Session 35

"Crumbs! Such a vivid dream!" murmurs Tom Driscoll as he groggily wakes up aboard the Toronto - the most high-tech space mining organism ship ever to be invented by human hands.

His sleep has been fitful and restless and represented as a cheaply put together CGI cutscene of a space podule flying over a desert and arriving at a sort of moon base.

Blinking his little eyes our hero notices something unusual. Instead of being in his sleep-mo-bed unit in this cabin, he seems to be in a corridor. And instead of being stationary and laid down, he appears to be moving along and sort of almost upright. His legs are dragging along the floor behind him and he's being pulled along by a couple of conspicuously cold-to-the-touch men. And instead of having any skin at all, he appears to have no skin at all!

"What's happening? I was having the strangest dream..." he begins before a door slides open infront of him and he realises he's being presented - more naked than naked - to the ship's captain, the ship's AI's robotic body, his best friend Joe and a girl who looks so familiar, yet he hasn't thought about her or mentioned her for so long that he's forgotten who she is... wait... it'll come to him... That's it! It's his girlfriend! His girlfriend who gave up years of her life to live on this space ship with him when she could've been becoming a successful radio DJ back on earth. His devoted girlfriend somethingorother -who needs names when love is deaf?

"Oh this is just a dream isn't it" says Tom. "In real life you don't find yourself suddenly more naked than naked in front of a load of important people AND a girlfriend who you are somehow aware you have but don't know any details about. That's it, in a minute I'll wake up and everything'll be--"

"TOM! WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN YOU SLACKER? WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD?"

"Oh God! Captain, Sir!!! I'm... That is to say... We were... Me and Hoff"

Tom tries to stand up but his skinless feet just slip around on the polished metal floor and he staggers clumsily.

NED - the nattily-bearded robot body provided to the ship's super-intelligent AI as a way of talking to the humans on board the ship without freaking them out by asking them to talk to computer panels or a single red LED on a dashboard - locks its jaws open and a plays a message through the speaker revealed inside its mouth "He must be drunk captain".

"No wait! I have something important to tell you! The planet isn't just a desert! It's inhabited by -- snooooooooooooze"

"Oh look. He's fallen back to sleep. Supporting my drunkness theory entirly... Ignore the panel in my chest that is closing up again"

"...Are those darts sticking into him?"

There is the sound of a chest panel springing back open and a sort of *thwip* sound - not unlike the sound darts being fired.

"His friend Joe has fallen asleep too. This supports my drunkness theory also. They are friends. They must've been drinking together... Ignore the panel in my chest that is closing up again again."

"That doesn't make sense" chips in the girlfriend - whatever her name is - "since we've not been able to find--"

Clunk. Thwip. Slump. Snooze.

"I propose that this also supports my theory somehow. Please ignore the panel in my chest that is closing up again again again"

"I must say NED. This robot body of yours, though not as sinister as an LED in the wall, does have a lot of foibles. The locked open mouth. The deadly exhaust fumes. The frequent problems with the directional controls that leave you walking holes through the walls. And now there's some panel in your chest that keeps popping open? Honestly, it's enough to make a man wonder if you're really as benign and friendly as the beard suggests."

"ERROR: FRIENDLY REASSURANCE 1536 NOT FOUND"

"Easy for you to say."

Ned turns his attention back to the slumped Tom, still held sort-of upright by the guards.

"Secret robot attendees - please take this man to a holding-- I mean... Recuperation cell."

"What did you just call those men? Secret whatbot whonows?-- *slump, snooze*..."

"The captain is drunk. Nobody be alarmed".

Later:

"Crumbs! Such a vivid dream!" murmurs Tom Driscoll as he groggily wakes up. He's locked in a cell on board the Toronto but there's really nothing to do. Minutes pass and he spends his time examining everything that could possibly be a clue to the (presumably) puzzle of getting out of the room. Eventually though, Joe turns up.

"Tom! Sorry I couldn't get here earlier. I fell asleep for some reason and only just woke up. When I heard they'd put you in here I just had to come visit you!"

"Joe! You're NEVER going to believe what I've been doing for the last few months!"

"Sitting in a desert going mad and eating your own skin?"

"NO! I've been living it up on a planet of adventure!"

"Tell me it all. But keep it short."

At this point the game says that Tom explains everything that's happened so far keeping it "short and sweet". I can only imagine where he started on this - the intelligent cat people? The fact that pre-Roman European druids travelled here through space? The fact that the Christian "God" of earth is in fact Amoeka - the evil brother of lovely Albionian goddess Amoeba? The fact that God is using the Toronto as a way of effing up his sister's goody-two-shoes kids just to get her back for saying that naming stuff was lame?

Whatever the specifics of what he says, Joe is convinced.

"Looks like we've been conned then!" he explains "Since the only bit of this planet that any of us have seen with our own eyes is the desert, we all assumed it was ALL desert. Additionally, NED said it was all fine and none of us thought to ask. I mean, there were all those monsters we had to kill when the mining started. I mean, LOADS of monsters. It was almost like the planet itself wanted to stop us mining. But we thought that really, since they didn't seem intelligent, we'd just blast their faces off with our shotguns and it'd all be fine..."

"I wonder who knows about this!"

"Well it's probably just NED. Think about it - remember snoopy beagle getting exploded by that space phone panel? It was definitely the panel exploding that killed him. Well the ship's AI could've short-circuited the panel and caused it to explode! Trust me, I'm a technician with access to all parts of this ships complex machinery - even super high security ones - so I know how these things could get done by a rogue AI that's gone rogue and exploded a panel that was definitely the thing that killed Snoopy Beagle. Oh, just on an asside, I think I've lost my space blaster... if you see it around anywhere let me know yeah?"

"'course mate. So what about the scanners telling everyone the planet's uninhabited?"

"Well I think someone could quite easily put scan data into the computer that makes it show up scan results that are actually taken from a different, totally un-inhabited planet if they had super high security tech-clearance. Or were, infact, the AI! See! It MUST be NED!"

"Wow! That's pretty bad news really isn't it!"

"Well yes. And if NED is a bad news cupcake, the disaster-cherry on top is that... NED isn't the only robody under the AI's control on board the ship! According to what I've seen, the AI has HEAPS of bodies. To the point that almost anyone on this ship might be a robot, piloted by the Toronto's super brainputer. Anyone, except me naturally. You can trust me Tom!"

"Cripes! Ok, so how do we sort all this out then?"

"Well here's my theory. The AI's superbrain is in a tamper proof, space proof, external booth that no one can get into no matter how high their clearance - to the point where if we wanted to take control of it, the only way to do that would be to feed it bad information through - for example - fake scanner info that can be input via a separate unit. Oh, but naturally we don't want to take control of the superbrain - ha ha ha ha ha. I'm getting all mixed up... in the excitement!"

"Hold on... Do you think that it might've been the AI that sabotaged me and Hoff's space podule when we set off to the planet all that time ago? You work in the podule dock a lot of the time so you'd know if it was possible to do it..."

There is a pause. "Yes. Yes I think the ship's AI could've done that thing."

"I suppose it wouldn't want us to report to the captain what we'd found - otherwise the captain would spot that the scan data of the planet was fake..."

Another pause. "Yes. The podule was sabotaged so that the CAPTAIN wouldn't receive data that conflicted with the readouts of his scanners."

"Anyway, what was your plan?"

"We should go to the fusion reactor room and try to work out a way of cutting off the power to the super-brain. There-by preventing it from ever finding out what's REALLY on the planet's surface..."

"Wait... no, the ship already KNOW'S what's on the planet's surface. It's just lying to get everyone to co-operate with the mining."

"...Oh! ha ha ha! Yes Tom. Yes. That's what I meant. I got confused because I'm a simple human! Oops! What a silly billy! We'll shut down the superbrain to kill it so that we can tell everyone to stop mining the planet. Yes."

At this point Joe joins the team! This is awesome - I love that the game has come back round and started re-introducing people you could casually chat to before setting off on your space mission at the start. It's like the stuff on the mono-rail in Half Life. You go past all the things that you don't think twice about initially, but that you'll later realise were significant and important.

Tom and Joe's route to the fusion chamber will take them through the servant's passages of the Toronto again - just like when Tom snuck into the space-phone room earlier in the game. They thieve the password for the access hatch from someone's bedroom and are able to scramble down the ladder into the first-person-perspective maze below stairs.

Joe explains to tom that they'll probably have to use some "strange" devises to navigate the maintenance passages. And he's not kidding! You know how you sometimes wonder how Bowser gets anything done living in a castle where all the corridors are populated by timed lava traps and angry ghosts? Well it's not much different in Albion land. Sure, these corridors aren't deadly, but how exactly anyone gets any maintenance done in them is beyond me!

Firstly we have to open a door. But we can't just use a security pass to buzz our way through, instead we have to coax a cuddle-bot to come out and stand on a pressure pad for us.

In the next corridor we have to do the beep test from gym class. Press a button at one end of a long hall then run down to the other before the timer runs out to press the other button at the far end. Wouldn't one button at one end be a better way of letting service engineers through?

In another room there is an array of pressure pads that light up when you step on them. presumably this next door is opened by lighting up the correct pattern? Can you imagine mentoring a new technician in this place? "Yeah, pretty soon you'll notice that none of the doors in this place work the same way as any of the others..."

"Boss, how do we know what pattern to make on the pressure plates?"

"Well you have to find your way through that maze over there and make a note of the pattern on the matching pressure plates somewhere through there..."

"And then the door opens?"

"Well, no... Once you've done the pressure plates, the force-fields between the buttons over there are deactivated and you have to run around and press them all within a certain time. THEN the door'll open."

"And then we'll be able to get to the fuse box for the meeting room?"

"Yeah... Well... Nearly..."

"Nearly?"

"Well as good as."

"Boss..?"

"Well ok. So then we might have to hurd hug bots around the place in a huge chamber to get them to (possibly) stand on the pressure plates in order to open the next set of doors into the fusion chamber."

"And the hug bots will follow us just like the last one did?"

"No, the rules for these hugbots are different. They're sort of random. I think it's something to do with bumping into them."

"So... We sort of stand around in a room full of randomly moving hugbots until the doors open for some reason, possibly to do with pressure plates, and then we can proceed?"

"Yes. Welcome to the team!"

This kind of stuff you can just about get away with in a "dungeon" setting. Y'know - if it was a prison style set up, or well-defended crypt, you can imagine that someone would set up fiendish trials and traps to prevent people getting in or out if they're not meant to. But you'd've thought that in the future, people would've sussed out that when a bulb needs changing somewhere it's a good idea to get the technician to the right place as conveniently as possible. Having Joe quip "I'd love to know what screw ball came up with all this" while you're working your way through it all only draws your attention to the ridiculousness of it all even more.

I'm bad-mouthing this section, but it was actually pretty fun. It was a really nice puzzle dungeon where you weren't under threat ever - you were just solving things to progress. Plus, it had quite a nice structure to it where you were solving a new puzzle in every room PLUS looking for the secret side chambers (none of them were TOO secret, but they were secret enough that you had to keep your wits about you and your eyes peeled) so as to gather all the pieces of scrap paper that no-good mechanics with their terrible memories had left about the place to remind them of the access code for the FINAL door into the reactor room.

After not too long you find your way into a really massive chamber - in the centre of which is the towering reactor operations room.

Stepping inside we flip back to third-person view and can have a good ooh-and-ahh at the reactor itself. A glowing yellow panel at the north end of the room, it pulsates rhythmically. It is the beating heart of the invincible planet eating organism that is the Toronto and Tom and Joe comment on how wondrous it is (although in reality it's nothing special).

Back to business - we saunter over to a control console.

"I'm going to suffocate the computerbrain now Tom... Just give me a minute since it's a bit complicated"

"STOP!!!" comes a voice over the loud speaker. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"We have to stop you mining this planet!" Shouts Tom - recognising the voice as that of the Toronto's AI.

"WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT? THE COMPANY NEEDS TO MINE THE PLANET! THAT'S WHAT WE'RE ALL HERE FOR!"

"There's living people on this planet you heartless computer! We can't let you destroy Amoeba's children!"

"YOU'RE DELERIOUS! DON'T DO ANYTHING AND WE'LL COME AND GET YOU AND PUT YOU INTO CARE AND LOOK AFTER YOU! I CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO WASTE THE WHOLE TRIP HERE!"

"It's a trick Tom! If we stay here the AI will send it's hench-bodies to come and kill us! I don't have time to kill it either! It's too complicated! I couldn't kill the brain without ruining all the mining equiptment!"

"Oh, but we could do that! It'd be fine 'cos we wouldn't want the mining equiptment anyway..."

"No, we'd be better off running away."

"...No, honestly, kill the brain AND the mining stuff! That's be best possible result, Joe!"

"Too late! Here they come! We've got to go all they'll DEFINITLY shoot us!"

"But the AI said it'd just look after us... maybe we could talk it round..."

Tom says this last while Joe is pushing him bodily out of the door - at which point he concedes and they run away.

Weirdly, they aren't accosted by the swarms of guards you might expect. Instead they're able to run all the way back to the dock where Tom arrived at the start of this post and the only person who tries to stop them is NED the robody.

"Tom. You cannot leave. We've only just rescued you once! Where will you go?"

"You know full well NED! Don't try and stop us!"

"I'm sorry Tom. You're clearly mental..." a panel on the front of the robody starts to open but Tom's too fast!

He pulls out a special magical bead that (aparently) someone gave him earlier in the game. I have no memory of this bead, but according to Tom it was a major plot point some time previous and he's been holding onto it ever since. Anyway, he uses it to eff NED up with a fire ball before he can attack!

As the robody fritzes out, jittering and spinning round, Tom and Joe make good their escape

"How did you do that?" asks Joe as they jump down from the hanger door to the sandy desert below

"Oh yeah - magic is real on this planet. Did I not mention that? So is telepathy, teleportation and resurrection."

"Do you think we should've stopped to let your girlfriend know we were running away again?"

"My whatnow?"