SHIFTING THE PARADIGM - ADVERSE RIG EVENT

[goneawaymod]

SHIFTING THE PARADIGM

PLOT DESCRIPTION
To say that the New Hires are unlucky is something of an understatement. After all, they're here, aren't they? They were the unlucky ones swept out of their worlds, left unconscious for Jorgmund to find, "hired," implanted with shock collars. They were unlucky enough to get caught, and now they're being mega, double, septuple screwed by a casual backhand of fate.

The rig doesn't often face a full breach. It does today.

The announcements start with a tinny warning: "RED ALERT: SEVERE STUFF STORM COALESCING OFF STARBOARD SIDE. PREPARE FOR RIG TO COME TO FULL STOP."

Anyone near windows can see it on the side facing the Wilds, a roiling, thundering mass of gray clouds that look a little more liquid than normal clouds. Lightning crackles, illuminating it from within but the color of the lightning isn't just white or yellow. Each thundering crackle flashes in a prism of unnatural colors.

The rig comes to a stop. Since it was going so slow, there isn't much of a change in momentum but they can feel it in the vibration of the braking mechanisms and creaking and groaning of tons of metal suddenly facing some minor strain. The storm expands up to the top of the atmosphere, anvil-shaped, flattening against the tropopause.

"RED ALERT: SEVERE STUFF STORM COALESCING STARBOARD SIDE. PREPARE FOR POSSIBLE ADVERSE RIG EVENT. SHELTER IN QUARTERS AND OTHER SHIELDED AREAS. CHILD CARE STAFF, RELOCATE YOUR CHARGES TO NEAREST SHIELDED BUNKER. ALL STAFF, REPORT ANY UNREALITY EVENTS TO RIG COMMAND FROM THE NEAREST ALARM PHONE, AND FIND SHELTER UNTIL SECURITY TEAM IS DEPLOYED."

The Stuff storm slams into the rig, making it sway just slightly. The wind pouring through the gaps in the rig structure howls in a way that sounds like inhuman screams. Thanks to the Stuff visibility drops to a very gray 0%.

A prerecorded message now starts playing. Celeste Lillian, with her soothing voice, speaking mantras:

"Staff members and couriers of hope, in this stressful time, I remind you to pause, take a moment, and breathe so deeply your lungs cannot hold any more of our Mother Earth's air. Breathe in, breathe out. The act of breathing is so precious because it's both necessary and voluntary. It is a gift you give yourself. Value yourself enough to give yourself the gift of a full, honest, complete breath."

Super helpful, right?

"Clear your minds, let go of any thoughts. Remember: 'The ocean changes. I can float.'"

But all hell breaks loose and mantras won't do a thing to stop it. The rig's many ventilation shafts have filters and metal covers to help shield against stuff, but they aren't replaced as often as they should be. Inspections are thorough but some material resources are scarce.

Stuff breaks through the covers and ventilation filters, sweeps through the rig, and reality gets less real.

"RED ALERT: FULL BREACH. RED ALERT: FULL BREACH. RED ALERT: FULL BREACH..."

SCENARIO #1 - PRODUCTIVITY

The rig's staff instantly increases by several orders of magnitude. The new employees don't talk and for the most part they don't pay attention to anyone else. They mill through the hallways, gesturing to each other as if they're colleagues walking and talking about the last meeting as they move through the halls.

Most of them are in full professional dress, suits and ties. But sometimes this dress is from a variety of eras, hearkening back to the idea of business. That means a lot of power suits and shoulder pads, and even some old fashioned bow ties, top hats, and glittering gold pocketwatch chains. Here and there, sometimes there's even a glimpse of someone in older merchant's clothing, flashy in a way that suggests "people send me regular complaints on cuneiform tablets about how I sold them inferior copper ingots." The mystery executives despawn and respawn randomly, phasing in and out of existence. Sometimes two will spawn in the same spot, somehow superimposed, like a glitch in a video game, twitching helplessly until reality goes "whoops!" and phases them back out of existence.

They have no faces, but the way they sometimes randomly turn to face the New Hires, staring them down, body language wary, makes it clear they can somehow see or sense without eyes. They sometimes speak with no mouths but the sounds don't sound like real language, and are always muffled.

New office or meeting room doors start flickering in and out of existence. Each time one appears it draws the nearest New Hires in, warping the metal floor in front of them so every step draws them inexorably inward. Inside, the New Hires find themselves pinned by stares from nonexistent eyes, the drones expectant. Maybe even impatient.

They're late.

Each room has a different scenario that must be satisfied to make the room go away, all of them the subconscious corporate imaginings of rig executives and staff, fears and secret wishes and ambitious aspirations all rolled together. The drones watch the New Hires carefully to make sure they follow "corporate policy" and obey the rules of the scenario, their body language growing more and more aggressive and threatening the more they fight it. They will eventually attack if New Hires don't follow through. There's no such thing as simply reporting someone to HR in their (nonexistent) eyes.

When each scenario is forced to completion by the New Hires playing ball until conditions are satisfied, the drones...dissolve. Trees suddenly sprout through their clothes, then flower. The petals scatter through a sudden breeze that always smells of grass and leaves and wet plants and gentle rains.

Finally free.

PROMPTS

a) resource management
The room has a table and chairs at the front. It's stacked with piles of unsharpened pencils and several electric or manual pencil sharpeners. The table looks out on rows of chairs, filled with faceless drones.

Watching... waiting...

Every time you finish sharpening a pencil there's light applause. It's a big pile of pencils, but at least it's an easy task. The drones don't seem to mind if you talk to break up the monotony.

Like so much of corporate life? Thrilling.

b) flipping through the deck
Have you ever had a nightmare where you had to do an oral test in front of the class that you weren't prepared for? Now imagine one where your teacher and classmates will beat you senseless if you get it wrong.

The slideshow being shown on the smartboard is completely nonsensical. That means the presentation can be just as nonsensical. New Hires can work together to bullshit on any topic, or maybe even just spout total nonsense. Either way, the drones around the conference table occasionally offer light applause and then turn to each other to confab in their nonsense mutterings, before turning back to watch once more.

When the meeting is perceived to be over, the drones stand, lightly clap, and flower.

Sometimes in rooms like this the drones hand over a list of corporate buzzwords that must be included, but they don't seem to care if it's in context.

Buzzwords: Break down the silos, tee it up, paradigm shift, low-hanging fruit, move the needle, run it up the flagpole, on the bleeding edge, synergy, core competency, leverage.

c) on the spot improvisation
Similar to the other presentation rooms except...

Oh, these are actual Jorgmund executives. The door sucked you into a normal meeting that they're cheerfully having despite the Stuff breach. They ask you your opinions on improving rig operations and quality of life and expect you to give honest answers.

But not too honest.

d) you've got some splainin' to do
You're handed hair nets and aprons and glared at until you put them on. The room is a small room in a factory line, with a conveyor belt passing through. The drone that henpecked you into putting on the aprons holds up a chocolate, points to the aperture the chocolates go through at the end of the conveyor belt, and shakes her head furiously. Then she wraps the chocolate in one of the wrappers from a stack of them, points back to the aperture and nods.

The garbled nonsense she "says" doesn't communicate it, but the gestures do: Wrapped chocolates go through, unwrapped ones don't.

Once the New Hires are in place in the conveyor line, the drone smacks a hand twice against the wall and the conveyor belt starts. Fortunately the drone leaves, but now the New Hires have chocolates they have to wrap, and they have to wrap them quickly.

The line is fast but not impossible. It's still a scramble and chocolate might have to be shoved in their hats and clothes to keep the drone from coming back and getting angry. Fortunately, you only have to reach a quote of 100 (as stated by a helpful sign on the wall) before the room spits you back out - sticky and smeared with chocolate - and fades away.

One perk: the chocolate won't disappear, but it's definitely some waxy, cheap stuff and sometimes the filling is a flavor that doesn't really pair well with chocolate.

e) the it crowd
You're led to desk with computers that don't actually work. Only nonsense words and memes (and nonsense memes) show up on the screens. That's fine because the people calling in on the phones are real people on the rig, trying to work despite the Stuff storm because of Company Loyalty™, and that means their problems are real stupid. Even laymen might be able to guide them through it.

They may include questions about the "cupholder," them not realizing the monitor has to be turned on, and issues easily resolved by a restart. Since the calls are real, there's a chance you can use some good old fashioned psychological engineering to gain useful things like usernames an passwords.

The drones don't seem to care if you chat among yourselves between calls, confer with one another (or mock the caller) while the phone is on mute, or whether the advice is even good. They only care that it's given. After a seemingly random quota is met, the drones expire, and room spits you back out and disappears. You'll find you have a small rubber duck in your pocket after you're spit back out again.

The ducks seem to not do anything. Yet.

Players can request the mods come up with idiotic IT issues for their thread.

f) breaking the ice
What is with this place's obsession with never-ending icebreakers?

This time it's less optional. You're are forced to sit in chairs across from each other or in a ring if more than two of you are pulled in. A sign on a small table between you says "2 truths, 1 lie" or "Truth or truth" (The drones seem to have forgotten the dare part). But sometimes a different game (of players' choosing) is displayed. The drones can seemingly sense whenever New Hires are lying and their behavior starts to grow hostile if they do, relaxing when they tell the truth.

The room won't release New Hires until there's been enough growth or honesty equivalent to a life-changing field trip.

g) corporate (property) restructuring
The drones are based on the thoughts of employees and that means the things they dream of doing, like taking a bat and going ham on a printer-copier. When you're pulled into a nonexistent department you're handed baseball bats and pointed at various pieces of office equipment.

The hostile language of the suited drones - also with their own baseball bats - means it would be wise for you to direct your un-vented frustrations at the equipment. All of it.

Or the drones might vent their aggression - with bats - at you. At least smashing shit up with a buddy - old or new - is cathartic? And that baseball bat can maybe be tucked away in a hideyhole somewhere for later use.

h) staring at the camera like...
This room is a small office space with chairs against a wall that has a window with closed blinds. The drones have a professional looking camera set up, pointing at the chairs, like it's some kind of confessional. These drones look more like the crew of a documentary than the other office drones, but have the same blank faces.

They gesture for the New Hires to sit down and hold up a paper that says: "Tell us how you really feel about this place and your fellow employees."

It's not like the drones are Jorgmund employees so maybe it's a safe place to let loose and have a vent session with a fellow New Hire? Interacting with each other during the vent gets nods of approval from the directors and crew. Trashing Jorgmund? Gets even more approval. They're loving that chemistry, guys.

i) wild card
Have a scenario idea that we haven't thought of? Go crazy! Pick some weird corporate scenario to play around with. The Stuff has plenty to work with thanks to the anxieties of the real corporate drones working for Jorgmund, and also because of all the office-related TV and movies they consume.

SCENARIO #2 - VIOLENCE
Some beings created by Stuff are alive and/or sentient. These are the New, but the drones are not New. They don't think and are therefore unable to reify the occasional wisp of stuff around the rig. They're more like programs in the computer of reality or like animations set into motion by the minds animating them.

But even if they're not alive, they are dangerous. They have no brains, no vital organs, no easy way to kill them. Since you need a thick skin to survive corporate life, it's very hard to break through their skin. When this finally occurs they start bleeding odd substances and objects. Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black printer ink. Paper clips. Sometimes it's thumb tacks, which makes walking and fighting very fraught. Go down even once and you might have a butt or back full of them.

No matter how much they bleed, however, they don't deflate or bleed to death. Only total destruction or dismemberment can slow them down. Fortunately, how much it takes to damage them seems to always be magically scaled to what the New Hires in the room are capable of.

That means it's somewhat unwise to fight them but it's at least not impossible. New Hires that want to try will be given their weapons and gear if they manage to make their way down to the armory near the training room. While New Hires will be hunted down later if they don't return most weapons and specific gear items, the chaos means some of the more disposable items - grenades, arrows, throwing knives - might possibly be tucked away somewhere without notice. For later. Excuses can be made about their use or loss, after all.

Players that know ahead of a time they want a fight scenario can always list one of the other scenarios above and note their preference for combat.

Since New Hires will have to go to the armory to get equipped, they can also have some threads with weapons and others without, to suit player needs.

OOC DETAILS
➤ Finite threat: While the doors can open anywhere and suck anyone in, the total number of rooms that need to be eliminated is finite. This means the New Hires clearing them out can eventually shut them all to avoid permanent, perilous addition to the rig's reality. They'll notice the number of doors that flash in and out of existence decreasing the more they go through scenarios.

➤ Opt out: Players may opt out of the plot by having it so New Hires mysteriously find their room door locked and impossible to open, even by force. Or players can make use of the "alternate reality" mechanic, where the characters are shifted temporarily into a calmer, alternate version of the timeline where they have a normal, quiet rig day. That band of possible reality will collapse and fold them back into the main rig reality when the event is over. This means if players want to completely ignore the event and work on their old threads, they don't even have to come up with a handwave. Their character might just be a little confused and need to be filled in when the event is over and reality folds them back in.

➤ NPC request: If you'd like the mods to npc a stupid IT call in a thread, hit the thread below and link to where they should come in.

➤ Questions: If you have questions about the event, want to know what your characters can get away with during the chaos, want to know if your characters can squirrel away secure info or grenades etc., feel free to hit the questions comment below to make your requests.

Comments

QUESTIONS

[goneawaymod]

Feel free to ask any questions or permissions for things here.

Re: QUESTIONS

[wheyoftheadept]

Okay, so! What exactly does the armory have and not have, and what can we cache? Like, if there's medical supplies, can we liberate those?

IT REQUESTS

[goneawaymod]

Feel free to ask for help with an IT prompt here. You can either ask for npcing the entire encounter or just a stupid IT complaint idea. If it's for the whole thread, we'll only npc one encounter so it's recommended both characters work together on it on speaker.

Let us know which type you you want: "it problem" or "npc encounter" in the subject of your comment and provide a link to the specific thread.

Re: IT REQUESTS

[walkingballpit]

Can I please have an IT call to use in a prompt? Do your weirdest worst.

Re: IT REQUESTS

[fromfryingpantofire]

Might I have an IT prompt as well, please?

[becauseimacoward]

Can I get an IT prompt, please? An IT problem would do the trick!

IT problem

[garmr]

May I have an IT problem for two cavemen who know nothing about computers?

[heterochrocatic]

1. Yeeeeah, I'm gonna need those TPS reports ASAP.

It had been a nice (well no, not nice), normal day on the rig. Then everything had gotten stupid with the onrushing storm of Stuff that blasted into the rig from the Wilds beyond, the sudden appearance of a multitude of faceless jerks, and on top of that the seeming demand that she, Catra, do something about it. She had been scurrying along a corridor, dodging between the aggravating new arrivals when she had found herself inexorably dragged into a door that hadn't been there a few minutes before. Despite her hissing, spitting, and yowling protests here she was.

It was a space that seemed disturbingly infinite, row after row of bland grey-walled cubicles on off-white carpeting stretching as as she could see. More importantly, there was a printer on a table next to her that was busily printing out papers filled with messes of gibberish (everything was written in wingdings). A drone wearing matching floral suspenders and tie over a pink and white shirt drones on in a dull monotone, waving the empty coffee mug it's carrying for emphasis. Catra and whoever else was unlucky enough to get sucked in with her are made to understand that the collated piles of gibberish need to be stacked together and then stabled with a cover sheet, which needs to be green, even though are also piles of red, blue, cyan, and magenta cover sheets sitting there, they aren't to be used. Only green. Then the collected reports (the printer never stops, it seems) need to be delivered soon, mmkay?

Catra stares as the drone wanders off to harass someone in a nearby cube.

"What the hell?" She stands there, hands on her hips. But that paper is piling up pretty fast...

2. Tell us about yourself

Despite having escaped other monotonous tasks, Catra is doubly unlucky in that her attempt to get away clean ends with her stuck in another room, this time sitting across from someone and looking at a card that simply reads 'Truth and truth.' She glares at the cardstock, as if it might somehow combust into flames or morph into the words she'd rather be seeing.

"This is stupid," she mutters. "Isn't there supposed to be a dare involved in this game?"

3. Wildcard, bitches!

Do whatever.

2

[monkey_wrench]

She's right. This was stupid.

Sitting across from her, Jack looks equally disgruntled by the situation. All the other tasks that had come from this Stuff attack had been pretty easy to manage, at least for him. He’d basically been groomed to work in a corporate environment, it wasn’t enjoyable and it wasn’t all realistic, but it had been easy enough to bullshit his way through the few tasks he’d been pulled into.

But if he’d never had to play another game of Truth or Anything again it would have been too soon. So of course this place had to make that happen pronto.

"There are variants on it. Last time I played it, it was Truth or Lies." Putting a finger on the cardstock sign he rocks it back and forth a bit as he talks before grudgingly flicking it over. "Can't say I'm a fan of any version."

[princesspower]

Adora stares helplessly at the pile of paper that's still spitting out of the printer. Honestly, she wasn't listening to anything the Drone was saying. She was trying to figure out what they were going to do next.

"I don't even know what these reports are for-" She bends over to pick up one of the sheets and eyeball it, "...this is just gibberish. Look-"

She hands it over to Catra. It's a bunch of meaningless corporate buzzwords cobbled together into something that vaguely resembles complete sentences.

2

[aleifr]

"Wouldn't know."

The blonde haired giant across from her - sat in a chair that's almost comically too small for him and wearing a scowl that might as well be chiseled from granite - doesn't look any happier to be here than she is.

"Never played."

2. Tell us about yourself

[credit_not_blame]

"Yes, it's stupid," Stacia agrees, propping an elbow on the table and her chin on her fist. It's the arm Catra lightly mauled the first time they met; completely pristine, like that incident never even happened. "And yes, there's supposed to be a dare. But hey, the company could be worse."

Not that worse company would make it any less fun to ask questions, but it would definitely impact the fun of answering them.

[wheyoftheadept]

1. we've got to get on-message about the systemic reciprocal time-phase scheduling

“And there my associate is now!” the short, pointy-earned woman at the head of the conference table says with a warm and winning smile. It contrasts neatly with the desperate plea in her eyes. “Well, then, time to get underway, no time like the present.”

Saturday laughs, with only a little strain, and the drones laugh back politely. One shoves a stack of cards in your hand: on them are written phrases like MOVE THE NEEDLE and SYNERGISTIC PARADIGM, fifteen in total. Saturday gestures to the screen behind her, where a slide is projected about ten feet tall.

“As you can see from our deck here,” she begins, very chipper, gesturing for you to please please come up here “a failure to maintain core competancies can result in being left behind from the bleeding edge, unable to move the needle internally or externally, therefore - “

If you step up to the podium, you can see four more slides arrayed in order, easy to cue up. (1 2 3 4). Start fighting or start bullshitting, Saturday will appreciate the help either way.


2. snack break

Saturday made it to the armory panting, bruised, and thirsty, and the first fucking thing she had to deal with was some officious pencilneck who wanted her to fill out paperwork before she got her hands on anything fucking useful.

“No one in this fucking place has any sense of self-preservation, I swear,” she mutters, bringing a canteen to her lips and drinking greedily. She’s breathing hard, and there’s a half-eaten power bar in her hand. Also a stack of grenades by her feet. She’s going out loaded for bear, but first she's taking a breather: perhaps you’d like to join her?


3. welcome to the (corporate) jungle

Saturday has caught her breath, acquired some grenades, and, well - the next room that snares her she dives into and comes up fighting. Maybe you were in that room; maybe you see the fight spill out into the corridor, Saturday borne down on a wave of drones then twisting up again with impossible agility. Either way, she’s clearly picked her coping method. Care to join her?


4. wildcard

Surprise me here or hit me up to plan elsewhere!

2

[heterochrocatic]

Catra is slouched against the wall. She's not worried about weapons because she is the weapon, but she understands the need. She cocks one eyebrow at Saturday, the shuffles over to the side in a casual movement meant to let her sit next to Saturday.

"Are you surprised by that? Because I'm not."

1

[partiallysquirrelblood]

Doreen might be panicking a bit. She can handle this, she can handle anything, but for Pete's sake she speaks squirrel not MBA.

She has an idea, but she still needs to rack her brains for the exact words.

"We... must all efficiently operationalize our strategies?" Doreen half sings. "And then it was...right, invest in world-class technology and leverage our core competencies, in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy."

1

[becauseimacoward]

Of all things to do in the huge rig in another world with Stuff and all sorts of weird otherwordly events, a business meeting presentation was not among what he thought he'd ever experience again. Oh, wow...this brings back memories. Tedious, mindnumbing memories from his younger years.

Does he even remember how to do this? He takes the flash cards, reading the words on them with an expression that says he feels lost. Still, he's stuck here. Looking back between Saturday, the drones, and the slides in queue.

"...therefore we must reevaluate our paradigms to achieve maximum efficiency. That requires--synergy, it requires synergy. As shown in the slide, it's self-explanatory"

Dojima can't remember if synergistic paradigm is a real term, but hey, if you speak with enough force, surely it's believable. Also use buzzwords. His voice doesn't waver, except when he hurried to bring up synergy. Still, he does glance at Saturday with a glance that just screams 'Tell me you're not the one who made those slides'.

[princesspower]

I - No College Education Here

Adora has no idea what's worse, the fact that she's stuck in a weird meeting room with a bunch of faceless drones or the fact that they apparently expect her to give some sort of presentation on stuff she doesn't understand. She stares down at the notecards she's been given, then out over the faceless audience. OK, this is kind of weird. Scratch that - entirely weird. She frowns and then squints at the cards and then the slide displayed on the screen behind her.

Well.

She should try something. She clears her throat and gives the worlds most awkward, most uncomfortable smile.

"Well, uh, hello. Uh. My name is Adora and I want to welcome you to-"

She glances down at the cards again, hoping there's anything she can read off.

"...to our sem-ee-nar-rr on Retaining Documentation Retention!"

Yeah, that's the ticket.

"As you can see, I am a... uh... expert in this field. I may have triple may-jorred in First One's history, acting, and - uh - Documentation! Yeah!"

Someone save her.

II - Suit Up

OK, Adora knows how to fight things. The problem is she needs a weapon and to get a weapon she has to go to the armory. She's winding her way through the corridors, trying to find the stupid stairwell that will take her down to the right level. She pauses at an intersection (possibly almost running into someone coming the other direction).

"Oh - hey - do you know where the stairs are? I'm trying to get to the armory-"

Please help.

Wildcard

[ ooc: invent your own! ]

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday grabs Adora's arm and yanks her out of the way, just before she smacks into a cluster of drones taking up the entire hall.

"This way, kid. Adora, right? Headed the same place as you, follow me."

She looks disheveled - sweaty, bruised, tired - but there's a shining sword in her hand and big cheerful grin on her face.

[greyerrant]

Suit Up

It's time for Loken to shine. Which is to say, it's time to fight. He was able to pummel his way through drones to the armory with fairly little frustration, the real frustration came from the actual corporate suits making him fill out actual forms to access his war plate, bolter, and blades. Still, that is over now, and he is slowly piecing together his armor, frustrating because having to rivet pieces in place himself, and apply all his own neural spikes into his black carapace is a slower affair than he would like. If he sees one of the other new hires approach, he will rumble, "If you would be so kind as to hand me that drill, and my gauntlet, I would appreciate it. Don't grab my boots, unless you can lift about two hundred pounds, by your measurements."

Only War

Loken is unleashed now, his bolter hammering round after round into a drone as he bisects another with the chain sword, two more blades belted to him at various points with an improvised weapon rig. He booms through his vox-grille "Kill for the living, Kill for the dead."

Care to join him in his natural environment?

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday has made a minor tactical error, to wit, she'd fucking fucked up the fucking turnings and gotten herself cornered in a stairwell. A mob of aggro'd drones is pouring through the emergency door, she's half a flight up instead of down, and behind her is one of the electrically locked doors. And she can't hulk-smash through those bulkheads; it was one of the first things she'd tried.

The inevitable happens and one of the drones clips her as she dodges another; it off-balances her and a third manages to grab her shoulder with fingers full of thumbtacks. She skewers it, but a fourth has gotten behind her, and she can feel the tide of the battle turning -

Which is when she hears an almighty roar. Machine at first, then human - a deep bass boom that she feels right in her bones. The drones shift their attention as one, and Saturday wastes no time vaulting over the rail to the landing below.

And that's where she sees it. There is a dude in a biggest, badassest, most fucking incredibly tricked-out battlesuit she's ever seen. And they are laying into a mob of drones, left and right, gun in one hand and in the other he has...

She squints.

A chainsaw sword?

It's a chainsaw and it's a sword. It's a chainsaw sword. And it's the most amazing thing Saturday's ever seen. The battlesuited warrior is wielding it like it weighs no more than a dagger, cutting through drone after drone as they throw themselves against the armor and slide off like bugs on a windshield. It's magnificent, and Saturday is a little bit in love.

If Loken happens to look over, he sees Saturday crouched on the stair railing, arrested mid-parkour with her mouth slightly open, staring like she just saw the God-Emperor take the field.

E

[tarnishedavenger]

"That'll be the tri-coiled wiring. ... Yes, that's right. When they manufactured the wires, they coiled smaller data cables around the main one. Why? Well, it's because it acts like a drill to push your data through all of the network traffic, that's why wired connections are so much faster than wireless."

Armstrong looks bored as he says this, examining his fingernails. He's been at this for hours, and each excuse he's given has been more out there than the last.

"Well, you know how electromagnets work, right? Exactly, the magnetism's pulled them together. So those coils have drawn tighter around each other and now they're too tight to drill properly. So what you're going to want to do is find your LAN cable, go back a good, oh, four or five feet, and then give it the hardest yank you can." A pause, and he shakes his head. "No, see, you've got to straighten them out a little. Don't worry, they're designed not to break when you tug on them. That's right."

He waits a few seconds, then shakes his head. "Your computer fell off your desk and now there's parts everywhere? Well, you must have yanked too hard. No, can't help you there, that's a hardware problem. I'm in Networking. Good luck."

click

He slowly turns and glances to his companion with a long face. "Some people just don't know how to handle computer issues." It... honestly sounds like he regrets this.

[tarnishedavenger]

"Well, of course you're having issues with your computer slowing down when you try to run that many programs at once. There's a..." He clicks a button, checking the randomly generated number. What did that mean, back in the day? Ah, right. "...an intermittent environmental underflow issue. All of the Stuff is causing power to be sucked away from your processor."

He leans back in his chair, glancing up at the ceiling tiles. Where had he left off counting them?

"You'll need to re-regulate the power by regenerating your computer's power draw. Yes, that's right. Go around to the back. You see that switch that says 115v? Well, toggle that up and down, very fast, for about a minute. Pretty soon you won't have any more computer issues. No, no need to thank me. Have a blessed day."

Aaand... number blocked.

[gempathizing]

B.

[ To quote a fictional character from once upon a TV show, "I don't know what I expected." It's really just the mood about this whole shift and the mess that comes flooding in with it. Mess that he's not sure he's equipped to handle, or that he wants to have to handle. Weird business stuff. Papers no one can read, people with no faces, endless pencils to sharpen. Jargon. There's jargon! He doesn't know corporate jargon! Bureaucracy! He hates that so much, he put in his time, he never wanted this!

Pulled into one of the many board room meetings with zero warning, suddenly shuffling a couple of buzzword list index cards in front of a dingy slideshow projection, all Steven can do... is his best. The fact that he is glowing, pink, and clearly stressing is not a big help. He can't control it, okay. It's a work in progress!

What also doesn't help is he's kind of terrible at lying, and this is so much more lying than acting. ]

Right. Right! Yeah, okay, um. So, I think that... the numbers we want to be good are good. Super good. They're- "on the bleeding edge." So... you... should move the needle! To the numbers we want low! Because they're. They're, they're not there yet. Which I'm sure my associate can help me explain.

[ His best is not the best. No one ever promised that.

The only thing that makes it even slightly less terrible is the fact that he's not all alone in this. He shoots a silent, desperate glance at his fellow New Hire. ]


G.

Will you-- can you just-- give me one second to talk this out, and-- [ In the list of things that are absolutely not working for Steven today: reasoning with the drones. Of course it's not working. The more he tries to hand back the bat, the more insistently they press it into his hands. The more he tries to duck away, the more they crowd him. That was freaking him out enough already. Now consider: it's also really rude.

Steven's been living on a fine mental tether since roughly the second he got back to Earth, and as it turns out, his patience levels have not been restoring the way he pretended to himself that they were.

All it takes is one firm thump between the shoulders too many. ]

Can you STOP PUSHING ME!

[ Whoop, no, there it went. Now he's pink and he accidentally put dent into the copier anyway. With his fist. This is why you don't slam your hands onto tables when you're mad, kids. Because then you are left with a dented copier, a bunch of drones shooting you the thumbs up, and a sense of horror that pushes right up against the freaking-out line.

What he hates the most is that these are the options he has to live with. He can hit the machinery or he can deal with the angry mob of maybe-living people. There's no non-hitting-something road.

And this is the story of how Jorgmund got a transparently miserable boy systematically trying to turn a copier into a pancake with nothing but a baseball bat, super strength, and all the pent-up frustration in the world. Please join in, he would love to get this done faster. He's trying not to think about the fact that it does kinda help with the frustration. ]


H.

[ Hmm. Awkward in many ways. Not the least of which is the fact that this little confessional hallway film crew has him hanging out with another person. He's a little behind on his reality TV, but he thought that wasn't how they did that.

Steven grimaces. Scratches the back of his head.

It's... it's better than another board meeting? Is that something he can hold onto to preserve his manners? ]

I didn't think I'd end up doing another video interview. Uhh, I guess what I'm feeling is that they're not as bad as they could be. For starters. Uh, Jorgmund, that is. For the record. I don't think I have big problems with any New Hires right now. What about you?


I.

[ wildcard for all other needs! feel free to hit me up wherever if you'd like to plot out something or have a question! i'm super open. steven's 100% doing some boring pencil-sharpening type time, "truth or truth" icebreakers, running into some fight situations, etc. i just couldn't scrape up enough words to feel like they were worth a whole individual starter section. ]

B

[walkingballpit]

[ Oof.

Actually, Steven does really well for a teenager being thrown into a class presentation for adults that he had no idea was about to happen. But Robbie is getting a floundering feeling of despair from that tag-in.

Robbie takes the buzzword cards from Steven and rifles them into the air on principle. He doesn’t need corporate cue cards, and the sort of people who do would love the dramatic effect. ]

Let’s dispense with the buzzwords, and take a deep dive into what we actually want to see in these metrics.

[ Like irony, but he’s probably the only one who can see that. ]

I can see what you’re all thinking. Success for Jorgmund, am I right? We can play with charts all day, but the bottom line is that the continued growth of Jorgmund is the only measure of success that matters at this table.

[ Robbie slaps a hand dramatically on the table. A lone orange energy ball appears, about five inches in diameter. He picks it up and spins it in his hand thoughtfully, then looks from it to Steven and the board.

Who admittedly are putting him in a constant state of unease with their smooth putty faces staring blankly. Robbie is trying to just let his eyes glaze over. They don’t look as intrinsically wrong in soft focus. ]

What my pleasantly pink partner is trying to say is, we need to pivot to our primary priority! The longest pole in the Jorgmund tent is its employees! And we must nurture the Jorgmund fam with positivity and humane conditions and a clean and friendly environment! My friend whose name is definitely not Pink Dipper is going to tell you how we do that!

[ Because Robbie needs a good ten seconds to recharge his bullshit canon. ]

[odani]

i) i'm new and what is this
In the hallway, engaged in a rather one-sided conversation with Pam from HR, there's a New Hire you wouldn't have met yet. She's got that wide-eyed, slightly glazed look generally found on people who have been thrown way too much information and not enough time to comprehend it, but she's trying gamely to keep with Pam's endless stream of unhelpful exposition.

"So that's your password to the employee intranet, and you can change posting modes by clicking the icon in the upper left -"

New Girl is looking at her comm, clearly still stuck on wait, what's an intranet.

"And if you take the elevator down that way, right in between the security cameras, you can get to the dorms where you'll be staying. You should be able to meet some of the others there, it's such a shame you didn't arrive in time for the welcome party -"

New Girl is trying to find a place to cut in and ask a question, but Pam runs at a mile a minute and doesn't even stop to breathe, let alone take input from the other half of the conversation. Pam doesn't stop, in fact, when the alert warnings start going off, so much as she raises her volume a notch or two to make sure she's still being heard.

"- and if we're in an alert, I need to get back down to my department, but if you have any questions I'm sure your fellow New Hires can help you! Welcome aboard!"

And just like that, Pam is gone, and the new lady is left standing in the corridor, blinking in confusion. "Wait, but what about -"

Help?



g) clobberin' time
This is a room full of weird things that don't make sense, which makes it exactly like every other room in this place, as far as Oichi is concerned, but there's a particularly high number of large boxy things with flashing lights, and nobody's even made a halfassed attempt to explain what they do or what they're for.

Nobody's actually explained what she's supposed to do with them, either, but one of the drones has just shoved a bat into her hands, so here she is: a pretty, petite type who looks like she wouldn't hurt a fly, holding a baseball bat and facing down a copier that won't stop making some very weird noises.

She glances at the drones, because there only seems to be one obvious use of a big club for this, and being brought in just to break things seems bizarre. "Are you sure?"

The drone pantomimes swinging the bat downwards, and Oichi frowns, but nods. And brings the bat down with crushing force and precision, right in the middle of the display screen. There's a sickening crunch.

She is clearly a lot better at smashing things than her appearance might imply.



i) wildcard me?
(Throw me a curveball, that's cool too. I'll swap to brackets if that's what you prefer!)

i)

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday is coming out of the showers with wet hair and towel over her shoulder when the alarms start. 'Ni-chan's hilt drops into her hand, and she starts bolting for the armory - or tries to, except there's a baffled looking woman in full kimono standing in the hall

"Shit!" Saturday screeches to a halt. "Sorry, didn't see you - we got an alert, you need to grab a weapon or take shelter!" The rig groans. Saturday spins, looking for a threat.

What Oichi sees is a small woman, densely muscled, with short black hair and wielding a chinese longsword. Her right arm is metal, and heavily engraved.

[thewholeofthemoon]

B

Remus isn't having a good day.

Sharing space, even nominally, with Sirius Black wasn't easy. Even though Sirius hadn't been back to their room since the first night. And Remus didn't know where he was staying.

He'd been considering that only this morning when he found himself pulled sideways into a large room with a fair number of people. Who had no faces. Which made Remus pinch himself hard enough to leave a bruise to make certain that he wasn't having some sort of nightmare.

Or mental breakdown. That's an option, too.

"Uh...hello?" he says, staring around the room for a moment before one of the...men? Maybe? Handed him a small stack of record cards, ushering him to the front of the room to stand in front of some sort of projector. He winces, putting his hand up to shield his eyes from the light for a moment before looking down at the cards. Which make no sense. He flicks through them quickly, trying to take in the phrases that swim before his eyes and heart suddenly hammering in his throat as the group sit and turn their eyeless gazes toward him.

"I don't suppose a Patronus spell will do me much good here?" he mutters, looking up at the screen and back down at the cards as the things began muttering between themselves.

D

At least the conveyor belt is familiar. Remus has SEEN this sort of thing before, along with the aprons and hairnets. And the instructions seem fairly straight forward.

He glances across the belt with a sigh to his companion. "Well. I suppose it could be worse. Can't go wrong with chocolate, right?"

He doesn't realize just how disappointed he's about to be.

B

[grimbiker]

Escaping Sirius Black was, it turned out, even harder.

When he saw who he was sharing the room with, he tried to turn around but the drones bunched together to block his way. Somehow he didn't think they'd be friendlier with his Animagus form.

He looked back at Remus and now that his gaze lingered on him for more than a split second, he recognized the tell tale signs of anxiety.

"I'll take care of it," he said confidently and, he hoped, reassuringly. He held his hand out, palm up, waiting to see if Remus would hand over the cards.

Of course he had no idea what was on those cards but it couldn't be that hard. From what he'd seen of the presentations here, you just needed to be able to bullshit your way through it. Sirius liked to think he was something of an expert at that. He certainly got his way out of detention more than once because of it. Never mind that about half the time he'd also talked his way into a longer time in it.

[somnioergosum]

f) breaking the ice

Ronan had been through enough surreal moments, both in his dreams and while awake, that he wasn't too disturbed when the floor warped beneath him. Which was to say, his insides were churning and he'd balled his fists, braced for a fight, but he didn't make any embarrassing sounds. A good thing too, because there was nothing dangerous in the room before him. Well, there was nothing dangerous unless you were Ronan Lynch.

A table lay before him with a sign proclaiming "2 truths, 1 lie." An audience had already gathered for the upcoming game. When he looked at the person across from him, he turned to the drones and had just one thing to say.

"Fuck this. I don't lie."

The drones' stance changed from expectant to menacing. Ronan didn't show it, but he was impressed at how efficient and synchronous that change was.


g) corporate (property) restructuring

When the faceless guy dragged Ronan into a room and he came face to face with a drone wielding a bat, he braced himself. Instead the drone handed him the bat and gestured to the copiers.

"Really?" He looked the drones over and seeing nothing to indicate this was a trap, he hefted the bat. "My pleasure."

He started with a printer, swinging with a reckless abandon as he grit his teeth. His eyes lit up and his grimace more closely resembled a grin. To anyone witnessing the scene, there was no doubt that Ronan was in his element. That and he definitely had some issues to work out.

"Need me to save anything for you?" he called without caring who he addressed, the drones or anyone who happened to get stuck with him.

f)

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday groans and puts her head in her hands. "Jesus fucking christ - sorry. Listen. They won't let us out til we do the stupid game, okay? They're a hard fight and I've already done a lot that, can we please just do it?"

Her appearance bears out her story: she's disheveled and bruised, suffering not so much from one big wound as from dozens of minor ones. Her jumpsuit is torn, and there's a thin line of crusted blood across her right eyebrow. Even her metal right arm looks dinged.

"Anyway, how is it lying if everyone knows you're doing it? I'll go first. I'm technically the priestess of a bronze age fire goddess, I was raised in a slum, and my father is the King of the Elves."

She does have pointed ears.

[becauseimacoward]

[Dojima was brought to another world altogether to face the woes of administrative work. When he thinks about that, he wonders if he died and went into some sort of nightmare purgatory. Really, hell must be made of eternal repetitive tasks.

This here is...it could be worse? But he's finding it mindnumbing.

resource management

One after another, the pencils are sharpened. Dojima has been piling them in pyramids, carefully making piles that actually look nice! The applause he's getting is very enthusiastic, admittedly. Dojima seems a little bit confused -- this is all a bit too much enthusiasm for watching someone sharpen pencils. Is there something he's not getting, he wonders. Still...]

When I get back home I'm going to advocate for a pay raise for everyone in the administrative department.

[Everyone who does tasks like these, at least. This is stressing in the weirdest way possible.

the it crowd]

So this is a meme.

[...he still doesn't get it. Those things on the screen are bizarre.

It's IT support time. Dojima is not qualified, but the drones don't care. it's not in his nature to do things half-assedly, so at first he does give it a try. Only when he finds out how bad with computers the people calling are, he starts losing heart.

At some point he's there, fingers, rubbing his temple in circles, while he stares blankly in the air like he's on the verge of screaming to the nothingness]

"...press enter. Press enter and we're done. I know--yes, the screen shows that, so press enter. The password is there, all you have to do--" he snaps to attention. "Don't delete it! The password was--look, type it again"

[Why is this happening.

Violence

At some point there's nothing else to be done. There was absolutely no way he was going back to IT support. Deciding he had enough playing nice, he decides to flee, only to find himself forced to fight a little later. Alright! He tried to end this without fighting, but clearly that's not a choice anymore.

By the time you come around, there's one of the drones rolling around on the ground. Part of its head has been obliterated, leaking CMYK ink everywhere. Dojima is standing not too far away, looking at the drone like he's not sure he should move in for the kill -- he's not someone who kills, really!

His right hand seems to have turned into a jagged, heavy-looking rock, sharp and tough. The rock blends onto his skin around his elbow, his arm has just turned into a club, a lot of it is covered with printer ink. Dojima is breathing a bit heavily, looking at the rock club like he's never seen anything like it before.

And he hasn't. He knew something was very wrong with him, but this is the first time he does such a thing.

He doesn't like it one bit.]

[greyerrant]

[ Loken initially doesn't know what to do when he comes across Dojima clubbing a drone down with his strange arm, and waits, before treading heavily into the room, an armored techno-knight that looks both savage and utterly technological. Actually... to a Japanese man, he probably looks a bit like a Gundam.]

Can you still fight? [ His bolter dips, pointing to the drone. ] I'll finish it, if you can't.

[fromfryingpantofire]

E

"Are you sure that the monitor is on, ma'am?"

This isn't the first time that Sam's done IT support. After all, Zachariah once made him think he worked doing just this for...at least a few days. Sam Wesson had been just as bored as Sam Winchester is about it.

But, somehow, the IT issues weren't quite this stupid.

"Okay, ma'am. If the monitor is on, there should be a light on along the bottom of the monitor." He pauses, readjusting his headset. "All right, that's fine. Can you turn it on for me? There's usually a button either right at the back or on the bottom of the monitor."

Though it could be on the front if it was still a CRT monstrosity. God only knew how many corners were cut by the corp.

"Right. It's still not on? That's strange. Can you try it again? You might have to feel around and...no? Are you certain you have the right button, ma'am?"

He winces, pulling the headset away while she yells for a minute, offering a grimace to his fellow IT workers before putting the headset on again. "Well, just feel around under and behind the monitor. There should be something there that..." A moment of silence before he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Ma'am. What happens when you push the button?" Another few moments as he types something into his own computer. "Right. Well, what I can tell you is that that's not connected to the monitor. That's your disc tray. Like on a DVD player? I need you to feel around on the actual monitor in front of you, probably on the lower right hand corner or near there..."

He trails off, then pinches the bridge of his nose harder before he manages an overly chipper, "That's fantastic news, ma'am. I'll be certain to pass on to the IT heads that the monitors need better signposting as to what you need to do with them. Thank you for your call."

He presses the disconnect button before pushing the keyboard out of the way, pulling his headset off and banging his head against the desk for two or three thumps. Because it's less painful than this job.

G

After being pulled hither and yon for far too long, at least this time it's something more conducive to Sam's continued mental health.

The drone hands him a baseball bat and points at the office equipment. It doesn't take much for Sam to realize what they want him to do. Which, honestly, is fine by him. After way too many IT complaints where the problem was the person behind the computer, he could easily let loose on more than a few bits of the offending computer parts.

He hefts the bat, walking over to the other inhabitant. "If I'd known this room was here, I'd have walked over this direction a lot sooner.

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday is leaning on her bat, disheveled, battered, and breathing a bit hard. That's probably because of the four pulverized fax machines in front of her.

"Beats another goddamned icebreaker, that's for sure."

She has a belt of grenades around her waist, but hadn't been able to use one, on account she wasn't able to stick a hand through the door without getting sucked all the way through and she didn't feel a burning need to become a batch of chunky non-vegan salsa. So much for that idea; she'll try another once she's out.

"Don't think we've met in person yet? I'm Saturday."