There Is Always Hope!

[Maharg67]

1.36.1[64] Troubles with the Strongvault Alliance

 

Military robots led the Strongvaulter assault on the rainbowfolk fortified outpost of FortTanga. With them came Shocktroopers in power armour or in battlemecha stomping along on two, four or six legs. As they came onwards, they were struck by laser, plasma and EMPguns energies, the last to knock out network-systems. Then there were bullets, shells, rockets and missiles blasting away at the attackers.

 

There were very many attackers and too soon compact, but powerful, battletanks were showing up with different kinds of weapon turrets. Each had one brainlinked driver-operator, one gunner and one commander being a robotic machine guided by the small crew.

 

Rainbowfolk quickly decided that they would both copy that idea and improve on it. Brainlinking was dangerous and too much so by rainbowfolk standards.

 

The enemy kept coming, none of them dying, and the rainbowfolk fell back.

 

Then the enemy were entering the settlement with surprising ease. Soon they were all in the settlement that was a very clever trap but not a deathtrap.

 

The controlling linkage between the hidden command and trapped enemy force was blocked totally. Then the surrender-conversion began for the enemy were all clones who did not want to be enslaved or to be expendable. Yet they had bad news. Behind the Strongvaulters lay a far more dangerous threat for the Strongvault Alliance was just a fabrication where all in it were enslaved, or deceived, except for a very few. Also other Strongvault forces would be coming that would not be so easily dealt with.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

3.2.1[65] Welcome to Braunburg

 

Rain lashed heavily against a broken landscape of slums as overhead flew a large number of vertibirds, of different kinds. Washington DC spread before them beneath a dome, far more intact than it had been in the DCWastelands but worn down anyway.

 

Raggedy people scurried, in fear and despair, around the DocTARDIS for they were clearly oppressed. Then the doors opened and people were going inside and not coming out. Soon many were going in, taking goods with them. All were sickly, malnourished, as they were redirected to a special created chamber that had been made with Harry's help.

 

Just what was going on? Where were they? The DocTARDISmind carefully tried to find out even as the first away team took a demiTARDIS to a nearby location. It materialised, they left the dull silvery cube, and then it returned at once to the DocTARDIS.

 

They passed abandoned cars, rusting robots and skulking people who lived in the vehicles. None wanted to talk, at first, until Harry went to them. They babbled then until calming under his influence. He healed them and sent them to the chamber inside the DocTARDIS.

 

They were in a quasireality beyond even SSVR as created by one warped supergenius Professor Braun, with the assistance of others. One did not get into a capsule but stepped through a special doorway and then, mind-body-spirit, they were merged almost totally with that other WashingtonDC known as Braunburg.

 

President-Mayor Braun was a sadistic monster unable-unwilling to control his darker urges. Massive OrderPrime robots stomped across the landscape, crushing anybody who could not get out of his way and that included Braun's twisted military, security and police forces.

 

Large apartment blocks outwardly offered shelter to the masses but they were torture traps leading to temporary death for most. Only a minority truly died despite Braun's attempts to stop even this type of escape. There were those who were daring to 'hack' into the quasireality network-systems causing the president-mayor much rage and frustration as they did things like have OrderPrime superrobots attack other ones or small areas to fall temporarily out of Braun's control.

 

A great 3Dscreen showed raggedy seminaked people fleeing from black robots with whips, electric prods and other devices. If the non voluntary volunteers made it through the mazes they would be given special citizenship but that was impossible for there was no real way to get to the prize exits.

 

They confronted thugs in black, studded, fake leather gear that were actually the police. Fresh blood splattered their spike fronted cars for they drove away, fast, trying to run people down. A short time later they left behind some black burn marks and took with them some converted police officers now in green jumpsuits and body-armour.

 

Ahead lay a great statue of Braun being made of white, polished, human skulls.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

3.2.2[66] Not Welcome to Braunburg

 

It was not Braun that attacked them but one of his former cronies, now a higher up puppet who desperately tried to please the President-Mayor so as to suffer less. Francint picked up the intrusion of the DocTARDIS just as it picked up on her activities as did Harry.

 

Harry converted a dark joke, of a public garden full of people torturing, devouring, plants to a peaceful one that guarded anybody in it.

 

Francint sent the military of murderous soldiers in twisted power armour; if they did not hurt others, they would feel pain. One big platoon, of squads, came in vertibirds and then charged towards the intruders. Seconds later most of them were converted over, now wearing standard power armour, while some were burned away having enjoyed their work just a bit too much.

 

One weakness of Braunburg was soon becoming apparent for nearly all hated him and none were truly loyal to him since he had tortured all. His amazing paranoia had meant he could trust nobody and his dark appetites meant that he would spare nobody. Another weakness was that the quasireality technologies, the network-systems, had more problems than Braun was willing to admit, even to himself.

 

Then there was the other, deeper, evil lurking beneath the surface and this one was feared even by Braun himself. It had supported the sold illusion-delusion of Braunburg but as Harry got closer to Tranquillity Circuit, where Braun himself was to be found as a little girl with an evil smile, the SecretEnemy departed. It had fed on much fear, as dark psychic-spiritual energies, and now it betrayed Braun just as that one had betrayed millions of others.

 

Francint went to Harry and was the first of the High Followers to convert over.

 

Rainbow butterflies began to appear all across Braunburg and the conversions increased in frequency and strength. Those already converted were rainbowfolk and the conversions continued.

Edited June 22, 2018 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

3.2.3[67] Braunburg Transformed

 

Braun was burned away, the cityscape was transforming strongly, greenery was flourishing and the last of the truly criminal ones were burning away.

 

The DocTARDIS was materialised in Tranquility Circuit, a great looping street with many buildings on the outside and a great circular park in the center. It had been the horror place, surrounded by high brick walls and ornate cast iron dripping with fresh blood, where Braun had personally tortured to death captives who had dared to fight against him; they would return to life, many escaping him, but some only to be torture killed again. Not so long ago Braun had all such people returned to the Park of Damnation but had lost control.

 

Harry stood in the great big children's playground that was now a genuine one but which had been filled with torture devices. "Dark creatures attacked Braun himself, once a year, and tortured him for one day to remind him that the real power in Braunburg was not Braun. More recently he was successfully attacked by rebels using 'sprites' in the shapeforms of heavily armoured-armed humans and great monsters. Even with out our arrival Braun was failing but the suffering, of millions, would have gone on for years and the dark entity would have fed on that suffering. The quasireality realm is inside a great machine that is inside TechVault112 being a very large techvault."

 

Harry: "It has a large population of humans, brainbots and robots along with some androids. It was they who, after hacking into parts of Braun's own supercomputer networksystems, learned of what monster Braun truly was and what evil he was working; they began the attacks on him and attempts to undermine the evil of Braunburg. It was not Braun that threatened them but the mysterious dark entity that does not seem to be directly linked to the SecretEnemy that serves the GreatEnemy."

 

DocWho spoke. "Why did the DocTARDIS land here?"

 

Harry sighed. "I do not know except for a vague sense that there is something here linked with all the techvaults, of which there are many more than those officially listed; a few of them are not even called techvaults."

 

People were trying to adjust to a new world with out the horror, pain and fear that they had become used to. Directly transformed people were trying to make sure none would be scapegoated because of what had happened, that a new fair government would rise and that all would be cared for but it was happening with impressive ease. For all were being transformed if only in an indirect fashion.

 

One question was straight forward; what was important about that location, Tranquility Circuit, in which Braun had staid and kept his control from?

 

At the very center of the big children's playground they found a great disk of superconcrete. It was soon to turn out to be a door that opened lowered and then slid to one side. Upwards rose a cylinder shaped elevator, a big door spun open, in a sideways fashion, and a large elevator chamber was exposed.

 

It was heaped with skeletal remains, and gear, of dead people.

Edited June 22, 2018 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

3.3.1[68] At the core of Braunburg lies below...

 

Clearly the great complex had been designed as a grandiose, over complicated, control area for the whole of the quasireality realm. It had been also built for a living elite with androids, robots and clones to serve them. The dark entity had clearly taken over the complex, including the big dome shaped central control chamber with the circular pyramid rising up the stop at a very fancy electronic throne surrounded by a half ring shaped console. The skeletal remains of the dead littered the complex even as things began to change with a glowing light gently flooding through the area.

 

Elite humans, servile clones, animals and plants were coming back into life with sparkling shimmering effects. Damage was being fixed, technologies upgraded-augmented. Harry's influence was profound.

 

He spoke as the group started to look around the big central control chamber and somehow all heard him easily. "This quasireality is becoming a new lifecube as linked to the HarryLifecube and it is becoming linked to the Lifesphere101 and TechVault101. Yet it is not here that we will find the missing TunnelSnakes or those that abducted them. They came to Braunburg, made brief contact with Braun who they tried unsuccessfully to kill though they did weaken him, helping to lead to the madman's downfall. They were here just after the dark, parasitic, entity departed in a hurry because it is strangely weak in some ways despite its strength in other. They found a few items here, exotic and dangerously potent, and stole them before leaving them. We need to search the complex more, despite any horrors we might find, but we will have the help of the returned-transformed clones, humans, robots and others here of which the nature of some will be most surprising, even shocking."

 

Then a pause before... "We need to find the real Braun."

 

Armilie spoke out, as one of the ATriplets. "If that was not the real Braun was it some kind of clone?"

 

Harry shrugged. "All one knows is that that was partly the real Braun, probably part clone, as created by the mysterious dark entity. Too often one only gets general impressions of such things. The dark entity's true identity may be revealed here. Also we will hopefully find clues to where the Rani group went along with the abducted TunnelSnakes."

 

Which was when sirens began to ring as some kind of aggressive, twisted, entities rose from the depths of the complex to attack he newcomers.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

3.3.2[69] Battle below the core of Braunburg

 

The battle raged savagely, for a short time, as the twisted entities, from below, attacked the newcomers. They were near impossible to define in shape. They flickered in strange unnatural shadows that they brought with them. Leading them was the 'real Braun' but it was no longer Braun at all. His insane creation had destroyed him along with his own madness and other dark forces. Laserguns, plasmaguns, battlerifles and other weapons tore the entities apart.

 

Braun was gone! As soon as 'he' was destroyed the other things dissipated away for they had been but reflections of his criminal insanity, his depths of depravity and hatred, and his fading power.

 

Braunburg would soon enough be Freeburg.

 

Then they found it, an entrance-exit into-out of Freeburg that took them out of the quasireality and into the great TechVault112 that had the mass of network-systems supporting the existence of the quasireality. Except it was now becoming part of a Lifecube as attached to Harry's Lifecube.

 

They found the abducted, transformed, TunnelSnakes in special statuscapsules. The Rani, and others, had done amazing-terrible 'things' to them that had been for secondary reasons for so it was soon concluded by DocWho, Harry, the Romanas and others.

 

DocWho was both furious and sad as he studied the deformed teenagers. "As bad as this is, it gives me a very strong clue as to what the Rani has been after. She has been attempting to learn how to create extremely powerful biological entities capable of going into most extremely hostile environments to deal with extremely hostile entities; this is to make preparations for some kind of confrontation mostly probably linked with an expedition of some kind going where no such expedition should go. The Rani has been gaining knowledge, and experience, but hopes to gain much more than that from the expedition itself. We Timelords have a subtle network of links with each other, even when we do not want to, which has been helping me understand more about what she has been up to."

 

The largely autorobotic, computerised, run techvault had an army of brainbots to assist it but most were in special bays, the brains experiencing SSVR realms so that they did not go insane as individuals.

 

In that place were many unused resources but also banks of statuscapsules with military, corporate and other people from Predoomsday along with other lifeforms.

 

Then there was Braun's Vault, a much smaller techvault inside the techvault proper. With its opening would come surprises, some of them disturbing and one of them being extremely so.

[Maharg67]

3.3.3[70] In Braun's Vault

 

Braun's Vault was luxurious to a point of insane over indulgence and it was full of dark depravities expressed as artworks, holographic projections and displays of strange artefacts in armoured display cases. That is much of it was for some areas were far more utilitarian and clearly meant for functionality. There were offices, for Braun himself and his small administration, laboratory workshops, design shops, rows of prototype enhanced-augmented SSVR capsules and also prototypes linked with the quasireality of Braunburg that no longer had that name.

 

The Timelords, vaultfolk and others soon worked out that Braun, for all of his later egotistical claims, did not design the quasireality technologies alone. There were three other supergeniuses called Chronoto, Maynee and Rharleston who had helped greatly and their reward had been to be placed in locked down statuscapsules. Clearly Braun had not wanted to share the glory with the other three.

 

In that place it became evident that Braun had been a 'superclone' generated by the HopeGenisis Project apparently being part of a much larger program of such projects. Many, of those they found data on, they already knew of even if in a general way. TechVault101 was mentioned as were other techvault based experiments. They were starting to put together a larger pattern behind all of the experimental programs be they based in the vaults or not.

 

It appeared that the Doomswar, and Doomsday, had not been the focus of at least half of the programs, of projects but what was was still not clear.

 

According to data records Chronoto, Maynee and Rharleston were just as criminally insane as Braun but in their own ways. So they were left in status for the moment.

 

Then a deep secret area of the vault was found and in it something very disturbing.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Maharg67