4 - The Machine Explained

Session 0	Session 3	Session 4	Session 5	Session 31
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Octavia	Bolt Lincoln Octavia	Bolt Lincoln Octavia	Bolt Octavia	Octavia

..and the return of Lincoln's crew

Played on 04-02-2024

Day 3
by Bolt

An enormous hall stretched out away from us. Little light came from small dirty windows above and darkness made me squint my eyes to see what was in it. Workbenches, some kind of bags and barrels stored on low raised platforms, a big stair in the back and a smaller spiral staircase of to the right, both leading up. But more interestingly, buzzing sound was coming from more machinery near the back wall in the space between the bigger stairs and the barrels.

The shadowy figures in the back moved away and probably disappeared up the bigger stairs, it was pretty hard to see. Probably because my attention was on the machines and not too much else. But most of the others decided it was a good idea to follow upstairs. Except for Finn and that beast of his, they moved towards the other stairs. I followed towards the stairs with the group first, but halfway I noticed the area around the machinery seemed to be clear of danger, so I changed my course and decided to have a good look there.

More panels
It was more of those cabinets, with panels in the front. More dials, buttons, some kind of slider and writing beside them. Both engraved, probably from old times, and chalked characters were near the buttons. There was a page of paper attached to the panels as well, it held more writing and what seemed like tally marks. Maybe I needed to learn how to read, but I'm not sure it was worth the time I could use for tinkering. And how would I feel in admitting to Octavia that it might be a useful skill? Would she also think I am interested in other text than the technical ones? I needed to think about this. I had to carefully rip corners of the paper where it was attached to the panel and stuffed it in a pocket. Octavia could help me with it later.

I took my time to properly investigate it all, but I would probably have to start opening up things to find out what this was for. I moved the slider up and down, pushed buttons and watched the dials move from green to red. As they were in green mostly and green does seem like a friendlier color I decided green was good and red was bad. So after some playing around I moved everything back to the places I think I found them.

I was starting to think these cabinets, like the earlier ones I found did not actually do something themselves. They were probably attached to other machinery somewhere. To confirm this I broke open the cabinets to have a look inside. The cabinet was filled with wires, leading to the buttons, the dials and to other places outside the cabinet. Buzzing was coming from devices, but no wires were visibly attached to those. I would have to remove them from the backwall to find out I guess, but maybe not right now. I noticed part of the wires leading to a hatch leading down. More interesting places to go!

Not alone
I looked up from the hatch, thinking about opening it, as I noticed voices near. I was probably in a safe place here, I could hide behind the panels and the darkness helped as well. To the right of me were Lincoln, Garrett, Finn and Flux and to the left of me was another larger group I did not know. Lincoln was speaking to them as if he knew them and even used the name of the person in front. Someone called Lutrell, he was a lot older than us and all of them were wearing white/grey clothing and what skin I could see was a lot paler than ours. They actually looked like the thing I saw last night. A lot like Zone Ghouls, but not really. Lutrell was speaking the same tongue as us, though he seemed to have a hard time following Lincoln's words and his words came out slow and careful. Did I mention he was old? Not as old as the Elder, but far older than us or the group behind him. Though they seemed more varied in age then us as well.

What is this place? Apparently this was their home, though they called it something else, some words I did not understand. They obviously wanted us to go away, but that's not going to happen before we got Lincoln's people back. And not before we got what we actually needed, we still needed to find drinkable water. Lincoln convinced them to help us find our people if we would leave afterwards. Knowing Lincoln he cared about getting his people back first, what we were actually going to do afterwards was not decided yet.

Rianna was calling my name, so I guess things were pretty friendly at the moment and I could show myself. I made my way towards Lincoln, Rianna, Finn and the rest. The moment Lutrell spotted me he turned towards me and got agitated quickly. He wanted to know what I was doing there and me telling him that pushing buttons and moving the slider didn't visibly do anything probably didn't help. He shouted something to one of his people and that one moved towards the cabinets quickly to I guess verify if things were still good or not. He told Lutrell things were still looking good, but Lutrell gave him more commands anyway.

After the commands, I followed him towards the barrels. There was some kind of white powdery stuff in there and he took a scoop out of it and made his way with it outside. I'm not really into the chemical stuff, but this sure was interesting! No one was blocking me so I followed him outside. We made our way from the big building, past what was left of the tower, towards the sphere like buildings. What would be in these spheres, if I get the chance I sure was going to have a look. But those were not our destination, behind the spheres were big baths of water. The closest one I could see had pretty clear water, but the further ones were doing worse. The man threw in the white stuff in the nearest pool of water. It dissolved into the water, what did that do? This sure was their water supply, we found it! I tried to ask him questions, but he simply ignored me and started to walk faster when I pressed him for information.

The search, and more
When I got back the discussion was over and they decided it was time to search. Our people were divided over the groups with members of their people as well. I wasn't going to join in the search, I had more important things to do! I was allowed to almost walk everywhere, even with someone tailing me. I was blocked when I wanted to look at the further pools, my new friend had a scared look on his face and I would have to resort to violence if I wanted past him, not going to happen! The rest was open ground for me.

I learned that there was not multiple machines, but this whole island seemed to be one big machine! It cleaned and pumped water around, it was slushing around inside the spheres, but the white powdery stuff seemed the most important part in the process. Running both through pipes above ground and some kind of maze underground, and all controlled from those cabinets and panels. Wow! These people could hardly be foolish Zone Ghouls, these things were complicated and needed careful watching to operate properly. And they knew how to write as I found more of those paper with writing and tally marks.

Return of our people
When I got back the search parties had returned, Lincoln's people had been found. They told us that they were found hiding inside one of the big round buildings, scared of the big bird thing, and extremely hungry. Another group had come by sheds with weird naked doglike creatures inside. They made weird grunting and squealing sounds. Not very interesting compared to what I found out!

Session 0	Session 3	Session 4	Session 5	Session 31
◀◀	◀	▲	▶	▶▶
Octavia	Bolt Lincoln Octavia	Bolt Lincoln Octavia	Bolt Octavia	Octavia

Updated on: 04:35