Farmhouse Grey hooked claws beneath the rim of the man’s disk, and tore it off. The man immediately began convulsing, sending Farmhouse Grey and I into a hasty retreat behind one of the boxes. The man didn’t wake up, or die, but groaned in an awful way I’d rather not hear again, and then lay still.
After a short pictorial debate with Farmhouse Grey, I removed the woman’s disk and we watched her convulse in turn, and produce a small puddle, then also lapse into apparently deeper unconsciousness.
For all we knew, we could have been doing the equivalent of removing an in-built smartphone. Or put them into a vegetative state. Even so, we raced back to that examining room, to give it a try on one of the captives, but once again our size, and inconvenient container doors, defeated us. After some futile scrabbling, we instead removed the disk of the woman who had been processing the captives, and then went in search of more.
The exit door of the ship was still open, giving us a good view of the consequences of button-mashing. The escapees had evidently been recaptured, and were again cargo making a return trip, when someone had knocked the sled drivers unconscious. One sled had rammed a rock about twenty metres away, and the other had ploughed into the side of the ship, just next to the entrance ramp.
They mustn’t have been travelling too fast, since the sleds had only acquired dints, rather than transforming into a crumpled tangle of metal and flesh. With two quick leaps, Farmhouse Grey reached the chest of one of the captives, and briskly bit the man on his ear. This produced a jerk, but no immediate return to consciousness, so I busied myself removing silver disks from the spaceship crew scattered in the vicinity, and then went on a hunt for others within the ship.
This was easy enough with all the doors open, and fun for the exploration aspect alone, though I shied away from thinking too hard about how much damage I might be doing to my victims.
Everything in the lower half of the ship was sealed machinery. The upper half of each polyhedron served a different purpose, and I explored crew quarters, and then a kitchen, dining, and hydroponic farm section, before returning to science and captives.
I was considering the older man in his clear-doored box when a woman staggered into the room. I skittishly leaped behind the examining table, but I don’t think the woman would have cared about me anyway. She dashed straight for the boxed people and pulled the young boy out onto the floor, immediately tearing the disk off his temple. More of the escapees showed up, and helped her get the older man out of his box and de-disk him.
Farmhouse Grey, arriving in the second group’s wake, watched critically for a moment, and then sat down beside me. An image popped into my head of a GAME OVER graphic, along with a questioning feeling.
I failed, once again, to shrug. Cats just aren’t built for it. But I thought Farmhouse Grey was right, and was proved correct when the last of the silver disks came off the last of the boxed people, and a system message popped up.
Primary Goal Achieved.
You may exit at
any time.
I hung around for quite a while, though: long after Farmhouse Grey, having realised that she could send pictures of words, made her goodbyes and faded away. I wanted to see what these people would do, or whether the story would just stop once the rescuing was done.
Mostly they argued, then dragged everyone out of the ship. Captives in one group, and the crew members in a second, tied up in a row with some brightly coloured rope fetched from the farm.
I was relieved the former captives hadn’t immediately bludgeoned the crew into pulp, and waited out various revival attempts. Finally, a dousing of water brought one woman to sputtering consciousness. She jerked upright, stared about her, tried to raise her bound hands toward her face, and then burst into tears.
Of joy, I think.
Another round of arguments followed, growing more complicated as other de-disked people woke, but almost all of the crew seemed unspeakably happy to be captured. The two who responded badly were separated out into a third group and bound more tightly.
Time Limit reached.
Automatic exit in
5
4
3
2
1
14
maps
The mint-chill of Soup hit me, and I gasped. Then I stepped forward, blinking at my return to the futuristic city of Vessa, and a brief appearance of the full overlay of my HUD, before it reduced to an unobtrusive graphic, followed by system messages.
Gauntlet Successful.
Gauntlet Success Rate: 1/1 100%
Challenge Success Rate: 1/1 100%
Lux Points Earned: 5
Total Lux Points: 5
Challenge Reward:
[Tier 1 Apparel Pattern]
[Tier 1 Consumable Pattern]
I activated [Tier 1 Consumable Pattern], and was treated to a dizzying array of menus full of food and drink. After hours of gameplay, I was hungry and thirsty, but not painfully so, and put off any hasty decisions when I remembered I already had a few entries in my [Consumables] menu.
Looking around, I spotted a parklike area in the middle of all the Challenge entrances, and wandered over in search of a seat. Decorative planting concealed nooks filled by tables and chairs, some occupied by people eating. No sign of any food vendors.
Shrugging, I found a seat and checked my [Consumables] menu, which contained three thrilling entries: [Complete Meaclass="underline" Animal Protein], [Complete Meaclass="underline" No Animal Protein], and [Water]. I prodded the [Complete Meaclass="underline" No Animal Protein] option to see if said meal would sci-magically appear on the table in front of me, but received an arrow instead. This led to an unobtrusive kiosk tucked among the plants, which, when I approached, popped up with an option to [Collect]. A hatch opened to reveal a flattish rectangular container of waxy cardboard shaped around its contents, a little like an airplane meal. I added [Water] to my order, and then returned to my nook to eat and browse.
[Complete Meaclass="underline" No Animal Protein] was a nice mix of crunchy salad, a warm patty of some sort of legume, not-quite-hummus, and fruit segments.
I dissected the patty cautiously, wondering whether to risk it, and then found I could review an ingredients list for the pattern. While I ate, I browsed the reward menu briefly, then turned my attention to the [Players] menu, finding a [Search] command.
Search Results:
1 exact match
[Amelia Beerheart]
[29 Similar Matches]
Following the link to Amelia gave me her details.
Reputation Name:
Amelia Beerheart
[Noonan]
Rank: 0
Status: Online/Challenge
Accepting: [Email], [Messages] (delayed)
Location: [Vessa]
Amelia being in a Challenge apparently meant she wouldn’t immediately see a [Message], but I could email her, and so sent a brief note to let her know what game name I was using. Then I opened the [Location] menu.
[Quadrant]
[System]
[Planet]
[City]
[Ship]
[Search]
I started right at the top, to see how The Synergis mapped out the Milky Way. Or whatever Dio had called it. Helannan. A top-down diagram popped up, with the spiralling disk of the Milky Way divided evenly into four, which is how it’s done on Star Trek, although The Synergis' quadrant division didn’t seem to run through Earth’s system. Instead, a blinking dot was visible in the top-right quarter.