[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: The bunker & elsewhere
WHEN: 1 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn on threads
NOTES: Plot Details | Bunker Details | Bunker Map & Key
Threads may take place ANYTIME during the plot, including before, during and after the tubes have been opened, just please do not godmod tube arrivals without explicit permission. Related threads not in the bunker are welcomed, as are general bunker exploration/reaction threads that have nothing to do with the arrivals. Please reference the bunker key doc for what is and isn't available to explore at present.

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Deep under the mountain, tucked away in the newly-discovered bunker complex, there is a room where everyone begins. It is filled with equipment — Computer consoles, monitors — but the point of it all resides within ten vertical stasis tubes lined neatly along a far wall.

One of them has been cracked and lies dormant, dry. In six of the remaining are bodies, unconscious and floating in their familiar vari-colored scrubs, vital signs ticking calmly off on their respective readouts.

In the corner, near the cracked tube, the ceiling has shattered and tumbled inward, across the floor and over the largest console in the room — The one flashing 24 HOURS UNTIL STASIS FAILURE.

Comments

[underachievement]

"Probably," she says through gritted teeth, backing out to the previous screen and tapping into the next item on the list, which brings up the same gobbledygook and the same request. Returning to the top menu, she scrolls down until she hits a dead end. Then she scrolls up and lo and behold, at the top of the list she didn't know they'd been plunked in the middle of, an option for systems control.

Entering that, the first option in capitalized blinking text is MASTER REBOOT like "I was over here the whole time, dummy!" Upon selecting it, Peggy's theory is confirmed. A window that overtakes most of the screen asks REBOOT ALL SYSTEMS? but won't take yes for an answer, providing a blank box for the password it insists they have.

Regarding Peggy, "You've been here a while, right? Any ideas?"

[womanofvalue]

She has been here a very long time and she wracks her brain to think of all the things she's seen that don't make sense. She'd brought one of the notebooks with her, somewhere where she's kept notes on the people in the village and absent things that she's seen. Instead of searching for a physical key, she looks at the screen.

Password, it wants a password.

"There were fish, once, with messages inside," she rambles, skimming her finger over the notes on the page that describe that, recalling how they'd found coins and messages. Inside. She looks up sharply and catches Jessica's gaze.

"Inside the wendigo," she says. "There was something inside the wendigo, wasn't there?" What did they do with it? She closes her eyes tightly and looks to Jessica. "It was a message or something, it had something inside it." She knows that many people brought items with them, did they bring that?

Peggy glances around and catches Jessica's eye. "It was a cylinder type item, I think. We need to find it, it had something inside."

[underachievement]

The hell? After hearing it, Jess replays the key points in her head and it's no less incomprehensible. Even removing fish from the equation. But with the firing of the exact right synapses, she links it to a mention by someone at the party that creature's body was retrieved for examination. If she'd been on her game, she'd have looked into it and would have that password right now, but she forgot about it in the hurricane of a hangover that ensued.

"Okay, well, I suck at people." Jess's hands slip from the console and she backs a step away. "You ask around, I'll check that pile of crap they brought down." It's evident from her tone that she's certain Peggy's getting the lead. Jess doubts she'll find some magic Da Vinci code device among a couple boxes of basic supplies and that should circumvent any glory or gratitude, if they manage to reboot the friggin' system. No skin off her nose.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy gives a sharp nod of her head, heading off as quickly as she can. She knows that this is all a crazy idea that they're following, but no crazier than some of the other things they've endured in their time here. Her conversations with others are short and brief things, but they lead her right back to Jessica, so perhaps it had worked.

She gestures to the pile of things. "That one, there," she says, because she'd been told by others that they had brought over a whole slew of items, but the cylinder is the one they want. "It apparently has instructions inside that didn't make sense to anyone at the time."

Funny how Peggy imagines they'll have meaning now.