Story

Records of a broken world are the pages called you can find while restorating the map. They are like short diary entries
So we head out, into an inhospitable world, burnt to a crisp by nuclear fire. As we tentatively opened up the doors of our bunker, the first thing we checked out was a Geiger counter. We calculated that the radiation levels should still be pretty high. How surprised we are, when our machines register nothing. The levels weren't elevated at all. It was just standard background radiation as in the pre war times. Very strange.
The world around us is in ruins, yet, inexplicably, no more radioactive than the inside of our bunker. We'll have to try to crack this mystery open. But there's not much use in scratching our heads inside the little valley where we emerged. We should look for other survivors.
Finally, we find signs of life! It's good to know we are not alone in this wasteland. The other survivors we found were also huddling in a bunker. As we find them, they are always happy to join us right away.
We are equipped with useful pre-war technology that can help us replenish the land. As we manage to turn the dust around our first bunker into lush greenery, we decide we could do this for the entire area around us, or go even further. There is one question though: in the pre-war time it's really not cheap to run. Do we still run on money? Of course we do! We wanted to have something to trade for manual labour and goods.
There isn't anywhere near enough bottles lying around to come up with a new kind of base currency
As we explore more of the wasteland, we are surprised by just how many bunkers there are around here. Was the pre-war civilization in this country particularly careful about surviving a possible catastrophe? Curious, we check the archives in our bunkers to see how much time our ancestors had to prepare for the impending nuclear catastrophe. We struggle to find a conclusive answer. The logs from various bunkers don't even agree on when exactly the bunkers were sealed. Shouldn't they all have been sealed at about the same time?
Oddly enough, despite there being an economy and money flowing around, we don't really experience many conflicts. People don't quarrel about having less than someone else. This lack of inner turmoil allows us to be incredibly productive. We also don't have to spend any effort on research and accumulation of military arsenal.
We have many pre-war books, where authors of the past mused about how bleak the future will be. They always pictured it as a violent, merciless place. Raiders, pillaging, violence, constant struggle for resources. We see none of that here. The pre-war books also often mention mutated wildlife. We do have a fair amount of that.
Signs of past conflict do exist, though. We salvaged numerous buildings which were blown apart by explosions. We've often seen places riddled with bullet holes. It's odd that there are bullet holes. What kind of enemy force would send foot soldiers into a place they were about to hit with weapons of mass destruction? Or did they come after, to clean the place up? When it was all meant to be radioactive?
As we clear the land and refurbish what we can, in our struggle to make things look a bit like the pre-war times, we encounter fauna and flora that I could only describe as utterly alien. The nature is very interesting to those of us who are scientifically inclined, who we call scholars.
People become scholars with the aid of old pre-war books. There are scholars who have read all the books of knowledge that currently exist but every scholar feeds from a bunker, though. Some of them were hermits, or lived in molecule tribe-like societies. As our society grows, it attracts more and more of them to come.
An arrival of a scholar can be a momentous occasion, especially when they bring along new books of knowledge. A massive scientific breakthrough can occur in a single day if someone brings the right book. There are things that don't make sense though, like when two scholars come up with hypotheses that oppose each other. That's a situation that would naturally lead to conflict of some kind, but we don't ever have those.
Most of the books we find just lying around in the old ruins aren't readable. They turn to dust at the faintest touch. It's a bit strange, many pre-war items have managed to retain at least some kind of integrity. It's just the books that fall apart like that.
Even more valuable than pre-war books are new books. Scientific records of our scholars. If a scholar ever decides to write a book, they gain the superior title of scribe. Very few of our scholars have managed to become scribes so far.
Some of our scholars dedicate much of their time to cataloging the odd animals and plants that exist in our world. I'll note down a couple I find particularly interesting.
The Venom Willow is a tree with droopy purple leaves, with tough wooden spikes covering all of its trunk. As the name suggests, the tree is full of venom - it's in the leaves and the spikes, too. Venom Willows can grow every kind of fruit one could think of. Of course the fruit was poisonous. Some of our scholars theorize that different types of fruit trees could have evolved into Venom Willows.
We have seen something that resembled a pre-war hyena, but it had multiple heads. The most disturbing thing was that its laughter was muffled and sounded like many voices speaking in unison. They could also perfectly mimic sounds they have heard. Our scholars think that the sounds they emit when they laugh could be jumbled up recordings of the past, which somehow carry over through their genetic code.
We also found a completely normal dog. We wouldn't be living in a proper wasteland if we didn't find one. We called him Sparky. Sparky was a very good boy.
A fair amount of rodents have survived the apocalypse, rats being the most common type. These five legged menaces can really adapt to anything. When you poison them it puts them down for a while and then they just get back up. They can even survive walking through a river fog. Among the mutated animals of the Wasteland, the current rats are the most similar to their pre-war ancestors.
We have some livestock animals, chicken being the most common among them. There's two types of chicken: the pre-war ones came from bunkers that specialized in the preservation of agriculture, and the new chicken is a tough animal that we found in the wasteland.
New chicken can grow anywhere between three to eight legs. They don't require anywhere near as much food as pre-war chicken if you want to raise them to maturity. They even get fat fairly easily. They are a superior source of meat, but the downside is that their soft feathery eggs are completely inedible.
The most terrifying predator we've encountered so far is, without a shadow of a doubt, the Giger. It's a massive animal with tall legs and a long neck, like a giraffe, and a monstrous feline face similar to a pre-war tiger. Hence the name. Gigers are a major threat for our communities, because we are unable to effectively fend them off. We just can't push ourselves to do anything that could destroy them.
Crops are essential to our survival. We mainly grow corn and wheat. We have found seeds for most of our crops in this odd ancient building. It had massive vault built deep into a side of a mountain, that was filled with nothing but seeds.
Word comes around from traveling survivors of a city that is so massive, it lights the night sky and makes it look like day. We have yet to see a settlement so splendorous. Hopefully there is some truth to the rumors.
We find an interesting crashed plane. It looks like it crashed much more recently than many of the pre-war planes we found. As we examine it, we find a recording of the last message that was sent from it, probably by the pilot. It goes: "December 3, detecting a major flare up of activity. Our operation has not gone unnoticed! Enemy base location confirmed!" What a peculiar message. We catalogue it, but we can't really puzzle out what the pilot could have been talking about.
We find the sea to be particularly difficult to restore. The sheer size of it makes this an enormous undertaking. Its waters are heavily polluted and poisonous. Thank Mother that we have the pre-war environment restoration tech.
Who is Mother? It's just a thing that everyone says. Mostly when referring to the incredible machinery that helps restore the wasteland, but people started to use it when talking about mundane machines as well. You could say it's something like our post-apocalyptic meme, like there were in the time when there was internet.
There are so many shipwrecks in the sea. It appears that time has been quite cruel to the old vessels. One of our scholars, a hermit from the wilderness, comes up with a wild story of how there was a time when all ships in the land have become sentient and heeded the call of a Machine God, who called them out to commune in the open sea. Needless to say, we didn't really believe him. Sounded like he has read far too many fictional stories.
We do sometimes find signs that appear to indicate that many of these wayward ships have sunk at about the same time, but that's all we can say. We can only imagine that it was some kind of coincidence. It's also strange that many of the ships sunk way out in the sea, not in the harbors. Most of the wrecks we find have sunk centuries after anyone actually sailed the ships.
Today, while exploring the sea, we have encountered a particularly wild sandstorm. Sandstorms are a dangerous phenomenon, but we grew used to it. They can come into a vibrant, restored land and turn it back into the decrepit wasteland it used to be.
As the sandstorm hit the sea ahead of us, which we just restored, it turned right back to what it was before. Now that I said they can turn land back to what it used to be, I meant it literally. If there was a ship wreck and we would have salvaged it, it would be right back where it was. The sandstorms in the wasteland are a really strange phenomenon. We are guessing there is some kind of reason for why they do what they do, but so far we failed to discover what it is.
We restore another part of the sea and stumble across an algae colony. These curious, dark green plants just started popping up in the seas and the ocean. They can generate a high amount of heat when they are hit by sunlight. Unusually high. As we look into them a little better, our scholars discover that the algae colonies have developed photovoltaic cells in their leaves. They actually generate electricity! This looks like something we might be able to use.
Another interesting plant that helped our industry is the Miner's Folly. It's an underground plant that grows long vines - as if it was growing roots, but they grow upwards instead of downwards. The roots of this plant take on various bright shades of color when they grow through various types of air, which helps our miners detect deadly underground pockets of gas before they are endangered. As we grow further, our need for stone and iron is so great, we would be in some deep trouble if it wasn't for plants like this.
One of the bunkers we've recently welcomed into our territory had a most unusual population. A large group of humanoid robots, whose heads looked like old PC screens. The humans in their colony called them Servo's. Where did these guys come from?
Speaking further with the Servo's, we came to a disturbing realization. They think they are human, and they claim that WE are the robots. Their description of how they see us was exactly the same as what we saw in them. Our explanations that they were really the robots fell on deaf ears. It looks like they have had a conversation like this many times, with many people of the wastes. An intrusive thought gnaws at the back of our consciousness: Which one of us is the real servo?
Even more disturbing was the fact that wild animals don't distinguish between humans and servos about whom to hunt or eat. I saw a place where a small group of travelers was killed and eaten by a particularly nasty Giger. Half of them servos, half people. All eaten.
Another trait they shared with us was the inability to have a conflict. This was particularly difficult when the discussions that compare us to them kind of naturally flow as if they were meant to escalate into some kind of conflict, but then we realize we are unable to continue. Any kind of intellectual debate can just freeze up at the moment when it would become heated, and then, unable to continue the talk, both sides just drop the issue.
We can't really puzzle out the situation with servos, so we move on with exploring the wasteland together, wondering what strange thing we will bump into next.
The last couple of shipwrecks we have examined yielded an interesting discovery. Their anchors were loaded with using remotely controlled explosives. Until now, we thought the ships have been wrecked somewhat naturally, as it would happen while most of humanity was huddled in bunkers. This new finding would suggest that it was intentional.
Another puzzling thing about the shipwrecks was that it looked like they all sunk at about the same time. This makes more sense if we assume that the ships were sunk deliberately, by someone using explosives. We have found so many valuable resources on the sunken ships. Who could possibly have had someone sink hundreds of ships without even scrapping what's inside?
Some of our scholars suggested that there could have been some highly dangerous materials on the sunken ships, which has triggered a panic. Our science staff across the wasteland started erratically performing various safety checks on materials salvaged from ships. All of our analyses yielded negative results. There was no unusually hazardous cargo on the ships we found. Of course we have found some radioactive material in nuclear-powered ships, but that was an expected find, and its amount was always within norms.
The short panic about ship cargo triggered another strange event. Some of our scholars never agreed with the hypothesis of dangerous cargo, and this caused tensions to rise. It's a well known fact that there are never conflicts of any kind in the wasteland. Or at least that's what we thought.
Suddenly we had a couple of scholars arguing with each other. Among others who were simply unable to do so, it was a shocking discovery. Something is inhibiting our ability to feel a wide spectrum of negative emotions, which could lead to conflict. This is universal across humans and servos alike, but there are individuals who have some kind of immunity to whatever is suppressing it.
Among the chaos and arguments that arose in the ship cargo crisis, one of our scientists committed murder. This was the first murder in recent history. Since we crawled out of our bunkers. Shocked and appalled, we struggled to find a way to respond to this.
We didn't even have any prisons. We had to build the first one, to contain the rogue scientist. With the scientist imprisoned, we try to find out how is it possible that among a handful of people who were able to have conflicts and fight, even kill. We don't arrive to a conclusive answer, but the affected people did share various hormonal irregularities. Could it be some kind of evolutionary trait that shields only a few of them from whatever is suppressing our ability to fight?
Anyways, we found out that the ships weren't sunk because they would carry dangerous cargo. The mounting evidence suggests otherwise. The ship cargo crisis just added another one to the pile: our ability to have conflicts is being suppressed, probably by some external factor. How? Why? It makes us feel odd to find out that we may have been changed by some unknown entity, without our consent.
Hungry for answers, we scour the wasteland with newfound vigor. It doesn't take long for us to discover another lead. A ruin of a pre-war military harbor, with its ships intact. We examine the anchors of the preserved ships, and find bundles of explosives. Now this is a solid clue. But that is not all. We also find a note.
We find a paper that someone used to write down a message they meant to send in Morse code. They probably wanted to send signals to transports into Morse on the fly. The message reads: "Raiding the military base was a good idea. Plenty of explosives to commence our operation. Also found three VTOL aircraft in working order. Designations: Watcher 1, Watcher 2, Watcher 3. We might be able to use these to scan for enemy activity when we trigger the blast." The codenames for these bits sound familiar for some reason.
The explosive charges in the harbor we found didn't go off, because whoever has written the note, and made the explosives didn't account for an ancient military signal jammer, which still worked in the area. It looked like they were installed on the ships quite a while ago. Our estimate was somewhere around 40 to 50 years ago. This estimate matches the age of the numerous ship wrecks we have found.
Our conclusion is that 40 to 50 years ago, someone rigged thousands of ships across the wasteland with remotely controlled explosives, and then triggered them all at once. Many of the ships ended up wrecking close to where they were anchored, but a fair amount drifted far into the open sea and wrecked there. Also, when they "triggered the blast" they wanted to use aircraft to look for some "enemy activity". The mention of a hidden enemy is deeply concerning to us. We have found so many mysterious things in the wasteland... could the secret enemy be behind some of them?
Such an operation would have required a tremendous amount of preparation and resources. Also, whoever did this didn't care much for the abundance of exploitable resources present on the ships. We can't imagine a good reason why someone would have done this. But we know they needed a pretty good broadcasting facility to perform such a stunt. We also speculate that whoever did this may have been able to... have conflicts, fight. Were they an anomaly too, or did they find some way to circumvent the conflict suppression in our heads? This would have been a tremendously valuable thing.
Knowing what to look for makes things much easier. We quickly narrow down the various broadcasting centers we know to a couple of most powerful ones. We thoroughly search old radio stations, airports, and various military installments to no avail.
After days of searching, we were left with a single option on our list - the last place we didn't search. A derelict broadcast tower. We didn't go there because the tower was surrounded by a thick forest of poisonous fruit trees, which was also full of ferocious Gigers.
There is no way for us to reach the last broadcast tower peacefully. We have to fight our way through the Gigers. Most of our citizens would be ill suited for such a task, but thanks to our recent discoveries, we know that we have a small number of people who are capable of fighting.
Being capable of fighting does not make one a fighter, though. We have plenty of weapons, medicine and tools one might need in a fight. We just had no one who could use them well. We had to train a fighting force. The first squad of fighters since the bombs fell. Or so we thought.
Finally, we felt like our fighters were prepared for the task ahead of them. They started fighting their way through the poisonous thicket full of gigers. The beasts fought back, more coordinated than we expected. We have rarely seen gigers in a group up until now, how could we anticipate that they would be able to fight so well as a pack?
In the midst of the bloody battle, our squad managed to open a corridor into the broadcasting tower. We sent an investigative team inside, to examine what happened in the tower. They all went in knowing that there may not be a way back. We all hope that whatever they find there will be worth the sacrifices that had to be made today.
Shortly after the investigators get into the tower, our fighters had to retreat. They kept suffering losses and it would only be a matter of time before the gigers overwhelmed them. We have slain so many of the foul beasts, yet they kept coming in such numbers. How is this even possible? It's as if nature itself decided that it wants to make this specific tower inaccessible to us.
Our investigators, now stranded in the tower, managed to contact us. They found clues! There was old gear, modifications were made to the broadcasting equipment, and much more. The clues suggest that a mixed group of humans and servos came to the tower 46 years ago. They carried weapons, which means they may have been capable of fighting. This group was responsible for broadcasting the signals which sent thousands of ships out into the open sea.
Our investigators were also able to deduce that by the time the signal was sent, there was no forest and no gigers surrounding the tower. Since the ship cargo debacle, we are careful about making wild hypotheses, but some among us think it's possible that the group that sent the broadcast was a guerilla group, fighting against some greater force. Force that could control nature. We hope this hypothesis is wrong.
As we analyze these events of the past, we came up with some names, to make it easier to talk about these things. The event when all ships in the surrounding area were simultaneously sent out to the open sea? We call it Operation: Anchor Break. The enigmatic group responsible for the event? We started calling them the Partisans. We also made up a name for the hypothetic force that the Partisans could be fighting: The Enemy. So far we don't know whether the enemy really exists.
The most interesting finding in the investigation was another lead - the Partisans had a base of operations in a Mega City. Unfortunately there was no indication of which one it was. We would also expect that the Partisan HQ would be well hidden. So we are looking for a secret base that a group of guerilla fighters operated from, in one of the massive cities of the wasteland. This may take a while.
We send search parties into every Mega City we have discovered so far, hoping something turns up. Now that we know more about the Partisans, we think about where else we could possibly look for some leads.
One of our scientists was analyzing the unexploded payload from the ship anchors we found a while ago. The explosives had an odd composition, and based on that, they thought they could find out where they came from. It wasn't a strong lead, but we decided to dedicate some resources to this effort.
Looking for the possible source of the explosives used in Operation: Anchor Break, we find an old military base with an unusual amount of artillery tech. With such a surplus of weapons, we try to conduct a small experiment. Can a normal person with their inhibited capabilities for conflict, go over and discover how to trigger an artillery strike to kill remotely? We discover that it's impossible, as long as the person pushing the button knows what it will do. It's hard to tell whether this will ever come in handy, but at least we learned a bit more about how the conflict inhibition in us works. It appears to be a deep modification of our consciousness, rather than just some inhibited hormones.
The military base we just found was pretty much scrubbed clean of all explosive charges. In one of the store rooms, we find a tiny metal plate bearing a name "Randall Smith". Could he have been one of the Partisans? It's a stretch, that name tag could have belonged to anyone, it could damn well have been from pre-war times. But we don't have much to lose by checking if that name rings any bells.
Bingo! We search the historical logs of the Mega Cities we know, and one of them has data on a resident named Randall Smith, who was born there 90 years ago. He would have been 44 years old at the time when Operation: Anchor Break happened.
We found some info on Randall's education. It looks like he was really into pre-war military tech. He collected weapons, too. We are pretty confident that this Randall could have been a member of the enigmatic Partisans. We decide to narrow our search for the Partisan HQ on the Mega City where Randall was from.
It's not a guarantee. Randall could have traveled to a different Mega City and joined the Partisan HQ there, but we made the decision to focus on his city the most. It doesn't take long to find the places where he lived - his old ruined apartment he grew up in, his place where he lived as an adult too. These places have since been picked clean by the various scavengers in the city. An unattended apartment doesn't go unattended for long in a Mega City. Despite the sheer size of them, comfortable living space is scarce.
We feel like we have searched the entire Mega City five times over. During one of our search party meetings, someone blurts out how we have practically searched everything above ground. Lucky for us, someone catches it and deduces that we should try searching harder under ground.
There are few places more dangerous than the underground tunnels under Mega Cities. Compared to what is there, our large fight against wild gigers was just a minor scuffle.
We scrounge up every single person we know who is capable of fighting, which amounts to 14 people. We decide to split them into two groups, which will be able to search the underground individually. This way, we can cover more ground. Some suggested that we should split our force into more groups, but we didn't want to risk losses in the underground.
Our search of the underground begins. It is slow and difficult. Our armed forces, accompanied by unarmed investigators, go through long, abandoned underground tunnels and infrastructure. Finding an old stinking sewer is among the best things they can encounter. There are also pockets of poisonous and explosive gas, giant bulletproof flying bugs that can spray acid at a distance, and abandoned storage rooms filled with nothing but IKEA furniture, from which someone stole all the screws.
We spend several days searching the underground. We lose 2 of our fighters in the process. One to bugs, another one to the furniture. Better don't ask. It's not a fruitless search though. We find out that there is a place with a particularly high concentration of gigers, which our scouts start calling the Nest.
A dark realization falls upon us, just like the Broadcast Tower where we discovered the Partisans, their HQ is probably going to be in a place that is protected the most by wildlife - the Hive. We ponder whether we send our forces there right away, or whether we try to search the rest of the underground more thoroughly first. We opt for the more careful approach, and search the rest of the underground first.
While searching the rest of the underground, we end up losing almost an entire group. 5 soldiers along with a number of investigators. A single soldier comes out of it alive. We find out that these losses were made in vain. There was no lead to the Partisan HQ, they just happened to meet a couple of particularly nasty mutated bugs. We are down to 7 people who are capable of fighting, with the Hive ahead of us. Would you have chosen differently?
We try to come up with some kind of countermeasure against the bugs, some way to fight them more effectively. We try modifying our clothing and armor to be more resistant to their acid - the results are not bad, but we could hardly call it a perfect countermeasure. We try to upgrade our weaponry with whatever resources we have at hand, so it can pierce their tough chitinous hides. We experiment with various chemicals that could serve as a repellant, but the bugs seem to be perfectly adapted to a climate with varying harsh chemicals, as can often be found in the Mega City underground.
After a long preparation, we assemble our strike team. 7 soldiers accompanied by 5 investigators and scientists. Sparky would still, spunkily wanted to come too, but I didn't let him. We try to not make the group too large, so there would be a possibility of taking a stealthy approach if need arises. They venture down, into the depths of the Mega City, to find the Hive and find the Partisan HQ.
It's a perilous journey. The strike team can barely get through a cavern without triggering a violent response from the bugs. One skirmish after another, our soldiers push on, slowly but surely running out of their precious ammunition and blood. Will there be enough to get into the HQ? Will there be enough to get out of it? They don't know.
At last! One tunnel filled with particularly nasty bugs seems to end with a sturdy bunker door. Nothing our strike team can't handle, we all crawled out of bunkers. Behind the door is what we've been looking for. The headquarters of the group we have named the Partisans.
One of the first things our soldiers find is a metal tag with the names Amanda Palmer, Joshua Palmer and Mary Palmer. Obviously siblings. Possibly members of the Partisans? It's unconventional that all of their names were written on a single tag - usually those three names would be written on three separate tags.
We find records left behind by the Partisans. They have a small library too, filled with incredibly precious knowledge about computers, medicine, weapons and warfare. It's clear that among the Partisans, there were a fair amount of scholars. We also find a large workshop which belonged to the man called Randall. It looks like he served the Partisans as something like an armmaster. He could make his own ammunition, repair and even modify guns.
We find labeled living quarters that belonged to a man named Leon. He must have been their radio specialist and engineer. His room is crammed full of radios, antennas, and various other electronics. On his table we find an interesting device that looks like a miniature walkie talkie. Too bad it's not finished, could have been good tech. Maybe some of our engineers will pick up the project and finish it, now that we have found it.
There is a large log book that documents the various operations that were conducted by the partisans. Entry Break seems to be one of their earlier ones, and they list it as an experiment. The Partisans suspected that there was an entity they entitled "The Enemy". What they wanted to find out was whether this Enemy was still monitoring the Wasteland, and where their headquarters were. So they conducted a bold roadside count that shook the entire region. And it looks like the experiment bore fruit. They found out that the enemy was still on the move, AND where their base was. The log also mentions numerous other minor operations, aiming to secure resources and knowledge. Two other logged operations stand out as particularly important, but we don't have the time to sift through all the logs now. We grab the book and decide to thoroughly examine it later.
There is a single computer in the entire Partisan HQ, and it's still functional. Written on its side is the word "Liberty". We boot it up. This machine obviously belonged to a very knowledgeable scholar. We find numerous research notes which are all about trying to find the old files on the PC. And even among the old files on the PC, the most incredible thing in the whole HQ.
We found Liberty's log, an her old PC in the Partisan HQ. She writes a lot about wanting to defeat M. Is this M the Enemy the Partisans mention in their other logs? Why does Liberty call them "her"? She hypothesizes about what things M could have an influence on. From the tone of Liberty's writing, she seriously suspects that M is The Enemy. Liberty was suspecting M of doing some numerous "something" M is the cause for why the animals and plants in the wasteland are all weird, M is responsible for so many, M is responsible for why the world appears to be all desolated. And they are even behind the conflict suppression in our brains, there is extensive research on this specific topic. And in an attached file, there is... a recipe? For a cure?
The moment we discover a file that describes how to synthesize a chemical that will "cure" the conflict suppression in our behavior, a loud hiss in the PC starts getting even more than what we're used to. One of our monitors we value this, something starts burning up in the door to the HQ soon after. And then, as we were just starting to make in to aid. So the strange hint found us, and immediately after we are attacked by bugs. The PC can't be salvaged.
The bird had to fly in from somewhere. We examine where it came from, and find an escape route. An old elevator shaft that leads straight up from the HQ. This would allow us to get out safely without having to go through all of the bugs. The worst thing is that we don't have time to go at this info about Liberty's computer. We started saving some files onto our portable computers, and we had to decide what to copy first - the rest of Liberty's logs, the formula for the conflict serum? We went for the serum. The elevator shaft was crumbling, the floor broke and bugs started pouring in. We quickly lost 5 of our soldiers while we try to escape through the old elevator shaft. One of the soldiers was holding the shaft entrance open for us while he kept getting hit by acid spit all over. Even as his flesh was melting away, he stood there with clenched teeth and held the door for the rest of us. We finally got in.
We emerge from the underground HQ. Finally free of the oppressive danger of the tunnels under the Mega City. Carrying logs, books, and a cure for our inability to fight. Thank you Partisans and miss Liberty. From 12 who ventured down into the depths, 7 remain.
We manage to create a sample of the Conflict Serum. That's how we decide to call it. This acts as an antidote against whatever is inhibiting our ability to have a conflict. People who weren't able to wield and use a gun before? Well, now they can. Our armed force has a potential to grow much larger than it was. We would still rather keep the Serum secret for now, though. If we distributed the cure to everyone right away, soon enough the Enemy would notice.
On the surface, we check the Mega City archives for any mentions of the various members of the Partisans. Of biggest interest are the logs on scribe Liberty Palmer. She may have been the best chemist and scientist among the Partisans. We also read through the logs that recount the operations conducted by the partisans, in the time when Liberty was there. A plan to stop M, once and for all. There are no returns from after this event. It's probable that this mission has claimed the lives of all of the Partisans. There was another file to write down what happened next, but now...
We manage to replicate the Conflict Serum, and test it. Even though we trusted the Partisans, we chose a cautious approach and tested the serum on a single human subject first. It's not like we had animals to test it on, no animal we have met seems to be affected by the conflict suppression. The results are promising, but there is something peculiar about how much it affects us. When we take the serum and nothing else happens, they feel it, it can get ugly. Making soldiers with this serum may be rather difficult, because then you have a bunch of people with a soldier's physique and no impulse control, and you have to weather the storm until they learn to control themselves. On the other hand, in some aspects it may be easier to teach one to an adult than, say, a child. I can't imagine what it would be like if young people could feel like this.
We spare the valuable log book we have taken out of the Partisan HQ. Among the major missions the Partisans were on, the very last one attracts our attention. They were trying to infiltrate something they called the Meta-brain. Their mission diary suggest that it's an underground complex with a massive computer system located under a large guarded building that looks like the Empire State... oh, I think I know where that is. Their objective was to... revisit the human consciousness? And then to shut down the main computer. I wonder if the main computer is still running, it must have been going for ages.
We venture out on another expedition, but this time, we are heading close to where it all started. It looks like this time around there are no books, which is strange. In our group are two soldiers. The two survivors from the previous mission, and the only person who we tested the Conflict Serum on - me. I had a set of rules right under the names of all members of the Partisan we knew of, because I wanted to take them with me on this mission. We will have 7 more people accompanying us. We want to keep the support staff at the mission at an absolute minimum, but we feel like we really need an engineer and a computer expert. We want to keep away from anything that has to do with the main computer. The entity that Liberty was trying to defeat has to have something to do with it and with the Meta-brain. The entity must either be in it, or be it. Maybe it's some kind of a central brain that has to do with everything?
We descend into the deep shaft, using the rope. It's like plan A and plan B and plan C and plan D are all off. We really scramble for what to do. Then a massive worm jumps through the shaft, right under my feet. It killed the soldier below, and knocked my foot into the wall, breaking it. I stumble through the rope and hold onto the rope. There are three more people above me and at least two of them absolutely have to get to the bottom of this. We listen as the worm burrows through the wall, preparing to strike. I manage to dodge it by swinging the rope. Yet it manages to dodge its own strike that I tried to use against it, sending up a free fall.
We were ready for this. All of us are connected by ropes, and we have anchor blasters - guns that can drive a high-caliber spike with enough rope around five inches right into concrete walls. Me and the other soldier draw the blasters and start shooting the walls like hell. They are really tough, but after a few shots we finally get through. As we cautiously climb all of us slim through the elevator wall, shuffling within inches. One of the support folks gets knocked unconscious. Nothing lethal, I assume the worm now knows exactly where we are. I quickly draw my pistol down the shaft to confirm we all have enough space under us and reload my anchor blaster. Then I listen. For a moment there is silence, but then I start hearing the worm, burrowing towards us. I cut the rope that holds us. We are given another free fall, and manage to dodge the worm by trust alone. This time our anchor blasters are ready, and we manage to attach numerous to the wall again, before accelerating too much. But this time I notice that the worm split falling down by swimming through the shaft. We are hit hard. The other soldier looks like he is on the brink of death. Shine a light down and notice that we are not far from the bottom. I start unwinding the rope quickly and we all land on the bottom of the elevator shaft.
Looks like the worm has slipped. Maybe the walls down here are too thick for it. I quickly administer first aid to the other three members of the group, pick up the other soldier and carry him on my shoulder. We approach a heavy metal door that has a black cut through it. "Thank you, Partisans." As we step into the hall, we are shocked by how incredibly white and clean the place seems. Oddly enough, there are dead bodies on the floor, but they all look like they just rolled off the factory seal. Also we find four corpses I didn't expect to find among the Partisans this way. I start investigating a corpse with a scraggly lab coat, and am reminded. After a single slip that my foot is broken, I crumple to the ground, give it a quick bind and look back a dose of painkillers. Then I get to the corpse and examine it. It's wearing a tag: Liberty Palmer. She has a voice recorder! I quickly pull it out and press play.
"Hello, I am Liberty Palmer. Put on a gas mask right now," we all put on our masks immediately, "I am lying here for a good reason. I know. This facility, the M that stands here, is responsible for this state the world is in now, and for all the weirdness out there. It's responsible for the changes in us as well. It had access to the ventilation system of every bunker in the region since day 1. We completed our primary objective, but we won't be able to shut down this Mother main frame. The Human Modification Protocol is how Mother shaped us, and before we could kill it, it contained a vicious curse that was meant to artificially shut us down. I could have run did it by causing a high percentage of helium in the airflow. If I could have gotten here sooner, maybe I would still be alive. I am so, so sorry, Joshua and Mary, with you right now. With me inside me for little ones, I will never love you." The voice breaks and she is silent for a moment. "I wish that no one else ever has to experience what I have."
Liberty's voice log continues. Her voice is getting more and more raspy and her speech is interspersed with heavy coughing: "We didn't remove the conflict suppression, because we thought if we made too many changes at once, Mother would detect what we were doing, and prevent us from shutting her down. She has found us anyways. I wonder if she has any gas left, to kill more people after us," we felt like there was no gas, and there certainly isn't any gas coming release upon us now. "We didn't even think we could do it to shut her down here. It could have had a large network of main frames that were all interconnected and shutting down a single one would be of no use. I'm still just thankful that at last I hit S in this one main frame. Whoever is listening to this, you have to shut her down. She was made with good intentions, but it was a failure. She keeps screwing everything up, but she keeps on getting more and more complex, so she doesn't even know how things are meant to look like. All you have to do is shut down the mainframe. It would be best if you could trigger the proper shutdown sequence. Mother controls many swarms of nanomachines that regulate the environment, and who knows what harm they could do if she was shut down incorrectly. But first activate Liberty h, struggling with every word, but she manages to get it in full. "If all else fails, by all means, blow this thing up please." She coughs for quite a while, but the rest of it is just silence.
Well, that certainly wasn't what I expected to hear. With shaking teeth, I get up and explore the surroundings. I find a large console which seems to be tracking, well, it says they are swarms of nanomachines. I realize that I'm looking at what we call Sandstorms. And these storms... yes, those are the areas of the many many nanomachines in areas that we have JUST cleared of corruption. As if the pre-war machines, the ones we use to restore the world, also used nano machines. These swarms of nanomachines seem to be trying to "correct" all of wasteland, but we see what happens when they are done - the land turns back to being a wasteland! Could it be that these nanomachines are malfunctioning and they don't even know what healthy land looks like? Indeed there are many red lights shining up the console, indicating that there may be something wrong. I wonder if whoever controls the facility will control the swarms.
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