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The door was closed with a old fashioned mechanical lock. This part of the overall lab wasn’t that old, but they must have had their reasons. It was a decent lock, but given the lack of time pressure Batshit didn’t have trouble sweet-talking it.
On the other side the lights were out, but with the light shining through the door they could vaguely see a square room, about 6 meters per side, walls decorated in some sort of pattern of wavy and weaving lines, mostly empty except for what looked like a small freezer in one corner and what what looked like a hospital bed, with portable screens beside it.
The only other door from the room was on the adjacent wall, lead away from the direction they had come in.
Reaching her face in just far enough to look down the adjacent walls, Batshit notices a low mana field aggravating her. It doesn’t feel polluted or angry or anything, just slightly low mana.
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The drone soon sends a feed of the camera facing the group, then what looks to be a camera on the other side of the wall. That camera gives the distorted view of a fish-eye lens, looking over a room that stretches a good distance to either side but less straight ahead. Most of the room looks pretty utilitarian, with storage racks and what look like pods from a coffin hotel, and smaller kitchen area. However the ground off towards each end has large circles inlaid in the ground, and the end walls appear to be covered in something like an abstract mosaic, although the resolution at this distance and distortion doesn’t allow the details to be picked out.
Most notably, there is nobody moving around.
The drone keeps looking for more camera feeds, however only reports back with “off-line” messages, eight of them in fact.
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The tunnels here were lined in what looked like white plastic, with even the ground coated. The street markings were replaced with a pair of narrow gauge train tracks, and still a seperate pedestrian area.
Following the curving tunnel for a few minutes brought the pair to the sight of a rather solid looking wall with a serious looking security door, featuring both an ARO and an illuminated sign reading “Experiment in Progress: No Admittance.” It looks like the wall is also equipped with a pair of cameras, but they are likely focused closer to the wall rather than down at the curved tunnel where the pair are peaking around.
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Per my last IC (up a couple of posts), after the decontamination room, there is the option of heading towards the experiment that Bobby was on, or heading to the rest of the area. I’m assuming heading down the corridor towards where you expect him to be.
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Eh, this was back when we were in university. Typical nerd flex on his part. I did have fun building some crazy ships and strategies. Doing cool things to do with the ship design rules gave me satisfaction, and I recognized that his fun was showing tactical superiority, so it kind of worked out. If we’d played more I would have insisted on actually using one of the scenarios instead of a free-style skirmish, but I think we only ever found time to do it about four times.
The good news is that he has taken to using his competitiveness and intellectual chops for good these days, and we are still (slightly distant) friends, decades later.
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Fortunately security seemed fairly light — people were supposed to move in and out of the robing rooms, so it was easy enough for Lilly and Batshit to look at the next stage beyond. Here there was a simple choice: a short corridor off to the right, at the end of which they could see branching tunnels with AR signs toward various projects. Off to the left was a long, gently curving, tunnel labeled physically and in AR (me to go back and find the name for the project that Bobby is on, and insert here. I should really write these things down), with reminder text “astral hygiene mandatory beyond this point.”
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Environmental modifiers? If you are active down here long enough, for sure.
Starfleet battles, it took me a minute to dredge the association out of my memory? Is that the board game loosely based on the Star Trek races/ships? I have memories of a friend continually killing me with federation cruisers that could fly backward while using superior long-range weaponry, but it is also possible that I just wasn’t very good at it.
Or is there a new game by that title?
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It didn’t take the team long to come in sight of the end of the tunnel. A wall, a human sized door, a vehicle sized door, some cameras, and a large “SnoLab” logo in an outdated font. It is visible where newer, wireless, tech has been attached to the older infrastructure as they hadn’t bothered to re-paint over the welds and bolts.
The team was well equipped with technology to defeat this barrier, however. Drones looped cameras, another drone dealt with the lock. Radar failed to show anyone moving on the other side. A careful look through the human sized door showed a large bank of lockers, two racks of clean room suits, and a large sign with instructions about how to avoid bringing contamination into the lab areas (showers, change of clothes, proper donning of the clean room suits, all with the right process behind it). Additionally there was a wired in phone and a list of numbers to dial to arrange escorts for visitors.
It is up to the team on how much they wish to risk the wrath of scientists if they do not decontaminate appropriately.
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The drone enters the command to take them to the SnoLab level, and the platform starts its steady descent into darkness. Presumably normally lights are turned on for the elevator but it seems to be a separate function, and the trio are not overly bothered by the dark.
The descent is slow enough that clearing their ears from the growing pressure is easy, although getting to used to the slightly changed quality of sound takes a small bit of effort. After the descend for a while the temperature starts rising, and by the time they reach their stopping point calibrated thermographic measures show the rocks at 42C, although ventilation seems to be keeping the air down to not much over 30C.
There is quite a large chamber where they arrive, apparently the common arrival area for both this elevator and an even larger freight elevator. A few tunnels branch off, but fortunately the route to SnoLab is clearly marked, and even dimly lit. It is a tunnel large enough to drive a truck down — and indeed there are even lane markings.
From the maps that they’d found in the matrix and on the wall of the dormitory building they know that it is over a kilometer to the entrance to SnoLab proper. A fairly straight stone tube seems like a shadowrunner’s nightmare, but there seems to be a shocking lack of security infrastructure, at least at this end.
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TThe drone trick works like a charm, and it soon confirms that the cameras are looped. The door to the human scale part of the building doesn’t appear to be locked. Some careful scouting and sneaking later and the team has found the elevator. It is a large platform, able to pack in fifty people, surrounded by a railing with a gate at the entry side. It seems to operate on dogged vertical rails with motors attached to the platform, rather than being lowered on a cable.
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security was lax enough the the trio easily moved over to near the mine head building. It was quite long, with garage style doors at each end, with plenty of tracks to show that trucks would drive through the building. There were smaller doors on an extension to one side of the building, presumably serving the elevator that workers used.
Lights were on in the vehicle accessible section, but the human part was dark.
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I didn’t know the reference either.
Sorry for delayed response.
Remember that Al and Becky (and Becky’s high grade agent) have offered to secure the top side of the elevator, or otherwise watch your back (at least until close to dawn). Should you request it.
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If you want to go talk to others in his unit, or to check his unit, go ahead. Else let me know if you are heading to the mine head, or something else.
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The janitor looked morosely at Bronwyn. Not unkindly, just sadly. “I might have known there was a pretty girl involved. Does my niece know about you? Then again, if you don’t know where he is, maybe he isn’t so serious about you, either?”
He beckons the women inside, so that the doors can shut and the cold can be left outside. “I don’t see what you all see in him, he’s not ready to settle down with anyone I don’t think. But who listens to an old janitor? Nobody, that’s who. I only watch all the bright sparks come in and out, date, fuck, fight, and tramp mud on the floor. What could I possibly know about who is marriage material or not?” He sighs expressively, swirls the mop around pointlessly, and sighs again.
Finally he adds something possibly more useful. “A big load of those fancy magic hunters used their decontamination showers a bit over a week ago, heading down. They haven’t been back yet, and I’d know because they didn’t put enough ventilation in those showers for the load, and I have to go and wipe down the malls after they are done. Else mold grows, and before long we’d all be coughing our lungs out. I don’t even know why they bother when they decontaminate again underground, I’ve heard them talking about it. Anyway, he was part of that group. I keep an eye on him, because of my niece, you see.”
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It seems likely 🙂
But is your current approach on the dormitory, or the mine-head? (my understanding had been dormitory, but now I’m not sure)
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Aria, fair point, because I think I know what was intended, but I could be wrong.
As I understand it, you all are at the complex of a dorm building, workshops, and a storage building. The ‘mine head’ (fair sized building that includes the elevator) is about 800 meters away. I think the intent right now is to confirm that the nephew is not here, and find somebody who might know something. If Jack or EM have a different take, please let me know!
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Sorry on the delay. I’m going to try and focus on keeping this moving and getting it done.
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The team quickly got past the fence and up to the dormitory. A quick peak suggested that the outer door of the building appeared to have a manual latch but not actually a lock. Past it was a vestibule featuring windows on the lobby, an old fashion touch-screen display, an obvious camera, and a more secure looking inner door. In the lobby proper it looks like there is the typical worn furniture as well as a large hard copy map of the Snolab complex covering one wall. A stoop-backed orc can bee seen in the lobby, mopping up the snow and salt and general muck that has been tracked in over the course of the day.
The back of the building features a couple of fire escape doors, all the more obvious since the snow has been dug away from them.
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The enclave was fairly quiet. While the trio planned, they saw an Inco corporate security SUV pull into the parking lot, drive around, then leave again.
In the distance the glow of the red-hot slag could be seen as pretty, or hellish, depending on your perspective. The wind was picking up, coming from the north-west, carrying any smell from the slag dump away from the runners. It carried a few snow-flakes; small, hard, little things, almost entirely unlike the lazy fat snow-flakes usually shown on the trids.
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