It's amphibious remember? I designed it a while ago.
Finish the amphibious pups. After it starts growing go outside with one of the mark 2 dogs and "search" for the adrenaline bird.
You continue DNA analysis. Since you are already sitting down you can easily bury your head on your hands and take support from table. Damn those guys, they should have warned first...
Look for fruits/berries that could be infected with the Mind, but are edible for humans.
You find few, but you have no idea if those are edible for humans. You need to perform tests first to determine that.
Thankfully you are already on your knees, otherwise you would have fallen badly. You hold your head and scream!
Investigate the snakeman. Why isn't he growing!?
You manage to find out that the base cell has divided few times before you fall on your knees and hold your head in pain.
Take my hand off the machine. Contact the infirmary, give authorization to Dave D. Davidson.
Contact Dave.
"Sorry, Dave, I was busy poking around the ship. Literally. You should have full infirmary access now, though."
Authorization is given. You can barely keep standing, your legs shaking.
Push the button
"everyone get ready I'm going to push the button." PUSH THE BUTTON
This is where computer games usually would start cinematics. Imagine it as such.
Warning!
Warning!
Wall of text incoming!Mark and Cromwell look at each other and understand perfectly what must be done. They don't need to say a word. Hell, they don't even need to
think to each other! They are first humans on alien ship, and here is a button. A button. Single button on ancient alien space ship that predates whole human civilization. And buttons exist for a single purpose; to be pressed.
In beautifully synchronized motion they both raise their hands and touch the button at exactly same time. The button and all symbols on the panel fades to stable blue light. Mark and Cromwell raise their eyes into the darkness in front of them. For two seconds nothing happens and then, for a brief moment, it turns into a sun. Flash of light makes you blink your eyes. You barely manage to see a humanoid figure inside newly revealed tube before all life on the planet freezes. For a second time within few days The Mind is flooded with sapience, massive amount of knowledge and history of another species! With it becomes understanding.
Far away on another solar system there were a planet. It was filled with many forms life. Warm blooded animals, cold blooded animals, stationary plants and mobile plants. They were the latter kind, bipedal mobile plants. They had a name for themselves, in its core it meant same as "human" means. "Us". "Our kind".
They were unique among all creatures within their world, for they were sapient plants and they felt emotions. They also had ability to form all kind of chemicals within their own bodies. This gave them edge over herbivores hunting them and all harmful bacterias and viruses. Another feature set them apart of other life forms; symbiotic relationship with cold blooded animal. In your mind you can see the creature; four legged gliding snake. It is similar to the bone plated flying snake you have seen here. But back then those didn't have bone plates, just harder scales than usual. The snake ate small bugs and insects seeking to nest within them and in return they kept snakes safe.
They started to group together and build civilization. Their ability to produce various chemicals at will gave them quite curiosity towards science, and it was corner stone of their civilization. As time passed they eradicated all diseases from their world and with progress of science their ability became less and less used, until it finally devolved away. It wasn't a problem for them. After all, with technology they were able to produce much wider variety of chemicals than their organs were ever able to.
Time passed, and their skill in biology became vast. Someone thought possibility of hivemind created through science. Possibilities of such were unlimited and having no problems with science they began to work on it. First version they created was a bacteria unable to reproduce, for sake of safety. Test subjects were able to coordinate their actions on unconscious level. Second version allowed them to actually communicate, and third version permitted sharing of knowledge and memories. They envisioned great future for their species, and so they made final version of the bacteria: capable of reproduction, adaptive mutation against harm, and limited transfer methods.
This bacteria were then distributed to every people. And it was truly a boon for their science. No longer were genius minds lost to menial work! Every person, no matter where they were, had complete access to collective knowledge of their species, and were able to contribute for scientific pursuits. With full mental power of their entire species their technology level took massive leaps forward, one after another, away from biology oriented sciences to full range of fields.
And new positive features of hivemind were discovered. They found out that "Reality is playfield of the Mind". With enough of minds connected together via connectworldmind bacteria they were able to achieve true instantaneous communication. They were even able to coach particles popping in existence in preferred shape. Not large amounts, no, only about a cubic centimeter at once. But it was enough to let them create complex and dedicate components without having to build large and complex machinery.
It wasn't all joy, however. Their newgrown child were infected with the bacteria from begin with, and it became known that they had less individuality than those who grew up without the bacteria, and they were more part of collective. They accepted this price of hivemind. After all, it has been so beneficial so far. Some dark secrets were revealed. Many people found their role in society became obsolete, such as teachers. It led to major reconstruction of their entire society. Since everyone had complete knowledge of larger picture, they knew where changes were required. Changes hurt many, but it was deemed necessary.
Thanks to all their technological progress, they were able to realize their sun would soon explode in supernova. Until this moment their space exploration had been minimal, few trips to nearest planets, but nothing much beyond that. They knew they couldn't stop sun from exploding nor could they save their planet. So they poured their collective efforts to developing space travel and finding new worlds to inhabit.
Numerous scout ships were built, manned, and sent away to find new home, while rest of species focused on building massive ark to save as many and much as possible. One of the scout ships found a new planet, sporting life different than theirs. They landed and began studying it, trying to determine if it was suitable for them.
The atmosphere was quickly deemed acceptable so they forgo their space suits. This, however, was a mistake. In light of progress they had forgotten possibility of harmful microbes. And generations had grown without need for immunity system, so it had grew weak. As they walked on planet they were bitten by various bugs. Those pests were just ignored and swatted away without much of thought, but this infected them with deadly virus. It spreaded quickly amongst explorers and started to cause deaths. By time they realized what was going on it was too late for most of them. The last four who were still free of the virus were put into stasis while remaining focused on finding cure for it.
Guess they never found a cure.
The alien on other hand experiences similar crushing understanding of the situation. When it recovers it throws a query through The Mind, trying to find others of its species, but finds nothing but The Mind itself. Soul crushing despair sets in, and you completely understand why: Being the last of its entire species left, being only one who survived, everything it ever knew is gone, completely and totally. It is literally thrown to future without any hope.
Then small idea rises in its mind. The connectworldmind bacteria were never anything more than glorified advanced biotech cell phone and "internet service provider", it never had sentience of its own. The alien looks directly into The Mind. The idea is reviewed, compared against existing data, reformed and confirmed. The Mind is all that is left of its species, perhaps mind of a single person who completely lost itself, forgetting everything it used to be, fallen into subconscious of the animals it spreaded on. It offers a little of solace.
Now the alien focuses on you and thinks to you clearly.
"Greetings."
And that's it folks.
Game over. I originally planned the game to last until all PCs were infected, but when it happened this Answers Arc were still in progress so I figured to wait until it was completed, at least to give you some IC answers.
I don't know what is customary thing to do here when a game reaches planned finish line, but I suppose I can answer any questions if you feel something were left unclear.
Like I mentioned in beginning, this is first forum game I led, so much of this was a one big practice run for me. And such I would like to have some feedback. How was the game for you as a player/reader? How was my GMing?
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Topic: The Mind: Day 4 - Finale (Read 112504 times)