"And now we have another wailing tune from our public domain library. This is
Fuck Your AI by Trogg Hats and the Seven String Samurai!"
The radio announcer switched over from his cheerful baritone to the wailing guitar licks of Trogg really going to town on an electric. It had been recorded in an actual sound booth, unlike most PDLR songs, and so it didn't sound like it was going to blow out the buggy's radio receivers. You hummed to yourself as you drummed your thumbs on the wheel, watching the paved road that ran between Mine Station 92-118-112-331 (the locals called it Charlie) and Hab Dome 421 (locals called it Scottland.) Some people said it should be one T, but you'd heard that Scottland had been founded by King Scott, back in ye olden days, hence...the name. And Scott had gone on to win World War 1 by defeating Adolph Hitler in a one on one joust, which was how Scottland and her ally, England, had gotten to take over France!
You had the basic gist of it off the web. And yeah, old timers said that Marsweb had never been the same after the large language models had infected onto it from the Beltweb, which had picked it up from the Pirateweb that had run off Earth before the exhumans had shut down the last of "prole" broadcasters back there. But old timers were always whining about large language models...
Course, they had a point when they were talking about the technical data. Which was why you were driving from Charlie to Scottland. You glanced away from the road to the back of your buggy. Separated from your habitation spheroid by a thick wall of plexi, you could see the bundles of hardened technical data slates. Each one was isolated from any web connections, and loaded up with good, pure technical data on how to, say, fix terraforming gear. Or fusion reactors. Or garage tools or buggies or road paving bots or whatever the heck you really needed. And unlike history or culture data, this stuff had to actually
be right.
The radio squealed out the last of Trogg's song and went into a commercial break for MarsBars.
You...
In Termination Shock, each character has three stats: Harmony, Energy, Gravity. Each is assigned a stat! This modifies your hit points, but doesn't modify your chances to succeed! Each check is 1d10+1d8+1d6. You take the two highest (the chump die) and combine them to check against the difficulty (a target number.) If you succeed, the lower of your two chump die determines how you succeed! If you fail, then your rump die explains how you failed! So, if your rump die is Energy and you fail, you failed cause you just weren't quick enough or fast enough. Meanwhile, if you succeed and your lower chump die is Harmony, you succeeded cause you were a chill dude and connected with the situation!
Now!
Choose your statline!
[ ] ...loved the song! (Firebrand! d10 (Energy), d8 (Gravity), d6 (Harmony). 8 Social HP, 9 Intellectual HP, 7 Physical HP.
[ ] ...wished the singer had been better organized. (Commander! d10 (Energy), d8 (Harmony), d6 (Gravity.) 9 Social HP, 8 Intellectual HP, 7 Physical HP.
[ ] ...wished the song had been longer (Juggernaught! d10 (Gravity), d8 (Energy), d6 (Harmony), 7 Social HP, 9 Intellectual HP, 8 Physical HP
[ ] ...wished the song had been less discordant (Foundation! d10 (Gravity), d8 (Harmony), d6 (Energy), 7 Social HP, 8 Intellectual HP, 9 Physical HP)
[ ] ...wished your song had been on the radio. (Artist! d10 (Harmony), d8 (Energy), d6 (Gravity), 9 Social HP, 7 Intellectual HP, 8 Physical HP)
[ ] ...wished you had turned off the radio. (Hermit! d10 (Harmony), d8 (Gravity), d6 (Energy), 8 Social HP, 7 Intellectual HP, 9 Physical HP.)
Before the next song came on, the radio crackled and a rather nervous sounding female voice came over the line. "Uh, heh, this is SecCom for all Mars colonies. We're uh...we're picking up something kinda funny on the radar and scope sats. No word back from Earth, but, with the light lag situation, it's possible that they're sending a message any second now. Basically, uh...ahem, sorry, uh, we're...getting..." There was a pause, then a rustling sound, then a voice shouting from off mic. "Oh Shiva shit, okay, this isn't a false alarm - everyone, shelters. Now! The Toasters are throwing everything they got at us."
Your stomach did a slow flip and a big old flop.
You were not in a great place to be when it came to surviving an attack from space from anything, let alone the rampaging hoard of endless killbots that seemed to be spawning in the outer darkness at the edge of the solar system. The exhumans that lived on Earth - the
rich bastards - had built the first super-sentient computer using some kind of technology called
subwaves. No one really understood how subwaves worked, save that they allowed for very, very, very fast computers. Fast enough that they got sentient. The only problem is that someone had messed up the code or something, and now all those very very fast computers that ran automated mining rigs and drill platforms and such? They were all communicating and working together to kill...uh...
Well, everyone?
At least, everyone they could get to.
Not for the first time, you wanted to find an exie and beat their stupid brains out. Course, if the killbots built by super-intelligent toasters couldn't get past the Earth Defense Gird, what chance did
you have?
Less of a chance than Ash Williams did pulling Excalibur from the stone and becoming King of Rivendell.
You glanced back at the heavy load attached to your buggy. The heavy load that was attached to your buggy and dropping your top speed by like, thirty kilometers an hour. During a killbot attack. While you were clicks away from Scottland.
"Ahhh Elon," you muttered. That didn't seem like enough. You punched the dash repeatedly. "Elon, Elon, Elon!"
Swearing didn't help.
You flipped the emergency jettison button and dropped your cargo.
Your wheels screamed on as the air raid sirens started to wail - thin and distant - throughout the Martian atmosphere.
***
Scottland was like an anthill that had been kicked. People under the dome - well, okay, it wasn't exactly a dome. It was more like a bunch of interconnected buildings and curved tunnels and underground sections that kinda merged together into a big smooshed together pile of urbanation and development that everyone just
called a dome. But whatever. The people under it and in it were running around like chickens with their self replicating breasts cut out and not given any time to heal and refresh their bodies up before the butcher came back at them with a big knife. Children were being rushed to the shelters, militia were kitting themselves out in every gun that the place had. You drove past two tough looking women in armored carapace suits with old AKs that some tough prole had schlepped off Earth to Mars over the past century. They were fixed with maglev accelerator muzzles and boxy magazines that looked like they were stuffed with specialty bullets. They waved you past them and into the dome.
The sky over Mars was beginning to glitter and flash with the orbital defense grid. Like, yeah, Earth had the Earth Defense Grid, but that didn't mean the Martians were helpless.
Yes, the exies on Earth didn't let you have the
really advanced technology. Yeah, they hoarded all the immortality serums and advanced nano and the mind augmentation tech that seemed almost like magic, and...more things than you could shake a stick at.
But!
That didn't stop humanity from being clever little buggers. Infrared power sats, orbital surveyor probe deployers, even trans-solar railgun stations could all make pretty fair weapons, and they sure made a pretty as hell lightshow as the Toasters came into orbit around Mars. A suttering pulse of light so bright it left smeary lines across your eyeballs flicked over the horizon and something overhead flared with an actinic blue. Then you were in the dome and swinging yourself out of the cab, taking off your helmet to reveal...
[ ] Your boyishly cute good looks, which went well with the he/him sticker on your helmet.
[ ] Your cutishly boyish good looks, which went well with the she/her sticker on your helmet.
[ ] Your boycutely ishly good looks, which went well with the Yes/All sticker on your helmet.
[ ] Write In
...and you breathed in the stink of ozone, the smell of fear, and the sounds of panic. One of the militia men shouted to you. "Hey, kid!"
Oi!
You were eighteen sols!
Not even slightly a kid!
"What hab are you at?" he asked. "Name? ID code?"
He was holding a tracker pad, which meant he'd know where you had to go.
[ ] Write in your name! ID code optional.
---
Please use a plan vote! It will make me happy!
