Forum    Search    FAQ

Board index » RPG Forums » Freestyle RPG




Post new topic  Reply to topic  [ 153 posts ] 
 
Author Message
 Post Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 1:15 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
Luo Jie "Roger" Wong knew only the hunger at first. It always took him a moment to wake up, but the hunger did not wait, clawing its way up from his belly before he remembered who and where he was.

By the time the cryopod hissed open around him, he'd finished the process of waking up. He was hungry Luo Jie "Roger" Wong. He hungry was a colonist on the hungry Pandora. He was hungry waking up from cryogenic suspension on a hungry brand-new world.

The room is dark - no-one's bothered to switch on the lights. There's no-one around - his cryopod is surrounded by thousands of others, stacked closely together, but not so close that one cannot walk between them. There should be a small box under his cryopod,with whatever he considered to be most important to have on hand soon after waking. (At the very least, it'll have some clothes). He knows this, but he can't see any of it, because it is dark in here.

The exit is quite some distance away, through the forest of cryopods. He can see the exit - the corridor beyond it appears to have working lights.

He's weak from hunger and his stomach will not shut up.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 1:35 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Shaking the sleep-haze from his eyes, Roger climbs out of his pod. He absent mindedly rubs his stomach to try and assuage the pain for a moment while he thinks--which is not easy given his state. Instinctively he walks towards the lighted corridor. He gets to within about 15 feet of the lighted corridor before he realizes that he's still in his underwear. Grumbling, he walks back to his pod and blindly feels around for some clothes and dresses. He feels his personal laptop nestled amongst his things and wonders if it survived the trip. Later he thinks. After food. He begins to make his way back towards the corridor.

"Hello?" he calls.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 7:17 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
A mature (edging on elderly) lady stares for a moment as he stumbles into the corridor.

"...you must be starving," she says. "Wait here, I'll get you something to eat."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 1:45 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger nods vigorously. He follows the woman for several steps before it registers that she told him to stay put. He places his back against the wall and slides down into a sitting position one leg bent at the knee the other stretching towards the middle of the corridor.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:03 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
The woman comes back quickly, with a plate containing some sort of leafy greens, some (unidentified) dried and smoked meat, a jug of water, and a glass.

She waits until Roger has almost finished his meal before saying anything further; once he's almost done, she says "I'm Doctor Vanderbilt, currently chief medical officer. And you are?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 3:02 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger makes quick work of the food. He gives the woman a quizzical look before shaking his head a little.

"I'm, uh, Roger Wong. Just a colonist. It's, uh, nice to meet you."

There's a brief moment of silence before he asks, "Is everything okay? Shouldn't there be I don't know more of us?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 6:40 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
Doctor Vanderbilt shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she says, "I don't speak - Elene, was it?"

It's only when she says it out loud that it hits Roger that he's not currently speaking English. He's - somehow - defaulted to speaking a language that he never knew before, never spoke before.

She sits down next to him.

"Don't worry too much about it. Most of the colonists are still in the cryopods. We... went a bit further than we expected to. A lot further than we expected. Something went wrong... somewhere... something about a clock, I think it was. We didn't stop when or where we were supposed to stop. Somehow, we landed here instead. It took a lot longer than anyone expected. We've got no idea how long, but all our food stores had rotted away by the time we landed. For some reason, some people just woke up almost immediately after landing. This planet... it's not the dry, empty husk we were supposed to land on. It's got life on it. Luckily, we can eat the local plants and animals, and we're starting to get the hydroponics bays up and running. We don't have enough food for everyone yet, but we're working on it." She sighs. "The ones who wake up by themselves - you're the fourth - all seem to just know a new language out of nowhere. We have no idea how that works."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 6:59 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
"That's.. a lot to take in." he says after concsiously making an effort to code switch in to English.

"Huh. At least we landed somewhere hospitable." After a pause he adds, "My name is Roger by the way."

He lapses into silence again and starts to mentally flip through some basic phrases in the several languages he knows, including this strange new one...

An innumerable number of questions spring to mind but he can't decide which to ask so instead he decides to reason out loud.

"I know head trauma has been known, in rare cases, to cause people to speak with foreign accents. But spontaneously learning a new language seems outside the realm of possibility for one person, let alone four. I suppose it could have been part of the ship's cryo-programming to subliminally implant the language but even then why go to all the trouble of implanting a completely brand new language? And why only a few of us? It just doesn't make any sense...unless it was somebody else's doing but that... that would mean... " He trails off.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 9:02 pm 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"It happens. Therefore it must be possible." Doctor Vanderbilt sighs. "The planet is inhabited, by people who could almost pass for human. The locals are medieval, or pretty close; they don't have internal combustion and tend to go about riding something incredibly like horses. They also speak Elene, but not English. Would you like some more to eat?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 6:57 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
"So there IS life on other planets and it's remarkably similar to us? I can just imagine any number of Sci-Fi authors' heads exploding..."

"I'm still a little hungry but I don't want to eat more than my fair share if supplies are low. I would like to see this new planet of ours though. Er, I guess it's not really 'ours' is it? Still I'd like to see it all the same."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 11:14 pm 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
Doctor Vanderbilt shrugs. "For all we know, the local humans could be descendants of a colony ship that used some sort of faster-than-light drive. Would you like to see the world first, or meet one of the natives first?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2016 1:43 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
CCC wrote:
Doctor Vanderbilt shrugs. "For all we know, the local humans could be descendants of a colony ship that used some sort of faster-than-light drive.

"Hm. Good point." He says simply.

CCC wrote:
Would you like to see the world first, or meet one of the natives first?"

After a moments thought Roger says, "Let's meet the native. I do so love getting the opportunity to speak a new language even if I didn't get the joy of studying it this time."

Roger invites the good Doctor to lead the way. While they walk, another question comes to mind.

"How long has it been since the first colonists awoke?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:14 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"Almost exactly a month. We're waking up mainly engineers, to get the ship's systems up and working. Power's a bit of a problem, but we're building more generators all the time. There's two of the natives staying with us at the moment." Dr. Vanderbilt leads Roger towards the medical bay, where a little girl in a white smock with grass-stained feet is busy finishing off a sandwich.

"This is Piper," says Dr. Vanderbilt. "She doesn't talk, but she clearly understands Elene. We found her wandering in the nearby woods, soon after landing."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2016 12:35 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger crouches down to look Piper in the eye. Careful to speak the correct language, he simply says, "Hello Piper. I'm Roger. I've just, uh, woken up I guess you'd say."

He stands, and addresses the Doctor again. "I'm not much of an Engineer, but I'm pretty handy with computers."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2016 5:50 pm 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
Piperholds Roger's shoulders, and carefully inspects his face. Then she gives him a kiss on the nose, and lets go to finish her sandwich.

"That could be useful," says the Doctor. "Though you'll probably end up fetching and carrying for the engineers at first, unless you have some other skill or talent. Come on, let's go meet Sir Bevier, then we can go talk to the Captain and tell him you're up."

Piper (her sandwich now gone) tugs on Roger's trouser leg and holds up her arms in the universal little-girl gesture for "carry me".

Top 
   
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
 
Post new topic  Reply to topic  [ 153 posts ] 

Board index » RPG Forums » Freestyle RPG


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

 
 

 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: