[d20 Cthulhu] What Rough Beast... (Part II)

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

*Ray looks from the clueless Kelly to the crazed-looking Kristof with more than a bit of impatience.

(Ok, that tears it, let them figure this out on their own!)*

"Kelly, nice to meet you, sorry it couldn't have been under better circumstances. Julia, sorry, I have got to run, work calls. I'll call you later. Bye everybody."

*With that Ray will get in his car and drive to the hospital for work*

 

[Anabstercorian]

Still here

Just letting everyone know that yes, I am still paying attention to the thread, and both Steven and Alex are on their way to Julia's house. ^_^

 

[Black Omega]

Kelly waves to Ray, still a little puzzled from meeting him at the door. Then a shrug and she puts it out of her mind, attention turning to Randy next "Nice to meet you." she returns the handshake before shrugging "A meeting of mathematics and computers only I could handle. Well..maybe not, but it was a metric ton of data to sort through..."

Kelly glances to Julia curious as she speaks, then she blinks, a shocked look coming over her face "Dead? What? How?? It's not been...ok..it's been quite a few days but he told me to come over..." her words cut off by the outburst as she stares over at Kristof. Thoughtful for a moment then "I -do- know you..Professor..Faulken? more than a little taken aback by Kristof's wild manner. After a moment she glances back to Julia and Randy "Um..what's going on? I mean..aside from..." she sighs "I'm sorry Julia, I really am. I had no idea..."

 

[The Crimster]

Ray grabs his coat, says his farewells, and leaves. There's a patient being prepped right now to be operated on; forgetting responsibilities is not Dr. Ray Silvers' way.

Kristof looks from person to person, and then sighs heavily. He takes off his glasses and rubs his face, as if trying to dispel the effects of too little sleep. He puts back on his glasses and almost runs back to the kitchen, mumbling to himself.

Julia watches Kristof leave, a puzzled look on her face. She turns back to Kelly and gives a weak smile. "Yes, Kelly. It happened on campus. I wasn't there unfortunately. From what I've heard, Alan was on his way to the library, and had a heart attack in front of admissions. A few students tried to help, but... It was too late." Julia looks over at Randy, and then back at Kelly. "Kelly... What did Alan have you working on? It may be... important."

Elsewhere...

Alex, you put the wrapped painting under your arm and walk down to your car. The rain has slackened somewhat, and it's only a mild drizzle that nonetheless will play havoc with the freeways. Thankfully you don't have that far to go to get to Julias. You almost drop your keys as you get to your car. There is something under the windshield. Not a flyer, but something large enough to cause the wiper to point upwards at an angle. You edge around the car cautiously. Who knows what it could be - considering what you went through yesterday? You get closer and see that someone has left you a small present. There, under the blade - a dead pigeon. You see that it appears to be missing its eyes. A note lays on top of it, attached by a nail that is driven through the poor bird's chest. Scrawled on the note in black pen is the following:


Onle this coold have savded us.
no eyez too se GOD.
he iz the ded gate
we arr the key
be carful

 

[Anabstercorian]

Alex's eyes go wide as he steps closer to the pidgeon. A look of utter disgust fills his face, mixed with fear at the realization that he isn't safe. Gingerly he pushes the deceased fowl from under the windshield wiper and gets in to his car -

What if there's a bomb?

No... No, that's crazy.

He starts the car and starts driving towards Julia's house.

(Where ARE the rest of you people?)

 

[Black Omega]

Julia watches Kristof leave, a puzzled look on her face. She turns back to Kelly and gives a weak smile. "Yes, Kelly. It happened on campus. I wasn't there unfortunately. From what I've heard, Alan was on his way to the library, and had a heart attack in front of admissions. A few students tried to help, but... It was too late." Julia looks over at Randy, and then back at Kelly. "Kelly... What did Alan have you working on? It may be... important."

Kelly watches Kristof leave, a worried expression on her face before she shakes her head "What happened to him?" then she nods "I really am sorry, I hadn't heard anything on that. but I do sometimes loose days when I get lost in projects. Prof. Pickman gave me a ton of data to distill down. I'd just finished and got the results. It's so a situation 42 though. I have the answer but am clueless on the real question. " she gestures to her backpack "Have the laptop with me with the results. Really, just came down to a number though...um..0.0011051999." Kelly thinks a moment then rattles off the number by memory "that mean anything to you?"

 

[Spoof]

Randy Morrison

Randy looks at Kelly and shakes his head. "Nope I am sorry I do not know what that number means. What was the question that ou were working on though. Sometimes the question is more important than the answer."

 

[The Crimster]

Julia turns to Kelly. "Yes, what was it that Alan had you working on? Did he say? What type of information did he give you?"

Kelly, for the most part - it was raw data from several long range telescopes scattered across the globe. Most of the information is pretty dull - the movement of certain stars, the magnetic resonance of certain comets, etc. It pretty much felt like Alan was having you come up with one big Astrology chart or something.

Just as Kelly is about to answer, the weary looking Kristof comes into the living room with a stack of papers in his hand. He sets them down on the table and smoothes them out carefully. Randy, that action vaguely reminds you of something. Someone else smoothed out paper like that, too...

"These... notes. All these notes." Kristof looks around at each of you. "These notes are what Alan wrote after his dreams. Most of the good stuff must have gone into his journal." Kristof pulls the top one off of the stack and begins to read it. "'Mid-January. 1994. Earthquake. West coast. Maybe Los Angeles? Must remember to take off time during that month. Tell friends.'"

Kristoff sets that piece down and begins to scan through the notes, looking for something specific. He pulls it out from a small notebook.

"Ah! Here it is. I thought I saw your name on it, Kelly." He looks up at Kelly with a smile on his face. He then takes off his glasses and wipes them with his shirt. Perhaps the same old Professor Faulken after all.

"October 3rd, 1999. Addendum to journal." Kristof reads. "Project going well. I have a student working on the number crunching (Kelly Zhang - must remember to get her something for all that she's done, and will do). She has no idea as to what it means - what the *numbers* mean. I can only hope that she finishes in time to make them worthwhile. My dreams are getting less and less real as I get closer to what's going to happen... I can't believe that he would try and undo what has been done. I must one day pay for my crimes, for all that has transpired since that day. Too much guilt for one man, but I know that... Hmmm. All back to the same philosophical bent. What is guilt - when you have killed God himself?"

Kristof sets down the paper as if it has suddenly become fragile. His glasses slide forward on his nose but he doesn't seem to notice.

 

[Anabstercorian]

Alex Higgens

You all hear the sound of a sudden banging on the door, without any sound of a car driving up to herald it. Perhaps fear or surprise grips you before Alex calls out from the front steps. "It's me! Alex! Let me in, I've got something very important, a... some messages. From people, I don't know who."

If you let him in, you see him holding three things. Under one arm, he holds a painting wrapped in semi-opaque plastic...

Flashback: ...Alex puts the finishing touches his piece. It is a mixture of browns, greens, and blacks - all bound by squares and rectangles. Each shape seems to have more than two dimensions, as if Alex was trying to make the image leap off of the canvas. It is perhaps influenced by yesterdays events - the geometric 'hallucination' and Randy's viewing of an other world through Alan's desk drawer. The squares look familiar - green with something that could be writing on its surface...

Under the other arm, he holds a shoebox, with a small piece of paper taped to it. He immediately begins to talk, frantic, nervous, frightened, stressed. His hands don't shake, though it sounds like they should from the tone of his voice.

"I... I did this painting. I thought... I thought from what Alan's journal said, and from my own hunches, that I might come up with something that way... Piece some evidence together or find something out. And... I did, kind of, but it wasn't what I expected at all. It was almost like I wasn't holding the brush... No, I was holding the brush, but someone was whispering in to my ear in a voice that I couldn't hear but was listening to anyway, guiding my hand. And... I think, I think that someone was Alan. That's what it felt like. It's all too weird for me to think about without some ice cream to keep me in a mellow mood." He opens up the painting and reveals it all to you.

"And I found... I found a dead pigeon on my windshield this morning. It's eyes were plucked out and it had this messaged nailed to it." He reads, starting to calm down now that he's among people he trusts. "Only this could have saved us: No eyes to see god. He is the dead gate, we are the key. Be careful." He hands the note to anyone who wants to see it: The spelling is atrocious.

Onle this coold have savded us.
no eyez too se GOD.
he iz the ded gate
we arr the key
be carful

"I'm not sure what it means... I think it's from one of the other students who lost it a few years back, hopefully not one of the ones we ran in to last night... I'm not sure what we can do with it." He looks at you, looking very, very afraid all of a sudden. "But don't you see? They know where I live. I'm not safe. I don't think any of you are either..."

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

*Ray pulls into the hospital at speeds that should have had him arrested. Even so as he runs into his office, he's intercepted by one of his nurses*

"You're obscenely late! I couldn't get ahold of you at home, your cell phone was turned off, and you wouldn't answer your beeper," she snaps, taking his briefcase from him, and shoving his surgical scrubs at him. "You have two ACL reconstructions, two knee scopes, and - "

*Ray throws up a hand to cut her off. She abruptly stops, then takes a deep breath*

"Sorry doctor, we just got a little frantic when no one could get ahold of you. The patient's prepped and on the table."

*With that, she leaves. Taking her words as the unsubtle hint they were meant to be, Ray closed the door and frantically changed into his scrubs. One shoe off, one shoe on (diddle-diddle dumpling, my son John, his mind continued inanely) he scrawled an note to himself to call the coroner during his lunch break.

He dropped his cell phone and beeper on his desk, then froze.

"Your cell phone was turned off and you wouldn't answer your beeper," she had said. Ray never turned off his beeper, and he was certain he hadn't turned off his cell phone last night. He almost never did anyway. But both devices were entirely dead. It looked like they had both run down at the same time.

He blinked. He had purchased the very best most long-lasting batteries and battery packs for both items just because he almost never turned them off. For both of them to run down at the same time was damn near mathmatically impossible-

He stopped himself right there in mid-thought*

"I'm paranoid. I'm only paranoid. Right." He gulped down the last of his coffee (stone cold by this point), and headed out the door at a fast walk.