Observer Report 01--"Cliffhanger"

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Technology can be infuriating.

I, a sentient, anthropomorphic robot, commit that statement to writing, and I whole-heartedly mean it. As inconvenient as it may have been for my mental well-being, I had long ago come to grips with certain intricacies of the spores emanating from my comrades. As much as I did not like it, I accepted the fact that when they were in dangerous, stressful situations, I would experience a bit of lag. So what if this amounted, from my perspective, as the stream coming to a dead stop right when things got most exciting for them? I would see everything play out when the crisis at hand was resolved. Seeing the video buffer begin to fill with bytes again was my reassurance that my friends were in the clear, and that I could safely unclench my electric sphincter. They would be okay.

At least, I knew Misters Harris and Riley would be okay.

As time marched on and I observed their companions, I found that I had grown fond of them, too. Freya, most of all. Her way with animals is still a mystery to me and I am fascinated by it! Her companions Sirius and Kuro fill me with delight at their antics, especially when they don’t quite get things right, but so far, they have never failed her. Along the way she has also befriended two other canines named Bo Jack and Fang. Even a river otter in Sparta went out of its way to leave her a present, once. Grudgingly, I began to appreciate some aspects of Sir Segway’s character, but mostly his penchant for diverting abuse toward himself that might otherwise be directed toward people and animals I care for more. Even poor, hard-working Maria, Sir Segway’s trusty and uncomplaining mule, has earned my affection. MARS, however, could wander off and be lost, or the team could take up one of the many lucrative offers they’ve been made and sell him, and I would not be disappointed by those turn of events.

I find that I care about all these people and animals quite a lot. More so than I probably should. I care about the odd denizens of Blue Mount and Rattle Farm just outside my armored doors. By watching my friends’ interactions with them, I root for the people of Sparta who have taken them in and cheer them on as local heroes. I root for the mutants, and Baron Coltrane and even Mayor Danforth, and find myself hoping that the people and mutants of that town will not be driven apart by the malicious efforts of the Rikers.

I have these feelings only because of the feed, my vicarious, one-way link to my friends topside. Friends I cannot help directly. The feed gives me a view of the world as only they can see it, and through what they are seeing, I am coming to appreciate this ruined world more and more.

So, when the feed starts up again, yes, there is some relief, but I find myself watching with some dread, as well. I can be assured by the incoming data stream that at least Mr. Harris or Mr. Riley has survived, but I know that only one of them need draw breath for the show to go on. Until I watch it all and catch up to the present, I am left in the dark as to the fate of everyone else in the group, and sometimes this is almost too much to bear.

And if the feed doesn’t start up again at all?

As it hasn’t yet?

What then?

Why do I have these feelings? Wouldn’t it have been simpler and kinder to leave my thoughts cold and calculating and unconcerned with such matters? Sometimes I believe that my creators, and many others who may have had a hand in the devastation of the old world, must never have considered such complexities. Clearly, there were many things they could create, but one has to wonder sometimes if they ever considered whether they should create them.

Such is my current lot in life: waiting.

The feed has still not resumed.

Day 17-Base Report

I continue to provide care for Dr Mishra and Miss Renault. Their vitals are fine, but not enough time has passed for them to make an appreciable recovery since my last report. I am really only making this log entry to pass the time and find some distraction from watching the frozen spore feed.

I find myself looking over these two and wondering if they can ever have the same kind of impact on my life as the first two humans I awoke from stasis out of desperation. They just don’t seem to have the same…spark that Misters Harris and Riley do. And I don’t hold out any hope that they could gather the same kind of wonderful menagerie to accompany them, either. Though, these thoughts may be wholly unfair to Dr. Mishra and Miss Renault. They are convalescing, after all, and not exactly at the top of their game right now, so to speak.

Only time will tell if I will need to place my hopes solely with them, or if I—and by extension, the rest of my errant team—will be graced by some miracle.

Day 23-Field Report

I am overcome with happiness at the surprise I received today! The entire gang returned to Blue Mount! For nearly a week the spore feed was silent, and I was quietly resigning myself to the idea that all of my friends were well and truly gone. Yet, I was alerted by outsiders accessing the main entry hatch and found Sgt. Harris alive and well! I nearly overwhelmed him with questions, but he eventually explained things to my satisfaction.

It seems that something they encountered in the field disrupted the spore feed, but once Sgt Harris returned to the bunker, I was able to sync his spores with the system again. I expect that when I get Corporal Riley to pay me a visit, the same will be true for his feed. This does not resolve the mystery of the third spore feed that began trickling into the computers here just before they went dark. I suspect one of the raiders they encountered and dispatched in the field was a former member of Project staff who went off-mission and turned feral, but this may be a question that can never be answered.

Now, just because the members of the team were alive does not mean they were all well. Several were severely wounded in the battle at the Hangtown cemetery and in their efforts to rescue an artifact hunter accompanying them name Rishaa. On top of that, the exposure to whatever kit-bashed chemical or biological warfare agent they were briefly exposed to made them all quite ill for many days after the fact. Truth be told, they might not have been able to return under their own power were it not for the assistance of their new companion. So, I guess she’s got that going for her in my book.

For now, my friends are recuperating and staying close to home, which is fine by me.

Day 47-Field Report

Dr Mishra and Miss Renault seem to have fully recovered from their stasis shock, and I am well into the process of reviving the rest of the surviving members of the team. With the good doctor’s assistance, perhaps the newest members to awaken will not be sidelined for quite as long.

The rest of the team seems to be doing well, and they appear to be enjoying some well-deserved downtime. I have been gently trying to hint that whatever mysteries exist out there in the wasteland for them to discover, Sgt. Harris might not need to feel like he is on a strict timetable; clearly the world has been ruined for a long time. Whether he gets out there to fix it tomorrow or next year, I don’t believe the wasteland will notice the delay.

It has been pleasant having the rest of the team close at hand, and truth be told, I suspect they have been enjoying it as well. However, I know that sometime soon they will make full recoveries, and I suspect that wanderlust will itch at them once more, especially with Rishaa’s tales filling their heads and making them eager to explore.

Day 56-Field Report

All carries on as normal at Bolthole VYZ and Blue Mount above. The team felt well enough to make a short venture to nearby Sparta, just to do some trading and show the colors; remind their friends there that they are still alive. The rift between the human and mutant communities that the Rikers attempted to foment has healed just a bit more. They learned that Callie Nevers and Mira—the caretakers of their house in Sparta—had played a pivotal role recently in the defense of the town when something called a “Manitou” threatened the populace. Mira was able to distract the beast, knowing that she would come back to life if it killed her, while Miss Never’s enigmatic protector, The Squidge, swooped in as he is wont to, and dispatched the horrid creature. Evidently, monsters such as those sometimes escape from a place known as the Morpheum, and it is the mission of the soldiers at Bastions Alpha and Omega to keep them contained.

While a tale like that might be worthy of a field report, my reason for making this entry lies elsewhere. Upon the team’s return, Sir Segway made an announcement to his companions. It seems that he feels the years are finally catching up to him, and after facing off against the raiders in Hangtown and rescuing a damsel in distress, he feels he has checked off the most important tasks on his knightly bucket list and would like to retire from a life of adventuring. He added that whatever they were exposed to in Hangtown also seems to be sticking with him more than he would like, and after their brief foray to Sparta he is worn out more than he is comfortable with. He fears he might be a liability to the others if he ventures out with them again, so he would prefer to stay here to be close to his people and lead them. He assured the team that they would always be welcome and have a home at Blue Mount, though, so this need not be goodbye.

The team respected his decision, and they also set in to resting after their journey. Life continued on as though nothing much had changed.

Day 64-Field Report

The team is fully recovered. The people of Blue Mount seemed to rejoice at the news that their leader has chosen to stop gallivanting around and focus on business again, as today marks the day that their latest batch of alcohol is ready to be decanted and traders will soon be coming from far and wide at this, the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.

There are festivities planned for tonight, a great feast that Seven-Fingered Bob has been preparing for with his hunting prowess. Though Bob may be providing the main course, the real draw appears to be some event called “Sipping the Dregs,” which apparently has something to do with everyone freely partaking in leftover booze that couldn’t be packaged for one reason or another and is therefore set aside for consumption by the locals. I don’t even have taste buds and it sounds awful, but the locals seem to be rather excited by it. I suppose I will have to see how it plays out.

Now, I feel I must digress. With their recovery in hand and a big celebration in play, I suspect the team will come to some decisions tonight. With Summer behind them, they may only have a few months of decent weather to explore. I find myself anxious that the team will choose to strike out once again, and that cycle of watching them from afar and fearing for their safety when danger strikes will resume. That awful feeling will loom around every corner where I can see no more until after the crisis is resolved; those periods of hours or days where I feel my heart would stop beating if I but had one pounding away in my chest. I find myself wishing that they would all just settle down and content themselves with the comforts of hearth and home, for they have found one here. Freya, for example, only knows this world as it is. She doesn’t seem to feel the need to transform it into something else, though I suspect she’d take some people out of it if she had the chance. In a broad sense, the mission of the Morrow Project is to rebuild the world to what it once was, to claw civilization back after the devastation of the holocaust that fell upon it. I see that drive in Misters Harris and Riley every day. In Dr. Mishra and Miss Renault, too. I feel that they all want to rescue this world and turn back the hands of time.

But I have to ask myself, “Wasn’t it the mores of the past that brought this devastation upon us all?” The politics of a bygone age and yes, even the damnable technology? The same kind of cutting-edge tech that allows for my very existence…when that drive was put toward other branches of research, it allowed for the creation of the weapons and horrors that brought about the end of civilization as we in the Project knew it.

But people like Freya, Sir Segway, Callie Nevers, Mira, Seven-Fingered Bob…Cleetus, Shemp, Glinda and Rollo? They never knew the world as we once did. And they seem just fine with that. And, as time goes on and I learn more about the people that inhabit this world…maybe I am becoming fine with that, too. I don’t know if, after all these years, it would even be possible to pull the world we once knew out of the ashes, and I am becoming less and less certain that we should. In many ways, our world was horrible for so many people. This one can be horrible, too, but maybe we can fix that, instead. Instead of trying to bring back the old world—which may be impossible—would it be more morally correct to instead save the one we have now? From the stories I have heard, the Shadow-Over Valley has faced more than its fair share of existential threats in the past, and who knows when the next one will come? Maybe some day my friends will be spoken of in tale and song by troubadours of the future alongside such notables as Hubert Hoss and his Band of the Scanned, or Ark’haynjel Shel, Lady of the Pit. There are many things about this world to dislike, but I have found plenty of people in it that I do like, and I’m not sure if I want to take their world away from them, for the struggle to survive here is what makes them who they are.

What will our struggle make of us? If we succeed at our mission, will we be saviors? Or will we be destroyers, the next existential threat? Who would be around to tell the tale of How the Wastes Were Won?