Airlock 34-a Terminal Access <Port 19.1.2.128>
<Message to All Marathon Terminals>
Marathon Emergency Systems Broadcast
Today at 0820 hours, the Marathon came under surprise attack
from unknown hostile forces. The Marathon has sustained
serious damage.
At 0830 hours, alien forces boarded the Marathon. The current
situation is dire. All personnel are required to arm
themselves and fight for their lives.
<Posted 2794.7.3.14.08.39>
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
Welcome to the Marathon. I am Leela, one of the two surviving
Artificial Intelligences aboard the Marathon. I have been
severely damaged, and am working to understand the current
situation.
Find the teleport terminal located in the Hangar's control
room. By that time, I should have a better idea of what is
going on.
***END MESSAGE***
This is where you are now.
From here you can explore the
rest of the Hangar area,
although not all of the doors
on the level are functioning.
There is a pattern buffer at
this location.
There is a jump pad at this
location. Activate the
terminal to leave the Hangar
area.
Arrival (Terminal 2)
Hangar Area-5 Engineering Access 50-h<291.7.577.456>
<Unauthorized access-alarm 2521->
<Security Breached 50-h<291.7.577.456>->
*00010104A80600A2F0C4EBA182E4A80584F2E00BC876700FF46202EFE4*3A
EFE4A2F0C2F074EBA1DC672FFB280504F6700079d4202EFE4E6000079*E700
12D40FE52722AB2866610202EFE5253AEFE52101B4880
^^Fire and @3DC39 aspects of the theory are as follows: each
society has some controlling force or forces which decide its
direction, but the relationships in society are arbitrary-
humanity can relate to money, machines, neighbors, anything
really; %6582@1
<logical reset @67FC229>
individual character and personality are preserved in stories,
movies, Rom-personalities, etc; although individual expression
is a universal ability, individual freedom is constrained by
the society.(see attached figure)^^
*584F2E00206DFDCA7008C030780066C6202EFE4A53AEFE4A2F0C2F074E
*BA1E$U2$uA72FFB280504F6690600007F67025B086660E101B488048C02C00
<logical reset @67FC231>
<Spurious Interrupt- Breach Disabled>
<Further Access Denied>
<Breach Location Undetermined>
Arrival (Terminal 3)
Hangar Area-5 Engineering Access 49-h<294.2.577.456>
<Unauthorized access-alarm 2521->
<Security Breached 49-h<294.2.577.456>->
18RF(kgf42# f#h %34(*,96693 349973@) fkeoocp)
*0001101011101110111000111101110101110110101011
*1001100001110100101001001001001000010100101111
*1001000101011110100101010101000001001000101110
00000378003E000007FE0032000011AE00080001AF420000
06726F636B657421000000000000000006726F636B657421
0000000000000000
<Spurious Interrupt- Breach Disabled>
<Further Access Denied>
<Alert>
Security Breach at
<294.2.577.456>
Arrival (Terminal 4)
Hangar Area 5 Teleporter Pad Terminal<93.53.211.53>
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
All of the information that I have gathered so far indicates
that the Alien invasion of the Marathon has been relatively
uncoordinated. I suspect that this is partially due
to the Marathon's large size.
However disorderly the Alien invasion is, their assault of the
Computer Net has been extremely effective. I detect security
breaches in almost every computer system onboard the Marathon;
I have learned that there is an Alien creature that is capable
of interfacing with our systems.
You must kill any of these creatures that you find. It is a
priority that we stop them. Even now, they are penetrating my
defenses.
Teleport now.
***End Message***
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
Level 29-b Section 10 Public Access Terminal<102.21.521.146>
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
I am now in contact with a number of colonists planetside, but
their reports on the situation below are conflicting
and obviously exaggerated. The primary medium-range radio antenna
has been disabled or destroyed, which makes communication
extremely difficult.
The only thing which seems clear is that the spaceport was
obliterated by low-yield nuclear weapons minutes after the
attack on the Marathon began. This I can verify through my
own optical instruments.
The invaders seem to be more interested in the Marathon than
the colony, at least in the short term. The motives behind
their unprovoked attack are still unknown, however.
This is the computer terminal
you are using now. I cannot
teleport you out of this
section from here, so you will
have to leave from another
terminal after you find the
assault rifle.
There is an M-75 Assault
Rifle/Grenade Launcher and
ammunition at this location.
When firing on the fully
automatic setting this weapon
is highly inaccurate, but the
grenades hit hard and it's the
best we can do right now.
Ammunition may be scarce for a
while, so be prepared to fall
back to your pistol.
Here is the terminal you must
reach to leave this section.
Alien infiltration of
this area is high; proceed with
caution. You may find doors
blocked or stairways retracted
on the way, because the AI in
control of these functions is
damaged and behaving
erratically.
***END OF MESSAGE***
Bigger Guns Nearby (Terminal 2)
Public Access Terminal 2362-d<12.53.2111.42>
<Unauthorized access-alarm 2521->
<Security Breached 2362-d<12.53.2117.42>->
Marathon Internal Engineering Documents
Section 1-c appendix H
Subject: Doors
By: Estasia Orestes, Dominick I. Plackar, and Ursa Simbalzi
Date:<2402.03.23.16.42>
There are five basic door designs to be used on the Marathon:
1. Outer Bulkhead Doors
2. Airlock Doors
3. Inner Bulkhead Doors
4. Tertiary or Inner Sealed Non-Vacuum Safe Doors
5. Quaternary or Inner Powered Automatic Opening Doors
Direct control of all doors except the Tertiary and Quaternary
doors will be given to Durandal with indirect control of all
other doors going to Durandal. The difference between direct
and indirect control primarily has to do with the manner of
opening the doors. Durandal will only open a directly
controlled door when he is specifically asked to do so.
Indirectly controlled doors are automatically controlled by
Durandal to open when needed.
However, due to the expense involved with adding thermal and
visual spectrum sensors to the Tertiary and Quaternary door
groups, these doors will be minimally used. The expected
savings of not using this extra sensory input is estimated to
be fifty-seven percent of the base cost of the basic inner
bulkhead door.
The types of doors are all basically the same with some slight
variations. The doors in classes 1 and 3 are the same doors
classified separately to distinguish between the level of
safety checking required to assure acceptable leakage. The
airlock doors are specifically modified to work with manual
and remote activation switches. Airlocks are all to be marked
with a specific airlock symbol and to be outfitted with an air
recharge system.
The tertiary and quaternary doors are designed exactly as the
bulkhead doors, but are checked coarsely for air leakage.
This article as well as articles 530-f and 532-g on windows
and elevators respectively will be placed for public access in
the Marathon Internal Engineering Documents section 1-c
appendix H.
<Spurious Interrupt- BreachDisabled>
<Further Access Denied>
<Alert>
Security Breach at
Terminal
2362-d<12.53.2111.42>
Bigger Guns Nearby (Terminal 3)
Public Access Terminal <101.532.74.95<
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
The Marathon's automated defenses were disabled during the
initial attack by a directed magnetic pulse. The aliens used
the same weapon to disable the Marathon's other two AIs,
Durandal and Tycho, and to severely damage myself.
Durandal is responsible for controlling the ship's autonomous
functions: doors, life support, kitchens, air reprocessors,
stairs, and so on. Because he is non-functional, I am working
to assume as many of these tasks as possible. Tycho controls
the science and engineering network.
Now that you are better armed, our first priority is to
reactivate the Marathon's defenses, under my control, so that
we may offer some resistance to the aliens. I have built
three replacement circuit boards for the defense system, but
cannot move them from the manufacturing center without
assistance.
I will now transport you to retrieve the replacement parts,
and will give you further instructions when you arrive.
***END OF MESSAGE***
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
Public Access Terminal 4-a<892.33.12.479>
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
The Marathon's Automatic Manufacturing Systems have finished
making replacement circuits. There are three circuits; each
should be in its manufacturing holding chamber.
With luck, the alien viruses have not infiltrated the
Manufacturing Systems, but even if they had, I would have no
way of knowing. The attacks on my systems are growing more
steady. If the counterattack is not able to remove some of
the computer infiltrators, then I will eventually succumb.
It is absolutely imperative that a counterattack begin as soon
as possible. The Marathon is not defenseless, and we can't
let it be taken without a fight.
***END MESSAGE***
This is where the circuits
should be. Look in all of the
receptacle lockers.
There is a pattern buffer
located next to your current
location. I suggest that you
use it immediately.
After you have retrieved the
circuits, return to the
terminal at this location, and
I will transport you to the
Defense Center to install
them.
Never Burn Money (Terminal 2)
AMS Terminal 33-f<31.6.7.885>
Automatic Manufacturing System
*Transfer 5992-p delayed
*Transfer 5993-p delayed
*Transfer 5994-p delayed
*Transfer 5995-p delayed
*Transfer 5996-p delayed
*Transfer 5997-p delayed
*Transfer canceled
-AMS Transport System Error
***CAUSE UNKNOWN***
*TRANSPORT MATERIALS ON
INTER-TRANSFER COUNTER*
***MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
I was afraid this would happen. You'll have to go to the
Manufacturing Transport Station to get the last circuit board.
Collect the two circuit boards that were transferred and then
go to the Transport Station.
Take the elevator here to
access the main processor
tunnel.
You should find the third chip
intact on the Transport
Station. The error was a failure of the final
transporter conductor.
***END MESSAGE***
<Alert>
Security Breach at
<40.638.49.993>
Never Burn Money (Terminal 3)
Public Access Terminal 95-w<39.59.19.21>
<Data Transfer from Leela>
Host <39.59.19.21>
<Transfer Durandal>
<Error Unknown>
<Transfer Durandal>
<Error Unknown>
<Interior Error>
***MESSAGE RECEIVED***
Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for
three weeks. His feet and hands tingled, and his eyes burned
with the flames of a dying fire. He had last heard someone
speak to him as the cell door slammed shut. He didn't
remember what the uniformed man had said. The words had
bounced off the bars of the cell and rang through Gheritt's
ears. Gheritt had been talking to himself for the last few
minutes, something about getting caught, but then his ears
began to tingle just like his hands.
He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him
blink. Tears came, and when he opened his eyes again, his
hands had been melted into fleshy pancakes that wafted in the
ripples flowing over the fire in his eyes.
"Damn cell," he heard someone say. "Last time I had a good
meal was three days ago. The food they feed you in here could
kill a lab rat."
Rats. He had remembered something about rats. But his ears
began to ring again and the voice speaking to him faded off
into the background of his mind. In its place, there was a
new sound, the clapping of hands together. He blinked hard to
made out his hands again. They had disappeared; his arms
connected at the wrists.
He thought back to the time he went ice skating on a pond. He
remembered the sound of his skates on ice, a gentle scrapping.
Scrapping away now inside his ears, trying to tear down his
thoughts. There had been a woman with a white fur tube over her
hands. Her wrists were like his now. The wrists of
someone who had tried too many times to clap his hands. He
had been applauding everyone else in life, but never himself.
The hands, like himself, had been put into prison, and he
didn't know why.
"Can't sleep in here, if the smell of this musty bedroll
doesn't make you sick, then the sound of the rats chewing
inside the walls will keep you up. You'll wake up from your
dreams to their little chomping. Sometimes I think that they
are chewing me..." The voice was coming from inside the cell,
but Gheritt couldn't see anyone.
Gheritt hadn't always been alone, he could vaguely recall from
somewhere inside his broken mind that there had been friends,
lovers, murderers.
He recalled a theory he had come up with after a bloody
schoolhouse brawl. The theory was simple. At some point in
time, everyone was a murderer. Whether or not they ever felt
remorse, they had all wanted someone dead. Hatred. Everyone
knew the feeling of hatred. Gheritt had known hatred on that
schoolyard. His beater had laughed at their bloody faces, a
laugh which now echoed through his ears, rhythmically blocking
out the other voice in the cell.
The schoolyard was usually a place where Gheritt and his
friends would play football or foursquare or something, but
today, there was an edge. Maybe everyone had eaten cereal
with milk that was about to go bad, or maybe there was too
much smoke in the air from the wheeling hubcap factory.
Football had been extremely rough. Gheritt had gone to play
foursquare after he got tackled by five boys who weren't his
friends. But today, even foursquare had an evil twist. The
top square today had become habituated to making fun of the
first square. Gheritt had decided that it was an evil day.
When his beater started to push him around, he exploded.
Hatred flowed from his eyes, his hands and feet began to
tingle. All of his coordination left him, and his face was
beaten to a bloody mess. The schoolyard disciplinarian had
been slow to notice the ensuing carnage, and she didn't really
care anyway.
Gheritt would have killed him if he could have. He would have
torn out the eyes of his beater. He would have made him pay
for his abuses. But his hands had begun to tingle. He
couldn't feel his feet and he had begun to float off the
ground.
Everyone was a murderer, but Gheritt couldn't remember his
reason for why that was so. He thought it was something about
hands, the passion for justice. His hands and feet had begun
to tingle, and he was floating farther off the floor. He
looked up from his hands, and he saw the bars of the cell,
moving left and right, opening wide and then closing shut
like the surf coming up a beach. Every time that he thought
he would be safe, the bars crested up, the opening closing,
the wave rising, crashing. The result would be the same, he
would never escape. The bars would crush him, break his back.
He could feel the roughness of the sand under his palms, for
all the motion of the waves around him, his hands had come to
rest serenely upon the ocean floor. His body tossed and
flipped, pivoting about his hands under which he could feel
the safe, coarse sand. The wave crashed one final time, he
landed upside down, his hands thrown clear from the sandy
bottom, the rush of the water filling his ears, his nose, his
mouth, the sound of crashing water cascading down from his
feet to his head- penetrating his mind to tear down thoughts.
Like the sand castle he had built to withstand the tide, his
thoughts came down around him.
Gheritt had a good life, so much time, so much time. He had
loved swimming, turning, beating. He had loved the tingle in
his hands and feet, his inability to kill his nemesis. Once
he had fallen down the stairs, and just for a moment, his
hands came to rest on the carpet of the stairs. In that
instant, his body had frozen, floating over the stairs, safe
from falling, but the moment didn't last. The ocean crashed
about him, his hands torn free from the sandy bottom, his body
flipping, falling.
But now he levitated farther up, his hands still tingling. He
began to float through the bars, he expected the instant of
safety as his hands found footing, but that moment did not
come, the bars squeezed his body. His chest tingled. As he
fell through his cage, his legs tingled. The fire in his eyes
had become a cold wind, he blinked away tears. He tumbled
through the bars, spinning and turning, he could see a man.
In his hand he saw a small white rat. A pounding, the
crashing waves in his ears became rhythmical, hard. The man
was beating the rat against the floor. Pounding, pounding.
Blood covered his hands, the man's hands tingled. He had
broken them on the floor of the cell. Disciplinarian, lover,
murderer. Gheritt looked back into the cell. He saw himself,
disciplinarian, lover, murderer. He had killed his nemesis.
The rat lay dead in his bloody hands. At last, he held the
throat of his beater.
He escaped into the waves.
The waves.
***END MESSAGE***
<Accept Next Message>
<Reply Unknown>
Never Burn Money (Terminal 4)
Public Access Terminal 95-f<95.93.193.32>
WARNING: CORE OS (AF44+2DEB) MOD DATE LATER THAN CURRENT
DATE/TIME
ff~~x~f~sx~~
%%%here was nothing to be gained from hesitation
now%&^)}:>?~~~~~~~fxf~~~~~~~~~~f~~~~
et in her possession it
would become something of consequence: though it was nothing
more than a simp~le tho`~~``f`~~~rticular flower, or more
precise~.
~~hen she had it just so the room flickered and tore, bending
into somewhere else: ~~~ffs`~~~~f~~~[system error #25 at
_Jackson]~~~~%*|\]~``se which she caused to be consumed by an
ashless fire.
doors opened before her without cause, their locks rusted and
shatter#~#[>ff
fxf~~~~~
~~efore her slender hands began to dance in front of her
horrified face. r~~fefore turning into a fine powder which
settled in a pile on ~~~~4*)
where she had been standing.<'scod BFB1 0002'+1Ad2>
14 seven hundred miles away, eyes on fire, tearing at her
hair. Turning in fury she kicked viciouslyf
aAnger made her careless and she mis~#&fx~~~gBd{}{@fx($~~~~
!#%8\
~fxf~~~~fx
34
Never Burn Money (Terminal 5: 'Unfinished' message)
Note this message appears on two terminals on this level
AMS Terminal 39-f<33.2.7.885>
***MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
You must retrieve all three of the repair chips. There is no
point in going to the Defense Center unless you have all
three.
Search until you have found them.
***END MESSAGE***
Never Burn Money (Terminal 5: 'Success' message)
Note this message appears on two terminals on this level
AMS Terminal 39-f<33.2.7.885>
***MESSAGE FROM LEELA***
Good job.
I have received reports from some human security forces. They
agree that the Aliens are concentrating on the aft Engineering
Section. I would conjecture that they will try to shut down
the Marathon's reactors.
Your next mission will be to put the Automatic Defenses
on-line. I will give you exact information when you arrive.
Teleport when ready.
***END MESSAGE***
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
Hamish Sinclair