Eclipse Phase, Long Night: Log 01 - Wake Up

[Arhra]

Life is pain.

The mechanisms of resleeving have allowed prophets of this fallen era to brandish this idea as a profound truth.

When you are resleeved, it is necessary to test whether the noetic imprint has been correctly written onto the brain. This is done through direct stimulation of the nervous system. In other words, you are tortured. Pain is the signal that allows you to know that you are alive.

Your voluntary muscle control is disabled, so that you cannot injure yourself, and your short term memory is disrupted, so that the version of yourself that awakens at the end of the procedure is disconnected from this experience. Even so, echoes of it are left bouncing around in your hindbrain.

To those who seek profoundity in this, the parallels are obvious. When you die, you wait in limbo for a time, and then you are judged. Whether from chance or entropy or malice, you might cease to exist. And if not, you are sent to purgatory before you can rejoin this unsatisfactory afterlife.

Oblivion or damnation. And, in the end, oblivion.

It is an unsatisfying religion.

You might choose to curl your new lips in contempt and throw back the simple rejoinder that it is better to be alive than to not be alive.

Whatever the case, for now you are alive.

* * *

The room was white and sterile. Its lighting was designed to have a warm rather than cool light to offset this, but it was not entirely successful.

The medical bay was approximately kidney shaped and somewhat lumpy. It had been retrofit into this section of Cerberus Station. A frame and a false ceiling had been set up, the necessary cable runs put in and the white panels installed. They were self cleaning modular units automatically networking to provide ventilation, temperature control and mesh access, easily interchanged with more specialised panels for heavy duty power amd plumbing. More low-tech solutions filled the gaps where this grid had been impossible to adhere to.

Five trays in a morgue-like nook had been opened and their former inhabitants, clad only in hospital gowns, deposited seemingly randomly on five of the twelve beds taking up most of the floorspace in the room. Two still had their heads resting in the maw of ego bridges.

A pale, plump woman was fussing nervously over the readouts on one of the bridges, hand to her mouth, white teeth chewing on the fleshy part of her forefinger. Her hands were raw looking, the nails chewed down to the quick. "All five neural writes successful." she said, hurrying over to a console. "Resuscitating now."

"Thank you Dr Chambers." the room replied.

It was the sort of soothing, confident, unhurried voice that had been lovely crafted in a lab by a crack team of linguists, psychologists and acoustic engineers to convey calm competency.

It was the voice of BaSIL, the Base Support Infrastruture Link, the artificial intelligence that monitored the unclassified section of Cerberus Station. Waking up here meant something had gone terribly wrong.

"Good morning to you all." BaSIL continued, as the five other people newly occupying the room began to stir. "Please take a moment to reorientate yourselves - your memories may not have fully integrated yet. The current time and date is 9:07am 16th March 17AF."

"I regret to inform you that twenty-eight minutes ago, a serious security incident occurred. The normal security response has not been effective. Under these circumstances, I am authorised to recruit an emergency response team. You have been selected for this duty due to confirmation that recovery of more recent ego backups is impossible. You have been upgraded to security clearance WHITE NOVEMBER for the duration of the crisis. Those of you who do not normally possess this clearance may be required to undergo memory redaction to protect sensitive project data after the present situation is resolved."

"Your revival was contingent on acceptance of these terms. A sworn affadavit recording your decision is available and the experience logs of your temporary infomorph instantiation can be migrated into your present instantiation should you desire. Due to the risk of mental degradation from rapid changes of neuroform, it was not possible to preserve continuity."

"Before I continue with the security briefing, do you have any questions?"

[Overcast]

The voice of the AI droned faintly into the ears of the neotenic stirring the childlike sleeve. Its big blue eyes fluttered open, vision blurry as it began to adjust to the light. Inside its head Scott Manning was beginning to hear the date, the time, and another little voice similar to that of BaSIL with a slightly more British tone spoke in his thoughts.

[It has been approximately 13 hours since your last backup Scott.]

His companion, Bosley, was already on the first subject he cared to know about. Scott stretched the arms of his new body, taking in a deep yawn, before testing distal planar functions. It was then as his vision cleared he noted the miniature digits of his hand, and as his eyes trailed down to the rest of his form he finally discovered that he had been sleeved into an Innocence model, "Intriguing." He mused, before chuckling cutely at his own prepubescent voice. Scott fwipped his longish blond hair out of his face and continued testing motor functions of the body, pulling up whatever tools he needed to be sure everything was working,

"I'd like a laconic update of the last 13 hours on top of the security brief if you'd be so kind BaSIL."

He couldn't remember any notable red flags going off before his backup, so maybe an update would help him a bit.

[PhoenixFlame]

Due to significant advances in medical and saftey technology in comparison to those of 21st century Earth, it was, in the current day and age, relatively unusual for one to die in such a way that their ego is spooled back more than a few hours. For the comparatively fortunate clanking masses of humanity, finding life as a some entity, be it synthetic or information within this timeframe, is not difficult. For those unfortunate enough to be exposed to Watts-Macleod infection, the 'waking dreamstate' nature of their psionic abilities, and the exceptional connection between subconciousness and conciousness, made death especially unpleasant. Those fortunate enough to be weak may never feel the deafening silence in their own mind moments before waking.

Fate has so far been dedicated to prove that Narela Freeman is not a fortunate person.

Commanding her eyes to open, she emitted a pained groan as the body had yet to fully integrate, the mental backlash not helping in the slightest. It was an adult morph, at least, and humanoid (Always a good sign), but not her own. Narela's heart sank slightly.

["Welcome back, Narela. I regret to inform you that we have been out for the last eight weeks, twenty-three hours. I am attempting to ascertain why."]

All additional sinking distance between her heart and diaphragm was now occupied. Frost's voice was calm and feminine, never worried about anything, but some news simply could not be broken easily.

"Those of you who do not normally possess this clearance may be required to undergo memory redaction to protect sensitive project data after the present situation is resolved." BaSIL confirmed that life was suffering.

"Maybe I should've stayed dead." Narela croaked, sleepily pulling her right hand to rub her forehead in exasperation. The hand was red, not usually a good sign. Last time her hands had been red was not a time she wished to recount.

[Aerozord]

Be it waking from sleep or from the twilight of death Hugo was never quick to rise. Slowly letting his mind awaken, not moving an inch until it had. As the others stirred he listed to the computer updating him on his new clearance level. Memory alterations, for reasons such as this he did not trust the hypercorps. If not for his own beliefs he'd have left for the outer system long ago. But they were the only ones with the resources and motivation to reclaim the Earth. Say what you want about greed, but its a reliable motivation. For that same reason Hugo suspected that they knew of why he agreed to all this. Which was for the best, hypercorps never put much stock in loyalty.


He transmitted his thoughts to the others [Well first let me save everyone some time.] Each receiving a simplified file of himself over the mesh including his name and duties on the station. [First thing we need to do is take stock on who is who. BaSIL was it? Guessing for the higher ups you might want to handle their files yourself. Beyond that, just give me the diagnostic, and if thats not possible where the malfunction for the diagnostic systems is.] While his morph contained an artificial voice box so he could speak he only used it when speaking with the occasional flat. They say humans can convey emotional state and intent with their voice, but frankly he never noticed. Why couldn't they use oscillating color patterns like civilized species.

[Steel Shadow]

Manny cracked an eye open, gave the Med-bay ceiling a half hearted glare, and then rolled over to go back to sleep. "Nope," the transport bay grunt mumbled, words slurred into little more than tired grunts, "not happnin'. Way too bright. Gimme a few more hours."

[Manny, get up.] The exasperated voice of Glottis prodded him towards wakefulness. [You're missing 5 days, and BaSIL sounds serious.]

"Musta been one hellva party," Manny mumbled into his pillow, swatting at the air with one arm as if that would somehow get the voice in his head to leave him be.

[Manny, you're not hung over. You've got a new Sleeve. Wake the fuck up before I start playing loud classical music into your inner ear.]

"Fine, mom." The lazy 'Travel Agent' pushed himself up to sitting position, blearily looking around and listening half heartedly as BaSIL finished it's explaination. Blah blah blah, something went wrong, blah blah blah, could you go clean up the mess, blah blah, we're probably not going to pay you anything for this. Big whoop.

And... what the hell was this?

"A Bouncer? Oh, gyuck, that's a sense of humor right there." He was not fond of his new living arrangments. "Questions? What are we gunna have to do to get this sorted out as asap as possible and get me a new sleeve?" Are they hands, are they feet, he didn't wanna know! "And can I get some coffee in here? Or something. I need a pick me up."

[You're always so grumpy when you re-sleeve...]

'Hush.'

[Arhra]

Siiiif, you've been unbanned for at least a weeeeeek, why didn't you post this?

Hoisting himself onto his elbows John looked around the med bay for a moment. A shuddering sigh escaped him as he collapsed onto his back. He layed still for a minute before hoisting himself off the bed.

"So, we all died... Not like it's my first time but this seems to happen to me with startling regularity." John grimaced as spoke.

"Eurgh, always feel screwed up after resleeving it's like coming out of a day long bender memory problems and all." cracking his neck John stretched out, his joints popping as he did so. He took a moment to look over his new body, he shuddered at the alien feeling the body gave him. It just felt wrong in some inexplicable way. The arms were too long and the legs too short, not to mention the increased muscle mass.

Attemping to get used to his body John walked around the medbay his hands fidgeting constantly, he snatched a flashlight from the wheeled equipment stand as he passed by twirlling it as he walked

"Alright BaSIL, hit me with your worst shot. Do we have any reinforcements on the way or are we alone on this one?" He suspected he knew the answer already but felt it couldn't hurt to ask.

"For those of you who might know me the name is John Bowen, I figure no one is going to recognize me in this body." he gestured at himself as he spoke.

[Arhra]

[First thing we need to do is take stock on who is who.] Hugo Takdorf the octopus said. [BaSIL was it? Guessing for the higher ups you might want to handle their files yourself. Beyond that, just give me the diagnostic, and if thats not possible where the malfunction for the diagnostic systems is.]

"I'm sorry Hugo," the smooth reply came, "I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm not able to determine what you are requesting. I think that perhaps you should sit down for a minute and take a digestive tablet to help the resleeving disorientation subside."

"I think I wouldn't mind taking one of those tablets." John said. "Alright BaSIL, what can you tell us about available data from any sensors still operative?" John paused a moment as he considered their situation. "So I know why they brought me back, for my charming and roguish good looks, but what can the rest of you bring to this cluster fuck?"

"Good morning John." BaSIL said. "I'm still collating the sensor information. If you'd like to get dressed, I will be able to give it to you in a minute or so.

Those hospital gowns were awfully drafty.

"Actually, they picked you because you were the only spare egos available." Dr Naomi said, giving the five newly ressurected a wan smile, handing John a blister pack of the tablets. Rose coloured hair and teal eyes didn't hide what she was, her albino pallor was unmodded and the strong, almost harsh bone structure proprietary to her futura sleeve showed through her soft features.

"Ouch talk about blow to the ego" John grinned although inwardly he seethed.

Turning back to the wall, Dr Naomi plugged a wire into an access port in the back of her neck and inserted the other end into the data port replacing the lock on a closest. It beeped and opened, revealing three semi-rigid armoured skinsuits.

A spidery assemblage of arms on the ceiling started moving, its turret traversing the track set in the ceiling for it and lowering in front of the locker, pulling them out and laying them on an extended arm, imitating a coat rack. It traversed to the next locker, opening it, and pulled out a technician's jumpsuit and a bag that seemed to be full of something the consistency of jelly, holding the last item primly in one manipulator like a purse.

"To bring you up to speed, here is the incident report." Basil said, offering the file for download into the newly formed security team's mesh inserts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Cerberus Station Interim Severe Incident Report #02Cerberus Station Interim Severe Incident Report #02
At 0839 an uncontrolled fire broke out in the unclassified habitat quarters cafeteria. Cause of ignition was the detonation of a container containing highly corrosive, highly flammable liquid disguised as cleaning supplies. This coincided with a netwar attack upon the station mesh from a distributed internal source.

The primary fire suppression systems did not activate and, due to the netwar attack, the unclassified habitat AI (BaSIL) was unable to obtain permission for emergency fire control procedures for several minutes. The fire was extinguished by the removal of all atmosphere from the compartment at 0844. All thirty-three personnel located in the compartment at the time of the fire are believed dead. All surveillance equipment in the compartment was destroyed by the fire and corrosive fumes, making it impossible to confirm at this time. The compartment is remaining quarantined until resolution of the incident.

Injuries consistent with destruction of the brain and cortical stack on eight of the trapped personnel were observed before failure of surveillance equipment.

The netwar attack was extremely successful in disrupting mesh communications and monitoring, but no attacks on core servers or other station infrastructure appear to have been conducted. Roughly half of the habitat is presently unmonitored.

In accordance with incident escalation procedures, Catapult Base has cut power to Cerberus Base. The restricted research laboratories entered level 1 quarantine, switching to restricted format comms and the airlock bridges were withdrawn to provide physical isolation. However, contact has been lost with all three laboratories due to the mesh disruption.

Approximately one quarter of personnel are estimated to have evacuated to lifeboat launch stations. However, due to extant security procedures they cannot re-enter Cerberus Base until a security all clear has been given. All thirteen security personnel were unable to be contacted at the time of the incident and so BaSIL activated emergency security procedures, deputising available station personnel to perform incident repsonse.

Only one living person could be contacted: Dr Naomi Chambers, a base doctor and research subject for Project TRAVELLER. However, she is unsuitable for frontline security duties due to a mental condition that causes her to enter a fugue state when faced with violence.

Five of the eight confirmed casualites suffering loss of continuity from the cafeteria fire were selected to perform auxiliary security duties. The other three casualties use externally encrypted backups, requiring their insurance companies to be contacted before the encryption key can be obtained for reinstantiation. This was not practical within the time-frame of the incident.

The personnel performing additional security responsibilities are as follows:

Bowen, John: Human Resources Manager.
Freeman, Narela: Senior programmer for Project BLIND TINKERER. Psi-capable.
Kaldevra, Manny: Unclassified cargo manager and shuttle maintainer.
Manning, Scot: Staiton head psychologist.
Takdorf, Hugo: General habitat module technician.

Please review station roster profiles for further information.

Despite the extreme irregularity of the situation, the lack of a coherent follow-up to the extremely successful initial attacks suggests security procedures were at least partially successful in containing the aggressors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

"Maybe I should've stayed dead." Narela croaked, rubbing her forehead with one red hand.

The ceiling-bot turned, the rubbery limbs of the combat suits flopping like empty skins. The limb holding the bag telescoped, offering the octomorph the cephalapod specific protective suit, and fanning its other arms to offer the humaniform newly reinstantiated a choice of clothes. It made a satisfied sounding musical sequence of tones.

"But you're helpless if you're dead!" Dr Naomi protested, the expression on her face giving some clue to the gruesome imagined story of ego-napping going on behind behind it. Moving into the rows of beds, she squeezed past the tall, lanky Martian morph that Narela's mind (and perhaps even soul) now inhabited. It made it very noticeable to Narela that the good doctor had put on an ammount of weight that was shocking for a two month period.

"There's only three armoured skinsuits available." she added, biting her lip. "BaSIL says the jumpsuit there should give some decent protection though. They're all vacuum capable in an emergency, but you don't want to know what prolonged exposure would do." Again, gruesome. "The bag's an octopus suit. Some sort of smart goo."

"A Bouncer? Oh, gyuck, that's a sense of humor right there." He was not fond of his new living arrangments. "Questions? What are we gunna have to do to get this sorted out as asap as possible and get me a new sleeve?" Are they hands, are they feet, he didn't wanna know! "And can I get some coffee in here? Or something. I need a pick me up."

The simple robot that lived on the ceiling apparently had enough brains to understand him. Pulling its main body up while rotatating a vaguely shoulder-like assembly downward to keep it's clothesrack arms in position, it telescoped a manipulator above head height, then folded down two small limbs to pick up a cup, put it below the coffee dispenser and press the button.

"As you had the most experience in extra-vehicular activities, I assigned the bouncer morph to you Manny." BaSIL explained patiently. "The remaining spare sleeves are both female, and Dr Naomi advised that your medical history suggested you were likely to suffer complications with ego integration if they were used."

A cup of hot coffee lowered into Manny's peripheral vision, gripped in a spindly manipulator arm.

"Alright BaSIL," John said, "hit me with your worst shot. Do we have any reinforcements on the way or are we alone on this one?"

"Catapult Base is on standby as a failsafe, should you be unable to stabilise the situation." BaSIL said. "However, activation of Catapult Base's contingency plan would cause the destruction of this base along with all research material and personnel. Please try to avoid that. I will establish communications with them to present your plan of attack for resolving the current incident once you have developed it."

Dr Naomi was busy opening a safe in the wall, having removed one of the pristine white wall panels to access the older, worn substrate behind.

"Authorising unlock of emergency munitions store." she said, swinging the hidden safe open.

"Recorded and acknowledged." BaSIL replied.

With a grunt of effort, Dr Naomi removed the large reinforced storage case inside. Two hands on the handle, hauling it up almost to her chin, she turned and dumped it on an empty bed.

Varied signage plastered on the case advised this side was up, it contained explosives, high energy storage devices and fireams, that unauthorised tampering with this case could be prosecuted with heavy fines and that it was a heavy load and suggested adherence to workplace manual handling strategies and a two person lift.

"Guns in here." Dr Naomi said. "Tamper seals look fine." The ceiling-bot handed her a coffee too. She took a long sip, eyes distant. "Better give you the nanomachine countermeasures too." she decided, opening a different cupboard and hauling out a much smaller suitcase with similar lurid warnings.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," BaSIL said to the half dressed and half equipped new security team, "but there has been a change of status that I need to inform you of immediately. All eight pleasure pods from the recreation section have entered an area where I still have mesh surveillance. They appear to be carrying weapons from the recreation section's emergency munitions supply and are not responding to mesh queries. Their current heading suggests their intended destination is the TRAVELLER research laboratory."

[Overcast]

Scott got the report of the last 13 into his head as best that BaSIL could deliver it, a few parties, minor injuries, an impending test, improbable drunkness. Nothing stuck its thumb out as being indicative of traitorous thoughts so he just stuck what seemed important in the back of his head and turned toward the others.

He ran through his head the minor notes of each psychological profile:

Scott gives his opinion on everyone.Manny, glitterati washout from the cargo bay. Charming, stubborn, lazy unless he was already interested, and a terrible gossip. Scott intended to lead this group, but if he needed someone to jabber he could think of no better individual.

Nalera, a tough case of a woman, intense, unstable, impulsive, dissociative, and judgmental. A flying elevator of emotions and touched as well with claustrophobia. All of this made her a somewhat positive example of the Lost, or any async, she had a strong will, was a terrifying liar, and one of the best programmers he had ever met. He might just need that at the end of the day, he just hoped she could trust him enough to care.

Big John Bowen, a manipulative bastard with anger problems he took out on the world through a mixture of corporate maneuvering and raw personality that seemed on the edge of breaking your neck. He knew much more than he should for his position, and most would say he missed his calling for being a merc with his muscles and skill with a gun. He was also a good friend of Scott's, who connected with him as another who was left behind in the Fall. Their differing reactions to it made them foils to each other, and their clashes made them friendly sort of rivals. He was happy to have him on their side.

Hugo. Scott was never fond of uplifts, they didn't think like regular people and made his job somewhat difficult, but if he had to ask for one Hugo was up there. A bit spineless, pardon the pun, with a lack of drive for advancement but enough of a work ethic to be senior technician. You could hardly find anyone of the hab better at fixing things. He'd be more than an asset in this chaos if they could keep him from panicking.

It was a rag tag team, but BaSIL had done good bringing them together. He stood up and walked for the equipment, grabbing a medical bag and slinging it over his shoulder as the AI informed them of the situation with the pods and he frowned,

"All of them? Could Otto have done that? Mmm, no he doesn't have the tech knowledge, probably means they killed him. Sad, he was always so good for morale. Hopefully he had a backup somewhere."

He continued sorting through clothes, finding a small enough jumpsuit to zip up over his tiny body, "Now ultimately our mission is to resolve the current security crisis before Catapult completes its contingency. For those out of the know, that means blowing all of us to hell to keep these secrets secret, and possibly anything we might have accidentally unleashed a bit more dead than it is now."

He grabbed a taser and a holster clipping it to his left leg, "So it is in our best interest to get a plan together now, me personally I feel like our first step is to try to undo the damage this attack had done to the mesh, and try to get in contact with whatever might be alive in the labs."

He grabbed a tranquilizer and tied it to his right leg, checking the drugs carefully, "Once we get a better idea of the damage this attack did to the important parts we can think up a better plan, whether that means jettisoning the whole lab area or collecting what we can and getting the hell out of dodge is still hazy."

"As for the party favors..." He looked long and hard at the rail pistol a moment before grabbing the lethal thing, and stuffing it in his medical bag, "They are a secondary worry, I don't want us risking our necks against a bunch of sex pods with assault rifles just because they are heading for TRAVELER. If we are forced into a scuffle then we'll do what we can, but I don't want anyone actively seeking out combat when we might be able to get away. We're the last chance anything on this place, including what memories they let us keep, are getting off this rock. We can afford a few losses for that." He slipped on a pair of shock cesti and arced the knuckles together as a test, "Any questions?"