Session Logs

24: Thanks for the memory?

Introduction

When I was eating my dinner after the session I had a vague idea of how I was going to start the introduction. After every thing else that's been going on during the week that's all gone out the window so I'm just going to have to write things as I think about them.

I did, incorrectly, have it in my head that the GA would have needed to cut through the Port airlock to gain entry, but I've just checked the log for session 17 and that wasn't the case as Six had subdued everybody by that point so could let them in. What checking the log did do, was confirm that the auto-repair system is now out of supplies, thus the repair to the engineering bay door where Lisa's cradle is an incomplete patch job at best. There are also a number of other doors to Engineering sections of the ship that have also been cut through to enable the GA to gain access.

One thing that should be born in mind in relation to upcoming sessions is that you may need to let things play out to find out what is going on. I would liken it to a drugs operation where a lot of surveilance takes place to put all the links in the chain in place before they move against the primary distributor.

I would also comment on why Two in particular didn't in the series want her old memories back. Two was one of the prime believers in "we have a chance to turn over a new leaf and not be the people we were", One in the series was the other one. It's primarily this philospohy that means she doesn't want those memories back because she doesn't want to be the person she once was. She likes herself the way she is now.

This does also lead onto another point. Five does now have controlled access to the memories she has. It one of those elements that is glibly skated over in the TV series in the way in which she uses Two's memories against her, and the conversation that none of you know about between her and Lisa's base avatar. Again the only people who know of the avatar's existance are Five and Lisa herself. On a side note as I've hinted at before to Five, that building in the background may be important... There are things that SIx knows about that might have some importance as well.....

There is one set of events that will occur post Lisa waking and before the arrival in the middle of no where involving Four that I need to cover off first in the next session.

House Keeping and other things

As things have now resolved themselves its time to put a couple of things in order. You escaped from Hyperion-8 on 2672.259. The jump you under took to the middle of  "nowhere" took 18.5 days, meaning you arrive on 2672.279. Five turned 16 on 2672.273. This means I now do need to sort out Five's skill selections with Paul.

From this point the nearest independant space station is 3.3 days away. You spent an additional number of hours going over the ship again, making a final assessment of what state it's in. With the Autorepair systems out of supplies you are going to need to make a repair stop asap which will take 3 to 5 days to complete.

The food situation is pretty dire. All of the decent food went missing and by the time you can make the space station you're pretty much living on 'green leaves' from the hydrponics system, whist is supposed to be an augment to your diet not it's mainstay.

For arguments sake you'll reach the space station on 2672.283

At the space station:-
Fuel (Main Tank): 821,360 (of 1,376,000)
Fuel (Reserve): 244,000
Oxygen: 31,945
Nitrogen:119,187
Water: 18,300 (of 120,000)

Note:  Amongst the other ISO containers that went missing was your reserve 26,000l ISO water tank.

Thanks for the memory?

We pick up with Boone having retreated to his room to deal with the emotional fallout of discovering that Sarah had died, and Portia and Ryo in Med Bay. Portia wants to work on controlling her neural link but she doesn't want the distraction of all the 'unknown' parties onbaord being where they can't really be controlled or eliminated easily, which means she wants them out of Medical. She comms Boone and asks if he can come and help Ryo move them to the unused cabin/store on the starboard side of the bridge deck closest to the main stairs.

Seven tries to appeal to Portia's 'better side' forgetting that Portia is not Two and she doesn't have a better side (other than perhaps to ask questions before shooting the messenger). As Boone left the doctor in a state where he's not much use to anyone, somebody else will need to assist Seven into the wheel chair he arrived in. This falls to Nyx and they are moved first, before Arax assists the doctor to the cabin. Ryo threatens to shoot them if they try anything. With them moved, Ryo moves to gurad the bridge whilst Portia retreats to her cabin to work on her neural link. Boone opts to guard the prisoners, but eventually decides he's just going to spot weld the door in a few places, in case they manage to find a way to circumvent the lock.

As Portia, Boone, and Ryo are using their comms to keep in touch Five and Six can passively listen in. Note they had no specific evidence there was anybody else on baord. Whilst their search revealed that cabins had been occupied Ryo's and Boone's search had not shown up any evidence there was anybody else on board, and Seven and the Doctor had both said they'd all recently esccaped from Hyperion-8 without mentioning exactly who had escaped. If Portia had been less pre-occupied with neurally linking which would give her complete control then things might have been slightly different [GM Note: I'm relying on certain elements of what happened in the TV series and massaging them to fit with the way things played out. Six could have attempted to free the prisoners which would have meant a potential shoot-out with Boone but overall it wouldn't have contributed much. As I noted in last weeks log the resolution to this was all in Five's court. This does bring me sort of to another point, Five has the abilities she has and has been able to use them in the way she has to date for a reason..]

Acting on GM hints [GM Note: Player memory vs character memory/intuition] Five, once Medical is clear makes her way through the vents to the access vent between Medical and the Dojo. Verifying that the corridor is clear she exits into the corridor and makes her way into Medical locking and encrypting the door access. She then invokes Lisa's base programming avatar, and explains her current problems. The Avatar confirms that if the Androids diagnosis is correct then she should shut herself down and enact self-repair.

Five confirms that she's already done this, but that doesn't really help explain what's going on, Scanning those ship systems she has access to she confirms that a manual search for neural links was activated, most likely by the Ship's Android in response to her inability to link, and that the ship has apparently found and activated 3 neural patterns, one for Portia Lin, one for Marcus Boone, and one for Ryo Tetsudo. [GM Note: there is a difference between the ship being able to activate a neural pattern invoking a passive link, and somebody being able to "Actively" link to the ship systems and thus control them.] The avatar also confirms that Portia Lin is actively trying to link to the ship, and that if she succeeds she will have total control of all ship systems in the same manner that a ships Android, Lisa in your case, has, and given everything else Five has said that would most likely result in her rapid demise.

Given that Five has already determined getting the bridge is likely going to be impossible she already on plan B [GM Note: Character plan ala the TV series not player plan as this sort of required thinking a little out of the box and remembering what Five had done previously and done some extrapolation.]. Plan B is to use the modifed brain monitoring headset that she had previously used to access her dream memories, to attempt to neurally link to the ship's computer. It does require a slight adjustment to its connection protocol but that isn't anything that Five can't rapidly do.

Given that Five is already registered as a main Admin with the ship's Ai she initially tries to link using her own identity but it doesn't appear to work. She consults the Avatar who suggests that if she has Two's memories she tries to link as Two (Portia). This sort of works but Five can't make sense of the link and is forced to break the connection. Consulting the Avatar once more, whilst not that constructive, does reveal one thing, Portia has discovered somebody has been accessing the ships systems from Medical and has encrytped the door lock [GM note as the only person at this point who can get into the vault is Five, getting into medical short of cutting their way in is not going to be easy.] but she has set the ships AI to breaking the encryption. Five tries again but Portia is mentally too strong for Five and Five is force to abandon the attempt. Five consults the Avatar again. The Avatar suggests that if Five has all of Two's memoeries she needs to find some memory where she is at her weakest and use that against her. Now unlike in the TV series, Five has already come across this memory, she experienced it several nights running as a nightmare [although Paul had forgotten this.] Five tries again this time invoking the memory....

"Two is on the run. She has been chased and hounded for nearly 48 hours by Dwarf Star after escaping. She is barefoot, barely dressed, cold and exhausted. Every present in the background is the Dwarf Star Tower she escaped from. She is running through alleyways in a shanty town in an effort to escape her persuers but they are gaining on her, she keeps looking back but all she sees are her persuers, even through the drizzle that has been falling for the last hour."

In the original memory, Two having looked over her shoulder turns round to see a Black SUV pull up blocking her way forward, there is nowhere left to run. In the link it is Five who stands in front of her. Now I can't rememebr what Five said to Portia at this point, but to Portia she is a nobody, just somebody in the way and Portia charges her, but in a replay of Neo vs Agent Smith, where Five is Neo and Agent Smith is Portia, Five easily avoids Portia and proceeds to throw her back down the alley, using the time to pick up a length of metal pipe from the debris in the alley. Five then sets about Portia until she reaches a point where Portia is completely helpless, and she could now strike a killing blow [GM Note: Yes this would have killed Two, and Portia knew this. Also at this point Portia has all her memories since the "Awakening". There is another element in these memories that hasn't come up yet. I haven't decided if I'll let Five in on this element or not. Suffice to say is that Five not deciding to kill Portia causes her to re-valuate everything she has been through since the "Awkening" which is why she decides to acquiess to Five's request. Note also that Rook also said something to Two about her "Awakening" and the events that transpired sometime after, which of course Two doesn't remember, in the same way that Portia doesn't remember anything that has transpired in the last 14 months and that includes the Dwarf Star research station encounter with Rook.].

As in the TV series Five throws down the pipe and says "No, not this way." I did then use the events from the TV series as, as a character Five has all the knowledge of Portia's memories, whilst Paul as the player didn't.

Five : "I know what happened to you. They treated you like a slave, and when you escaped they hunted you like an animal. No one ever showed you anything but the worst we have to offer, and it made you this way. But I've seen the other side of you, and I want her back. I want my friend back. Please " Reaching out to Portia "Sever the link and end this now"

Portia considers for a moment and severs the link. As she does so, Two, Three, and Four lapse back into unconsciousness.

Five contacts Six and they let the prisoners out. Five explains that it was some sort of delayed GA virus that compromised Two, Three, and Four, although she's not 100% sure that Arax, Nyx, and Devon buy the explanation.

Two, Three, and Four recover consciousness about an hour later. They all have screaming headaches but no memory of the last 4 fours.

Time ticks by. Approx 24 hours later Lisa comes back online. Five recounts the events of the last 30 hours to her. She initiates both a ship diagnosis and suggests full medical scans of Two, Three, and Four. The scans reveal nothing but very minor neural damage, nothing that wasn't self repairable. The medical scans, coupled with Lisa's ship diagnosis, the finding of the stored neural patterns of Portia, Boone, and Ryo in the Medical Computer, not the Stasis Computer (which is why Five's initial search didn't find them), and Five's explanation of events, leads Lisa to the conclusion that Two's, Three's, and Four's memories have not actually been erased, but have been walled off, and the activation of the neural Patterns by the Ships computer caused them to switch which set of memories were active. It should therefore be possible to use the stored patterns to reactivate those memories whilst retaining their memories of everything that has happend since they came out of stasis 4 months ago [GM Note: Yes it has been approx 120 days since you came out of statis].

Five questions if that is wise given what happened when the links were activate. Lisa confirms that recovery of the old memories is likely to cause a reversion to the old behaviour patterns as occurred. Five states that she would leave the ship if they were given their memories back. Lisa argues that the decision is not theirs to make and that Two, Three, and Four should be given a full explanation of the choices available and the consequences of having their memories restored. Five agrees and calls a meeting in the conference room between herself, Lisa, Two, Three, and Four.

A GM prompt is required to stop Two and Three accepting [GM Note: as I said in Session this would be a game breaker.]. Given its a game breaker and not what Two actually did in the series [GM Note: As noted in the Introduction for the reasons given.] Two recant. A secret squirrel session then takes place between Five and Three, where she informs him of exactly how pyschopathic he was and exactly what he did during the intersession, before he agrees not to restore his memories. Four reserves judgement [GM Note: as he does in the series, but he does eventually have them restored. You''ll have to wait for future events to find out the circumstances.]

Some days later they complete their initial FTL jump to the middle of nowhere and go over the ship again with a fine tooth comb. Two considers taking up Arax on his asteroid, but the food and water situation, coupled with the need for medical supplies, and supplies for the auto-repair system, plus needing to have a number of doors and hatches repairs, means that a closer station is a necessity. The closest fully independant station is 13ly away (3d 1h). Lisa calaculates the course and initiates the jump.


    Back    
  Session Index   Dark Matter