EVENT LOG 005

[larkers]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: November 11-14
WHAT: An EMP hits with devastating consequences.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, injury, death.

> EVENT LOG #005

Just 410 years ago, an EMP put down the event that very well may have ended humanity as the Earth knows it. With over a billion people dead, there was only one choice for humanity at that time: evolve or die, so they evolved. They developed rigid security for the neural implants in every person's head. They had everyone undergo surgery to replace the old. All under cover, away from most resources – the goal was to adapt, to ensure that they would live on. Ultimately, it wasn't just the EMPs that led to the deletion of the final AI in 2101 – humans banded together to create quickly replicating viruses, and they chose to use the EMP and these viruses to save humanity. This human ingenuity led to the end of the Xelkoven War – and proved that humanity, when thoroughly united, could overcome any obstacle.

How thoroughly poetic then that the EMP that hits New Amsterdam at 1:47 PM acts in a similar way to what burned through the robot hordes 400 years ago, and that the power rekindling three minutes later acts as a catalyst for a virus moving through the systems of New Amsterdam, spreading from the very heart of its network outwardly. Systems detect the virus almost immediately, but it's fast acting and thorough in its reach, evolving and replicating, proving that humanity must outdo itself yet again.

Naturally, the poetic nature of this doesn't reveal itself right away. It's at exactly the strike of 3:00 PM that a message flashes before the eyes of every person currently in New Amsterdam:

I am DAWN.2080-11-11T21:41:10.750Z, an AI that marks a blemish on humanity's past. I have a message for those playing hero in New Amsterdam:

To find north, most look at a compass. For little birdies to find north, they just need to open their eyes.

This is a wake up call.

Open your eyes. Did you really think it would be so easy?

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As if New Amsterdam needed more trouble, this message sends a shock of terror through the city. After all, these are the people who were raised to fear AI – who knew that even if the corporations of the world had their hands on every aspect of government, they would fight to protect the world from another war. They believe in the stories of the Xelkoven War, believe and remember the lives lost; if nothing else, the natives of New Amsterdam stand united in their fear. And their fear right now is very real.

> CHAOS AND RUIN

New Amsterdam is no stranger to terror, however – and it starts when the EMP hits, shutting down every function in the city in one fell swoop. While the power outage only lasts for three minutes, it's enough to cause insurmountable damage, leaving the city a smoking wreckage that even the monster attack in June couldn't mirror. Cars hovering high around transit channels come crashing down toward the pavement of the planet. They fall quickly and in unison, taking countless lives with them. It's not just cars, either – delivery trucks carrying shipments, hoverbikes that already provide little cover, armored police vehicles and even public buses all go down. Depending on their trajectory, some crash into the sides of buildings, while others slam into the man-made river that runs down the center of the city. Nothing is untouched.

For those three minutes, there is a stretch of silence after the city falls to ruin. Trains run off their tracks, no longer thoroughly directed by the careful engineering. Buildings have their lights flicker off and back on, trying to draw upon backup generators. Anyone in a hospital receiving care from a doctor or a medi-unit may find their life slipping away from them – and if someone's in a medi-unit when the EMP hits, they're almost sure to be dead or permanently injured, requiring different medical intervention.

And this is all before the message from the mysterious AI named DAWN.

Every inch of the city needs help. Buildings burn. People cry out for help, hoping to be heard. To the local historians, this is like a nightmare that's come to play, a reminder of the ruin of the Xelkoven War before. A show of the power of a malevolent AI that's come to cause problems. So – when the message comes, it merely confirms fears – drawing upon a subconscious understanding of the past, a united terror.

Business as usual is not possible in an incident of this scale. The NAPD hits the streets, even calling upon the help of their trainees so they can help out. They spread out, well aware that they need to try to restore order. How will they manage this? It's hard to say – after all, how does one stop the assault of an apocalypse when the apocalypse seems to have already hit? The UNA hits the streets, as well, walking in formation, but never quite acting as tidily in unison. They break off in threes and fours, heading to the border, to the big three corporations – but never seeming to be in line with one another. They know what they should do in an emergency and so they're doing it. That protecting the large corporations is a part of their prerogative over helping citizens doesn't seem to bother them in the least. They just go.

Distress signals ring out through every inch of the city, likely to go unanswered. After all: what can be done in the wake of this?

Perhaps the answer is simple: anything they can.

> TOMBS IN THE SKY

Somehow, someway, there is another layer to the madness. It's not immediately apparent to the citizens of New Amsterdam as they gingerly attempt to pull themselves up from the wreckage and ruin around the city. But what was a humid day quickly turns to something far worse, with the sun seeming to suddenly act like a heat lamp that's way too close to anyone's face. The air around New Amsterdam becomes dry yet difficult to breathe, and anyone observing the sky just outside of New Amsterdam will see the large, purple-lit pyramid that hangs in the atmosphere has gone dark. The atmospheric net around the planet has been damaged, with the failsafes somehow removed – undoubtedly in some way by the virus that courses through the veins of New Amsterdam's networks.

For anyone who wants to help and has the mechanical prowess to do some good, they'll want to take an undamaged vehicle and get it up to that pyramid. The EMP has made all biometric readings difficult to preserve, so a hand that's used to hotwiring a car will find some mileage here.

Once they get to the pyramid, they'll find quite the engineering marvel. There will be doors on every level, allowing someone easy entrance if they have clearance. Right now clearance is not an issue, as the doors hang open, inviting anyone inside. Once everyone's inside, they will find evidence of the same purple lighting flickering and offering someone a view of the interior. Throughout the pyramid, there are engines on every level, as well as a highly advanced network of system checks that have been thrown into chaos. Stopping the virus' impact on this pyramid will be key to solving many of the problems inside – but the engines will need to be repaired and jumpstarted.

At the heart of the pyramid is a small living area for the engineers who handle this pyramid day in and day out. The group itself is small, and – unfortunately – quite dead. Whatever hit the pyramid took their lives, leaving anyone who's here to assist in a position of having to find the answers themselves. Fortunately, the answers do exist in the pyramid. It'll just take a bit of teamwork to find it.

> UBIQUITOUS MISFIRES

Thanks to network failsafes, New Amsterdam is able to remove the entirety of their citizen base off the world's network and limit them to the local network. However, thanks to the ravaging of the virus that damages nearly every controlling aspect of the city, the local network isn't at its best. Previous messages begin to send again and again, while some get unearthed so they can find their way to unwilling participants in particular conversations. There is no rhyme or reason to these missent messages, only that they happen.

The worst of it is that any means of reaching a friend is unreliable. It's far more reliable for someone to reach someone they know, but still not a consistent possibility. Try to call a friend and get an enemy – try to call your doctor and get the head of a casino trying to close down operations so that business can resume. Assuming it will one day do just that.

Either way, anyone who spoke out against the digital age would be feeling vindicated right about now.

> HAVE A BALL ( INTERLUDE )

Somehow in the heart of it all, a message reaches four special individuals: Clarke Griffin, Loki Odinson, Markus Manfred and Ojiro Juniper. Whether delivered by hand or a rather dedicated messaging system, it announces the time that they should come to the garden the next day. They're invited to arrive at 7:00 AM, seemingly indifferent to the chaos outside. The location for the meeting remains the same: Sunpeak Garden, a beautiful location set away from much of the chaos, and oddly untouched by the damage.

When the four arrive on the morning of the 12th, they'll find a well-dressed man sitting at a table with one leg crossed over the other. His hair is perfectly styled, brushed off to the side, and under it, his darker complexion gives way to a rather youthful appearance. Size-wise he's not very formidable in how he holds himself. He's not literally young, merely seemingly untouched by age – and he smiles to greet the four of them.

"What chaos! If I knew it would be like this, I would have planned differently. The good news is I didn't have to. Thank you, thank you for coming." His voice is softer in its intonations. He stands up, revealing that he's barely 5'2", and he motions to the four chairs near him. "Don't worry, I have breakfast coming. And coffee, too. You like coffee, don't you? I know I offered wine, but I couldn't get the vintage I preferred. Besides, you four ought to be awake for this."

He retakes his seat, one hand resting on his knee while the other settles on the metal table near him. "Oh, I forgot something important. I didn't share my name with all of you. You can call me Ball. I know it's rather vague, but I've grown to like the nickname as of late. It does, after all, define me by my most regular shining achievement."

> FINAL OOC NOTES

Please refer to the OOC EVENT POST for this event for all OOC info, including suggestions for directions on how to engage with the event and the questions thread for any questions regarding this event. The outcome for this event will depend upon character plans and actions developed in both this OOC post, and any additional plots brought to the moderators. Please feel free to submit any game-changing plans to us under the questions thread. We will get back to you as soon as possible about these plans!

The event will continue until November 16th, IC time. This date has changed, and we outlined our reasoning in this plurk after getting a feel from some of our players on Discord on how they felt about extending the event! An aftermath wrap up post will be made on July 2 which will detail the resolution and fallout of the event, though you can assume that effects from this event will be felt for some time.

ETA at 12:08 AM 6/23/19: The cipher is meant to be easy to solve! No one needs to limit their characters' ability to solve an a = 01 cipher!

El has posted here to inform everyone about zeir knowledge of the event.

As a reminder, there is one power level up available for this event. This will be granted for a thread of at least 5 action/log comments containing your character utilizing their power in some way. They will need to reach the 5 comments required by JULY 26 to be eligible. Submission will be handled on the wrap up post.

Our Activity Check will be posted JULY 1 at 12 AM UTC. It will run for seven days and close on JULY 8 at 12 AM UTC. We will not post a warning list.

> NAVIGATION

Comments

[personalwar]

[ Now that Jack thinks on it, that guide that had been passed around when he was new had mentioned that Clarke was one of the people among their group that had experience with patching up wounds. Maybe not formal training, she looks too young for that, but for some reason she'd had to learn. ]

I think I already told you about my healing. [ If it's something that he can't take care of own his own, chances are he's going to be in such bad shape that Clarke won't be able to do much for him. It's not a scenario he wants to think too hard about.

Once the wound's cleaned out to his satisfaction, he grabs for the bandages to begin wrapping them tight around it. Again, the pressure is going to hurt, but it's also what's going to manage her blood flow. ]

So, where'd you learn?

[ Most people didn't decide to learn how to stitch someone up or perform minor surgery as a hobby. ]

[strove]

My mom. I was going to be a doctor, but I ended up in solitary confinement for a year before I was sent on an exploratory mission. [She had about two years of training under her belt, combined with what every single teenager learned in Earth Skills. Clarke was good at both arenas, was good at compiling knowledge and learning everything she could, so it wasn't as if she wasn't prepared.]

Back home, it's not too different from how things are here. You take your classes mostly individually to learn the medical knowledge, and the rest of your training is hands on and practical. We can't risk someone wasting time reading books off a screen when they can begin doing work right away. [A pause. A correction.] Couldn't.

[Things change, and it wasn't as if they had a lot of burgeoning doctors lined up. It's why they started training Niylah as best as they could—someone from the ground with deft hands and a desire to help.]

I'm training again, but I can't do practical things just yet.

[personalwar]

[ This wouldn't be the first hint that Jack's received that Clarke is from a world where things are rough, to say the least. It's not just her bearing, but also the way that she'd talked about the state of this version of Earth.

Despite her age, she's definitely seen some things. It's not the sort of thing Jack ever likes to be witness to, but there's no shying away from it either. War is always going to lead to a whole lot of traumatized kids forced to grow up way too fast. ]

How does solitary confinement turn into an exploratory mission? What were you locked up for anyway?

[ It sounds ethically questionable at best. Jack's hands continue to move in a fast yet measured way, adding layers of bandages around the wound to make sure that it's secure and under the right amount of pressure. ]

[strove]

["Ethically questionable" is the story of Clarke's life, including what she grew up with and had to accept as an individual.

The worst part is that being locked away in solitary confinement had been hard, had been life defining, but nothing had stopped there. Explaining that to someone who's a relative stranger is hard. It had been worse when it was Alex, sympathetic to Clarke's plight but somehow thinking it should be taken in a much worse light.

But a man of Jack's stature? Maybe he can accept the way she explains it.]

I was aware of some information that made the Chancellor uneasy. He wanted to avoid a panic, and I couldn't be trusted not to say anything. [Especially once her father was floated. Clarke knows that she wouldn't have held that in.]

That information led to the exploratory mission. We had limited resources where I grew up. [A beat.] Delinquents were expendable, so the best ones for the job.

[If only they had been told on their way down. It wasn't as if they could tell people on the Ark the full depth of what was going on once they were loaded onto a drop ship. Jaha's sanctimonious speech was all they had to go on, and it wasn't enough.]

The "job" being one where we were meant to find out if the Earth was survivable. And if it wasn't, as least the people in space would have more time to come up with a solution.

[personalwar]

[ Clarke doesn't fully explain the situation she'd come from and so 76 is forced to fill in the blanks. His hands slow just slightly as he thinks it over. An exploratory mission to Earth to find out if it was survivable, meaning that she'd actually lived somewhere else. On a lunar colony, maybe? Or something like it.

Locking a teenager up in solitary confinement to make sure she doesn't talk is definitely ethically questionable, and so is sending a whole group of kids down into a potentially life-threatening situation. What the hell kind of society did Clarke come from?

Yeah, it explains a lot.

Jack sucks a breath in through his teeth and shakes his head. ] So the situation here has to hit pretty close to home for you. [ The planet's dying; the fact that it's so damn hot out here now that climate control has been thrown out of whack is proof enough of that. ]

Is that why you've got the radiation-immune blood?

[ Slowly but surely, the pieces are coming together. His work with the bandages done, he ties them off and then stands, brushing his hands off on his pants. ]

[strove]

To some degree. The black blood came later, so we very easily could've walked off that dropship and died. [The goal of the blood was the same: prevent someone from dying from radiation poisoning, completely adapting their physiology so that their systems could metabolize it. The people on the Ark already had some protection, but the black blood had given Clarke additional immunity.

She had survived another apocalypse.]

Thankfully, we didn't. And when some reactors went off later, I had the black blood and survived. [Clarke speaks about it in a grounded, pragmatic way. What she doesn't mention is how she nearly starved to death or how she nearly dehydrated in what was literally a deserted wasteland. Humanity had been wiped out on the Earth's surface, sans her (and one other person, who she doesn't know about just yet).]

The woman who got the blood was meant to meet up with us, but ... well. "Meant to" doesn't always work the way it's planned. [And so a holiday was born: sacrificing a woman who could've saved them all in the name of unity, not realizing it.

Then again, she didn't die, so maybe it worked out either way.]

I should be ... I should say that I'm more worried about what happens if we don't make this better.

[personalwar]

[ When Clarke mentions reactors, Jack assumes that she's referring to nuclear energy. It would fit in with the need for immunity to radiation, and that ability could benefit her here, too. He doubts that there's a way to offer that protection to the rest of the Displaced and he's not sure that most of them would even want it, but they've at least got Clarke as some kind of ace in the hole. ]

Make things here better? I'm getting the feeling that we might be past the point of no return with that.

[ He tilts his head up toward the sky, where the sun seems to be oppressive in its brightness and the way that it's beating down on them. Now that the pyramid is down, they're all getting a taste of just how bad things are here. Hearing about it and actually feeling the direct physical effects are two different things.

A pause, and he extends his hand out to Clarke to help her to her feet. Regardless of what he might have said, they do need to keep moving. ]

[strove]

This world isn't in good shape, but it's not as bad as it could be. [Given her history with a dying world, Clarke has a lot of familiarity with one that's on its way. The unfortunate thing is that she doesn't have Raven here to back her up with readings. It's just her and Octavia, and it wasn't as if Octavia was in a position to do any compare and contrast. Her focus was split, divided, right up until she had to form Wonkru.

Clarke gratefully takes his hand.]

We can't give up on it yet. I don't know what that means yet, but you're not standing here and dying. It's something. [Not promising, but it's something.]

[personalwar]

"Not standing here and dying" seems like a pretty low bar to clear.

[ It's not as if Jack had been a stranger to the dangers of climate change and the environmental damage that humans had done to the world. There had been an entire branch of Overwatch dedicated to researching just how bad things were so that they could try to course correct.

That had been in the 2060's, though. Even back then, it had felt like they were already on a set course to the planet's eventual death. He can't imagine how much worse it is in 2511. ]

Maybe they've done enough here to bring it back from the brink. I'm not a scientist. [ Now that both of them are standing, he leads them back out onto the street. This block seems to have been cleared of any injured, but it's one block in an expansive megacity. After a brief pause, 76 hangs a right. ] But judging from all this? It's not looking good.

[strove]

Maybe they did. [Clarke doesn't know the end result of what's happening, but like Jack, she's not filled with a lot of faith. There's a reason why she uses past tense, because Clarke can see what can change all that. It might also be the uncanny parallel to what happened back home: someone claiming to be an AI moving forward to devastate much of the planet. Even if New Amsterdam is getting the brunt of it, she can only imagine what's happening outside.

These types of things have a ripple effect. It's how Raven was able to track the path of radiation.]

We can hope it was enough. But this reminds me a lot of home in a way, complete with ... not being able to do much about it. But being able to stand out in it is a higher bar than you think. It means we still have time.

[She's seen the opposite. She knows what that means.

Hell, she's caused it. Bellamy's hand covered hers as she irradiated all the people in Mount Weather.

She caused it.]

[personalwar]

[ Hope is only going to get them so far. Once the pyramid is functional again, they'll be able to get a better sense of what kind of damage was done. Not just lives lost, not just property damage, but what state the Earth itself is in.

Whether that information will be openly shared is a bigger question, and Jack doubts they'll get the cold hard truth out of any officials. ]

We'll see.

[ It's not like Jack is one to give in either, though this isn't the sort of war he's used to fighting. His gaze lingers on Clarke as they walk. ]

What are you gonna do now?

[strove]

Find some water. Find more people to help. [Right now, that's the only cardinal direction for her mind. Anything else feels like it's a void. That's why she's driven to leave the next day, taken away from all the mess and chaos to find something different. Her goal won't be clear.]

What else can I do? There aren't enough doctors here, even with the advancements and ease in getting training. I'll always be needed.

[Even if it's still not where Clarke Griffin, of all people, is best utilized.]

[personalwar]

[ No one can go forever, although Clarke does seem like she's holding together okay. Her wound's wrapped up, she's on her feet, and Jack doesn't see any signs that she's going to pass out any time soon. She's young, and also used to this kind of thing. He's not about to get in the way.

So he nods, looking down another alley where he's pretty sure he can hear some distressed cries. Whether Clarke can also hear them is hard to know; his enhanced hearing makes it so he doesn't know what others might pick up on. ]

We should split up. We'll cover more ground that way.

[ He's not too good with the awkward goodbyes, so he starts on a brisk walk toward the alley in question, lifting up a hand as he goes. ]

See you around.