<> <> (Ha, missing a 0 on that number.) (25.00!) <> <> (Grr.) <> * Zeke, or rather, one of his drones, is 'sitting' on one of the walls in the lounge, waiting for people to arrive. Maybe they can talk now. * Hestia is managing the funds on her future!iPhone, putting them into a carefully-constructed, hopefully untraceable, anonymous account for transfer. * TOMAS arrives, looking around for the others to discuss events. (IN CAPS no less!) (I'm excited to be here.) * TOMAS is now known as Tomas <> (Ha ha.) (Sounds good!) (I no longer have a bed.) <> <> (*points it at Preston* TRY THIS FOR US) <> (I'm not yet! Nor is Lexi, I think?) (Oh, thats true.) (Or, uh. Kyle.) * Lexi is lounging around the lounge area calling friends of hers! She hasn't been in touch for a while... She's on the phone with uh... Agnes! "She did wha-!? You're kidding! I thought I was the wild party girl? She trying to steal my thunder while I'm away?" She giggles. * Zeke's drone looks around at all the people as they arrive. At least it reorients like it's looking at them! (Yeup, not there.) <> * Zeke's drone skitters off as the time approaches! Zeke can be heard clanking down the hall a few moments before he gets there, and then he is there! * Tomas eyes Zeke as he comes in, "Any word on this courier?" * Zeke shakes his holohead slightly. "I know nothing about them. Perhaps Hestia and Amadeus are more likely to know." * Kyle walks into the lounge, a delicious sammich in his hand. "Hey guys, what's up?" * Hestia tap tap taps away with a stylus or a baguette or something. "He gets here when he gets here. These types are very picky and very arrogant, usually." * Tomas turns to Kyle, scrutinizing the supposedly delicious sammich, "Waiting." * Kyle munches on his sammich, of which there is a sort of meat, some vegetable, a solid dairy product, all encased in a breaded substance of some kind. "Oh, that's cool." He takes a seat. (It sounds pretty dunno.) <> * Kyle does, in fact, have an eggy substance to moisten the sandwich. It was simply not visible to the normal observer. Would you want enough maonnayse topping food product to be detectable at a distance on your sandwich? * Amadeus walks in about now, looking a bit more disheveled than usual, and he's actually forgotten to put his glasses on today. It's the first most of you have seen of him in days. He's also jacked into a datapad, but that's pretty normal for him. "Morning," he says distractedly. (Bet I could detect it.) 'morning Prof. (OH, you totally could, but you weren't here. So nyah. :P) <> * Tomas continues gazing at the sandwich. Occassionally his tongue flicks out to taste the air. (I thought we were in the ship?) (So did I!) (Is Tomas... eating Kyle's sandwich?) (That's why we're supposed to stop him.) (OH GOOD. Hang on, let me change that statement. * Amadeus keeps walking for the lab. There we go. (HOLD ON AMADEUS DON'T RECURSE REALITY :( ) (WHAT WHERE ARE WE) (WHO IN THE WHAT NOW?) (OH SHI-) * Lexi is still chatting away. "Eh... It's not that exciting really... And there's a distinct lack of parties full of hot guys..." <> * Tomas's attention does not falter. Sammich. * Zeke replies, "Likely them. Or another fan." Them? Oh, the courier? * Kyle finishes his sammich and licks his fingers. "Think that's our courier?" The sammich had a chipotle asian flavoring to it. * Amadeus actually stops and starts paying attention now. * Tomas frowns slightly, peering at Kyle, "Likely." <> ...you could let him in and find out. (HE DID NOT SAY MAYO) (IT COULD BE GUACAMOLE.) * Zeke replies, "I will." And he tromps down the hallway to greet them. Or kick them out if they're bums. < of headphones, cell phones, and any other audio devices you may be listening to.>> <> "When I got the call for a discreet delivery I never figured it'd be you guys. You gonna let me in, or maybe a dozen more people could see us talking?" * Zeke has some of his drones and his birdsect with him. The birdsect immediately flares its wings as he comms, ~... it is the woman with the bird.~ He then steps back a few steps to let her in. "No, you may come in." A pause as she comes in, then he adds, "Hopefully he is not drunk." "Nah, he's just angry at your drone. Nice mechanics, by the way, you can barely hear the motors." <> (It IS LENIN! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!) (RUN MORTALS) * Hestia raises an eyebrow. Woman with a bird. Oh right, from High Tea. "Interesting." * Zeke replies, "Thank you," as he leads her through the ship. * Zeke's drone is not letting Lenin out of its sight either. It can twist too! * Amadeus looks over at the chick and the bird. "You know her?" he asks, curiously, as he goes to sit down near Tia. Guess research will have to wait for a bit. * Hestia taps on phone screen with her stylus, then withdraws a credit chip from a port for those, not looking at Amadeus as she answers. "'Know', not exactly. 'Saw in a crowded room of drunks', yes." * Kyle looks over at the courier with a smile. "Hey, 'sup?" <> "Wow, whole crew's here. I met some of you at the mixer on Indi Epsilon, but my name's Mika Picton. Bird's Lenin. Nice ship. You got my creds?" * Amadeus nods. "Pleasure to meet you. I'm Amadeus Cheung." If you're exchanging names, might as well be fair. He looks to Tia, since she's the cred person. * Tomas looks at the bird sullenly--he's not a sammich--then waves at Mika, "Hello again." * Lexi looks up at the woman and then turns back to her phone. "Hey, Agnes... I gotta go... there's uh someone here to see us... Yeah, we'll go out for drinks later." And she hangs up and sits up. "Room full of drunks. Sounds like my kinda crowd. My name's Lexi. Lexi Calhoun." * Hestia is That Bitch and tosses the credchip at Mika. I hope Lenin eats it. "Here." <> "Hey, thanks. That was pretty painless, except for getting it out of that museum." <> * Kyle nods lightly. "Kyle Maksimov. That's it?" * Hestia gets up to get the bag. She has no further comment! * Kyle looks mildly curiously at the bag. "That's it. Like sneaking something out of a museum at the behest of one of the employees wasn't weird enough, it's actually some weird kind of encoded print on deadtree." * Zeke looks slightly confused a moment, then replies, "As long as it encodes useful information." * Amadeus looks more than mildly curiously at the bag. "No clue. I can't read the stuff, I just had to get it here." <> "Anyhow, thanks for the fare. I'll see myself out." <> * Zeke , or rather, two of his drones follow her as Zeke turns to Hestia. * Tomas turns to Hestia as well, "so what is it, T?" * Amadeus waves as Mika heads out, then turns to Tia. (Sorry.) * Hestia removes whatever it is from the bag! Presumably a book since Todd speaks Cham's futurelingo. <> * Hestia runs her fingers over the cover. "Well... this is indeed it, but what the hell. Stupid geeko." (GEEK + GECKO GET IT) <> (HA HA HA) * Lexi leans over and takes a look at it. "What the hell is it?" <> ... Did she include a key or anything? * Hestia looks one more time to make sure the courier's not still here, then frowns and flips through the book. "I don't think so. I'm guessing we have to scan this, one damn code at a time." Uh... into what? One of those old barcode machines? * Lexi rolls her eyes. "Well that'll be fun..." * Hestia shakes her head. "I imagine we can set up some sort of reader, but it's the number of pages that's the problem." * Amadeus shrugs helplessly. (You can always call the source. :D) (I can't remember if I'm supposed to know what's _in_ this book.) (Thought they'd told people what it was when the money issue came up) (I'd hope so!) (We did.) * Zeke states, "I believe the visits will take longer than the decoding, on a per-target basis." * Kyle scratches his head. "Well, could probably build an automated reader." * Hestia flips through a few pages, and frowns. "She had to have some compelling reason to do this in such a... stupid way." We're all baffled. It's probably supposed to baffle anyone else, too. Maybe we're supposed to call for the key. (>_>) That seems like it'd defeat the purpose of the bonded courier. * Amadeus nods in agreement. * Amadeus also reaches over and starts flipping through, looking for some sort of key or something. <> Yeah, looks like we'll just have to scan it. <> (Okay!) 2d6+10 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Kyle (2d6+10) and gets a natural 9 for a result of 19. <> Actually... Yeah, I think I remember a few things like this. Hey Amadeus, can I use your lab for a 'bit? Sure. Let me just make sure you don't mess with anything that I'm going to need. * Amadeus gets to his feet. * Kyle heads back with the Prof. *wink wink* (Okay, not really) (Eek.) <> (While I'm there, I'm going to do researchery things! That's shocking.) (Drinking myself silly. Er, wait, no, that's unlikely.) (Tomas is probably composing a letter to Mika in his mind...) (I'm gonna pwn some newbz over the wuberwubz) (Okay not really.) (I've retired to the kitchen.) (That... leaves me alone with Lexi and Tia. This will go well!) (I don't have much to do until the Super Long Process is done, so) (I apparently play a lot of bejeweled) <> <> (I'd better learn Sleythin!) * Amadeus looks at the data over Kyle's shoulder. "Space Jesus, I didn't think not learning Sleythin would be so much trouble." * Hestia does the first thing she can think of: she checks for data on the Jihadibird System Relax, I'll work on it. I figure I should pick it up with all the Sleythin stuff goin' around. * Kyle grins. * Hestia flipfliptypeflip. "Angling for my job?" * Amadeus reaches up to push his glasses up his nose... then realizes he forgot to wear them today. Instead, he awkwardly moves to try to smooth his hair. "Well, do you think we can at least get an automatic translation on that?" Um... lemme see. <> [WARNING! DUEKTI-OCCUPIED SYSTEM! DO NOT ATTEMPT COMMUNICATION WITH OR TRAVEL TO THIS PLANET!] ...yeah. * Kyle searches for a babelfish translator for Sleythin -> Spacer. * Hestia skims the actual entry, for the hell of it. (Aw, Kyle, that trick never works.) (I know. But it'd get us some HILARIOUS results) (I think if I coded a program that translates *heard* sleythin to marsal, it'll work on *read* sleythin) <> <> <> (So this means that the index uses a coordinate system we can easily understand. Hooray!ish.) (Sweet.) <> <> (Well considering there's public bodyslide bowls and stuff like that, I assume some sort of sleythin<->human star chart coordinate conversion algorithm already exists.) <> * Chamelaeon nods. (THE MIGHTY GM NOD) (Er, yeah. sorry, long .... month. week. thing.) * Hestia tap tap tappity read tap. "How cute. Even the lizards avoided those bastards." * Zeke tilts the holohead. "Those?" Pause. "The Duekti? It seems likely." They are ridiculously advanced. * Lexi looks over at Tia. "I thought that this was supposed to tell us something about the prophecy or whatever?" I don't know about 'ridiculous'. The similarity of the planets is explained, at least. * Hestia turns around the futurephone and points with her stylus at the text, even if she's the only one who can read it. "Terraforming." * Hestia shrugs and looks for the prophecy! I bet the Duekti are responsible. * Zeke nods slightly. "Combined with organism transport." Pause, then, "Given their desire for control. This does not explain why they abandoned the other planets." Of course it is. But they terriformed complete planets, making them exactly the same - not, by the way, matching their home planet. Which makes me wonder what happened to it. (Wait, how do we know it doesn't match their home planet?) (Amadeus just told you.) (I believe his question was: how did Amadeus know it.) (You didn't ask!) (Okay, just checking it wasn't common knowledge!) * Zeke's holohead looks to Amadeus, with the 'confused' look on. "It did not match their home planet? I... did not know that." * Amadeus nods. "They don't match up at all on a microscopic level. The bacteria we found in the, er, abandoned bathroom did match up, though." It looks like they just found a planet that they found comfortable, probably in that solar system, and then carried it over. Which means that they must have more than one system. Or have had more than one. * Zeke nods slowly. "The Sleythin document supports that." (Anyhow: prophecy? Yes? No?) (.... wow, okay, need to not be asleep) * Amadeus nods in agreement. (^^;) (AGREEMENT) <. * Lexi shrugs. "So what's it say?" <> (Yes, I am punting, because I don't trust myself to english it good enough z_z) You may also want to check and see what it says about us. (Stay a while and listen!) * Zeke looks oddly at Lexi. "We are not planets." She means humans. Didn't they get their star chart data about Earth from the Europa Team, though? (From some jerk. With a sword.) * Hestia looks anyway, to satisfy Lexi's curiosity. * Zeke pauses, then, "Ah. That is the official first contact, yes, so that is likely." (Okay, I actually need to wrap it up) (Sounds good! As soon as we find 'Mostly Harmless' in the database.) (Oh, right.) (Haha!) (Okay. <> [Low-tech indigenous species, highly excitable, generally peaceful. Probable contact within 200 sleythin years.] (Anyone got a response, or we done? ^^;) (I think we may be done!) <>