Aberrant: The Long March - Chapter 3: Finding a path

[Omar]

Omar spends his time doing whatever manual labor the village needs. When not a laborer, Omar will relax on the beach.

[Mr Fox]

While Andrew, Steve, Omar and Morgan are down on the planet helping out the good people of Stormbringer's village, Cody has been busy on board the ship interrogating Director Thetis.

Lorean records the session for future reference and sound proofs the room so that the crew isn't disturbed by the screams. Not that Cody is intentionally causing her pain, but his telepathy unfortunately has that effect on people as a result of his own painful erruption.

When he first enters, the director is cool, and relatively lucid. She does speak to the voices in her head as though they are real people, but then she has been alone for the last 20 or so years not knowing if the human race has survived the war that she caused.

The questions start with easy things that don't go directly to her root insanity. What does the box with the button do?

Cody scans her mind for the truth as he asks the question eliciting a startled and pained gasp as he doens't have to press to deeply for the answer. He gets an image of the box creating a field rendering monsters harmless. She thinks of novas as taint ridden monstrosities.

The next question elicits a gasp followed by pained whimpers. What's in the two vials? This time you get an image of laboratories and a nova who is ill. You see blood being taken from the nova and taken away. As you press further tracking down the memory, you begin to realize this is the sterilization drug, or rather the retroviruses that go into the drug to produce the results.

"How dare you treat the Director this way you monster!" The voice is slightly different than the directors normal one. It is one of her alternate personalities speaking.

The next question follows on the heels of this comment produces annoying results. What's your name and history?

The images you get are vague and are very odd. You are seeing images of someone elses life, or rather what the director's warped subconsious imagines is the life of her long dead assistent. It takes some time and many painful screams later before you get to the true images of Director Thetis' life. You get her real name and images of her life as she grew up. More images of her joining the Aeon Society as a young woman and being smitten with Max Mercer. Images of her ambition as she rose within the orginization getting ever closer to Mercer and the center of power. Images of her becoming disillusioned with Mercer as he disappeared on one of his long absences. More of her growing ambition as power became more of a focus of her life. Horror at the discovery of the inner secrets of the orginization when she realized that there were other types of humans out there, and that the orginization intended to guide humanity so that the different races could live together in peace. Jealousy and eventually hatred as she grew to resent Mercer and the other meta-humans for having greater potential than her. The establishment of a secret orginization within the Aeon Society that was loyal to her alone, Project Proteus.

This all takes quite a long time to get out of her. With her insanity you have to sift through much of her insane imaginings to glean what you have. After a few hours of rest for you both you return and ask the next question, When where the gadgets moved into the room, and how long after the war started did she take a hammer to them? You see her ordering the move two days before the bombs dropped. Then images of her going through the gadgets over and over in the weeks after the bombs and cursing and weeping that there is nothing within the bunch with which she can communicate or view earth. Finally in a fit of peak she took the sledge hammer to them after a year or so, having first removed the box and the neural disrupter as being useful. She used the box to make sure the devices weren't active before smashing them. You receive these images without too much resistence and thus not too many screams.

The next question results in more screams though, not because she resists, but because you have to dig in her mind to ensure she is telling the truth, Is there a cure for the sterility? She knows of no cure and honestly hopes there isn't a way to reverse it, even though it led to the war.

Again Lorean advises you to let her rest for a time before continuing. After a few hours you return to it, Who else is in Project Pro? Who did she give orders to? Who gave her orders? Who hired her? When? After much screaming and what seems like hours of effort you come to the conclusion that she is the head of the serpent. She established Proteus to protect humanity, or rather that's what she tells herself. The reality is that her jealousy ran so deep that she did what she did in hopes of someday eliminating the meta-humans. Mercer himself hired her and even helped her along in her career, but never realized what she was becoming along the way. It was her own infatuation for Mercer and the discovery that she could never have him that turned her against the meta-humans and caused her to do the evil things she did. You get glimpses of horrible things that she ordered in the name of 'protecting humanity'. You also get the images of many people that reported directly to her and that she used to accomplish her goals. As you interface with Lorean, she is able to put names to the images you get from the director and compile a list of the knowing participants in her campaign of genocide. You also begin to understand that in her position as a member of Aeon's board of directors she was able to order many things to be done that accomplished her ends but that those performing their duties never realized they were doing anything wrong. This session was a long and hard one, and there were points where you were afraid she wasn't going to survive the questioning.

In the final session you learn that Max Mercer was affected by an experiment that triggered his genetic flaw. She sees it as a genetic flaw and considers him little better than one of the monsters now, though she didn't start out feeling that way. Mercer didn't seem to fit in with genetically with the Novas or the Psiads. His ability was to travel through time, a unique ability as far as she knows. He knew nothing about Proteus, and she took great pains to ensure that he could and would never find out even by time travelling. She was careful to never let anyone know enough to realize that she was the one behind the name Thetis. After this session she is very weak and Lorean suggests that she needs a day or two rest to recover enough to survive if you intend to question her further.

[Mr Fox]

Meanwhile those on the planet spend two days visiting and helping out the people. Omar does months worth of work for the village people in the two days. They are very grateful for his help. With his size and strength they have a good oldfashion barn raising, or rather two barns, three houses, and a wall around what is to be the new garden for the potatoes and fruit that you brought.

Meanwhile Morgan heals the village's sick. Despite the mostly radiation free environment of the island there was an increased number of people with cancer and other illnesses.

Andrew gets the chance to try out many new shapes and enjoy flying and climbing as several different animals and manages to listen into many of the villagers conversations.

Steve spends his time in the library and visiting with people of the village trying to learn about the war and the history of the people since the burn.

There is an incident that occurs on the second day while Omar is helping to build one of the barns and Steve is talking with a family of villagers that will be living in the house that was just build next to it. Apparently Steve's luck is in. You hear a high pitched scream from just on the other side of the wall. When you invistigate you discover a young girl about 10 years old lying on the ground crying and clutching at her head. She is cradled in a group of vines and plants that seem to have broken her fall from the top of the wall. Every inch of her skin that you can see is a deep and healthy shade of green, and leaves and flowers seem to be growing in her hair. Looks like the girl was trying to eaves drop on Steve's conversation and get a close look at the visiting 'lords' when she slipped and fell, erupting on the way down. Her parents quickly arrive and many tears ensue as they are both frightened and relieved and overjoyed at the same time. Seems that it is considered a great honor here to erupt as a Nova and this automatically raises her status among her people, and apparently her powers are related to plants which will make her greatly honored as she will be able to help with feeding her people.

At the end of the two days you take your leave of Stormbringer and his people confident that the human race will survive on this timeline and perhaps will rebuild a better society than the one that was destroyed.

After a short walk down the road until you are out of sight Morgan creates a warp and you return to the ship to discover the results of the investigation and to plan your next actions.

[Courier]

Originally Posted By: Mr Fox

After a short walk down the road until you are out of sight Morgan creates a warp and you return to the ship to discover the results of the investigation and to plan your next actions.

Steve walks through the gate, picks up the waiting CRC and uses Fast Tasks to write "To: Stormbringer from the crew of the Lorean. Good luck. Steve." and then he tosses the book to the middle of the road where it will no doubt be found quickly.

[Andrew Murphy]

Back on Lorean Andrew returns to human form, a slightly disgusted look on his face is preceeded with, "After three days as any number of animals I REALLY need to brush my teeth ... blech." He heads off to his quarters to shower and clean up before joining the others for a meal and to discuss the results of their visit and the interrogation.

"Well sounds pretty awful I'm glad I wasn't on ship to hear that," Andrew says after hearing the account of the interrogation thus far. "So I guess the interesting thing here is that there have been extranormal people for quite some time, and it appears that Aeon was created by a time traveler."

Andrew sighs and mulls this over for a bit, "At least we can relax now that we know we aren't going against a cross-dimensional conspiracy. That said we do need to worry now about a rogue agency that is fully prepared to eradicate our kind and has the technology to give it a go."

Andrew shakes his head and leans back picking his teeth with a fork, "I think," he says around the fork, "That we should go back to the beginning and see if things started out ok. Maybe Aeon was doomed from the start, maybe not, I think we need to find out and if it is ... well we might need to stop it from forming."

[Omar]

Omar felt good that he was able to help the citizens of Stormbringer's village. He had not had a good shower in a few days, and wanted to get the dirt and grime off his body. Omar retires to his room and hits the showers.

When he finished showering, he reviewed the interrogation information. He quickly turns off the video of the interrogation because it reminded him of his own torture. Instead, he reads a synopsis of the information gathered.

"This woman was an evil person," he says to Andrew. "She wanted to kill of all of us. What is worse, is that there were others who were in on her plan. Maybe we should try to stop Aeon from existing."

[Courier]

Steve says,

"First things first. After she recovers and answers any more questions, we go back 24 hours before the nukes launched and drop off old Thetis so young Thetis can take care of her... and we'll pick up any Quantum tech while we're at it and fresh samples of those drugs. Hopefully there'll be an instruction guide in there somewhere. I think that's the only outstanding question, where are the tech manuals for all that stuff."

"Then... I'm tempted to go back to the 60's or 70's and tell Max not to hire Thetis and the rest of the bozos on that list, but I think Andrew is right. At the moment we know there's at least four different types of super folk but we only have first hand experience with one and very limited information on one other."

"Dragging Max into this in the 70's is risky because he'll have at least 4 decades of experience by then. Similarly, destroying AEon is also a problem because I remember too well what N-day was like, without Aeon I think it would have gotten ugly quickly."

"Let's level the playing field. Let's go back and deal with everyone when they were still new and didn't have decades of experience under their belt. Let's go back to... two days before the accident, then let's see what Lorean's scanners say about the before and after. Then let's skip forward a month or two and join Aeon."

[Mr Fox]

*Warning* This post is very grim.

Lorean suggests that Director Thetis has undergone about all the questioning she can handle without suffering a complete break from reality. Keywork being complete. So having taken all the information from her that can be squeezed out, you put your plan into action. 24 hours before the bombs will be launched you jump in behind Mars and open a warp into the storage room where all the equipment is. It takes you and the crew a good fifteen minutes to move all the artifacts through the warps and into one of Lorean's cargo bays. It's not that there were really that many things, but some of the objects like the box are a little awkward to move, and some of them you need to handle with care since you don't know what they are likely to do or what might activate them.

Once you have everything aboard, you deliver the older Director Thetis through the warp into the bunker minus it's nice toys. You do leave the hydroponics facilities intact as well as the power generation equipment and artificial gravity deck plating. Just before he brings her out of her confinement, Cody uses his telepathy on the director one last time to impart to her the full knowledge of what her actions have caused on this timeline, as well as the other timelines and that nothing good has come her evil on any of them. This time her screams are not just from the pain of the telepathy. Before she goes through the warp Morgan also steps forward and with a look of digust on his face heals the old woman so that she will be in peak shape for someone of her years and live as long as possible in her isolation with her younger self.

Lorean waits until the nukes launch and then jumps to a position in Earths orbit between the planet and the sun so that she will be hard to detect. Not that anyone is looking beyond the atmosphere. "Lady's and Gentlemen of the crew. We are about to be witness to the distruction of most of the life on the Earth. I would suggest that you avoid the images that I will be recording, and to help you with that I have provided entertainment in the galley for the next two hours. If you feel you must view the tradegy I will provide a realtime hologram of the apocalypse on the bridge, but again, I suggest that you not attend.

Most of the crew goes to the galley to be with others and be distracted. A few do go to the bridge to bear witness to the deaths of nearly 5 billion people. From orbit the view of the planet is spetacular and as breath taking as anything you've seen in your journeys so far. Then you see lights bloom around the globe, first one, then another, and another and another. It is like watching a lightning storm on a hot summer night off in the distance. Unlike that, these lights have a terrible quality as each one represents the deaths of tens of thousands. It lasts nearly two hours before it finally peters out. In all several hundred bombs were detonated. Nearly every major city was completely wiped out.

Lorean again speaks, this time in a voice thick with emotion and only to those on the bridge. "Again I advise that you not witness what I am about to record." A couple of the human crew leave the bridge weeping and holding each other. Smythe and one or two others stand grim faced, but not budging from their spots.

The scene changes as Lorean jumps closer and zooms in on city after city recording the destruction. Each city has a label in the image above it because without the label you wouldn't be able to distinguish most of them due to the devestation. The cities are followed by by images of people dying and dead. After she finishes recording this she jumps forward in time 5 years and again takes images of the cities. The ruins are devoid of life, the countryside is devoid of life. Everywhere you see skeletons; humans, animals, and birds. There is something poigniant about the images as you see ocassional patches of color amongst the carnage. Grass growing among the small skeletons of children on a playground. A rose bush still growing in the front yard of a house on a street in a small town with no one left to appreciate the beauty. Then depressing, but hopeful in a way you see refugees struggling to eke out an existence in the mountains of South America and other places. Sickness and disease is rampant and the people are obviously affected by radiation even in the parts of the world that weren't directly hit.

Finally Lorean's image replaces the hologram. There are tears in her eyes. "But there is still hope, even here." She ads images she took when you were in New Zealand of Stormbringer's village. Children playing, people farming and building houses with the help of Omar. Morgan healing the sick. Steve talking with Stormbringer about his people and their story since the burn. The little girl that erupted and the reactions of her people to her eruption and what it would mean to their survival to have someone that could effect plants.

In a voice at first quiet but then stronger as she goes on, "I have made three copies of this. Morgan I ask that you open a warp to the bunker where the Director is and send this recording through." From the wall two small devices emerge from a compartment that you didn't know was there before. "The director should see this and know the full horror of what she did. Sadly, knowing that humans and novas depend on one another for survival will likely affect her as much or more than the evil that she commited."

"I also ask that you indulge me and give me one more day in this timeline so that the second copy can be delivered to Stormbringer for his library. The third copy I will keep to preserve knowledge of what has happened. Perhaps it will sway others on timelines where history hasn't yet been written to avoid this fate."

[SkyLion]

While many of the crew seem content to distract themselves with Lorean's diversions, Cody can't help but wonder at their denial. They know what is happening...the knowledge is raw. terrible and relentless.

That the timetraveling vessel lends its own surreality to the scene doesn't change the fact that it *is* Earth down there...that those are real people who have lived real lives and are now really being destroyed.

Cody watches with Lorean in silence, his tainted eyes tearless, yet no less stung by the enormity of what transpires below.

[Courier]

Steve watches the world burn and tells himself that there's an infinite number of Earths burning in other timelines, and countless others ok in still others. It doesn't help anywhere near as much as it should. He nods in agreement to Lorean’s request briefly without words.

Finally he has Lorean open a com to the ship and says,

“It’s over. I expect this one was as bad as it can get. We came here to meet our fears and find their origin, and we were successful. The engineer of this is stuck on Mars in a trap of her own making, and I can’t see anything more fitting. If it makes anyone feel any better, this never could have been your world. Your world diverged from this one long ago, probably back in the 1920’s.”

“Well, we’ve seen the fruit of this poisonous tree, and we’ve captured the original cancer cell that took a planet down this road, the next step is something lighter. The ultimate origin of this mess was in the 1920’s.”

(Later, only to Lorean and the novas)

Steve says,

"Guys, this last timeline was pretty brutal. I think the crew deserves a break. Instead of going to 1920's right before the accident, how about we go there 10 days before? That will let us find an island somewhere in the sun belt and relax for a while."

[Omar]

Omar couldn't watch the Armageddon unfolding on earth for more than a few minutes. It was too biblical for him. Instead, he sat in his room and imagined himself in the 1920's

To Steve. "Getting some sun would be great. I could use a mental relaxer after seeing the earth scortched."

[Andrew Murphy]

Andrew stares down at the smouldering planet long after the majority have turn away he focuses his anger into a ball, concentrating it into a white-hot purity, There is no way to stop this, it has already happened and will continue to happen. On countless world humanity and nova kind are eradicating themselves, sterilizing the planet. Why? In the infinite cosmos is the only constant the suffering, hatred, and loathing of small minded people?

Andrew finally turns away as Lorean turns off the view screens. His shoulders slumped, his face ashen, Andrew moves off into the depths of the ship. He makes his way to the gym where he batters constantly at the traning equipment, working the anger, frustration, and agression out of him. He pours fourth the while hot anger into the punching bags. Four hours he can be heard thrashing away at within the gym, his cries of anger and frustration leaking from the room.

[SkyLion]

Quote:

Steve says,

"Guys, this last timeline was pretty brutal. I think the crew deserves a break. Instead of going to 1920's right before the accident, how about we go there 10 days before? That will let us find an island somewhere in the sun belt and relax for a while."

"Thats a good idea. It will also let perform some ground-level research and investigations that we need to. Lorean wont be as much of a help there...No offense Lo."