Spore Batch 04--"A Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing"

Day 8

After many years of being alone in the Bolthole, I stopped wondering about certain things, as there was no way for me to acquire any answers without abandoning my post and being derelict in my duty to protect and oversee the project members that were sleeping under my care. With Misters Harris and Riley awake and exploring the world, I find many of these questions coming back to my thoughts, and I wonder if they will be able to find answers to them.

“How did the end of the world come about?”

“When did the bombs fall?”

“How much time has passed?”

“How did the plan go so wrong?”

I realize that answers to most, if not all of these idle queries will not impact our current situation one bit, but I believe there is a feeling of reassurance to be found in the truth. I can only assume my compatriots often wonder the same things, and it soothes me to think that they likely want answers, as well. After all, they gave up what lives they had for the project, and this isn’t exactly what they signed up for.

However, they did sign up to try and make the post-apocalypse a better place, and they seem to be keeping their end of the bargain. After convincing Colonel Blackwind of the Rykers to take his troops and leave Sparta unmolested, the team garnered accolades all over town. Sir Segway explained that he must return to Blue Mount for business reasons, and would be willing to check in at the Bolthole to see if I have completed the radios I was supposed to be working on. As if I have much else to do. The rest of the group seemed to be intrigued by the stories of “Ghost Towns” that they have heard about, and were eager to learn more about this peculiar phenomenon. They rested up and planned to begin their search at first light.

Day 9

Overnight, while MARS stood guard outside their hovel in the “mutant quarter” of town, he picked up a strange radio signal. It was encrypted, but just barely; even MARS was able to crack it, and determined that the traffic was a series of measurements and equations. When he shared this information with the group, the consensus was that someone was relaying target information. The next day, Riley, MARS and Freya strolled about town trying to identify likely targets while Jock attempted to create a device that might allow them to locate the signal. The difficulty in this endeavor lay in the fact that whatever MARS picked up, it was coming in short bursts, and only intermittently.

MARS was able to determine that Sparta’s town hall, a concrete number that had weathered the bombs and years better than anything else in town, had many physical dimensions that fit some of the numbers he heard rattled off overnight. With a high degree of certainty, he thought that the town hall was the subject of the radio message. Riley pored over the building with an expert eye, determined the building’s weak spots, and figured out exactly where one would want to plant explosives if one had a mind to bring the building down. He found no treachery and was able to decisively conclude that a bomb plot was not afoot. One oddity he did discover, however, was a small engraving in a cornerstone of the building, a bas relief consisting entirely of a long string of ones and zeroes, clearly binary code, but the resolution from the spore recording was not fine enough for me to make it all out. Meanwhile, Freya investigated the docks, following Sirius’ nose. The stink of some of the Rykers fresh in his snoot led him to the water’s edge, where the Baron’s boats nearby might have been a tempting target.

After a while of listening from atop the Baron’s river depot, Jock picked up the signal again briefly, but it was so short that he was only able to determine a bearing: to the northwest. Their searching had eaten up a fair portion of the day, but with no indication of the distance to the source, they wanted as much light as possible to travel by if they were going to venture away from necessities such as food and water. Again, they opted to set out at first light, now with a destination vaguely in mind.

Day 10

The team set out at dawn heading northwest, which happened to be the direction the group of Rykers that were murdered a few days ago had taken—not the ones Riley murdered, mind you. A different group. Murdered by someone other than Riley. Freya sent Kuro out to scout up and ahead to see if he could spot anything with his keen eagle eyes. Within a few hours on foot, travelling across the grasslands and toward some hills, Kuro caught an irregularity on the hill dead ahead. To Freya, it looked like a thin black line drawn into the hillside that seemed to glitter in the sun. The team drew closer and Jock and Riley were able to determine that the black line was a fairly fresh and unused asphalt road that started at the crest of the hill ahead of them and terminated about a hundred yards down the slope. They closed in and approached cautiously.

What they found atop the hill was a gridwork of paved streets, sidewalks and the foundations of buildings. Neat piles of construction materials were stacked all around, as well as the timber that must have been felled to clear the area. For all intents and purposes, it looked like the beginnings of a tiny modern city in progress. There were no signs of life, however, and no detritus that any workforce would necessarily leave behind. Even Sirius indicated to Freya that he smelled no people, but suggested that what he did smell reminded him of MARS.

That’s never going to stop amazing me. Now, here I am, a sentient Machine Intelligence (at least, I think I am); the epitome of living, breathing science-fiction in the electric flesh, as it were, and a girl talking to a dog is bloody well the most astounding thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe I can talk her into bringing home a pup for me to help keep the Bolthole from feeling so lonely. But, I digress. I find that I have been doing that a lot lately. Now is not the time for it, though. I have to get this log made for posterity’s sake before I can digress any further. So.

The team explored the area, finding nothing outstanding above ground other than a similar binary bas relief cornerstone on one of the buildings that bore an identical footprint to the city hall of Sparta. Stranger and stranger. They did find a sewer access point and—with much trepidation—ventured underground, certain that subterranean horrors awaited them. The entry point was too narrow for MARS’ rotund chassis, however, so he searched further and wider and found an alternative entry point at what seemed like the foundation of a water treatment facility. Reunited, the group explored the sewers, and found no hostiles, but did find signs that people had been here: some food debris, and several spent high-impulse electrical cartridges.

At a loss for what to do next, MARS reached out via radio on the frequency he had heard the incoming signals. He received a reply, supposedly from other Morrow Project personnel that requested he rendezvous at a location nearby. Certain forms and protocols within the message seemed suspect, so the group was not entirely trusting. Suspicious would not even be too strong a descriptor. But, since it was their only current lead, they felt compelled to investigate. They set out, and opted to stop close to the meeting point, but to approach at dawn.

Day 11

A few hours before dawn, MARS heard a faint, constant whine floating on the air. He was able to spot a quadcopter-style aerial drone running search patterns overhead. In his haste to wake the others, he nudged Jock with a robotic pedipalp. Now, when a 400-kilogram war machine in a hurry had “nudged” someone, this is a generous way of saying they have been “kicked.” Jock was sent flying a meter or two and nearly broke a rib. Fortunately, this commotion woke everyone else up, sparing the necessity of further “nudges.”

Freya sent her own eyes into the sky to watch the watcher, and Kuro clearly had no doubts as to the proper course of action. He swooped in on the drone and knocked it out of the sky as only a majestic bird of prey can. Jock swooped in on the wreckage and was able to use his directional antenna to try and locate the location of the signal controlling it. He was quick enough that they had not stopped transmitting, and was able to determine that it was coming from close to the location they were headed. If the team was not suspicious before, they certainly were now. When daybreak came, they moved out, ready for a confrontation.

When they approached the indicated coordinates, MARS noted that the location was quite undesirable from a tactical standpoint: Low ground, with plenty of cover up high and none below. A killing field, in essence. Instead of blundering into potential crosshairs, he began moving up one of the slopes to take some high ground, ostensibly to place himself in a position to ambush any potential ambushers. This, in turn, triggered the suspected ambush, and the scoundrels lying in wait unleashed a sneak EMP attack that nearly laid MARS low.

The team fought for their lives, as these foes had the high ground and were well-equipped with the training to match. Riley suffered multiple wounds from enemy rifles as he closed in with Freya nearby, being saved only by the tough armor of his regulation jumpsuit. Through the combined assault from Riley, Jock and MARS, several of the attackers were incapacitated. It became all too clear to Freya that a peaceful solution was no longer in the cards, and she was able to deliver a resounding coup de grace with her knives to bring the hostilities to an end.

One of the attackers bled out as the limited medical skills of the team were unable to save him. The others were bound and interrogated once they came to. They seemed to take umbrage at the group’s possession of MARS, and wanted them to turn him over. Clearly, they were in no position to make demands, and fortunately they quickly realized this as well and did not force the issue. They claimed to belong to some group known as the “Shepherds,” and it was their responsibility to monitor and contain autonomous pre-war robots. They claimed to follow the precepts of some local folk hero known as “Hubert Hoss” and his “Band of the Scanned.” They also cited a long-ago incursion by “The Cars with No Drivers” as proof that the Shepherds’ cause was just and necessary. This particular group claimed to be operating far from their base of operations, which was far to the west on the other side of the Shadow-Over Valley.

As of the last of the spore batches I have received, it seemed they were on the verge of brokering a truce with the team and negotiating their release, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Shepherds, indeed. They attacked my friends; unprovoked, no less! They sound more like Wolves in the clothing of Shepherds, to me. I dare say if they should darken my doorstep, I will make them pay dearly for every bit of shepherding they would care to enforce upon me. I’ve still some demo charges laying around here somewhere. Perhaps I should see about putting them to good use.

Ah, but later, dear reader. It appears I have a visitor! Perhaps it is Sir Segway? I’ll see about figuring out how to detonate future visitors later, after I have chatted up this one. If, by chance, my decision to not lead with the explosives was folly and I am unable to continue writing these logs, feel free to scoop up those charges and fetch me some vengeance. Now, where were those radios…