Fallout Blues : Fallout Series Discussion

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 12:23 am

51 :intergalactic:
ARCHAVO: WITH THE THIRD PRINCESS #3

The shadow thing that had ‘possessed’ the third princess was made up of special nanobots but of a very different kind that Archavo himself utilised when linked to the entity or force he called the ‘Light’. Yet the shapeform created by the Dark nanobots had claimed itself to be a mad president who was supposed to have died almost exactly three hundred years ago, on Doomsday. It was a most mysterious and disturbing situation!

The caster-ants were gone from the city of the metallica-ants except for the malformed ones and dying ones brought to Archavo. Those that wanted to be saved were saved while others died peacefully.

The third princess wen slept except for brief moments of taking reports and giving orders to her people except when she spoke with Archavo, Justine and Professor Brown. Sometimes she spent time alone with the agent-ant who had gained a special status with her for the much smaller giant-ant even slept next to the princess at times on the cushioned platform.

Archavo had hoped for some clarification of recent events from the metallica-ant third princess but when it came to the conflict between the metallica-ants and the caster-ants he was disappointed. The third princess had not willingly even considered allying herself with the caster-ants but when the shadow thing had entered her she had at first been its helpless puppet. Yet its control had rapidly begun to fall away and the third princess had regained much of her power and the alliance had failed. Her memories of the dark time were hazy; she had no real knowledge of what had been the plan behind her bizarre domination.

Archavo wondered amongst the displays of the big museum throneroom or assisted metallica-ant scribes, engineers and scientists to work out various designs, concepts and processes. It was not so much a matter of creating new technologies as adapting human technologies to metallica-ant uses. There were things that he carefully did not give them but he never lied about this if confronted.

The humans watched, amazed, as the first metallica-ant driven quaddike roared around a big bare loop in the chamber and while the driver ant seemed pleased, the two passenger giant-ants clung on grimly and made unpleasant noises of protest. The machine caused giant-ants to flee in all directions and almost crashed twice into displays. The metallica-ant driver was no less than the agent-ant who was, after that, forbidden to drive any more vehicles. She crouched next to Justine and sulked; her personality had grown along with his various abilities. Justine sat and gently stroked her giant-ant head until she cheered up.

52 :wave:
ARCHAVO: WITH THE THIRD PRINCESS #3

It appeared that the attack on the metallica-ants had been a test of some kind of the abilities of the caster-ants. The caster-ant offensive had failed, had revealed weaknesses amongst the caster-ants, but in its own way this was a valuable resort to the dark power behind the attack. They, or it, had learned much and had retreated with the most successful aspects of the caster-ants. With them had also gone the super-mutants and the Greening’Lord with all of his forces.

The Greening’Lord was gone and the Unityfolk stormed into his fortress that turned out to be very different from the austere, hard working place the Greening’Lord had pretended it was. Instead it was a place of many luxuries and a dictator with dedicated women followers willing to fill his every need and desire.

The third princess went through the painless dewinging ceremony and began to lay eggs, focusing on basic workers, soldiers and servitors for such would be needed by the damaged queendom. Special workers carried the eggs to an area close to her now set up for the eggs to grow in nurtured comfort as the growing creatures inside sensed the comforting closeness of their mother, the princess.

The wings of the third princess were proudly displayed in softly glistening preserving oils against a metal plate on one wall.

The oonkeys happily returned to their old warrens and surface settlements that were strongly linked with each other. A big oonkey community was soon returning to being fairly close to the throneroom as oonkey workers, servitors and guards served there in various roles as they did in other thronerooms.

It was at this time that Justine asked Archavo to help her reduced lifespan problem with the use of the Light. Reluctantly he did so, having her lay down on a bed with the agent-ant lying snuggled up to her. The Light flowed through her and Justine both touched the agent-ant and gripped the right hand of Archavo.

Archavo blanked out peacefully and thus began a strange adventure for the three of them.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 11:55 am

53 :drool:
ARCHIE: RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #1

Archavo awoke and found himself with a new identity as Archie, an altered appearance that made him look older though still as a young man. He sat up in what was a special form of light power armour known as a survival power armour suit or SPAST. The ‘T’ was added to make a plural of the acronym easier to pronounce and to sound more dignified as in ‘two SPASTs’.

A young woman was facing him, was standing in her own SPAST of dull brown and she was, he somehow knew, a transformed version of the agent-ant. She had her helmet removed as did Archie. Her name was now Angentia and she had pitch black hair and black skin. Justine appeared to be much the same but she was looking puzzled as she crouched there in her own SPAST.

They were in a very small grassy clearing in a forest of twisted trunk mutated trees from which hung what looked like big bunches of curly blue bananas. Archie sat up as he sniffed the air carefully, sitting up in a crouch, and noted some odd tracks of something big that had recently moved through the area.

Justine shook her head as if in confusion but then she smiled. “I have had a childhood in TekVault-013, an actual childhood from baby to teenager and then I grew to being a young advlt. I feel good but puzzled. We have a past together. We grew up in TekVault-013. None of this makes sense but it feels good. We are in California, close to Mt Whitney. The vault is inside the mountain. What is happening? Is this really real?”

Archie smiled at Justine as if to reassure her. “It is real! We have been inserted into the past in such a way as not to do massive harm to the time line, to the flow of history. It would take great power, skill and knowledge to do this but what ever the ‘Light’ really is, it has them. Question is, why go to so much trouble to send the three of us back in time and to even set up past lives for us? Justine, this version of you is not an enclone and, you, Angentia, are clearly no longer a giant-ant. As for me, something tells me I am, at core, much the same as I was, will be.”

Archie stood up slowly and as he did so he picked up his lightly armoured backpack and put it on. Then he picked up his tririfle that was a combination of 20mm caseless slimshot calibre rifle, pulselaser carbine and 30mm caseless grenade-shell monolauncher. All three had each one of these, an xdart-pistol, a 10mm caseless slimshot calibre autopistol and a tripulser.

Angentia had as a back-up a snubpumper, a short barrelled 12 gauge pump-action shotgun. Justine had a 44 Magnum revolver with limited recoil suppression to improve ease of aim and use with one hand. Archie had a composite bow that he was very good with and often he used it to hunt with. Getting arrows often meant buying them from tribals who often used bows for hunting so as to conserve bullets for fighting.

Angentia sniffed the air. “I smell good things and bad things. This body is odd but I have lived a whole other life so I am at home with it. I think we are back in the past, way back before Archavo, the other Justine and the agent-ant were born. Well, hatched in my case.”

Archie went to the big, strange tracks on the ground and he knelt to inspect them more closely. Then he frowned. “We three have been out on a scouting mission secret to all in TekVault-013 except for the High Overseer and his cronies. We are on the lower slopes of the mountain side that end in raggedy foothills as created by Doomsday. The mountain was part crumbled on Doomsday but remains mostly intact. High Overseer Harry Trent gave us no real solid instructions. Basically he sent us to look around and then go home again with data recordings, samples and charts.”

He picked up a bit of earth and sniffed at it. “Three super-mutants, massemoths by the size and weight of them. I have sensory impressions of thick body-armour and chunky 20mm Slambanger autoguns. That is basic but durable automatic weapons that even stupid super-mutants would have a hard time damaging. There is a big super-mutant hound with them, a monstrous canine both hairless and ugly. Oh, yes, very aggressive. Zyhounds are what his kind is called. This is not right. Something tells me that super-mutants should not be found so close to TekVault-101 during this time period. Some force is meddling with history, with the past.”

At that moment came the forest and distance muffled sounds of Slambangers blasting away with 20mm bullets and other weapons firing, being a pair of tririfles and a tripulser, or so Archie figured.

The three of them set out at once to go to see what was going on and to perhaps to help those fighting the super-mutants.

54 :jammasterjay:
ARCHIE: RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #2

They came upon the backs of the super-mutants, three former human massemoths and one great former dog zyhound. They were firing upon a lone human, a young slimly muscular man in a blue vault-jumpsuit but with outdoor boots and kevlar body-armour including a helmet. He was armed with a tripulser but there seemed to be something wrong with it as he huddled behind a broken, half melted metal structure of some mysterious nature.

Archie, Justine and Angentia aimed their tririfles and let loose volleys of 12.5mm caseless slimshot bullets. Two massemoths shuddered and died, falling to the ground, their weapons dropping heavily to the same. The third massemoth turned and the hound whirled to attack but Archie fired off a 30mm caseless grenade-shell that exploded between them, hurling them in all directions.

The young man in the blue jumpsuit came out, craggy and tough but a smoothskin for all that. He watched in wary gratitude as Archie went over to investigate the super-mutants and then in shock as Archie did the same sort of tricks that Archavo could do. One massemoth and the hound climbed to their feet and were of the Goldenlight.

The man spoke then. “You are from TekVault-013 just as I am but I did not know they had such power armour suits in the vault. The High Overseer did not tell me of them when he gave me some basic equipment and supplies to go and seek a new AI-superchip for the vault’s life-support network-system.”

Archie nodded. “High Overseer Leslie Sarane is not to be trusted. Like your father, you are on his death list as a potential trouble maker. Sarane is quite insane. There is most likely no trouble with the AI-superchip or a spare if there is trouble. You need to go forward, though, to seek the AI-superchip because you have a destiny to fulfil. We will come with you, if you wish us to. Of course those hidden in the treetops would also be coming with you, I suppose.”

The other man looked thoughtful and then he gave a soft whistle of noise. Out of treetops dropped three tough looking young women in flexikevlar body-armour and dappled green brown combat fatigues. They had helmets, pouchbelts, pouches and boots of flexikevlar along with the vest with groin protectors. Each held a tripulser but had an xdart-pistol holstered at her side and a variety of bladed weapons, hand-grenades and other devices.

The other man spoke. “Harris Dane is my name and these are part of the rebel forces inside TekVault-013. We wish to put an end to the insanity of Leslie Sarane but you may not know of what I speak. How long have you been out from the vault?”

Justine spoke this time. “Just over a standard year.”

Harris Dane nodded. “When the dark stranger entered the vault and spoke in private with the High Overseer for five hours straight, that was when Sarane became worse than he was before. He began his Three-of-Three Programs then and his Three Projects. I suggest that we move from here and go somewhere safer since you have saved me from an attack that I did not really need help with. My friends here would have saved me.”

Justine nodded as she aimed her weapon at the man and his companions, as did Angentia and Archie. “Of course though they are enclones, as you are. Where is the real Harris Dane?”

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 9:14 am

55 :woot:
ARCHIE: RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #3

The enclone shrugged. “We do not know. Our lords and masters made a mess of things. The EagleEnclave dropped us from a vertibird about a hundred fifty Kliks from here after we were given a briefing that soon turned out to be largely in error. Harris Dane did not appear when or where he was supposed to do. Instead we ran into the super-mutants. Such monsters have been spotted a good distance from here close to the huge underground fortress of Mariposa MPB.”

An MPB was a Multiple Purpose Base. Mariposa was a mixture of military defence base with elite Patriot Guard and other forces along with extensive research, development and testing facilities. President Jack Patriot Jackson visited the base at least a dozen times in the years before Doomsday, which pointed it out as being very important to the United States of Greater America.

The transformed massemoth spoke then. “I was human once, a soldier serving in the elite First Marine Power Infantry Brigade. The scientists were secretly kidnapping Marines and dumping them into mutagenic vats after injecting them with specialised FEV. There were only a few super-mutants made by such means but when the soldiers found out what was going on, they were understandably very angry. Perhaps they would have had to fight the Patriot Guardsmen but the PGs were called away to somewhere unknown just about a month before that. They took most of their fancy hitech with them but left some useful stuff behind, mostly because the Marines bought the stuff from a corrupt PG quartermaster. It is strange now that my mind is clear and smart once more. Anyway, I know that something important is wrong. The other super-mutants and I were abducted, brain washed by some strange force and brought here to find and kill Harris Dane of TekVault-013.”

The massemoth patted the massive zyhound on the head who was much calmer now and got his hand licked in return.

Archie nodded to the massemoth. “Do you remember anything that might help?”

The massemoth nodded. “Aliens, nasty little aliens with transparent bubble-helmets and floating robots. A really big spaceship, a flying-saucer. Oh, yes, other captives including humans and animals from other historical eras. Some aliens were workers, were passive, even submissive. They were in red and the nasty aliens were in silver. There were alien farms, manufactories, workshops, laboratories and much else.”

Archie frowned. “Somebody is providing me with bits of knowledge. Zetan aliens in silver but the others are letan slaves, being of a close cousin species to the more aggressive zetans. The robots are dronetans, multiple functional with modular added weapons, tools or other devices. The saucership sounds to be a zetan mothership if it was as big as I sense you mean and had all those facilities. Bad news for this world if a zetan mothership is in orbit. This is mainly because the zetans serve a far darker and more powerful force than themselves.”

Archie then turned to the enclones. “Would you like a longer and better life?”

56 :shocking:
ARCHIE: RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #4

Archie did his thing and the Light did its thing so that each enclone was now transformed to become, as Justine was now in the future, a goldenlightclone or goldliclone. They were still for a while but when they came fully to they all spoke of experiencing ‘real lives from birth to their current age’. They had people waiting for them somewhere, in another realm.

Justine nodded. “The Light works in mysterious ways.”

Archie sighed. “The Light works to bring matters back to some kind of natural balance. A dark, disrupting force of great power has been meddling with the interweaving timelines that make up real time, which is not a straight forward linear process. Nothing is free and the Light will expect some kind of payment to be made in the form of assisting the Light to carry out its chosen tasks.”

The formerly fake Harris Dane nodded. “We will assist you. I now name myself Eva TaLonee. The real Harris Dane was supposed to have been set up, to be set out with no armour, sabotaged weapons and pitiful supplies including one poisoned foodbar. We were supposed to kidnap him and return him to the nearest EagleEnclave outpost where a vertijet would be waiting for us.”

Archie sniffed the air softly, as did the monstrous looking hound, and soon they were on the move again. This time had had new allies being one massemoth, one zyhound and four goldliclones.

Archie had gained information through the Light transformation process with the enclones. The program-processing of early generation enclones was problematic and often broke down if enclones spent too long isolated from base program-process reinforcing. Later, he more than suspected, the program-processing became much stronger and resilient. Justine had only easily transformed to a goldliclone because she was most of the way there with her own efforts to be free.

Archie was drawn to go sideways along the slope and then downwards at an angle. They followed a narrow path on a barely wider ledge with sharper slopes on either side of it. The path had marks not just of animals but of humanoids of some kind.

They came upon an area of ruins, crumbled away almost to nothingness, and amongst them signs of abandoned campfires, of a brief stop-over of a fairly large group. More humanoid footprints were there and some broken steel bits like an axe-head. There were also some spent bullet cartridges.

The massemoth growled. “Damned! Mutant cannibals like ghouls and zhouls but something between with qualities of true pack carnivores. The carniviles have retractable claws and are not, on average, as intelligent as humans or ghouls but they are terrible fighters with enhanced physical abilities. They hunt animals, eat some herbivore stuff but they seek always other humanoids as trophies and because they believe that if they eat somebody, that they gain their abilities.”

Archie nodded. “Some tribal humans, very good at passing through an area while leaving very few traces, also came this way. Yet so did something powerful, unnatural and very dangerous.”

They set out again.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 6:23 am

57 :cryvaultboy:
ARCHIE
RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #5

They came across the dead and ding carniviles scattered over a clearing with a polished metallic machine of a so called wonder-mechanism from the Decades of Technological Miracles. The DTMs were the last two decades, roughly speaking because it was twenty-two years, just before Doomsday. The nature and history of such wonder-mechanisms were blurred, often hidden, to people back then and after Doomsday.

Archie found that he did not trust something about the almost new looking metallic looking mechanism that in truth was not made of metal at all but something far stronger and more enduring. The mechanism was a perfect cube three metres high and wide. It had a square door in each side, each being two metres high and wide. Archie doubted that these doors, if they could or would be opened, would lead to some normal space or other finding.

As Archavo would know, Archie knew it was a Tranzicube and that it had something to do with instant travel of various kinds. Like all the WMs of President Jack Patriot Jackson, it was dangerous to use and even dangerous because it existed.

Archie went amongst the dead and dying carniviles. Some were transformed but most died peacefully for they wished only to go to their ‘Ever Challenging Hunting Territories’ that was there version of Heaven. The transformed carniviles were no longer such. They called them selves goldliviles and they vowed to amend their old ways and to pay for their past crimes. There were eight of them.

Again he was building up a Goldenlight army and again, as he had done as Archavo, he wondered what he would do with them.

They carefully buried dead carniviles, looting them of useful items but leaving some useful items where anybody else could easily find and use them. Archie had no doubt that animals would dig up the dead bodies and eat them but, somehow, the shallow burials had seemed the right thing to do anyway. Archie soon confirmed what he had strong sensed; that the carniviles had been smashed by the powerful, dark, unknown entity that he had sensed earlier.

Archie began to carefully examine the wonder-mechanism that, by all rights, should not have been found there and then. But even as he was doing so it suddenly vanished with a strange shimmering and thrumming, throbbing noise. He had the strong sense that the action had nothing with him being there at that time but that somehow it was linked with him in a more general sense.

58 :gun:
ARCHIE
RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #6

Again they were to hear the muffled sounds of fighting and then they were approaching, carefully and in an organised manner, a raging battle. Three figures in survival powerful armour, of the same kind that Archie and his friends were using, were firing off tripulsers and xdart-pistols at fast moving shadow things. The xdarts did damage but the tripulser pulselaser beams did even more so. Sometimes they would cause a shadowvile to die, to vanish with a disturbing purple red flickering of energies.

Dimness had come and the dark things were hard to see with normal vision unless they came closer into light. Infrared night-vision showed them up fairly poorly but ultraviolet did it well.

The defenders had allies. Ten tribals were moving quickly, speedily around the clearing and even through the treetops. They fired off arrows with exotic biocrystal tips glowing golden yellow or fiery red. The shadow robed things screamed and vanished with a strange purple red flickering if struck, the arrows falling to the ground with most of the arrowheads still glowing much but more dimly than before; some of the biocrystals were burned blackened and now useless as weapons against the shadowviles.

The surviving shadowviles fled by simply flickering out of existence, by teleporting away to arrive, almost instantly, in some other place a good distance from there.

The real Harris Dane came forward and he removed the helmet of his survival power armour. He was much like Archie in features, or like Archavo, but broader of shoulders and shorter. He studied Archie carefully for a moment and then nodded as if confirming something to himself.

He spoke. “The strange little man came to TekVault-0013 and he influenced the High Overseer to give over to me proper equipment and supplies to me. He did this by simply asking the High Overseer very politely to do so. The High Overseer also admitted that there was no real urgent reason to go looking for a replacement AI-superchip for the vault’s life service-support network-system. The High Overseer also opened all his secret instruction and other datafiles to everybody in TekVault-013 before he resigned. Another, better and more popular High Overseer now rules but with constitutional restraints and both an Overseers Council and an Elective Council to keep an eye on her.

“The strange little man somehow filled up big empty storerooms with spare equipment and supplies, including much that was needed. There are some odd new items like bicycles, handcarts and other items that would make vault life better but which none of us in TekVault-013 even considered using. But the strange little man also sealed off a part of the vault that nobody but the old High Overseer knew existed and even he had not known what was in it. You, Archie, are meant to find out what is in that sealed off part of the vault and decide what is to be done with it. I was sent to find you and then to set out to fulfil a big quest and some smaller quests.”

Archie did not like being manipulated and he wondered what link there was between the Light, with its Goldenlight influence, and the ‘strange little man’. Also, what was the link between them, the dark single presence of great power and the shadowviles? What was the link between any of these and the shadowy figure he had dealt with, would deal with, as Archavo in the past-future?

Time travel was damned complicating and complicated.

Harris Davis spoke. “You are to go to TekVault-013 and we are to go to TekVault-015 to find something special there and to be somebody special. I am told that you will meet us there. I suppose the tribals, who came to our rescue, are with you.”

Archie just shook his head in the negative.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 9:07 am

59 :vaultboy:
ARCHIE
RELIVING THE PAST WITH NEW LIVES #7

The tribals dropped down into sight being five women and five men in flexible light hornlizard leather body-armour but steel helmets marked with the tribal emblems of the Roughnecks. The ancestors of the Roughnecks were US Marines, camp-followers and others saved by the marines. What had once been a nickname for US Marines became the name of a large, powerful Wastelands Greater Tribe. Its people lived as tribes in not just Northern California but in other areas relatively close to there.

A man and woman both stepped forward. The women had the bows, the men had autorifles, autoshotguns and some other weapons. Every one of them had a very big survival longknife in a scabbard, other knives and a necklace of teeth, small bones and preserved wrinkled ears. Their skin was rough and colour patchy, they being true roughskins of the surface as toughened by the law of survival of the fittest and wild mutation influences plus wildfire FEV.

The woman spoke in fluent English but with an odd accent that made it a little hard to understand. Her tone was cautious. Tribals did not often bother to deal with non-tribals or tribals outside of their Greater Tribe or various alliances. “The strange little man came to our encampment with many fine gifts of horses and brahmins, themselves hauling packs or pulling carts of goodies. We call him the Gifter but also the Trickster or even the Maker of Honourable Obligations. Our people, that is of our lesser tribe of the Greater Tribe, had suffered recently thanks to the increased number and activity of super-mutants and other threats. He would have given us all, anyway, and healed many of our people as he did, but we were honour bound to assist him. He is an avatar of the Nine Faced God and he can not always intervene directly or at all but now a DarkGod has done so and he has more freedom to do so.”

Archie nodded. “Nine Faces of the Gifter, the Trickster, the Obligator, the Comforter, the Healer, the Teacher, the Liberator, the Pathfinder and the Puzzler. To others he, or she, has other face names. Yet she, or he, has four other faces. The thirteenth is all twelve others combined in flowing confrontation and cooperation. We do not speak of the other three.”

The tribal man then spoke. “We do not now speak of the other three faces. We came to escort the man called Harris Davis from TekVault-013 to TekVault-015. We reached him only to find him under attack by shadowviles but luckily the strange little man had given our women a way of battling them as in the special arrows but now some of them are destroyed.”

Archie turned and walked to pick up the nearest of the blackened arrows and with a sparkling shimmer the biocrystal became as new but its energies were bright again. The tribal women raced to pick up their arrows and they brought the blackened ones to him and he, using again his very special nanobots, fixed them. Such things took him by surprise as much as they did anybody else.

Harris Davis introduced himself and his companions, both of them being women, to the tribals. They made plans. Archie and his people, an impressive number of them now, found a quite large but secure cave to make camp in for the night. It was easy big enough to comfortably hold all of them and still have a goodly amount of room to spare.

Archie slept in a fold-over that, unlike a sleeping bag, was easy to get out of and would not so easily become a trap for one if one was attacked. Soon he was dreamlinking, a kind of two way visioning.

60 <_<
ARCHAVO/ARCHIE MINDEYE DREAMLINKING
WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS AND OTHERS IN TEKVAULT-101 #1

[size="3"]He was Archavo again and he found himself in a very big chamber like a more comfortable and luxurious version of a normal vault apartment. He was in a blue jumpsuit outfit of a male Vault Dweller and was sitting on-in a body-chair that fitted itself to his shape for both maximum comfort and health.

A neobaby, chubby muscular was sitting sleepily and happily on his lap and was looking up at him with big brown adorable eyes. But he was also a little grumpy. Archavo had been away too long.

Archavo’s little sister, Triennia, was there. She was in her vault standard issue pyjama-jumpsuit of dark, dull pink. The six year old was clutching her teddibots, a robotic teddy-bear. She was also a little grumpy with him but also pleased to see him.

Triennia spoke. “Where have you been?”

Amata, his girlfriend, was frowning softly at him, all beautiful and strong, slimly voluptuous in her tight dark, dull pink jumpsuit. He largely ignored her.

He sighed and then he carefully recounted his adventures. Pictures emerged behind and above him on a 3Dwallscreen. The others, except the animals, watched in amazement. The animals? Where did they come from? Not from the vault, clearly, but they were familiar to him. The big old muscular dog slept with his head resting on one of Archavo’s feet, grumbling softly as the yellow-brown hound dreamed.

Yes, when he was somebody else called Aaron who dwelt in the USGA before Doomsday. He had lived on a farm estate and the dog, BigYellow, was one of his pet-companions. The estate was in Virginia, being right inside the DC after President Jack Patriot Jackson had transformed and expanded the DC. What happened to Aaron, he did not know except for vague, patchwork memories.

Then he was born as Archavo and was taken as a baby by his father, Professor James Ashworth, to TekVault-101. A Brother of Steel named Star Paladin Cross, a woman, had escorted the professor right up to the main power-door to TekVault-101 before she had returned back the way she had come.

He did not speak of his adventures as Archie, at least not that time.

He noted his foster parents were there but sleeping in bed together in one corner, almost cuddled up together. They were, in the dreamscaping, only representational in nature. Many others in the chamber were only representational for they were awake or otherwise unable or unwilling to enter the dreamscape.

He supposed that they had meant to be good parents to him but they had never fully accepted or understood or really loved him. As he got older, they became more the strangers to him, for the foster parents had other, younger children to dote upon. Three children they had being, from oldest to youngest, a daughter, a son and a daughter. Archavo got on well only with the youngest daughter who was very perceptive and bright for her age. Neither was she the favourite. The father’s favourite was the other son and the mother’s favourite was the oldest daughter.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 2:48 pm

61 :mohawk:
ARCHAVO/ARCHIE MINDEYE DREAMLINKING
WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS AND OTHERS IN TEKVAULT-101 #2

He picked up the neobaby and the six year old snuggled onto his lap. The neobaby ended up in her arms and getting kissed.

Amata spoke then. “You assume the worst of me. You think that I am some kind of s***. You are not the only one. Word has got around amongst your many fans, dark twisted stories of my goings on with a young Elitor man. They say that I betrayed you.”

He shrugged. “You betrayed our relationship. I was faithful to you, despite all those women who were willing to give themselves to me because of my fame, and you raced off with that slime thug.”

She frowned. “Well he turned into a monster and was killed by Security Guards. You should feel vindicated. I am not sure why I am here for I am in a coma since Harmon attacked me savagely just after we made love. I suppose you think I should feel ashamed or guilty of what I did with him but I am not. I have no regrets except that I lied to you. We could be friends.”

Archavo looked quietly at her for a moment and then shook his head. “No, it would be best if we went our separate ways from now on. At least for a few years. He was charming, he was wealthy, he was gallant, he was a cheat, he was a bully, a criminal and he was a piece of womanising scum. So you treated me like dirt and went after him.”

Amata just shrugged and then she faded away to nothingness, was gone.

Triennia was not happy with him. “You were very mean to Amata.”

Archavo sighed. “We all get older and we change. I will try to heal her so that she wakes up from the coma.”

Triennia smiled and nodded. “Very good, then. Amata was lying. She is so proud like you is, you big dummy.”

“Lying about what?” Archavo looked to her. “I sensed she was not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Perhaps I was too hard on her but she hurt me very badly.”

She shrugged. “Nobody tells a six year old nothing good, even if she is a smarty pants like me. I sensed she was not telling the truth but not what the lie was about. I got a new dolly from grandma. She says that she is concerned for you and that she loves you very much. They made her go into temporary retirement in a status-capsule so she can be protected from the monsters better.”

Yes, the monsters? Just what was happening in TekVault-101?

62 :flame:
ARCHAVO/ARCHIE MINDEYE DREAMLINKING
WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS AND OTHERS IN TEKVAULT-101 #3

Triennia did not want to think too much about what was happening in TekVault-101 but she spoke of it anyway. "The Elitors began to turn into monsters. Not all of them but many of them. The other Elitors have locked themselves into a secret part of the Elitor Zone except those who escaped to join the Commoners' fight. Many are saying now that this is the end of the Elite, even many of the Elitors who have not changed into monsters. Vaultgov is changing. Lots of documents are being signed and meetings are being held where VIPs vote on things. The High Overseer has declared a new constituion including an Elective Representational Council or ERC. Dad and mum are sceptical the changes will mean much but who knows? Dad and mum often get things like that wrong."

Archavo smiled as his small sister climbed onto his lap and the neobaby ended up in her arms. She frowned in concentration of thought. "Them monsters move real quick. They run and crawl through the vent-shafts. They find weak places in the structure of the TekVault. Mummy says that VaultTek Corporation cut corners to save money, what ever that means. Some internal walls, gratings and doors that should be very secure are not secure enough. Daddy says he can understand why VaultTek did it because profits come first but mummy said he was a big fool and they had a big fight. Mummy said that daddy has been stealing many small things from Vaultgov and has been putting them in a hidy place so he can sell them to the Rimzoners for a big profit. Mummy said he was ripping off both the Vaultgov and the Rimzoners."

Archavo wondered just what was going on. His foster father had never shown such criminality before unless he had just been very clever at it. Only problem with that idea was that his foster father was not very clever. He needed to get back to TekVault-101 but how could he do that if he was stuck in the past as one Archie?

Triennia shrugged. "Vaultgov keeps saying that the monsters are being beaten, that there is nothing to be worried about, but everybody seems to be frightened. The games have been suspended so that gladiators can join the real fight against the monsters."

Triennia was in no real position to tell him what was really going on and nobody else in that dream like environment appeared willing and able to talk with him. He hugged his little sister again, gave her and the neobaby a kiss each and then slipped back to 'reality'.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 12:32 pm

63 :shakehead:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #1
LINKED DIRECTLY WITH CHAPTER 51

Archavo woke again as himself but knew he was still active as Archie in the past in some problematic fashion to do with time paradoxes and other such confusing physics based stuff. He found himself with the original enclone Justine and the eccentric agent-ant. There were others there also being the small force of Goldenlighters and the Megatonfolk. Archavo knew what he had to do; that is he need to trust these people from the surface settlement and find, hopefully, a quicker way back to his vault home through Megaton.

Professor Brown from Megaton was eccentric but brilliant. He had collected as much data as he could to find a way back to Megaton that avoided the cavern waters and the creatures that dwelt there. There were gaps and even some minor contradictions in the information he had gained but what choice did they have but to use what was there. They began to prepare the expedition and they consulted with the queen mother.

She had interesting news. The old caster-ant queen wanted to meet with Archavo. She was now in a large chamber with her remaining caster-ant followers and other resources. The chamber was surrounded by metallica-ant guards and smaller soldiers. Metallica-ants were now driving a series of small vehicles and using other machines to their advantage. They were saluaging old machinery more efficiently now but there was still much that they did not understand. Archavo was wary of teaching them too much. If they wanted to, the metallica-ants could become a major threat to other peoples in and under the DC Wastelands. Yet Archavo continued to sense that the metallica-ants did not care to conquer others. Yes, they wanted to expand, but to build an empire from scratch from what might be called 'virgin territories'.

When the queen asked him to take a metallica-ant envoy group, including some oonkeys, he was surprised but he accepted readily enough. He could see no harm in it and it was better that the different peoples meet diplomatically than that they blunder into each other and into some kind of violent conflict. So it was that the first leg of the journey was mapped out as much as was possible. Even as this was being done, Randro of Unity popped up and announced he was to be the semiofficial first envoy of his people to go to Megaton. Randro confessed he just wanted to go home but if going to Megaton meant getting home faster, then all the better.

When the expedition set out it was far larger and complicated a taskforce than Archavo had previously imagined it would be. What surprised him most was that he became leader, almost naturally flowing into the role as a waterfall flows naturally down into a lake below. Nobody questioned and everybody seemed to assume it would happen that way. Archavo the loner felt a little stressed at the idea of having so much responsibility but less so that he would have previously assumed he would have.

Along a long, gently winding, long abandoned prefab tunnel they went in small powerful four wheel drive vehicles, with various kinds of robots, with androids, with many kinds of creatures. They staid as quiet as possible and the metallica-ants even sprayed smell suppressive substance into the air that supposedly made it harder for enemies to smell them. Archavo disliked the rancid smell of the stuff and he was far from the only one to do so. He sat in the third vehicle so he was hopefully safer from a frontal attack.

64 <_<
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #2

IFor a while the expedition made good time along the fairly level, quite clear tunnel. At times obstacles had to be cleared away but the metallica-ants were very good at that sort of work and the pauses were quick. About two hours after setting out they came to the heavily guarded chamber where the old caster-queen was to be waiting. Or at least that was the theory.

Archavo made his way carefully past scattered dead metallica-ant guards, bigger and slower, and soldiers, smaller and faster. He was disturbed but the metallica-ants with the expedition were understandably far more agitated than he was. At first he suspected that the caster-ant queen was somehow the cause of the massacre but then he saw the severed limb of a super-mutant, a massemoth, that still gripped a strange clubpistol. Archavo examined the arm and the gun. Somehow they seemed different from those of the super-mutants that had been allies of the caster-ants. Yet that did not tell him much. He took flesh and blood samples plus some data-recordings of the whole sorry, bloody scene. Yes, the metallica-ants had their own form of blood for they were quasi-insects.

Professor Brown also examined the chopped off limb that had been largely hidden under a dead metallica-ant guard. "I suspect that the attackers meant to take away all signs of their own nature but accidentally left his arm behind themselves."

Archavo began to move into the big chamber. The big blown open armoured doors and the first sighting of massacred caster-ants showed him the truth; the old caster-ant queen was a victim. She lay dead on her cushioned disk shaped platform surrounded by a ring shaped pile of guards who had died fighting to save her. The battle had been amazingly savage. Not only caster-ants but metallica-ants had fought the attackers in that big chamber. Splashes of blood and bits of super-mutant, along with other clues, indicated that the attacking humanoids had suffered very heavily though with the massemoth had been at least two huge hulking behemoths. There had also been not just zentaurs but some creatures that seemed to be more massive kinds of zentaurs. For want of a better name, Archavo called them super-zentaurs.

But it seemed the old caster-ant queen had the last laugh. Hidden beneath her was a so called archive-ant with a kind of firmware that carried a surprisingly lot of data in a secondary brain. The archive-ant spoke efficiently information that the giant-ant itself had no interest in, its intelligence being fairly low. As it spoke Archavo grew increasingly angry. He knew then he, and not just he, had been duped not by the queens of the metallica-ants but by the third princess. How? Because inside the mind of the third princess that he sensed he could trust was buried the mind of a traitor who served something called the Shadow Pact. That traitor mind was well hidden and it was also hidden in hundreds of other fake metallica-ants. Yes, the third princess was not the real third princess. Her body, along with those of her real followers, was rotting in some dark damp cave chamber somewhere.

Archavo grinned. "We are going to take advantage of such overly clever cleverness by getting the false mentality of the fake third princess to expose the treachery buried inside her. It is worth a try."

Professor Brown sighed and svcked on his pipe, making a horrible noise, and then spoke. "Very good, my boy, very good but you did survive growing up in a TekVault. We surface dwellers always assumed you must live luxury lives down in the TekVaults, at least compared to us, but to learn of the crowded conditions, the rationing, the shortages, the oppressive government, the claustrophobia and the other problems there, well you seem to be little better off than we are."

Archavo shrugged. "I was born on the surface. My real father, one Professor James Ashworth, took me to TekVault-101 when I was a baby. He was escorted there by a woman of the Brotherhood of Steel, one Star Paladin Cross. I was born, I think, somewhere in the actual ruins of Washington DC itself but not inside the great dome there."

The other man was surprised. "Well, well, that is most curious. We have much to discuss but not now, not just now."

Archavo could only agree.

» Sun Dec 05, 2010 11:39 pm

65

bliviongate:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #3

They sent three small fast moving messenger-ant to carry to the metallica-ant queen not just the truth about the third princess but a plan that might both win a victory against an unseen threat and win many resources for the metallica-ants.

Archavo found dying giant-ants and the caster-ants became Goldenlighters and the metallica-ants became enhanced versions of their old selves. He was still questioning why the Light was doing such things through him, through the specialised very tiny nanobots, tiny microbots and barely visible macrobots but practicalities had to come first.

When the caster-ant queen arose as a Goldenlighter, he was quite astonished. Her insanity was gone, she was enhanced in many ways, and the Goldenlighter giant-ants quickly accepted her as their queen. The archive-ant was also transformed to become smarter and more curious.

Archavo stood with the Goldenlight queen and spoke to her. “What was it about, the whole action of creating the caster-ants?”

“A test, a set of wargames and the reflection of the distorted alien mentality that is behind the scenes and pulling the puppet strings.” The Goldenlight queen responded in the language called Esperanto but now with much less difficulty. “The shadowy figures that you spoke of earlier, they were most like but basic shadow-avatars of one of the Shadowmen. The names are meant to sound dramatic and to conceal the true identities of these entities. Shadowmen, Shadowmaidens, Shadowgirls and many other names seem to serve the purpose of both classification and disguise.”

Professor Brown walked up in time to hear all of this. He frowned softly. “Megaton is a fine enough settlement, in its own roughly eccentric manner, but has its black sheep, its trouble makers and its fringe dwellers. In the super-missile quad-silo bunkerplex we call Megaton Bunker, the dwells over ten thousand folks. In Megaton above, the crater with all of its platforms and such, another fifteen thousand or so. But outside the big walls and the main double power-gates is the trading outpost with its own defences. There dwells about two thousand folk including trouble in the form of Colin Moriarty and his damned family of petty criminals. They run the Girls’N’Games Saloon, the Goods’N’Guns Shop and the Guys’N’Girls Hostel, the three all being sleazy, tricky, cheating and some what dangerous. Not too dangerous or cheating because the Moriarty Family is too clever to frighten off the customers. They even make sure that somebody wins big now and then, but not too big.”

Archavo nodded. “Sounds fascinating but what is your point?”

The professor frowned some more. “Colin Moriarty was seen talking to a stranger, a shadowy stranger, who seemed somehow disturbing or even unnatural. The two met in one of the many small secluded pockets in the trade outpost but though the sunshine was dim there, the stranger threw no shadow though he should have done; Moriarty certainly did. After that Moriarty suddenly got a burst of sudden wealth. He fixed up all three Moriarty establishments, added some features, and fixed up the two level monstrosity of the Moriarty House. Yet there is more. The spy only managed to pick up a few distinct words and one was ‘James’ and another was ‘Archavo’.”

It was disturbing news.

66 :snoring:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #4

The expedition set out again, this time bringing with it the revived metallica-ants and the new Goldenlight ants, including the queen who was carried along on a platform. The archive-ant lay next to her and loyally recorded the first of her memoirs that the queen intended to publish, giant-ant fashion.

Archavo was again in the third vehicle and with him were Justine, the agent-ant, Randro, Professor Tom Brown and Stasho. Stasho manned a heavy machinegun and the others were armed, the professor reluctantly so with just a revolver-pistol.

The professor was looking quietly thoughtful when he spoke. “Our history does not quite add up. At least not the official history. From the middle of World War Two there are inconsistencies, gaps, contradictions but not enough to disturb the general story. It is all linked with one Senator Jack Patriot Jackson, who became the President of the USGA, who conquered Canada, Cuba, Mexico and other places.”

Archavo nodded. “Guatemala, Belize, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. There was also Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Commonwealth and others. Basically Central America and the Caribbean. Ironically enough, the living standards of many of those conquered areas actually rose, even for the poorest people.”

Justine added some words to the conversation. “Yes, only the United League of South America, the ULSA, stopped the US from going further south. The process of conquest began after World War One and was complete, except for Canada, by the start of World War Two. What has this got to do with anything?”

The professor sighed. “It is said that the evil Third Reich was forced to end the fighting but was never conquered. Yet it was forced to change its ways also. Most strange. Do you know that Senator Jack Patriot Jackson secretly travelled to Berlin and carried out a series of secret meetings with powerful Germans. Except that Hitler, Himmler, Goring, Hess or others of their ilk did not know of these events. Almost exactly a month later they were all rounded up and forcefully retired, the Final Solution was ended before it could really get into full swing and the International Cessation took place. The British Commonwealth was most unhappy, as were the Soviet Union. The Japanese were forced to not only end the war but to withdraw back to Japan. The new, NeoNazi regime of Germany withdrew from most of Europe but kept large chunks of France, Poland and Africa. Surviving Jews were given medical attention, fed, clothed and transported to Great Britain, which was forced to take them. The poor Italian Fascists were considered a joke. But there is no good recorded reason in official history why all of this should have happened.”

Archavo shrugged. “You forget the Super Genius Thirteen who betrayed the USGA by sharing super-weapon data with the New Nazis and the Soviets.”

Professor Brown shook his head. “No, no I do not for a very good reason for they were never truly proven to exist. The only publicity shots of the six women and seven men were proven to the International Resistance Cell-Network to be highly paid character actors.”

Justine was peering ahead down the tunnel. “The New Nazis fell and the European Enclaven arose to replace them. The ULSA failed in South America and the dreaded Zaztec Empire rose there. Rocketships and gravity-ships took expeditions to Luna and to Mars, including its two moons of Phobos and Deimos. The incredible Lunar Underworld was discovered and then the Martian Underworld complete with its great flowing canols.”

Archavo was also starting to sense something odd. “1961 saw the Three Month World War of World War Three ending when the mysterious Centro saved us all from nuclear destruction. The Centro then took many people, other lifeforms and things with them to where ever. They gave humanity thirteen great gifts. To no avail. In 2001 there was World War Four that ended in Doomsday.”

Professor Brown nodded. “Name the thirteen great gifts for me.”

But none of the others could do so. Then the taskforce ran into a very bizarre and dangerous obstacle.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 3:16 pm

67 :shocking:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #5

The builderbots crawled over the metallic walls of the shaft, over amazing gridworks of plastic, armaglass, carbon-fibre and other materials. The huge shaft was easily over two hundred metres wide and went upwards to end in a great, thick metal cap of some kind. It plunged down into the depths to vanish out of sight. All the way up and down were the layers of platforms, modular buildings, girders, gridworks, buttresses, flying-buttresses, columns, rampways, spiral rampways, elevators, power-rampways known as rampvators, pipes, vent-ducting, great thick cables, chains and much else.

Archavo watched the builderbots of many sizes and shapeforms. Most had legs that clung to things or walked or scuttled or ran but some hovered on fanjets and some had wheels. There were hundreds of them in sight and most likely thousands of them altogether.

Professor Brown indicated the many weapon-turrets, the securitybots floating through the air like oversized and much more armoured-armed eyebots. There were smaller fanjet lifted eyebots as well. “I have a bad feeling about this. I do not think we can go forward. At least not with out doing something special to get past the heavy security. This shaft was created by some kind of conversion device. The marks on the walls, the rock is mottled, indicates human-alien hybrid technologies were used.”

Then Justine spoke. “Skynet! The low orbital based United States Space Based Defence Network, or USSBDN. ‘Skynet’ was a simpler way to name it, I suppose, according to the mass media. Skynet had three big disintegrator striker-platforms in orbit. One of them could easily have created such a shaft while it tried to destroy a deep based vault or bunker or something else.”

Skynet? Yes, Skynet turned against its builders about halfway through World War Four. Luckily it also turned against the Soviets and the Enclaven. Also luckily it did not deploy all of its weaponry for unknown reasons. Perhaps this was because ground and sea based super-missiles managed to destroy many of Skynet’s platforms, satellites and even at least one of the spacestations but who knew? Much information about Predoomsday events had been lost during or in the insanity following Doomsday.

Archavo shrugged. “Perhaps the Light will assist.” Then she looked puzzled. “I am picking up radio communications of some kind. These robots are all linked by special modules to something known as the Experimental Cybernetic Autorobotic Network-System or ECARNS, often pronounced ‘Ecarns’. ECARNS wishes us no harm. ECARNS wishes only to be left to do what it does best and what it enjoys doing. ECARNS warns that if we are going to try any threatening actions as others have tried, then we will be dealt with harshly.”

Archavo then went on. “I am telling ECARNS that we desire only to get to Megaton safely. ECARNS asks do I mean Megaton Subway Station.”

Professor Brown looked startled. “I didn’t even know that there is such a place. State we are seeking to get to the Megaton Missile Base.”

Archavo responded. “I did so and ECARNS that it knows of no such place but if we follow one of its guide-drones than it will lead our expedition through secondary tunnels around the shaft. I am agreeing to the idea and am promising in turn an exchange of valuable data. ECARNS has data that we could find most valuable.”

It was soon agreed that the expedition would need to trust this ECARNS and would wait until the robots joined their tunnel to a secondary tunnel by doing some quick, efficient digging.

68 :flamethrower:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #6

ECARNS kept its word and the expedition went around the great plunging shaft by using a series of linked tunnels of varied kinds. When they were on the other side of the great shaft, Archavo exchanged data with ECARNS with the assistance of the Light. Thus he learned that Skynet had tried to both infiltrate and dominate ECARNS but had failed badly. Yes it had stolen some data but ECARNS had managed in turn to steal valuable data from the still active Skynet.

About 29% of Skynet had survived but unfortunately this included a huge, previously hidden fortress in the moon, three big low orbital weapon platforms, five spacestations and other facilities. Some of these facilities were not only on the Earth but they were active. ECARNS did not know many details but there was a hidden Skynet Outpost in the DC, another in Pittsburgh and yet another in Point Outlook. The ground network of network-systems was known as the Earthnet but there was also something hinted at that was called the Deepnet.

ECARNS was intent on surviving. The shaft was part of one of its new cybernetic autorobotic metropols or CARMs that it would have multiple purposes including trade and diplomacy with other entities. ECARNS had many projects under progress but it was wary about giving too much away and Archavo could hardly blame ECARNS for that.

ECARNS was pleased to learn about the metallica-ants, the Unity and TekVault-101. These could prove to be useful diplomatic and trade contacts. It was not so pleased to learn of the caster-ants, the supermutants, the GreeningLord and the shadowy figure.

Archavo wished to meet the cybernetic brains that were part of the ECARNS but for the moment the request was refused. So the expedition set out, using ECARNS provided data, for Megaton Subway Station.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 6:45 am

69 :gun:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #7

Gangers in black hornlizard leather, as tough a kevlar and with similar bullet resistance, fired upon the expedition from the raised platform of the big subway station. Archavo and Justine aimed and fired their tripulers, dropping a seminaked ganggirl who struck a pile of rubble below to roll down its side. The gangers were roughskins, were tough and brutal, and were heavily armed.

Justine cursed even as agent-ant huddled down behind rubble close to her. The Goldenlighters were largely pinned down but some were moving along through the two monotrains, through long commuter cabins filled with skeletal remains, rubbish and other debris. What had killed the commuters was something of a mystery for the station itself was in fairly good condition, as were the monotrains, compared to many other places in the World Wide Wastelands. Then clues were found in the tiny remains of death-nanobots that were one of the super-weapons unleashed on Doomsday but thankfully one that had turned out less effective than had been planned.

The Goldenlighters were made up of supermutants and giant-ants, along with zentaurs but most were giant-ants. They struck out with guns and with odd new powers that allowed them to hurl bolts of energy and to erect energy deflection screens; except the new powers were quite limited. The gangers had set up very good defensive positions, so good that Archavo began to sense that something was wrong.

Somebody had warned them that Archavo had his people were coming but who? His mind raced. Justine, the agent-ant, Randro, Stasho and Professor Brown, along with the Goldenlighters, they he sensed strongly he could trust but there were two others from Megaton. He had not had much to do with them. They had also staid in the background.

One was a woman named Lucy West who was quietly tough. She had been born in a settlement called Arefu that was based on a highway bridge across the DC River. The settlement gained by charging a toll to all who passed over the bridge but also by selling them goods and services. She still had family in Arefu but also relations in Megaton who owned and ran a blacksmith service there; from horse shoes to metal pots and much else, they made and repaired them.

The man was named Greg Fallon and while he was quiet, he was always very observant. Unlike the others, such as Lucy West, he seemed reluctant to get involved in any real working or fighting. The others, even Lucy West, had gotten angry with him a few times for his apparent laziness and cowardness.

Where was Greg Fallon? Archavo closed his eyes and focused his mindeye. He reached out, a trick he found tricky to do, and found the man. Greg Fallon was sneaking up on Lucy West who was huddled behind rubble and was aiming her rifle at a ganger. Greg Fallon’s mind was full of dark longings and plans for dark acts. It seemed he had desired Lucy West but that she had rejected him.

Archavo sent out an alert of a kind even with out consciously intending to do so. Lucy West whirled around, had one look at Fallon, and shot him in the chest with her lever-action rifle. Thrice she worked the lever and three times she shot him, starting with a bullet in the breech and ending with a bullet there.

But Archavo, having glimpsed the mind of Greg Fallon, knew he had nothing to do with the gangers. Archavo decided that perhaps fighting was not the best way to deal with the gangers and he decided to use his odd influence that he tended to have on people.

70 :rofl:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #8

The gangers were wary, unfriendly, but willing to negotiate. They had no interest in staying in Megaton Subway Station. There were bigger, more powerful and more savage DC-Gangs who were pushing at the subway station. This gang liked staying small, mobile and was fairly nomadic. They were the BlackRailers, a name that came way back from before Doomsday. Many modern gangers were descendents from Predoomsday gangers.

Archavo passed over some equipment and supplies to have the gangers go away and for some information. He gave over no weapons or ammo but the gangers did not seem surprised by this. They welcomed the stimpaks and the radaway.

He learned about the zhouls that too often swarmed through the amazingly vast DC Subway Network, the DCSN, of a great network of many subnetworks and of three layers. Normal commuter services in the upper layer, special commuter and freight services in the middle level and the lower level had been government special. The lower level had been classified.

The sat at a grubby metal table to negotiate. The Ganger Chief scowled at Archavo. “Smoothskins come from Claves and vaults. Don’t like smoothskins but cannibals might consider you good tasting.”

Claves were actual Enclaven fortified colonies. The EagleEnclave had its own Claves.

Archavo shrugged. “I wasn’t born in a vault, I just grew up there. Have you ever heard the name of Professor James Ashworth?”

The ganger chief went to snap in sarcastic anger but then stopped in obvious surprise. “I have. Looks a bit like you, too. Could be your father. I saw his 3Dphoto and his name. We found the photo on a dead body of some dude not far from here. Dude had a TekVault jumpsuit on. He was next to some big, strange looking machine. I got a very good memory for names and faces. Sometimes we take enemy gangers or those stupid bandits and sell them off to the Regulators for bounty price. I memorise the bounty posters regular like. I just gave you free info except not where to find the body.”

Archavo grinned. “The woman who fell down, she is dying. I can save her but she may change.”

The ganger glared. “Take the b****. She is getting tiresome. What about one of your fancy rayguns?”

Archavo shook his head. “Forbidden.” He took out a large Emergency Issue Coin and passed it over. “$100 in EID form. Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending it has low value.”

The ganger chief grinned. “Your loss. EIDs are vanishing with people using them on the magic-vendors, the holotricks and the other wondrous machines. Even normal coins and dollar notes are going. So, here is how you find the man.”

The gangers were soon leaving. Clearly they thought they had got the much better deal and that Archavo was stupid. They were wrong. Archavo had sensed there were hidden treasures in that place and that finding the body with the strange machine was very important.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 1:14 pm

71 :icecream:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #9

The former ganger woman was named Helen Tale but that had not been her ganger name. She was not quite Goldenlight but no longer was capable of being a ganger. She frowned hard at Archavo while standing on a big commuter platform with her gear and then shrugged.

“You saved my life, or at least the Light did. The ganger chief misled you but you knew he did and you knew I would tell you the truth. That man isn’t half as clever or as tough as he thinks he is and the other gangers are getting tired of his b***s***. Show you around, if you wish.”

Archavo nodded. “Yes, I wish. The Goldenlighters will clean this place up, fix it up and set it up as a settlement, that is what the Goldenlighters are going to do. They are all over the place here, now, searching it, taking notes and gathering up useful resources. Me, I want to go to Megaton and then back to TekVault-101 but I will return here in the future, even if just for visits.”

Justine was sitting in the background reading a story to agent-ant from a Predoomsday book she had found in a storage status-box. Status had been used to safely store more than just living bodies in suspended animation but most were basic in design. Of course it was much easier to preserve a leather bound book or fresh fruit than a living human. Justine was gently stroking agent-ant’s head as she read to her.

Helen looked at the pair and snorted softly. “Life never ceases to surprise.” Then she spoke to Archavo once more. “Somebody warned us you were coming but they did not say there would be so many of you or that you would be so damned strong in numbers, arms and armour. Those supermutants and giant-ants are most impressive. Those zentaurs normally give me the creeps but these ones seem, well, weirdly cute.”

Archavo smiled. “Perhaps they think the same way about you.”

Helen shrugged. “Perhaps they do. The vending-machines over there are magic-venders. NukaCola, GadgetsGalore, CharityLink, ChickiChicken and Holophotoman. They are slow to recharge-refill. Mattercators must be troubled.”

“Mattercators are trouble.” Archavo noted as a protectron thudded past on its chunky metallic legs.

The robot had already been reprogrammed by the Goldenlighters. Professor Brown was following it as he wrote notes in a notepad but then he diverted course to come over to the pair. Then he spoke to Archavo. “The Goldenlighters at first found what you predicted. That is normal subway station facilities like administration offices, kiosks, ablutions, caretaker rooms, some robots, security stun-turrets, Transit Police offices, autorobotic facilities and such like. Then they found the secret door. It was quite cleverly hidden.”

Archavo stood on. “Lead on, McDuff.”

Professor Brown gave Archavo an odd look, nodded and then did so.

72 :mohawk:
ARCHAVO
GOING TO MEGATON WITH SOME DISTRACTIONS #10

The secret room was a vault chamber full of status storage containers of different kinds and sizes. In them were lots of boxed meals, EIDs, small tools, books and much else of value. It would seem that they had found the prize, that some corrupt folks in the US Government or the Megacorps had put some goodies away for a rainy day. Archavo was suspicious. It seemed to him that the stuff in the vault was real enough a prize but was put there to convince thieves that they had found all that they would get.

Another, even better hidden secret door showed him he was right. It was heavily armoured and heavily locked in a very hitech manner. The Light, in the form of the bots, unlocked it and had it powering open in five seconds. Helen and Professor Brown were there and they stared at Archavo in wonder. The others there had kind of gotten used to his tricks, or at least those of the Light.

There was a big, long hallway and as they went along it the hallway lit up. The Light went ahead as invisible nanobots, invisible microbots and barely visible macrobots darting along the walls. So the security turrets, not just with stunguns but with lethal weaponry, did not attack them and the powerful sentrybot just quietly scanned them. On each side of the hallway were twelve doors and at the end of the hallway, two separate doors. Archavo knew, somehow, that the number of doors, and the way they were set out, was special in some way.

Each door to each side led into what looked like a basic metallic elevator chamber except that the controls and numbering was strange for mere elevators. Each was marked, at the back wall, with a code stating that it went to a particular coded destination.

But the doors at the end of the hallway each led to an elevator chamber with one button each and no explanation at all to where they went. The one on the left had a button with an arrow going upwards and the elevator on the right had a button with an arrow going downwards.

Justine spoke. “Will we go down or up?”

Archavo shook her head. “Neither up or down for the elevators are traps of some kind. You will note that there is a long space on either wall between the two doors at the end of the hallway and the nearest doors on the side walls. We will look there.”

Professor Brown nodded and spoke. “Very good.”

Archavo turned and looked at Professor Brown. “There is something most interesting about you, Professor Brown.”

Professor Brown smiled. “There is also something very interesting about you, Archavo, along with all those amazing things about you. Now what?”

Archavo sighed. “Now we go back and check all the codes and numbers in all the chambers for they are separately controls, as they seem, but together they form a puzzle. We need to solve that puzzle to get into the next chambers. Question is, how did a mere ganger chief get this far?”

Helen sighed right back. “He didn’t! Some stranger met him, bribed him and told him what to say when he got to talk to you. None of us ever saw a 3Dphoto, a dead man in a blue jumpsuit or a big strange machine as that fool said.”

“As I thought.” Archavo nodded and the work began to learn the nature of the puzzle and then to solve it.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 3:24 pm

73 :thumbsup:
ARCHIE
FINDING A WAY TO TEKVAULT-013 #1

Archie, Justine, Angentia and the others made their way around and upwards towards where the nearest way to TekVault-013 was to be found. They had separated from Harris Davis, his two vault comrades and the Roughneck tribals, and travelled as quickly as they could. The weather conditions were worsening and there was the distant but growing sound of thunder. In the same direction there were flashes of lightening.

California was a whole new climate since Doomsday but then again the same was true for the whole world. Despite the cover of tough, gnarled trees with deep roots, they did not want to be caught by the storm on that slope. There were indications of landslides, big destructive ones, and ironically one of those had given them a way to shelter.

A smart-concrete wall was partly exposed, self repairing, and yet it had a small hole in it. Tracks and other signs indicated animals had crawled through it, even larger ones. So they crawled. Archie, Angentia, Justine, the other goldliclones, the Goldenlight massemoth, the big hound and the goldliviles moved through a long hole in the very thick smart-concrete wall until they came out into a huge, dark chamber lined with huge, locked, smart-metal storage bins.

Archie signalled the others to be quiet and still. Then he made a series of odd singsong noises, sweet and calming. Soon a big creature came out from behind a series of containers and the mutant-bear sat on her rear and showed Archie her wounded arm. Archie then tended to it. The animal had a collar around its neck with a smartchip embedded behind a coded tag. According to the tag she belonged to something called the Circus Stupendous.

Just what was the Circus Stupendous?

Archie had not learned of anything such during his life in TekVault-013 and the others knew nothing of it except the massemoth who was now much brighter than he had been. There had been supermutants that had vanished and one had returned, having escaped from a bizarre circus, but was dying. Nor could he explain much of what had happened with his poor dumb supermutant mind. Those who controlled the supermutants, especially the one called the SuperMaster, had not appreciated some other force stealing their soldiers but efforts to find the weird circus had come to nothing.

But Archie realised, from the description, that there had been zetan aliens at the Circus Stupendous and that they had all been in the audience. There had also been other creatures that sounded, as far as Archie was concerned, like various kinds of aliens. Yet he did not know how this knowledge came to him.

The big chamber had open doorways and big armoured doors leading to other places, the armoured doors all being heavily locked except for one that was slightly open. They had to choose in which direction to go or did they have to go yet?

74 :mellow:
ARCHIE
FINDING A WAY TO TEKVAULT-013 #2

What drew Archie to inspecting one of the big storage boxes, he was not sure, but what he found was a surprise. It was highly specialised and sophisticated hardware of a scientific research nature. It soon turned out that the chamber was full of enough stored equipment and supplies, including specialised robots, to set up a fair sized research and development network-system.

How had it ended up in that place? The possibilities were many because of the chaos of World War Four and the Great Troubles before that which has seen many government and corporate missteps. They sealed up all of the boxes and then moved onwards through the bunker.

They found the skeletal remains inside three suits of T51C power armour, the armour being marked with the GuardTek logo. GuardTek was a security based TekCorp that also did semilegal mercenary operations. The big holes in their armour plating and their sprawled positions indicated that they had died fighting. There were other indications of fighting around the chamber such as a mangled sentrybot and burn marks on the walls from pulselaser gunfire. The Goldenlighters looted what they could use from the dead soldiers but then they repaired the power armour with out the assistance of Archie as the Light worked through them and not him. The former enclones ended up wearing that power armour.

In the very next chamber some dead zetan soldiers lay stacked against one wall in their slim, silvery metallic suits with their transparent bowl shaped helmets. A burned out battledrone, a zetan hovering robot, lay near them. After Archie took what she wanted to, only a few small items, the Goldenlighters took other things.

When the six alien suited figures rose and began to move along it was as if they were softly glowing constructs of metal and flesh inside but also bonded to the silvery suits. Archie, Justine and Angentia were disturbed by this happening, this creation of these Goldenlight animated goldlioms.

Archie tried to contact the Light about this but was seemingly ignored and he became sharply annoyed. As if making a concession to his feelings, the Light fed him information as a mixture of impressions and false memories. The goldlioms would be needed in the near future to save lives, even that of Archie himself, and they were not evil but were merely cybernetic controlled cyborgs made of a mixture of altered organic and non-organic materials. Archie sensed truth in this backed up by what he sensed of the goldlioms themselves.

Archie had picked up weak psychic impressions of what had happened. Zetans had raided for some reason, beaming down into a secondary chamber. Normal security guards and GuardTek had fought them, had driven them back to secondary chambers, and had sealed them off. The impressions were vague except for one central, focusing idea; the aliens had come to get back something that had been stolen from them.

The bunkerplex (complex of more than one linked bunker) was huge and built partly out of a big altered-enhanced cave system. Part of it was also close to TekVault013. The great complex had a mixed multiples of purposes, some quite vague and some seemed quite odd.

They kept moving as best they could through the bunkerplex.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 2:17 am

75 :facepalm:
ARCHIE
FINDING A WAY TO TEKVAULT-013 #3

The mutated bear vanished when Archie became concerned about his safety. This was also to do with the Light having some kind of compassion for the creature but also having some uses for it which would do it no harm, or so Archie sensed.

Angentia spoke soon after the bear vanished. “Has the Light often creatures away and where do they go?”

Archie shrugged. “Mostly I sent away small non living things away when I was younger and some living things that were injured or trapped or that were dangerous to people in TekVault-013 or TekVault-101. I do not know where they went or what it is like but I do get a strong sense it is safe there and comfortable. I would like to know what the Light wants. The Light always wants something.”

Justine looked around at the Goldenlighters who moved quietly and smoothly, including the goldlioms in the alien silvery suits. “Have you always been linked to the Light?”

Archie shrugged. “When I was born as Archie, the Light appeared with me. When I was born as Archavo it may have been there but it was not so quickly evident to me in all its strength.”

There were more big chambers, more storage bins but these were empty as well as big machines wrapped protectively in special sheeting and oils. It was Archavo who first sensed that something was wrong but it was the Light that sent out ahead the goldlioms into what turned out to be a terrible, invisible trap.

The animated cyborgs lumbered straight into a triggering field of energy and then death-rays were flashing across the area from various special metallic turrets, sweeping back and forth. Except that the goldlioms were not truly alive and their silvery suits, their cybernetic network-systems, helped protect them. While the goldlioms decoyed the death-ray projectors, the other Goldenlighters aimed their guns and blew the turrets to pieces.

Alarms began to ring, echoing through the big smart-concrete spaces as water dripped from an area of ceiling high in one corner. But nothing came and soon the alarms simply ceased. There did not seem to be anything there to answer the alarms and perhaps there had been nothing there for a very long time.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 4:35 am

:celebration:

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 11:27 am

:spotted owl:

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 3:38 am

:celebration:

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 3:23 am

:violin: :whistling: :poke: :brokencomputer: BUMP :sadvaultboy: :vaultboy: :disguise: :tops: :fallout:

I HAVE COMPACTED MY CHAPTERS FROM ONE PER POST TO TWO PER POST TO OVERCOME THE 200 POST LIMIT. I WANT TO KEEP WRITING BEYOND 200 SMALL CHAPTERS. SO PLEASE RETURN TO EARLIER POSTS TO CATCH UP WITH THE STORY. I HOPE THAT YOU DO NOT MIND THE CHANGES.

THE DATE FOR WORLD WAR FOUR AND DOOMSDAY HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM 1977 TO 2001.

GAME TYPE RAIDERS HAVE BECOME GANGERS
NOW RAIDERS ARE MUCH MORE DANGEROUS WITH POWER ARMOUR, ROBOTS ETC.

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 8:13 am

I AM SORRY BUT DUE TO ILLNESS AND OTHER CONCERNS I AM UNABLE TO CONTINUE TO WRITE IN THIS FORUM, AT LEAST FOR NOW.

I CONTINUE TO WRITE IN DRUID'S GARDEN OF THE NEXUS FORUMS.

KEEP ON WRITING ON! KEEP ON MODDING ON! LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

» Mon Dec 06, 2010 7:10 am

closed by request