Transbot Survivor

July 14, 2005

Dick: Where were we before I went to, um, deal with Samuel and Tom?
Donald: Checking for a pulse in the disemboweled pig on a platter, I believe.
Dick: Ah yes. Have a Perversity point and make me a Medical check, Donald.
Donald rolls - 20.
Donald (ooc): Son of a...
Dick: Not only do you find a pulse, but you are positively convinced that the technician is simply holding his breath and playing dead.
Donald (shouting): "You can't fool me, citizen! Get up and then drop and give me 50. That'll teach you to lie down on the job and gorge yourself on real food!"
Dick: He doesn't immediately respond.
Donald: I grab him from the front of his jumpsuit and shake him thoroughly.
Dick: He doesn't respond, though the apple falls out of his mouth and rolls across the lounge car floor.
George: Picking up the apple and eating it.
Dick: It tastes like there's a bit of blood on the peel.
George: I polish the apple against my jumpsuit to get rid of the blood and then eat the apple.
Alberto: I'll examine the technician, too.
Dick: Roll Medical.
Alberto rolls - 12.
Alberto: Failed by 2.
Dick: He might not be faking it, after all. He might have been drugged - possibly by whomever cut open his chest and removed several of his internal organs...
Alberto (ooc): This is absurd. You know that, don't you?
Dick: That's why I'm letting you roll - because it doesn't affect the plot, and it's funny to watch you fail.
John: Can I declare my Wetware narrow as "Is He Dead, Jim-R?"
Dick: Sure. Go ahead and roll it.
John (ooc): 50-50, boys and girls.
John rolls - 4.
John: "Um, guys, I'm pretty sure he's dead."
Donald: "No he's not! I've seen dead men before, and they didn't look anything like this lazy clone."
Alberto: I get some sharp kitchen implement out of a drawer. "Maybe this will convince you to cooperate." I begin slowing cutting at the places where the nerves are.
George: I supervise while finishing my apple, occasionally looking around the lounge car to make sure no stone cold killers show up.
John (ooc): Yeah. Alberto-R and Donald-R would resent the competition.
Donald (ooc): I'm not a stone-cold killer. I'm just apparently really bad at checking for a pulse.
Alberto: Does he react to the pain?
Dick: No.
John (ooc): Notice how Alberto doesn't even bother to defend himself...
Alberto: "Tough Commie to crack, eh? I'm gonna enjoy this..." I do even nastier things with the sharp implement.
Donald (ooc): Sometimes the best way to make an accusation seem even more credible is to flatly and repeatedly deny it, right George?
George (ooc): Let's not discuss Karl at the gaming table, okay?
Dick: Alberto, give me another Med check.
Alberto (ooc): No Perversity?
Dick: Your tics are not liking to be interrupted and being camera shy. If you had taken "inflicts horrible tortures on innocent citizens and corpses" as a tic, you'd be earning Perversity.
Alberto (ooc): But you said I couldn't take "enjoys interrogating traitors too much" as a tic.
Dick: And at moments like this, I'm glad I did.
Alberto (ooc): Awww.
Dick: Medical, please, Alberto. Actually, I'll roll it. 10, right?
Alberto: Yes.
Dick rolls in secret - 4.
Dick: Well, if he wasn't dead when you got here, he's definitely dead now.
Alberto: Oh. In that case, I lose interest and move away in search of clues as to who killed him
John (ooc): You're not going to leave him on The Computer's doorstep as an offering?
George (ooc): He's a sadist, not a predatory feline.
Dick: What's your Stealth?
Alberto: 6.
Dick rolls in secret - 12.
Dick passes Alberto a note: You don't find any clues.
John: I'll examine the area, too. Stealth is 4.
Dick rolls in secret - 7.
Dick passes John a note: Nothing.
Donald: Doing the same. 6.
Dick rolls in secret - 5.
Dick passes Donald a note: This guy's been dead a while, so he couldn't be the source of the scream. Also, the surgical precision of the cuts made to remove the organs seem to indicate that the killer had extensive medical knowledge.
George: I'll supervise the investigation.
Dick: Just as you're wrapping up the preliminary search, you hear some rather unhappy sounds from the direction of the humanitarian cargo car.
George: "We might want to check on Samuel-R. He should be recovering nicely, now."
John: "Are you so afraid of moving forward, George-R, that you feel constantly compelled to move backward to revisit the past?"
Donald: "I agree with our noble leader on this one. This technician has been dead awhile, and whoever killed him knew his anatomy."
Alberto: "I should be interested in meeting this person."
John (ooc): Planning to swap recipes?
Donald (ooc): Inquisition Appetizer - You will need 1 innocent victim (healthy), a fresh razor, and some means of keeping the victim's hand open with fingers spread. Slice the skin between each finger perpendicular to the hand with a razor. It takes very little time to complete this process, and while the agony it produces is not vast, it holds the undeniable advantage over thumb screws, bamboo splinters under the fingernails, and Hammer Hand Crunch in that the damage it causes heals in a matter of a few days with virtually no scarring. To increase the psychological effects of this treatment, ask a minimum of 1 uncomfortable question each time before you make a cut. If your innocent victim refuses to answer, hesitates, or gives you an answer you don't like, make the cut. If he says what you want, ask him another uncomfortable question. This increases the prep time, but the connoisseur of sadism will appreciate the increased dimension of its flavor. That and your superiors are less likely to take as much interest in your psychological profile if you can pass this appetizer off as just doing your job for The Computer and Alpha Complex. Either variation should eventually produce the same result.
John (ooc): Did you just lick your lips, Alberto?
Alberto (ooc): Of course not. Must have been a trick of the light. And I thought we agreed not to talk about Gitmo, Donald...
George (ooc): Careful what you say about that, Alberto. You're on the short list, but if Congress hears you saying things like that, they might think you'll be one of those activist judges we all hate.
John (ooc): It might let you pass as a moderate. You have your record to stand on, after all.
Dick: Where's Samuel when I need him? Oh yeah, waiting for the rest of the team to check on him in the humanitarian relief car...
George: I'll take that hint and lead the team back to where we left Samuel-R.
John: Taking a lead, now. What a weird thing for a team leader to do... I'll be right behind him.
Donald: Following.
Alberto: Ditto.
Dick: Okay. I'm going to get the others, then.
Condi, Samuel, and Tom return from the isolation chambers.
Dick: Coincidentally, Condi-R arrives at the humanitarian relief car just as Tom-R is coming to - minus an arm. Samuel-R is also missing an arm, his hair, and most of his body fat. The docbot has wandered off toward the front of the transbot.
Samuel: Hold on. Don't I even get a chance to blast the tin can into atoms?
Dick: Alas, no. It clearly knew how much to sedate you so you couldn't wreak your vengeance just yet.
Condi (to the tune of "Whatever Happened to Saturday Night"): "Whatever happened to you guys' arms?"
Tom: "Those INFRARED scum took them."
Condi (singing tunelessly): "They took your left arm?"
Tom: "No. They took my katana!"
Dick (ooc): So much for Straight style...
Tom (ooc): Give me a motorcycle, and I'll have the perfect Zap character.
Dick (ooc): Yeah. See, I don't *want* to run a Zap game.
Samuel (ooc): Especially since he's saddled us with a roomful of nuclear warheads.
George (ooc): I dunno. We could go for the record for number of TSKs in a single session...
Condi (ooc): TSK?
George (ooc): Total sector kill.
Dick (ooc): Thanks for playing, but no.
Condi (singing tunelessly): "What do you know about it, Samuel-R?"
Samuel: "I suspect the docbot that tended us has gone Frankenstein."
Condi (singing tunelessly): "Where is it now?"
Samuel: "Not here. It's probably hiding in some dark corner of the transbot, waiting until one of us is injured so it has another chance to hack off our limbs."
George: On our way through the Tech Services sleeper, do we see the docbot?
Dick: As a matter of fact, no.
John passes Dick a note: I can't remember. Which hygiene closet did I use to change clothes?
Dick passes John a note: You didn't specify, so we'll say the Tech Services closet.
John (ooc): Uh oh.
George (ooc): What?
Dick: Continuing with the game at hand, you reach the humanitarian relief cargo car without incident and discover Condi-R looking in something like wonder upon the one-armed Troubleshooters who have clearly recently recovered from their sedated state.
Samuel (ooc): Don't forget "fetchingly thin."
Tom (ooc): Right
George: "How did the negotiations with the enemy go, Condi-R?"
Condi: In a catchy narrative song, I explain the terms the Commies laid out for us. They'll turn off the perimeter lasers if we leave all the humanitarian relief cargo behind. Once we pile up the goods, they'll turn off the lasers. They won't come out to collect until after we leave. No funny business on either side.
Dick: There is another scream from the direction of the engine car.
George: "What the..?"
Donald: "Sorry, noble leader. I forgot to mention that our dissected technician in the lounge wasn't the one we heard scream. That must have been someone else."
Dick: There are several more screams from the direction of the transtubes.
Tom: "This is getting ridiculous. If we stay in this transbot station any longer, we're going to keep losing technicians, and those transtubes are going to be a one-way slide to a swift death. We need to get somewhere that those transtubes aren't the closest insertion point for clones."
George: "Agreed. Unload the propaganda weaponry."
Samuel: "Wait, sir. I have an idea. Sabotage it, first."
John: "Sabotage and booby-trap. I think we can work together on this project."
Alberto and Donald scribble furiously.
John (ooc): Stop that!
Donald (ooc): Just doing our jobs, John.
George: "Do what you must, then, but make it quick. Something is killing the technicians we're supposed to be protecting. We don't have time to bake a pipe bomb birthday cake, here."
Condi (ooc): Baking birthday cakes in Alpha Complex? I think you have an anaspatialism.
John (ooc): Anaspatialism? That's not even a real word.
Condi (ooc): Kind of like an anachronism, except instead of meaning "wrong time," it means "wrong place." Kind of.
George (ooc): Right. Remind me to pray you never end up playing a character in Semantics Control, Condi. Anyway, the Alpha Complex equivalent of baking a cake with a pipe bomb in it.
Samuel: Right. I settle down to sabotage the big guns as quickly as possible. It might be a bit obvious once they examine the goods, but we'll be long gone, by then.
Dick rolls in secret - 7.
John: And I'll spend 10 Pervs to create enough HE shells to blow the place apart and set a timer to detonate them shortly after we are long gone.
Dick rolls in secret - 8.
Condi: I start unloading some of the goods to make it look like we're acting in good faith.
Tom: I'll help Condi.
George: No you won't. I'm going to order you to go with Donald-R and Alberto-R to investigate the source of the screams at the front of the transbot. *I'll* help unload the transbot.
Dick: Okay. Anyone disobeying orders?
Alberto: No, but I'll be comparing notes with Donald so our reports corroborate one another with regards to our suspicions about the real reason George-R chose to remain behind.
Donald: Good idea.
Tom (ooc): Maybe if I die horribly, I'll get a new multicorder.
Condi (ooc): Maybe Dick will give your arm back, too?
Tom (ooc): Shush, you.
Dick (ooc): An arm for a multicorder? Sounds like a fair trade to me...
Tom sighs.

GM - Vice President Cheney
Alberto-R-GZS-1 (Alberto) - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Condi-R-ICE-1 (Condi) - Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
Donald-R-UMI-1 (Donald) - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
George-R-BSH-1 (George) - President George W. Bush
John-R-SNO-1 (John) - Secretary of Treasury John Snow
Samuel-R-BMN-1 (Samuel) - Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman
Tom-R-IDG-1 (Tom) - Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge