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00000 - Meet the New Boss!

Day 1, awakening

You awaken in an enclosed space, lying at the edge of a large pool of chilly, murky liquid. You are chilled, naked, sore, and you feel strangely. You body feels unfamiliar, and the parts you can see look equally unfamiliar. You have a strong mental sense of being yourself, but recognize immediately that physically, this is not 'you'.

Your eyes are drawn to the center of the pool, where you believe you see a large entity, or entities, in the midst of a thick fog. You feel an overwhelming sense of affection and protectiveness towards the entity(ies). You are unable to look away, but you are equally unable to really see anything.

Most of the time when you try to see into the fog, you don't recognize any distinct shapes or forms. Sometimes, just briefly, you think you catch a glimpse of the face or the shape of a beatutiful woman, but when you try to focus on her you lose the image in the fog. You could see better if you got closer, but you have a strong aversion to entering the pool. Your feelings about that are mixed. You know not to enter the pool now, though you are drawn to it. But you also know that you will soon be welcome there again.

You are prepared to wait until you are called. You will always serve the entity in any way it desires. That is not so much a decision, as a basic posulate which you know that you will follow. You understand that you did not arrive at that postulate freely, but you choose not to allow that to trouble you. You are not cerain that is a free choice on your part, or just another level of servitude. You recognize these things, but they do not trouble you. You know that, as a slave or by free choice, you will serve the entity to the best of your ability, sacrificing your life - if necessary - in its service, and that in return you are likely to live a long, interesting, adventurous, and fulfilling life. You know this to be true, and you know that you have already accepted this bargain... though you cannot recall exactly when that occurred. As with so much else, however, that uncertainty does not trouble you.

You gaze at the fog for a while. Distinct images and feelings of home, security, peace, sensuality, comfort, pleasure, health, and happiness vye for your attention and keep you from focusing on anything else, but eventually you shake yourself out of the reverie and manage to focus on your situation. Each time your gaze drifts towards the pool you find yourself getting lost in thought again. You make a conscious decision to no longer look in that direction... for now.

You stand up and survey the room, avoiding any more glances into the pool. It is large, warehouse sized, but hexagonally shaped. Recessed lighting near the 40' ceiling provides good visibility. You see that the pool covers most of the floor, but that it stops around its entire perimeter 4-6 feet from the outer wall. As you look at the opposite wall, you see that it's upper region is a huge display. It begins an audio-video presentation.

The video track shows only unfamiliar shapes and patterns. You cannot pinpoint the location of the 'speakers', but you gradually become aware of a subtle soundtrack accompanying the images. The audio track is difficult to distinguish, just at the threshold of your hearing, but it is melodic and definitely in sync with the visual images. You enjoy the display for a while, almost trans-fixed, but you quickly regain control. The music fades. You hear a male voice, speaking precisely and enunciating each word carefully.

It welcomes you to your 'new glorious lives". It tells you that you are not really the 'you' you think of as yourself. It tells you that the 'you' you consider yourself has been dead for millenia, but that your personality was selected to help preserve a life form which is important to the speaker and to further an urgent goal for all living creatures. It tells you that you should feel honored to have been so chosen, and that in return for your service you will live for millenia, gain abilities you may have wished for, wield power you have only read of, and enjoy pleasures you could not have imagined. All this if you faithfully serve your <something... the word he uses sounds like: MAH-rhee>.

You instnctively know that he is referring to the creature in the pool. You glance at it, and again you have the sense of one or more beautiful women whose names you cant quite remember. You try to catch sight of one of them in the haze, but you can't seem to focus on them. Eventually you look away. The speaker exhibits great affection and respect for you, and for the creature(s). He begins to explain more about your situation, but then there is an obvious change in the display.

The screen goes dark for a moment, and a different voice fills the room. It's enunciation and accent are far less easy to undertand, and it uses many words that you do not know. You also detect a clear change in tone. There is no affection here, but neither is there hostility. You characterize it as the tone of a boss who just wants you to get your work done, but who has no interest in socializing with you outside of work,

The new speaker tells you that there is going to be a change of plans for you. He says that he has taken control of your <something... it sounds like Heal-a-FAQ> and removed your accesss to most of its rooms and facilities. He tells you that the people who placed you, and 'it', here are part of an illegal organization, and that they have placed a set of other similar Heal-a-FAQs in the same <something... Peer-a-neck? > which holds yours.

He tells you that he has no personal feelings either way about their agenda, but that he discovered that they stole the Peer-a-neck(?) from an organization over which he has oversight responsibilities. He tells you that they made modifications to the Heal-a-FAQ's which were necessary for their agenda, but are also convenient for his. He says that he does not care if you pursue their agenda, or any of your own, but he tells you that these modifications allow you to perform missions to obtain items of great value for him.

He then tells you, with no change in manner or tone, that you will perform these missions for him, or he will expose you to the authorties, who will immediately destroy you and the <somethings... he uses a different word but you know he is referring to the entity(ies) in the pool>. You know you cannot allow any harm to come to it.

He tells you that your 'heelafaq' (that's what you have decided he is calling this place) will allow you to travel to what you would think of as different times and places, some of which would have very different occupants or different rules of basic physics or chemistry. What you do in those places is of no concern to him, but he wants you to gather items from some of them which he can trade to collectors and researchers.

He tells you that he will start you off with a simple set of tasks, and give you increasingly more complex ones if you succeed. If you deliver, he will reward you by giving you access to more of the facilities of your heelafaq, better equipment, more information about your mahrhees, and by telling you how to get to additional locations... where he will also want things.

He understands that you may take years to provide his first requests, but that he has "all the time in the world" and will place no immediate timeable on your compliance. You are an experiment to him to see if he can successfully participate in a subterfuge, but the expriment is not of great importance to him. He will not hurry you, but he will also not turn you in to the authorities unless it becomes clear that you won't do as he says. However, until you meet the first requirements, you will have access only to the one set of destinations from which he wants you to gather specific trophies.

He tells you that he will detail your first missions in the next few weeks, but that your immediate concern will be gathering food for yourselves. He understands that will be your first priority, but he does expect to see some progress on his missions once you get your survival needs met. He tells you that he will be monitoring you, so he will know when you could have started working on his missions.

He tells you to leave this room now, and indicates a door behind you. He advises you to go to the outer corridor, and to find the doors in the outer walls and look for the one or two which are glowing white. They will take you to the other 'heelafaq's, where you will meet your companions. After you have a chance to get acquainted... or re-acquainted... he says you will use the outer-wall door which glows in colors to enter a world which is in what you think of as the Pleistocene era.

That is where you will find food, and it is also where you will pursue the first set of missions. He advises you that some of these portals were set to watch predators up close, so use caution as you exit.

G.U.T.S.™ * M.A.R.S.™ * Hexes Nexus™ * Players * Chronicle
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