Dreams again
Odd dream last night.
So I was stalking around my grandmother's house, except it was like it was when grandma was still here, with wood panel walls and all her furniture still in place. Apparently, I was in some expansion pack to the game Thief 2. I traipsed around snatching all kinds of money and valuables, since I knew what was really grandma's and what was just stuff placed there by the game. Not a bad haul, but I knew I could find more somewhere. Then all of a sudden, Children of Karras are everywhere, clunking about and playing scratchy recordings of the New Scriptures of The Master Builder. I was hard-pressed, since I was low on fire arrows, water arrows, and mines, which are the only things reasonably effective against the behemoths. There were a mess of little Children, too, ones I could bonk with my blackjack until they shut down, but they weren't my primary concern. Too many of the big ones in the house, so I climbed out the upstairs window on the bathroom roof and from there to the ground, then made for the street.
Alas, though, as one of the big ones heard me and started stirring up the others. I was half way down grandma's driveway when they started stomping out of her front door. I'm not quite sure how the big Children fit through her front door without taking out the walls on either side of the doorway, but they were still coming out. A mess of Children, small gold ones and large blue ones, meandered in tight circles at the edge of the driveway on the street. Apparently I could not just hop the 2 foot wide ditch between me and the next yard, so I tossed out a mine, and when a Child tripped it and blew itself up, I followed up with a couple of fire arrows, and the resulting blasts shattered 3 children and shut down three more. Only 3 of the harmless gold ones remained, so I dashed forward towards the street. I hid in the shadows of the trees in the front lawn, and eventually lost them as they milled about in the streets looking for me, sure that I was okay, because the remaining children might stir up more allies, but they had lost track of me, and would eventually reset into a more passive search mode.
I came upon a strange structure, a large house-ish thing in the backyard of my old trailer in Savannah. I got curious, and the Children were visible far off in the distance where I could keep an eye on their searching (which was odd, since grandma's house is miles from mom's trailer), and explored. Turns out to be some sort of hidden apartment building and office, raised and run by one man, a balding guy in his forties who is kind of John Galt-ish in character, only a little more human and a lot less womanizing. He said his name was J. Bob. I can only assume it is J. Bob Belew, pragmatic, worldly, and exceedingly resourceful ace from Wild Cards. Luckily, he did not lop off any of his body parts during this dream, even though I know if he did, whatever he chopped off would just grow back.
He explains that since Karras successfully released the Rust Gas, and the Children of Karras swarmed over the Earth, survivors are few and far between, and in fact I am the first he's run into since he built his sanctuary. Well, me and my friends (whoa, where did they come from?) decide to stay at his place, which, with our help, eventually grows to a full middle income community complex. Now we just have to find people to fill it.
Meantime, J. Bob has captured and reprogrammed a bunch of Children to serve as guards and patrol units, since it is no longer Children of Karras that walk the Earth rampant. See, after the first couple of weeks, it rained a lot, and all the Children have a weak spot in their boiler-bodies that, if you dump enough water in it, it douses their fires, so eventually they all rusted solid or broke down, etc. without any people to run maintenance on them. So J. Bob found plenty of doused Children to reset, refuel, and ignite into service. Steam-powered robots. Awesome. Now, instead, other loathesome beasts had appeared. Most of them were unidentifiable green, warty, leathery things, as often soft-bodied as hard. For the most part, they are rapidly evolving new life. Apparently the rust gas Karras released affected animals more than anything (it was supposed to turn every non-machine into rust), but most plants, and some protists and microbiology survived, and they are rapidly growing new branches on the evolutionary tree to fill in the spots that have been cleared out by Karras' genocide.
They'd been evolving as the machines were dying, and lately, there'd been some that actually walked on two legs. Trolls. Most of the beasts were small, blobby things, usually no larger than a medium sized dog, and because they were evolving and developing so rapidly, their biology had outpaced thier education and learning, i.e. they would be medium-dog-sized, clawed, fanged, amoebas with eyes, ears, limbs, etc, etc. I recalled a dream-memory of meeting one in the woods once. It was like a green rubber sack about the size of a large pillow, with a cougar's head, also green, and stubby, but clawed, green legs. Its body was so soft it sagged on it's little legs, but it was sturdy enough to warrant my climbing a tree to escape a possible mindless mauling. Thank goodness for rope arrows... J. Bob's Children of Karras were effective at fighting them off as they stumbled onto the apartment sanctuary grounds through the front gate, as they were soft-bodied and squishy. Nearly all the higher jelly-forms were just that, sacks and containers of goop or gel with rubbery skeletons or plated skins (or both) that held the interal gel in a functioning shape. However, the creatures had been evolving faster, and some of them became dumb but tough predatory beasts. The Trolls, for their part, had been getting bigger and bigger, until they started standing a foot taller than even a large blue Child of Karras.
I witnessed one fight between a particularly big troll and a blue Child that worried me. The troll was tall and lanky, and pounced on the Child from behind, but since the Child is a one-ton machine, nothing happened to it. They began to wrestle, the crazy troll, snarling and growling ferociously all the while, clawing fruitlessly at the metal chassis of the Child, who was too clunky and awkward to effectly battle the wild creature on its back, while creaking out phrases about "hostility and violence" and "a wretched creature, be thou warned" in Karras' scratchily recorded, nasal voice. The troll's claws were only messing up the Child's baroque decorative finish, but it occasionally caught on a joint and tugged fearsomely, even loosening a plate or two. The Child wasn't even remotely as agile as the troll, but with it's great strength, it sometimes clubbed the troll distressingly hard with its flailing arms when the beast swung within reach. The troll's body, though tough, was still gellid enough to take the blows with less damage than a meat-based creature would have. In essence, it was a clumsy, but terrible fight. Eventually, the Child would win, since it did not feel pain and the damage being done to it was mostly cosmetic. But what worried me about it, though, was that the troll was actually doing some damage, even though minor, and that the thing had a combination of strength in hardened muscles and padding in soft outer tissue. They were evolving into more dangerous threats, and I foresaw that they would eventually out-evolve the durability, strength and destructive power of the Children of Karras. Doom would eventually come upon us at the sanctuary if we did not do something about it.
But what? I had great skill as a thief, and my stealth and agility were unparalleled. I could put traps and arrows in the paths of nearly any threat. But I could not be everywhere at once. I approached J. Bob in his office, which was decorated in that pseudo-futuro-Art-Deco style that was everywhere in the 80's, and we argued over it. He was sure that he could have his construction machines fortify the buildings and the community grounds enough to handle the trolls, though he was shocked to hear how one had actually held ground in a toe-to-toe fight with a larger Child of Karras. I pointed out that if they could evolve to fight Children, who is to say they couldn't evolve beyond that. And that was just the Trolls. Other blubbly and lumpy things were out there, unseen, evolving into God-knows-what. What happens when something huge lumbers out of the nearby woods that we don't know how to handle, bigger than elephant or with dental plates that ground up stone, or slavering raw acids? Or tiny, for that matter, like poisonous bugs... No, J. Bob didn't want to hear it. He had faith in his technology. I decided I had to leave the community and hope J. Bob could watch over my friends.
It was time for me to go hunting for solutions.
Unfortunately, I woke up just as I was collecting things in my loadout.
Damn. That would've been a fun dream to continue...
So I was stalking around my grandmother's house, except it was like it was when grandma was still here, with wood panel walls and all her furniture still in place. Apparently, I was in some expansion pack to the game Thief 2. I traipsed around snatching all kinds of money and valuables, since I knew what was really grandma's and what was just stuff placed there by the game. Not a bad haul, but I knew I could find more somewhere. Then all of a sudden, Children of Karras are everywhere, clunking about and playing scratchy recordings of the New Scriptures of The Master Builder. I was hard-pressed, since I was low on fire arrows, water arrows, and mines, which are the only things reasonably effective against the behemoths. There were a mess of little Children, too, ones I could bonk with my blackjack until they shut down, but they weren't my primary concern. Too many of the big ones in the house, so I climbed out the upstairs window on the bathroom roof and from there to the ground, then made for the street.
Alas, though, as one of the big ones heard me and started stirring up the others. I was half way down grandma's driveway when they started stomping out of her front door. I'm not quite sure how the big Children fit through her front door without taking out the walls on either side of the doorway, but they were still coming out. A mess of Children, small gold ones and large blue ones, meandered in tight circles at the edge of the driveway on the street. Apparently I could not just hop the 2 foot wide ditch between me and the next yard, so I tossed out a mine, and when a Child tripped it and blew itself up, I followed up with a couple of fire arrows, and the resulting blasts shattered 3 children and shut down three more. Only 3 of the harmless gold ones remained, so I dashed forward towards the street. I hid in the shadows of the trees in the front lawn, and eventually lost them as they milled about in the streets looking for me, sure that I was okay, because the remaining children might stir up more allies, but they had lost track of me, and would eventually reset into a more passive search mode.
I came upon a strange structure, a large house-ish thing in the backyard of my old trailer in Savannah. I got curious, and the Children were visible far off in the distance where I could keep an eye on their searching (which was odd, since grandma's house is miles from mom's trailer), and explored. Turns out to be some sort of hidden apartment building and office, raised and run by one man, a balding guy in his forties who is kind of John Galt-ish in character, only a little more human and a lot less womanizing. He said his name was J. Bob. I can only assume it is J. Bob Belew, pragmatic, worldly, and exceedingly resourceful ace from Wild Cards. Luckily, he did not lop off any of his body parts during this dream, even though I know if he did, whatever he chopped off would just grow back.
He explains that since Karras successfully released the Rust Gas, and the Children of Karras swarmed over the Earth, survivors are few and far between, and in fact I am the first he's run into since he built his sanctuary. Well, me and my friends (whoa, where did they come from?) decide to stay at his place, which, with our help, eventually grows to a full middle income community complex. Now we just have to find people to fill it.
Meantime, J. Bob has captured and reprogrammed a bunch of Children to serve as guards and patrol units, since it is no longer Children of Karras that walk the Earth rampant. See, after the first couple of weeks, it rained a lot, and all the Children have a weak spot in their boiler-bodies that, if you dump enough water in it, it douses their fires, so eventually they all rusted solid or broke down, etc. without any people to run maintenance on them. So J. Bob found plenty of doused Children to reset, refuel, and ignite into service. Steam-powered robots. Awesome. Now, instead, other loathesome beasts had appeared. Most of them were unidentifiable green, warty, leathery things, as often soft-bodied as hard. For the most part, they are rapidly evolving new life. Apparently the rust gas Karras released affected animals more than anything (it was supposed to turn every non-machine into rust), but most plants, and some protists and microbiology survived, and they are rapidly growing new branches on the evolutionary tree to fill in the spots that have been cleared out by Karras' genocide.
They'd been evolving as the machines were dying, and lately, there'd been some that actually walked on two legs. Trolls. Most of the beasts were small, blobby things, usually no larger than a medium sized dog, and because they were evolving and developing so rapidly, their biology had outpaced thier education and learning, i.e. they would be medium-dog-sized, clawed, fanged, amoebas with eyes, ears, limbs, etc, etc. I recalled a dream-memory of meeting one in the woods once. It was like a green rubber sack about the size of a large pillow, with a cougar's head, also green, and stubby, but clawed, green legs. Its body was so soft it sagged on it's little legs, but it was sturdy enough to warrant my climbing a tree to escape a possible mindless mauling. Thank goodness for rope arrows... J. Bob's Children of Karras were effective at fighting them off as they stumbled onto the apartment sanctuary grounds through the front gate, as they were soft-bodied and squishy. Nearly all the higher jelly-forms were just that, sacks and containers of goop or gel with rubbery skeletons or plated skins (or both) that held the interal gel in a functioning shape. However, the creatures had been evolving faster, and some of them became dumb but tough predatory beasts. The Trolls, for their part, had been getting bigger and bigger, until they started standing a foot taller than even a large blue Child of Karras.
I witnessed one fight between a particularly big troll and a blue Child that worried me. The troll was tall and lanky, and pounced on the Child from behind, but since the Child is a one-ton machine, nothing happened to it. They began to wrestle, the crazy troll, snarling and growling ferociously all the while, clawing fruitlessly at the metal chassis of the Child, who was too clunky and awkward to effectly battle the wild creature on its back, while creaking out phrases about "hostility and violence" and "a wretched creature, be thou warned" in Karras' scratchily recorded, nasal voice. The troll's claws were only messing up the Child's baroque decorative finish, but it occasionally caught on a joint and tugged fearsomely, even loosening a plate or two. The Child wasn't even remotely as agile as the troll, but with it's great strength, it sometimes clubbed the troll distressingly hard with its flailing arms when the beast swung within reach. The troll's body, though tough, was still gellid enough to take the blows with less damage than a meat-based creature would have. In essence, it was a clumsy, but terrible fight. Eventually, the Child would win, since it did not feel pain and the damage being done to it was mostly cosmetic. But what worried me about it, though, was that the troll was actually doing some damage, even though minor, and that the thing had a combination of strength in hardened muscles and padding in soft outer tissue. They were evolving into more dangerous threats, and I foresaw that they would eventually out-evolve the durability, strength and destructive power of the Children of Karras. Doom would eventually come upon us at the sanctuary if we did not do something about it.
But what? I had great skill as a thief, and my stealth and agility were unparalleled. I could put traps and arrows in the paths of nearly any threat. But I could not be everywhere at once. I approached J. Bob in his office, which was decorated in that pseudo-futuro-Art-Deco style that was everywhere in the 80's, and we argued over it. He was sure that he could have his construction machines fortify the buildings and the community grounds enough to handle the trolls, though he was shocked to hear how one had actually held ground in a toe-to-toe fight with a larger Child of Karras. I pointed out that if they could evolve to fight Children, who is to say they couldn't evolve beyond that. And that was just the Trolls. Other blubbly and lumpy things were out there, unseen, evolving into God-knows-what. What happens when something huge lumbers out of the nearby woods that we don't know how to handle, bigger than elephant or with dental plates that ground up stone, or slavering raw acids? Or tiny, for that matter, like poisonous bugs... No, J. Bob didn't want to hear it. He had faith in his technology. I decided I had to leave the community and hope J. Bob could watch over my friends.
It was time for me to go hunting for solutions.
Unfortunately, I woke up just as I was collecting things in my loadout.
Damn. That would've been a fun dream to continue...