Post by Bobbi on Oct 21, 2018 7:31:13 GMT -5
Olanji, Hapes Consortium
“Darien?”
“Still here. Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah. Just needed to hear it.”
The area around them was black as pitch, the air as still and stale smelling as it could possibly be. There was no climate control, so the stillness was stifling. It had been explained when they were given their walk through of the place that the climate controls were currently being repaired. That did not make standing in the still dark any easier for Solomon Tekal.
He was there with his brother, and that did help. He could feel his brother’s presence within The Force like a candle that was blasting away the tar-like darkness around them. Those two little words that Darien spoke shook away what The Force hadn’t.
Fraziar’s Entertainment Extravaganza was a large complex that housed just about every form of entertainment known to the galaxy. It catered to all predilections, fetishes, addictions, species, recreational activities and so on. If it could be done for fun, you could do it at Fraziar’s!
The more carnal and chemical based sports were left untouched by the pair. Darien and Solomon were not there to catch flesh shows, or sample mind bending realities. They were in the more mundane buildings owned by the entertainment company. Many of the games offered were run on holosimulations, giving the place the ability to offer a wide variety of options without the need for a planet-spanning company.
The game was on Solomon’s bill. They’d chosen it at random from a list of nearly ten thousand scenarios that were similar, and it wound them up in a dark room that was no bigger in dimension than Sol’s living room.
Both of them wore headgear that was reminiscent of a flight helmet with a thin visor mounted in place and immobile over the eyes. The purpose of it was known to both. Through that visor they’d see the images sent to them by the game. The reason for the dark room was to keep the environment the visor was sending them as vivid as possible. They could walk, turn, talk, and otherwise move and the sensor suits they’d been provided would interpret the actions, send feedback to the visors and from there the world they were seeing would react accordingly. It was all easy enough to understand.
What they were waiting on right then was for the game to load. It seemed to be taking forever.
That eternity flickered in the darkness, becoming a soft white haze before Solomon’s eyes. Gently, and slowly, that haze solidified into a more concrete idea of a world that had sprung up around him and his brother.
Turning his head, he caught sight of his twin and stifled a small laugh. Where his brother stood, Solomon did not see the taller and more broad version of himself. He saw a squat little alien that was no taller than one meter and covered completely in tan-brown fur. The image would have been cute, Darien looking like a little bear, if that bear hadn’t been decked out with enough firepower to bring down the Buffton Tower on Coruscant.
“It’s a good look for you.” He told Darien, still trying not to laugh.
“Yeah, you think so?” The little bear made a show of looking himself over.
Sol’s person had changed, as well. He’d gotten taller, thinner, and more reptilian in look with a long narrow muzzle, a body covered in smooth dark green-blue scales, and sharp spines that ran down the center of his back which were roughly 5 centimeters thick. While the little bear next to him was decked out like a tank, Solomon was fitted for a slightly lighter approach. He carried long range weapons, two blasters, and an assortment of small close range items on bandoleros like darts and knives.
The world around them, right then, was a city springing up to life. The dimensions of it were deep, seeming to fill in past the walls that surrounded them. It looked real. It sounded real.
They were standing in the middle, a small center of the city that was home to a little park. The grass here was green, so green that it looked artificial. It was not a color that could be found in nature anywhere within the galaxy, of that Solomon was sure. They weren’t there for the grass, though.
He drew a blaster, bringing the sensor pistol he carried up to a ready position while taking a look at the rest of the world around them. The bear at his side was doing the same.
“Its really quiet,” He heard his brother say, and he answered with a nod.
“Remember the plan -- we stick together.”
“Like I’d forget.”
Together the pair set off, choosing to head down one the open street to their left.
“There’s movement at all.” That observation belong to Darien as they stopped at an intersection.
It was a primitive setting, they both noted. The buildings they were passing by were tall, but their architecture was more blocky, there was something about them that was anything but modern. Nearly every intersection had a rectangular box with three lights to it: red, yellow and green. The roads they walked on had lines painted on them, some yellow and some white. The entire area felt archaic.
“Hey Darien.”
“Yeah, Sol?”
“Where do you think the people are?”
“No idea, but it's too quiet for it to be anything but trouble.”
Being a simulation meant they couldn’t feel their way around it. What their senses were telling them was completely different than what their eyes were seeing. Solomon was deciding that he didn’t like that.
A noise, the sound of shuffling to their right caught Darien’s attention first. He called Sol’s focus that way, toward an open and broken manually operated door. The building they were just then looking toward looked like it could have been a residence. In fact, they were just then surrounded by many of that same time. It was shorter than the skyscrapers they’d seen closer to the city center, and smashed up wall to wall with the like houses on either side. A simple, small set of steps carried them up to a porch that looked like it was made out of something like duracrete, but not entirely the same thing at all. That movement was turning into a shuffling noise, and raspy breathing.
Darien went in first, but stopped in the doorway. Sol could see over his brother’s little fuzzy head and what he saw turned his stomach slightly. The look of the place from the inside was not all that dissimilar from the way a modern house would have been set up. The common room held many of the same elements. What was different was the dessicated woman and child feeding on the entrails of a man who’d had his face eaten off some time ago.
“Go back. Sol...go back. Now.”
Those words, spoken in haste, were enough to draw the attention of the woman and child who rose and began lurching their way.
“Nine hells.” Sol’s breathed words were the precursor to a salvo of blaster fire opening up and raining down on the moving undead that were coming their way.
A retreat was in order, as the girl and her mother were not stopping despite the number of hits registered to their central bodies.
“Why are they going down?”
“No idea.” Darien was making his way backward step by step with his brother’s covering fire burning through the air over his head, “But keep firing anyway!”
Beneath his boots, Solomon’s sensors read the edge of the top step. He felt it just before feeling his left boot slip back and down which knocked his aim off target and sent that bolt high. It struck the woman in her head, and she fell while Sol did his best to keep his balance in that split second. A slim scaled hand caught the railing next to the steps and helped save him from a nasty short tumble.
Darien was still on his feet, and followed the accidental lead. Aim was taken, and a short burst of shots were fired at the little girl’s head. She followed the woman, falling to the door frame in a sick slump of what used to be a human.
The little bear turned to see its tall reptilian cohort regaining his full sense of balance, staring in shock at the two dead in the doorway.
“What are they?” Sol asked, as if poking at them with sticks.
“Don’t know. Don’t care, and don’t want to be caught here if more show up.” Darien was making his fluffy way toward the stairs, Solomon slipping to the side so his brother had room to hold onto the railing. Motion being what it was in the game animated Darien’s climb down into a stubby legged hop that took him back to the sidewalk. Solomon was quick to follow after.
At the bottom, Darien had stopped causing Sol to nearly walk into him as the lizard-man stepped off the bottom and onto the sidewalk. Feeling the proximity, Sol looked in the way that his brother was looking and swore in some soft Mando’a.
“Sol.”
“Yeah, Dar?”
“Run.”
Heading their way from further down the block was a horde of those undead things, drawn by the sound of blasters being fired.
“Darien?”
“Still here. Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah. Just needed to hear it.”
The area around them was black as pitch, the air as still and stale smelling as it could possibly be. There was no climate control, so the stillness was stifling. It had been explained when they were given their walk through of the place that the climate controls were currently being repaired. That did not make standing in the still dark any easier for Solomon Tekal.
He was there with his brother, and that did help. He could feel his brother’s presence within The Force like a candle that was blasting away the tar-like darkness around them. Those two little words that Darien spoke shook away what The Force hadn’t.
Fraziar’s Entertainment Extravaganza was a large complex that housed just about every form of entertainment known to the galaxy. It catered to all predilections, fetishes, addictions, species, recreational activities and so on. If it could be done for fun, you could do it at Fraziar’s!
The more carnal and chemical based sports were left untouched by the pair. Darien and Solomon were not there to catch flesh shows, or sample mind bending realities. They were in the more mundane buildings owned by the entertainment company. Many of the games offered were run on holosimulations, giving the place the ability to offer a wide variety of options without the need for a planet-spanning company.
The game was on Solomon’s bill. They’d chosen it at random from a list of nearly ten thousand scenarios that were similar, and it wound them up in a dark room that was no bigger in dimension than Sol’s living room.
Both of them wore headgear that was reminiscent of a flight helmet with a thin visor mounted in place and immobile over the eyes. The purpose of it was known to both. Through that visor they’d see the images sent to them by the game. The reason for the dark room was to keep the environment the visor was sending them as vivid as possible. They could walk, turn, talk, and otherwise move and the sensor suits they’d been provided would interpret the actions, send feedback to the visors and from there the world they were seeing would react accordingly. It was all easy enough to understand.
What they were waiting on right then was for the game to load. It seemed to be taking forever.
That eternity flickered in the darkness, becoming a soft white haze before Solomon’s eyes. Gently, and slowly, that haze solidified into a more concrete idea of a world that had sprung up around him and his brother.
Turning his head, he caught sight of his twin and stifled a small laugh. Where his brother stood, Solomon did not see the taller and more broad version of himself. He saw a squat little alien that was no taller than one meter and covered completely in tan-brown fur. The image would have been cute, Darien looking like a little bear, if that bear hadn’t been decked out with enough firepower to bring down the Buffton Tower on Coruscant.
“It’s a good look for you.” He told Darien, still trying not to laugh.
“Yeah, you think so?” The little bear made a show of looking himself over.
Sol’s person had changed, as well. He’d gotten taller, thinner, and more reptilian in look with a long narrow muzzle, a body covered in smooth dark green-blue scales, and sharp spines that ran down the center of his back which were roughly 5 centimeters thick. While the little bear next to him was decked out like a tank, Solomon was fitted for a slightly lighter approach. He carried long range weapons, two blasters, and an assortment of small close range items on bandoleros like darts and knives.
The world around them, right then, was a city springing up to life. The dimensions of it were deep, seeming to fill in past the walls that surrounded them. It looked real. It sounded real.
They were standing in the middle, a small center of the city that was home to a little park. The grass here was green, so green that it looked artificial. It was not a color that could be found in nature anywhere within the galaxy, of that Solomon was sure. They weren’t there for the grass, though.
He drew a blaster, bringing the sensor pistol he carried up to a ready position while taking a look at the rest of the world around them. The bear at his side was doing the same.
“Its really quiet,” He heard his brother say, and he answered with a nod.
“Remember the plan -- we stick together.”
“Like I’d forget.”
Together the pair set off, choosing to head down one the open street to their left.
“There’s movement at all.” That observation belong to Darien as they stopped at an intersection.
It was a primitive setting, they both noted. The buildings they were passing by were tall, but their architecture was more blocky, there was something about them that was anything but modern. Nearly every intersection had a rectangular box with three lights to it: red, yellow and green. The roads they walked on had lines painted on them, some yellow and some white. The entire area felt archaic.
“Hey Darien.”
“Yeah, Sol?”
“Where do you think the people are?”
“No idea, but it's too quiet for it to be anything but trouble.”
Being a simulation meant they couldn’t feel their way around it. What their senses were telling them was completely different than what their eyes were seeing. Solomon was deciding that he didn’t like that.
A noise, the sound of shuffling to their right caught Darien’s attention first. He called Sol’s focus that way, toward an open and broken manually operated door. The building they were just then looking toward looked like it could have been a residence. In fact, they were just then surrounded by many of that same time. It was shorter than the skyscrapers they’d seen closer to the city center, and smashed up wall to wall with the like houses on either side. A simple, small set of steps carried them up to a porch that looked like it was made out of something like duracrete, but not entirely the same thing at all. That movement was turning into a shuffling noise, and raspy breathing.
Darien went in first, but stopped in the doorway. Sol could see over his brother’s little fuzzy head and what he saw turned his stomach slightly. The look of the place from the inside was not all that dissimilar from the way a modern house would have been set up. The common room held many of the same elements. What was different was the dessicated woman and child feeding on the entrails of a man who’d had his face eaten off some time ago.
“Go back. Sol...go back. Now.”
Those words, spoken in haste, were enough to draw the attention of the woman and child who rose and began lurching their way.
“Nine hells.” Sol’s breathed words were the precursor to a salvo of blaster fire opening up and raining down on the moving undead that were coming their way.
A retreat was in order, as the girl and her mother were not stopping despite the number of hits registered to their central bodies.
“Why are they going down?”
“No idea.” Darien was making his way backward step by step with his brother’s covering fire burning through the air over his head, “But keep firing anyway!”
Beneath his boots, Solomon’s sensors read the edge of the top step. He felt it just before feeling his left boot slip back and down which knocked his aim off target and sent that bolt high. It struck the woman in her head, and she fell while Sol did his best to keep his balance in that split second. A slim scaled hand caught the railing next to the steps and helped save him from a nasty short tumble.
Darien was still on his feet, and followed the accidental lead. Aim was taken, and a short burst of shots were fired at the little girl’s head. She followed the woman, falling to the door frame in a sick slump of what used to be a human.
The little bear turned to see its tall reptilian cohort regaining his full sense of balance, staring in shock at the two dead in the doorway.
“What are they?” Sol asked, as if poking at them with sticks.
“Don’t know. Don’t care, and don’t want to be caught here if more show up.” Darien was making his fluffy way toward the stairs, Solomon slipping to the side so his brother had room to hold onto the railing. Motion being what it was in the game animated Darien’s climb down into a stubby legged hop that took him back to the sidewalk. Solomon was quick to follow after.
At the bottom, Darien had stopped causing Sol to nearly walk into him as the lizard-man stepped off the bottom and onto the sidewalk. Feeling the proximity, Sol looked in the way that his brother was looking and swore in some soft Mando’a.
“Sol.”
“Yeah, Dar?”
“Run.”
Heading their way from further down the block was a horde of those undead things, drawn by the sound of blasters being fired.
