[log] If Looks Could Kill (You Would Be Dead) [closed]

[thewarningafter]

Characters: Doctors Strange and House
Location: Hospital (building 131)
Date: 197 (afternoon / evening)
Summary: Dr. Strange wants to find out what's going on with his cloak. Dr. House dies again.
Warnings: Dr. House is going to die. Again.

131: The hospital is eerie in its silence, and snow presses in against many of the windows, keeping much of it in sterile darkness. It still smells like a hospital; the antiseptic is fresh, and there isn't much dust. Someone must be cleaning it, and yet it's clear no one is here. The hospital is four stories high with one basement, all connected via the elevator lobby and staircase. Unfortunately, the wall of the elevator lobby has been torn open all the way down, exposing it to the bitter air outside. While you can explore and remain on most of the floors of the hospital at night, you cannot travel between them until it's daytime once more, as the lobby seals itself up at curfew. The staircase is its own separate enclosed area, but it too seals itself off from the lobby at night, so you'll be spending an uncomfortable night on the staircase if you get stuck there.

Comments

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen gives the scalpel a bemused look as he passes it over, briefly startled by the feeling of being on the wrong end of the medical pecking order. The feeling doesn't exactly pass as he leans down to dig through his bag for the still-wrapped syringe he found just earlier today. No needle, but that shouldn't matter here. He sets it next to the microscope.]

Unless you have something better.

[rubikscomplex]

[House's reading glasses are low on his nose when he glances over at the syringe, having moved them down to look into the microscope. He tilts his chin up to eye the thing through them and nods silently before returning his attention to the microscope.

It's a few minutes later that House makes a frustrated noise. But he doesn't give up. Stephen may want to get comfortable it's another 45 minutes of quiet focus, interrupted only by the gentle clink of the scalpel blade on the slide. The doctor will ignore Stephen and the cloak entirely, shuttering his senses to all but the task.]

I can't do it.

[It's time to admit defeat. For now.] I can't isolate them. I'm not gonna waste your syringe. When we have more specialized equipment for extraction, we can try this again. Haven't found a working centrifuge here... or any centrifuge, but it's the next best bet.

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen watches with slowly waning interest; there's really not much to be said for watching someone else methodically nudging at a slide with a knife. After a few minutes he remembers to tend to his cloak, though thankfully there doesn't seem to be any ongoing "bleeding" from the little cut.

By the time House speaks again, Stephen has gotten on the network and done an update on the census. He minimizes the window before glancing up.]

You found a working microscope. Obviously Santa's going to bring us a centrifuge next.

[He makes a face and grabs the syringe to put it back in his bag.]

[rubikscomplex]

A little girl found a working microscope. I just enhanced it so we could see anything useful. Maybe if one of the kids go looking again...

[House leans back from the microscope and his hands are shaking. He crosses his arms to hide this and tiles his head up at the same time, looking thoughtful.]

[thewarningafter]

You think it makes a difference who looks?

[He's not actually discounting the possibility that it might. It just seems a little too much like magical thinking for Dr. House.]

Where did she find it?

[rubikscomplex]

She found it here, and yeah, it matters sometimes. The kids find things and can interact with different data ghosts.

[thewarningafter]

Really.

[Again, Stephen's thoughtful rather than disbelieving.]

Was that before or after you'd searched the building yourself?

[rubikscomplex]

After. Multiple times.

[thewarningafter]

So new items do definitely appear, not just food. I'd wondered why the buildings hadn't been stripped clean of everything useful.

Data ghosts like the music people have been hearing in certain places?

[rubikscomplex]

Yep. Not just music. I've heard voices. They can give you hints sometimes about what you need to do.

[thewarningafter]

Hints. Isn't that convenient.

[The more he learns about this place, the less it seems anything that happens here is by chance.]

When you say data ghosts, I'm guessing you're operating from the assumption that they're some kind of echoes generated by the computer systems here.

[rubikscomplex]

Video game convenient.

[Don't think the parallels haven't dawned on him, Stephen.]

You guess correctly. We know there's some kinda back-up of everything on the servers and our brains are being affected by the nanomachines inside us. My theory is that entering into and taking specific actions in certain areas triggers whatever remnant coding was left there or is connected to the server from that point.

[thewarningafter]

Sounds as likely as anything. What kind of actions are we talking about here? How have you triggered them before?

[rubikscomplex]

[House ticks things off on his fingers as he thinks of them.]

Played a song I heard in the retirement home on the school piano and got a kid's voice behind me. Corrected some equations that were all screwed up in one of the houses and got a sigh of relief along with an SD card that let me copy a program. Lit a fire in the basement next to the pharmacy and had shadow dogs biting me all night. Dyed a faded blanket pink, put it on a bed, and found one of the Prophet dolls. Lit a candle when there was a whisper that it was too dark and pinpricks of light like stars turned up. The voice told me lights should glow after that. Turned on the Prophet Eye app and got an SD card with Winter and Andromeda's conversation.

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen is rethinking his initial assessment of House. Though he's obviously come up with entirely technological explanation (one that might even be true), Stephen wouldn't have expected him to have the kind of open mind that would try just...doing things like that.]

It really does sound like some kind of game. Bring the right item to the right place, give the right answer to the puzzle....

[rubikscomplex]

[It's because of the comfortable box of 'this is technology' that House is willing to experiment and test the boundaries of that. Plus, he's a gamer and this stuff is just classic puzzle-solving.]

Fetch quests. We had to collect nine of those dolls, get it to the last one, and then bring all of those back to another building just to open up that damn pass. Thomas finished it up, but we were working together on that before I met up to experiment with the birdboy.

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen's not a gamer, but 'fetch quests' sounds fairly self explanatory. He nods.]

So we get into the next part of town, find the next locked door, find the next puzzle. This is sounding less and less like an real place that just happened to end up this way after the nukes hit.

[So...starting to reverse his position on the question of whether this is "reality." Sort of.]

[rubikscomplex]

Yep. You know the entrance area south of here? Couple of the guys had to go around downtown collecting keys in areas that were booby trapped. Each key they found led them to a different key, then to a card to get into one of the locked rooms in the hotel. They had to pull a bunch of people together to get the keys they'd originally collected back into their respective locks, then used key cards in all the other rooms in the hotel and only then did the final key card work.

We're looking for a big building or just another locked door in the industrial sector. That'll be the next puzzle to solve.

[thewarningafter]

That's ridiculous.

Okay, so say we're rats in a maze. [That's where his mind goes, rather than to video games.] Whose maze is it? The admin's? Robert Miller's?

[rubikscomplex]

[House considers for a moment, reaching up and rubbing bandaged fingers absentmindedly at one of the scabs on his face.]

That's the million dollar question, Strange. It was Miller's maze below ground. Evidence points to the Admin being his boss, though, and something else controlling her. I think it's our rogue AI.

[thewarningafter]

What for? If it's the thing under town hall, it wants us to reach it. Why the puzzles?

[Don't think he's missed those scratches, House. Don't think he hasn't worked out that they were made by fingernails, either.]

[rubikscomplex]

[Well, as long as they aren't talking about it, noticing is a moot point.]

What wants us to get to the center and dig deep isn't necessarily what's destroying the town. Or it's different pieces of the thing at war with each other. We're caught between at least two forces. They've each got their agendas for what they want to make us do.

[thewarningafter]

The puzzles aren't stopping us, though, they're just slowing us down. By definition they're there to be solved.

[rubikscomplex]

Delay us long enough, the clock runs out, and we lose. Like I said. Opposing forces. I don't think the rogue AI is fully in control, which is why it can only set up complicated roadblocks. Or maybe it's some part of the Admin that's trying help us get through, but it can't be overt about it.

[House shrugs.]

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen sighs.]

Or it's all one big, elaborate experiment and all of the apparent tensions between our captors are manufactured.