Curious, worried, Smoke Alarm sat on one of the couches in the back. She remembered a Kang game of racing wheely chairs down the carrydoors; this was a bit like that, but not. Doing up the seatbelt she found easy – the action was completely the reverse of the Kangs' scrapheap farewell, itself a memory of a safety harness in a ship before time start.

Being in the car was also like being in the ship, as it roared and whooshed and smelled and spun around and screamed away. Smoke Alarm could handle a loop-de-loop in Dev's sky-bike, and all kinds of aerial acrobatics, but this was a whole other angle, without the safety-firsts of anty-gravs and things. She yelled and clutched the seat so tight she thought her fingers might go through. Couldn't they have just taken the talkiphone box? In fact, she thought she eyespied a familiar talkiphone box on the side of the road.

'Stan! Why do you want to eyespy where the Warlock begins? How does a Warlock begin anyhow?' she asked at last, once she got her breath back.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:20, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

"Um...hopefully Warlock...Phillipe begins as a normal baby in the hospital. Like most of the humans around here." Stanley replies, hoping that is answer enough. "You know that something bad happened to Phillipe, when he was travelling with Trav and me, right? It is all complicated time travel stuff, so it hasn't happened yet, but something might have already changed here....In any case they messed with him in such a way that his bio-signature is different in the future... I must admit that I don't know how that is even possible, so apologies if I am not being clear. We want to know more about what happened to him and what better place to start than at the beginning?"

Having arrived at the hospital, Stanley walks up to the front desk of the hospital. This is a small hospital and this is before everything is done via the internet, so it wouldn't be unusual for researchers to come look at data in person. He has spent enough time working as a doctor in hospitals, so that is also not going to be a problem. "Excuse me, I am Doctor Stanley Newton. The drive here didn't take as long as I had expected, so we are a bit early, but I hope that's not a problem." He pauses and then looks back at the others. They don't really look like a team of doctors or researchers, but they'll have to do. The person behind the desk, obviously has no idea what he is talking about, so Stanley gives more information, explaining the others and why he needs the data. "My team and I are here to take a look at the records from the maternity ward. Using that we can finish the last bit of statistics we need for the paper. Almost there." Stanley says with a smile

"Well, I expect it is going to take a while to study and copy the data, so I'd like to get started as soon as possible. I am not really familiar with the layout of this hospital, so can you tell where those records are kept and how we can get there?"



Presence + Medicine + Voice of Authority
22:23, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 16 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 1,6. Presence(3) + Medicine(4) + Voice of Authority(2).

This message was last edited by the player at 21:32, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

He grumbled at both Traveller and Smoke; he just eyeballed the pair of them all throughout the car ride. When Traveller fooled around with the car; he shook his head further - if she'd been Draconian, he would have taken her to task by now. Of course, if she'd been Draconian, she would never have been so insolent and irresponsible.

When Stan started poking around at the hospital, it was all Sereth could do to -not-step in and ask the important questions himself. Stanley knew more about what they needed to find out; but his manner of talking was clumsy; to say the least. But this was his party; but Sereth lurked on the edges, so if it went drastically wrong, he'd step in.

OOC: Sereth will watch Stanley; and will step in if he really looks like getting nowhere with his questioning.

The young woman at the reception desk has a name badge that reads STACEY.  She looks flustered at Stanley's assertion that the group is expected, particularly given the appearance of Smoke Alarm and, to a lesser extent, Trav.  But Stanley is throwing the right buzzwords at her, and at last she says, "Director Helman isn't available right now, but I expect that is who you're here to see."  She looks indecisive for a moment, but then says, "Let me take you and your colleague to his office.  You can explain the access that you need once he's out of his staff meeting."

She begins to lead Stanley away from the desk.  From her body language and the eye contact she makes with Sereth, it seems that she has come to the conclusion that the others are not professional associates of Stanley's, but that Sereth is, and that she's only expecting the two men to follow her.

There is no one else at the reception desk, although there's a little bit of patient and visitor traffic through the area.  Trav notices that Stacey has locked her PC before leaving the desk.

OOC:  I'm not sure what you all choose to do with those events.  Anyone who ends up accompanying Stacey will be taken to a modest but well-appointed office where there is also a PC, currently powered off, and left there to wait.

He nodded quietly at Stanley.

"After you, Doctor Newton."

Making it clear by his body language; that Stanley was superior.

He then threw a warning glance at the other two. You know the kind - the one that says "If I hear one more word, I'm turning this car around right now."

Smoke Alarm still wasn't sure if outgoing to eyespy Warlock as a little baby was such a good idea. What could a baby show-and-tell them? But she figured that if they mayhaps found what had made him broken, then they mayhaps could fix what he'd broken on Arsuran. Well, that seemed to be the idea anyhow. But it wouldn't fix the people made unalive, would it?

She outlooked dismally about the hospittle, feeling cold and uncomfortable and kind of itchy. It was yawny, everything was all blank walls and cleaners, smelling like a Cleaner's sprinkle gas. Hospittles were places to be sick and unalive, not to live.

Wisely she remembered the Kang knowhow, and realised they were going about this all wrong. 'Shouldn't we mayhaps outgo up to the roof? That's where the Ship will fly over to drop the babies down the hair-conditioning ducks.' she said, aloud.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:10, Wed 25 Mar 2015.

Trav gives an innocent smiles and giggles, but pulls Stan over for some private words that Sereth and Smoke are allowed to join in for -

"I know this is all fun for right now, but this really important. Someone tried to keep us from here. No matter what happens, we have to let history proceed as it should. Stan, to us, this has already happened. We're here to watch how Phillipe, Warlock, Fortuna, and Evers started, learn about the mystery of the TAROT devices, and find out who wanted to meddle with him. It's Phillipe's past to become Warlock. Remember that, no matter what happens. It might be hard to just stand back and watch, but that's what we have to do. If you can't make the decision, I will. You all understand what I'm saying, don't you?" Trav's voice drops to being grave, as she gently exerts her authority as a Time Lord - something she often does not do. "We can only take action if someone tries to interfere in that. Ask me if it goes against Time - I'll know if it moves the wrong way against time. We're not here to change anything, only to watch, and be part of things naturally."

Trav, like she owns the place, aims her sonic at Stacey's PC, intending to copy the entire hospital network to her IPad. "So, Smoke, I *really* need to bring you to a Rave. Acid house is the thing these days, with the best US scene in Austin and Brooklyn." She waves her sonic like a rave stick, and proceeds to roto rooter the data out of Stacey's Pentium.

OOC:09:26, Today: The Traveller rolled 22 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 5,1. Copy Hospital Database - Ingenuity+Technology+Sonic.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:27, Wed 25 Mar 2015.

"We can wait until the meeting is over, like I said we are a bit early. Waiting in his office will be fine, thank you Stacy." Stanley replies, having read the name badge. It doesn't seem likely that this Helman will have Phillipe's files in his office, but this is a step closer to getting there. He is already thinking about how he is going to convince Helman to give them access.



Stanley wasn't planning on influencing the past, not consciously at least. He can probably do more damage to the timeline here than when they were in ancient Siluria. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be careful and try not to interfere too much."

OOC: That is going to be pretty darn successful against the finest computer security the 1990s could muster, but please clarify what you're doing -- are you trying to find the specific record, suck in the whole database for reference, or what?

Smoke Alarm outlooked bewildered at Traveller, who seemed to always say things without a lot of context. 'Is that muzak?' she wondered. 'Like hop-hip-jump or dub-foot?'

Outlooking at the roof, she eyespied a hair-conditioning vent and the duck above it. 'And what about the babies? Should I be ready-steady to catch one?' She stood under it, and eyespied a soft couch she could drag over to provide a soft landing for the baby. After all, they were small and couldn't jump like Kangs.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:55, Fri 27 Mar 2015.

OOC: Copy the whole database for reference, so that Trav can leisurely go through it on her Ipad, with no messing with it for right now, as well as leave a back door in case we need to get back in. I think Trav's Ipad, made with 91st century tech, can hold probably the entire Internet of 51st century Earth.

Trav is playing with her Ipad, which looks like an etch-a-sketch to anyone else when she shakes it.  "Yes, baby, that is muzak. It always sounds horrible up and down the timestream. Raves are dance parties. No, babies don't come out of those, those are ventilation chutes.  Let me check what was in the Puter. Chibi, find me the records for Phillipe Collinswood," she whispers to the Ipad."

As Chibi does her work, Trav also waves her sonic around, like as if was to raver music, with her headphones on. She's really scanning the local time-space, which she hasn't had time to do yet. Something tried to keep her and her TARDIS away from here. If it was a powerful enough field to almost force her and her TARDIS to forget this piece of space-time, then the opposition was no joke.

10:51, Today: The Traveller rolled 20 using 2d6+12 with rolls of 6,2. Trav uses sonic to check local space-time - Awarness(2)+Science(6)+Turn of the Universe(2)+Sonic(2)

OOC: Wrong name from buh? fixed by the Guardian.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:47, Thu 26 Mar 2015.

By the time Trav hears Stacey returning, she has captured an image of the hospital records onto her iPad and set the ChibiTrav agent to searching the records.  She is a little disturbed that the record isn't immediately called up: even the records of the hospital going back for several decades shouldn't take that much computational effort to search.

The local spatiotemporal scan she carries out in the meantime alarms her even more.  It reveals a number of anomalies and disturbances centered over a wide area around the town, though for the most part they don't seem to be concentrated within the center of it, but rather the surrounding country.  It also seems like they aren't particularly recent; most having occurred around six months ago.  None of this was evident from the scans made while the TARDIS was in the Vortex, which suggests that some further efforts at concealment are afoot.

When the iPad flashes with its result, the face of Chibi is screwed up into a pert little scowl.  "Boss," it says, "something's not right her.  I found what you were looking for.  But for the longest time it ran away from me."

The image on the display shows what the software construct means.  It has hold of what looks superficially like a standard set of hospital records, covering the delivery of Phillipe Collinswood to a Marianne Collinswood; father, James Collinswood.  But the record is actually tagged to a sophisticated software worm that allows the standard database system to interact with it normally, but appears designed to deflect and deter any detailed scrutiny of the information.  As Trav studies it, the worm mutates and tries to escape from the tools she's using, although it doesn't quite manage it.

Trav also sees that the record gives the date of birth as two days from now -- yet diagnostics on the worm show that it has been living in the hospital's system for about six months.

Stanley and Sereth look up as the door to the Director's office opens.  There's a man who looks like he may be in his fifties, with a white doctor's coat over dress shirt and tie.  "Gentlemen," he says, a little warily, even as he offers his hand.  "I'm Richard Helman.  Ms. Rutherford informed me that we had visitors saying that they were here to conduct... a research audit, was it?  I'm afraid that I wasn't made aware of your visit -- in fact, I don't recall having heard of this audit before now.  Can you give me some explanation of what organization you're affiliated with, and perhaps some idea of how this was miscommunicated?"

Someone was preparing for this.

Trav attached a bluetooth keyboard to her Ipad. She starts tapping madly. This reminds her of one of the chronal formatting weapons of the Time War. She suspects that the entire area was seeded and formatted 6 months before the even got here in preparation for a major pivot point in time to be reformatted. Trav knows this because she, as the Marshall did this herself innumerable times against Davros and the Cult of Skaro. She even engaged in it earlier - as the 1st Traveller, in her first great running conflicts with both the Krayloss Empire and the Faction Paradox. She's sickeningly reminded when the Faction attempted and almost succeeded at reformatting the 3rd Doctor into becoming Grandfather, at his regeneration at Metabilis 3. Of course, the 1st and 2nd Travellers always protected regions of Space-Time from tampering or restored them, restoring prior history in the best Time Lord manner.

Of course, she didn't immediately suspect this because Sweet Boy was a research TARDIS, not a war vehicle like a Type 102 like Compassion. The fact that they had arrived 2 days before Phillipe's birth indicates to her that the Time Vortex was fighting back against this gross manipulation. If she were the Marshall and if these were her Exigents, software on their Time Rings would already be sounding alarms. However, the chronal-spatial equations weren't finalized yet - they were softening up the mud, so to speak, before firing the kiln. But they probably weren't counting on her being here.

Or maybe they were. Maybe this was all a lure, like how the Shedraya needed her to come into being, back in R Space.

Well, sometimes, you have to say to yourself, fuck it, and go tits in.

The bad guys probably knew they were here, especially if they could influence the local morphic field like this. She adapts and compensates Chibi's code for this, integrating Time War counter routines she hand wrote from her old days as the 1st and 2nd Traveller and the Marshall, when she struggled with the Daleks and the Faction. She and her companions were Time Travellers - they were already resistant to a degree from morphic manipulation. She could probably rig something more durable for the team back up at the TARDIS.

She found herself reaching down to her thigh for her Rod. In it's stead, she finds the empty holster of her Turbopistol. As this, she smiles. Could the Traveller of now fight the battles of the Time War back then? Hell yes, she could. She won another Time War. She was every inch the better of her old self. No need for those old cruelties, she had better, nobler, more heroic and more fun tricks.

OOC: 00:18, Today: The Traveller rolled 18 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 1,1. Trav does further analysis and coding on local space-time - Ingenuity 8+Science 6+FTTOTU 2.

Trav crinkles her nose. She hasn't seen this kind of subtlety since the Time War. Parts of her brain unused since that time so long ago light up. She has no idea as to what is going on and she needs time. Further, she finds the memories of both the Time War and her great locking of the Shedraya behind her own constructed Time Lock painful, and she finds herself in rebellion of considering higher Gallifreyan chronal and mimetic mathematics. She closes the IPad and puts it away, as her brain starts to unlock, older parts of herself reluctantly starting to cooperate.

She lets her new code compile and shoves her Ipad back into her bag. "Excuse me, Miss. Do you have a local phone book I can have a look at?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:25, Fri 27 Mar 2015.

Smoke Alarm shrugged at Traveller's response; it was all "musak" to her and mayhaps the babies would comeout later. Growing yawny, she wandered about the reception area, show-and-telling herself she was outlooking for clues like Traveller was, but really just curious as a rat. It was all the same anyhow. What was lost-and-found?

At the water cooler, she filled a cup, spilled a little on the floor, and watched it glug-glug-glug so thirstily. She picked up a talkiphone handle, and listened to the mysterious warbling dial-tone, and pressed some buttons to hear it beep-beep. Then put it down again, not on the catch so the call didn't cancel. There were so many appliants here, appliants just like she remembered from Paradise Towers, not at all like the shiny high-tetch ones of the future. Plasticky appliants that Kangs lost-and-found in the scrapheaps, broken and fixed, that they could just guess at the functions of or otherwise reuse and recycle, make things they could survive with. Appliants of mystery that contained sparks of electricky and signs of wear and use so they were unique, and worked so erratically that a Kang needed luck, wishing, and superstition. Appliants that seemed almost somehow alive. One of the old Rezzies had said everything had a kammi, a ghost in the mechine. And so Kangs had adopted these as their totems, as their names. Smoke Alarm outlooked up and eyespied hers on the ceiling, and made the superstitious seatbelt gesture, feeling reassured by its presence. It would warn of hazards.


OOC: Insatiable Curiosity, go!

"Certainly," Stacey says with a smile.  She reaches into a drawer at her station and pulls out a combined White Pages / Yellow Pages volume, handing it over to Trav.

OOC: What was your additional roll meant to be doing?
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:34, Fri 27 Mar 2015.

OOC: Finding out who is trying to conceal and format the local space time. Trav thinks that there's some hinky Time War super high level time-space format bullshit going on, trying to conceal and hide shenanigans around Phillipe's birth and creation, either to guard it or change it. She think's it's Time War level stuff and she suspects that the people behind wanting Phillipe becoming the Great Beast are behind this. She's specifically looking for TAROT manipulation, but she's also reminded very much of what the Time Lords did when they'd use the Eye of Harmony to fix big sections of space-time, what the Faction Paradox does when they rewrite time and space, and what The Moment did, and also what she herself has done in the past (she actually did this back in the RIFTS game when she time-locked an entire species of Demons using psionically powered nanotech to pursue them through the Time Vortex at the Camapign's climax.) Super scary hinky stuff. With a roll of snake eyes I presume a "no, but."

"Thank you."

Trav starts flipping through the phone book, looking up the address of Phillipe's parents, and their phone number.

Trav's further scans reveal no obvious additional insight, except for the fact that the local distortion and damage is plainly visible at "ground level".  There are too many unknowns about the high epistopic flux that occurred when the Last Great Time War went from consuming all of the continuum, to simply being not, and Trav wasn't around to see it happen.

The information in the phone directory for the Collinswoods matches up to what is on the birth record, giving "Box 78, Route K" as the street address.  The precise details of rural U.S. postal routes are among the trivia that Trav doesn't keep ready to hand, but it suggests that they live well outside the town proper.

Smoke Alarm outlooked inside a plant-pot and down the back of the couch (which was always good for lost-and-found keys and coins), opened and closed the doors and wiggled the handles to see if they worked and how, flicked a light off and on, removed a yawny picture from the wall and put it back down-side-up, tried to fish a chocky bar from the vending mechine, and sidled into the office to outlook at the fax machine.


OOC: Does Smoke find anything poking around the appliances and whatnot?
10:01, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 17 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 2,6. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2).
This message was last edited by the player at 02:01, Sun 29 Mar 2015.

Stanley takes a deep breath and gets up, he hasn't talked this over with Sereth and he doesn't know if he is going to approve. Nevertheless, past experience has told him that dealing with management people is never easy and Helman sounds like he wants to verify things before giving permission, so Stan is going to cheat. He smiles politely and shakes Director Helman's hand. "Doctor Stanley Newton. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."

Stanley quickly adjusts his grip on Helman's hand and changes the tone of his voice. He also speaks a fraction slower, all with the effect of getting Helman in a more susceptible state of mind. He is trying to hypnotise director Helman using a quick script this time. "Richard, look at my eyes and focus on my voice. I am going to count down from three and when I get to one, I will snap my fingers and you will be completely relaxed and calm. Three, you are beginning to feel sleepy...Two, your eyes are feeling heavy...One!" He lets go of Helman's hand and snaps his fingers. "Completely calm and relaxed. Calm and relaxed..."

"Okay, we are good. Don't make any sudden noises or movements, though." Stanley looks at the door, half expecting someone to burst in and interrupt everything, before turning to Sereth. "Apologies that I didn't introduce you to him, but it is best to try this when his attention is focused on me. I am going to convince him that he has given us access to the hospital and the archives. Then it is just a matter of grabbing a doctor's coat and we are free to look around."

"Richard." Using a patient's first name tends to give a better response. "Richard, when you wake up you won't remember this conversation. You will remember that we had a pleasant talk and that you gave us permission for our audit. When anyone asks about Stanley Newton or Sereth, you will say that we have your permission to be here and do what we need to do. Remember that you gave us permission."

"Any requests before I wake him up again?" Stanley asks Sereth.

OOC:
Roll to hypnotise the director, spending a SP:
00:43, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 23 using 4d6+8 with rolls of 6,3,4,2. Presence(3)+Convince(3)+Hypnosis(2)+SP(2d6).

About the only thing that Smoke Alarm has turned up in her exploration so far is a lot of attention from visitors in the waiting area that she has been prowling around.  In particular there's an oldster there who seems like he's trying his very best to pretend that Smoke doesn't exist and isn't doing what she's doing, a boy in his teens who's sitting with folded arms and staring morosely into space, and -- sitting in the chair right next to the boy -- a little girl who's watching Smoke Alarm with rapt attention.


OOC: I feel like making such an earnest attempt to interact with a perfectly ordinary hospital ought to yield some kind of payoff, but I can't think of what it would be.  If you want to make a discovery that prompts you to do something worthy of getting into real trouble, you can do so and get a story point for it.  Otherwise I will keep your exploration in mind if anything plot-relevant turns up.

Director Helman's initial reaction to Stanley's efforts is surprise, and even a little amusement, like he thinks Stanley is making a joke.  But he's apparently a natural subject: it takes a little bit of time, but Helman is standing there in front of Stanley and Sereth in a calm and relaxed pose, watching Stanley attentively with a slight smile.

"Of course," he says.  His tone is pleasant, not the stereotypical vacant monotone, but just a tiny bit dreamlike.  "It was all my mistake, and of course, all your credentials are perfectly in order.  If anyone asks you what authority you have for your audit, please, don't hesitate to refer them to me.  You'll have full access and the complete cooperation of the staff."

OOC: ZOMG.  I did NOT expect Stanley to go all Svengali here.  But a +12 success evidently does not lie.  What must Dr. Newton's quarterly review meetings be like?

The Guardian, for the NPC Director Helman, rolled 11 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 2,2. Resisting hypnosis: Resolve(3) + Ingenuity(4).