TO994M | day 2 | morning | text

[cactusy]

Found a stick that was whittled down to a point at one end. Any of you want to cop to making this and then leaving it behind, or should I assume it was made by some other group of kidnapping victims who passed through here at some point?

Volume's off, btw. Text or bust.

[She's hiding from a drone right now and is not looking to risk noise detection.]

Comments

text | HO125E

[trialbyliar]

i was wondering where my shiv went!
w(°ｏ°)w
just kidding
but we're definitely not the first people that've been here
i found a lot of weird stuff!

[cactusy]

Me, too. This is the first thing that doesn't seem like random flotsam, though.

What did you find?

[trialbyliar]

a six-pack of beer!

[No one could be blamed for assuming that's a lie.]

[cactusy]

[YEAH, EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS]

Don't drink it.

[trialbyliar]

ehhh??
aww why not
i don't even like booze but i'd rather drink something sealed in a can than dirty river water
oooh, you think someone poisoned it??

[cactusy]

Alcohol is dehydrating.

[trialbyliar]

awww boo
except alcohol's pretty gross so w/e

[cactusy]

How old are you?

[trialbyliar]

37

[salamanca]

You can't have alcohol.

[ He doesn't actually give a shit if you have alcohol, but he has to look like he gives a shit or his cover is blown.

In real life, Kokichi gets a light smack upside the head and Lalo tells him, "Don't tell everyone you're drinking beer, dipshit. You're still sixteen. Some of the hardasses here are gonna have a problem with it." ]

[trialbyliar]

meanie! tyrant!! who do you think you're bossing around, huh?

[ irl kokichi sticks his tongue out at lalo and only sips at it a little anyway, making faces at the taste every time. ]

[salamanca]

[ Lalo just laughs, loudly, at every dainty sip. "You'll get used to it!" he assures Kokichi, in response to the stinkface. "It'll put hair on your chest!"

He slaps his own chest in demonstration. ]

[trialbyliar]

[The oversized jacket with no shirt underneath already shows off plenty of his scrawny hairless chest, but he gives Lalo the flattest look possible and tugs the jacket open a little as if to say no amount of booze will do that.]

[salamanca]

[ That gets a decent belly laugh out of Lalo, who sets his half-drank beer down. He grins.

Better move fast, Kokichi. If you don't, you will find Lalo, with surprising speed and deliberateness, yanking you in close for a noogie. ]

text; DI481O

[salamanca]

I know I didn't make it.

Why is the volume off? Is something after you?

[cactusy]

A drone's in the area. Not risking it.

[salamanca]

[ Okay, fuck it. He's not going to keep pretending he knows wtf a "drone" is. He's heard people on the walkies mentioning and describing them, but doesn't know what one actually is, and it doesn't do him any good not to just have the information. Besides, he's pretending to be a wet behind the ears rookie cop anyway. ]

What's a drone?

[cactusy]

Remotely piloted aircraft. The one I saw was only a few feet wide.

[salamanca]

What the fuck? Jesus. What'll they come up with next?

[cactusy]

They're not specific to this situation, you can use them for all kinds of things.

These look pretty fancy, though. Guessing military.

[salamanca]

These drones... what do they look like? They sound like helicopters, yes? They look like 'em too?

[ "What does a drone look like?" is prob a stupid question to somebody from 2015! But for those of us in 2004, drones are only used for secret military operations and most people haven't heard of them yet. ]

The military uses them?

[cactusy]

These ones are smaller. No person could ride inside one, but they could be picked up and carried underneath one, depending on how strong it is.

[salamanca]

I see.

[ Sort of, anyway. He's still trying to picture them, but he feels like he maybe has sort of an idea now... ]

Thank you for the explanation, Miss Shaw. You worked with these things before? Would you know how to disable them?

[cactusy]

I've worked around them, but not closely. I'm not a techie. I don't know how to program or disable them.

text; TN811N

[hyakuoku]

Interesting find. There aren't that many of us that have actually spoken up on this network, so it's possible it belongs/belonged to someone that we haven't heard from yet. But your other guess could be right too. I mean it's obvious that other people existed here at some point based on the bits of things here though whether they were shipwrecked or kidnapped or what, who knows.

Are there drones where you are too?

[ He's been paying attention to the network, ok, he can keep up. ]

[cactusy]

Have you come across anybody in person?

And yeah, there's one pretty close by.

[hyakuoku]

Not yet.

What does this thing look like? Do you know if it's armed?

[ He knows this is probably a pain to type but whatever, he's asking anyway. ]

[cactusy]

[There's a gap between responses here, as she can't actually see the drone when the question comes in and she doesn't bother to answer until after it comes into view.]

About a yard wide, four rotors, grabbing claw at the bottom. No noticeable weapons.

[hyakuoku]

That's much bigger than I was picturing when you said drone.

[ Thank god this convo isn't out loud because part of him is like EXCITING! But part of him is like WOW WHAT THE HELL. Inside you are two wolves, etc. ]

Grabbing claw. I assume for grabbing people, but maybe not JUST people. Animals?
But that begs the question what they want with it at all. Are the people controlling the drones the same ones that brought us here? What's the point in such a thing?

If we could build something to overload them, an EMP or to fry their circuits with electricity, maybe we could get one and take it apart to see what else it can do. But for now with limited resources we're pretty screwed.

[ Voice to text means his habit of thinking out loud puts this there for other people to see as well. ]

It also begs the question of their range, how many of them there are, and what exactly happens when they catch you.

[ He DID hear Martin's post, but after that, who knows? ]

[cactusy]

If we could start marking them somehow, we could count them. That's assuming they all look totally identical. I've only seen the two so far.

[hyakuoku]

I wonder if there's any sort of ID mark or number on them, but that might be too small to see from far away.

[cactusy]

My guess? There is. But capturing one is going to be a hell of a job.

[hyakuoku]

Yeah. If I can find some more electronics then I can build something to overload them. EMPs are a lot harder to make and I doubt I'll find the materials for that here but never say never.

Guess we'll have to make it a goal to capture a drone.

[ He's enjoying this plan even though it's insane. He's also not anywhere near the danger, but his mind wouldn't change if he were. ]