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| Red Faction : Lounge : SP Empyrion Teaser |
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| blinded2 |
  Posted 26th Jul 2007 5:28am |
L4Y Member
Post 123 / 194
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Well I'm working on a new SP campaign called Empyrion. I promised a teaser... so here it is. Enjoy! I had a lot of fun writing this. 
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“Thirty years after The Revolution on Mars, they built a colony on Pluto called Empyrion. That’s all I know.” The man’s long sigh did nothing to mask the irritation in this voice.
“Was it a mining colony?”
“No, nothing like that. Pluto doesn’t have the natural resources that Mars does.”
The guard turned to glance at me for the first time since my “little interrogation”, as he called it, began.
I was trying to get some solid information on a topic I had been researching for the last couple weeks. Ever since they picked up fragments of a radio signal at my office coming from an unknown location in space. Can you believe it? Radio signals… I didn’t know there was still equipment around old enough to send such a signal. Besides that, I couldn’t understand why anyone would purposefully use such a dated form of communication.
I have to admit I was less than intrigued when a colleague, and friend, of mine mentioned the subject in passing as we dined on the third floor cafeteria of the Mitrotech Corporation building; our main headquarters in Osborough.
The dark, wiry man opposite me hunched over the small Kintell table set that was at least fifteen years old and had probably seen less cleanings than its years in service.
Joseph Carraway was a man seldom given to excitement, at least not in the long years that I had known him. But as he leaned in towards me with his chin almost touching the top of his hands he had placed flat on the table, I wondered at his newfound exhilaration and its origin. His eyes were wide and as white as the plate sitting untouched in front of him; a sight that gave him a comical appearance which was only accentuated by his too-large coat and too-short slacks that were suppose to be the same shade of gray. But his eyes were what really caught my attention, as I continued to ignore his appearance, I was used to it by now; I leaned in a little bit myself and gave him my full attention.
“I’m telling you, Lewis. Radio signals! Picked up by equipment stored in the old containment rooms on the twenty-first floor.”
He gave me the courtesy of letting me know that the twenty-first floor was above us by repeatedly stabbing a single, tapered digit at the ceiling. He finally stopped poking the thing but kept it in the air where it was as he continued.
“Heard it from Buchanan over in IT. They had been up there searching for some old units that they might be able to spread the recent excess work load over, since those damn fools in finance screwed up the…”
Sitting back with and exasperated sigh and rolling my eyes, I gave my old friend a hard look. That was another thing I was also used to; Joey had a wandering tongue that never seemed to end up on the same topic it had started on fifteen minutes earlier.
Thankfully the other man had caught my look and stopped shaking his still-raised finger that had not been meant for me but for “those damn fools in finance.” I knew he had already forgotten what the initial topic had been because he was staring past me off into space trying to recapture the juicy tidbit he had been relating only a moment earlier. I couldn’t help but smile at his situation, it wasn’t that he wasn’t an intelligent guy; he was in fact one of the most intellectual persons I knew. I had always though that that was his problem; his mind usually moved on to ten other related topics before it had fully finished comprehending the initial thought. So I gently guided him back to the subject, as I was so used to doing.
“So that signal from the twenty-first floor…” I admit I probably shouldn’t have used my own finger in a mock imitation of what he had been doing only a moment before; but I was always an arrogant, satirical as s. That was my problem, ask my wife.
“Right, right, right… the radio signal. They picked it up from somewhere in space and when they ran a full diagnostic they weren’t able to pinpoint the exact location but what they were able to learn was the exact distance the signal traveled and that it was sent from a stationary source.”
“A colony on Mars.”
“Well, see that’s what they thought until they compared it with the figures they had for the distance it had traveled.” He gave me a knowing smile, enjoying the slight edge he had over me in the realm of deductive reasoning.
“I ran my own figures based on what they have and what I pulled up… Well here let me show you.” He turned and reached for his briefcase he had lying haphazardly on the floor and slammed it down in front of him, sending utensils flying. Turning myself, I apologized to the table next to us for the unwarranted racket and flying shrapnel. As I turned back I found my friend’s entire head completely hidden behind the top half of his briefcase and was forced to content myself listening to the sound of paper rustling for the next few moments.
“Here, here it is!” He slammed the briefcase shut in the same motion as he shoved a handful of papers into my face. Following his lead by multitasking myself, I grabbed the paper from his hand and glanced, at the same time, in our neighbor’s direction who continued to throw dark looks in our own. Mouthing another apology and a weak smile I found Joey staring impatiently at me, as I had not yet deigned to soak up the contents on the wrinkled page in my hand. Looking down I found myself staring at hastily sketched spheres I took to be planets with arrows between them and distances marked above them. I quickly learned the distance between Mars and Earth was somewhere in the range of 56 million kilometers, but the radio signal’s distance traveled had clocked in an outstandingly higher number; and I wasn’t in the mood to count zeros.
“Wait a minute, there has got to be some miscalc-“
“Miscalculation? No, there isn’t, in fact, 5.9 million kilometers is the exact distance between Earth and another planet.”
I took a wild stab. “What? The Moon?”
“No, Lewis the Moon is a moon, not a planet.” I knew there was a reason I was as satirical as I was.
“Okay, so what then?”
“Pluto.”
“Pluto. You’re kidding me that’s got to be…”
“Be about 5.9 million kilometers away from Earth? Yeah, your right, it’s a long way off.”
“Yeah but that must have taken the signal years… hundreds of years to travel that far.”
“Well, only about thirty years unless I miss my guess.”
He smiled coolly and I felt like wiping that smile off with a swift kick to his…Instead I dropped my head into my hand and looked up running my fingers through my hair, Joey was checking his watch and, for the first time since sitting down, starting to glance around at his surroundings. I knew our audience was coming to and end so I tried anything I could to keep him at the table.
“So what do you think about all of this?”
But it was already too late. My old friend stood with a sly smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes and looked around; probably trying to remember where he came in at.
“I don’t know, Lewis. But I do know I got a lot of work to do so I’ll see you next Thursday night?” Next Thursday night was dinner with the wives and then usually off to a movie or sometimes an occasional bar.
“C’mon you big tease you can’t just leave… I don’t even know where to start looking.” But he was already strolling away towards the nearest elevator.
CENSORED Joey! We aren’t in grade school anymore!” He turned back just long enough without stopping to shout back at me with a laugh.
“I’ve done my job. I’ve planted the seed, now its up to you what to do next, Lewis.”
And that’s how I found myself a week later; walking away in the cold from an interview with the aforementioned young guard that knew next to nothing. Only that he couldn’t be talking about “such delicate matters” with any civilians. Stopping at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the entrance of the building, I turned around to stare up at the large faded blue letters.
U-L-T-O-R
I knew they were involved in some way; they always were. First Earth, then Mars and now Pluto. These thoughts and others floated in my head as I stumbled off into the night trying to hail a cab.
---
You pick up as Mr. Lewis Mathis, your stuck in a dark, dank dungeon by yourself and your wife and kids are nowhere to be found. As you set off to find your family you have nothing but the low reassuring voice of a mystery friend in your ear to help you with your journey and keep your spirits up.
Look for the release in the next few days.  |
| "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." |
Modified Jul 26th, 05:35am by blinded2 |
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| Hapa Hanu |
Posted 26th Jul 2007 5:58am |
Mac Maniac
L4Y Member
Post 749 / 1544
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I like the sound of Pluto, the celestial body formerly known as a planet. What do they call it now? A dwarf something? 
Pluto would be a great place to blast your friends. 
| Quoting blinded2 | | “Yeah but that must have taken the signal years… hundreds of years to travel that far.” |
What? Did they send the message by Pony Express?  Are we in the same solar system? 
Proxima Centurai is 4.6 light years away. It would take a radio signal 4.6 years to get to there from earth... |
| I have suffered in real life for the past couple years, now its your turn! |
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| blinded2 |
Posted 26th Jul 2007 6:08am |
L4Y Member
Post 124 / 194
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haha its all fiction, i really didnt do my homework when it came to space travel
btw, i just crashed your server. with my level. |
| "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." |
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| goober |
Posted 26th Jul 2007 6:59am |  |
L4Y Member
Post 5359 / 265
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| Quoting Hapa Hanu | | I like the sound of Pluto, the celestial body formerly known as a planet. What do they call it now? A dwarf something? |
I think it's refered to now as a Dwarf Planet |
For anyone reading this in 2019 or later: The RF community is alive on the Community Discord
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| Hapa Hanu |
Posted 26th Jul 2007 7:38am |
Mac Maniac
L4Y Member
Post 750 / 1544
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Dwarf Planet, how unappealling. Should have called it a planetoid or something. 
| Quoting blinded2 | | haha its all fiction, i really didnt do my homework when it came to space travel |
No worries, with proper "suspension of disbelief" I can believe anything.
| Quoting blinded2 | | btw, i just crashed your server. with my level. |
Incidently the Dinner server did not crash. It was the clients on PCs who crashed. Ms. wanky, on a Mac, did not crash and left the map out of boredom when no one else was able to get in. There is a bug in Direct X when there is too much geo in one spot, typically in a floor, it will cause PCs to crash to the desktop. On a Mac this same geo bug will fill the screen with abstract and intangible triangles without crashing. |
| I have suffered in real life for the past couple years, now its your turn! |
Modified Jul 26th, 07:38am by Hapa Hanu |
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| KERPAL |
Posted 27th Jul 2007 4:14am | |
L4Y Member
Post 865 / 1353
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yeah and incidently it was my fault lol... it happened right after I blew up a remote charge. |
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