12 - This bastard has some fancy stuff
..and I can't touch it!
The rest came back and brought this Carla woman to us, but that was not all. For some reason Jo-Ann was there as well and why did that bring a smile to my face? What is she doing all the way out here?
Apparently things were mixed up at home and Harper was trying to step into the void. Was that a bad thing? Maybe for Lincoln and Elona, but also for me? A short time ago I don't think this would mean anything for me, but I have been a little bit more in the presence of Lincoln lately. Not things I normally think about, should I start now?
If Lincoln and his fellows needed to be heading home, I guess we would be going back as well. But not at this moment, it was nearing dark and the world was dangerous enough in the light. Maybe we needed more light in the dark, the tower had some kind of light at their gates, could we learn from that? Can we make it moveable? Did those moving vehicles have lights? We only saw them during the day. Well, apparently we would be spending the night in the tower as guests. Would I get a chance to have a good look at those vehicles or other stuff? Let's find out!
Inside the Tower
Carla led us towards the gate, raising a hand in greeting. Would these people have allowed us to enter if we just knocked on the gate when we got here? The gate rumbled into activity again and another big plume of dark smoke rose from the backend. I really needed to have a look, but apparently I was to follow first as Rianna almost dragged me forward. We would have to undergo some kind of cleaning first before we were allowed anything else.
They didn't use water to clean us, but used brushes to clean the rot from our bodies. At our Ark we clean ourselves in our water supply, would that be a reason why our supply was getting worse? Guess we can learn from others, maybe we could have learned earlier if we were allowed to go outside the Ark before our Elder started to degrade together with our whole Ark?
After cleaning they gave us food, someone was mentioning something about the food not being right in some way, but I wasn't really listening, I was hungry. And hey, free food! They told us we could walk around while waiting to see this Chairman fellow. Though we could not go up to the penthouse or down into the basement. What's a penthouse anyway? Something up top apparently, and I was more interested in the basement and other things anyway.
But first, let's have a look at that gate! Free to walk around? Sure, but I can't touch it, or open it, or look at the real interesting stuff! I need to learn things, that means looking up close and feeling around, maybe move some parts around a little! I cannot learn anything like this. Bah! I had a look at the basement entries, they are guarded unfortunately. They had light inside the walls behind transparent material of some kind. Interesting! But the eyes of the guards watching me gave me the idea that they were probably not going to allow me to open those anyway. This is getting boring fast!
I made my way inside the tower a bit and found some kind of contraption. A wooden cage attached to ropes leading up into a tall open shaft. Was this some way up into the tower? But before I could investigate I suddenly heard screaming as a door opened and a man with only underpants came running outside. It was this man that was screaming and he made his way towards the gate. The gate was not opening and he slammed against it hard as he tried to climb upwards. Shouts came from on top of the gate as warnings were given for him to stop. He did not stop and was apparently driven to get away. But before he could get far enough he was shot down from above and he dropped down, dead on the ground. I looked around, maybe this gave me chance to stroll into the basement innocently, but the guards were not impressed by the situation and kept their place. Was this a normal thing around here? This didn't feel right, even with the words from Carla earlier about males being less than females.
The Chairman
I quickly forgot about the previous situation as Carla gathered us to take us to the Chairman. I didn't really care about the chairman, but we were going to be taken upwards in that cage like thing. It didn't feel like a real cage as the sides were open, so that was ok and Carla went up with us as well. As we stepped into it she shouted up for the thing to go up. Slowly but surely the thing started to rise. It was smaller than the shaft up by quite a lot, so there was room around it. I made it wobble a bit by moving back and forth, but quickly stopped and shrugged as I got a few crossed eyed looks.
It took a while, but we got to the top and left the cage into a hallway leading towards a door. Carla knocked on the door and made our presence known. Inside was a huge room and the walls were decorated with all kinds of different things. It also had these flickering lights I noticed earlier. There was a big desk and chair with someone behind it. A pale man dressed in a black cloak and a woman standing behind him with a three barreled shotgun. I was probably not going to be allowed to check that out as well. Well, I guess the Chairman being a man didn't make all males bad, right?
I made my way towards the wall as the others were going to have a chat with the chairman. And again I was not allowed to touch anything, but I guess looking was a good start as well. There were weapons and other interesting mechanical stuff. Two tubes attached to each other with glass at the ends. I couldn't look properly through it being attached to the wall and too little light, but it was somehow deforming what came through it. Let me touch it! And all the other stuff please!
I didn't get much from the conversation with the Chairman, but afterwards I heard he was kind of full of himself. Only wanting to get more power and trying to find out where our Ark was and how many people we have. Guess that conversation didn't really go anywhere, but at least we were allowed to stay in the tower and sleep the night.
After setting up our camp and apparently deciding that we needed to leave the next day someone new showed her face. A woman named Krin showed up and told us she wasn't really happy with the Chairman. Guess not only the men were unhappy here. What would this lead to?
Updated on: 10:27
