Notes taken by Alastair and Samantha Beadle.
Session 2.8 Index Session 2.10
Darkness falls. Servo manages to construct a Geiger counter and a radio signal detector after Noesis wonders about radio transmissions and nuclear reactor meltdowns. Servo finds out that there are no radio signals bar a high pitched tone which is coming from the South West. The background radiation level has increased to about twice its 1995 level, Blitz shows a higher level of radiation still (though not enough to be dangerous) when the radiation detector is pointed at him. A second radio detection from the Telecom Tower doesn't show any change of direction - the signal is obviously coming from far away. Rather than going to Wembly in the dark, everyone meets up at the top of the Telecom Tower. After discussions about what we can do we decide to spend the night there. We all sleep, John Doe helpfully turns into a four poster bed for Truth, the unconscious Naomi and Blitz to sleep on, the others find chairs or sleep on the floor, Servo has to reveal his true identity as he cannot sleep in the armour, he is Malcolm Forfield, dynamic young inventor responsible for the sucess of Colmar Technologies.
Everyone wakes. We all feel very refreshed and are not hungry. Naomi is looking better but shows no signs of waking as yet. We decide to go to Wembley. Servo remains behind to stay with Naomi.
We fly to the outskirts of Wembley. Truth goes on ahead (as she cannot be hurt by most weapons), and the others follow. Truth approaches the barricades and asks to speak to The Sergeant. After some discussion with a man named Wilkins, we are taken to watch the morning court which is being held by The Sergeant, prior to talking to us. All the inhabitants of Wembly (about 50 tired-looking "peasents") are there. A man called Thomas is on trial for running away, The Sergeant (who is obviously Avenger aged by about 20 years, seated on a crudely gold-painted throne on a dias, with a big blaster over his lap; three others are on the dias with him - a man in a business suit, a woman in urban camoflage, apparently made of polished wood, and a man in rough-seeming normal clothes; Noesis finds that the 2038 Avenger's mind in almost psychopathic - much more so than the 1995 Avenger) finds the man guilty and sentences him to being crippled to stop him running away again. Avenger decides to object to the older Avenger's behaviour and shoots the man trying to carry out the sentence.The older Avenger decides to talk to us and holds off the execution of the sentence until later. He asks who we are and we tell him we are the London knights, he says we are all dead except him, he gets his Chief of Security (the highly polished wood woman) to check us out. She touches us all and says we are who we claim to be except John Doe (currently appearing female and calling herself Joanne) who she wishes to check further. John Doe feels something very very strange and complex for a second, then its shut off abruptly. The "peasents" are dismissed before the 2038 Avenger speaks.
We ask what happened to cause the plague. The older Avenger says that we stormed the base and attacked the Viper agents and a Catman (supervillian). Blitz blasted a canister marked with a biohazard sign, the resultant release caused Blitz to start to glow then he burned through the roof and exploded (causing the big crater on the South Bank of the Thames and flooding the Viper base). Avenger seemed unaffected by the plague, Noesis fell from the air, Truth solidified in a wall, Servo died in his armour, and Cronos aged to dust, John Doe just vanished in the confusion. The plague quickly spread across the world, and still exists as most babies still die from it.
The polished wooden woman asks to speak to Joanne and takes him/her aside. She places a hand on Joanne's shoulder and starts whittering about 'not believing it was possible', and claiming that she was John Doe's mother. She starts to make him shrink despite his resistance until he is the size of a tennis ball, then she swallows him. At this point Noesis, Blitz and Cronos attack her to little effect. John Doe feels himself being pulled apart. Until now John Doe seemed unable to react but he suddenly pulls himself back together (causing the woman to lose control of her shape a little) recovers his powers and forces his way up her throat. The older Avenger asks Megan (the polished wood woman) what she is doing, she says she will explain later. Eventually John Doe forces a tentacle up her throat and she vomits him out.
John Doe transforms himself into the now familiar silver demon with spiky bits. Megan continues to smile and being enigmatic about what she was up to, basically ignoring John Doe when he attacks her. She does say she thinks John Doe is her child, but that she was unaware of his existence until now. He asks how old he is. She says 12000 years, give or take. She says she was only analysing John Doe and would probably have reassembled him once she was done. According to her, John Doe is damaged and ignorant. We discuss what would happen if Avenger was killed by Avenger, when the older Avenger says he thinks we should leave. He says that the only other useful thing he can tell us is that more of the spidery robots came out of the sewers soon after the release of the plague, he doesn't know what happened to Canary Wharf. He says he will let Thomas off this time out of respect for the younger Avengers feelings, and we all leave.
We arrive back at the Telecom Tower and tell Servo what Avenger told us. Soon after Naomi wakes up. She calls Cronos Uncle Bernard (everyone laughs). She is too weak to send us back at the moment, we are not really there which is why we don't need food or are affected by the plague. She also doesn't know what happened to Canary Wharf, she was raised by another version of herself who came back to raise her, and who disappeared one day. She is a renegade and is alone, she wants to stop the destruction of the world even if it means wiping this version of herself out. From what she says, she appears generally quite ignorant.
We decide to go and check out the Viper base and locate the canister's position and find the exact layout of the base. Truth, Noesis and John Doe submerge to check the flooded base, the others go and check out local betting shops etc for sports results so we can make some cash when we go back to our time zone. The radiation levels are higher here (around Blitz's crater) than elsewhere in London.
Truth, Noesis and John Doe soon find the plague canister in a lab. It appears to have many levels of containment, all of which were burned through by one of Blitz's plasma bolts. It is attached to various bits of equipment (which John Doe memorises so he can reproduce it for later examination by experts). We find the bodies of some of the London Knights in the lab (Servo, Truth - a skeleton halfway through a wall, and Noesis). There are the bodies of about twenty Viper agents in the whole base, there are claw marks on some of the walls. John Doe and Noesis collect the rusty Noesis shell, Servo armour and Truth's cat suit from the base. We notice that the pattern of damage on the "old" armour caused by Breaking Glass are different to the scratches on "our" Servo's armour.
After finishing there and returning the dead Noesis shell and Servos body to the river, we all go to a bank vault where Naomi has collected various newspapers. We notice that some of the stories are different from the stories we recognise (Naomi did not appear in the pub where Avenger beat up the cameramen, for example). Of the newspapers for our future the stories go:
Then the newspapers stopped being produced, the last one about a day after the plague was released. Naiomi says that once she found the stash of newspapers she was able to start trying to stop the release of the plague, but it's hard to go back so far - that's why she kept appearing and vanishing.
We take some of the newspapers back with us to Telecom Tower so we can work out a betting accumulator to "earn" some cash to more effectively fight crime when we get home. We also stop at Canary Wharf. Just the tower has gone, there is a large flat area with triangular pits at each corner. The radiation level is also higher here, there are bits of metal and glass spread around the area (hidden under the undergrowth). We also check out the Tower of London (the crown jewels are gone, as are the ravens) and Buckingham Palace, but find nothing interesting.
We spend another night in the Telecom Tower, we work out an accumulator to bet on when we get back, on Australian horse races, on the assumption that the plague won't have affected their outcomes at all. Servo takes some persuading to take part in this, but eventually does.
Naomi is feeling much stronger and she sits on the floor, we all hold hands and the twisting sensation starts, we are wrenched from the time zone and swirling greyness is seen. When we open our eyes we are back in our time, in the little room with the table and lamp at the end of the tunnel to the Viper base. We are with some STOP agents who tell us that the Viper agents have barricaded themselves into the base, it is now 8.30 pm on Friday (we left at 11.00 am on Friday). Naomi is still with us; she wants to try and help us.
Firstly we send Cronos out to place the accumulator at a number of bookies, we get odds of 1000-1 and place all the cash we have on us - about £1250, mostly from Servo and Cronos.
Then we show the STOP experts the layout of the base and the machinery around the canister by John Doe transforming into a map. They seem rather confused by our story, but who wouldn't be. The experts identify that there is a safety control which will destroy the contents of the canister by flash-frying it, but a security code is needed. The plan we decide on is that Truth will take John Doe into the base to the canister (she can manage to carry him desolid if she doesn't carry her utility belt and John Doe goes as small as he can) and they will get someone to give them the code and destroy the contents of the canister, while the others and STOP attack the base somewhere else to distract the other Viper agents.