The Handbasket Ride - Episode 5
A solo Electric State RPG actual play report
Content warning: Strong language
Wednesday, October 16th, 1996. 8:21am
Scene Chaos Factor: 6
Expected Scene: Finding information on Barstow
Testing the Expected Scene: 6 - Interrupted Scene
Random Event Focus: 26 - NPC Action
NPC Choice: d4/d10 - 2/8 - Blackwelt Military
Meaning Tables Actions: 20/19 - Combine Defence
After regaining some of my composure, I got back on the highway as fast as I could, and just got the fuck out. Merrick and his men might have let me go once they realised we were on the same side, but I'm pretty certain they'd just as happily put a round through my skull, just for shits and giggles.
I'd driven about ten miles or so, mostly on auto-pilot, while turning over the events in the culvert over and over in my mind. I'd met some shady characters during investigations, but I'd never met anyone that scared the living shit out of me like Merrick did. That motherfucker was cold.
Agility check: Does Eamon lose control of the vehicle because he's not paying attention? Six dice (including the +2 for the pickup's manoeuvrability) - 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4 - No successes.
Road Accident table roll: 5 - Flip. (The vehicle flips over on its side. To get it upright requires an action and a Strength roll.)
Next thing I know, the pickup hits a pile of dust and sand that was a lot bigger than it looked, and it's suddenly up on two wheels. I tried to get it under control, but to no avail. The Bronco went over on its side.
Was it Driver's side up? 50/50 - 21 - Yes.
Was Eamon wearing a seatbelt? 50/50 - 04 - Exceptional Yes.
I'd hit the sandbank with the driver's side wheels, so luckily for me, when it went over, it was passenger side down. Even more luckily for me, the seatbelt held me in place, so I didn't go flying round inside the truck as it toppled over.
I killed the engine, and then rolled down the driver's side window, and climbed out. I'm able to jump down to the ground without much hassle.
But then it hits me: getting this son of a bitch back on its wheels by myself is going to be a major league pain in the ass. But I'll find a way. I have to.
I just stand there staring at my truck lying on its side for a minute or two. The wind whistles across the desert, and from somewhere overhead comes the shrieking cry of a freaking red-tailed hawk. You know the one; they use it all the movies to let you know that the character is somewhere really isolated.
Fuck this noise.
Does the Bronco have a winch on the front? 50/50 - 90 - No.
Does Eamon have some rope in the truck? 50/50 - 79 - No.
Is there something long lying around nearby that he can use as a lever? Likely - 22 - Yes, with a random event.
Random Event Focus: 43 - NPC Negative
NPC Choice: d4/d10 - 3/5 - Nym Shani.
I spent about ten minutes hunting about and eventually find a long steel pole lying by the side of the highway, about a hundred yards up from the truck. It probably fell off a repair truck or something. It's heavy as fuck, but it should be long and strong enough to use as a lever.
See, all those years of studying civil engineering taught me about levers. At least that shit was useful for something these days.
After hauling the pole back to the truck, I look around and find a decent size rock that I can use as fulcrum. It's about eighteen inches in diameter and heavy as shit. It takes me another ten minutes to drag it over to the truck as well.
I manage to get the pole under the edge of the pickup and push the rock as far as I can underneath the pole. It's a pretty shallow angle, but it should hopefully do the trick.
Strength check: Five dice, including a +1 for the lever - 1, 3, 4, 4, 4 - No successes.
But pushing even as hard as I can doesn't do more than rock the pickup a little. It moves, but not enough to get it over onto its wheels again.
My frustration gets the better of me, and I scream "FUUUUCK!" at the top of my lungs to the sky. It's utterly pointless and serves no useful purpose, but it's cathartic, and helps focus my rage.
Right at that moment, my rage gained a target: Nym fucking Shani. It was all his fault I was in this mess. If he hadn't hidden in Barstow, the Pacifica military wouldn't have set up roadblocks on all roads of out of the town. If they hadn't done that, I wouldn't have been cornered and coerced into going to Barstow to look for him. I wouldn't have ended up getting ambushed by my own fucking military and threatened at gunpoint. More to the point, I'd probably would have spent the night in Mojave instead, and woken nice and rested.
I'm so fucking angry at that motherfucker that if he was here right now, I'd probably shoot him in the head myself. Who gives a fuck about whatever secrets he's carrying? They can die with him, for all I care.
Somehow though, the rage focused my mind, and I suddenly saw how to fix the problem. I pulled the pole out from underneath the pickup, then pushed the rock much closer to the truck. With a bit more effort, I was able to get the pole back under the edge of the truck, leaving the other end of the pole over seven feet in the air.
It took a bit of jumping, but I was finally able to jump up and grab the pole. Moving the fulcrum point closer to the truck meant that my whole body weight was hanging off the pole, because my feet were about a foot off the ground.
Push the roll: Four dice (can't reroll the 1) - 2, 4, 5, 6 - One success.
Hope reduced by one for the rolled 1, now down to 4.
It did the trick though. With a creak and groan, the truck rolled back onto its wheels, as I collapsed to the ground utterly exhausted.
I just lay there in the sun with my eyes closed for a while, not wanting to move. I ached too much. But before long, it started getting uncomfortable, and when I opened my eyes, there were a few turkey vultures starting to circle overhead. I had no desire to be their breakfast, so I hauled my ass up.
My pickup had some damage down the right hand side. Nothing major, thankfully, but it's going to need a trip to the body shop to get the dents out - particularly the spot where I jammed the pole under it - and then a respray. That's assuming I can still find someone who can do that kind of work.
About then. I realised that I hadn't checked my neurocaster. I'm going to need to find Kate, so I'm hoping that it didn't get too damaged when the truck rolled over. But I'm also not prepared to sit next to the highway and zone out.
The truck started normally, and once I got it rolling again, it didn't seem to have any major problems, although it's pulling a little to the right. Probably just needs a wheel alignment. I hope that's all it needs.
After finding another side road, it takes me about ten minutes before I find a spot where I'm away from the highway and there don't seem to be any culverts. There doesn't seem to be anyone around for miles. With the Pacifica military closing off all the roads, it's actually kinda lonely and creepy out here by myself.
Is there any damage to the neurocaster? Very Unlikely - 43 - No.
I climb into the back seat and pull out my 'caster case. Because I travel around a lot, I picked up a zippered foam case for it, much like a decent guitar gig bag. It looks like the case did its job in the roll over. There doesn't seem to be any visible damage to the caster, which is good news.
As much as these things can be really useful tools, I hate using it. I just don't trust it, especially after the Mode 6 update earlier this year. It's sucking too many people into it, and they're not getting out again, which is why the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It's even scarier how we're all somehow OK with it, that we just accept that there are people who get stuck in the neuroscape and never come out again.
I hope to God that's not what happened to Kate, but there's a dark part of me that fears precisely that. She deserved better than that. I just wish that things had worked out differently between us. Martin's a great guy, and a better match for Kate than I ever was, but there's still that little voice inside me that wishes that things had worked out better for us.
God, I'm getting maudlin. Time to get on with it.
I settle the 'caster down over my face. The long horn at the front pulls my head down. Not for the first time, I wish that Sentre had designed this thing with better balance. But anyway. I reach up and pressed the power button.
There's the usual whir of the fan starting up, and the red Sentre logo appears out of the blackness, hovering in the void like some sort of beacon. I wonder if it's possible to replace that stupid boot image with something more interesting, like the Bat Signal. That would be cooler.
Now, the question I've been asking myself all day is what the hell does a neuroscape look like? There's no mention of it in The Electric State art book, and chapter two of the RPG (which apparently describes it) wasn't released with the initial alpha version PDF. There's a brief sidebar description of a local neuroscape in the published Angel in the Machine stop, but it's not much to go off. Right now, there's no real official guidance on this.
So, in the age old GMing tradition, I'm just going to make some shit up. It's a virtual world, so anything goes, pretty much.
Do Eamon's neuroscape sessions always begin in the same place as he logs into the network? Very likely - 14 - Exceptional Yes
Is the starting place like an airport, where you can select your destination in the global neuroscape and "portal" to it from there? Nearly certain - 50 - Yes.
The Sentre logo faded to black, and then the "doors" slid open, revealing a beautiful multi-storey atrium, looking like it had been made of white granite. Massive skylights several floors up gave the places a bright, welcoming feel. A huge fountain surrounded by tropical plants filled the atrium's centre, and there were people sitting and walking all around it. Escalators took people to the upper levels, and you could see all sorts of stores, or cafes, or whatever up there.
This place always used to look pretty impressive; it's one of the reasons why it started to hook people in. But since the Mode 6 update went live, you'd swear this place is real. The graphics really are that good.
Because you get to design your own avatar when you first join up, there are no ugly people in here. Weird, yes, but ugly, no. Everyone's pretty much supermodel gorgeous: tall, thin, beautifully proportioned, and every colour under the rainbow. You're not limited to being a normal skin tone either. There's plenty of people walking around with bright green or red skin. Not everyone is human, either. There's plenty of cat people, or upright wolves, or dragons, some things that really just defy descriptions. It's like the cantina scene in Star Wars transported to an exclusive and ridiculously expensive tropical resort.
Me, I always fancied myself as James Bond, so it's a tailored tux for me. It might be cheesy, but it's not the cheesiest thing in here. Not by a long shot.
I always get caught up in the grandeur of this place when I first connect. It usually only lasts a minute or so, but it's just so amazing. It's not hard to understand why people would rather stay in here, than be out in the real world, especially when everything out there is going to hell in a hand basket.
But I'm not in here to stare at the scenery, or the beautiful women - especially as many of them are really fat, balding men lurking in their basements. I came in here because I wanted to know what's going on in Barstow. Time to find a portal.
Portals are everywhere in here, all designed to look like anything you want. I've tried a bunch, but my favourite though, without a doubt, are the ones that look like an old fashioned phone booth. For some reason, I love doing the whole Get Smart thing of picking up the handset, dialing a number, saying what my destination is, hanging up, and then dropping through the floor into the teleport sequence. I watched way too many episodes of Maxwell Smart as a kid, and it never gets old.
I see a phone booth one level up on the mezzanine, so I head over to the closest escalator and head up.
There's a woman ahead of me on the escalator, who turns around, and just stares at the scenery below. "It's so beautiful, isn't it?" she says. "I just love it here!"
I just smiled at her. I didn't want to rain on her parade. "It sure is!"
She continued to gush on about how pretty it all was, but I just nodded and tuned her out. She was probably part of the blue rinse set down in Fort Lauderdale or something. The sort of obnoxious retired tourist that gives Americans a bad name overseas.
At the top of the escalator, I wished her a good day, and pushed past her and headed straight to the phonebooth. I opened the concertina doors, stepped inside, then pulled them closed behind me.
Picking up the handset, I dialed 4-4-1 on the old fashioned rotary dial,
"Destination?", said a nondescript female voice.
"Barstow, California."
"Stand by," said the operator.
That was my signal. I hung up the receiver and stood waiting. A second later, I dropped into a swirling tunnel of light, like the opening credits of the old Doctor Who shows they broadcast here on PBS.
Now, normally, when I reach the destination, the swirling tunnel fades out to an all white display, and then fades back in at my destination, wherever that happens to be.
Today was not a normal day, and it just got worse. Everything faded to black.
Remember way back when I started this scene, it was supposed to be an Interrupt Scene, with an NPC action for the Blackwelt Military? This is where they finally come in.
Everything stayed black. I was stuck in a completely dark, featureless void. I don't know if you've ever been deep underground, like in a cave or a coal mine, and turned out all the lights. The complete absence of light is freaky, and more than a little terrifying.
This was just like that.
I thought my caster's operating system had crashed somehow. I could feel my heart rate starting to race and panic starting to set in. I was just about to try to hit the emergency reboot button, when a clearly computer synthesised voice spoke.
"Relax, Mr O'Sullivan. Your neurocaster is working perfectly. We have just diverted your signal into a pocket dimension so we can have a discussion."
The fuck?
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I said. "Who the hell are you? What do you want with me?"
"I said, 'Relax.' After your encounter this morning in the desert, we were briefed on what you said, and what Pacifica has you doing. We felt it prudent to establish contact the next time you connected to the 'scape. I am your controller; you can call me 'Zephyr'."
This cocksucker was Blackwelt military? Goddamn it, Big Brother was watching me.
"Oh, for fuck's sake! Can't you bastards just let me get on with it? Pacifica's probably got a trace on my caster, so they know that you're talking to me now."
"Negative, Mr O'Sullivan," the robotic voice said. "Anyone trying to trace this signal will see the equivalent of a networking failure on your caster. This space is encrypted, and untraceable. It's also low bandwidth, hidden within the mundane networking overhead traffic, necessitating the complete lack of visuals. What is said in here is strictly between you and us. When we're finished, you will be returned to the Atrium to begin your journey again."
Fuck. Me. I didn't even know that sort of shit was even possible in the 'scape. Military neurocasting must be a hell of a lot different to the civvie version.
"So, what now? What do you want from me? I didn't plan this diversion."
"Your new assignment presents quite the opportunity. The information that Shani possesses could prove highly useful to military intelligence. If Sentre - as you reported - is this serious about recovering what Shani knows, then we want a copy. If possible, deliver Shani to us. If not, recover his information, then hand him over to Sentre, or neutralise him yourself."
"Just like that, huh? How am I supposed to deliver this information to you? It's not like I can just duck across the border to hand it over, and the chances of me stopping for another piss on top of your Coyote team is pretty remote."
"Neither are necessary," the voice intoned. "We will be monitoring your neurocaster signals. When you are ready to deliver the information, drop the name 'Beckett Nazari' into the conversation. The next time you neurojump, you will be intercepted like you were this time."
Beckett Nazari? You've got to be kidding me. It's a good thing they can't see my face. Or my middle finger.
"Whatever," I muttered. "OK, Zephyr. Well, this has been fun. Can I go now? I've got places to go and people to find."
"Dismissed, Mr O'Sullivan. We shall await your information."
There was silence for a second, then the doors to the Atrium slid open again, and I was hit by a massive wave of deja vu.
End of Scene Bookkeeping
Things definitely were not in Eamon's control again, so the Chaos Factor goes up to 7.
Added Nym Shani to the Character List.
Added Blackwelt Military to the Character List.
End of Episode Notes
This scene took a while to get to the point, but was still fun to write. Originally, I felt that Eamon was so rattled by the Coyote team that he probably wasn’t paying enough attention to the road, so I tested that. I figured, he run off the road and hit a railing or something, but the ES Driving rules had other ideas. It was also the first time he failed a roll and I decided to push it, which made it interesting.
The interrupt scene and the prompt threw me initially, until I realised that I could do it in the neuroscape. But then the panic set in: in neither The Electric State art book, nor the current alpha release of the RPG does it actually describe what it’s like when you put on a neurocaster.
I nearly bailed on the game at the point, fearing I’d painted myself into another corner, but then I had the airport idea, and things took on a life of their own after that.
I don’t know if that sort of neuroscape is anything close to what Free League has planned as canon, but it was fun to write, and I’ll stick with it for the rest of this AP.