THIRTEEN OF THIRTEEN

[Maharg67]

0147

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

AARAA AARAO OF THE ZAVID THIRTEEN

 

Aaraa and Aarao opened a way for the transformed brainbugs, zhouls and ghoulers to go to Sanctuarius with some loot from the area and they did. The flesh, life, phase and solar elementors did the same. Sanctuarius needed them and they needed Sanctuarius.

 

They found the teleport-receptor, made it only semiactive and locked it down into that mode. No more brainbugs would be coming through it, hopefully. They found some teleport-sender coordinates from which the brainbugs had apparently come from. They had been sent from the domed city of Springvale.

 

LifeVault0101A1 was still waiting for them so they set out once more. They quickly ended up in a main monorail subway tunnel and came to a small secondary subway station. It was one of the kind that did not open to the surface directly but which was used mainly for passengers, courier packages and delivery freight to be passed between trains or from trains to smaller monorail-trams.

 

It was there that they found the remains of the earlier expedition that had set out from LifeVault0101A2 to LifeVault0101A1. Butch and the Tunnel Snakes were dead, and partly devoured, along with the others. All evidence pointed to the fact that the expedition, including robots, had been quickly overwhelmed by brainbug partly controlled ghoulers and zhouls. Many of the attackers had perished such was the savage defensive action carried out.

 

Yet there had been something else there, something powerful and of mysterious nature. It also had attacked the vaultfolk expedition, blazing away with miniguns and some kind of plasmaguns.

 

Aaraa and Aarao empath-telepathed the dark news to the others back in both LifeVault0101A2 and the ZavidVault. UnityNeo had already 'sensed' the strong possibility of truth because of the 'sense of absence' of those who had gone on the expedition.

 

They could have teleported back to the ZavidVault using their special abilities, especially now they had been both enhanced and expanded, but they continued onwards towards LifeVault0101A1. It had always been an important mission to go there anyway sooner or later to investigate the place that Beatrice Armstrong had come from.

 

They approached the main entrance to LifeVault0101A1 through a secret tunnel and using a monorail-car, fully enclosed and lightly armoured. It was a GuardTek machine of that Mercenary TekCorp and had some weapons and survival lockers on board. There were even three long dead TekGuards on board in assault power armour.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0148

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

AARAA AARAO OF THE ZAVID THIRTEEN

 

All of the vaultfolk of LifeVault0101A1 were either dead or missing or in status-capsules inside heavily locked, armoured and security network-system protected storage chambers. Dead bodies had been gathered up and placed in status-coffins. Other efforts had been made to clean things up and basic network-systems had been repaired where they had to be. The LifeVault was running smoothly enough with humming machinery except that there was still much damage in some areas.

 

About a third of the population, including animals, were in status-capsules. About another third were in status-coffins. That left about a third who were missing. Which meant about thirty-three thousand in each grouping.

 

Designed for the internal isolationist experiment, the vault interior layout was quite abnormal, especially when compared the standard design of most TekVaults; that is LifeVaults, TechnoVaults and other kinds. Areas were designed to be cut off from others, to put citizens into solitary isolation, with many internal security airlocks.

 

They got as far as the Prime Overseer's Office that was designed to be in control of isolating network-systems incorporated with standard type network-systems; that is communications, access, transportation and others. The environment, the Overseer Government, the very society of these vaultfolk, had been heavily distorted by the experiment. The databanks were extensive but narrow focused.

 

Then they found a series of datafiles that had survived a hurried attempt to empty a series of databanks. The datafiles indicated a set of very special technologies deployed to keep surveillance on all LifeVaults, be they experimental or controlled comparatives with no experiments, that were very unlike standard TekVault technologies. All that they got were a list of names and small descriptions.

 

There were specialized nanobots sent to observe and report, some inside the bodies of vaultfolk. There were bigger but still tiny microbots. There were macrobots, just visible to the standard human eye as tiny black dots. Then there were something called ghost-eyes that were only described as 'limited transdimensional reconnaissance devices'. It seemed they operated just out of phase with the local dimensional realm, making them ghost like in nature and able to move through things and even people. Yet they had sharp limitations though those were not explained.

 

The group that had come to the damaged LifeVault were the Mysterious Stranger and unidentified others being a mixture of humans, androids and robots. They had placed many bodies into status-coffins, had done some repairs so that the vault could then do more repairs for itself, and had even done some cleaning up. Mr Walker, the Mysterious Stranger, had strange abilities such as being able to 'ghost' through solid things. They called him the 'Phantom', the 'ghost who walks' and sometimes he wore rather exotic, grey stealth power armour that also disguised him.

 

There were puzzles there yet to be solved and places to be explored.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0149

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

AARAA AARAO OF THE ZAVID THIRTEEN

 

A subvault containing an experimental synthetic manifesticator, and related network-systems, had been destroyed by a big, savage battle and then by a well placed series of plastic explosives. LifeVault0101A1 had been invaded by synthecants, doppelgangers, brainbugs, wild manifesticants and kineticants. The free vaultfolk, fighting for their lives, had become cunningly desperate and had, with a last ditch attack, had destroyed the source of their enemy's major strength.

 

The Mysterious Stranger had showed up in time to assist in the attack, had smashed, blasted and fought her way through the subvault in her special stealth power armour. With her had gone many vaultfolk with a mixture of their own equipment and some extra gear provided by the Mysterious Stranger.

 

The subvault was mostly deactivated through damage with some active or semiactive emergency network-systems still running. Resources had been salvaged and placed into storage to be reclaimed, including roboremotes, robots, sealed supplies, solid-state electronics, holotapes and much else. They had not been reclaimed but why?

 

The triplets went to the Prime Overseer's Office again and this time found a very well hidden secret exit that was a prototype teleport-sender. They used this and appeared in a larger, more sophisticated direction coordination supervision chamber for the isolationist experiment. Here it was revealed that there was also the experiment to attack the vaultfolk with various threats, the same sort of threats meant for LifeVault0101A2.

 

At first they thought the tough looking, taciturn man might be the Mysterious Stranger but then he, clad in a blue vault-jumpsuit, spoke out. “No, I am an FMS, which stands for 'Follower of the Mysterious Stranger'. In truth I am an avatar follower of a prime kind just as you have with you three prime and three auxiliary follower avatars. Do not try to open the status-capsules or status-coffins. Both the living and dead, in status, are infected-infested with an unknown series of entities networked together with a hive-mind of some kind. It is called the deathfane.”

 

He went on. “The Mysterious Stranger, also known as Mr Walker or the Phantom, is one of the Thirteen Character Personalities of Lucky Eddie that includes Lucky Eddie himself in a way that is hard to explain. Even as a follower avatar, an FMS, I find it very hard to comprehend the thinking, the motivations, the actions of Lucky Eddie, of his Thirteen Character Personalities. I do know that the Mysterious Stranger saved about a third of the vaultfolk from the infection infestation, of the deathfane, that secretly infiltrated the bodies of many of them. Those who could not be saved from the deathfane, were put into status-capsules. Those who died with the deathfane in them, were put into the status-coffins. If any are let out of status they will transform into dead or living monsters? Why not just destroy them? Because this exotic threat of the deathfane needs to be examined, to be researched and then ways of dealing with it effectively need to be researched, developed and created.”

 

He went on speaking. “The Mysterious Stranger took the living survivors, along with other lifeforms and resources, to a Sanctuary of Sanctuarius where many peoples have settled from three Lost Earths, each being Alternate Earths of each other. The promise is that the ones in status-capsules here will be sent to join them, if they can be cured and cleansed of the deathfane. As for the dead in the status-coffins, who knows?”

 

He began to fade. “I am being recalled by the Mysterious Stranger who seems to need me urgently in Sanctuarius. Good fate to you.”

 

The the FMS was gone with a soft shimmering.

[Maharg67]

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[Maharg67]

0150

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

OUTSIDE OF THE OUTSIDE

 

Walter had cut open a truly dead cap-zombie and found the thing inside it that was a head-node, a chest-node, a spinal-tentacle linking the two and a webwork that filled the rest of the animated corpse. This reanimantor was one of the things that actually made reanimants animated and were carefully linked with webcaps. Reanimantors were much like brainbugs in their quasiliving silicon based design and purpose and yet there were important differences. The link between them was not easy to realize by examining reanimantors or brainbugs captured by the LifeProclamation Human Alliance.

 

The fighting was over. The bizarre enemy threats were gone except for the dead ones and equipment left behind. Too much death, destruction and disorder had been caused but was being fixed up, as much as possible, with surprisingly efficiency and speed.

 

Walter spoke to Astrid, Olivia and Peter with out looking up. “Many years ago William Bell and myself were working on a US Federal Government project studying captured alien technologies of some kind. The technologies turned out to be three small aerospaceships and inside we found silicon based quasiliving entities that were much like both the reanimantors and brainbugs; except they were more intelligent, were had a secondary group mind and appeared to be fairly harmless. All but one were dead. Then the living one escaped and killed three people by enslaving a fourth human. We had to kill both the creature and the poor enslaved, transformed human in order to safeguard the rest of us people.”

 

Walter frowned. “The brainmasters, as we came to call them in a less official manner, were inside greytori designed and built saucerdarts, or so we were to find out later. They were part of the Greytori Silvertori War and had been misdirected to our home world. Fortunately for us, a Silvertori deathstalker had killed most of them before the saucerdarts even got close to Earth atmosphere.”

 

Walter frowned some more. “Officially everything was destroyed; that is the dead alien entities and all of the greytori technologies, designed as they were to keep their secrets and which were very dangerous to deal with. Unofficially, two years later, both Bell and I learned of a very hush hush secret base in Northern Alaska that was destroyed by an internal nuclear weapon. Picking up what data that we could, we realized that the government fools had decided to try to learn greytori secrets anyway from the three damaged greytori saucerdarts. Perhaps they did learn something of value because that was when the US Federal Government both extended the Apollo Lunar Project and enhanced it with new resources, including European, Japanese and Soviet involvement. Apollo Eighteen began the construction of the the first permanent moonstation of subsurface design. Not long after the new Unified Space Program found the Lunar Caverns and the first of the artifacts of the AncientOnes.”

 

Walter sighed. “The reanimantors are very close in their nature to what those brainmasters had been but are even more disturbing in some ways.”

 

Olivia spoke. “Where did they and the other threats come from? Those manifesticants, the kineticants...?”

 

Walter stood up and sort of smiled at the others. “I have no idea but I expect that somebody in the new emergency government does or perhaps those aliens of the LifeProclamation do. Neither seem in a hurry to tell us the truth. What do you say, Astrid, will your other people tell us anything?”

 

Astrid did not seem surprised. “As Walter has worked out, I am a silvertori human hybrid, a silvertavan.”

 

Olivia nodded, smiled a little. “I always wondered how you survived in that warehouse and why we found eight dead shapeshifter assassins in it from that Alternate Earth? I always doubted your explanation of a mysterious rescuer that you called the Mysterious Stranger.”

 

Astrid sighed. “I killed them but only because they would not listen. They were difficult to fight and my wounds were very real. The Mysterious Stranger was real but what I did not tell you was that he came from the future. It was hard enough to get all but Walter to believe in him as it was. I suppose you want me to leave.”

 

Walter gave Astrid a puzzled look. “Why ever would I want you to do that, my lovely sweetness?”

 

Astrid sighed. “Walter, I told you to only call me that in private.” But then she smiled and kissed him.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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[Maharg67]

0151

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

KAVIP KERZ KIRI KAEN OF THE CARADA THIRTEEN

 

Professor Kevin Blaine was dying and would die unless sent to Sanctuarius, which would happen soon. He was being honest and was full of regret for past actions. “I do not know how I came to change from a man of some ethics to a monster, and I am not trying avoid responsibility, but there was a man who was not a man. He called himself SageProfessor Abadonton and the Amtriellan Imperial Sages Council supported his title. He was a monster able to seduce both men and women in many ways. He was brilliant but twisted. He introduced us to the Multiple Reality Theorem stating that not only could more than one reality, even contradictory reality, exist at the same time in seemingly the same place, but that they often did. He stated that this was how the Multiverse, the universality of universes, actually existed for time was the basis of all, time meant change, change was linked to contradiction and contradiction drove existence. With out time, change and contradiction, there can be no existence.”

 

Kerz nodded. “We know of these ideas and accept them as given. They are the basics of what one might call, in a basic fashion, Multiple Phase Alternates Transdimensional Physics. Abadonton is of great, dark power and could easily twist the thinking of most mortals to his will.”

 

“That is what Abadonton said, that is about the Multiple Phase Alternates Transdimensional Physics.” The professor gave the triplets an odd look. “Yes, you are different also but not in the terrible, disturbing manner that Abadonton was, is. In the end we turned against him, a group of us led by one calling himself the Mister Walker, the Mysterious Stranger. He came to assist us and helped us greatly though Abadonton was far more powerful than himself. Then another came, terrible and mournful, RothuaRetirwa. Abadonton fled but not before RothuaRetirwa hurt the monster. Then RothuaRetirwa made the GlimmeringFog go back through the Stargate, which is another story.”

 

Kiri nodded her head. “We know of it. The greytori forced the zetans to bring the saucership here.”

 

The professor shook his helmeted head. “No, Abadonton did so, fooling the zetans into thinking that the greytori did so. I do not think that the greytori would be pleased if they discovered just what Abadonton had done, not pleased at all.”

 

That was an understatement!

 

The Carada Thirteen sent Professor Kevin Blaine to Sanctuarius and he was rejuvenated on his way there to start a new life after he got there.

 

The Carada Triplets, along with follower avatars, continued onwards to the NukaCola Corporation Manufactory.

[Maharg67]

0152

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

KAVIP KERZ KIRI KAEN OF THE CARADA THIRTEEN

 

They stared in shock out over the vast storage chamber with its many support columns and modular storage stacks, spider like roboremotes and overhead monorail lifting units. There were at least 20,000,000 bottles of NukaCola and 40,000 bottles of NukaCola Quantum along with a few tens of thousands of experimental types of NukaCola. This was but one of over a thousand such storage chambers and new ones were being constructed. For the NukaCola Manufactory was not only fully active and making bottles of the infamous drink, it had been expanded and upgraded since Doomsday; it had tripled its PreDoomsday level of production.

 

But why and how?

 

The answer was quite strange. An experimental form of turning energy and a semisolid substance into a wide range of tradegoods, mattercation, resulted in a strange, lethal toxic side-product. This side-product toxin was then used to create the NukaCola Core Serum, the NCCS, that in turn was used to make NukaCola, NukaCola Quantum and other NukaCola variants.

 

NukaCola was linked to the ghoulification and to the mutagenic substances that helped make such as supermutants.

 

Yet there was more to it than that. They hacked into computer databanks and found some references to something called Project Sustenance, Project Diet Night and Project Sanctum Deathfane. There was no solid data on any of these projects.

 

'Sensing' approaching great danger of an exotic kind, they departed quickly and quietly, moving into secondary tunnels and were soon running. Nukalurks, a deadlier kind of mirelurk monster, went to attack them but were too slow. GlowingOnes charged towards them and then stopped abruptly as if 'sensing' that this might be foolish to do.

 

They lost the 'exotic powerful threat', leaving it behind but were not fooled into thinking that the threat had ceased to exist. They would have to take great care from then on but, then again, they had always been doing so.

 

They approached the outskirts of the NukaCola Manufactory Complex.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0153

PART ONE: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!?

KAVIP KERZ KIRI KAEN OF THE CARADA THIRTEEN

SUPERGOODGIRL

 

They entered the huge domechamber and looked around in shock at what was a NukaCola Museum. It was quite well lit up and had many autorobotic displays and other exhibitions. There were some NukaCola big atomic, and smaller electric, delivery trucks. There were huge Nukaboy and Nukagirl autorobotic statues. Nukaboy and Nukagirl androids moved around doing tasks or were in restore-recharge bays. There were various NukaCola banners, emblems, tapestries, posters and much else. A small NukaCola airship was held up in the air above by a clever system of almost invisible cables. There was a NukaCola LandLiner, a big atomic motorized coach that was one of a fleet that went around the country promoting the range of drinks.

 

There were displays of bottles, toys, tea-towels, Tshirts and other merchandise either given away or sold cheaply to the public.

 

A series of large 3Dscreens showed looping running of 3DTV and 3Dmovie advertisements whole holographic projectors projected other advertisements. There were also advertisement style 'documentaries' shown the same way.

 

Suddenly she stood there in a very tight, not very modest, super heroine leotard like outfit with a short cape and slim boots going half way to the knees. Everything was purple except the red cape, a red ring on each middle finger, a red bracelet on each wrist and a red headband and a red emblem on her belly below her much cleavage showing neckline.

 

She smiled and thrust her chest out. “I am SuperGoodGirl, super heroine of all that is goodness and rightness in the world. I will assist you.”

 

Kaen grinned mildly. “You could try putting some more clothes on.”

 

SuperGoodGirl gave him a puzzled smile. “I do not know what you speak of, young man. If you are being naughty, please do not be so. SuperGoodGirl has no such thoughts.” Then she smiled very warmly at him. “I will have to take you somewhere private, later, and have a good long talk with you about such things.”

 

Kiri shook her head in obvious annoyance. “SuperGoodGirl, ha! Apart from trying to seduce one of my brothers, how will you assist us?”

 

SuperGoodGirl frowned softly at Kiri. “Perhaps I should give you a quiet talking to, as well, naughty young woman. Abadonton is here but not directly; he is here as a powerful projection avatar of himself. The projection avatar is named Abadontess and is female in nature.”

 

Kiri sighed. “We are meant to meet another who will bring us further instructions and resources.”

 

SuperGoodGirl giggled and then spoke. “You sillies, that's me and I will bring you the resources. Lucky Eddie had you come here. He would have come to meet you, himself, but he is far too busy elsewhere.”

 

The triplets smiled at her.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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Edited December 15, 2011 by Maharg67