>>213218

We still don't have a good handle on cultural norms, I don't think we should be hitting on Mika just yet.

>>213219
Aye, but +1 to just helping her debug butterflies.

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface Pavilion (3F ceiling) Lyan 2010/08/01(Sun)01:34 No. 214494 ID: f202ec
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I slip into the water and enjoy the coolness against my skin. I pull up my interface and begin filing away some of the day's events; I haven't been in anonymous mode much since I awoke, but adding some tags will make it much easier to recover later. Still, it's slow doing it manually and after a few hundred seconds Mika glides up beside me. "What're you working on?" Now she's floating on her back, orbiting around me, motionless except for a slow undulation of her tail.

"Just recording some memories. Don't want to forget anything. I've had some... issues lately." That's certainly as close as I want to get to explaining my problems right now.

"Oh? Anything in particular you're trying to remember?" She looks at me lazily out of one eye, but there's a definite something behind her question.

"Well, I certainly don't want to forget your or Sal." There's a slight cough from behind me. "Or Szen, of course. You're the first friends I've met so far this... well, this life. Mind if I capture an image?" She blushes and ducks her head slightly but nods. I turn around to grab the others and see Sal has sprouted strange wing-like protrusions from her back. "Sal? What's that?"

[Just thinking hard about something.] The tips of her 'wings' are glowing faintly red. [Going to need to dump some waste heat here soon. Think anyone will mind if I boil a bit of the pool?]

I turn back around. "So, Mika... perhaps I could help with your butterfly swarm. You said there were some bugs in the system?"

Mika smiles and steps out of the pool. "I need to visit the assembler. They're all yours." A bridge forms atop the surface of the water for her, leading to the central island. She blows me a kiss as she departs, and the swarm of projectors hovering around her flutter through the air to settle on me. Sal snickers as Mika turns and begins to ascend one of the spiraling ramps to the lower floors; the architecture in this place is still a bit confusing.

Szen takes another sip of his drink, then asks, "She's a bit young for you, isn't she?"

[Her? Lyan here is barely a day old. Oh, to be young again...]

There's a sudden buzzing in my head. *Incoming message from the Lethe Center. Accept?* "I appreciate your talking about me like I wasn't here, but I need this info. Excuse me." I swim out toward the center of the pool, paddling furiously to stay afloat. "Accept."

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface Pavilion (3F ceiling) Lyan 2010/08/01(Sun)01:36 No. 214497 ID: f202ec
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Good evening, Lyan-406.705.840.197root. Analysis of your archived post-treatment state vector has been completed.

"Well?"

A full simulation of your state vector and exocortial interface has been performed. It appears that significant manual alterations have been made. Part of the modifications appear to be a parasitic self-modifying memetic agent of a high degree of sophistication. No such structure was noted in your pre-treatment state.

"My brain is infected? If it's been identified, remove it!"

We believe that may be an accurate description. Complete removal of the agent may not be entirely possible; it appears to be deeply involved in the motiviational and reward structures of your cognitive processes. Excising it will result in alteration or eradication of your personality.

It appears that malicious alterations appear to have been made to your exocortical processes as well. This appears to be the source of the destructive feedback loops that resulted in your earlier cessation. What purpose they serve, if any, is unclear. If untreated, simulations display a profound disassociation of the exocortex with 8 to 12 Mseconds. The preceding period will be marked by paranoia, false recall, and fugue states of increasing length.

"What about my previous versions, then?"

We propose to restore you to a previous state and attempt to merge a delta of-

The lights die.
There's an indescribable sound, too loud to truly be a noise, and the world comes apart.

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface +100m Lyan 2010/08/01(Sun)01:38 No. 214498 ID: f202ec
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I'm in freefall.

The air rushes out of my lungs like I've been punched in the solar plexus. My eardrums burst. I immediately clench my eyes shut to avoid being blinded by ice. The helmet slams closed over my head. Too late. Far too late.

Time slows to a crawl. I hope the adrenaline will last.
I have:
A vacuum suit
My blade
3 "goo" grenades
1 flashbang
2 throwing knives
Interface rings with holographic display.
Tazer with 15m cable
20,000 cubic meters of water, rapidly boiling away into the vacuum

No air.
10 seconds of consciousness.

I wonder if Mika is ok.

I don't want to die.

Well, shit. There's probably no good way to convert water into oxygen with those supplies, is there? You could use the lines of the tazer as rope, if you had more than 10 seconds to get somewhere. Where the hell is the nearest exit and/or atmosphere?

Use your interface rings to put up a call for help. There's a ton of people around who are vacuum sealed, and at least one should have an oxygen supply they can lend you. Or can you contact them via radio as well? Use all options.

Lacking that, you could suck in some water to re-pressurize the inside of your suit so you can open your eyes (although you'll be drowning at that point) and then use the tazer's line as a grappling hook to reach SOMETHING.

Another thing we might be able to do is modify your suit so it can extract oxygen from the water, somehow.

Assuming you get some oxygen, you could suck in a bunch of water into a separate compartment of your suit, pressurize it, then use it as kindof a jetpack like thing to counteract your momentum.

Also, why did the Lethe Center get cut off like that? Weren't they communicating directly? Someone must be jamming the connection somehow!

>>214498
Orient yourself so you are visible from the surface, set your suit to flash bright colors, and set-off the flashbang.
Sal's body is not only capable of surviving this kind of event, but is also capable of rescuing you and providing you with oxygen. As you were the least prepared of anybody here there is a good chance rescue will arrive in time.

I am opposed to using the flashbang.

>>214525
I'm not entirely sure about the flashbang, since that's going to kick us somewhere in a very imprecise fashion, and that somwehere might be "spiralling off into nothingness". But lighting up the suit is very much plan A.

Attempt to absorb the oxygen from the water, if you can open your eyes look around for somewhere to latch your cable onto, or, well, ANYONE really. Set suit lights to flash and hope someone comes after you. Can YOU think of anything you can do?

>>214524

If there still is a Lethe Center...

>>214498
Well fuck, that's not good. Look around and see if you can see Sal. If you find it then it might be able to help you get some air to survive.

Other than that you might be able to siphon air out of somebody elses suit. That should give you some extra time, hopefully enough to stay alive until rescue can arrive.

Put the rest of your vacuum suit on.

Definitely need assistance. Set up some sort of distress beacon, and don't randomly chuck a flashbang.

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface +200m Lyan 2010/08/01(Sun)22:38 No. 214730 ID: f202ec
File 12807275301.gif - (140.44KB , 500x500 , 18869552.gif )

I thrash and resubmerge myself. This is going to get cold, quickly. I think my suit has a built-in heating element. Where's the backup air? 8 seconds. Interface with suit. It's scavenging O2 from the water around me, slowly. 5 seconds. Chromatophores in the suit to cycles colors, max intensity. Distress signal is already going. How much momentum do I have? Do I have enough mass to get back?

Something is screaming in my ear but I can't make it out. 2 seconds? Fading... Try to stimulate breath reflex with rhythmic contractions of suit. Automatic resuscitation in 30s.

I hope

this



works

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface +???m (animated) Lyan 2010/08/01(Sun)23:12 No. 214737 ID: f202ec
File 128072957953.gif - (214.59KB , 500x500 , 18869587.gif )

All my muscles contract at once and I draw a deep, shuddering breath. My eyes open painfully through a thin layer of ice.

...I'm glad that worked.

The air in my helmet is thin, but breathable. That's good, because the readouts indicate I'm breathing nearly pure oxygen. My ears are ringing and there's a slow trickle of blood from my nostrils that I can't reach up to wipe away. I absentmindedly wipe my hand across my helmet and snort in frustration before I remember where I am.

There's something else, something vitally important, but I can't remember what it was.

Help Mika. Propel your way her way.... somehow. Your suit hopefully has something built in. If not, grab chunks of ice and throw them. If your suit really does flow like liquid, you can wrap it around her and share. Hopefully Sal will be okay for a few minutes, even though he needed to vent heat and is now in insulating vacuum.

>>214737
You are currently drifting away from the habitat. You need to propel yourself back somehow! You've got some stuff you can toss... but do you have enough? Can you reconfigure the flashbang to use the limited accelerant in it as a kind of propellant?

Toss the throwing knives away, and your gel grenades. You need to redirect your momentum so you can contact the smart surface of the habitat again... or anywhere else nearby that you can get a grip on.

Maybe you can intake some of the surrounding water and use that as propellant too. Also, send out some radio/email/whatever to contact Sal or whoever's nearby; find out if they're sending a shuttle.

>>214741
>throw
>grenades
You know, if you can do so safely instead of just throwing the grenades why don't we set them off and use the force to direct ourselves back? At least the gel ones, they should be fairly safe, and will help us stick to the ship if we hit it. Or to Sal or Miika if we can find them.

But first things first, look around as well as you can and figure out where things are relative to you.

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface +1km(?) Lyan 2010/08/02(Mon)01:44 No. 214764 ID: f202ec
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My head is starting to clear. Where is Mika? Sal and Szen should be all right, at least for now. Long enough for a rescue. I twist awkwardly in place, with nothing to push off of but the tip of my tail dipping into the sphere of water that's quickly boiling away into ice crystals behind me.

The math is easy; call me 115kg moving 10m/s in the wrong direction. Maybe 2kg of mass I can shed. Can't change my momentum enough with that to get back on my own. I have a chance if I can get back to the water. I throw both my knives as hard as I can and hope that's enough to get me back into the pool. While I wait I pull up my interface and start trying to create a water-jet out of my suit.

[LYAN!] I have no idea where that's coming from, or how far. I twist around again and spot someone drifting slowly closer through the fog. It makes a last-second course correction by throwing some sort of weight and collides gently with me. We begin to drift backward another cm/s or two toward the pool of water.

"Sal, what happened to you?" The facade it was wearing at the party has dwindled away to a stick-figure. Its legs end in two short stumps.

[I had to jettison some mass. Seemed the easiest way to get to you. Good job with the lightshow - I knew it was you right away. Are you ok?]

"If I've had worse days, I can't remember them. I'm deaf. What's going on? What in Murphy's name happened?" It's strange not hearing my own voice in my ears.

[Something bad. Catastrophic. I guess you can't tell, can you? Habitat 58 is... dead. Everyone out here is screaming for help and nothing is answering.] I don't know how to respond to that. It's just too unbelievable. Sal continues after a moment.

[Listen, we don't have much time at all. I need your sword.] I hesitate for just a moment, but I'm not sure why.

Sal tilts its head in its familiar way. [Do you trust me?]

Might as well trust him/her/it. Give Sal your sword.

>>214764
He's either going to kill us, or we're dead anyway. Sure, give him the sword.

Tell him he'd better not cut anything of yours off. You're two feet from kilotons of ice. That's plenty of mass for whatever.

>>214764
We're only paranoid because of the brainhack. Give Sal your sword.

yeah, kinda low on options. not giving the sword would result in us kinda not being ble to do anything.

Level taser on Sal. Give Sal your blade.

"Given the circumstances? Yes, but not enough to not tase you if you start hacking off bits or something."

Seriously though, there's not much else you can do, so hope it has a plan.

>>214764
Sal is better than you with funky programming of stuff. It can probably use the sword to get you all back to the station. Because the option of staying outside isn't really a good one.

Oh, and I suspect we can now make some better guesses at the purpose of that hack. Wiping out an entire station through a sleeper agent and making it ripe for resettlement by your own people would be quite an ingenous trick.

>>214768
Pretty much this. If anyone has a magical way to get back, gain enough materials to stay alive, and then figure out how to survive the chaos long enough to construct a way out of--- yeah, fuck it. Just give Sal the sword. One way or another, it's a lot faster than just dying out here on our own.

>>214778
No, we are not going to menace Sal.
"We've got plenty of reaction mass for you to engulf right here; Think you could use that megawatt output of yours to rig up a crude ion drive? Or at least a superheated steam jet or something? We need to save Mika.
Also, could you shed your armature, use me in its place, and share life support? I don't know how many minutes I've got, and that'd make it hard to get split up."

>>214764
Give Sal the sword.

Ask it what it's planning on doing while you do so.

We trust Sal more than anyone else at this point, so go for it.

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface +1km(?) Lyan 2010/08/03(Tue)10:19 No. 215193 ID: f202ec
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"You need to ask?" I pull loose my sword. "Where are the others? Mika wasn't sealed! What IS happening?"

[Szen is taking care of her. Listen, someone apparently wants you dead very badly. I'm sure you have an iron constitution, but if you're still alive in 20 seconds they'll have to know their plan failed.]

"Sal...?"

[There's no time.] It looks away. [I'm sorry, Lyan.]

>>215193
You're about to feel a little prick.

58-N115-ADZJ - Surface +1km(?) Lyan 2010/08/03(Tue)10:25 No. 215195 ID: f202ec
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[...this shouldn't hurt.]

There's just few drops of blood. Ice is spreading through my chest. Heart is slowing down. See it withdraw the blade, pull it back for a swing.

[I'll see y.. . . . . .]

Lyan 2010/08/03(Tue)10:31 No. 215196 ID: f202ec
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Chapter I concludes tonight.

>>215193
Lets hope Sal knows what it's doing. Otherwise you're gonna have to punch it some when you come to.

Man, if Sal doesn't come clean when Lyan's next backup is instantiated, we're going to have to bust through causality ourselves to get Lyan to do something about whatever is wrong.

At this point, I think Lyan should just stay dead until this whole thing blows over. Wake up somewhere far away in a few centuries.

Try not to decompose too much before chapter 2 starts.

Also, watch out for scavengers; I hear Sergals eat their dead.

N115-ADZJ - near Habitat 58 Suggestion 2010/08/04(Wed)04:38 No. 215479 ID: f202ec
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End Chapter I.


Halting State resumes next week.

>>215476
...did Sal just decorptitate us and turn the body into solar sail?

>>215487

Sal had Rights to Lyan's suit.

Trippy.

>Sal had Rights to Lyan's pants.

Fixed.