The Dashboard Melted But We ... (Ch. 3b: Day 1, pt. III)

psikeout · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:16 pm

Rock came as close to cracking a smile at Ace and Jam's exchange as he could presently manage (which may have actually looked a little scary, but he wasn't trying to make it so). Tau brought the conversation back on track, though.

"If there are any better suggestions, I'll... gladly take'em," explained Rock to the robot. He winced as he weaved his arm through the strap of his life support pack, and readjusted his sling. "Otherwise—sounds like acceptable risks."

Seafarinhare · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 3:26 am

Wild Badge sighed, not sure what to do now. He didn't want to be carrying around Pandora's Box for who knows how long... Rent-a-cop had no contact with GUN at the moment. And the cuffs DID seem to be working out, as demonstrated when the llama once again started to struggle, and then immediately stop.

He headed back toward the others just in time to hear something about the Eclipse Cannon, and "Acceptable risks."

He bent down to drop the llama on her butt, then looked at Rock, and the others. "I don't know what you guys are up to, but if it involves getting this place in working order again, I'd like to help."

NPC · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:38 pm

A distant boom reverberated through the station, and the floor buzzed through the boots of the group. The waiting groups of people — audience and racers alike — shuffled nervously. There were a couple stifled gasps.

After a moments silence, a blue light began to flicker across the walls of the hanger, pulsing on and off to the rhythm of a gentle alarm. It was not particularly ominous or grating alarm, merely a low-key oop… oop… that quietly, yet persistently, asked for attention.

After some scanning, the source of the light — and perhaps the alarm — would be recognized by anyone looking as a box, mounted some distance away, on the wall of the hanger, near a very old, very low-tech looking computer terminal. The terminal was unique — not only in its lack of technological advance — but also in the fact that it was one of the few electronic devices left running in the station.

It was a very small, very green, very low-resolution screen, with a clumsy, chunky old keyboard set directly into the wall underneath it, at a slight (and barely ergonomic) angle. On the screen could be seen two solitary lines of text, followed by a cursor.

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Lithosoft® INT2B TranCom © GUN Systems 2041-2053
1 new alerts(s) since this terminal was last activated. Press any key... 
_

psikeout · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:10 am

Rock glanced back as Hoji rejoined them in their shuttle's bay. Someone strolling in and just offering their help, no strings attached? You could bet Rock would take it, even if Wild Badge wasn't necessarily his most favoritest superhero at the moment. (Then again, maybe he was--not like Rock knew many "superheroes," so it could have been victory by default.)

"That's the idea," confirmed Rock in a tone that was positive (but still a little gruntlike). "We're gettin' ready t--"

And there was that big noise.

The primate moved back down the ramp with quickness he probably shouldn't have allowed himself to exhibit in his present condition and peered around the docking bay to investigate. Wordlessly, with just a glance back to the others (the kind that silently urged "we should check this out"), he started through the scattered crowds toward the beckoning blue light.

He may not have been the first to get there. He may have even had difficulty getting through to it at first with all the curious onlookers. Even if he was the first, though, he wouldn't touch it immediately. It was a fifty-year-old text-based prompt. Proprietary software for aging, proprietary hardware. No GUI.

Cue an obvious look toward the resident robot.

Sheff · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:28 am

As Rock and Co. finally walked off, Sheffer gave a sigh and turned to the only one who had addressed him in a normal tone, his anger starting to ebb away. He took a moment to calm down some, letting the aggressive situation pass so he could properly communicate with the new person before him, whomever she was.

"Okay... alright..." he said, nodding. "Yeah, your help would be appreciated. I've been all around this hangar, and everyone is just... clueless on what to do, including me. But, we really have that long to waste time, as you can see-"

Cue sudden rumbling of the station.

With a quick intake of breath through gritted teeth, the hedgehog's eyes found the source of new noise and light instantly (as did most of the others in the bay). Just like moths to a light, he joined the other curious refugees of the ARK and made his way over to what now he could see as the ancient terminal, only wondering lightly if Astrid was following him.

Glancing around, he noted how no one seemed to be taking action, and with it relatively close, he simply stepped forward towards the terminal, not realizing he'd beaten his previous aggressors there. He only took a quick look at the screen, expecting a jumbled mess of computer gibberish... but his assumption was quite wrong. In fact, the instructions upon the terminal seemed almost too simple. Noting the multitude of eyes around him, he stood straight for a moment, sweeping his eyes around, then looked back to the screen.

And so, with some brief hesitation, he pressed down on the ENTER key with a quick tap of a finger, expecting both the best and worst.

NPC · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:36 am

The computer readout flickered, and then disintegrated into a stream of unintelligible glyphs.

Sheff · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:39 am

"...."

He blinked once.

A low, barely heard groan of frustration was then made.

Kazz · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:59 am

"An' if we all die, we got spiky over there to blame!" an entirely too familiar voice yelled from an undefined "somewhere" back in the crowd.

"Well, that worked," remarked an even-toned voice, laced with a hint of sarcasm, from about a foot behind Sheffer. Rodolf had finally shown himself again, and took it upon himself to come up alongside his fellow racer from out of the assembled.
To put it simply, he didn't exactly look his best (though at the least, he was a far cry from as bad as Rock), fixed up with a bit of slipshod first-aid. As it was, he and his board had been thrown entirely off-course and into a good-old fashioned solid mass of rock when the... incident... occurred, and it hadn't been a pleasant landing or venture back into the colony. Well, that explained where he had been. The unicorn looked like he may have been limping a little bit, to say nothing of a truly interesting array of bandages wrapped around and plastered on various points on his body, and even a little blood matting down a bit of his hair, mostly on his chest. It even looked like his horn was a little bent, but perhaps that was just a trick of the light.

Regardless, he strode(/limped) his way up alongside Sheffer, and gave him a sidelong look and a raised eyebrow.

"Let's just keep pushing buttons, shall we? Nothing could possibly be messed up by that, now could it?"

Tau · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:02 am

Tau momentarily shifted his focus towards the approaching.. masked organic just as the rumbling paired with alarms kicked in sending the injured simian to dash off to investigate without a word. Tau had once again simply followed after the simian quietly to the terminal in question and subsequently observed the green hedgehog whom approached and interacted with said terminal before any one else had a chance to.

Given the nature of the instructions displayed on the terminals screen it didn't concern Tau that some one else had pressed any key first as he was still able to observed the subsequent readout. With the terminal current preoccupied Tau began to search for a possible remote means to interact,or otherwise communicate with the primitive terminal.

Sheff · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:06 am

Sheffer gave the unicorn a quick glance, at least glad to see a familiar face he knew on somewhat better terms than the rest he'd already encountered. The comment was expected, and he gave a quiet huff at first for an answer, still very, very aware of all the stares (possibly glares) drilling into his back.

"It clearly said press a key. What did I do? Pressed a key," he replied with a low mumble.

Meanwhile, his eyes were staring intently at the screen, holding on to a dwindling hope that something legible would eventually pop up.

Seafarinhare · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:55 am

Wild Badge followed the monkey out to investigate the noise. He passed him at some point as they made their way through the crowds toward the blue light. Once at the terminal in question, he had a similar reaction to the apprehensive monkey.

Clearly, however, a certain green hedgehog was made of braver stuff. Ready to follow the on-screen instructions, like it was a tutorial to a new game. What followed was whole lot of gibberish. The masked hero canted his head, unable to make out the readout. He looked over at Tau, silently wondering if the robot would be able to translate it into layman's terms.

Where's Wikipedia when you need it?

NPC · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:10 am

The torrent of nonsense stopped. The screen flickered one more time, and then displayed a serene block of text.

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------Systems Report Critical Delivery Override------
Seismic event in Cryo Recovery B, Century Deck. AL.01.01.GEM.CRB
Sensors reported maximum proof mass excursion of 0.51032.
Decompression in Cryo Recovery B, Century Deck. AL.01.01.GEM.CRB
Sensors reported atmospheric decline ~ 31kPas/s.
Decompression in Cryo Suite Ops, Century Deck. AL.01.01.GEM.CSO
Sensors reported atmospheric decline ~ 4kPas/s.

      Shields offline due to power shortage!
      Possible hypervelocity impact at Cryo Suite, Century Deck!
      Possible hull breach in Cryo Suite, Century Deck!

Then, much closer to the bottom of the screen.

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[S]ave [C]lear [L]og [D]etail [R]eturn [H]elp _

Sheff · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:05 am

Sheffer's face instantly lit up with surprise and relief, but said expression quickly vanished as his eyes skimmed over the text. He read through it once, twice, then three times, grasping what he could from it and coming to a simple conclusion; they were running out of time. The colony he stood within suddenly felt like a metal coffin, fit for him and all of its new passengers. Only a matter of time before such a thought became reality.

"We need to get movin' quick..." he muttered to Rodolph, glancing over his shoulder to the crowd.

"Hey, anyone here know how to get more info off this thing?" he questioned, any nervousness that may have come from speaking before the amount of people there buried beneath urgency. He eyed a certain robot that loomed over them all, and then gave a quick glance to the squirrel he had encountered earlier.

psikeout · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:06 pm

Rock had imposed by trying to get close enough to read the screen, regardless of whether or not the green hedgehog was the one currently messing with it. Maybe he felt more urgent about being close at hand, given who it was. It didn't help that the kid's big, blue-dyed quills were flailing every which way as he looked around for help, though.

It really only took Rock a couple second glance to get the info he needed, anyway. "No shields—asteroids—bad," he summarily summarized with a succinctness only robots and those of his degree of desired efficiency could appreciate, speaking over the din of the confused crowd (and possibly any retorts following his incendiary remarks). However, with just an additional once-over of the console (searching unsuccessfully for any ports to plug Tau into, which sadly weren't there), he immediately stepped back.

"Not much time to play with it," he said dismissively. "It'd be good if somebody could use this crap to run diagnostics on the reactor and find out what's wrong with it in case our plan runs into problems," he admitted as he started away, "but we oughta move now."

In other words: Let somebody less capable than us play with the computer--if they can figure it out, great, but we've got a job to do if they can't.

Kazz · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:12 pm

"Where exactly do you propose we 'get moving' to?" Rodolf grumbled to the hedgehog, no small bit of irritation bleeding into his voice. He seemed... somewhat less than impressed. He wasn't about to start fiddling with the computer; and yet, he was quite thoroughly lost on any other course of action to pursue.

He looked at Rock briefly as he gave his summary of what was on the screen. For a second, he attempted to scrutinize the monkey's actions and (lack of) expression. This turned out... to be an exercise in futility, to be blunt. Regardless, he kept an eye on him. After another moment, he turned back to Sheffer, and added onto the end of his own previous sentence:
"Or are we just going to stand here and push buttons until something works?"

He cast another look in Rock's direction. He wasn't about to go run over and be buddy-buddy 'so what's the plan', but the simian seemed to actually have some inkling of a course of action, which was, at the very least, something.

The Dashboard Melted But We ... (Ch. 3b: Day 1, pt. III)

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