The Handbasket Ride - Episode 3
A solo Electric State RPG actual play report
Content warning: Strong language
Tuesday, October 15th, 1996. 9:03pm
Scene Chaos Factor: 5
Testing the Expected Scene: 4 - Interrupt Scene
Event Focus: 91 - Current Context
Meaning Tables Actions: 05/11 - Ambush, Bureaucracy.
Two goddamn hours I've been stuck here.
Driving had been getting harder anyway. After I left Baker, dust from the desert had been blowing across the road, and conditions were getting a little treacherous. In some places it was like sand across the road, and in others, the wind whipped the stuff up and made seeing anything damn near impossible.
But then, twenty miles south of Baker, there was a roadblock across the whole highway. The Pacifica military had set a chokepoint and had stopped all traffic. Not that there was a whole lot of it anyway, but they stopped what there was.
Everyone was ordered - at gunpoint - to step out of our vehicles and to only bring our identification papers to a large Army tent that had been set up just off the road. There's maybe about a dozen of us here, and none of us have any idea what the hell is going on. We're supposed to just sit in these hard plastic chairs and wait.
A couple of times, a young soldier has come into the tent armed with a clipboard and a pen, and has gone through the group, asking our names, places of residence, and intended destinations. Same guy. Asking the same questions, over and over. I don't know why they had him do that, but it was crazy weird, and crazy frustrating.
We've heard a fair bit of shouting and clanging outside. One of the new arrivals - an older woman named Janet - said that the soldiers had been going through one of the first vehicles in the queue. They'd pulled everything out of it, and they might have even been disassembling part of the car. God only knows what they're looking for.
One of the young guys in the group went a bit pale when Janet said this, and asked which car it was. She said it was a faded Toyota Camry or something, and he just swallowed and looked down at the floor.
"Hey man," I said, "are you ok?"
He glanced up at me and just shook his head, without saying anything.
A few minutes after that, a pair of armed soldiers entered the tent and surveyed the group. The taller of them looked at us. "Which one of you is Andrew Corbett?"
This was despite them having asked us all what our names were multiple times already.
Everyone looked sheepish, but then the young guy stood up with a sigh. "I'm Andrew Corbett," he said.
The two soldiers came over to him quickly and grabbed his arms. "Come with us," the taller one said, and they quickly escorted him out the way they had come in.
Is Corbett summarily executed? Unlikely - 42 - No.
The rest of us kind of looked at each other in shock.
Janet quietly started sobbing, and one of the others - an older gentlemen who's name I think was Toby - looked at all of us with his eyes wide. "What the hell was that about?"
I looked at the tent entrance, then back to Toby. "At a guess, I'd say they found something in his car they shouldn't have."
Janet looked up at me, tears still trickling down her face. "What are they going to do to him? Is he going to be all right?"
I shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. I guess it depends on what he's done and what they found in his car. I hope it's nothing major."
"Eamon O'Sullivan," said a deep voice behind me.
I turned around and saw a tall, African American man in a black suit standing there.
"I'm O'Sullivan," I said.
"Could you come with me, please, sir?" the man said.
"Am I in some sort of trouble? I was cleared by the soldiers at the border checkpoint only a couple of hours ago after they checked through my car."
The suit just stood there, not even blinking. "Could you just come with me, please, sir?"
"Fine," I muttered, and grabbed my things.
As I walked over, I put my hand gently on Janet's shoulder. "It'll be OK. I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about."
Janet just started sobbing again, barely nodding. I felt bad, but there wasn't much I could do for her, right there and then.
I looked around at the rest of the group. "I'll catch you all later on," I said and walked over to the suit.
"Lead on," I said.
The suit lead me out of the tent, then down about a hundred yards to what looked like a semi-trailer when the sides expanded out, painted in a desert camouflage pattern.
As we walked down there, I could see my Bronco was still intact, which is more than I can say for poor Corbett's Camry. It had more than half its panels removed and it looked like most of the interior had been pulled out. None of the other cars seemed to have suffered the same fate though, but all of them looked like they'd been searched, as their doors and trunks were all open, and some stuff had been laid out on the ground nearby.
The suit led me up a short set of stairs to a door at one end of the trailer, punched a code into a keypad, then escorted me through the door.
Inside was a stark white, brightly lit room, furnished only with a round table and three folding chairs. There was a door at the on the other side of the room that looked like it led into another part of the trailer.
The suit indicated one of the chairs. "Please be seated, sir. Someone will be with you shortly."
"Any chance of a coffee?" I asked. I didn't expect to get one, but it was worth a shot.
Unsurprisingly, the suit just glared at me, then exited out the door, which shut behind him with a clang.
While I felt like pacing around like a caged animal, I decided to take the suit's advice and sit down.
Is the interviewer a woman? 50/50 - 08 - Exceptional yes.
No sooner had I done that, than the other door opened and an attractive dark-haired woman in a black suit stepped through carrying a notebook and an expensive looking pen. I quickly stood up, but she just waved me back down again.
It took me a couple of seconds to recognise her, but then I realised that I was sitting across the table from Leah Bellon, one of the "faces" for the Sentre Corporation. What the hell was going on here, that Bellon is out here at the ass-end of nowhere? And what does she want with me?
"Mr... O'Sullivan? she asked, after glancing down at her clipboard.
"Yeah, that's me," I stammered. "I'm surprised to see you all the way out here, Ms Bellon!"
Is she taking a friendly tack with O'Sullivan? 50/50 - 22 - Yes.
The doubled 2 is less than the Chaos Factor of 5, so we have a random event.
Event Focus: 19 - New NPC
Meaning Table: Action - 16, 68 - Praise Conflict
Is the new NPC female? 50/50 - 66 - No (and not a random event, as more than Chaos Factor).
Name? Nym Shani.
Ms Bellon raised an eyebrow. "So, you recognised me, then?"
"I remember seeing you on a lot of the Sentre ads a few years ago. You were the supermodel face of the Stimulus TLE when it first came out. Kind of hard to forget. It would not surprise me if your face alone sold thousands of neurocasters, especially to horny young sorority boys."
Bellon laughed. "Hundreds of thousands, actually, if the marketing analysis is right."
I raised my hands in supplication. "I stand corrected!"
Empathy check: Can he can get a read on her demeanour?
Five dice: 1, 1, 5, 6, 6 - Two successes.
I studied her face for a moment. If I'd met her in a bar in Vegas, or LA, or pretty much anywhere else, I might have tried chatting her up. But despite the amused appearance, there was a look of cold seriousness in her eyes. This was definitely not a social call, and treating it like one wasn't going to fly.
"But I suspect you're not here to talk about Sentre's marketing prowess," I said, clasping my hands together in front of me on the table. "I'm also assuming that I'm not in trouble with the Pacifica military at this time, given I was not manhandled in here by the grunts outside, unlike the guy they pulled out of the tent ahead of me. Which leads me to suspect that you have something you'd like me to tell you?"
Bellon raised an eyebrow again. "Straight to business then. Not going to try to charm me or anything?"
"I'll be honest," I said. "Were the circumstances and location different, I might have offered to buy you a drink and get to know you better. But I have plans to meet with friends at the end of the week down on the coast, and I'd prefer to get there as fast as possible. Frankly, being this close to the border when there might be a shooting war about to start again makes me nervous. I'd prefer to be as far as possible from here before that happens."
The briefest of smirks appeared on her face. "I appreciate your candour, Mr O'Sullivan. You were correct before: I am not here to talk marketing success. You were incorrect, though, about me wanting you to tell me something, though."
"Oh?" I said, with a slightly puzzled look on my face. "If you don't have any questions for me, then why am I here?"
"You are here, Mr O'Sullivan," she said, "because I need to explain to you what it is we need you to do for us."
I put my hands up for a moment. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a sec. What I need to do for you? As in Sentre? I don't remember saying I was going to do *anything* for Sentre."
"Hardly surprising, as we're not asking you to do anything for us. And yet, you're going to do it for us anyway."
Opposed test: Bellon's Wits vs O'Sullivan's Empathy. O'Sullivan gets +1 die for the Extra success on his previous Empathy check.
Bellon - Four dice: 2, 3, 4, 6 - One Success.
O'Sullivan - Six dice: 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6 - One Success.
"What makes you so sure that I'm going to do that?"
Bellon looked me right in the eye. "Well, if you refuse, then the Pacifica military will assume that you're working alongside Mr Corbett, who's facing charges for possession of a trafficable quantity of unlawful neurite. Not to mention illegal access to the Exclusion Zone. Amongst other things."
"What other things?" I said, through gritted teeth.
"I cannot say at this time," she said, holding up her hands. "I have not been briefed on what the military has found."
"Riiiight," I said. "I suppose that even if they didn't go that route, there's a shooting war looming."
"Exactly," she said, with a wry smile. "Collateral damage unfortunately does happen from time to time."
"Hmmm," I mumbled. "OK, let's assume - for the sake of the argument - that I did volunteer to help. What's in it for me?"
Bellon flipped a page up on her clipboard and consulted her notes briefly. "Well, I'm sure we can provide you with a little spending money for your vacation. As you no doubt discovered in your little detour into Baker, there's not a lot of fuel available within at least fifty miles of here. I expect your pickup is quite thirsty, so I think that we can arrange a full tank of gas. And a half pack of cigarettes, if that's your thing."
I smirked, in spite of myself. "While it is dark, we're a lot further than one hundred and six miles from Chicago and I appear to have misplaced my sunglasses."
"Touché!"
I scratched the back of my neck. "Why me? Are you offering everyone else in that tent the same thing?"
Bellon shook her head, and glanced down at her clipboard again. "Eamon O'Sullivan. Resident of Hawthorne, in Blackwelt. Widowed, no children. Former civil engineer. Private investigator for four years, specialising in locating missing persons."
She looked up and smiled at me, the same way a big cat would smile at its prey before it pounced. "Basically, Mr O'Sullivan, you came along at an opportune moment, and your expertise is useful and will save us a great deal of time."
"So," I said with a sigh, "who is it you need me to find for you?"
She pulled a grainy black and white photo from the back of the stack of papers on her clipboard and pushed it across to me. It showed a youngish Indian man, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. It looked like it was taken on a campus somewhere.
"His name is Nym Shani," she said. "Born in Mumbai, India, in 1965. Graduated Indian Institute of Technology Bombay 1989, majoring in Mathematics. PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley 1992, with a thesis on optimising data throughput on a neurograph network. Worked for Sentre in Silicon Valley until March this year. Since then, he's gone underground, trying to stir up as much trouble as he can against Sentre."
I looked down at the photo of Shani, and tried to get his measure. "Judging from the fact I'm here right now, I'm guessing that he's doing a pretty good job of it."
Bellon picked up her pen - which I realised was a very expensive Montblanc - and started twirling it around her thumb. "It is not my place to confirm nor deny what Mr Shani has or has not been doing. He is, however, in possession of some *highly* sensitive intellectual property, and we would prefer to ensure that it did not fall into the wrong hands."
Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. "Is he? And do you have a rough idea where Mr Shani is currently located? There's an awful lot of nothing out there to hide in. It would be useful to narrow that down a bit. Or a lot."
"Thankfully for you, Mr O'Sullivan, we believe that Shani is currently in Barstow. The Pacifica military has roadblocks on all roads in and out of the city, so he should not be able to escape. But he might disappear again if the military, or even Sentre, makes overt appearances in the city. You, on the other hand, have no connection to either, so you should be able to pass far more unnoticed."
End of Scene Bookkeeping
Things were rather neutral, fate wise, for Eamon in the scene, so the Chaos Factor stays at 5.
Added Pacifica military to the Character List for the third and final time.
Added Leah Bellon to the Character List.
Added Nym Shani to the Character List.
Added Locate Nym Shani in Barstow to the Thread List.
End of Episode Notes
This scene threw me initially. Being an interrupt scene, and getting “Ambush Bureaucracy” as the prompt was a bit weird, and again, I nearly rerolled it. But I resisted and pushed on.
I’m glad I did, because this random scene turned into the beginning of the first Stop in the journey. In The Electric State, the Traveller’s journey is made up of a bunch of Stops, where they have to action something before they continue on. It’s like a mini adventure in the middle, and a chance to see first hand how bad the world is going.
I hadn’t planned any of this, but it changed the direction of the story rather dramatically, as you’ll see as the journey continues.