Game Night Tales from around the gaming table

 

None.

 

I am playing Jake Winters, a pre-generated character from an All Flesh Must Be Eaten RPG adventure.

 

 

 

Awareness.  The bitter taste of the tank.  Stillness and quiet after so long.  The flood of memories not my own... Fading... Fading...

 

Awareness.  The stale filtered ship air hisses.  The rumble and hum of the ship in orbit.  The flood of memories from my Prime.

 

After a few hours the sensor net retracted, I am updated.

 

I got dressed and headed to the bridge to meet with the 4 other awaken clones in the command staff.

 

There, we found out that we were 8 weeks overdue for de-tanking.  On investigation, we found that another set of clones were already de-tanked and that they had wiped all computer and video surveillance logs.  "What the hell is going on?" I mumbled to myself as I started to query for usage of fuel, food, water and anything else that might help us determine what happened in the last 8 weeks.

 

To aid us in the search, the Captain gave us full systems’ access.  We spent hours pouring through logs and systems hunting.  What we found was disturbing.  Shuttle 1 had gone down to the planet -- that was to be our new home -- over 7 weeks ago and returned.

 

Jason, Mark and I split the tasks of scanning the planets surface, the space around the ship and enhancing the internals to find anything out of the ordinary.  The Captain went to the armoury and retrieved pistols for everyone, just in case there was something that the sensors couldn't read.  James headed to the shuttlebay to check on their status and to see if there were any clues left there.  As they left, I flipped on the motion sensor cameras and locked down the bridge, then did an intense scan with my hand scanner to be on the safe side.

 

By their return, the surface scan showed no humanoid signs, nothing in orbit around us and the internals registered only the 5 of us.  While messing around with the sensors, we found that some things had been intentionally disabled.  It meant that we'd have to use the hand scanners and search the entire ship deck by deck to figure out what had happened.

 

We were also able to recover two partial logs -- one was the other Doctor and the other was too garbled to tell.  It was obvious that our other versions had become paranoid and talked of killing each other because "they were no longer themselves".

 

We decided that we would break out into two teams, with the doctor staying on the bridge to monitor our vitals for any abnormalities.  We figured that Deck 4 -- where the primary labs were -- would be the best place to start. If we had gone down to the planet, we would have brought things back to study and they might give us a clue as to what was going on.  By this time I was getting more and more paranoid, so I suggested that we wear Hazmat Level 1 suits -- in case what was brought up by the others was what made them crazy.

 

The Captain and I took the left side and Mark and James took the right.  James and the Captain were there in case something found us, and Mark and I were around to investigate the labs and tell if the safety and containment protocols had been followed.

 

They found it first, at their very first lab; they could see through the door that there were samples on a table and signs of something amiss.  We got the Doc to pull up the lab's cameras, that when we found that they had been tampered with too... Again I mumbled "What the HELL is going on here?" as I reviewed the scene.  James was able to clear the cameras' overrides and give control back to Jason.

 

There was a dismembered body lying facedown in there.  That's when the Captain ordered me into the lab; someone had to go in and check it out.  So in I went through the airlock and into the lab.  First was the body, I could tell it was the Doctor even through all the disfiguration.  I was even gladder for the Hazmat suit -- it blocked the smell -- as I approached the body, it looked as if it had been rotting for weeks.  With samples taken, I retreated back to the tables and started to look over the notes and samples from the planet, keeping up a constant dialog of what I was doing and seeing and showing everything to Jason over the video feed.   Before leaving the bridge I had secretly setup a secure download of all feeds -- hidden away in the sensor net database -- and keyed it to be uploaded to my next clone, just in case this all happened again.  Hey, I didn't know a lot about computers, but before this had all started my Prime had needed re-syncing more than a few times.  So, he had learned how to do full syncs and also wormed out how to update syncs from a very cute Tech.  Saved her time then and gave me a useful skill today.

 

The Comm went silent.

 

"Hello?  Hello!"  I called out, "Hey, I know I'm most likely not getting out of here... but keep talking to me so that I know what's going on!  If I'm going to die, I'd rather keep working to find out what happened and to give us a fighting chance!"

 

The Comm hissed back to life.

 

It seems that Jason had found a microscopic agent - something akin to a stinkbug spray - that was throughout the ship.  The strongest concentrations were within Shuttle 1 and down here on Level 4.  One of the samples in the lab was a bug, something that looked like a flying scorpion without a tail or stinger.  I took the sample jar and loaded it into a glove box, sending all data feeds to Jason.