MINGLE: The Derelict Ship

[save_the_souls]

Who: Anyone traveling to the derelict ship(s)
Broadcast: If you want!
Action: At the Derelict Ship on the Planet
When: 10/13 onward



[After several days of traveling, the passengers are able to reach the ruins of the ship. Explore the ruins, try to find a distress single scavenge, play your hand at Harvest moon and grab some pumpkins- come on in, it's a mingle!

>> Plot Information ]

Comments

[monolike]

...this sure takes a while, huh?

[nerdeology]

[Mikleo scowls, and his only response at first is an exasperated exhale.]

I really don't like computers.

[Click. Click. Click. Ugh.

After this he's getting someone to teach him how to type properly.]

[monolike]

[leans over his shoulder to backseat program, helpfully] Are there any shortcuts you can use? What does this one do? [click]

[nerdeology]

That--!!

[Too slow, apparently. Mikleo stares down at the screen, his hand half-reaching to stop Sorey from touching anything, now waiting to see what happens. The screen flashes unhelpfully, and a series of error messages pop up, too fast to read.

The last one, covering the rest, simply reads: "Do you wish to proceed" with buttons for yes and no.

Mikleo stares.]

...I don't know what this is for.

[WHY IS THERE NO CANCEL]

[monolike]

It's pretty cut and dry, isn't it? Yes, we want to proceed because it's not like we can go back, so, [REACHES AGAIN]

[nerdeology]

[jkfhdsjkfsdg nO

Mikleo lurches in to try and stop Sorey's hand again, but in his haste he reaches too far; while stopping Sorey, he ends up hitting the screen himself. The prompt vanishes into another series of codes.]

...Sorey!

[This is at least half your fault.]

[monolike]

What?! Okay, I didn't mean for that to happen! [he did not alright] It's okay, we can fix this. Uh, um. [HANDS HOVERING OVER KEYBOARD] ...what if we type "please stop" at it? Y'know, maybe it just needs us to have some manners.

[nerdeology]

Just- stop! Stop touching it for a minute!

[Mikleo prods Sorey away from the console before he can do any more damage. They don't even know what they just agreed to let it do, and the code's moving too quickly to get a good read on it. He squints, leaning in, hoping to catch a word or a phrase that sticks out.]

...I... think it's wiping the storage...

[WHAT HAVE THEY DONE]

[monolike]

What?! It's- [okay well THAT'S BAD

Sorey drops to a knee, shoves his hand into the open mess of wires and yanks out the power supply. He cranes his neck to see the screen gone black.]

...d'you think I got it in time?

[nerdeology]

[Mikleo eyes the bundle of wires cautiously, crouching down beside him.]

Only one way to know for sure... putting it back in would just reset the system, wouldn't it? We interrupted what it was doing...

[...right???]

[monolike]

Gods, I don't even know. I guess we gotta try it.

-are we supposed to wait a certain amount of time? Like to let something...I dunno, settle?

[nerdeology]

I don't think computers work that way.

[At least, that's what the augment tells him. still, it takes a surprising amount of willpower to push the button and reactivate the console, which... thank goodness, appears to boot itself up like normal.

For about thirty seconds, that is, until it starts glitching and displaying unintelligible code. Oh dear.]

...Yeah, that's not a good sign.

[monolike]

[Covers mouth and just. Stares at this mess. His augment is more attuned to hardware and mechanical prowess than software and computer systems, but even he can tell that's not good.]

...okay. This is completely my bad.

[nerdeology]

[It's not like Mikleo himself did much to help or prevent the mess, but. Uh.]

...Let's just try another console. Maybe this one's isolated enough to not affect the actual data.

[monolike]

Yeah...

[Sorey is struggling up another creaky set of rusting support beams when he laughs suddenly.] Ahaha- whoops, Mikleo you know what this reminds me of?

[nerdeology]

Hm? What's that?

[Mikleo's a step behind him, kicking aside a loose stone to get a foothold.]

[monolike]

You know that one time we came across that lever that was just jutting out in the middle of the floor? And- here, gimme your hand- and we sat and argued about that thing for weeks. [Turned out to be a moot point anyway because when they'd tried it, it had snapped in half.]

[nerdeology]

Oh yeah, I remember that. You wanted to just pull it and see what happened, and I wanted to make sure the roof didn't fall on our heads!

[One instance of many where Sorey's adventurous spirit was determined to give him an aneurysm.]

[monolike]

You wanted us to pull up all the tiles to find the mechanism and follow it! We would've been there for months. Besides, it was obvious from its placement that it wouldn't have dropped the roof on us. [obviously, mikleo,]

[nerdeology]

We wasted weeks arguing about it instead of trying, so it ended up taking just as long to decide! And you should know better than to assume how a trap works at face value. [OBVIOUSLY, SOREY]

[monolike]

It wouldn't have made sense! It would've crushed the mechanism and rendered the trap unusable! There's no way they'd build such a complicated trap just to only be able to use it once! [ugh, these stupid bars, the first thing he's gonna do when they get back to the ship is make a grappling hook]

[nerdeology]

What about the floors that collapse on themselves? Or those dispenser traps that didn't kill us when we were nine because they'd run out of arrows centuries ago? Maybe the ceiling left a gap for the mechanism! There's lots of reasons why it could've been a viable theory.

[The ancients made tons of unreasonably large and stupid traps. For it to not make sense is no excuse!]

[monolike]

Mikleo- ugh. [It's so depressing that you won't admit to being as wrong as you are.] The room was centrally located. Nobody would stick a gargantuan trap smack in a central chamber of their worship hall! They'd have to rebuild half of the eastern temple if some little old lady tripped and triggered it!

[nerdeology]

It doesn't have to be the whole ceiling. It would only take a small fragment to crack someone's head open.

[Totally sensible, theoretical, and not-at-all-morbid conversation.]

[monolike]

So you were worried that pulling that lever would drop a single stone precisely onto one of our heads, at just the right angle to kill us.

[Pulls himself up onto a ledge with a grunt.] No sense.