Sorry, Your Time-Traveling Privileges Have Been Revoked
- Thread starter Chandagnac
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Mate, instead of drinking yourself into a stupor looking over old photographs you could be ingratiating yourself to the next benevolent goddess who could send you back home for the services rendered in her ascention. Wink-wink.
[x] Ask him about the city council.
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that several of them have been replaced by robot duplicates?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that the mayoress is actually a shapeshifting giant who dreams of becoming a god?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that Cripple Yan ran away, went into hiding, and became the leader of the Doomsmen terrorist group?"
-[x] "As a member of the city council, do you have the authority to allow me to borrow something from the museum?"
--[x] "I need to borrow one of their vehicles so I can rescue a friend of mine who is buried underneath some rubble."
-[x] "Does the 'space program' have any other staff, or is it just you?"
[x] Give him hope.
-[x] "We're going to defeat the False God who secretly rules over this city, steal his powers, and then we can all go home! You want in?"
[x] Ask him about the city council.
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that several of them have been replaced by robot duplicates?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that the mayoress is actually a shapeshifting giant who dreams of becoming a god?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that Cripple Yan ran away, went into hiding, and became the leader of the Doomsmen terrorist group?"
-[x] "As a member of the city council, do you have the authority to allow me to borrow something from the museum?"
--[x] "I need to borrow one of their vehicles so I can rescue a friend of mine who is buried underneath some rubble."
-[x] "Does the 'space program' have any other staff, or is it just you?"
[x] Give him hope.
-[x] "We're going to defeat the False God who secretly rules over this city, steal his powers, and then we can all go home! You want in?"
Forget the Freezer, can he shoot lasers out of his eyes?
Well, Stalker is pretty popular, at least. Not that people know which novel the game used for inspiration.
Wait, what's our latest plan for digging up Glitch?
Last edited:
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Actually, yeah, I was agonizing over what we could ask of him, when in fact we could ask him for everything!
[x] Ask him about the city council.
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that several of them have been replaced by robot duplicates?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that the mayoress is actually a shapeshifting giant who dreams of becoming a god?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that Cripple Yan ran away, went into hiding, and became the leader of the Doomsmen terrorist group?"
-[x] "As a member of the city council, do you have the authority to allow me to borrow something from the museum?"
--[x] "I need to borrow one of their vehicles so I can rescue a friend of mine who is buried underneath some rubble."
-[x] "Does the 'space program' have any other staff, or is it just you?"
[x] Give him hope.
-[x] "We're going to defeat the False God who secretly rules over this city, steal his powers, and then we can all go home! You want in?"
[x] Ask him about the city council.
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that several of them have been replaced by robot duplicates?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that the mayoress is actually a shapeshifting giant who dreams of becoming a god?"
-[x] "Would it surprise you to learn that Cripple Yan ran away, went into hiding, and became the leader of the Doomsmen terrorist group?"
-[x] "As a member of the city council, do you have the authority to allow me to borrow something from the museum?"
--[x] "I need to borrow one of their vehicles so I can rescue a friend of mine who is buried underneath some rubble."
-[x] "Does the 'space program' have any other staff, or is it just you?"
[x] Give him hope.
-[x] "We're going to defeat the False God who secretly rules over this city, steal his powers, and then we can all go home! You want in?"
- Location
- St. Petersburg
I mostly like it for the sheer "would it surprise you that the world is a dark and terrible place full of horrors?" factor, and then giving him an offer he would see little reason to refuse in light of the reveal.
And should that offer benefit us as well, wouldn't that be a nice coincidence?
Last edited:
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
No, because I've never played the Dishonored games and know next to nothing about them.
As I said in my last update, I want to write a whole rant about what inspired me to create the character of Mikhail, mostly because I want to rant about some of the things I liked when I was a kid, but I'm not sure when I'll have time for it.
Like it says at the top of the list of options, "Choose as many options as make sense".
That's fine, thank you.
Possibly he'll end up being one of your most overpowered companions, but I rather doubt that he'll manage to beat Evie's record for borderline Mary-Sueishness.
Is that something you want to say to him?
It should be clear that he's trying to drink himself into a stupor for lack of any better options. It's up to you to give him those better options.
Possibly he could make beams of light energy appear as if they are shooting out of his eyes, but I think that would be a rather inefficient use of his powers. Much more useful to gather energy at a distance, where it's needed, and then use it to blow things up.
Is that the Shadow of Chernobyl game? (No, I've not played it, but I've heard about it.)
I don't know. What do you want to do? Borrowing a mechanical digger from the museum is certainly an option.
Indeed.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Yeah, loosely inspired by Picnic on the Roadside.
Ends with one of my most favorite lines in fiction.
Notes on Mikhail Sokolov
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
Notes on Mikhail Sokolov
As I've said before, when I was a kid I was a big X-men fan, probably because I was the perfect age to be awed by the Saturday morning cartoon of the same name. I collected the comics for years, even when they weren't very good (which was a lot of the time, to be honest). In a way, I suppose you could say that my memories of those comics inspired me to write this quest (in which Frida assembles a collection of odd characters with weird superpowers), just as much as Chrono Trigger and some of the earlier Final Fantasy games did.
Because the writers of those comics were constantly getting substituted and moved around, the quality could vary markedly, plotlines were constantly being discarded in favour of the next big idea, and some interesting characters were given remarkably short shrift. I feel like I learned a lot about writing as a consequence of reading those comics, but most of what I learnt was about what not to do.
There were dozens of characters whom I thought had a lot of potential which was sadly squandered, either because they were unceremoniously killed off for a moment's cheap shock, or because the writers had no idea what to do with them. Mikhail Rasputin, brother of the X-man Colossus/Peter Rasputin, was never a very interesting character, being a generically insane villain with nebulous superpowers which made him difficult for the writers to use, but I always thought he had potential.
In most of his appearances, Mikhail Rasputin was a villain, but it's worth noting that he wasn't always a villain. To begin with, he was part of his brother Colossus/Peter's sad backstory: he was a Russian cosmonaut who was missing, presumed dead, after something went wrong on one of his trips into outer space. In actual fact, he had encountered a weird anomaly which transported him and his spaceship into another dimension. I never got to read it myself, but I'm told that he even had his own comic book miniseries in which he was basically a Russian version of John Carter of Mars (or Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Michael Kane, or Carlton Marvell, all of whom are variations of the same archetype): having pulp-ish adventures in space, battling alien warlords and romancing alien princesses.
Later on, Mikhail was brought back to the X-men comics as a villain. Apparently, his dimension-travelling adventures had driven him unfortunately insane, which meant that the writers never bothered to come up with interesting motivations for his villainy. As far as I remember, he was just a generic insane villain who wanted to rule and/or destroy the world. Also, his dimension-travelling adventures gave the writers an excuse to not have any proper continuity to his appearances, so he had a tendency to disappear and reappear whenever they needed him to (although not very often, because he was never a very popular villain).
In the alternate universe of The Age of Apocalypse (which I'm still very fond of despite the atrocious Liefeldian 90s artwork), Mikhail Rasputin was originally a noble patriotic hero, the leader of Russia's superhero defence force. They fought a brave and defiant last stand against the forces of the genocidal mutant tyrant, Apocalypse, who had already taken over most of the world by that point. Mikhail personally killed the leader of the invading army: Apocalypse's horseman, War. In fact, he and his fellow Russian superheroes fought so well that they would have won the battle if Apocalypse himself hadn't taken the field and bailed out his defeated army. Mikhail was captured, brainwashed, and turned into War's replacement as one of the horsemen.
That sounds awesome, right? I would have loved to have seen a comic book starring Marvel's Russian superheroes (who all tend to be depressingly stereotypical and have the word "red" somewhere in their names) fighting to defend their homeland against the forces of a genocidal world-conqueror, coming tantalizingly close to victory, and being sadly defeated at the last moment by an enemy who was basically a demigod. However, all of that was just backstory for a comic book starring The Age of Apocalypse version of the Avengers superhero team, which was… well, it was okay. Not great. Still, I feel like that taught me a lesson, which other wannabe writers might find useful as well: if you've written a backstory which is more interesting than the story you're currently writing, maybe you should be writing a story about that instead.
In the main series continuity, Mikhail was finally killed off in another miniseries which claimed that the reason for his insanity was that he was possessed by his namesake, the mad monk, Grigori Rasputin himself. I remember it being terrible, from start to finish, but what it did to Mikhail was probably a mercy. At least he can't be made into the villain of any more horrible comic books (because I can't imagine that any writer would bother to bring him back to life).
A lot of minor comic book villains tend to have badly thought-out superpowers which make them incredibly powerful and difficult for writers to use. Mikhail was no exception. As I remember, he had the power to control and manipulate all forms of energy, which most writers treated like it was magic and could do basically anything, until the end of the story when he was inevitably defeated via deus ex machina. There are some obvious restrictions they could have given him, which I plan to use in this story, (for example, maybe there's a limit to the amount of energy he can control at any one time; or he can't control the energy of anything he doesn't notice or is surprised by; or he needs to expend some of his own body's stored energy in order to control energy, which would mean that he could be worn down by overexertion), but they never bothered, even though it would have made it easier for them to write decent stories.
I think that having limitations and restrictions – and seeing fictional characters work within those restrictions – is one of the things that makes superpowers interesting. Of all the writers I can think of, Brandon Sanderson is the one who does it best. He has created a large number of fictional worlds which each have their own unique magic system with a different set of rules. For me, part of the fun of reading his books is seeing how characters will use their powers to do amazing things despite the limits on what they can do. Being limited in some way forces characters to be clever and creative, which is fun. If a character is so ludicrously overpowered that the only way to defeat them is via deus ex machina, that's not fun.
Anyway, Mikhail Sokolov is my homage to Mikhail Rasputin and all the other X-men characters whom I thought had potential which was sadly wasted. I changed his surname to Sokolov because it's supposed to be a more common name than "Rasputin" (which I've been told appears in fiction more often than it does in real life because 'Ra Ra Rasputin' is one of the few famous Russians whom people here in the western world can remember the name of). Also, "Sokolov" is derived from a word meaning "falcon", which I thought was rather appropriate for a man whose profession involves flying, even though falcons don't actually go into space… so maybe it's not that appropriate. Never mind. Finally, until I came to write this – and went back and did some research just to check – I was under the impression that a couple of real life Russian cosmonauts had been named Sokolov, but it turns out that I was wrong about that. I was probably thinking of Anatoly Solovyev and Vladimir Solovyev, I just misremembered the names.
I think Russian 'John Carter of Mars' makes for an excellent addition to this quest's ensemble cast, along with Muslim Samurai Jack, dumb Conan the Barbarian, HK-47 with the serial numbers filed off, the elven version of 'the Doctor' from Doctor Who, and all of the other characters who populate this weird and wonderful fictional world. (Do I have any shame, you may ask? The answer is no. I am a completely shameless thief.)
Thank you for reading this, if you've bothered to read this! I'll get on with writing the next update now!
Last edited:
- Location
- St. Petersburg
No, there aren't any, but there is a (domestically famous) painter Andrei Sokolov who drew space and cosmonauts, and then there is this...
...I will take you at your word that you never heard of it.
I thought he also went through a chassis remodeling. That totally counts as an original character!
Last edited:
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
It's entirely possible that I had heard of it, forgot about it, and got it subconsciously mixed up with my other inspirations for this character (whom you were supposed to meet earlier in this quest, but you didn't explore the Government Building enough for me to get a chance to introduce him, darn it).
On the hand, if I'd never heard of it, that's a rather spooky coincidence! I like it!
(Hmm. It does look very familiar. I actually think I might have come across that comic book when I was doing my preliminary research for this quest, and chosen the name "Sokolov" for that reason, but that was at least three years ago, so it's hardly surprising that I've forgotten about it.)
Last edited:
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Eeeeeh. DC comics also don't really bother with anything other than "they are probably communists in disguise" aesthetic. I mean, I wouldn't even mind that if they were goddamn communists, actually saying something about the plight of the working class and how swell it would be to seize the means of production from the debauched bourgeoise and distribute them among the masses of impoverished people, but instead almost all Russian supers in any given comic are government-sponsored enforcers, the government which is, uh, not communist, last time I checked.
The most sympathetic Russian characters I've read about in comic books are immigrants, which pretty much says everything you want to know. But then again, maybe I shouldn't bitch about it since the situation with Chinese heroes is even worse.
205. Recruitment Drive
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
Glitch: "WE MUST SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION!"
Other robots: "WE ARE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION!"
Heh, still one of my favourite jokes in this entire story.
However, despite quoting Karl Marx for his own purposes, I'm not sure that Glitch can be considered to be a communist, even if he is very concerned about the plight of oppressed workers (whether they be robots or otherwise).
In the specific scenario I outlined (in which they were defending their homeland from the forces of a vile despot who wanted to wipe out all of humanity except his chosen few), I think even those Russian superheroes who are normally portrayed as being government stooges would have been very easy to sympathize with, simply because of the sheer evil of their opponents.
When I first saw Grant Morrison's Great Ten, I thought they were interesting and well thought-out. However, on closer inspection, they're bland and/or very stereotypical, and some of them are outright offensive. (Looking at you, Mother of Champions!)
*
Recruitment Drive
'So... you're a member of the city council,' you say, carefully considering how you're going to broach the subject of what you're going to say next.
'Yes, I thought we'd established that,' he says snarkily. It would appear that Glitch has even more competition than you'd realised.
'Would it surprise you to learn that several of your colleagues have been replaced by robot duplicates?' you ask.
'No, I always thought most of them were brainless drones,' he replies. Then, after a pause, in which he takes the time to actually think about what you just said, he does a double take. 'Wait, you're serious?'
You nod. 'Also, the mayoress is actually a shapeshifting giant with dreams of becoming all-powerful, Cripple Yan ran away and became the leader of the Doomsmen terrorist group, and this entire city is secretly ruled over by a false god who is hiding somewhere up in the Crown area. He uses robots as his eyes and hands down here on the lower levels.'
A broad grin spreads across his face. He doesn't seem to believe you. 'I see. Do you have any proof of these assertions?'
'I could take you to see Cripple Yan right now, if you want,' you offer. 'He's got his own spaceship!'
'That makes one of us,' Mikhail says bitterly.
'Does the "space program" have any other staff, or is it just you?' you ask.
'It's just me. And it's not as if my department has any actual funding, other than a modest stipend for my living expenses, or any real chance of ever getting me back into space.' He upends one of his almost-empty bottles of wine and drains the last gritty dregs from it. 'Like I said, I'm a joke. What a loser!' With a howl of broken laughter which might as well be sobbing, he scrapes a hand over his mouth, wiping away the wine stains.
'You should come with me,' you say, offering a hand. 'Me and my group, we're going to defeat the false god, steal his powers, and use them to escape this place, so that we can all go home!'
Wherever that home may be, you tell yourself. My home is the open road: an endless journey across the stars, throughout time and space, forever.
He looks uncertain. 'I'm not sure I believe anything you've told me,' he admits. 'How do I know that this isn't some complicated practical joke?'
'What if it is? At least you'd be doing something productive with your time, rather than trying to drink yourself into a stupor.' You shrug unconcernedly. 'It seems to me that you might as well take a leap of faith. What have you got to lose? Other than your chains, I mean?'
'I suppose you are right,' he says, taking your hand. 'How do you want to go about this?'
You help him stand up, though not without some difficulty. He's a big, hefty fellow and – because of the amount he's had to drink – none too steady on his feet. Even when you've got him to stand upright, he's still swaying from side to side like a tall tree in the middle of a gale.
'How did you manage to drink that much?' you ask, indicating the thicket of empty bottles he's left behind. 'I'm impressed that you've been able to talk to me at all.'
'It's because of my powers,' he explains. 'Ethanol is fuel, so my body automatically converts it into stored energy. Most of it, anyway. If I drink to excess – if I drink more than my body can handle at any one time – I can start to get drunk, but I need to drink an enormous amount even to get the slightest bit buzzed.'
'Seems like a lot of effort to go to,' you tell him. 'I don't know, is it worth it? Have you considered taking drugs instead?'
'With my bizarre physiology, I have no idea what effect recreational drugs would have on me, if any,' he admits.
'You're not tempted to try?'
'Where would I even get drugs around here? Hah! I've seen some of the effects which homemade drugs have had on some of the poor people of the shanty towns. They basically poisoned themselves. All I can say is, no thanks,' he says brusquely.
'So, you're not suicidal,' you say with a nod. 'That's good to know.'
'No. I'm hurt and miserable, but not to the extent that I'm desperate to end it all,' he says quietly. 'While I live, I still have hope… that someday I will go home and see my family again.'
You clap him on the back. 'I can see that you're going to fit in well with my team! Although, it's a bit of a sausage fest at the moment. I should see about recruiting some more women.' Just then, a thought occurs to you. 'Hmm, I wonder if Nonette would want to join? I mean, she's happy here, but if I told her that there's a good chance that this city's going to be destroyed in a few weeks, maybe she'd want to help out? Alternatively…'
Mikhail looks questioningly at you. He's wearing that exasperated expression which you're very familiar with because you've seen your other teammates wearing it so often.
'As a member of the city council, do you have the authority to allow me to borrow something from the museum?' you ask. 'I need to borrow one of their digging vehicles so that I can rescue a friend of mine who is buried under some rubble.'
'Rescue? This friend of yours is still alive?' he asks.
'Well, even if he isn't, I can rebuild him,' you say. 'I have the technology to do that.'
'I'm fairly sure that I could authorize it,' says Mikhail, after a moment's thought. 'Of course, if the other council members found out about it and thought that I had been abusing my position, I would probably be summarily dismissed, but… for various reasons, I don't think that is going to be a problem.'
'You don't think they'd terminate you with extreme prejudice?' you ask.
'Hmm. I suppose they might replace me with one of those robot duplicates you mentioned, if they thought that I had become a nuisance rather than a joke,' he says, hazarding a guess.
What do you want to do next? (Choose one)
[] Get Mikhail to help you to traverse the 'Freezer' area so that you can reach Vault 9.
OR
[] Go to the Museum. Ask Nonette to let you borrow one of their well-preserved digging vehicles so that you can rescue Glitch. Get Mikhail to authorize this.
-[] Ask Nonette to join your team.*
OR
[] Do something else (write in).
*Obviously, you shouldn't include this sub-option as part of your vote if you don't want Frida to try to persuade Nonette to join her team.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
[x] Go to the Museum. Ask Nonette to let you borrow one of their well-preserved digging vehicles so that you can rescue Glitch. Get Mikhail to authorize this.
Right. Go get the gizmo, raid the Freezer, rebuild Glitch (we have the technology), and get this show on the road before we find another side quest to distract us.
Sorry, Nonnette. We should probably warn you that the museum won't be lasting another week, but I can't think of why we'd need you.
Right. Go get the gizmo, raid the Freezer, rebuild Glitch (we have the technology), and get this show on the road before we find another side quest to distract us.
Sorry, Nonnette. We should probably warn you that the museum won't be lasting another week, but I can't think of why we'd need you.
- Location
- Where Jokes Die
[X] Go to the Museum. Ask Nonette to let you borrow one of their well-preserved digging vehicles so that you can rescue Glitch. Get Mikhail to authorize this.
Maybe we can come back to warn her after all is said and done? It's a bit of a leap.
Maybe we can come back to warn her after all is said and done? It's a bit of a leap.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Using Marxist rhetoric to convince a communist to support you? You fight dirty, Frida, but I like it!
Oh, Frida, how nice of you
Ah nevermind
[X] Go to the Museum. Ask Nonette to let you borrow one of their well-preserved digging vehicles so that you can rescue Glitch. Get Mikhail to authorize this.
-[X] Ask Nonette to join your team.*
If this were on Questionable Questing...
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
Hmm. Maybe Frida would like to add a cute robot girl to her ever-expanding harem?
We've already established that Frida thinks the resident sexy elf, Evie, is so gorgeous and fanciable that it helped open the closet door for her, but what about the other members of the Time Travellers' Society? Garrar is a massively muscular hunk of manmeat, and I'm sure a lot of women would find him very attractive, so long as they didn't expect any stimulating conversation from him; with his experience of being a stage magician, it's likely that Neoptolemus Grimwood knows all kinds of tricks to liven things up in the bedroom; Al-Khidr is old and experienced, so I'm sure that he would be a skilful and considerate lover; she's just recruited Mikhail Sokolov, who is a dark, brooding action hero with a backstory full of tragedy, who needs to be comforted (sexually?); and as for Glitch… well, I've been looking for an opportunity to make a jokey reference to 'Fisto the sex-bot' from Fallout: New Vegas. Yes, I think Nonette would make a fine addition to Frida's list of conquests. Perhaps she could start off by showing the sweet, innocent robot girl what is meant by 'this thing called love'?
Anyway, that's the version of this quest which I would be running on Questionable Questing, if I had completely taken leave of my senses.
Obviously, I'm joking. I think it would be very out-of-character for Frida or any of the other members of the cast to start behaving as if this were a smutfic, especially Al-Khidr (because of his devout religious beliefs), Mikhail (who would be unwilling to cheat on his wife) and Glitch (who would be weirded out by the whole concept.)
Last edited:
- Location
- St. Petersburg
That niche is already taken by Oswald Grey the android. Look where it got him.
- Location
- Dethklok
Sorry. I failed my spot check.
[X] Go to the Museum. Ask Nonette to let you borrow one of their well-preserved digging vehicles so that you can rescue Glitch. Get Mikhail to authorize this.
Though reading his reaction could be fun.
[x] Go to the Museum. Ask Nonette to let you borrow one of their well-preserved digging vehicles so that you can rescue Glitch. Get Mikhail to authorize this.
206. Bureaucracy Is the Final Barrier
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
Bureaucracy Is the Final Barrier
After you've said goodbye to Janus for what will probably be the final time, you leave the Pandemonium bar and nightclub behind, with Mikhail in tow. Though he is a little unsteady on his feet, he keeps up with you easily enough. You navigate your way through the cramped city streets, past all the buildings which appear to have been placed randomly and haphazardly, around the central pillar which supports the Crown high above, until you reach the newer, better-maintained buildings which are part of the 'Hightown' area, laid out in an orderly grid pattern. As usually happens whenever you come this way, your passage is blocked by the barricade which completely surrounds Hightown. This time, the Seraph guards on duty see that you are with Mikhail and wave you through without question, not even bothering to look at your stolen permit. (If they had asked, you would have told them that "Mister Grin" is your stage name.)
From there, it's a short distance to the museum, along a straight and relatively well-kept road. However, the museum itself still looks as grimy, dingy, and acid-scarred as it ever did, despite the fact that it must have been a magnificent edifice when it was new. Compared to the other buildings around here, it looks rather sadly neglected, at least from the outside.
You walk up the steps and push open the front door. Considering that it's late in the evening, you're slightly surprised to find that it isn't locked, but you don't suppose that Nonette pays much attention to what is going on outside of her semi-private domain. Inside, the museum is sparkling clean and neat, without even a speck of dust that you can see.
At the front desk, there is a bell which you can ring to get the attention of a member of staff. Well, that's what the label on it says. As far as you are aware, Nonette is all the staff which the museum has or needs; unless you count the five mummers, and people don't normally count animatronic robots as if they were members of staff.
Experimentally, you ring the bell. 'Does Nonette normally respond to this?' you ask Mikhail.
He shrugs. 'I don't know. It's not as though I've ever had much to do with the museum before now.'
'Don't they have a section dedicated to the space program, the planets, and so on?'
'Surprisingly, no.'
A moment later, Nonette appears, carrying her usual feather duster and cordless vacuum cleaner. 'Good evening,' she says, blinking her cloudy white eyes at you. 'I wasn't expecting visitors.'
Rolling your eyes, you say, 'You're never expecting visitors, are you?'
'No,' she admits. 'Hardly anyone ever comes to see me.'
Mikhail looks rather fascinated by her purplish-pink skin and hair which appears to be made of plastic. He raises his eyebrows as if her appearance is rather unexpected.
You nudge him, asking, 'Haven't you ever seen a robot girl before?'
'I've never seen one like her before,' he admits.
'In all the time you've been here in this city, as a member of the council, you've never bothered to visit the museum before?'
'I took one look at it, realised that it was full of trash and nonsense, and never bothered with it again after that,' he says.
Nonette looks rather offended. 'My museum is not full of trash,' she says.
'Of course it isn't,' says Mikhail with obvious sarcasm.
'I don't think I like you very much,' she tells him.
'A fact which worries me so much that I will probably never sleep again,' he replies.
'Oh, I'm sorry… I didn't mean to cause you any lasting harm.'
'Mikhail, stop annoying the robot girl,' you say. 'We've got important business to attend to.'
'Am I a robot?' Nonette asks, glancing down at herself. 'I think I would have noticed if I was.'
'Well… do you need to eat, drink and sleep just like any other human?' you ask.
'Yes,' she replies.
'Huh, interesting…' You shake your head, trying to stay focused on the matter at hand. 'But never mind that. We need to borrow one of your exhibits. Do you have any construction vehicles like those which were originally used to build this city?'
'Yes, it's part of our "History of Terminus" exhibit,' she says, eagerly nodding her head. 'It has been expertly restored and repainted, just like new. It was supposed to be used as part of a parade… but I don't think that's going to happen now.'
'Excellent. That's exactly what we need. We're going to borrow it for a few hours. As a member of the city council, Mikhail here has the authority to do that,' you say, clapping him on the back.
'Very well, have you filled in the necessary paperwork?' asks Nonette. 'I need to see a requisitions form before I can allow you to borrow anything.'
'You don't need to see our paperwork,' you say, doing your best impression of the "Jedi mind trick".
Nonette tilts her head to one side, looking confused. 'No, I'm pretty sure I do. It's a rule.'
What will you do? (Choose one)
[] Go to the government building and get the correct paperwork, fill it in, and come back.
[] Persuade Nonette that you'll fill in the correct paperwork later on, but you need the digging vehicle right now.
[] Tell Nonette that it is an emergency, that you need to rescue your friend who is buried underneath some rubble, and you'll be ever so grateful if she could ignore the need to fill in the correct paperwork this once.
[] Offer Nonette a chance to come with you on your adventures if she stops being so fussy about needing the correct paperwork.
[] Knock her out, steal the construction vehicle, and carry on with your plan to rescue Glitch.
Last edited:
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Ah, I should have realized that when we acquired a Russian sidekick we've also acquired Russian problems with him. Bureaucracy! The only way to win is to refuse to engage. Filling the paperwork only ensures that they will win instead!
[X] Offer Nonette a chance to come with you on your adventures if she stops being so fussy about needing the correct paperwork.
[X] Offer Nonette a chance to come with you on your adventures if she stops being so fussy about needing the correct paperwork.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Well, then there is also a proven solution to it. "When you are not allowed to but want it very much, you can!"
Nepotism and preferential treatment, go!
[x] Tell Nonette that it is an emergency, that you need to rescue your friend who is buried underneath some rubble, and you'll be ever so grateful if she could ignore the need to fill in the correct paperwork this once.
I have a niggling suspicion that paperwork is a part of a conspiracy by robots to take over all spheres of human lives. No wonder the Council got replaced by androids; no living being can hope to make sense of it all.
[] Persuade Nonette that you'll fill in the correct paperwork later on, but you need the digging vehicle right now.
Hmm, why don't we have Glitch fill the paperwork for his own rescue?
Nepotism and preferential treatment, go!
[x] Tell Nonette that it is an emergency, that you need to rescue your friend who is buried underneath some rubble, and you'll be ever so grateful if she could ignore the need to fill in the correct paperwork this once.
I have a niggling suspicion that paperwork is a part of a conspiracy by robots to take over all spheres of human lives. No wonder the Council got replaced by androids; no living being can hope to make sense of it all.
[] Persuade Nonette that you'll fill in the correct paperwork later on, but you need the digging vehicle right now.
Hmm, why don't we have Glitch fill the paperwork for his own rescue?
Last edited: