No, this is not a reminiscence for old Three Dog Night fans, but the opening thread of the game for Eli Ray Bumbalough, who has just finished a character sheet in The Character Generation Thread.
A friend of your dropped off a box he says he thought would interest you. It contains a hand-held device purported to be the first independent thinking machine. The material says that it uses something called "scriff" to enhance high-speed internal connectivity and so enable the processor to operate at speeds fast enough to emulate real thought. It interacts by voice, and is very user-friendly, as if it were its own person--in fact, when you drop it, it actually says, "ouch" before shutting down.
Picking it up, you get a nasty shock and black out.
You are now starting to awaken. You are lying, eyes closed, on your face on a flat surface that feels padded with something scratchy, sort of like fake grass, and you smell a mix of tangerine and celery.
What will you do?
--M. J. Young
uggg. I can't believe I dropped the AI... Why am I on something scratchy? Time to get up.
I open my eyes and look around. After I get over the shock of being in a strange place, I look for my stuff.
You are lying under a moonlit sky on what appears to be dry grass, but feels fresh enough--its color is light, tan perhaps.
Your equipment surrounds you. The AI is not anywhere to be seen. The stuff that is around you is scattered in roughly the same relationship it had back home--as if someone removed the floor from your room and dropped everything straight onto the ground, but that nothing is broken or appears to have fallen.
You have a nagging feeling that you left something "over there"; in that direction you see something sticking up from the ground and a disturbance in the ground. You also have a nagging feeling that you were supposed to "meet someone", but that's in almost the opposite direction, more behind you. Ahead of you are hills, and there are other objects in your peripheral vision at greater distance. The light is pale but bright for night.
--M. J. Young
That's rather odd. How did I get here with some of my things arranged exactly like I had in my room?
I grab the canvas backpack, gather up my things and pack them into the backpack. After that, I go over to where I feel I left something.
I turn on the Maglite and take a look around.
Actually, the Maglite is the on object that is not immediately surrounding you; it's the one you find when you follow the sense of having left something over there.
To get there, you have to walk around a hole in the ground. It's perhaps ten feet square, sharply cut on three sides but with a gentle slope on the fourth. There is a gleam of the reflected moon at the bottom (and there's something odd about that reflection), as if there were a pool. There is also a dark hole in one of the side walls, and what appears to be a dark plaque beside it.
You also see another plaque, of sorts: the object sticking up is very like a single post sign, rectangular in shape.
As you retrieve the light and shine it about, you see that the sign is beside a pair of parallel paths worn in the grass, perhaps five feet apart.
The beam of your flashlight makes the grass itself look orange, the dirt look red-brown like clay. The beam is not powerful enough to illumine anything else, but you still can see significant objects in three directions.
Standing with your back to the hills and the hole in front of you, the slope is near you and the hole is on the side to your right; the pool thus is on the far side from you. The sign is also to the right of the pool, on the opposite side (beyond the far right corner from this position). The tracks which begin there head directly to your right, and in the distance there is something reminiscent of Disney's Magic Kingdom, a city, perhaps fifty miles or so distant, of spires rising in the moonlight, gleaming as if of translucent glass or unfaceted gemstone. Straight ahead of you, a similar distance and lining the horizon from end to end in that direction, there appears to be a vast industrial complex--derricks and cranes and other machines, flashes of light illumining and silhouetting these. To your left, considerably closer but still a good day's hike, there is something reminiscent of the sort of forts used by the cavalry in the days of the settling of the wild west: a surrounding fence that might be stockade but that it has a semi-solid quality as if light were shining through it as much as reflecting off it, a gate with a sign over it, and what appears to be a watch tower rising from the middle. That is the direction in which you feel you are supposed to meet someone.
--M. J. Young
I don't think I'm in Tennessee anymore or on Earth for that matter.
To confirm it, I look at the sky and try to find a constellation that I know(which admittedly consists of Orion, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor).
What phase is the Moon in? Are the lunar maria arranged differently?
What angle does the moon form with the horizon?
In what direction is the moon closest to the horizon?
After that bit of astronomy, I take a look at the two plaques.
It is immediately apparent that this is not the moon you know. It is full, a bit larger than you anticipated, completely devoid of maria, directly over the glass city, equidistant from the left and right horizons as you look that direction, and very cleanly octagonal in shape.
There are no obviously familiar constellations, either, although I don't expect you're spending much effort looking for them.
The sign posted by the pair of parallel paths appears to be made of some sort of black molded material, like plastic but harder. It reads:
- Fitzgerald Road
Created by the Automobile which
Mary Fitzgerald was able somehow to
continuously operate here.
Moving to the other requires walking down the dry clay slope in the hole, toward the liquid at the bottom; you need not go too far to see it clearly, however. It reads:
- Michael’s Foxhole
Dedicated to those who built it for themselves
and for those who would follow them:
Michael
Peter Adams
Daniel O’Malley
Bob Thomas
Mary Fitzgerald
These were the first humans known to set foot in NagaWorld,
and they paved the way for those of us who followed.
This place is given as a refuge to any creature who needs it
by the humans of Umak Tek.
From this vantage you can also see that there is something scrawled in the clay wall inside the hole in the wall, which now appears to be a tunnel. It is the imprint of a human hand, a left hand with the thumb pointing down, with words beneath it etched as if by the tip of a finger, reading "Go Tell Sparta".
--M. J. Young
Defiantly not Earth... Maybe I was abducted by aliens... That stupid. Why would the go trough all the trouble to abduct me and drop me off in the middle of nowhere next to a shelter called Michael’s Foxhole. Let's see what's in the foxhole.
I go into the foxhole and look around.
You crawl through the three-foot diameter tunnel; it is about ten feet long, and opens into a round chamber with a domed roof, about four feet high at the center and three feet along the walls, about twenty-five feet in diameter. There are six "niches" in the walls, one distinct from the other five.
The five that are nearly the same are six feet end-to-end, three feet deep at the bottom, curving slightly to meet the wall about two and a half feet above the floor. Their "floor" is three inches above the floor of the room, and thus their tops are three inches below the ceiling. Each has an inscription in the clay above them, made apparently by the same finger that wrote in the dirt by the entry. Going clockwise from the entry, they read:
- Peter Adams, October 14, 1985
Bob Thomas, October 17, 1985
Dan O’Malley, October 14, 1985
Michael, September 30, 1985
Mary Fitzgerald, November 2, 1985
The other indentation falls between Mary and Michael, and is smaller--still a three inch raised floor, two feet high and three feet wide and about two and a half feet deep into the wall at the bottom. The roof of this indentation is slightly domed, such that it is lower in the front than in the center, and there is a small hole in the center of the roof.
There are two small "cubbyholes" in the wall beside it. In the lower one are four sheets of lined "notebook" paper, the first a different cut from the other three, and written in a different hand. That first page is in a clean script; the other three are in a legible printed scrawl.
There are PDFs of these papers available on the web, the first here and the others here. If for any reason you cannot or do not wish to download and read those PDFs I will copy them here, but it saves a lot of trouble if you simply get them and read them if you wish--PDFs don't copy right, because when you do a copy/paste of a page it removes all the line breaks and does not replace them with spaces.
Otherwise, the room is empty.
--M. J. Young
So I'm a dimensional traveler... Sure! Why Not? It makes as much sense as anything I can think of. According to the paper, it's near sunrise. I'll head to Umak Tek next moonrise.
Those beds are probably too small, I'll just sleep on the floor. But first, Food!
I'm going outside and gathering enough grass to fill my stomach and for 3 meals tomorrow.
After I eat, I try to sleep for as I can.
When I wake up, I check out side to see where the sun is at.
The grass has a sweet flavor of tangerine with the texture and a slight undertaste somewhat like celery. It is reasonably satisfying, probably containing significant amounts of sugar, but you have to eat quite a bit to fill yourself. You tear it off easily enough.
While you are gathering the grass, you hear a noise--not a quiet, maybe something's there, noise, but a clear "boop", somewhere in the middle octave of a piano, almost an electronic sound but not quite.
You hear it again. It's coming from somewhere behind you.
--M. J. Young
Huh!?!?!
I turn around and look for it.
(OOC: Sorry for the short post)
Shadowed against the bright grass is a dark round spot. Looking closely it appears to be a sphere, a bit larger than a softball, maybe five to six inches in diameter, sitting atop the grass as if it had almost no weight at all. It has to large eyes, white with dark pupils that look as if they were drawn or pasted to the outside of the sphere like some sort of cartoon. You are about to include that this cannot be what you heard when below the eyes a darker round hole opens for a moment and the sound repeats, coming directly from the object.
--M. J. Young
What is that thing? It has a mouth. It's definitely not from Earth.
Let's see what it does. It looks like it is as light as a feather. What can it possibly do to me?
(famous last words...)
I sit down and continue eating. While I'm eating, I try to keep an eye on the Unidentified Softball Thing (UST) but I don't look directly into the UST's eyes.
I'm waiting to see what it does.
It says "boop" again. It rolls forward one complete turn, and when it is again facing you it has a bit of grass hanging out of its mouth, which it swallows. Then it says "boop" again.
--M. J. Young
That is an interesting way to eat.
I try to give it a piece of grass and I continue eating.
It watches you a bit more warily as you extend your arm toward it, and does not get closer. It is about eight feet from you, one roll apparently moving it about two feet.
--M. J. Young
I shrug and continue eating until I'm full.
I watch the UST to see what it does.
The unidentified softball thing also eats, rolling forward to grab some grass and back again to eat it. It watches you as well.
Once in a while it boops. Then there's an answering boop, some distance from you at right angles to the first.
--M. J. Young
I watch the two of them and after a while I try to mimic the "boop" sound they make.
I'm making a pile of grass for lunch tomorrow while I eat.
How close is it to sunrise?
The two boop at each other as if they were communicating, and they close on each other, and start bouncing a bit. It appears that they have the ability to draw their surface in and release it quickly, firing them upwards into the air at least a few inches. They seem excited to see each other.
They also seem to be attracting more of the same dark balls, which begin approaching and booping from all directions.
And when you make your "boop", they all answer you and move closer.
There are soon between twenty or thirty of them around, and they are bouncing higher, some of them as high as six feet in the air, all booping at roughly the same pitch, the top string on a guitar played open, the middle of the middle octave on the piano, a note that is comfortably high for tenors and uncomfortably high for baritones. You manage it. They're thrilled to hear you respond.
One of them is bright, perhaps yellow in color. It does not bounce like the others.
The moon was over the glass city when you arrived; you have been here between two and three hours, I would wager, and it is still visible high in sky to the far side, having moved less than half the distance toward the horizon.
--M. J. Young
Let's see what they think of music.
I'm singing Yellow Submarine by The Beatles and I'm humming the instrumental sections.
In the town where I was born,
Lived a man who sailed to sea,
And he told us of his life,
In the land of submarines,
So we sailed on to the sun,
Till we found the sea green,
And we lived beneath the waves,
In our yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
And our friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door,
And the band begins to play.
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
As we live a life of ease...
Every one of us... has all we need...
Sky of blue... and sea green...
In our yellow submarine.
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
OOC: My gut is telling me that this probably requires a SAL.
I would rate myself as a low amateur.
Your gut is pretty good, but 1) I'm assuming that you wrote those words from memory, so I'm not going to roll for whether you can remember them, and 2) since you're only trying to impress a herd of Nagas, whose ordinary vocal range seems to be one note, I don't think we need to worry about whether you sang this very well. But I will note you with 1@4 Singing M0@0.
As you sing, they become more excited, bounce more, and try to boop with you--most of them unsuccessfully, but a few seem to be finding the beat once in a while.
--M. J. Young
Let's see if I can teach them the rhythm and the tune.
OOC: I have no skill with teaching.
That's O.K., they seem to have no skill at learning, either. But they seem to enjoy the fact that you are singing, and they are having a grand time making the monotonal noises in disparate rhythms while you do so.
--M. J. Young
That was fun but I need to go to Umak Tek. I think I can make it there before sunrise
I get a drink of water, grab my bag and start walking towards Umak Tek.
Yeah, it would take a normal walker about three hours to walk to NagaWorld, and you've got at least that much night left.
You start walking, and the balls move with you for some time, booping and hopping and rolling. Then there is a high-pitched scream from their midst, and they scatter, all of them shrieking. One purple ball appears to be in the mouth of that yellow ball that had wandered into their midst. It vanishes in seconds, and the yellow ball starts rolling away from you.
You are soon alone on the plain, headed toward that fort-like compound in the opposite direction from the moon, which you will reach in a new thread, Eli and Michael Gathering
--M. J. Young