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00003 - Sort it out, and plan first moves

Day 1, awakening + about 3 hours

When Tyler finishes everybody pauses for a few minutes to let it all soak in. Then it starts...

Some of you start to tell each other of discrepancies in the stories each person has told, but it soon becomes apparent that each of you remember your own life, and the lives of each of the others here, differently. Dale confirms that he knew Frank, and that he was rock solid and dependable. His only complaint was that he never saw him smile. Frank commented that he seldom smiles at work... and then he smiled. Jody said he remembered seeing that smile often in his game room and that he remembered Frank as a fun-loving guy, not at all serious. Jody told Dale about the time Frank got him in trouble with Barb because he had a bunch of strippers come to the game room one night as a joke.

Frank remarks about one thing that is bugging him. He says he's still not sure this is even really him here. He says that all those memories he recounted... it was like he was telling all of you about a movie he had seen, not the life he had led. Although the memories did seem to be personal, he found that he couldn't always follow them through t remember related events. He also noted that he remembered that he was a computer expert, but for the life of him he couldn't even remember how to write 'Hello World'... that he wasn't even sure what that expression meant.

Jody and Dale remarked on similar discomfort about their memories, and lack of remembering the specifics of their occupational skills. Everyone else admitted to similar feelings, and similar gaps in practical knowledge.

Everyone discussed the significance of the differences in their memories, trying to account for them. Eventually everyone agreed that there were only a few possible explanations:

• We weren't really any of us who we think we are, and the people who gave us memories did a crappy job keeping things in sync
• We got our memories from totally different sources, all of which had done their research on background information separately. Each of them had assorted errors, which imples that the researchers were working with conflicting records.
• We were all from different alternate universes. Our lives had overlapped in all of them, but some of us had taken different paths in each one.

Everyone couldn't settle on just one of these, but it didn't take long before somebody pointed out that they had more pressing matters to consider. After a brief discussion in which it comes out that they have all searched their own heelafaq and that none of them have any food, resources, clothing, weapons, tools, etc. Dale, Jody, and Scott remarked that this was like the begining of one of radar's games. A few of them chuckle about that. Jody says "Let's make sure we don't call out the name of anybody whose first initial is 'D'.". That remark brings a bigger chuckle. Guttyr says: "as long as we didn't all roll 55's!"

Everyone agrees... again... that it's time to table these side discussions and focus on their immediate concerns. They decide to do a ittle pre-exploratory planning.

Planning session #1

Some experimentation in moving between the heelafaqs confirms that their relative placement is fixed. They appear to be connected in a line along their BD axis, in this order:

Dale <-> Mark <-> Scott <-> Tyler <-> endekks <-> Frank <-> Guttyr <-> Jody

You agree that no one should go alone, but that it is also inappropriate to send everyone on an itital look through each portal. Someone suggests that the portals may only function for the person who lives in that heelafaq. Someone else notes that the mission guy said we would be able to help each other on missions, so we could probably all use each other's portals. Everyone agrees that we should test those ideas, but that for now each person should explore outside their portal with one other person. To keep it simple, everyone agreed that you would accompany the person whose heelafaq was immediately to your right when he went through his portal. Everyone agreed that was as good a system as any.

People stopped for a moment to comment on how bizarre this was. Some questioned whether this was real, a dream, or what. Dale commented that we needed to treat it like it was real until we had a reason to doubt it. He said that he knew that the hunger he feels right now is real, and he doesn't remember ever dreaming about being hungry. He says that we need to all stay focused and take this seriously. And we need to remember that we are going into some strange situations where we won't be able to depend on anything we think we know about what is or isn't possible, so we better be able to depend on each other.

A few people (Dale, endekks, Guttyr, Scott, Jody) said that they wanted to say up front that they plan to be helpful to everyone else. The others said that they felt the same way. Frank stated that he knew he was a stranger to most of you, but that he was a marine through and through in the life he remembered, and his unit never left a man behind. He said that he would give all of you the same loyalty. As far as he could see, no matter how well we did or didn't know each other in the past, our futures depended on getting to know, and depend on, each other.

Everyone thought that was pretty cool.

Nobody was sure what we were supposed to get for the mission guy, but most of the clothers remembered that he said getting food for ourselves and our mahrhees would be our first priority. Everyone agreed that we were all hungry, so we decided to get started on our first chow run.

We agreed that no party would stay out more than a few hours. We agreed that if a party didn't come back in 4 hours that we would send in another party to see if they needed help, but that we would not keep losing people indefinitely. Everyone agreed that we would trust the judgment of the clothers who were left behind. It was unspoken, but understood, that one of us had to survive to ensure the survival of the mahrhees.

Jody raised that issue out loud. He said that it looked to him that we fed our mahrhees by putting food in the containers near the back wall of the mess hall. Everyone knew where he meant from their own initial exploration. Jody asked that people stock his containers for him if he died on any of these missions and promised that he would do it for everyone else if they died. Everyone agreed, very solelmly.

The clothers moved to Jody's heelafaq to begin the initial exploratory/chow run.

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