Session 1.14 Index Session 1.16
Szechuan wanders about the ship tinkering with parts of it, aided by his imaginary engineering team.
Bingbong prepares to wander off to continue his seduction of Amanda in an unhappy manner.
"She may be one of the people who inflicted this on us, so we have a perfect right to break her heart and destroy her life. At least, she'll have a bit of a life before we destroy it," we argue in defence of what we are doing and making him do.
He goes off. The rest of us speculate that it might be worthwhile giving Amanda and Bingbong some of the anagathic virus when we are done, to erase all this pain and make them a happily married couple. [Thus the session title!]
The rest of take the 'Fantasy' up into space and set a course through real space for Gorre, now that we have our prospecting licence. Various targeting radars and other sensors 'paint' us as we go, so we show off as we fly out, but not to the full extent of our ship's capabilities. It will take roughly six days to fly to Gorre, and indeed Clarent or any of its moons...
As we fly, we do more research on Gorre using what we (Ak mainly) have been able to get from the Camelot corporate intranet. The moon of Gorre has a population of 40000, all in Gorre Town. It seems that, in addition to there being no hotels and only a company hostel on Gorre (used for company business only), there are no restaurants, only company canteens, run by non-LFM personnel. We could, apparently, rent rooms in people's apartments on the sly, but this is technically not allowed. As visitors we will only be allowed into the Gorre Town dome as far as the maintenance bay and company shop, directly adjacent to the spaceport.
Ozymandias puts forward the plan that we have two things to do at Gorre:
Everyone else agrees with this.
And after six days we arrive at Clarent. We refuel at the gas giant, a very dark, cold place, a blue gas giant viewed under dim red light, then fly out again towards Gorre. As we do so, we detect a few satellites in orbit around Gorre and the other moons in the system. As for other ships, there seem to be three at Gorre two SDBs, one, the Isordil, in orbit, the other, the Gantanol, on the ground. There is also a Kantrex-class (Tessalon-type) ship, the Tamiflu, on the ground at Gorre town, and a few seeker-type ships about too, surveying or on the surface. We also detect a number of neutrino sources, of the various space vessels, and also one for each dome at Gorre Town and its labs. Our densitometer scans tell us that the domes are thick-walled, and contain large open spaces; their resolution is not enough to tell us more than that.
Arriving at Gorre, we go into a low, fast, polar orbit and begin scanning. It is very cold here. The ship's sensors tell us that the average surface temperature of Gorre is about 10K.
There seem to be a few mining camps dotted over the surface of Gorre, mostly associated with the landed seeker ships we detected earlier. As we zip overhead, we are hailed by the seeker 'Terawatt'. "What are you doing here?" asks the voice at the other end of the radio link.
We reply that we are doing a high-tech survey of Gorre. They seem concerned that we are there to put them out of jobs, and want to know who we are working for. "No-one," we tell them. "We are waiting for our Escort Licence to be approved and doing this to pass the time. We'll sell data to you, help you."
"What are your rates?" they ask.
We tell them we don't know - we'll work something out. "We'll help," they say, in a manner that implies we might well not get the best deal out of any such help.
We ask where we could get a decent meal on Gorre. Apparently the best (and indeed only) place is the company shop at Gorre Town - but they'll charge you heavily for the privilege. We thank them and sign off.
As we zoom along in our surveying orbit, we are hailed by a few other miners, and have similar conversations to the one we had with the crew of the 'Terawatt', giving them the same story. There are no hails from Gorre Town.
As our orbit takes us over Gorre Town we cannot help but notice that there are signs of months-old damage, now repaired, on the Genetic Engineering Research dome, and at the spaceport. We speculate that these are the signs of our escape.
After a couple of days a Dolobid-type ship, the Tasmar, flies in and lands at Gorre Town. As we fly overhead we notice things being transferred between it and the town, in both directions. Six hours after the arrival of the Tasmar, the Tamiflu takes off and heads out away from Clarent until it reaches the point where it can jump away.
A day later, we find a mineral deposit, and start the claim-staking process. This is apparently a two-stage process. First, one makes a tentative claim to protect what you might have found, then you have to actually go and take samples to prove that there is actually something there worth claiming. Claims can be sold in either stage. We do the first part of this.
Another few days pass, during which time the 'Tasmar' leaves Gorre and jumps away to somewhere. The two SDBs also swap positions, the Gantanol going up into orbit, then the Isordil coming down to the surface of Gorre.
Better plans of attack are sought. We can have the element of surprise, and we can, if we want, place missiles in space, pre-programmed to do things after we are gone. For example, all drop from orbit at once.
Ozymandias worries that any evidence we find may be tainted if we commit a massacre to get it. Fair point.
We also find a few more average-sized mineral deposits.
Then we get a radio call from Bingbong on our secure (scrambled and very hard to detect) communicators. He is married now. Ozymandias is unhappy that we were not invited. "You're all just gits I once met," complains Bingbong.
We interrogate him further over what he has found out. Apparently he met some of the people we are interested in at the wedding, which took place not long after the Tasmar arrived from Camelot. He has not been able to get hold of any interesting data - that all seems to be held on a secure and physically separate network in the lab. He has been able to get hold of floor-plans, a copy of which he sends us, and directory information on the people who live here, which he also sends us.
Apparently Professor Orkisthros lives in an apartment in the genetic engineering laboratory complex. We are amazed at how sad that is. All the other members of the team from Rhylanor live in the Gorre Town dome itself, which is also where the Dinnergongs now live. "She's very happy," Bingbong concludes.
We ask him about what Amanda does. Apparently she is part of the scientific support services in the genetic engineering labs. The research scientists order genetically engineering microbes and they make them to order. Which is apparently quite a challenging job in its own right. So she may have had an indirect hand in the anagathic virus, but probably not knowingly.
Then we ask about security in Gorre Town. Bingbong tells us that everyone carries an identity card, which is scanned on going into and out of the town and laboratory domes (this is done remotely - there are no card-swiping systems). These scan points include the terminii of the monorails to the lab domes. Bingbong himself has a probationary identity card; he is not a citizen yet. The offices of corporate Security (the Corporate Police) are in the middle of the Gorre Town dome.
We ask Bingbong if he can steal an identity card, or whether we could? He tells us that he is an exotic foreigner here, in whom people are interested, so it is possible that that could be done.
We could certainly, given the relative tech levels of Caliburn and our ship, reproduce the identity cards. The ship has a three-dimensional printer that should certainly be up to the job. Could we take someone on a joyride and 'borrow' their cards then? We can certainly legitimately meet Bingbong, as we knew him before he was married, so we arrange to call him by legitimate channels and sign off.
Then we call Gorre Town and an operator puts us through to Bingbong. Greetings are exchanged. We arrange to meet in the canteen of the company shop tomorrow, without Amanda being there. We 'banter' with Bingbong regarding his newly married life, then sign off.
Ak calls Bingbong back on the secure channel and asks him for a description of the identity cards. Bingbong sends a picture of his to us, and then, during the night, of Amanda's. All passes look the same, and do include a photograph of the bearer. Ak begins work on creating bogus passes.
We order a present for the Dinnergongs from the company shop's internet site. It is a dinner gong, inscribed with the words 'Bon Apetit from your caring colleagues at Fantasy Escort Services'. This costs 50 Cr. From its web site the company shop is very much a general shop - pretty much anything can be bought or ordered from it.
And next day, we land at Gorre Town for lunch. The spaceport is really just a cleared patch of ground with, basically, no facilities at all. We troop across the cold, dark surface of Gorre and into the Gorre Town dome via one of the two airlocks into the shop/maintenance area. Security guards on the airlock issue us all with visitors passes, and warn us not to leave the shop and maintenance area other than to return to our ship.
Inside, the shop is like a small warehouse. It is very crowded with shelves containing a wide variety of goods, but no variety in brands - there is only one kind of everything to choose from. There are not many people shopping at the moment. The cafe area (which is a self-service facility) is off to one side, with a maintenance/workshop area visible through a glass wall beyond.
Bingbong is at a table waiting for us. He is haggard-looking and is nursing a drink. He looks rather older than he did before.
We complement him on how well he looks! Small talk occurs. Bingbong grits his teeth and looks less and less happy to be here. How he misses us! But he does slide his identity card across to Ak under the table.
We all get food and drink from the cafe. Ak eats quickly, then makes his excuses and goes off back to the ship to 'recalibrate the sensors'. The guards check and reclaim his pass on the way out.
The rest of us make painful small talk with the guilty and angry Bingbong. Some of the locally-made alcoholic beverage is consumed. Bingbong describes it as 'interesting', and tells us he has developed a taste for it.
He then goes on to describe his dull life as a probationary house-husband to us. This is in fact a lie - in reality he is continuing his anagathic research, though he has had no major breakthroughs recently. "Hopefully Amanda will be able to get me a job in one of the domes," he says. "Working and everything."
On the 'Fantasy', Ak works on Bingbong's identity card. Over the course of two hours he finds that the card broadcasts a unique time-varying identification code, with the seed for the time variation being unique to the card (so that eavesdropping on what one card is doing does not allow you to work out what other cards are doing, or to copy others cards based on their signals). There is a fault signal if the card fails in some manner. Each card can only be written to once, and cannot be altered once written to, so it is possible to create blank cards onto which information can later be loaded.
Once he has found this out, he makes what he hopes is a working copy of Bingbong's card. This takes fifteen minutes or so. Then he makes a copy of Amanda's card, but with the fault signal as the only thing it can do. This can be swapped for hers at some point. This too takes fifteen minutes or so. And then he makes various blank identity cards for later use.
With that done, he returns to the Gorre Town dome, carrying the copies of his cards in a shielded box (so their transmissions do not give us away).
For the rest of us, the three hours have passed in painful small-talk. Everyone is happy to see Ak when he returns. He stays with Bingbong while everyone else escapes to collect our gift to the Dinnergongs. Ak slips the package of identity cards to Bingbong under the table.
Then Ak asks Bingbong about children. He glares at Ak.
The rest of us return with the gift. Bingbong is less than impressed with it.
We wish him good luck, and say that we must talk again later. "Keep in touch," we say as we leave and go back to the ship, with a plan to play with the security system now that we know a bit about it...
From the ship, Ak uses his system logon (which does work here, its addition having had enough time to percolate through the system from Camelot) to check the local security system. The identity cards are not just identity cards; they are also credit cards, medical (and other) record holders and room keys (to people's homes). There are turnstile gates at the monorail terminii, which raise a flag if someone tries to go through with more than one pass on them. This is both for security reasons and to avoid timesheet fraud. Apparently duplicate passes will raise a flag at security headquarters, but people will still be let in. New passes are made at security headquarters; people have to physically go there to do this. The security system runs off of a computer in security headquarters. We wonder if we could somehow crash this computer to make all the doors everywhere revert to a default 'open' state.
Ak investigates this further, and quite quickly, almost as if remembering it from somewhere, finds a loophole in the security computer system. A database access sequence that causes a subtle system crash of exactly the type we want. Lucky! However, the crash will not last forever, so time will be limited. We would need a plan of what to do once we caused the crash.
For the time being we plan a joyride for some locals with our borrowing the card of the joyridee.
So, Ozymandias and Ak dress up in their most exotic off-world clothing, and leave the ship to go sharking for women in the shop. Szechuan doesn't go. Apparently he is dating someone on the engineering team. The shop's cafe is quiet now, it being mid-to-late afternoon. So Ozymandias and Ak sit and drink sensibly, and wait.
At about six o'clock people start to drift in, and muzak begins to play in the background. Apparently the shop is the most happening place in Gorre Town.
After a while, as the place starts to fill up, a pair of average-looking women in their late twenties wander over to Ozymandias and Ak and ask whether they are from the ship that landed today. They say they are, and go with the plan of having the two women along for a joyride. Ozymandias feeds them a line with the aid of Ak , and eventually the two women, Wilhemina and Ashandra, go back to the ship with them.
They don't seem too pleased to see Scarlett when they get aboard, and ask who she is. They are told that she is a 'colleague', and won't be coming along on the joyride. They give Wilhemina and Ashandra a tour of the ship, during which time Scarlett pilfers their identity cards, and leaves for the cafe with the pilfered cards in a shielded container. Szechuan hides in the engine room. From their cards Wilhemina and Ashandra are nurses at the Research Hospital.
Following the tour, Ozymandias takes the ship up and out into space, first around Gorre, then off to Clarent. He lets Wilhemina and Ashandra each have a go at the controls. This is the most exiting thing to have ever happened to them, it would appear. Drinks are drunk as they fly, then the kissing starts. Wilhemina and Ashandra are definitely on for this. The 'Fantasy' is put onto auto-pilot and people retire to the staterooms...
Back in Gorre Town, Scarlett gets a visitors pass from the airlock guard, then swaps it with Wilhemina's pass and goes out of the shop into the town proper. She wanders the halls of the town for a little while, then decides to go and have a look at the Research Hospital.
There are a few people waiting for a monorail car, and a few more get off when the car arrives from the hospital. Everyone boards the car via the turnstile, and the car moves off. At the hospital, everyone exits the car through another turnstile and goes into the hospital. Scarlett wanders the halls with a competent manner, like she knows what she's doing and where she's going. No-one bothers her.
She finds that the hospital has a lot of low berths as well as wards, operating theatres, laboratories, scanner facilities, tissue culture facilities and research animals in cages. There is a Psychiatric Wing too, as well as support facilities - records offices, administration areas, apartments and so on. Several thousand people seem to work here.
On the 'Fantasy', Ak subtly quizzes Wilhemina about the hospital, her work, the patients she works with and so on. She tells him that nurses don't just work in the hospital - they also work in the two research labs, and they do transfer between the three facilities. No nurse work in the distribution centre. She doesn't know any details on her patients identities, only their conditions and treatments.
Scarlett reconnoitres the Research Hospital. She finds some staff lounges and locker rooms, from one of which she steals a lab coat in her size to cover her normal clothes. It and the nurses uniforms have a SuSAG logo on them. As she moves around she notices that the hospital is of a considerably higher tech level than Gorre Town - more like the sort of thing we saw on Rhylanor.
She slips into one of the low berth facilities and examines it more closely. There seem to be about two thousand low berths here, with an automatic forklift-type stacking system to move them in and out of their slots. About three quarters have people in them. She records a dozen or so names from the displays on the low berth capsules, for later reference, but cannot access any other information - it seems to be password protected.
That done, she leaves the hospital and gets the monorail back to Gorre Town, taking the white coat with her.
Back in town she goes to check the quarters of Wilhemina and Ashandra. They seem to share an apartment. Scarlett quickly searches it. There are four rooms - a kitchen/living/dining room, a bathroom and two bedrooms. Unfortunately, she finds nothing incriminating. Wilhemina in particular seems squeaky-clean. Then she checks the email system. Again, there is nothing incriminating. Wilhemina does gossip about Ashandra, but that's about it. All quite dull really.
With that done, Scarlett goes back to the shop's cafe, observing the security guard patrols as she goes. There are some. The guards go in pair, wear light body armour, and carry snub pistols, truncheons, and some sort of spray can at their belt.
There are a lot of people in the cafe when Scarlett gets back there. Various people talk to her about being from the starship, trying to charm. None have any luck. She mingles, talking to lots of people but none for very long, looking for a security guard or someone who works in the genetic engineering lab. Unfortunately, she does not find anyone meeting that description.
At about this point, the 'Fantasy' lands back at the Gorre Town spaceport. Wilhemina and Ashandra are quite drunk by this stage. Ak and Ozymandias get their contact details from them - they want to do this again - even though they have no real intention of seeing them again. Ak asks what people do for fun here. Apparently they watch TV, drink, or go to dances in the staff canteens. What a happening place this is!
Back inside, there is a large crowd around Scarlett when she gets a call from the ship asking her to come back. This she does, to the regret of everyone else there, and when she gets back to the 'Fantasy' the identity cards of Wilhemina and Ashandra are carefully returned, with them seeming none the wiser. Then Wilhemina and Ashandra are escorted back to Gorre Town. Kisses are exchanged and goodnights are said...
Back on the ship, Ak and Ozymandias discuss guilt.
Scarlett tells everyone what she has found out, and has Ak check the names from the low berths on the intranet here. They are listed under the hospital's web site. They are all rich people with a variety of currently untreatable conditions, from a variety of worlds across the Spinward Marches sector, of varying ages (though they are mostly old). They have been here for between 126 and 8 years. All are listed as being in the hospital here (rather than anything more sinister). Hmmm...
Then Ak checks the list of people who are 'in storage' awaiting a cure for our original names. The names do not appear, and as far he can tell no flag is raised either.
When Scarlett mentions how high-tech the hospital seemed, Ak points out the sense of using high-tech equipment there, even if not in the town itself.
And we consider what to do next...