Aberrant: Phoenix Rising - Book 2: Chapter 5: The Final Cut

[Courier]

Doug sent, *Anna, Gregory has been hurt. Do you think you could do your healing thing for him, or are you too busy tearing apart buildings?*

[Mr Fox]

Raider sighed, "Very well, my friends and I will attempt to stop it."

Raider blinked back to the scene and yelled, "Anna, you have to stop. You are hurting the city and the AI is going to send defenses against you if you don't stop now. Besides, this place is humanities last hope for civilization, don't lash out just because you are upset with what I said."

[Joani]

Originally Posted By: SalmonMax

She indicated her glowing body, her incandescent eyes.

"It goes away. I look human again. I feel human again. If you give me a chance...me and Greg, maybe, if he wants to...I think we can teach you. But you have to be willing to stick with it, Anna. You can't just give up if there's some hardship. I can't promise it'll be easy. You have to be strong, and you have to be brave, and you have to be determined."

Anna was about to strike again when Ashley suddenly ‘appeared’ in her face. The large tree-like woman stopped and blinked a few times momentarily distracted and confused. She didn’t want to hurt Ashley although she felt much like hurting something – a very alien emotion to her. The chunk of concrete and steel she just ripped out of the building fell to the floor with a heavy noise and Anna stopped listening to Ashley’s words.

“I… I don’t know if I can do that, Ash… I mean look at me. I don’t even look human anymore. I don’t feel human and this place is making me…”

Originally Posted By: Courier

Doug sent, *Anna, Gregory has been hurt. Do you think you could do your healing thing for him, or are you too busy tearing apart buildings?*

Anna’s head instinctively turned towards the direction she saw Gregory and the others just before she left. “Gregory is hurt.”, she stated to Ash and looked concerned.

“I must help him.” *Where is he?, she asked.

Raider could hear that the noises suddenly stopped just a moment after he yelled to her. Anna’s outburst was relatively short-lived – she wasn’t really the type to lose her temper.

[Courier]

Originally Posted By: Joani

“I must help him.” *Where is he?, she asked.

Doug moved so he was over Gregory and sent, *Directly below me.*

[Joani]

*I’m on my way*, Anna replied, her anger and frustration gone in the face of someone who was in dire need of her help. Even though Gregory was damaging the nature around him she couldn’t deny helping him. The large tree-woman felt responsible for her friends and she had grown fond of the savage boy who was much like her but in a different way.

With a few but determined steps she closed the gap to Doug and reached down for Gregory trying to see how badly wounded he was and if possible picked him up carefully as she slowly poured healing energies into his body.

Click to reveal..

ooc: I’m not sure if I should make a roll or what the circumstances are. In the case things go smoothly she’ll heal him for 6 Bashing or 3 Lethal IIRC

[Gregory]

When you come upon Gregory, he is unconscious and his body is flexed and rigid as if he's suffered a brain injury. Saliva leaks from the corner of his mouth which is twisted into a silent scream of fear.

(OOC: There is no affect when healed. He remains in a state of catatonia.)

[SalmonMax]

Ashley swoops down as Anna picks Gregory's unconscious body up to get a closer look. Her forehead creases in concern when the healing attempt doesn't bring him around.

"What's wrong with him?" she asks.

[Joani]

Anna looked worried at Ashley, “I… I don’t know. He’s not waking up. I don’t know if he was really hurt but something is happening to him.”, the large tree-woman held Gregory carefully in her arms and tried to keep him suspended as comfortably as possible.

“I… I don’t know…”, Anna kept repeating and looked back at Gregory. “Please, Gregory, don’t die. I didn’t mean to scare you away. I’m sorry… please wake up. Wake up… wake up…”

[Gregory]

Gregory doesn't wake. He is breathing, slowly and deeply, but refuses to respond to any physical or verbal stimuli.

(OOC: Gregory will be comatose for two days.)

[Courier]

Doug rotates through the link, *Raider, everyone, Gregory is still unconscious. He might have had a stroke or something. Raider, can you ask that computer where we could put him for a detailed medical exam? And please also ask it how the rest of us could communicate with it? Could we carry around... what are those called? Telephones?

[Mr Fox]

Raider contacted the AI, One of our people seems to have collapsed. He needs medical attention, we will take him back to the hospital where we implanted everyone with citizenship chips. Please have the systems respond to assist. Also, is there a way for the others to communicate with you?[/i}

[jameson (ST)]

Of course. The medical center stands ready to assist any citizen regardless of the severity of the injury. Unfortunately the robotic systems will be limited in their ability as they have only ever been intended as aids to human doctors.

Unless your freinds have the same ability you have to interface directly with my network they will need to locate an access terminal to communicate with the computer system.

Together the others brought the unconscious Gregory to the city's hospital where Raider and Anna worked together to puzzle their way through the diagnostic machines. It seemed that there was nothing physically wrong with the young nova (if indeed he could still be considered a nova), but the neurological scanner indicated an imbalance of hormones in his brain, possibly as a result of some kind of emotional trauma.

[Courier]

Doug said, "Emotional Trauma? Losing his skin didn't bother him... either the computer is wrong or we're missing something."

"Anyone have a clue here?"

[Joani]

"It's this place - it makes us sick. I can feel it and it already changed me and still is. I think the same is happening to poor Gregory...", Anna was close to tears.

"It's this place... it's cursed."

[SalmonMax]

"Anna," Ashley said, trying to calm the giantess, "We were changing already, before we ever came here. I know this is scary...I'm worried about him too...but we won't do ourselves, or Gregory, any good if we panic. We have to keep ourselves together."

She reached out to put a hand on Anna's forearm.

"There's no curse. In fact, Gregory's lucky we came here. There may not be another place in the world that has the medical technology to help him."

[Joani]

"But it's this place that caused his condition... don't you see it? What good is medical technology if the place makes you sick? We should leave and never come back to this 'city'. Everyone's dead here - there's a reason why and we'll be dead soon, too... if we stay."

Anna was calming down a little. Actually she wasn't close to panic but rather sad and griefing instead. She really hated this place.

[Courier]

Doug replied, "Anna, it's not the place, it's the planet. KB wasn't in this city when she was affected. Ditto every other nova on planet."

"The closest thing we've seen to a sane nova was the guy, here, who killed himself. As bad as things are here, everywhere else is arguably worse."

[Joani]

"That doesn't make any sense. Do you actually believe committing suicide is a sane thing to do? If so, why don't you make a good example of yourself and just die? I - don't - believe - any - single - word - you - say.", Anna pronounced every single word with contained anger.

Doug was always playing the level headed know-it-all and Anna finally decided not being the gullible one. She had trusted Raider and Doug but slowly they proved to have held back with vital information and knowledge.

They're not in any way better than I and don't know what to do either - they just think they are. Poor Gregory... he doesn't deserve this..., Anna thought as she averted her eyes from Doug and watched Gregory hoping that he'd wake up soon.

[Courier]

Doug smiled grimly and said, "Survival is over rated."

[Mr Fox]

Raider looked flatly at Anna, "This place might very well have been the place where the quantum bomb or whatever it was went off. And this place might be at the center of what happened to make every nova on the planet become an aberrant all at once, but the energy is everywhere now, not just here. When I was teleporting all over the world looking for signs of survivors, I spent the entire day jumping all over the place and never got tired. There is just a ton more quantum energy in the world now than there was before. It's not the city, it's everywhere. If you don't believe then go somewhere else and see for yourself, but you might be needed and useful here were at least you have a few friends."

[Courier]

Doug asked, "What makes you think this place could be at the center? I've seen no damaged buildings or whatever. York is missing stuff and has fallen buildings. It was also abby central, the logical place to drop a taint bomb."

[SalmonMax]

Ashley sighed. "You guys keep talking about it like it's a literal BOMB going off. But an explosion powerful enough to spread this...quantum or whatever...all around the whole planet would have left a crater the size of a city. Whatever this was, it probably didn't happen with a bang. Maybe it was cosmic rays from outer space or a haywire nova leaking radiation or...who knows? It could have been just about anything."

[Mr Fox]

Raider shook his head, "No, I'm just using the term bomb because we don't have any better explanation. For all we know it could have been the guy with the computer book erupting and flooding the world with quantum. It seems more likely that this was done deliberately, I've never heard of anyone able to able to have such a major effect on the world though."

Raider looked to Doug, "The AI says you can access the city's computers via terminals."

The idea sparked a question in Raiders mind and he relayed it to the AI, The last surviving citizen. What projects was he working on before the population died?

[jameson (ST)]

I am unaware. The last citizen alive before you arrived was an artist, I can direct you to his studio if you would like. A small hovering robot soon found them and waited to guide them to wherever they wished to go.

[Courier]

Doug thought, 'An Artist. You could do that here and not starve. Bet he wasn't working on anything interesting... wait. Not before the change anyway.'

Doug said, "He had a lot of months to try to use the city to figure out what happened, and he was probably better at it than we are."

[jameson (ST)]

Anna elected to stay behind with the comatose Gregory, in part for fear of leaving him alone in this technological madhouse, and in part for a desire to be nowhere near Courier. With Adam and KB nowhere to be found that left Raider, Ash, and Courier to investigate the artist's studio in hopes of finding out something about the taint event.

The robot guide led them through the city and after a short walk, a tram ride, and another short walk they were led into a large open layout apartment. Canvases of all shapes and sizes where scattered about. Many had been defaced or torn, as many were on the floor in tatters as were on easels in proper condition. The artist apparently specialized in landscapes as a large portion of the paintings were just that. Images of rice paddies, mist covered mountain valleys, and sun rises or sunsets over cities (both this one and ones unseen by man). With the help of the computer they were able to sort the paintings by date of completion.

Most of the older paintings were intact, and exquisite, but it was the newer paintings, the ones which had born the brunt of the artist's apparent rage, which proved most interesting. There was a painting of the city, dated just a week after the event if they counted right, the sun coming up through the eastern gate was red like blood, the light straining through high dusty clouds that gripped the horizon. Raider noted that the color was likely the result of haze between the rising sun and the viewer, at least it would be if it was painted from a real sunrise and not some fanciful imagination.

Another showed the city square, they recognized the fountain where Raider had found the man's body, the painting was actually a triptych, a painting made up of three panels that conveys a single scene. The first showed a normal scene, the people smiling, the children playing. The second was a scene of horror as mutations appeared, twisting and distorting the occasional citizen, at first glance you almost didn't see them, the work was so subtle, but the longer you looked the more they people you could see being twisted and changed. The third panel was a single man standing amid a shadow darkened version of the plaza, around him were bleached white skeletons, phantasmal green shades, and creatures, once human, that appeared to be writhing in agony, their bodies', some normal and others twisted, bled from their every orifice. In all three panels the sun was visible and surrounded by a green corona, like a malignant aura that was driving the deprivation and horror within.

[Courier]

Doug frowned, this was grim, and said, "Seriously good work. I think he painted what he saw. So... it was a normal day, the sun turned green, people mutated, and he killed everyone."

"Gas in the air? Dust in the air?" And this is pointless. We're looking for perfect information as an excuse for not doing what needs to be done.

Doug looked around for a computer terminal and, assuming he finds one, started trying to get a feel for what resources he had access to.

[Courier]

Doug said out loud, "We really should put a time limit on how long we're going to do this. Sooner or later we're going to need to make a decision with the information we actually have, not the information we'd like to have."

[SalmonMax]

Ashley shook her head. "Not that anyone's asking me, but if you ask me I'd say we need to find out what happened. If we CAN'T find out what happened, then that should be the end of it. I'm definitely in favor of erring on the side of 'not nuking' if there's inconclusiveness."

"That said, I'm not really in any position to stop you two, so whatever. Lets focus on the now. Does the computer have any camera footage from the time that the 'event' took place?"

[Courier]

Doug thought a moment then said, "Hey, Ashley. If you'd erupted back at... West Point was it? If you'd erupted there rather than York, what would your fellows have done to you?"

[SalmonMax]

"Thrown me out," she replied promptly. "They wouldn't have gunned me down in cold blood, if that's what you're thinking. But I couldn't have stayed there like this."

[Mr Fox]

Raider didn't comment on the by-play between the two. Both points of view had merit, but he leaned more in Courier's direction. Lack of conclusive evidence wasn't a reason to do nothing. The moonies had proven hostile, whether they were actually guilty of attempted genocide or not was the only real question.

"Good idea Doug. Let me see what the AI has to say."

He tapped into the terminal, Please stream to this terminal, any video from the day of the event that killed all but one of the city's citizens. Also, AI, do you have a name that we can call you?

[Courier]

Doug replied to Ashley, "What if it'd been someone else? What happens if Raider or I try to make contact by landing inside the town's center square?"

[jameson (ST)]

Originally Posted By: Mr Fox

He tapped into the terminal, Please stream to this terminal, any video from the day of the event that killed all but one of the city's citizens. Also, AI, do you have a name that we can call you?

I do not have a common name. If you find it easier to communicate with me you may choose one. I will route the video to your terminal, do you have a specific camera you would prefer or do you wish all data? Raider asked for all the data and began to play it through. Scene after scene played out, all the same despite their differences. The AI had edited down the segment to a roughly 30 second timespan. In each it started as a seemingly normal security camera video with people going about their lives. The footage was in color and after five seconds there was a greenish flash from the sky and about one in every ten or twenty people began to mutate and change horribly. This lasted for perhaps five or ten second before all of them, the mutants, the men, the women, the children, all of the seemed to cry out in agony before collapsing dead to the ground. After perhaps twenty videos, each the same though different, there was the plaza, the fountain, and the one man who didn't die, the one man who apparently killed a city full of people in a single instant.

[SalmonMax]

Ashley watches the video, rapt in horror.

"The flash, the green flash...is there a camera that's looking up? What's that flash coming from? The sun? The whole sky?"

[Mr Fox]

Raider felt he had a scent and asked, AI, please extrapolate from the videos the point of origin of the flash that occurs in each video just before the people begin to mutate.

[jameson (ST)]

Collating, calculating. One moment please. The AI withdrew, leaving the screen playing the scenes over once more. After about a minute the screen when blank and the AI returned, its avatar a simple red sphere. Based on analysis of the camera footage from all four thousand, three hundred, and forty-five external cameras and cameras with external views and interpolating shadowing I have reached only a single conclusion. You may, however, review my data if you wish. The flash recorded in the video was a momentary shift in the color of the ambient natural light, that is to say that the flash was in fact a short term shift in the color of the sun's light.

[Mr Fox]

"So there was no actual point of origin for the flash, it was a shift in the color spectrum of light coming from the sun, with the Sun as the point of origin?

[jameson (ST)]

That is one possible explanation though there is no scientific reasoning for a sudden, extreme, momentary shift in the spectrum of output light from the sun. Is it not more likely that the phenomenon was due to a momentary energy field within the planetary space or atmosphere? Or possibly a high atmospheric chemical reaction which filtered incoming sunlight? Cross referencing with weather data, please stand by. ... There is nothing in the weather data to indicate atmospheric disturbance by a chemical or physical force.

[Mr Fox]

"Do you have any sensors that could have picked up energy emissions? I am thinking that is related to a massive influx in quantum energy. The question is where it came from."