Sorry about the lack of these recently. Hotline Miami came out. And it continued to exist.
ER Xcom Journal:The universe is very glitchy.
Operation Vengeful star, taking down another abduction attempt. Bringing bishop again, him and scrambles.
Some train yard this time, plenty of cover but I haven't found anything around so far. No doubt a dozen berzerkers are just lurking a dozen feet out of sight.
So a few enemies come out but then the universe freezes and needs to be rebooted. Lets try that again.
Ok so we got two heavy mutons and two normal ones. Scrambles uses run and gun to flank one of the heavy mutons and gives it a good hit as faith brings down the other. Milno brings down the injured one and jim takes down one of the normal ones. And then...it freezes. Again. sigh.
OK ONE MORE TIME.
And it freezes again.
Fuck this.
I reloaded an old universe save.
We're going to austraila this time. Fuck brazil and it's physical instability.
Ok so we're at some sort of paper manufacturing building. Time to murder some glichy aliens.
A Muton comes out and dies to overwatch fire but we also somehow see something through a wall. Not sure what it is though. I think we kill it on the next turn but I'm not really sure. Fucking glitchy aliens.
And then 3 heavy mutons come out of nowhere. AND JIM GETS HIT THROUGH A FUCKING WALL: what the hell guys? THis is stupid, the guy shot through not one wall, but a wall, another wall, and a shelf. Fucking glitchy aliens.
Jim uses his turn to nuke two of the bastards but he gets taken down the next turn; not killed but critically injured. We get milno in there to stablize him but things go increasingly tits up. Three heavy floaters pop in out of nowhere and splash both milno and Scrambles pretty bad. We get them own but two more show and splash Feyri before we get them down too. Fucking hell, this has no been a good day; first those repeated freezes, then glitched out shooting through walls. Not a happy camper here.
Brazil panics but fuck they ass, if they wanted help they shouldn't have been so broken. Jim is out for a week and bishop hits LT.
Speaking of fucking brazil: thats our next mission. Some UFO set down there and it's time to go crack some skulls. Or melt them.
It's a big one too, one of those really big ones. We can see it even from the starting location. Welp.
We take some cover on the first turn and instantly a cyber disk is flying on out of the ship. And almost as instantly, faith kills the shit out of it. The rest of the crew takes care of the drones.
Alright,time to try and get into this thing. We move round one side, heading for a ramp. We head up a ramp and find a ladder to the roof of the ship. I think I'll send faith up there. Ok open the door and...oh. oh dear.
SECTAPOD! EVERYONE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE AND FIRE AGAIN!
Fuck it jim! FIRE ZE MISSILES! Ok, still not dead...uh, SCRAMBLES! go shoot it! Still not dead? Milno, shoot it! STILL NOT DEAD? SHIT.
It gets off two shots and misses with them both WHEW. Welp, time to bring it down. It goes down without much trouble now and we move on to exploring the rest of the ship. We get about a foot before a muton and berzerker show up. Bishop panics, again. I think he has some sort of phobia in regards to berzerks. I can see why.
Jim starts panicking too for some reason. He calms down a moment later. Weird.
And then we catch a noise: Somethings coming at us from behind. Now we're all spinning around and trying to find the source of it, forming a circle, ready for attack from all angles. We find them outside: just two heavy floaters. We take them without injury.
We move back to where we were before hand and press forward a bit before finding another cyber disk. Oh come on guys, how much does this place have? We take it down without problem though.
Christ this place is big, and I still hear shit bouncing around somewhere.
As we enter what looks like a large supply room 5 mutons and heavy mutons. We take two down easy but feyri takes two massive hits. We bring the rest down a moment later but we're still not done. God damn.
I have Milno patch her up and we keep pressing forward, trying to find whatever fucking guy is left. Probably like one outsider somewhere in here, hidden.
Yep, two of em. Feyri reaction shot kills one through a wall and faith takes one down the reasonable way a second later. 19 fucking aliens here. 19! Feyri's out for 2 days and scrambles hits colonel finally.
She gives you some jerky.
You grab the book and begin flipping through it. It seems to be a collection of completely unconnected short stories written by fairly mediocre author.
You read the first.
Birdwatchers
He adjusted one of the knobs, increasing the intensity from two milliamps to four, but without success. After a moment of thought he twisted another knob till the LED display above it read “.015 ampere” and toggled a switch. The monitor went hazy for an instant as current fed back through the system, lines of distortion twisting the display into a seasick kaleidoscope of wavering phantom shapes. The image recoalesced moments later, and nothing had changed. He watched as the view in the monitor bobbed swiftly about, its focus irrevocably rooted to the scattered seed spread across the pavement. Distracting the cameras with seed was an old trick, Illegal, but still as common as it was effective. He disconnected from the first camera and found another, this one perched high atop one of the nearby tenements. A cursory twist of the knob brought the image on screen round a full 90 degrees; snow laden rooftops, pillars of black chimney smoke, and the quickly darkening sky blurring past the monitor's vision. Satisfied with the camera's cooperation he busied himself adjusting knobs until the image of a man appeared on the monitor. The man was walking alone, trudging through the knee-high snow of a disused street. He watched the man struggle for another quarter mile before he pressed the signal button. Though he could not hear it-the cameras did not transmit audio- he knew that the camera let out three sharp squawks. It was an unnatural sound, sharp and angular, and drew the patrols like flies to honey. He reclined in his chair, watching the monitor, and drumming his fingers against the armrests as the police arrived. He watched the man gesture wildly and assumed there was yelling along with it. His eyes flicked lazily between the the man and the officers, his fingers still drumming away against the armrest until the first silent muzzle flashes began. The image on screen jerked wildly as the camera abandoned its roost, frightened by the noise. He stared blankly at the monitor for a moment before flicking the power switch and standing up.
He stretched his back, digging his knuckles into the sore muscles, and attempting to kneed the stiffness away. The console slowly shut down, the hum of many monitors dying away, and being replaced by the dull noise from beyond his office door. He checked his watch, but it had stopped, the hands stilled at a quarter pass three. He considered rebooting the console to check the time but decided against it. He was tired. He took his coat from the back of the chair and his gloves from its pockets before stepping out into the hallway. The hallway was little more then a long corridor, lined on either side with rows of identical, featureless doors. He squinted against the glare of florescent light on white paint, nearly unbearable after a day in that dark office, and wrinkled his nose at the antiseptic smell. He blinked away the water in his eyes and started off down the hall, listening absentmindedly to the noises beyond the doors. There was the clicking of keyboards, the squeak of knobs, the hum of electricity, and, most of all, the omnipresent cough of winter. As he walked he too felt the need to cough, but stifled it, feeling the silence of the hall to be somehow sacrosanct. Only once he had made it to the elevator did he allow himself to succumb to the tickling in his throat. He exited at the lobby, scanned his badge and hand print at the security terminal, and stepped through the first set of doors on the way out. He paused there, between the inner and outer doors, staring through the glass at the wind blown snow beyond. It was cold already, and he pulled the coat tighter around him, readying himself for what lay ahead.
The door opened smoothly and he gritted his teeth as he stepped out into the wind. The dark clouds had exhausted the bulk of their fury during the day and now dropped only an insubstantial shower of pale gray motes which clung like dust to all they touched. The antiseptic smell followed him- it had long ago soaked into his clothing- and mingled with the smell of smoke in the air. He looked up at the great block of concrete and glass which housed his office, its shape so massive and out of place amongst the brick buildings huddled around it, and wondered what the residents of those century old tenements thought of their colossal neighbor. Across the street a patrolman, all black synthetic carapace and polished steel, watched him carefully. He tugged the collar of his jacket higher, and started down the street. The tenements which lined the road were twice his age at least, three and four story constructs crowded so close together as to merge into an unbroken line of soot stained brick and iron. Pillars of smoke rose from unseen chimneys and held aloft a darkening sky, monochrome sunset flowing weakly through cracks in the overcast. He stared idly at the buildings as he walked, hoping perhaps to see a figure in a window, but knowing there would be none. Most of the windows were covered, hidden behind sliding metal shutters or simply boarded shut. He remembered when the windows had been covered by bars rather then shutters, when burglary was actually a concern. The cameras had done away with that, and with it, the bars. Now a new barrier had been erected to thwart a new invasion.
Somewhere above him he heard a rustle and looked up in time to see a flock of birds abandon their perch along a rooftop ledge. He watched them vanish into the advancing dark. He wondered if someone, somewhere, was watching him slowly fade away on a monitor. He was almost home when a group of children burst from an alley along his path and ran out onto the sidewalk in front of him. He stopped and so did they. In the ensuing silence he felt the urge to smile, but found himself unable to. Before he could say anything they had turned and fled back the way they came. On the ground lay a small bag of birdseed, its corner torn and its contents spilling slowly out into the snow. He looked around, no patrols in sight. He picked up the bag and tucked it into his pocket, kicking snow over what had already spilled out. He looked down the alley, but the children were already gone.
The last vestiges of light were draining from the sky as he reached to his apartment building, stepping carefully on ice coated concrete steps. The doorman cowered and looked away as he mounted the stairs toward the upper floors. The stairway was old, its timbers rotten and darkened by countless damp years, and the wallpaper had peeled and fallen, revealing the crumbling drywall within. There was an old smell of sour milk in the air, mixed with new aromas of cooking food and burning wood. He let himself into 306 and closed the door behind him, shaking off the snow as he passed through the threshold. He could hear yelling from one of the rooms around him and for a time he stood and listened. The sounds were unintelligible, but too rare to ignore; such expressions had faded from the outer world, surviving only in seclusion. He stood with eyes closed, listening to the duet of baritone and mezzo-soprano, and quietly took all the beauty from it. The voices vanished soon after and again he felt the weight of exhaustion upon him. He lay in bed for a long time, listening, willing the voices to return, but they did not.
He awoke the next morning and stretched his back, grimacing as he did so. Before he left he stood before the mirror and looked at himself, checking his expression. His refection stared back at him, its face a mask of utter inscrutability. It was still dark as he left, the fresh snow glowing pale orange beneath the staggered streetlights as barely visible flecks of ice continued to fall. The wind had long since died away and he walked as through dream, lost in soft luminescence beneath a sky of gray cotton. The great panes of glass glowed within the concrete block and he watched the edge of sunrise peek over the rooftops as the elevator doors closed. Into darkness he fell, the smell of antiseptic growing stronger until it burnt his eyes and stung his throat. The elevator opened upon a changing room, rows of polished aluminum lockers lined the walls, and a wash basin ran through the center. He stowed his jacket in a locker and pulled a shrink wrapped package from a dispenser bolted to the wall. Sealed within the package was a chemical suit, white and tissue paper thin, and a pair of latex gloves. The basin was filled with some sort of disinfectant which burnt as he washed, donning the suit and gloves after doing so. Beyond the changing room lay a corridor lined with polished metal stalls, some open, some closed. He found an open one and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
Inside the stall was uncomfortably small, barely wider then his shoulders, and just long enough to accommodate himself and a table opposite the door. The walls were polished smooth, save for two apertures in the far wall. The aperture on his right contained a variety of surgical tools, but the other was empty. He slid open a panel on the surface of the table and pressed one of the buttons hidden there. There was a hiss of air and moments later a camera appeared, dropping from a recessed pipe in the ceiling of the left aperture. He retrieved the camera and inspected it, careful not to break the paper cuff which encircled its wings. It wasn't a model he recognized, some new breed of pigeon or dove, but with a dark reddish plumage. He set it on the table and pressed a button; the surface of the table hummed and the camera convulsed momentarily before collapsing. He selected a scalpel from the right aperture and cut away the paper cuff before beginning his work. He carefully peeled back layers of skin, fat and muscle until the spine was visible. Between the scapula lay a length of copper wire, tightly coiled, and fused to the spine in several places. The camera began to stir and he had to stunned it again before continuing. He split the flesh up the neck, following the wires along the spine till he reached the skull. A hatch had already been cut into the rear of the skull and secured with metal clasps, which he opened and peered within. The circuits piggybacked on the optic lobes were in working order, but the rest was hidden by a mass of discolored flesh and mucus. He cut into the tumor and out spilled blacked flesh and pus which he hurriedly wiped away. He stood with his scalpel hovering over the rotting tissue, his eyes scanning it carefully as minutes ticked by. Finally, he set the blade aside impotently, closed the skull, and stitched the incisions shut. He watched as it slowly recovered, drunkenly rising to its feet and scanning the room with dull, twitching eyes. He opened his suit and reached into his pocket, retrieved the bag of birdseed, and spread some on the table. It ate and he watched, though it ignored him. He reached a hand out to touch it, but it hopped away, its eyes never leaving the scattered seeds. When the seeds were gone it stared at him, black eyes without a glimmer of understanding behind them. Without looking away, he lay his hand on the table's controls, twisted a knob to its maximum setting and pressed a button. The table hummed loudly and the camera collapsed. It did not move again.
That night he stood outside door 307 and listened to the voices within. He could not understand them, their voices barely audible even through the thin drywall, but he listened none the less. He tried to imagine what they looked like and thought they must be beautiful. There was a warmth in that dull, indistinct murmur, and he breathed it in, trying to infuse some of that warmth into himself. He could smell the food beyond the door and feel the heat of the fireplace where it cooked; could feel the softness of the great overstuffed chairs which must surround the hearth and he basked in the glow of the smiling faces which inhabited them. A door slammed somewhere downstairs and he was cold again. He started to knock but stopped, knuckles resting soundlessly on the lacquered finish of the door. After a moment he stepped away and entered 306, leaving the voices behind him. He sat on the edge of his bed and stared out the unshuttered window into the uncertain world beyond. Motes of snow, glowing like embers in the pale orange of the streetlights, drifted down upon the city beyond the glass. The whole of the visible world beyond the window smoldered in that orange light, black and gray with cracks of cold heat, ash and embers of ice. He opened the window and scraped the snow from the sill, replacing it with a handful of birdseed from his pocket. He waited, watching through the glass till his eyes grew sore, as the city burned in its own fire.
The figure which stared back at him from the depths of the mirror the next morning was gray as the snow which fell beyond its window. He touched his fingertips to a sunken cheek and wondered where the warmth that flesh once contained had gone. He left his apartment late and was on his way to the stairs when the door to 307 opened beside him. The man who had opened the door was not beautiful, nor was the woman behind him. They were shrunken and hollow, scarecrows of flesh with unseeing eyes and pallid faces. The room behind them contained no hearth, no warm chairs, good food or smiling faces; all that lay beyond the threshold was cold drywall and harsh fluorescence, a smell of sour milk and sweat. They stared at him, their black eyes without a glimmer of understanding. He tried to say something, to do anything except stand and stare, but the door closed. The hall seemed cold now, colder then it had ever been; there was no longer any warmth from 307 and there never would be again.
He sat at the console with his coat on, still cold even with the radiant heat of the monitors. He manipulated the camera idly, turning knobs with the tip of his finger as the screen swayed drunkenly about. The streets were empty, save for the other cameras, and he flicked his vision from one to the next in a halfhearted attempt to find something worth watching. It was hours later that he found them, still spreading birdseed as they had been the day before last: they were a cloud of steam and gray synthetic against the dirty snow, a cluster of mittened hands and booted feet spreading seed unrepentantly before the eyes of the camera. They committed felonies while laughing to themselves, years of their lives spent with each handful thrown carelessly into the snow. Chances were that some other camera had picked them up already and that the alarm was only moments away. He watched them and waited for the inevitable terror, the futile race though kneehigh snow. But it never came and he watched them walk till finally they disbursed, each child vanishing down a separate path. He leaned back in his chair and stared blankly at the ceiling, drumming his fingers on the armrests. He wondered how long it would take for the feed from his cameras to be analyzed and his negligence discovered; Maybe a day, probably less. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, clenching the armrests till his fingers ached. Finally, he stood and, without pausing to turn off the console, walked out of the office. He scanned his handprint and badge, leaving the latter behind as he escaped into the street. Light streamed down through the cracks in the cloud cover and rain fell softly on concrete, washing away the soot and staining the remaining snow black. The chimneys lay dead, their pillars of smoke long since vanished, and the sky loomed down upon him, threatening to fall.
He walked home, up the stairs and through his door, not bothering to remove his jacket as he sat upon the bed. Beyond his window a bird huddled on the sill, picking half frozen seed from the melting snow. It was red and black, soot and brick, and watching him as it ate. It finished the seed quickly but remained on the sill, staring through the glass at the figure on the bed. He lay back, resting his head on the pillow. The bird turned from the window and faced the world outside. He closed his eyes. The bird called out, three sharp squawks. He was tired.
Your jaw upper teeth start to ache now.
Sorry about that.
Scrambles face goes blank as he stares at the very poor simulacrum of breasts on Jim's face. Jim capitalizes on the opportunity.
Jim proceeds thwack Scrambles directly in the side of the head with the flat of his blade, sending Scrambles cartwheeling to the ground, completely unconscious and dreaming of poorly rendered boobs.
Neither of these things are functioning right now.
You send a copy to Derro.
You wander to the hanger and go sit in the airlock, making sure to keep the inner door open.
"That could work" The doctor says, "though clamping quad legs to you wouldn't be very elegant. Fine."
He walks over and hands you another lump of flesh.
"Eat. I'll go get some robotic legs."
He walks out of the room.
"Nah. I worked in a bakery."
You walk with the doctor as he wanders down the hall in the back of the infirmary.
"Yes, yes. I suppose I should tell you that Physical modification is pretty much mandatory for this. We should probably do that bit first, gives you a better chance to survive."
You gurgle and slap yourself repeatedly.
You nibble jerky while watching May play with her lizard and typing absentmindedly.
Uh...welp. Hm.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette On ship Thread: Maurice's One Night Stand (Read 6001508 times)