Star Trek: Foothold - To Relieve Paine

Where Lions Watch Over

Paine crossed the threshold of the holocomb again feeling moderately better fed, but more troubled by the encounter she'd had in Cargo Bay 4. Buban Roda's reaction—that of much of the crew, in fact—didn't surprise her, but it did hurt. The Vellouwyn was diverse, full of species from across three quadrants, so it was not her difference that made them wary: her Passenger, for all of its alien-ness, was not in and of itself the problem, she surmised, but the unwitting, unwilling way by which she had been changed, and the perverse scars which made the facts unforgettable.

Trying to shrug off the sense of disappointment at the fact that her aloofness and separation from the crew was now less a matter of her choosing, she ducked under the overhang which had been on the other side of the exit when she'd left earlier and was confronted by a system window from the program, asking a set of survey questions about the next checkpoint. Specifically, whether she'd woken Yeong-Ja for a shift at watch, or if she'd chosen to stand the night on her own. Gesturing casually through a number of responses, the window popped up a black screen at the end which listed, at the top, 'Calculating bonuses and penalties.'

Paine cocked her head, curious how the program would consider implementing such things, and watched as a number of visual roulettes spun their way arcanely through a couple of icons, and then settled. The black screen read at the end:

NO SLEEP PENALTY: -1 Stamina, -1 Agility. Combat challenges adjusted accordingly.

SINGLE VIGIL BONUS: Personal Mythos +5 (10/10000), Callout Loyalty +5 (5/10000)

RANDOM ENCOUNTER CHANCE: 4% (Area Cleared). Rolling... ... ... 51. NO ENCOUNTER.

TAKE POSITION TO RESUME PROGRAM.

Stepping past the window to lean against the entryway into their shelter, Paine watched briefly as the morning sun glinted against a world of shattered buildings, casting rays through sullen smoke. It was dark and moody and beautiful. "Resume program."

From behind came the sound of scrabbling as the tarp hung across the Park family abode was tugged aside, and the young Ji-Yeong scrambled out, followed by his father. Paine ignored them after marking their presence, as Ji-Yeong squeaked when she noticed him and scurried off around the corner to where they'd set up the latrine. A few minutes later, while Jeong fiddled around with supplies, setting up a pot of something to boil on the embers of the fire, the small Korean woman came up to stand beside her. "My nephew says he saw you doing something strange last night, before you gave me this spear. I suspected at the time, but what he told me has convinced me. You're a Player, aren't you?" she asked, leaning the weapon against the wall, gripping it casually.

The question took Paine by surprise: program characters were not meant to know they were characters, to know that the Players were, in fact, something external to them. There were entire areas of study within the Federation and every other faction which had invoked the technology around the entitization of a holographic program. The Vellouwyn even had a crewman who was the result of such an epiphany, and there were regulations about taking risks with such things, regardless of the fact that it had proven exceedingly difficult to create a meaningful spark of life in a simulation by anything but accident or exceptional insight, neither of which seemed to pass on well through teaching. She hesitated to respond, unsure as to what she should do to answer, or what the right thing to do would be. Seeing her hesitation, Yeong-Ja nodded and carried on.

"I heard rumors that some people were being bestowed power by the Tower, and that they would use some sort of system like a game. I didn't think it was true, or that we would meet someone like you out in this hell. But it would take something like that for a person to be powerful enough to dominate in a place like this. If there are other powerful people, Players like yourself, I am sure we'll find them in one of the fortified outposts. If we get to Chungmuro, I will do my best to help you."