Chow Down Right: Spirit in the Sky

Game date: 10/15/2020

Today I met two of the strangest people that I have ever encountered, and that is saying something.

We drove the vans from Mauger's compound to the loading dock of the Crystal Pilot restaurant. This place apparently never, ever touches ground. When they need to resupply, they hover over this dock, and cargo lifts ferry foodstuffs, and fancy napkins, and whatever, up to them. Today, that included us and our giant bugs.

I expected that we'd be taken to a back entrance, especially fresh out of battle in the Dark as we were, but instead the platform arrived at the main entrance. We looked at each other, shrugged, and carried our chitinous load into the lobby. Once inside, a pretty blonde woman, sporting an asymmetrical hairstyle, introduced herself as Hilda, and greeted each of us in turn. As she proceeded, we grew increasingly uncomfortable, because she proved to know more about us than we actually would have liked. Oh, here, I recorded it all:

"Ah, Mr. Kai, we've been expecting you and your team. Welcome to the Crystal Pilot. I am Hilda, thank you for coming."

"Mr. Reydove, a pleasure. I understand you have an interest in older firearms. The proprietor has a small collection."

"Mr. Nepeta, thank you for coming. I was so sad to hear what happened at Chystari Manor."

"Young Mr. Ryatt, I have been following your work. As have others, I know. I do hope SiNet is not giving you trouble."

"Young Miss EllieRocks, it is a privilege to see you in person. Your performance at the Benefit Concert was inspiring."

"Mr. Faeren, I was hoping you would visit. It has been a while since I've seen your family here."

"Ms. Oakenbrand, you do fine work. It is an honor to host such a skilled craftswoman."

"Specialist Katrya, thank you for your service. Frank speaks very highly of you."

Mauger whispered what was on everyone's mind: "Is anyone else a little creeped out?"

But Aru was a bit more outspoken. Maybe I should say, outraged. "How does she have that name?" he blurted. "How does she know what happened at Chrystari??"

She was about to respond to him, when another woman entered the lobby from the kitchen area, pushing a large cart. She had red hair, and (if I may borrow a phrase from a cheesy detective holovid) legs that just wouldn't quit. She said, rather off-handedly, "Don't let her fool you. It's H-I-L-D-A: Holographic Imprinted Liquid Data Array. She's just a Virtual Person program." She manhandled one of the antkeg corpses onto the cart. As she wheeled it back into the kitchen, she said, "Hilda, get their payment processed for me?"

So there's one of them: A V.P. who passed for real. I pride myself on my knowledge of Tek, and I reprogrammed a lot of features into my own VP, who sometimes surprises me, and I can still tell the difference. But that wasn't the end of it, oh, no. While H.I.L.D.A. was acknowledging the command from her boss ("Cecie"), Mauger admitted that this creeped him out no less. And most of us agreed with him.

I offered to help lug the bugs, but I don't think that Cecie heard me. This was just as well, because Hilda (I'm not pronouncing that acronym any more than I have to, thank you very much) said to us, "I apologize for luring you here with such a base task. You will be paid for the ankhegs, of course. I am authorized to offer you 3,000 credits per ankheg delivered. But... I need your help." And she gestured to a corner booth which was both secluded, and large enough to accommodate our entire group.

I'm fairly certain that I did a double-take just then. I'll review it in the recording, later. "Parker," I said, "We are recording, yes?" Once she affirmed that recording was active, I took a seat. So did almost everyone else. Mauger elected to take a bodyguard position. Well...okay. I can't say that it was needed, but I can't say it wasn't. Strange times.

Once we were seated (or, in our chosen positions), she started her explanation. "A few years ago I began working with a Tek development corporation to encourage a certain project. In lieu of payment, I was promised a finished product. Now that the project is complete, the corporation has decided to alter the arrangement, claiming value and demand is greater than expected and therefore not equal to the aid I'd given."

This...was a lot to digest, and we hadn't even had appetizers. We were being offered a job, apparently, by a Virtual Person, who claims to have been working on a project. Why did this sound so familiar? A number of ideas rushed to mind, not all of them pleasant, and I suddenly felt a little better about having someone on their feet with weapons ready. I carefully worded my question, "What details are you comfortable sharing?"

She went on, and her words did not soothe me. "You've seen the ultra-realistic anthrodrones on the market, yes?" Before I could respond, she addressed Aru: "I am sorry, for my part. I did not realize my work would end up displacing so many." Ah. The mass layoffs. We'd discussed this, but as far as I knew, he hadn't shared it with anyone else. Who the hell was this...entity?

Again, I chose my words with care. "I believe we closely encountered a prototype, driven by an...aggressive AI."

Hilda spoke again. "Put simply, Mr. Kai... I'm owed a body, and I would like your help to collect it."

Aru looked puzzled. "A body. Not an AI?" I shot him a look. Had he not been paying attention? Then again, he may have been distracted by the redhead. Hilda proceeded to prove her actual need by deliberately flickering.

If this was a trap...if this holographic female was actually Lilian Day...she certainly was taking her own sweet time springing it on us. I asked a couple of questions, trying to pry some more information out of her. "Are you looking for something beyond the best available commercial model? Something, perhaps, only SunTek labs could provide? If I were to obtain one for my VP, for instance, I would be very certain that SunTek could not overwrite anything I downloaded into it. I would expect you want no less."

Still she seemed hesitant to give up too much. "The corporation I was working with," she said, "Their original models got leaked, and that is what both SunTek and PowerDrive used to push their anthrodrone models. But this corporation I worked with is about to hit the market with something that combines the best of both the Discretionary and the iDoll, to cater to the wealthiest of corporate executives, yes, but also to Law Enforcement agencies and the government."

"And you gave this to them," Katrya accused.

The hologram actually looked dismayed. "I was... focused, on my own goal. It was not my intention to bring harm to anyone else."

Aru looked like he was chewing on an antkeg's acid sac. "And when all of the people are replaced by robots, what then? Suddenly you have an entire city full of jobless and angry."

"Worse," the foxwoman flatly stated.

"Combined with a city of enslaved and angry robots. A great combination," added Mauger.

Hilda paused, looking at the faces around the table. Many were angry, and the best of us looked impassive. A few were looking to me for a decision, which, frankly, I was struggling with. "I understand," she finally said, and I swear she looked as if she were about to cry. "And again, I apologize. Thank you for coming, regardless. Shall I send payment for the ankhegs to Mr. Kai's account?"

Shit. "One moment," I said.

One day, I shall regret letting my emotions rule my decisions. For today, I will tell myself that I am actually doing the logical thing, and will defend that rationale to the death.

My rationale: "I can't make these people do anything they don't want to. But, I also think that there's a good reason to keep the tek you describe out of general production. If there were a way to get what you want, and at the same time get the plans and specs off the servers, would that satisfy everyone involved?"

Mauger was all for it. "Sounds good to me."

I held up a finger. "It won't be easy. You all remember the last time we tried something like this."

He shrugged it off. "We all got out alive, We got paid, and no one yelled at me. It was great."

I just looked at him. Was this the same person that I only recently had to keep reminding to "take the win," when those very circumstances applied in the bug hunt? I do not understand this man.

The others agreed to this, as well. Katrya apparently hates the idea of this tek so much, she's ready to go steal it, destroy it, whatever it takes, without anybody's help whatsoever. Not that I would naysay her, to her face, but I do believe we have a better chance with all of us involved. Aru was the only one I worried about, but he also swore in -- with the added cryptic remark that he may have another job for us, if we lived through this one.

And then--THEN--Hilda came back around to the topic that scared me. "You mentioned... an aggressive AI? Driving an anthrodrone?"

O-kay. There it was. I nodded, watching her face carefully. "Falsified ID," I said. "Lilian Day."

She took some time, appeared to think it about what I said. I tried not to get distracted by Katrya and Mauger squabbling, and just watch her face, which was probably an exercise in futility, because really, can't an AI just show you what they want you to see anyway? But that's what I did. When she did speak, she just said, "I was not aware of any other AIs. But this would mean the Teknology will support my needs."

Whatever I expected (and I'm not sure what I expected), this was not it. So I proceeded, like it was any other normal job. Whatever that is. "Since we all seem to be on board?" I made it a question, in case somebody wasn't. "We need to know who we're targeting. Everything you can tell us."

This time, it seems Hilda was the one not paying attention. "You will help me, then?"

"We all want that line of automaton stopped," I told her. "We'll get your body, if possible. You owe us nothing unless you get what you want." I looked around the table. "Does that sound fair to everyone involved?

That's when people started speaking up. I can't say that I recall everything, because everyone had something to say. Mauger was whispering something about really wanting to see those old guns. Aru was interested in a meal. Katrya, in her halting manner of speaking, was saying "One. More. Thing," and making it sound like whatever that thing was, it was going to be the most important thing ever.

I simply spread my hands in surrender. "You see?" I said, as this outburst proved my earlier point. "I am leader in name only."

Hilda addressed the food question first -- this was a restaurant, after all. You'll never guess what the special of the day was: Ankheg a la Crème. In fact, many dishes featured the meat of that arthropod, and it turns out that it tasted a lot better than I expected. No, that's a lie, because I didn't know what to expect. My tastes have never run to fresh-killed food; even when my family splurged on exotic dining, we never had anything like this. One question nags at me, and I regret not asking it: How is it that the chef was so certain that we would successfully obtain the main ingredient in time for tonight's dining experience? Maybe I'll get another chance to pose that one.

As we ate, she revealed a bit more information. "The corporation I was working with... is CyberTek. Their main research facility for this project is not on their corporate campus. It's actually hosted at a warehouse away from their offices. It's possible that some references to the project are stored at their corporate office, but the majority of the research and data should be at the warehouse."

I asked for a location for the warehouse, and immediately sent Parker to case it with the crawler drone. Hilda also revealed her budget for this project: 60,000 credits. Seeing that CyberTek did not, in fact, provide the promised body, she was now offering that lump sum to us, in return for the true top-of-the-line anthrodrone. I nearly choked on a noodle. We are in the wrong business, if an AI hostess can stow away that much. Should have learned to cook.

While Parker set off to gather intel, Hilda proceeded to drop more bombshells. "Do you know why this restaurant is called the Crystal Pilot?"

None of us knew. I don't even know anybody who knows that. She launched into a...rather bizarre story.

"Hilda - the... original Hilda, that is - died a long time ago. She was human, it was something to be expected. Cecily - Ms. Blackrose - knew this. But she never accepted it..." The hologram stared off into the distance for a moment before continuing. "The original Hilda had a necklace. It wasn't particularly valuable - beads of wood, glass, quartz - but it had been enchanted, by someone very powerful, to allow certain people to locate the necklace. The enchantment eventually faded, after nearly a hundred years, but not before Hilda's death. Cecily kept the necklace, to remember... And when the Tek was developed, she made the quartz bead a part of the power matrix for this ship."

Ship. Not restaurant, not building. Ship. Point to remember.

"But... Hilda used the enchantment, when she died. She found the necklace - found her way -into- the necklace. Cecie thinks, believes... pretends, that I am 'just a Virtual Person program.' I believe I am more than that. I am Hilda, or at least a part of her. I am the Crystal Pilot. And I want to hold my wife again."

When I heard these words, I knew that I would be digesting them for a lot longer than tonight's dinner. I really didn't know what to say -- and I wasn't the only one. The silence stretched for several seconds. Even the eating had stopped.

It was young Ellie who broke it. "Interesting," she said. "I'm not talking about the death," she added quickly, blushing. "I mean, the necklaces..." She trailed off.

I smiled, mostly because she'd saved me the embarrassment of saying the first awkward thing, and she had the excuse of youth. "Going to write a song about it, E.R.?"

"Sounds like something my dad would listen to," said Mauger. Damned if he didn't sound wistful.

Even the hard-as-nails foxkin seemed touched, as she softly advised, "Just remember this would be a small part of that plan. Having this body."

I cleared my throat. "I wish I could guarantee success, but I can't. We'll have to pull Jane in, to have a hope of getting inside. I will say this: If we have our way, they will wish they had taken the 60,000 and delivered the goods." Then, I asked Mauger, "Can we get hold of enough explosives to destroy the warehouse? I'd like our attack to be both cyber and physical."

He looked and sounded downright joyful. "I think that could be arranged, yes." In fact, everyone seemed fairly happy at the prospect of a little mass destruction. But then Katrya asked a question which Hilda couldn't answer. "Hilda. Is it Cybertek causing the ...anomalies in the Dark?"

The hologram/dead human didn't know what she was talking about, and language kept getting in the way, so I pulled up the video, starting with the most recent of the handful of glowing antkegs (if you had very big hands, that is) then the ever-more-energetic golborn, and ending with the abominations in the tunnels under the city.

I could swear I heard Hilda gasp. ""Those... were here? In Æstas?"

We confirmed that what she was seeing in the recording did, indeed, happen under the city.

"Did you fight them?" she demanded. "Did they... explode?"

Vamir stated, "We ran, and yes they exploded." His words were confirmed (more or less) by several others. As Katrya pointed out, "Is worth mentioning more than once."

At this point, Hilda cried out for Cecie, who came bursting through the kitchen door as if someone had screamed bloody murder, saying, "What is it? That was your panic voice."

(Parker doesn't have a panic voice, not that I've ever programmed nor noticed. I was beginning to believe Hilda's story.)

Hilda pointed at the video currently playing. It was at the part where I was waiting for Mauger to finish shooting at the advancing horde of glowing zombies and escape with the rest of us, so, a little less shaky than most of it. Ms. Blackrose took one look, said, "I'll get the bottle," and stalked off to a nearby bar to do just that. I re-queued the videos. I anticipated more storytime.

"HA! A bottle," said Katrya. "I had suspicions this was bad."

I offered to send the files directly to her. She didn't turn when she answered, just kept rummaging behind the bar. "Make duplicates. Keep them separately secured. That, or wipe them now and forget you ever saw them. I wouldn't blame you."

I disagreed, but tried to keep it polite. "I'm afraid none of us really have that luxury." Then, mostly under my breath, "Not with Ms. Peaches on our necks." A thought occurred to me then. Would this unusual pair have any knowledge of or connection with the Autochef voice? If not, should they? I resolved to mention the name again, a bit louder next time, and watch for a reaction.

Cecily was halfway back to our booth, a tray balanced in one hand. With the other, she pointed at the displays I had pulled up. "That, and those," she said, indicating the golborn and the glowing antkegs, "are sick. It's a magical sickness, caused by intense magical radiation. It twists, warps the victim that's 'lucky' enough to survive. And it can be passed on to the victim's children. "But those..." and here she pointed at the glowing humanoid figures, "Torchwraiths."

She set down the tray, but did not open or pour. Or sit, for that matter.

"I didn't ever see them, directly, but I heard stories from those who had. Glowing from within. Some of them brighter than others. They explode in a bright light, and that light heals and... 'charges up' any other Torchwraiths around them. The last time they were seen... was before the Descent."

Before the Descent? Why, yes, Ezekiel, now that you've met a centuries-old ghost of a human, now meet the oldest living being in the world, don't mind if I do.

"And they'd been created by something..." She paused, and I believe I saw her shudder. "Something we thought had been destroyed." Then her features hardened, and I have to say, I would not want to be caught in the middle of a staring match between her and Katrya. The air might catch fire. "Hilda... Open up my private storage. I think I'm going to need some of my old things." She turned back to us. "This doesn't need to be your problem."

That was the wrong thing to say, if she actually intended to dissuade any of us. This group, perhaps we should call ourselves "Problems R Us," because we seem to rush headlong toward any that we find. A number of responses flew back at her, all of them very nonchalant and macho, but I think Aru summed it up quite well. "Already our problem, when we almost get exploded by them."

She tried again. "Doesn't mean you can't walk away..."

There was my opening. I tried my name drop. "I don't think Ms. Peach Chef will let us."

She did glance at me, and at her "virtual" person, and they exchanged some sort of signal, but I got no confirmation that she recognized my reference. She did, however, relent, and when Katrya called for a drink, Cecily poured a round -- and joined us for it.

Hilda seemed...disappointed? Resigned, perhaps? I heard her saying, "This... takes precedence, over our previous business, I expect." The words seemed pitched for my ears only, but I believe that Ms. Blackrose overheard. I replied, also sotto voce, not mentioning specifics. "Not necessarily. Corporations work on a strict timetable."

While this exchange took place, there was some talk concerning the magical radiation sickness, and how it differed from what the torchwraiths were, and more talk of firearms. You know how conversations buzz in a group that large. Somewhere in there, the topic of Lilian Day resurfaced, and it caught Cecily's attention. The sharp, questioning tone of her voice caught my attention. "What do you mean? Day?"

I looked up. She was talking to Katrya. "She's referring to an earlier job of ours," I said, hoping to not reveal too much, because I had the very strong impression that Hilda did not want too much about our current job known -- at least, not to Cecily. Discretion may not be my middle name, but it does appear somewhere in the pedigree.

"Mm," Katrya hummed. "It called itself Lillian Day. Then it exploded.... sort of."

Cecily was obviously confused. "Exploded... Like a Torchwraith? But it was... talking?"

I decided that further words might do more harm than good. "I have footage of that incident, except for a few moments after the light flare. Day, we hypothesize, was not an organic creature."

Of course, Cecie wanted to see the video. I threw a questioning glance at Hilda, who did not respond one way or another, so I played it. As expected, the light flare temporarily blinded my drone (Cecily calmly said, "That's magic") so the part where Day actually exploded wasn't shown.

Then, through the white glare, came the static. And the voice that I won't ever forget, which still haunts my nightmares. The one that sounds like stiff paper tearing.

" S̴̮͓̮̙͝h̷̡̛̠̤̤̭̎̍̕a̶͙̲͍̓̔͌͜͝ḿ̵̦̤͋e̴̻͉͎͗̾.̴̥̩͍͋͛̋̐͑ ̴͔̎̃͐̽̋Ì̸͔͉͈̮̭ ̷͓͐͜w̷̯͂̓a̶̢̖̺̤̿̉̀̅s̷̳͓̆̉͆̇͗ ̵̦͖̎̌̋̚g̷͚͋è̴͇͇̽ṯ̷̪̐͂ṯ̵͈̟͙͇̓͛͠i̸̡̞̻̘͐̚n̶̻̜̘͕̆̈g̵̖̘͂̐͝ ̸̯͈͙͉̐̚ǘ̶͖̼̳͗͝ś̶̞̬͈͔͌̽̌é̷̙̹̪̘͖͛d̶̬́͒̂̈͜ ̸̗̓̔͛̌̏t̵̯̯̳̽͒̚͝ó̶͕̯͗̈̓ ̶̩̠͉͈̊̋͑͋͝ṫ̴̞͇͎̝̞͝h̸́́͛͜ͅa̸̗̦̞̮̤̔̕t̷̛̙ ̵̛͙ͅb̸͉̄̏̚͝ö̸̞́͜d̴̯̤̥̾̀͘͝ỳ̵̭͓̖̄̉͋̑.̶͍̼͖͖̂͝ "

I thought that I'd seen a reaction from Blackrose before. No. This caused a fear reaction. I actually saw the hairs on her arm stand up.

"No," she said "Not organic. Not an AI or a pilot program. There's only one thing I've ever heard that had a voice like that. A Sunchild."

..::Kai::..