Notes taken by Alastair and Samantha Beadle.
Session 5.11 Index Session 5.13
It is just after five o'clock in the afternoon in Southampton. We have just dived through Void's gate to escape a cargo ship being thrown at us by a mysterious rainbow force.
Blitz asks Void to open a gate to where the rainbow-effect ship-lifting force seemed to originate - somewhere behind that warehouse over there - so that we can see what caused it.
Void nods and sends his gate over there, small, to scan around.
It is just before midday in Boston Massachusetts.
Observing from within the wall of the Lord Protectors Residence, Noesis sees Cromwell's secretary dial his telephone (which is presumably on a different power circuit) to ask what is going on. He speaks to someone from a moment, then puts the phone down and informs the Lord Protector of the results of his conversation. "It's Quincy, sir. He says he didn't think that it was going to be as big a use of power as that."
Cromwell looks disapproving. "When does he say that the power will be back on again?" he asks.
The secretary says he does not know but begins attempting to find out by using the telephone again.
It quickly becomes apparent that this will take some time and Noesis is not really interested in this information. Instead, he leaves the Residence and goes off towards somewhere he does find more interesting - Boston Castle.
Outside the Residence, Noesis resumes human form and makes his way down towards the Castle. Boston does not seem to have descended into anarchy due to the power failure. Instead, a few people are milling around looking a little concerned, mainly over what seems to be their refrigerators not working. Traffic is still flowing, the policemen of traffic duty not being affected by the power cut. There are no traffic lights here.
Noesis quickly reaches Boston Castle and re-merges with the ground. From there he follows one of the sets of large power cables over the wall and into the Castle. They, along with the other set of power lines, run into a large concrete blockhouse built up against the wall of the Castle keep in the castle courtyard.
Inside the blockhouse the cables join together into one very large cable running down into the floor. Noesis follows it down. He passes into the dungeon levels of the keep. To his surprise he finds that in these levels the corridors are all carpeted and the guards are all wearing black cloth masks. [As political prisoners are kept here, the carpets and masks stop people knowing when people are being moved around, and who is here.]
There are two levels of this.
Continuing downwards, Noesis then finds himself in a large space, around three storeys tall and perhaps half the area of the keep above. In the centre of the space, suspended from the ceiling by several large brackets, is a large, baroque, primitive machine of metal, glass and ceramic. The power cable enters its top from the ceiling and the whole mechanism is humming with power, the same power Noesis sensed before, although the level of power is falling rapidly now. At its bottom, close above the floor, the machine appears to have a focus, a conical projection with ceramic discs spaces horizontally along it. The flagstones of the floor beneath this projection look charred and cracked.
Around the walls of the room are a number of other, equally baroque, pieces of equipment, as well as lab benches, blackboards, piles of components, tools and so on. The place is lit by what appear to be emergency lights only, with a number of more powerful, but unlit, arc lamps also spaced around the walls.
There are a number of people in the room.
One is a short, ordinary-looking man with dishevelled brown hair, in a lab coat. Perhaps the person named Quincy?
To one side of the room is a ten-foot tall steel robot consisting of a cylindrical body with four arms equally spaced on a ring two-thirds of the way up it, mounted on a pair of tracks, with glowing red camera-eyes close to the top of the body. For hands it has large, powerful-looking clamps.
Also present are around a dozen identical dwarves, moving nimbly around the room and working on the equipment. They are each about three feet tall, but bulky and muscular, with black hair and beards.
The 'mad scientist' is angrily ordering the dwarves around, blaming them for the power outage and demanding that they put it right. From listening to what they say, it soon becomes apparent that the machine is something called a Telluric Energy Projector (TEP). Whatever that is.
Noesis watches all of this for a while. He notices some papers on a bench to one side and shifts over there, through the wall, to have a look. An eye pops out of the bench and looks at the papers. The 'mad scientist' and the dwarves are distracted by re-establishing power-type tasks and do not notice this.
Noesis quickly finds that the papers are a mixture of scribbled notes in appalling handwriting, and rough sketches, with no apparent order to them. There are lots of crossings-out and corrections, as well as 'NO's written across there here and there.
One of the dwarves, who from what the 'mad scientist' says is apparently called Abraham, receives some more motivating yells from the 'mad scientist', who he does indeed refer to as Quincy. Quincy then turns and heads for the bench to scribble some notes. Noesis withdraws into the wall and observes from there.
Quincy scribbles for fifteen minutes or so, and then returns his attention to the dwarves.
Back in Southampton, Void scans his portal around, looking for the source of the attack on us. After a few minutes, through the portal we see a group of about half a dozen men in a variety of different kinds of clothing standing in the shadow of a warehouse, discussing matters. They appear to be a couple of sailors, a couple of dock workers, a military officer and a member of the Security Police.
The security officer and military officer appear to be having an argument.
Void moves his portal closer, but as he does so the Security Policeman seems to notice it, and us notices. "There they are!" he exclaims, pointing.
"Get them!" says Blitz.
Void obligingly opens up his gate ten feet off the ground, and Blitz leaps through to attack.
Servo lines up to fire through the gate in support of Blitz.
After a pause Truth decides to follow Blitz.
As he leaps through into the alleyway between warehouses, Blitz gets a closer look at the six men who are there. They are:
Blitz realises that he has, perhaps, bitten off more than he can chew here. He continues his attack anyway.
Using the momentum from his ten-foot fall from Void's gate, Blitz aims a full strength kick at the head of the Nordic-looking man, and connects. There is a nasty crunch and the man falls to the floor, bleeding from the head.
The military officer with smoke for hair moves to intercept Blitz, moving almost as quickly as him. The smoke billows out from his head and swirls around Blitz, partially blocking his sight.
The average-looking man in dock worker's overalls begins to shift and change shape.
Shimmering rainbow light surrounds the American Indian.
The redheaded man starts to blur and vibrate.
The security policeman is just staring hard at Blitz.
Blitz dives for the Native American.
Through the gate, Servo fires a blast at the shapeshifter, and hits him. This seems to disrupt his morphing process, leaving him an intermediate stage. Whatever form he is shifting into seems to be quite large with an unusual number of limbs...
Truth decides not to follow Blitz through the gate, but instead opens fire with her pistols on the security policeman instead.
He dodges to one side, and she misses.
Blitz's foot hits the rainbow force-field around the Native American very hard, but the force-field does not give an inch. Instead it starts to extend towards him in a hostile manner. Blitz leaps aside.
Servo fires again at the shapeshifter, hitting him again. Now the man's shape wavers and starts heading back towards the human end of the scale.
The blurred redheaded man zips around the scene at high speed, then stops suddenly, pulls a gun and fires through the portal at Servo.
The bullet hits Servo's force-field with unusual power, or in a vulnerable location, shattering the bones in his right arm. Servo is still conscious, but is also in a lot of pain.
Truth sprays bullets through the gate at the group, trying only to avoid Blitz.
The bullets ricochet off the rainbow force field to no apparent effect.
The security policeman stares at Blitz again, and suddenly Blitz feels weak and slow. All of his powers also seem to fade away. Oops.
Seeing this, Void swoops his gate down to rescue Blitz, who makes a feeble attempt to dive into it.
The grey-skinned military officer leaps for Blitz as he does so, kicking him hard in the chest and breaking several ribs. Ouch.
Then the gate scoops up Blitz, and Void shuts it quickly before anything else happens.
From where we were he quickly opens another gate and we pass through to safety in a barn in France.
We have a brief discussion regarding what to do next, with the result that Void then takes us to the cave under the hill in France to seek some medical assistance from Baron Charles de Bourges.
Upon our arrival in the cave, the Baron is quickly summoned and briefed on the situation. Medical attention is summoned.
Medics with stretchers quickly arrive, and we are taken to a medical tent outside. Servo insists on walking, but Blitz accepts the help of a stretcher to get here. As he is carried off, Blitz recovers from the power-sapping attack, and the world seems to slow down again.
In the medical tent, Servo's arm is splinted and he is given morphine against the pain. The doctors can do little else for now. Blitz's ribs are also strapped up.
With all of the excitement over, Bethany, via Void, tells us that she will go to tell Noesis what has just happened.
We discuss the situation before she goes, and decide that, as there is this new group of New Commonwealth superhumans at large we need to get to Boston as soon as we can and finish things as quickly as possible. We ask her to ask Noesis to arrange an arrival point in Boston for us. She agrees to do so, and fades away.
We intend to cross the Atlantic by way of Void's gates. Truth asks the Baron for a dinghy to sit in en route to America. One is sent for.
At this point a soldier comes running in and reports to the Baron. He says there has been an attack in the cave. A hole in space much like Void's opened up, gunfire came through and then it closed. Oops.
We advise the Baron to change the Octuple Alliance headquarters here, because the New Commonwealth now know where he is. He takes this on board.
In Boston Castle, Noesis feels Bethany slide into his mind, and greets her. They exchange news.
Bethany tells him about the Southampton attack, and the new superhumans.
He tells her about the Telluric Energy Projector, the mad scientist Quincy, the robot and the dwarves.
After a little discussion they decide that a good arrival point for the rest of us will probably be one of Boston's many cemeteries. That being so, Noesis goes off to find a suitable location, slipping out of Boston Castle in the same way he came in.
Moving away from Boston Castle, Noesis is struck by the fact that one of Boston's many warehouses might be a better place for us to arrive in than a cemetery. He begins to look for a suitable one. Most of the warehouses are very active at this time of day, not appearing to be too bothered by the loss of electrical power.
However, about half a mile from Boston Castle, Noesis finds a couple of quiet run-down-looking warehouses at the poorer end of the docks. He goes up to the roof to give the area a more thorough survey, and from this picks out a list of landmarks to help Void vector in to this location.
He then checks the inside of the warehouse, and finds it largely empty, containing only a small number of sacks of coffee.
Back in France a dinghy is provided to the rest of us, and with everyone ready, Void opens the first gate far to the west, revealing the swells of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. We and the dinghy go through, and we shortly find ourselves on the high seas.
The dinghy is being thrown about quite a lot in fairly rough weather. Void quickly opens his gate even further to the west, and we go through again. The weather seems worse here, but we carry on. Again the next jump takes us to even rougher weather, and worse again, before beginning to ease off.
After a couple of hops Bethany joins us via Void. Through him she passes on the news she received from Noesis, and then leaves for Boston again.
After a few more hops Void sees land through his gate, and we pass through it to escape sea sickness and possible drowning. To find ourselves in a wintry forest, presumably somewhere in North America. At the moment we are not too bothered exactly where we are, just that we are in somewhere quiet from which we can then navigate to Boston.
From our woodland hideout, Void spends a while hunting around with his gate and quickly finds the city of Boston.
Meanwhile, Noesis passes on the details of the warehouse he has selected to Bethany. It is the third warehouse on the left after the big red ship named 'The Angry Christ'.
Returning to the rest of us, Bethany passes these details on to Void, who quickly finds said warehouse and opens a gate into it. We all pass through this to join Noesis.
After greetings are exchanged, Noesis does his healing thing on Servo, fixing his arm and even filtering the remaining morphine out of his system. Servo feels much better for this.
Noesis then moves on to Blitz and heals his broken ribs.
Void, Blitz, Noesis and Servo all being quite tired by now, we discuss future plans for a while, then eat and rest. We decide that giving Servo a look at the Telluric Energy Projector machine is probably a good way to start.
While we rest Bethany slips back to Britain to talk to some of her contacts there before returning to us.
She tells us that the various docks are still blocked. Also, the freedom fighters we assisted - the Fen Tigers and the Irish Royalist Army - are making attacks in East Anglia and Ireland to quite good effect.
Later that night, after we are all rested, Void, under direction from Noesis, opens up a small portal into the TEP room under Boston Castle and Servo peers through.
Despite the late hour there is activity in the room. The emergency lights show that half a dozen of the dwarves are still busy with the TEP. The robot is still there (red eyes glowing, but stationary in the same place as before). However, is no sign Dr Quincy.
With Void moving his gate as directed, Servo first looks at the notes on the doctor's bench. From what he can see of them, Servo can tell that much of them are quite meaningless. From what he sees Servo does not understand how some of this actually works. He also concludes that Quincy is also clearly quite mad.
All of this takes Servo a couple of hours.
Even then he does not know how the TEP works, but he does have an idea of what it does. It produces Telluric Energy (whatever that is!), which is projected through the earth to re-surface at any location required. This can then activate the Telluric powers of the potentially blessed.
Quincy can apparently also locate and track potential and actual blessed using another of his machines, displaying their locations on a large screen attached to a machine up against one wall.
Again using Void's gate, which he directs into this machine, Servo disables this part of the system in a reversible way so that it is useless now but we can use it later.
Then Void closes his gate and we consider how to proceed.
A new plan is hatched. Servo will replace Quincy and work out how this machine works in detail. In particular, does it have a reverse gear? That is, can is be used to 'de-power' blessed?
That being decides, Noesis goes looking for Quincy. Void gates him back into Boston Castle, where he re-enters the walls and begins to look around. Quincy is no longer in the TEP room. Outside the armoured bank-vault-like door of the room a passageway leads off. There are several doors. Behind one he finds a bedroom containing several of the dwarves. Behind another he finds Quincy asleep in bed, along with three beautiful naked women. Noesis then returns to the gate and to Servo, and relays what he has discovered.
Noesis describes how Quincy talks and acts as he uses his powers to transmogrify Servo into a duplicate of him.
Servo then does a practice Quincy impression for Noesis to see how close he is. Noesis watches him, and finds that Servo seems to be doing very well. Good.
Servo also asks Bethany (currently riding along with Void) to make contact with him so that she can make contact with him later on in the plan and be a means of communication between us. At Bethany's request, Void touches Servo, and Servo feels Bethany pass into him.
They chat, and Bethany concentrates on forming a solid enough link to Servo to be able to go to him at range. This is soon done, then Bethany moves into Noesis.
With the help of Void, Noesis, with Bethany riding along, return to the depths of Boston Castle and Noesis positions himself in Quincy's quarters, where they lie in wait.
The rest of us wait.
A few hours later Quincy crawls out of bed and goes to his bathroom. Once he is inside, Noesis seals the door behind him and Bethany slips off and contacts Void. Void opens up a gate in place of the mirror in the bathroom and Servo stands ready on the other side.
Quincy spots Servo, despite his attempts to mimic him like a real mirror image. Well, the background is different! He is startled and confused and begins to demand who Servo is and what he is doing.
Servo briefly attempts to claim that he is Quincy, but then grabs him and pulls him through the gate to the rest of us.
Servo then goes back through the gate into the bathroom. Noesis unseals the door and Servo exits and joins the lovely ladies.
He does what seems to be a passable impression of Quincy being mad and unpredictable for the benefit of the harem, kicking out two of them and having the remaining one help him dress. He then exits the bedroom and goes to work in the lab.
Meanwhile, back in the warehouse, the protesting Quincy is knocked out and put to one side.
In the TEP room, Servo enters to find that the dwarves have failed to fix the machine. Servo rants randomly, hits one of them and goes over to the bench covered with notes. The dwarves seem to see nothing unusual about this.
He makes some more notes as he searches through the many pieces of paper on the bench, but keeps them with him as he has difficulty mimicking Quincy's appalling scrawl. The papers on the bench are utterly disorganised, and comes in many different forms, from the backs of envelopes and napkins to proper writing paper, all covered in scrawl and diagrams, with many crossings out and corrections.
Servo begins the task of wading through all of this in search of clues.
Among the notes he finds some references to 'The Automaton', apparently the robot here. From the notes it was built as an experimental war machine, but was abandoned as being too slow, heavy and unreliable. Quincy seems to find it useful around the lab, though. It works on very simple instructions given to it from a console (which is on one side of the room) or by a list of people whose voice it recognises. The voice database currently contains just Quincy and the dwarves.
Back in the warehouse, a plan is hatched.
When we bring Quincy around, we will have him interviewed by Cromwell. He will be told that he is being taken off of the TEP project, which is now being run by someone else, and instead he is being put onto the project of undoing its effects.
To help with this, Noesis morphs Blitz into a Cromwell look-alike, and then reconstructs part of the ground beneath the warehouse to look like a small laboratory.
From further examination of Quincy's notes, Servo determines that the TEP machine has been used around a dozen times since it was built. Looking at what dates and times there are for these events, he concludes that all of us except for Noesis were turned into 'blessed' by it.
The notes seem to indicate that each use of the machine normally creates just one blessed, but that Cromwell forced Quincy to use it on six people at once in Southampton to combat us.
Servo tinkers with the TEP machine and with the machine for detecting and tracking the blessed, taking of panels and poking around inside while trying to see how they work. They are both very complicated and complex. From the notes they are also quite temperamental. The TEP machine in particular contains many electronic valves each of a unique design and each one seemingly hand-made. Servo is still not entirely clear on how any of this works.
As he tinker he observes the dwarves. He quickly sees that they seem to be exceptionally strong, and quite fast too. They are easily lifting weights of around a tonne, and seem to be as fast as Truth is here. All the dwarves appear to be called Abraham.
He rants at them as seems to be normal for Quincy, then suddenly turns on one and quizzes him about his family.
"We ain't got any family," replies the Dwarf. "Well, they are all dead."
Oh.
Servo then complains about Cromwell, attempting to provoke a response from them.
They appear to be afraid of Cromwell, and avoid joining in with 'Quincy's attempts at putting him down.
Servo then follows some of them as they leave the room. They go into the suite of rooms down the corridor outside which Noesis found before. It only has one bed. The dwarves look around resignedly as 'Quincy' barges in.
Servo watches as two of the dwarves standing close together suddenly shimmer and merge together to form a single one, like two drops of water merging to form one of the same size.
He leaves and returns to the laboratory. As he goes there Bethany joins him.
They discuss the situation, and Servo passes on all the information he has found out so far to her.
Meanwhile, back in the new 'lab' under the warehouse Quincy starts to come around...