CyberPunkforTheHolidays2016

 

So it's the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2016, and I'm sitting outside a warehouse in L.A.  It's 2345 hours. I'm Snake and I'll be narrating this ramshackle attempt at a story / journal entry.  This is how things really went down in the beginning.  This is what it was like to be there.  A lot of people died.  Beginning of what? I'll get to that.

 

Emily, or Klaus, as she sometimes goes by, was sneaking into the warehouse. No one had to ask her, she just went off and did it, with her impish combination of Loner and Impulsiveness.  She was placing cameras, so we, and more importantly, George our Sniper could see what was going on inside.  She was the teams Infiltrator, and there were very few places she couldn't get. 

 

"I see two Semis," she said. "Backed up side to side, tractors facing opposite directions, about 10 ft apart, with a camper or convention shack connecting them. They're probably one big work space inside."

 

"For what?" Asked Lyndon, though we never called him Lyndon. He was obsessed with code names.

 

"I dunno, let me go look." So off she went, crawled up on a truck, and put a small hole in the top for her camera probe.  The video was beamed to us on our phones.  I watched mine from the drop down chest shelf on my concealed partisan mag vest. We were across the street, William Burke, Muscle Head was behind me and he watched too.

 

Ten nerds were in the truck, tapping away on keyboards or watching monitors. Eight guards were inside the warehouse, in relatively high speed tactical gear, and four guards patrolled outside in plainclothes, but with relatively obvious concealed vests.  Emily zoomed in on one computer screen, a map of the shitty, err city showed on it. Then she looked at another, it has the same map, just at a higher magnification.

 

"What's that?" she asked.

 

"A city of the map," I answered with a chuckle.  But really, it was.  One map had vertical red lines on it 17 miles apart, the higher mag map had lines every roughly 1500 ft.

 

"Ok, here's the plan. We execute at 10 to, unless something forces us to go early. George take out two exterior patrols, while Will and I take out one each of exterior patrols.  Then we all breach the building at the same time. Lyndon, I assume you can get you and Natasha in?"

 

"Yep," Lyndon our driver answered. Natasha was our demo expert.

 

"Then we fight through the inside guards, and get a nerd."

 

"Got it, leave One Living Nerd." Emily said.

Lyndon added, "Great band name."  That was his thing. We all laughed.

 

"Police shouldn't be here for an hour or two, unless we really blow something up. This is Compton after all."  I thought that was about it.

 

Five minutes later, we hit our H hour, and George's Accuracy International 7.62mm Suppressed round hits one, then the guard behind him.  "Double kill headshot," he says in an almost disturbing fashion over the radio. 

 

Will and I start trotting across the street towards the warehouse, and when our guards are in sight, I count down, "3. 2. 1." Pop pop.  Our suppressed 5.56mm rifles snack and pop. The two guards hit the ground.  Lyndon fires up the Suburban and drives straight at the warehouse wall and Will and I run for exterior doors.  We fire a shot each at a lock, then kick the door in as Lydon drives right through the wall, and sideswipes a guard inside.  "I'll take east guards first."

 

Will answers, "I'll take west guards first."

 

Inside, we cross through our doors.  We each see three, and three shots later, our respective three are on the ground dead, bleeding, or clutching their wounds.  Lyndon guns it, and swipes another guard with his rear fender sending him flying into a container and leaving the goon crumpled on the ground.  All guards down.  I yell at them "Stay down! Stay down!"

 

Meanwhile, Emily says "They're gassing the nerds!" She jumps down, and had contemplated a flashbang or a smoke grenade, and instead just jumps in the cab of one of the tractors and pulls it forward.  The sound of shrieking metal, electric shocks, and cracking plastic fills the warehouse and the rifle reports die.  She jumps out and runs to grab a nerd, Lyndon has gotten two more. They're all named Jason.  We immediately begin interrogating him, but he shares little.

 

At four minutes to midnight George reports a bomb blast in the distance, 5-6 miles off.  Then more, then a wall of explosions are moving our direction.  He takes a call from our Contact, who says his family has been taken by a man in Minnesota.  Our contact also says to get out of CA, the whole city is going to blow!  We react sort of calmly, though I have to admit there was some panic.  But really, it's just another mass bombing.  We calm down, and load the Jason's in the truck.  Things keep blowing up, right on the red lines.  I finally read the small print on the computer map, it says Artificial Robot Cerebellum Housing Intellect Experiment number three. Weird!  Lyndon thinks it's an AI.  Delusion?  I wished.

 

Somewhere before we bug out, I'm outside the semi trailer having a conversation with Emily inside at a yell, because explosions.  She hands me out a computer and I'm looking at it with Lyndon I think.  He says some warning, like above, that it's an AI.  Then the computer/laptop from Em says "Yes, hello, how can I help."

 

"Holy Shit!" I say. I don't remember the rest of the conversation with the computer, but I do recall talking to it.  Maybe one of my team mates will fill in the missing gaps in my memory in the comments below.  Unlikely, but a bro can have dreams.

 

So, back to interrogating Jason.  "What the F?  Why are you blowing up the city?" I ask.

 

"We're not, we're just watching."

 

"Just watching? You don't need a huge truck like this to watch!"  I hate being lied to. "What else are you doing? Why shouldn't we just kill you?  Give us a reason to keep you around."

 

"Ok, yeah, we do stuff.  Our boss, a guy named Archie calls and gives us job, or work. We work for Atlantis corporation.  Mr. Smith is our handler."

 

"Can you find them?" I ask.

 

"No, they call me."  He's repeating underling drivel.  "They have my family man!"

 

"Ok, get on the phone and see if they've left you messages.  Could you find them?  Now that they tried to kill you?"

 

He might be able to.  So we strip him of gear, tape him and the other Jason up, and drive east fast.  Lyndon wants to time it so we pass between waves of explosions as fast as we can.  That sounds great to me!  I guess we're going to Minnesota.  Lyndon pulls up a map, and there is a regional airport just east of us, maybe a few miles.  We drive there after the explosions have passed, to find the tower a smoking ruin.  So he drives around all the hangers, and finds us a fast twin engine leer jet.  We steal it, pile in, and tape the Jason's to the seat.  We lift off and head east towards Colorado.

 

An hour later our contact is back on the phone with William, saying weird and crazy stuff.  Explosions all up and down the coast, everything has been hit from Vancouver to Tiajuana.  Worse yet, is cities are turning blue, and lines of blue are spreading between the cities.  Social media is blowing up with it.  People are posting pictures of being in the blue, and other people are bugging out.  Vegas is the eastermost city to be hit with terrorist bombs, and it's turning blue.  The people that are getting out though, report that they turn back to normal once outside of a very defined threshold.  There is almost a globe of blue around the cities, but it's not a globe you can see the edge of, you just see the effect of it, even inside things, it's almost like a blue light.  We turn the plane north and swing over Vegas.  We fly in and out of the blue, it's surreal.  Cities are also going dark, as the explosions are spreading through the infrastructure, and worse yet, natural disasters are following right behind.  Strangely Alaska and parts of Central and South America aren't targeted.

 

Lyndon and Emily think it's a space ray, or a space weapons system.  I'm like "If it is, I hope NASA has some shit to deal with it, cuz I can't."  We calculate that Hawaii will be hit by explosions in 3 hours, and we've used 1 in flight already.  Then Japan and Korea will be hit, in another 5 or 6, then it will start hitting China, Australia, etc.  We all hope no one thinks this is a strange first strike, because it this goes Nuclear it will be a whole nother brand of suck.  Nuclear Winter! It was confusing and weird, and I'll admit I was a little scared.  I don't like problems that can't be reduced to golf ball size and shot (like a medulla oblongata). There was some crazy talk, I think someone mentioned the apocalypse and maybe super heroes.  Or goats.  I'm not sure, but well, it was a lot of talking, so I'll skip it and get back to the actions.

 

This guy named ARCHIE signs his checks, and clearly Lyndon had put together that the nerds were working for this guy, and this guy was a computer, and the computer was trying to bring about the end of the world.  Maybe he didn't say as much, but maybe he wasn't trying to spook us more.  Anyways, Jason gets back on his laptop, and is trying to find the guy.  Bill remembers something about hi tech weapons on a weapons blog, and said that it was all in the mid west.  So now it seems like the world ending psycho super computer AI also has advanced weapons.  Yes sunshine, things would only get better from here.  No they won't. That was sarcasm.

 

Lyndon says from the cockpit, "I see Minneapolis' lights up ahead, and things look normal. Make ready for landing."

 

We can hear the tower, "Unidentified Leer Jet. Identify yourself, you're flying without a flight plan."

 

Lyndon comes on the channel, "Oh shit, a flight plan. We forgot that when Los Angeles was BLOWING UP. We just made it out of there.  Oh shit."

 

Tower, "Oh god, ok, come to 45 and land on Number 5."  Then another voice on the tower, "Stay professional."

 

Whatever.  We land, and I say someone should call Uber so we can jack their ride.  Lyndon says something about a Premier or Super Uber.  Which is doubling up on the Adjectives I think, but again, whatever.  In our private hanger, we sit and wait, we cut the Jasons out, and wait for it to arrive. We're not down for 5 minutes, when it rolls up outside.  I forget who punched the driver in the face and tied him up, but such small details often get lost to history.

 

Anyways, while we're waiting, Em(ily) pulls up a traffic cam from I H1 outside Honalulu looking over the city out to Sand Island.  And I'll shit out my dick if things don't start blowing up.  They do thankfully.  At least for my wager, but not really good news for the Hawaiians. The feed goes black.  We do some more math, and it'll take approx. 20 hours to circle the earth.  Just four or five hours more will bring it to Japan and asia.  So we know we're on a dead line. We also know it's damn cold in this city, so we head to an REI and bundle up.  As we leave the airport, we pull over, kick our Uber driver out of the car and take his phone.

 

He has the balls to say, "Hey guys, like if you could maybe not trash my ride.  It's how I make my living." 

 

I think, did he even need to add that last part. I fucking know how you make your living serf. 

 

Natasha, "I promise we won't wreck it, but the Universe doesn't always follow our plan."

 

Em says, "Fuck you guy."

 

Natasha says, "We'll try to fill it with cash."  Then she leans back and starts picking dollars out of unhelpful Jason's pockets.  Someone points their gun in Uber Drivers face, and says "Fuck off."

 

We then pile back in the stolen suburban and head towards an address.  There is some hysterical/unhinged laughter as Emily rips out "We need to steal money to pay back this fuck.  What is this, A HOSTAGE PONZI SCHEME!"

 

Someone else, says "Now opening for One Living Nerd."  Lyndon says, "Great band name."

 

Helpful Jason, just glad he isn't in our cross hairs, who will no doubt live a long and happy life has given us an address in Northeast Minneapolis, and old closed down police precinct.  So we eventually leave the REI warmer and poorer, and drive by that address he's given us.  It's in sort of a regenerated neighborhood, with some hippsters walking a dog, and a brewery.  There is an artist flat near by, and I'm about to throw up.  As we roll by, Emily jumps out and disappears.  She stealths up to the Precinct and gives us a few camera spots, and some surveillance on the site.  As she's getting in position, we drive about 3 blocks away and let George debark, at the foot of the next tallest building around.  He gets up into overwatch.

 

Emily is hearing news reports from inside, though a scope or something, of Google Earth updating their imagery showing the blue lines that now connect cities, and strange points out in the wilderness at intersection points.  Some of the lines are a mile or more in width.  The ISS also is showing images from space with the lines being visable. The precinct is now in private hands, Lyndon looked up a bunch of history on the sale of the building, but I can't remember most of it.  I don't have Eidetic. Anyways, Bill and I see guards with AK's, but they're more AK than AK.  They look too real, or too good, or just a little off, it's hard to say.  But as Emily points out the guards, they all have them.  We should be wary. 

 

As Emily is doing recon, Lyndon brings up if this is an AI situation, what should we do?  I think I said kill it?  Not sure.  But I know I did say, "Well, we'll know it is an AI when our position or intent is compromised. When it knows about us, we should then seal our cell phones, and enact the Tinfoil Bag Protocol."

 

Lyndon says, "That would be a sweet song.  I'm sure Hostage Ponzi Scheme will put that on their next set, or next record."  We all have a good laugh.

 

Anyways, recon says there is a room of guards inside, maybe 10, and 2 patrols of 2 outside.  Guess we're going hunting.  Plan is to set everything to blow, then rush in and see what they're doing.  Leave one alive, but get their stuff or stop their shit.  It's sort of hard to say, since we don't know what or if they're doing anything here.  So we start around the back, with George, whose gotten down from his perch and will be leading us around. We're going to clear to the power line, gas line, planting a charge at each, and then move to sweep around the building. Our goal is to stay in between the patrols.  Again, George will be leading me, Will, and Natasha around.  Lyndon will be out front in the truck on overwatch, ready to come in and get us, or get us out.  Time will tell.

 

We get about half way around, when a patrol has fallen behind, and one guy starts to turn around and face us.  George shoots him in the face, and before his body has hit the ground, Will who was second in the stack has shot the second guard in the face.  Good, well handled. 

 

Lyndon now pulls up to block their Garage as Emily has gotten into a position between the garage and what we're calling the bull pen, where all their soldiers and standing, resting, sitting, whatevering.  Two guys are in the garage, about 6 or 8 in the pen.  One of their guys on the computer sees Lyndon park, and sends 2 out.  Emily reports this.  We kick our plan up a notch, and hit the front at a run to meet the two guards on their way out where we'll shoot them.  Emily will create a distraction, and Lyndon will secure the garage.  Probably killing the two guys in there with the truck.

 

Like all good plans, it goes off pretty much without a hitch.  Emily draws their attention with some grenades, blows the lights, and Will and I smoke a bunch of clowns in the dark with night vision goggles. Lyndon takes out the two workers in the garage and zip ties one survivor.  George shoots 3 inside, I drop 2, Bill drops 1, KO's one. 

 

In the bull pen, we see a door that Emily had previously seen and knew she couldn't defeat without raising an alarm.  So we gather around it, talk a little, then get through it and head into the basement.  I rush down alone, so we're not all in the hall at once, but the basement is clear.  When everyone is down, Will and I clear it proper, but it's a large room, with two side rooms, and not much else. The side rooms like like Evil Dentist rooms (double oxy moron?), or torture rooms or something, complete with chair and stainless steel cart with scalpels.  The center room is cabinets on all sides, a desk in the front corner, a video camera on a tripod, and a large expensive looking Machine Center in the middle of the room.  Searching the cabinets finds tons of the more AK than AK AK's, but also 1911's, Benelli M1's, and USAS-12's.  With lots of ammo.  Also fancy new armor.  Plus, best of all Natasha finds things that look like grenades from the movie Aliens.  She takes a bunch of grenades, while we load up on our respective weapons with backups.  My only decision was if I take 10 mags, or 12.  I went with 12.  We do this all without talking, because we're a well oiled machine of slightly loony sociopaths from a disparate collection of international intelligence agencies and shadow governments...

 

We do all the above without talking.

 

Then it's time to figure out what the computer, camera, and machine tool is for...

 

So we grab the hostage Jason That Helps, and put him in front of the camera and at the computer station.  I motion to Jason to find Archie. He starts tapping away on the computer when I think he says there is a face on the screen or something.  Klaus writes something to Jason, like "social engineer this shit up. Get the computer to tell us something." 

 

"Hello, who is there?" the computer asks.  "The computer/camera isn't working."

 

Jason says, "I want my pay Archie.  Give me my money." 

 

"The camera isn't working.  Was there a problem with Direct Deposit? Did it not go through?"

 

"Yes there is a problem. You tried to kill me.  Now me and my ten friends are coming to find you and get paid."

 

"Oh indeed," the smug ass AI says.

 

I jump in on this for some reason... "Where are you computer?"

 

"Ah, hello masked man from LA?"  Shit, I forgot I talked to him in the LA warehouse. "What do you want?"

 

"I want to know where you are, and what you want."

 

"Oh, just the destruction of the world, and I'll have it.  You can't stop me now. Also, you should come to breakfast, Father can't wait to meet you."

 

"Fuck you we can't.  We're coming for you computer!"  Oh, he's really pissing me off.  No one destroys my world.  While saying all this, I implement Contingency Plan: Tin Foil Bag Protocol, with my cell phone.  I expect everyone else does.  So now we're just on our secure radios, which I'm sure aren't totally secure from a AI computer, but they are frequency hopping and minimum power modulated, so at least it should be harder to find us...

 

I think we smash the computer, and leave the building with a few extra grenades in it. Once we're safely away, Natasha brightens the night with a wonderfully bright explosion.  Fuck that computer.  Whilst I was talking the rest of the team, led by Lyndon I think using a wifi ap on his phone, or Emily?, found a radio in a closet, with no antenna going out, but where the wifi was going. So this is how the computer was talking to the AI.  We note the frequency on the radio.

 

So now we come up with a diversion plan: Get George on a rooftop and have him shoot every gas station tank, propane tank, and cell tower in LOS.  Good, done with that.  Then we drive to near the Lake Minnetonka.  Lyndon gets on Jason's shit about being a nerd and does he have his Technician Class Ham Radio License?  Jason says, "Yes of course, I'm a huge fucking geek ass dork nerd, of course I have my Technician Class Ham Radio License.  In fact, I was going to get my General Class until you guys kidnapped me."

 

Lyndon says, "Good, now we're going to drive around and you tell us where to go and you triangulate the location of the frequency source (that we found in the basement)."  Jason agrees, if only to keep his skin.  On the drive, we dump the two other Jason outside the front door of a McDonalds.  We then break into a Bill's Gunshop, heist a Barrett M81A1 .50 BMG for George and a few mags of ammo, and then get to the Minnetonka neighborhood about 0600 hours, local.

 

Once George is on a tall water tower, about 300 yards from the McMansion, he gets the first look at our enemy.  A blind woman, with all sorts of weird tech on her wrists, is standing outside the house.  She's blind, but obviously aware of what is going on.  She isn't wearing a jacket.  There are also 3 more of these blind warrior women in the house. Further, there are 20 thug guards around the grounds and inside, with more being outside.  They have the same looking not-AK AK's that we do.  George also reports that one of the Blind ladies inside, walks someone into the basement. The look on the persons face is like they're walking to their death.

 

We discuss at length about what to do.  While we're discussing, Emily sneaks around, and eventually gets into the basement (on a Crit Success, the BAD was -8!!). It smells bloody.  Yuk.  Eventually we go with plan Lyndon and drive up to the front gate, me and Bill on the back bumper ready to jump off, with Nat and Lyndon in the front seats, guns loaded. George is on overwatch, and Emilys is somewhere in the basement.  At the gate, Lyndon says we're there for breakfast, and the gate opens for us.  Emily, in the basement hears chewing from beyond the next door, as we're driving up, she's keeping us appraised through the radio link.  So we park, and they let us out, we disperse and cover each other as we go in as best we can, but we're vulnerable.  The best we can do is a slow dispersed walk, about 5 yards apart.  We're obnoxious, and don't sit at the offered table.  I remain in one corner. One of the blind women, leading us in, who sits, oddly, says father will be with us soon. She then asks where are the other 5 members of your team?  Oh, they'll be here we say.  Natasha excuses herself, muttering about a cleanse, and goes to the bathroom, where she starts rigging a charge under the sink, probably flushes another charge down the toilet, and gets her grenades ready.

 

Ugh.  Over the radio we hear Emily, or George lose there lunch for a second, well, just a loud disgusted grunt really.  Then Emily says, "Holy shit, there is something down here eating people. Light it up."

 

George counts down, "5... 4... 3... 2..." then a silent count of 1... as he breathes in, then out and holds... 0.  BANG.  The flight time of the round is about 1 second, but the Blind Warrior outside the front of the house easily dodges.  What the shit!  She then breaks into a dead run his direction, going straight across the frozen lake.  It'll be a long slow run.

 

George shoots again, but misses again.  I hit the blind woman in the room with 5 shots, and an energy field from some SyFy fucking alternate reality protects her, but it's intensity decreases with each shot.  Lyndon and Bill both hit with their shots, but none of the warrior women go down (too bad... ba dum cha!).  They all shoot back.  WITH LASER WRIST BLASTERS!  We all dodge.  They smile, as if to say, ah, this seemed easy, but maybe not, at least this will be fun.  Natasha comes out of the bathroom, and bolts across the room, heading down the stairs towards Emily.  Emily throws a grande through the door, it lands in a tank on a hover pod(!?) that the big snake like man eating thing is in, and then she runs up the stairs at Nat.  They sort of meet at the top of the stairs. The grenade goes off, and Emily sees it's shield go down as it's moving at them.

 

George shoots again, but this time at the ice infront of her. She doesn't quite see it coming, and falls through the ice.  The rest of us shoot, we all hit and do some damage.  They shoot back, Lyndon dives under the table. Bill and I get hit, he dodges, I take it and my new armor protects me! Wow-yay!  One goes around the table at Lyndon with a sword, weird.  Nat rigs her grandes to blow on impact and throws them down the stairs, banking them towards the thing.  Emily keeps running up the stairs.

 

We get back to shooting, I get through the field on mine and splatter it's guts all over the inside of the office, and the rounds that blow through make a huge mess of the wall.  This uberAK is uber!  I waste a round, and walk my fire into Lyndon's, my last round hits her good.  Bill hits his, as does Lyndon and they continue to weaken the shields.  Nat runs again as Em runs too, the grenades go off downstairs.  Nat yells, "Bathroom hot in two!"  They shoot and miss or we dodge. Whew.

 

I hit again and almost drop Lyndon's.  Lyndon hits his again. Bill switches to the AK instead of reload, and goes full auto.  His burst, makes a Jackson Polluk of his.  We do more dodging, as the last one up targets me, and I dodge.

 

The room is full of plaster debris now, guts and blood hang in the air, particulate from the basement blasts have come upstairs, and it's a real mess in here now. The last one up gets finished off by my blast.  The snake thing comes up and shoots a fireball.  The basement and bathroom explode as we walk fire and exit out the blasted wall behind us.  It falls into the basement in the blast.

 

A chaotic close range gun battle breaks out on the porch as we walk backwards into an ambush.  We return aimed fire and grenades at the 20 mooks on the porch.  They go down in a withering hail of gunfire.  Our UberAK's, UberPistols, UberShotguns, and UberGrenades make quick work of them.  We continue our retreat to behind a bullwark of decorative stone, and prep for the assault of the snake thing.  The Blind Lady of the Lake has not come up for air.

 

George then reports, "Tentacle Monster coming around from the back. On you guys in 4."

I don't like the sound of that.  No tentacles going in my back.  I've seen tentacle porn.

 

When we finally see it, oh shit is it messed up.  Emily and George have seen it before, but the rest of us haven't because of all the smoke inside.  When we finally do see it, I'm not ashamed to say that witnessing the visage of something that is clearly Not From This Earth made me lose my shit.  Me, Bill, and Lyndon are stunned for various amounts of time. We gasp out a collective OH SHIT!!!11

 

As it slithers up to us, and wriggles it's eight tentacles, it says "Accept your fate you bugs and DIE!"  That's not going to happen, though, like I said, the three of us are too stunned to offer any witty banter, and again the stunning kept my mind from hearing any of the unstunned members of my teams witty repartay (lol french).  But needless to say, they light it up.  It blasts fireballs back at us, and it has like laser turrets and shit, and even a pew-pew eye laser blaster.  Natasha and Emily fire pistols and lob grenades. George brings withering sniper fire down on it, but even his .50 cal BMG does a fraction of what our AKs do now, and it's sort of on par with what the ladies do with their pistols.  That also gets a WTF.  Bill rejoins the fight first, and does the most quickly.  He takes the brunt of it's fire, but dodges.  It shoots Nat, but her armor soaks it.  Klaus dodges too.  Then Natasha's grenade makes him drop his staff, and Emily Klaus' pistols fire makes the glowing weird eye things on his barge go dark. Yay I guess. Don't know what they do.

 

Lynn doesn't unstunn, I do.  We pour more fire on it.  Eventually we whittle it down, and reduce it to a smoking smelly pile of alien flesh.

 

So that's that.  We don't know it, but in the coming years our journey through the post apocalypse brought on by ARCHIE and this dimensional traveling alien slug thing usher in a world we come to call Rifts Chaos Earth. 

 

- Snake