Me, Myself and I

[Maharg67]

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Simple Feedback: :thumbsup: = okay :thumbsup: :thumbsup: = good :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: = very good :dance: = so good I want to dance

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Edited February 22, 2013 by Maharg67

[LordWushin]

Very interesting! ;D :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :smile:

[Maharg67]

Thanks for your positive feedback, LordWushin, it is most appreciated! :biggrin: :thumbsup: :dance:

[Maharg67]

0103: I WAS THE EYE

Four times four parachute canisters fell; each cluster of four parachutes fell in the same areas, quite close to each other, despite the growing winds of a big, incoming storm to the DC Wastelands. Word had gone out, from various sources, offering rewards to bring the canisters to them. The rewards were generous. Groups also appeared hunting for the strange parachute canisters, the parachutes and the contents. Yet the great majority of Wastelanders did not even know they existed, as yet.

In the isolated settlement, of Bungadunt, four parachute canisters landed and the cannibal-scavengers there quickly dragged their prizes into hiding. The settlement was hidden beneath rubble. The Bungadunt folk were barely human, were like savage zhouls or ghoulers. They easily opened up the three metre high, and wide, cubes with their rounded off corners because they were designed to be easily opened.

In a big cavern chamber the Bungadunters chortled, danced and bickered over cans of food, stimpaks, survival blankets and much else besides. It was the BigOman himself who claimed the most exotic of the items. There were four helmet like devices, four sets of glove like devices and four odd backpack like devices. What to do with them, though? BigOman sat on his big throne, on a platform above the floor of the big rough chamber where his people were still dividing up the other goodies.

The strange devices did not seem to respond just to anybody but when BigOman picked up a helmet, lights blinked on it and it began to hum softly. The gnarled, strong old man grinned with crooked teeth and gaps where teeth had been. Then he slipped on a strange helmet even as it adjusted itself to fit him perfectly. Then it was on and BigOman cried out in surprise. Such was the cry that the others stopped and stared at him in surprise. Wary silence filled the room. BigOman was not much liked, recently, and many whispered it was time for him to be replaced by a 'new BigOman' but this BigOman changed even as he put on a pair of the strange gloves and backpack. When he put a backpack on it bit into him, somehow, and he cried out with a horrible shuddering. Then he became still with his face hidden now, along with the rest of his head.

Then he spoke in a strong, commanding voice that was both him and yet not him. "Line up and be tested! Three others will be of the Chosen Ones who will experience this world for the sake of the Chosen Lords. We will be further transformed, will gain new abilities, and we will be rewarded well by the Chosen Lords. Oh, glories to the Chosen Lords of the Ways of Scientific Miracles and the Ascension of Reason. They, who are blessed with the Grand Logic, they will give us access to a great paradise. Come!"

While many lined up to be tested, some fled the scene for they 'sensed' something was very wrong. It was they who survived. Later they returned to find four of their people vanished, along with all of the exotic items and much of the other stuff that had come in the parachute canisters. They also found the dessicated corpses of the others, killed terribly and drained of blood, life energies and liquified flesh. The survivors gathered what resources they could and fled into the Wastelands but they took their story with them.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0104: I WAS THE EYE

 

The storm hit hard, coming westward, and forced any military action to come to a halt except for that underground. Except that such was the massive downpour that some underground areas flooded and even fighting in those zones ended. Not that fighting had been anything but skirmishes because all three sides were trying to gain more intelligence on just what was going on; nobody seemed to know just where anybody else was. There came high winds, lightening strikes, hail along with the monstrous rain falls. Aircraft were grounded by the storm.

 

The Free Alliance had fully formed as it strove to strengthen its hold on various territories, to form a solid front against the Marsclaven Pact and the DominatorThirteen. The other forces were doing the same against their foes. The taking of the Grand Mall meant that a large area was secured, as much as any such area could be secured in the Wastelands.

 

The Troopers of Steel moved through the Mall area, along ditches where savage fighting had taken place against the supermutants. Now and then they came upon the dead remains of a supermutant or some other mutagenic creature. The rains flooded the ditches and the better prepared ones had drainage but some were up to waist deep in muddy water. The power armored soldiers strode through it and hoped nothing would attack them, unseen, or that they would not trigger no water hidden mine.

 

Then they saw the man and stopped in surprise. He was wearing a strange helmet, gloves and backpack. His body was covered, otherwise, in silvery skin like material. Yet he was seemingly no threat. Instead he was tending some strange mutated plants with big muttfruits growing in clusters. They were the richest, healthiest looking muttfruits that any of the soldiers had ever seen.

 

The man turned and spoke to them with an odd double voice in one. "Each one of us mirrors the nature of our host. If our host is savage, we are savage. If our host is caring, we are caring, and so on. Our host was a soldier, a Talon Mercenary, but it turned out all he wanted to do was to tend to plants. The muttfruits are perfectly healthy and ready to eat. Very tasty!"

 

The muttfruits were very healthy with no excess radiation or toxins; they were nutritionally rich. They took the man with them to the nearest big Alliance Outpost. The Troopers of Steel had not failed to note that each of the mutated muttfruit plants had grown out from two or more dead Talon Mercenaries. The man quietly informed them that the mercenaries were killed by supermutants but the soldiers were wary of him anyway. It turned out that he was telling the truth.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0105: I WAS THE EYE

Field Marshal Grandmier, and his echelon, barely escaped from the treachery of the Marsclaven, that he had served loyally for decades, and President Eden the AI-supercomputer network-system. The cloned soldiers ceased to follow his orders as did androids and robots except for a few that were early versions of clones or special program-conditioned androids and robots.

The heavily armored stormcrawlers moved steadily away from the RavenRock Citadel. The five of them had been his insurance policy. Now he headed towards the rendezvous point with the group from the EagleEnclaven, the government of the EagleEnclave. Yes, he also had planned for betrayal but only because he had become aware of what had happened to others like him and their followers. The tall, stocky man was surprised that he would be also be meeting with Orderhood of Steel envoys along with others of what was called the Free Alliance.

None of those, in the stormcrawlers, noted the magnetic-bombs planted against the sides of the machines or how the Mysterious Stranger removed them with amazing speed, agility and strength along with his surprising ease in getting part their clever anti-tampering devices. The Mysterious Stranger was working against outside interference that should not have happened; he was rebalancing matters back to where they needed to be.

Grandmier stared through an armored window though he could not see much thanks to its thickness and the heavy rain smashing against the machine. He wondered why the Marsclaven had come to exist as a kind of government inside a government that worked very different from its host. He had once considered himself to be a patriotic follower of a fine institute that fought against evil but had come to learn that the Marsclave was a parasitic monster of power, technologies and blind obedience to an unknown outside force. The Marsclaven, the government of the Marsclave, was the dark core of this evil madness.

Was the treachery always planned against the standard humans of the Marsclave? He was not sure for there was a kind of insanity that seemed to run through the Marsclaven, and Marsclave, that he could not explain.

Grandmier smiled to himself, a hard smile, for he had very important data that would do a great deal of harm to the Marsclave, to the whole Marsclave Pact that was emerging. He had stolen portable databanks that held both secrets that he knew and others that he had not been able to access. Yet the truth was that the Field Marshal had no real idea just what a huge impact that his stolen secrets were to have; if he had known, perhaps he would have just destroyed the portable databanks.

[Maharg67]

0106: I WAS JACK

 

I, Jack, was back in Megaton, a changed settlement thanks to the reality shifts that had ceased to happen. Megaton had a dome and seemingly had had one for decades. The semitransparent dome covered a great crater that was much bigger, had always been 'much bigger than it had been'. Reality shifts could be painful to deal with if one was aware of them but the great majority were not aware of the changes.

 

I was a local but no longer so well known as 'I had once been'. Moira's shop had been replaced by a second hand clothing and shoe shop, the hidden areas having somehow 'never been there along with the TransOrb'. Moira, her exotic emporium, and others were well established in the RingBase Domeland itself. I lived with her. The enlarged population, the enlarged settlement, was firmly part of the Peoples DC Republic. The UnityWays was strong in the republic as it was in the Subwayers Union. I was only too aware of unityfolk observing me.

 

I was not in Megaton for long but set out for Springvale because of the strange situation there where a large force of gangers was fighting a large swarm of exotic giant-ants, or rad-ants. Such was odd enough but the giant-ants seemed to have nothing to do with the AntEmpress of the DominatorLords. As for the gangers, they were not the original gangs of Springvale that they had driven out; these 'new' gangers were more like well trained paramilitary thugs with standard weapons, armor and other equipment.

 

Whispers had come to the Regulators of something called an 'AlphaKey' that was being sought by the gangers. I spoke to some folks in the settlement and was soon making my way through underground ways towards Springvale. Even as I did the great storm was pounding the DC with wind, rain, hail and lightening. Through broken tunnels, through a big old cave system, I moved as quickly as I could. Conditions were far from good with some parts of the underground being flooded and part of a tunnel system had collapsed.

 

What else had whispers spoken of? Yes, that the gangers were seeking to break into some kind of vault but what kind of vault? There were no official records of any vault being beneath Springvale, a domed town. (A reality shift had 'added' a dome but the town had remained surprisingly the same in other ways.)

 

Wading across a knee deep body of water, I 'sensed' the TallThinMan even as he appeared, almost as if he had always been there. The TallThinMan was taller than me and I was quite tall for a human. I stopped and looked at him warily though I 'sensed' no real threat.

 

He spoke. "You need my assistance and I need to get hold of the AlphaKey that you have heard about. I made sure that the JaeiouThirteen did hear about it. The vault is a CacheVault, a place for storing highly valuable data and artifacts. The CacheTek Corporation built the vault, with the assistance of VaultTek, for a mysterious faction using a series of well fabricated false fronts. The GeniusThirteen, or part of them, may have been the ones who contracted the vault to be made."

 

I nodded. "We have some distance to go so I suggest we keep moving."

 

He only smiled, in an odd fashion, and we both vanished with a sparkling shimmer.

[Maharg67]

0107: I WAS JACK

 

The educational institution had officially been a paradise of fine education for a select few students of 'high capability and potential'. In truth it had been a horror house of torture, of obscene experiments, of debauchery and other dark crimes. In the days, before Doomsday, government authorities had moved in and had closed the place down but they had only obtained access to the upper layers, the official school, of what had turned out to be a much larger facility.

 

Government SWAT Teams had battled brain washed security guards while rescuing starving, tortured students from cages. Many were beyond saving. I moved past a row of such cages and wondered just what kind of insanity would lead to such treatment of older teenagers and how they had gotten away with it.

 

The TallThinMan spoke, as if answering my unvoiced question. "One of the GeniusThirteen, that is one of the GeniusThree, became brutally insane. Because of her great influence, she managed to block a proper investigation being carried out into the school for over two years. Yet this place was not just set up to carry out her sadistic games. She was carrying out a series of dark experiments based on a captured AAA and upon human-gray hybrid technologies; the first she could not really understand or control; the second was unstable and dangerous to use. Her name was Professor Ivernstein. The school was about turning some people into a monstrous elite of sociopaths who would turn the other students into either puppets or victims; the experiment worked to a great extent. Except that is a pocket rebellion broke out, of staff and students, that managed to get the truth out to a less corrupted part of government."

 

We passed long dead bodies of security guards with strange helmets that were somehow sinister. I spoke. "The helmet like devices were used to control the puppets?"

 

The TallThinMan nodded. "Yes, but they did not function perfectly and some security guards went berserker insane, attacking everybody while others killed themselves. Now similar devices are appearing in the strange parachute-canisters landing in the DC Wastelands."

 

I knew of them and the growing concerns, in many factions, of just what the strange technologies meant. They reflected, and amplified, strong core features of those that they 'selected' to wear them. Wastelanders that were evil, tended to be powerfully evil, ones who had better nature were more powerfully good but also many eccentricities were expressed more strongly. Like the woman who was madly collecting bottles of NukaCola, both the standard type and the more exotic variants.

 

The first big ant creatures, they were not really ants at all, came out to attack but halted abruptly and crouched as if indicating they meant no harm. I knew that it was the TallThinMan that had them so intimidated.

 

The TallThinMan shook his head. "Do not underrate yourself, Jack of the JaeiouThirteen."

 

He communicated with the rad-ants through empathic-telepathic means and learned that the AntEmpress had sent somebody, called the AntAntagonizer, to try to stop the fake gangers from getting into the CacheVault that was also beneath the school but also into the sealed off research and development complex. They were Marsclave Special Forces clones along with androids and robots. They were elite clone soldiers with special abilities and experimental exosuits that made them even more dangerous. It was not what I wanted to hear.

[Maharg67]

0108: I WAS JACK

 

The big vault type wheel-door was long ago exposed by government sappers, working with the SWAT Troopers. The SWAT Teams, and others had fled long ago taking others with them including rescued students, staff and animals. The fake gangers had been digging up another part of the school in a vain attempt to find a way into the complex or perhaps the vault that was also supposed to be there.

 

The TallThinMan spoke as he touched the armored wheel-door. "I must leave you, after I open the wheel-door. My kind can only interfere so far in the affairs of mortals, even in situations like this where there has been dark interference in the affairs of mortals. You are immortal but only of the lesser immortal status. I brought you directly here, to the school, for a powerful dark entity was about to ambush you. I will now go and deal with that entity that I can not identify."

 

So he tapped the door, there were some muffled clicking and other noises of unlocking lock mechanisms, and the huge wheel-door slid back before rolling to one side, out of sight.

 

The TallThinMan vanished, almost as if he had never been there, and behind him he left a device something like a big three barreled rifle but it was no rifle. Information came to me of how to use it and why I needed it, at least a basic knowledge that is.

 

I picked it up, it was light and well balanced for its size, then I went carefully into the research and development complex. First sight was a very disturbing one of many long dead bodies of those who had been trying to escape from something. The chamber was actually a security-quarantine airlock with another great armored wheel-door. Gently pushing aside the corpse of a security guard, I closed and locked the outer wheel-door for the inner one would neither unlock or open as long as I did not do this.

 

I activated a big 3Dwallscreen and it showed a view of what lay behind the inner wheel-door. The scene showed only swirling, disturbing blackish purple fog that sometimes glimmered unnaturally. Barely visible things moved inside the fog, human shaped things. At that moment I knew that I was not going through the wheel-doorway but would find another way to get to the CacheVault. Then I noted that the airlock chamber had one armored side door in either side wall and I chose to go through one of those.

[Maharg67]

0109: I WAS JACK

 

The complex was very much vault like in its design but with some obvious differences. It was more complicated, less efficient, in its layout than a typical VaultTekVault was. Clearly large sections of it, between the outer and inner hulls, had been used to store a whole lot of junk and semijunk. I had to find my around such obstacles through stale air filled chambers.

 

Then I came to an abrupt halt for there seemed to be no easy way forward. Thus it was that I entered the complex itself, strange gun-device ready to use, and carefully locked the armored slide-door behind myself that I had used. I entered a large chamber with only traces of GlimmerMist and not any of the thicker, deadlier GlimmerFog. Around me was some kind of big workshop with an eccentric layout of strange vats filled with slowly bubbling greenish tinged black substances. The stuff was disturbing somehow and stank awful.

 

It was also strangely familiar.

 

=-=You, the JaeiouThirteen, helped create the first batches of this substance that is made up partly of ingredients taken from another dimensional realm and 'translated' so it can exist here. It was a deed that should not have been carried out and this substance should not exist. The JaeiouThirteen was brain washed and was not responsible. The GeniusPrime was the main culprit. The GeniusThree were insane and unstable. The GeniusNine were under the powerful, cunning, manipulative influence of the GeniusPrime but some were more influenced than others. This batch of undeathnia has greatly weakened and is of not much threat but you could make it neutral.

 

It came to me, then, that the gun-device was useful for many purposes and I shot each vat with a particular range of energies. The undeathnia bubbled wildly and part of it vanished with an odd shimmering, sizzling effect. Then it was just water that was very clean and healthy to drink. There was no undeathnia in that chamber by the time that I left it.

 

The first zombie stumbled towards me. Real zombies did not rot, or fall to pieces, like they did in the 3Dmovies unless they 'failed' and then they were soon gone. Yet they had about them a feel of endless unnatural rotting and regeneration. I shot the lesser undead and it died, burning and crumbling away in seconds in a bizarre manner.

It had been some sort of techie once and it left behind itself a lightly armored white jumpsuit.

 

How many had been trapped to suffer death or worse just because somebody wanted to play at being God? The same question could be asked about the whole of the Marslands and, most likely, beyond them.

 

I heard the moaning, shambling, of more zombies and then the sound of guns firing which was most surprising