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8: Battle of Sodium and Transistors
“Look away” Basil said, standing over a very boxy machine. “You can trust us to not share your secrets” Simon replied with a hint of confusion in his voice. Basil smiled. “Oh, I trust you, it’s just that ACE is going to arc weld and if you’d prefer to not be blind you’ll want to look away.” Simon, Tobias, and Basil all looked away as ACE used a repair drone to do some final touches on the radio.
Read more…7: Introductions
Basil drove his newly acquired truck through a much larger wormhole, quickly going from seeing a snowmobile in the dark room of the facility to seeing a tropical paradise. A gush of wind mildly rocked the truck as it wouldn’t fit in the sealed room, but before long he was driving slowly across the sandy beach. Basil could feel a bit of dread, recalling his parting misunderstanding with the small group.
Read more…6: Most Normal Floridian
Basil stepped through the wormhole, surprised at the sudden guest of wind. Though the pressure in the sealed room was equal to that of sea level, it still did not affect the winds blowing across the ocean. He covered his eyes as the blinding sun and humid salty air momentarily overloaded his senses; and as his eyes finally adjusted he could see the jet flying away from the inflatable boat that had just dropped out of it.
Read more…5: Domum
Basil had been walking for about five minutes yet saw very few signs of life aside from the birds flying around and the faint smell of fish. He flipped open his phone, odd, still no signals. Even though GPS signals were supposed to be everywhere, between remote areas being deprioritized and the cheap chip in the phone he reasoned it could easily explain why he hadn’t detected any. Looking around to be sure he was still alone he quickly pulled up his holographic PDA, but that also did not detect any signals.
Read more…4: The Fourth Variable
“How have you been feeling lately?” ACE asked Basil as he stared into the sealed room. Basil instinctively rubbed his arm where the injection had occurred. “Nothing so far, is that a good sign?” ACE reminded Basil of their previous conversation. “We will not know for some days.” The two remained in silence as several maintenance drones set up a device in the room before sealing it off. The device had been made in the fabricator from the cached schematics and had a peculiar design.
Read more…3: Chilean Pit Stop
As Basil sat still a flood of recent events rushed through his mind. “You are sure you are ready to do this?” ACE asked Basil, who was spreading out a tarp. “Yeah, I’m feeling alright. Let’s get this jet ready.” Several maintenance drones climbed onto the tarp and Basil began to drag them towards the hangar. Unlike his first outing, he found the landscape to be awe inspiring. The sky was lit up with the most amazing shades of red imaginable, and a few stars were still visible in the dusky sky.
Read more…2: Blank Slate
Basil realized he was awake, though did not remember waking up. He felt groggy and his mind was clouded, and he felt as if he had just dropped below the threshold of being aware of the fact he was awake. He found himself in a bed, caked blood cleaned off, and feeling entirely painless for the first time he could remember. A maintenance drone lay lifelessly in the corner of his vision, but sprang to life and approached him once he started to move.
Read more…1: Failed Initialization
[init] Starting service ‘QS5DLkUu’ (pid 101), exited with status 1 Unable to locate QS5DLkUu, initiating failsafe [init] Service ‘QS5DLkUu’ killing any children in process group [init] Starting service ‘ZGVkYnJhaW4=’ [init] Successfully started ‘ZGVkYnJhaW4=’ (pid 101) [ZGVkYnJhaW4=] Initializing resources… [ZGVkYnJhaW4=] Resources loaded successfully. [init] Service ‘ZGVkYnJhaW4=’ (pid 101) is running Uptime 00:00:00:01 The lights came on, replacing the previous dim red glow with normal white light which assaulted his eyes. However, the little robot and the voice behind it were still silent.
Read more…A1 Prologue
He could hear something that sounded like a light brush on a window. His head hurt, though so did the rest of his body. The room was dark. Pitch black. No, wait, his eyes were closed. He opened his eyes, but they felt as if they had to be pried open, and as they did he felt as if his eyelids were made of sandpaper. Now all he could see was red.
Read more…26: Last thing on the list
Basil made a left at another intersection. Was it a left? Shit, how was he going to find his way back now? Well, perhaps that didn’t matter much; it wasn’t like he could get past the army between him and safety. He took another shot at his much faster pursuers, forcing them to take cover for a second as he rounded another corner at another intersection. Seeing a small alley alongside the road and his pursuers having not yet rounded the corner, he ran down it.
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