Lazybones
Adventurer
Session 25 (October 20, 2008)
Chapter 106
Note: We didn’t have a session on October 13.
It was a slow week, a respite of sorts. It was almost as if the aliens had all gone on vacation.
Alpha spent the days after the Los Angeles mission waiting for the other shoe to drop. But other than a few incursions by small craft in the Eastern Hemisphere that came and went before an intercept was possible, the board was quiet. Intel did pick up some coded transmissions between Mars and locations in France and China, but X-COM's code crackers weren't able to provide any useful data.
It was no surprise at all when China withdrew from the international consortium and announced a separate treaty with the aliens.
Everyone knew that events were building to something, but X-COM took full advantage of the lull. In the secret U.S. DoD aerospace facility, the shell of the AVENGER craft began to take form, while at HQX, research and manufacturing projects were completed, and new ones started, to ensure that when things heated up again, X-COM would be ready to respond.
The members of Alpha put their time in on the various projects, and even fit in a few training exercises to keep their skills sharp. But they had no assignments the Saturday morning that found them gathered in the small dining area just off the kitchen. The morning breakfast shift had just ended, and they were alone except for the cook, who was collecting plates and utensils for transport to the kitchen. He shot the Alphas a curious look as they lingered over their coffee, but said nothing.
Catalina grabbed her xPhone the instant it buzzed. “Now or never then?”
Vasily looked down at his own phone, which has buzzed at the same time, along with the rest of them. “Guess so,” he said.
Counselor Beauvais’s voice sounded from the speaker set into the ceiling. “Alpha Team, report to Medical Lab 1, please.”
“Now it’s official,” Catalina said, crumpling her empty cup and tossing it into the recycling bin. Behind her, Jane and Mary rose from their table, the Indian doctor figeting, nervous.
“Well, let’s go,” James said.
They met Hallorand coming out of the medical lab. “Hey, Alpha.”
“Chief,” Vasily said, with a nod.
Hallorand gave them a quick looking-over. “So, it’s the head shrinkers, eh?”
“Yeah, that or the alien head-hunters,” James said.
“I saw those chairs they brought in,” Hallorand said. “Man, I’m glad I’m not you.”
“What are they going to do to us?” Mary asked.
Hallorand tucked his thumbs into his pockets. “Well… you ever go to one of those dentists, the ones that have the 20 year old magazines in the waiting room? Well, that new lab, it feels like that.”
“Chief,” James said, “If we do get some alien psi-powers, gonna use ‘em on you for practice. Just sayin’.”
“Well, best of luck. They say everyone will have to be tested, but at least we’re not first. Especially since they ran a power conduit in there bigger than the one for Workshop 3.” He slipped past them and headed back down the corridor toward the kitchen. “If you come back with funky powers, just remember I knew you when.”
“Uh, thank you, chief,” Vasily said. He turned back toward the door to the medical lab, and hesitated, just for a moment.
“Time to have our heads shrunk for real,” Jane said, pushing past him, triggering the door mechanism. “Come on, let’s have some fun.”
The others followed.
The medical lab was quiet; there hadn’t been any more accidents that week, and without any missions, none of the field teams had sent people to the infirmary. The bulky machinery that put together the components for the X-COM medikits gurgled and whirred against one wall, and one of the surgical nurses, who was reorganizing the supply cabinets, looked up and nodded as they entered.
“Back here!” Counselor Beauvais’s voice came, through the storage room. The Alphas went through there, to the new doorway that had been installed unobtrusively on the far side of the racks of medical supplies. The door was open, and they could see a brightly lit room beyond.
They went through the door into a place that was… different wasn’t quite enough of a word. The machinery was vaguely familiar, at least in that they recognized the huge wall monitors, the banks of computer consoles, and the power conduits with LED indicators blinking happily. But there was something ominous in the three massive chair assemblies in the center of the room, which looked like a dentist’s chair melded with heavy machinery into some sort of Frankenstein’s creation. Maybe it was the apparatus of tubes, wires, and bulbous metal contraptions that hung from the ceiling, directly over the chairs. A faint hum punctuated by unpleasant clicks and whirls issued from that lurking monstrosity, which looked almost poised to collapse onto the poor unfortunates sitting in the chairs.
“Wow, those chairs look… scary,” James said.
They were so absorbed by the scenery that they didn’t notice Joan until she stepped out from a control bank along one wall of the room. “Greetings, Alpha,” she said. “You’re all here? Good.”
Stan White was there as well, kneeling on the hard tiles as he checked feeds that stretched from what looked like a medical diagnostic console. The cables meandered haphazardly across the floor before connecting with jacks in the base of the chairs. The doctor rose from his work as they entered, and shot them an almost apologetic smile before glancing over at the counselor. “I hope this works,” he said.
“We followed the schematics precisely,” Joan said.
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, maybe there are things that humans aren’t supposed to…” he trailed off.
“It will be all right,” Joan said. “Go ahead, three of you, take seats over there.”
There was a pause. “If anyone is going to be fried,” Jane finally said, “I’ll volunteer first.”
“Sounds good to me, Jane,” James said.
Joan walked over to the chairs, and started pulling back some of the wires and cables that seemed to sprout from every surface of the chair assembly. “Don’t worry about the restraints,” she said, as she helped Jane into the chair. “They are there for your own safety.”
After a muttered curse, James came forward, and got into the second chair. Stan helped him. James started to make a joke, but coughed as Stan snapped iron bands around his wrists and ankles.
Catalina moved over to one of the consoles, watching as indicators appeared showing the vital signs of Jane and James. “I wonder what this does,” she said, hovering her finger over a button.
“Hey!” Vasily said, as Joan helped him into the third chair. “Press nothing!”
“If it’s any consolation, I was tested earlier,” Joan said. “I insisted on being first. In fact, I…” she trailed off, and grabbed her throat as a strangled sound issued from her chest. Her eyes bulged, and she leaned against the chair. The others stared at her in stunned silence, but after just a second recovered and smiled at them. “Just kidding.”
Vasily let out a breath; the restraints had strained against the sudden tension he’d put on them. “Ahaha,” he said, as he forced himself to relax.
“Oh, you’re a riot, doc,” Stan said.
“Really, it’s safe,” she assured them. “The energy wavelength is less than that used by a cell phone.”
“I don’t use cells either,” Hadrian muttered. The Marine had remained near the door, watching the proceedings suspiciously.
Joan adjusted a series of small metallic panels that dropped from the top of the chairs, flanking the heads of the first three subjects. She pulled out a panel on an extensible arm and began entering commands. The array above the chairs began to hum more aggressively, and flickers of colored light began to show as indicators began to glow. “Just let your minds go blank,” Joan told them. “You don’t need to do anything. Vasily, we’ll do you first. Just relax.”
Vasily looked anything but a man with a blank mind, his hands white on the rests of the chair. There was a faint flicker of color in the air around his head, and an almost inaudible ping from the machinery, then Joan looked at her screen and smiled. “Hmm, not bad,” she said. “Definitely on the higher end of the human range.”
SERVER : [DM] Vasily Kasprjak has a Psi Potential score of 72
“What are you doing to them?” Mary asked.
“We’re only scanning, Mary,” Joan said, offering a reassuring smile as she saved the data from the scan.
“Get with the programme, Mary,” Catalina said. But she frowned as she glanced up at the heavy array looming over her companions in the chairs.
Vasily frowned as Stan came up and unhooked the restraints. “That all? But I not feel anything.”
“This is just a diagnostic,” Stan said. “The hard work… that will come later.”
Joan had already turned to Jane, shifting the console to follow her. “Okay, Jane.” The former CIA agent rested calmly in the chair, breathing quietly. Joan activated her panel, ran through the sequence again. “Impressive,” she said. “That’s higher than… well. It’s very good.”
SERVER : [DM] Jane Swift has a Psi Potential score of 98
“And Doctor Allen,” Joan said. The operation went as quickly as it had for the others, but Joan frowned as she looked at her console. “Is this… is this right?”
Stan came over to take a look. “Man. We’re going to have to raise the top end of the scale.”
SERVER : [DM] James Allen has a Psi Potential score of 108
“All of you scored well,” Joan said, as she reinitialized the scanner for the next round of tests. “You will respond well to further training.”
Catalina looked at Vasily, who rubbed his wrists as he walked away from the chair. “What am I thinking, Vas?” she asked him, with a grin.
The Russian turned to her. “You were thinking, ‘It my turn next.’”
“That’s just a good guess,” Catalina said, sticking out her tongue at him.
Mary had not taken her eyes off the chairs since entering the room. “Um… I am not feeling so well. Perhaps I should go lay down, come back later.”
Joan came over to her, took her arm. “It’s all right. It won’t hurt you. We didn’t do anything to them, just scanned their existing potential. With training… well, we’ll see.”
She and Stan got the other three into the chairs, and set up the sensors as they had before. The operations passed quickly. Joan scanned Catalina first. “Hmm,” she said, looking at the results. “Well. Perhaps with training…”
SERVER : [DM] Catalina De Farrago has a Psi Potential score of 41
“Told you, nothing gets in here,” Catalina said.
“Well, it’s not a race,” she said, although she shot a concerned look at Stan as he unfastened Catalina’s restraints.
They turned to Mary next, who sat in the chair with wide eyes, her hands fisting against the restraints. Joan finished the test quickly, and smiled at Mary when she was finished. “Ah, you might give James a run for his money,” she said.
SERVER : [DM] Mary Ranma has a Psi Potential score of 103
“Okay, I’m ready,” Mary said.
“I think they do it already,” Vasily said.
“Told you,” Stan said to Joan, as he helped the Indian doctor from her chair. “Doctors just tend to have the talent.”
They finished with Hadrian, who’d sat stonily in the chair while the others were tested. His results got a raised eyebrow from Joan, and Stan came over to look at the panel. “What? A Marine scored that high?”
SERVER : [DM] Hadrian Jones has a Psi Potential score of 100
“We done here?” Hadrian asked. As soon as Stan released his clamps, he got up and left.
“I will be contacting you with a schedule for the training,” Joan told them. “You will all be spending time here.”
“Can’t see it doing much good, counselor,” Catalina said. She was disappointed that her results hadn’t matched her companions. “Whatever it takes just isn’t there.”
“Everything is half talent, half effort,” Vasily said.
“You’d be surprised,” Joan said. “Thank you for your time. Check your in box for your training assignments.”
“Oh, James, Mary, if you wouldn’t mind stopping by the medical lab on the way out. We finished those field surgical kits you ordered, and we have the first samples of the new regenerative serum. Your work on those was quite remarkable, Mary.”
The Alphas filed out of the lab, leaving Joan alone. She remained at her control console for a moment longer, studying the results of the tests. She looked at them for a full minute, then let out a small sigh before closing the file, and touched the “Send” button.
* * *
Note: the Psi Potential Widget made rolls for the PCs, and reported the results to the DM. The roll was basically a d% to get a 1-100 result, then it added a bonus based on the subject’s INT, WIS, and CHA modifiers. If I remember correctly, the formula was d%+ 3(INT mod)+ 5(WIS mod)+3(CHA mod). I handed out amulets with benefits based on the result; anything above 50 gave a small bonus to Will saves, while results above 125 gave limited-use mental powers, like 1/day Fear or Confusion spells for use on the aliens. After this session, we integrated Psi Training into the forum game, with players getting a chance to improve their character’s Psi score on a weekly basis. And high scores enabled PCs to use the Psi Amp… but more about that later.
Vanya Mia was disappointed; I think she wanted to have Cat get into trouble using psychic powers.
Chapter 106
Note: We didn’t have a session on October 13.
It was a slow week, a respite of sorts. It was almost as if the aliens had all gone on vacation.
Alpha spent the days after the Los Angeles mission waiting for the other shoe to drop. But other than a few incursions by small craft in the Eastern Hemisphere that came and went before an intercept was possible, the board was quiet. Intel did pick up some coded transmissions between Mars and locations in France and China, but X-COM's code crackers weren't able to provide any useful data.
It was no surprise at all when China withdrew from the international consortium and announced a separate treaty with the aliens.
Everyone knew that events were building to something, but X-COM took full advantage of the lull. In the secret U.S. DoD aerospace facility, the shell of the AVENGER craft began to take form, while at HQX, research and manufacturing projects were completed, and new ones started, to ensure that when things heated up again, X-COM would be ready to respond.
The members of Alpha put their time in on the various projects, and even fit in a few training exercises to keep their skills sharp. But they had no assignments the Saturday morning that found them gathered in the small dining area just off the kitchen. The morning breakfast shift had just ended, and they were alone except for the cook, who was collecting plates and utensils for transport to the kitchen. He shot the Alphas a curious look as they lingered over their coffee, but said nothing.
Catalina grabbed her xPhone the instant it buzzed. “Now or never then?”
Vasily looked down at his own phone, which has buzzed at the same time, along with the rest of them. “Guess so,” he said.
Counselor Beauvais’s voice sounded from the speaker set into the ceiling. “Alpha Team, report to Medical Lab 1, please.”
“Now it’s official,” Catalina said, crumpling her empty cup and tossing it into the recycling bin. Behind her, Jane and Mary rose from their table, the Indian doctor figeting, nervous.
“Well, let’s go,” James said.
They met Hallorand coming out of the medical lab. “Hey, Alpha.”
“Chief,” Vasily said, with a nod.
Hallorand gave them a quick looking-over. “So, it’s the head shrinkers, eh?”
“Yeah, that or the alien head-hunters,” James said.
“I saw those chairs they brought in,” Hallorand said. “Man, I’m glad I’m not you.”
“What are they going to do to us?” Mary asked.
Hallorand tucked his thumbs into his pockets. “Well… you ever go to one of those dentists, the ones that have the 20 year old magazines in the waiting room? Well, that new lab, it feels like that.”
“Chief,” James said, “If we do get some alien psi-powers, gonna use ‘em on you for practice. Just sayin’.”
“Well, best of luck. They say everyone will have to be tested, but at least we’re not first. Especially since they ran a power conduit in there bigger than the one for Workshop 3.” He slipped past them and headed back down the corridor toward the kitchen. “If you come back with funky powers, just remember I knew you when.”
“Uh, thank you, chief,” Vasily said. He turned back toward the door to the medical lab, and hesitated, just for a moment.
“Time to have our heads shrunk for real,” Jane said, pushing past him, triggering the door mechanism. “Come on, let’s have some fun.”
The others followed.
The medical lab was quiet; there hadn’t been any more accidents that week, and without any missions, none of the field teams had sent people to the infirmary. The bulky machinery that put together the components for the X-COM medikits gurgled and whirred against one wall, and one of the surgical nurses, who was reorganizing the supply cabinets, looked up and nodded as they entered.
“Back here!” Counselor Beauvais’s voice came, through the storage room. The Alphas went through there, to the new doorway that had been installed unobtrusively on the far side of the racks of medical supplies. The door was open, and they could see a brightly lit room beyond.
They went through the door into a place that was… different wasn’t quite enough of a word. The machinery was vaguely familiar, at least in that they recognized the huge wall monitors, the banks of computer consoles, and the power conduits with LED indicators blinking happily. But there was something ominous in the three massive chair assemblies in the center of the room, which looked like a dentist’s chair melded with heavy machinery into some sort of Frankenstein’s creation. Maybe it was the apparatus of tubes, wires, and bulbous metal contraptions that hung from the ceiling, directly over the chairs. A faint hum punctuated by unpleasant clicks and whirls issued from that lurking monstrosity, which looked almost poised to collapse onto the poor unfortunates sitting in the chairs.
“Wow, those chairs look… scary,” James said.
They were so absorbed by the scenery that they didn’t notice Joan until she stepped out from a control bank along one wall of the room. “Greetings, Alpha,” she said. “You’re all here? Good.”
Stan White was there as well, kneeling on the hard tiles as he checked feeds that stretched from what looked like a medical diagnostic console. The cables meandered haphazardly across the floor before connecting with jacks in the base of the chairs. The doctor rose from his work as they entered, and shot them an almost apologetic smile before glancing over at the counselor. “I hope this works,” he said.
“We followed the schematics precisely,” Joan said.
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, maybe there are things that humans aren’t supposed to…” he trailed off.
“It will be all right,” Joan said. “Go ahead, three of you, take seats over there.”
There was a pause. “If anyone is going to be fried,” Jane finally said, “I’ll volunteer first.”
“Sounds good to me, Jane,” James said.
Joan walked over to the chairs, and started pulling back some of the wires and cables that seemed to sprout from every surface of the chair assembly. “Don’t worry about the restraints,” she said, as she helped Jane into the chair. “They are there for your own safety.”
After a muttered curse, James came forward, and got into the second chair. Stan helped him. James started to make a joke, but coughed as Stan snapped iron bands around his wrists and ankles.
Catalina moved over to one of the consoles, watching as indicators appeared showing the vital signs of Jane and James. “I wonder what this does,” she said, hovering her finger over a button.
“Hey!” Vasily said, as Joan helped him into the third chair. “Press nothing!”
“If it’s any consolation, I was tested earlier,” Joan said. “I insisted on being first. In fact, I…” she trailed off, and grabbed her throat as a strangled sound issued from her chest. Her eyes bulged, and she leaned against the chair. The others stared at her in stunned silence, but after just a second recovered and smiled at them. “Just kidding.”
Vasily let out a breath; the restraints had strained against the sudden tension he’d put on them. “Ahaha,” he said, as he forced himself to relax.
“Oh, you’re a riot, doc,” Stan said.
“Really, it’s safe,” she assured them. “The energy wavelength is less than that used by a cell phone.”
“I don’t use cells either,” Hadrian muttered. The Marine had remained near the door, watching the proceedings suspiciously.
Joan adjusted a series of small metallic panels that dropped from the top of the chairs, flanking the heads of the first three subjects. She pulled out a panel on an extensible arm and began entering commands. The array above the chairs began to hum more aggressively, and flickers of colored light began to show as indicators began to glow. “Just let your minds go blank,” Joan told them. “You don’t need to do anything. Vasily, we’ll do you first. Just relax.”
Vasily looked anything but a man with a blank mind, his hands white on the rests of the chair. There was a faint flicker of color in the air around his head, and an almost inaudible ping from the machinery, then Joan looked at her screen and smiled. “Hmm, not bad,” she said. “Definitely on the higher end of the human range.”
SERVER : [DM] Vasily Kasprjak has a Psi Potential score of 72
“What are you doing to them?” Mary asked.
“We’re only scanning, Mary,” Joan said, offering a reassuring smile as she saved the data from the scan.
“Get with the programme, Mary,” Catalina said. But she frowned as she glanced up at the heavy array looming over her companions in the chairs.
Vasily frowned as Stan came up and unhooked the restraints. “That all? But I not feel anything.”
“This is just a diagnostic,” Stan said. “The hard work… that will come later.”
Joan had already turned to Jane, shifting the console to follow her. “Okay, Jane.” The former CIA agent rested calmly in the chair, breathing quietly. Joan activated her panel, ran through the sequence again. “Impressive,” she said. “That’s higher than… well. It’s very good.”
SERVER : [DM] Jane Swift has a Psi Potential score of 98
“And Doctor Allen,” Joan said. The operation went as quickly as it had for the others, but Joan frowned as she looked at her console. “Is this… is this right?”
Stan came over to take a look. “Man. We’re going to have to raise the top end of the scale.”
SERVER : [DM] James Allen has a Psi Potential score of 108
“All of you scored well,” Joan said, as she reinitialized the scanner for the next round of tests. “You will respond well to further training.”
Catalina looked at Vasily, who rubbed his wrists as he walked away from the chair. “What am I thinking, Vas?” she asked him, with a grin.
The Russian turned to her. “You were thinking, ‘It my turn next.’”
“That’s just a good guess,” Catalina said, sticking out her tongue at him.
Mary had not taken her eyes off the chairs since entering the room. “Um… I am not feeling so well. Perhaps I should go lay down, come back later.”
Joan came over to her, took her arm. “It’s all right. It won’t hurt you. We didn’t do anything to them, just scanned their existing potential. With training… well, we’ll see.”
She and Stan got the other three into the chairs, and set up the sensors as they had before. The operations passed quickly. Joan scanned Catalina first. “Hmm,” she said, looking at the results. “Well. Perhaps with training…”
SERVER : [DM] Catalina De Farrago has a Psi Potential score of 41
“Told you, nothing gets in here,” Catalina said.
“Well, it’s not a race,” she said, although she shot a concerned look at Stan as he unfastened Catalina’s restraints.
They turned to Mary next, who sat in the chair with wide eyes, her hands fisting against the restraints. Joan finished the test quickly, and smiled at Mary when she was finished. “Ah, you might give James a run for his money,” she said.
SERVER : [DM] Mary Ranma has a Psi Potential score of 103
“Okay, I’m ready,” Mary said.
“I think they do it already,” Vasily said.
“Told you,” Stan said to Joan, as he helped the Indian doctor from her chair. “Doctors just tend to have the talent.”
They finished with Hadrian, who’d sat stonily in the chair while the others were tested. His results got a raised eyebrow from Joan, and Stan came over to look at the panel. “What? A Marine scored that high?”
SERVER : [DM] Hadrian Jones has a Psi Potential score of 100
“We done here?” Hadrian asked. As soon as Stan released his clamps, he got up and left.
“I will be contacting you with a schedule for the training,” Joan told them. “You will all be spending time here.”
“Can’t see it doing much good, counselor,” Catalina said. She was disappointed that her results hadn’t matched her companions. “Whatever it takes just isn’t there.”
“Everything is half talent, half effort,” Vasily said.
“You’d be surprised,” Joan said. “Thank you for your time. Check your in box for your training assignments.”
“Oh, James, Mary, if you wouldn’t mind stopping by the medical lab on the way out. We finished those field surgical kits you ordered, and we have the first samples of the new regenerative serum. Your work on those was quite remarkable, Mary.”
The Alphas filed out of the lab, leaving Joan alone. She remained at her control console for a moment longer, studying the results of the tests. She looked at them for a full minute, then let out a small sigh before closing the file, and touched the “Send” button.
* * *
Note: the Psi Potential Widget made rolls for the PCs, and reported the results to the DM. The roll was basically a d% to get a 1-100 result, then it added a bonus based on the subject’s INT, WIS, and CHA modifiers. If I remember correctly, the formula was d%+ 3(INT mod)+ 5(WIS mod)+3(CHA mod). I handed out amulets with benefits based on the result; anything above 50 gave a small bonus to Will saves, while results above 125 gave limited-use mental powers, like 1/day Fear or Confusion spells for use on the aliens. After this session, we integrated Psi Training into the forum game, with players getting a chance to improve their character’s Psi score on a weekly basis. And high scores enabled PCs to use the Psi Amp… but more about that later.
Vanya Mia was disappointed; I think she wanted to have Cat get into trouble using psychic powers.
