You walk down the street and approach the Petty Public Library, an old building sitting on the edge of the Thomas Petty Square. The building looks as though it was built in the '30s, a two story structure made of old crumbling red brick and rusty iron. The place has simple square windows with many small panes, from which dim yellow light spills. There is an old rusty fire escape down the left side of the building, from an emergency door on the second floor. You walk through the oak paneled windowless double doors, and enter the dirty library itself. The area near the entrance is cordoned off by rope dividers into a lobby area about thirty feet wide and twenty feet long, with dirty old armchairs scattered about and a large stained pine front desk dominating the center rear of the area, behind which sits a thin, gray-haired woman in her sixties with a pair of silver spectacles. A few people are sitting in scattered chairs, absorbed in their reading. To the left, a gap in the dividers leads to a darkened alclove containing an old wooden staircase leading up to the second floor. To the right, another gap leads to a large brightly lit two-story area full of bookshelves and writing desks, ringed by a dark balcony on the second story. At the back of the library is another wooden door which you guess leads to the administrative section of the library.
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You flip through channels with irritated boredom. There doesn't seem to be anything good on these days on the thirteen channels you get. Channel eight is showing the daily weather report. Channel five has an especially sappy old western on. Channel one is reserved for public announcements, and is currently static. Channel four features an infomercial for some sort of folding chair. Channel eleven is currently broadcasting a documentary on Renaissance artists. Channel thirteen is really fuzzy, and you can't make out anything of it. Huh, it wasn't like this earlier. Channel nine features the ending credits of a cartoon, then cuts to commercials. Commercials occupy the other channels, and you skip those.
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You try to run, but the clerk is fast for his age. With a shout, he whips out his taser and dashes toward you. You react quickly and run out the door, but he is faster and catches you before you've run a block, stabbing you in the small of the back with the head of the weapon. "Gotcha now, thief." You quickly slump unconscious.
You awake in a dirty cell ringed by walls of steel bars. There is a door also made of a mesh of bars set into the south side of the room, offset to the west. On the east and west sides are a pair of metal benches. The room is about a ten foot square, and is occupied by eight other men in various dress, sleeping, sitting, walking around, and the like. You feel your clothes and discover that your personal effects are missing.
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The logic unit is pretty trashed, but most of the damage seems to be superficial, and you believe with a bit of work it can be salvaged. You really don't know what exactly you need to do to get it running; you work more with the software side of the project. Might as well fix things up, though. With your deft, nimble fingers, you remove the corroded components for cleaning and repair, and clean out the inside of the unit, taking care not to touch the sensitive microdrive arrangements. You then wire the unit into your terminal, so you can check the status of the program once it's cleaned up.
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With an expert flick of your wrist, you toss the hammer in front of the man in dark, shabby clothes, who, running headlong down the alley, trips over the errant tool and flips in the air, landing down on his left knee with a sickening crack. He manages to stand up, grimacing with the pain, and proceeds to run off, staggering as his injured leg takes the weight.
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Topic: A Toss of the Dice- The IC Thread (Read 932 times)