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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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 Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:51 pm
He didn’t quite recognize where he’d been dropped off.
At least, he didn’t initially. It took a few moments to reorient himself. The capital building was that way, up ahead and to the left. The fountains were likely off to his left entirely. There was a residential area nearby, off to his right. People lived there at some point. His people.
Encke took in a deep breath.
His people.
His people once breathed this air that he was breathing now, back when he was actually from this comet and not born on Earth with a foreign starseed in his chest. Even after so many times of coming back to this comet, he hadn’t quite gotten used to the lack of people. Sometimes, he relished in it. It was nice to come to a place that was only his, a sanctuary where he could be by himself, quietly fixing things so maybe people could someday live here once again.
Other times, like now, it just felt … empty.
Something felt strange about the comet this time, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He could certainly make excuses for it. Maybe it was the fact that the haze seemed to be just about gone. Maybe it was the fact that, this time, he hadn’t exactly been set down near any kind of hub. Off the trail. But nothing was really different so far as he could tell. The comet was still the same. Nothing had moved since he had been there last. He was just … in a slightly different spot.
Encke sighed.
He shifted a bit, moving himself from where he stood onto the nearby path. His mission had been to come back to that seat of government, today. That seemed to be where he was getting the most memories as of late. Maybe it was a sign that he should keep working on it.
“Encke, your honor!”
He felt himself turn around and offer a smile, even as the woman who was trying to get his attention bowed deeply in front of him. It still felt really unnecessary, but he had stopped trying to get people not to do that. It wasn’t ever going to work. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, I was wondering if you had a minute?” After waiting for a polite nod, she continued, “This is probably a silly thing to bother you about but the connection near my house seems a bit faulty—”
Faulty? That didn’t sound good. Encke glanced behind him to make sure nothing looked off. No, seemed normal. It was probably just a problem near her home. Technology didn’t always work right. “I’ll send someone over to your house as soon as I can. What neighborhood do you live in?”
“Ah, I live in the neighborhood on the bend—”
He hadn’t missed the fact that in most of his memories, there seemed to be a lot more available light. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t light available on the comet--mostly during what passed as “daylight” especially--but there definitely wasn’t anything that required a “connection” at the moment. Over time, he had brought candles with him. Flashlights, too.
That wasn’t the first time he had heard a reference to a source of power in his memories, but it was the first time that he had a memory directly related to the generation of the power. There apparently were connections here, of some sort.
It would honestly explain a lot.
One of the first places he thought of was that room deep back in the government building, where there seemed to be places for recessed lights. He did think it was odd that there weren’t really any places to put candles around the room and he had to bring his own with him…
Though he really wasn’t sure if thousand-year-old wax would be usable. Thousands? He wasn’t entirely clear on that part.
A long time ago.
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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:52 pm
On approach to the familiar building, Encke immediately noticed something odd.
Was the door—
How did the door get closed?
There was no one else there, right? Uneasily, he took a look over his shoulder, almost expecting someone to jump out at him. Nothing happened, of course, because the comet was empty. There was no one else. He was alone.
He hadn’t brought anyone with him, and he was fairly sure there was no other way to get to this place. He was fairly sure if there was, there would have been people from NASA or CSA or ESA or one of the varying space agencies losing their minds. Or all of them. Maybe experimenting on him, all things considered. He was able to just pop himself into a strange area of space for no explicable reason.
Encke slowly approached the door, hoping to find that he had made a mistake, and the door was indeed open. It wasn’t, of course.
Well, s**t.
He was fairly strong, right? Maybe he could just muscle the door open.
It seemed as worthy of a shot as anything else.
Encke put his back into it, grabbing onto the handle of the door and throwing himself backwards as he attempted to force the door open. It didn’t budge. He turned around, grabbed onto the handle, and pulled himself forward, trying to force the door to come with him. It didn’t budge. He turned back towards the door and put all of his leg strength to use in a kick that reverberated so much it made his leg throb.
Nothing.
He punched the door for good measure afterwards. Not because it would do any good, just because it would make him feel a bit better.
Now what was he supposed to do?
He supposed he could go do something else, but he wasn’t just going to sit back and accept that an entire rather important building was going to be entirely off-limits to him now. This was his world. This was his building. He needed to get the damn thing back open, even if it required some extra measures.
No more kicking, though. Ow.
Maybe there was another entrance?
It seemed like a more viable method than continuing to try and beat up the door, and there wasn’t exactly a keyhole on the door, so it wasn’t like he could go digging for the spare key someone left under the figurative mat over a millennium ago. He just needed to find another entrance. Seemed easy enough.
Except he had explored this whole area fairly thoroughly and he had never seen another entrance.
He’d just have to look harder, or something.
That was what his father would say, right?
Ugh.
Abandoning his position in front of the building, Encke initially hobbled, but soon regained his stride as he walked backwards away from it. It wouldn’t necessarily be as easy as a back door. If it was, he likely would have spotted it by now. It would have to be in some area that he either didn’t look in, or didn’t look hard enough in. And it likely wouldn’t be that far away, either. If the other entrance wasn’t directly attached to the building, it was likely a tunnel, and tunnels had entrances all over the damn place.
Unless it was an underwater bridge—
Ignoring his brain’s useless rambling, Encke surveyed the area around him. It all looked pretty average. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to be looking for when it came to “secret hidden back entrances that definitely existed and weren’t just made up with no particular proof to them.” He figured it was logical there had to be a back entrance. It was a government building. Those always had weird secret passages where people had secret meetings, right? That was just A Thing.
Okay, maybe he had been trying for too many spy movie parts recently, but he knew that government buildings usually had secret ways for the rulers to escape if need be, at the very least.
Where was his?
“I always love speaking to The People, but now is not the time.”
“I agree.”
“Let’s go around. That way?”
Encke reoriented himself based on what he had seen in the brief flash. There were people at the front, so he wanted to approach from the side. What was at the side that he could possibly use? Was it a latched door, buried in the ground?
He ventured off in that direction, not finding any trap doors in the process. What he did find, though, was something that he had ignored several times over when he had traveled to his comet. Honestly, he had thought it was an outhouse. He figured he could probably just deal with it later, once the major buildings were fully restored, and the houses were, too. Individual outhouses weren’t that important.
It wasn’t an outhouse, though.
When he pushed on the door and it came loose, it led to a ramp, descending down.
Seemed as worth trying as anything else.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:54 pm
The descent downwards was a fairly short, leading into a hallway with minimal lighting. There were a few candles he was able to light (he supposed millennia-old wax was still usable) taking out the pack of matches he usually took with him to do so. Overall, though, it seemed these candles were probably not meant as a significant light source. It left the area dim, at best.
It was still bright enough that he could get through the hallway with a fair idea of what was in it, especially as his eyes adjusted to the low level of light available.
There were doors. A lot of doors. They didn’t seem consistently spaced out, but there were definitely a lot of them. This entrance was clearly actually used for something, not just an escape hatch for ruling forces that didn’t want to deal with their underlings.
Maybe he should figure out what they were actually for.
Testing it, he pushed against one of the doors, finding that it gave only a little bit of resistance before popping open. He found himself behind the throne-like chairs of the large auditorium, in-between the tapestries, facing the crowd.
Well, at least he knew how to get through that door now.
He left it open, just in case, continuing down the hallway.
Encke glanced to a door on his left, deciding that he’d give that one a shot, too. Like the first door he tried, it gave a bit of resistance, but was rather easily broken, popping open to reveal a room with a round table and some chairs. Against the wall was a … panel, of some sort. A monitor? He hadn’t ever seen one of those before, which was surprising, considering he had been going to Encke for years now (even if, for most of that, it was only once every three weeks or so). How had he not come across one of those?
Was it an actual computer?
Curious, he left behind his mission of getting through the hallway for a moment to approach the panel in front of him. He pressed a hand against it. It certainly felt smooth and cold like he might have expected. When he pulled his hand back, he saw he left a finger print, and immediately moved to pull off an armband so he could fix that. Leaving it marred like that wouldn’t do any good.
His attention turned back to the rounded table. Was this some sort of meeting room? It looked like it. Maybe someone was supposed to stand to the side of the panel and use it to present something to the people assembled.
Something so mundane seemed fascinating when it came to societies of the past. Encke didn’t care a lick about meetings back when he was on Earth, but on this comet? He wanted to know more about how they worked. What was the procedure? What were they meeting on? Did they have some weird Enckean version of those obnoxious presentations he had to make for school group projects?
Did he hate them just as much then as he did now?
Encke traced his hand across the table as he headed back towards the exit. The table was cold. There wasn’t enough ambient light to make out significant details, but he could tell it was made out of stone. A lighter colored stone, at that.
He’d have to come back and take a closer look, once he had a flashlight.
Or at least, more light.
He ventured back out into the hallway and continued, mostly because he wasn't exactly sure where it all led, and he wanted to find out. It was more of his comet; of course he wanted to know.
Encke traced his hand along the smooth wall, suddenly stopping when he felt an indentation. He turned to get a closer look. Was that … a portrait?
He squinted at it. It was hard to make out any details from this angle, but he wanted to. He went back up the hallway a bit, swiping one of the candelabras so he could maybe get a better view. The candles seemed to help, thankfully. It was a portrait of …
Himself?
That looked like what he had seen in the mirror, long blue hair and eyes that somehow still seemed to glow even in the picture. He reached out to touch the painting, but pulled his hand back in hesitance. If it was that old, any hand oils would probably damage it whether it had been preserved in an unopened hallway or not, right? They did all those fancy perseveration practices for paintings as old as this one.
His robes looked rather … nice.
“Do you like it, your honor?”
“Like it?” He felt a smile spread across his face, looking at the painting where it hung. There was a small fence around it, preventing anyone from getting too close, but right now, he was beyond the fence and probably getting a little too close. He didn’t care. “I love it. You did a fantastic job.”
The woman sounded flattered. “Thank you, sir. It was an honor to be commissioned to do a royal portrait for you.”
“I’ve seen your handiwork before.” He shot a grin over his shoulder, before turning his attention back to the portrait. “You seem to know exactly how to use the luminescent dyes. Only so many have actually mastered their use. And my robes! They’re so vivid!”
“Ah- thank you.” He glanced back at the woman again, who was shuffling her feet awkwardly with a goofy smile on her face. “I’m glad you like it so much. I hope other members of your House consider me for portraits?”
“I’m sure they will! I need to find a more prominent place to put this, I think…”
Apparently, he never did.
Maybe Encke did need to figure out how to move this. Were any of his fellow senshi or knights portrait preservers?
How was he supposed to know that?
What definitely caught his attention was the ‘royal’ reference.
That made it clearer than ever that he was part of the leadership of the comet. He had no idea how deep his involvement went, but it was clearly there.
He stepped away from the portrait.
His involvement was so obvious that he was commissioning portraits of his likeness that he thought he needed prominent positions for. It was so obvious that people seemed to defer to him in a lot of situations, or listen to him for speeches in big auditoriums.
He continued down the hallway, mulling over his position.
His thoughts kept him lost in fantasies for a time, imagining himself speaking in front of big crowds, or listening to the needs of others, or negotiating deals he had no business understanding at current. His brain tumbled over what memories it could clearly remember, the memories of him speaking to crowds, the memories of him negotiating, the memories of him simply working on beautifying the fountain while some other people said that he really didn’t need to do that – he supposed that made sense, now, if he was considered to be a ruler of the people. He remembered talking about the income that his people were given, and at first he had thought he was referring to the income he and everyone else was getting, but maybe he had truly just meant his people.
If they were his, then he was their ruler.
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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:55 pm
Encke soon found himself at the end of the hallway, not even noticing until he almost smacked right into it, facing a door that seemed rather hard to budge. It was solid, cold and hard like the stone he had found on that table. He pushed on it, and unlike the other doors, it didn’t give as easily.
He put his back into it, hoping to force it to pop open, digging his heels into the ground in an attempt to give himself better leverage. He just had to act like he was at the gym. It was a bigger weight he had to try and push down the hallway.
The door seemed to rattle, for a moment, before popping open, causing Encke to rather unceremoniously collapse onto the floor inside the room.
Considering he had already managed to injure his leg, that wasn’t particularly welcome. It took a few moments to convince himself he probably needed to actually get up off the ground himself. Considering there wasn’t anyone for literally millions of miles, no one else was going to help him up. He winced, slowly coming back to his feet and brushing himself off.
It was almost excessively dark in this room. Except for the small amount of light coming from the candles in the hallway, he couldn’t see much of anything.
It took a few moments for Encke’s eyes to start to adjust, giving him an idea of what was in the room, even if it was in black and white and varying shades of grey. He gathered there were more of those panels along the wall, and in front of him, too, slightly lifted from the floor and surrounding a … pole, of some sort. He wasn’t sure if there was anything else to it, considering how hard it was to see anything.
So he moved a bit closer.
Click, click, wait--
When his boot pressed a little further down then it felt like it should have, he jumped back in alarm. s**t, was the room booby-trapped? Of course it would be booby-trapped. He was the one who decided to explore some random hallway based on some urges he had and now something was definitely making a lot of noise and –
A blue light flickered on.
Oh.
There was a vague glow of blue about the room, now. It came from a recessed grove in the ceiling, surrounding the entire room. Did he just turn on some kind of back up light?
Huh.
He could at least see a bit better, now. He could definitely confirm that the things surrounding the rooms were panels of the same sort that he had spotted in the meeting room. The room honestly reminded him of something he might see in a ridiculous tech movie, where some dude was a super hacker and had a bunch of screens to work with rapidly while they tried to break into the government or some evil corporation or something. The pole in the middle of the room, though? That didn’t really fit the aesthetic.
The panels surrounding the pole in a circle kind of did, though the pole definitely didn’t. He approached the pole and used the panels as leverage to get himself as close as possible, pushing forward and resting his hand against it. It was cold, which made sense, because it seemed to be a metal pole. Just a … metal pole. Just sitting in the middle of a room. For no particular reason.
There was likely a very obvious particular reason, but it wasn’t obvious to him, unfortunately. He may have been Sailor Encke, but he definitely wasn’t Enckean.
These panels weren’t particularly helpful, either. For one, none of them were actually on, even with whatever weird ancient back-up power he somehow managed to activate.
A spark and a flicker from one of the strange sources of ancient back-up power reminded him as to just how ancient it was. It probably wouldn’t stay on particularly long. He wasn’t sure how it was staying on now. Encke hadn’t seen any generators, but maybe they just weren’t anything he would have recognized as generators.
Maybe he could force one of the panels on? Encke bent down, looking at the hook ups underneath the panels. There were a few things that seemed to resemble wires running close to the panels, but it looked like they were running through the ground. At the very least, there was no way to unplug them and plug them in again. A wiggle of the cord didn’t prove particularly effective, either.
He stood back up, looking at the panel. Alright. Maybe whacking it would work?
That sometimes worked on really old electronics. Was worth a shot. He basically popped the panel, whacking it slightly to the right with his hand. For a moment, it flickered, showing a bunch of stuff he couldn’t understand. He was fairly sure the message in red likely wasn’t a good sign, though. He honestly didn’t have a chance to even try to understand it before it turned itself right back off.
Of course.
Shaking his head, Encke leaned back and crossed his arms. What was he supposed to do with this?
Maybe if he was an ancient electrical engineer, he might be able to figure out what he was supposed to do with what seemed like ancient electronics. Even if he was, though, it wasn’t like he was from Encke’s Comet. It was likely they did everything entirely differently. He assumed some principles held, though. They had to.
Biting his lip, Encke took another moment to survey the room. Unfortunately, he didn’t see anything that could be manually controlled. No switches. He ventured over to the wall, taking a look behind one of the other panels—
A spark above his head caused him to flinch away.
s**t. He didn’t have time for this. How much longer would this last?
“Hurry, hurry! You have to hurry!”
“You never hurry a king.”
“Well in this case you do!” huffed a man, gesturing wildly at the consoles in front of them. They were lit up, but flickering. “I don’t actually know what will happen if these things entirely shut down. No one told me. Can they even come back on? Maybe sink us into a permanent darkness?”
“I can assure you there’s a way to relight it. At one point, my comet didn’t even have electricity. Just calm down.”
Helplessly, the man paced back and forth. Honestly, watching him was starting to stress him out. “Don’t you Encke Senshi type have those really intense plasma powers? Maybe you can act as a generator, or something.”
“Excuse me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He felt himself blink.
“Apparently not.” The man in front of him seemed rather impatient. He rolled his emerald eyes, keeping his eyes focused on some point off to the side. There didn’t seem to be anything over there. “You use your abilities. On the pole. It’ll send electricity up into the system. It’ll charge the coils. It’ll be fine once we get it all started again.”
“You’re seriously asking me to – electrocute the whole system.”
“Yes.”
“Have you drank too much of the glowing nectar today? It’s okay, you can tell me. I promise I won’t tell the others.”
“No, your honor.”
“Do you really think that’ll work?”
“What other choice do we have, your honor?”
Sailor Encke had no idea if that would work. It sounded ridiculous.
Then again, he had no idea what this system was doing. He supposed it was logical enough. The pole in front of him was clearly made of metal. He assumed it was conductive. Did he really produce enough energy by himself to actually power an electrical grid, though?
Then again, that didn’t seem to be what the man was implying. He just needed to provide enough power for power to get back to … whatever was actually generating the power. The coils?
Hell if he knew. He’d have to see if he could research that later. He just knew that shocking the system, so to speak, was the most viable option he had left at this point. What else could he tweak?
He found that, unfortunately, this room wasn’t particularly large. He was definitely not going to be able to get out of the range of his attack. But that was alright. If there was a chance that he could actually reactivate the power on Encke, that was … huge. He had to give it a shot, right?
That didn’t stop the slamming of his heart as he dug his feet in as well as he could, bracing himself for what was likely to be quite the impact.
For a moment, his mind flashed, and he saw himself standing there again, the emerald-eyed man backing up out of his periphery, hands placed forward and focusing on the pole as his target. This seemed like a really, really bad idea.
It was also his only idea.
“Full Ionization!”
At first, it didn’t hit him, but then the shocks to his exposed arms started, and he immediately winced, attempting to hold his ground. He tried to keep his eyes forward, on the pole, watching electricity spark from the ether towards it. A few of the panels flickered on and off as more lightning zapped at the pole. Encke closed one eye, stumbling back a step, but he kept his eye on the prize.
When the lightning hit against a panel, throwing it off balance, he jumped in alarm.
“Ignore that for now!”
Encke yelped, instinctively pulling his arm back as he felt a shock hit it. He had been used to it from his basic attack, but he admitted his super attack was so much harsh—
He suddenly heard a crackle, and his eyes darted from left to right, trying to find a source. It came again, before he suddenly saw a streak of light rip upwards, through the pole and up into the ceiling, where he lost sight of it.
“Ha! See, I told you I had the right idea!”
“Still the dumbest thing I’ve heard today.”
“But only today, this time!”
Encke suddenly felt his body pushed back, and he was slammed against the wall, eyes fluttering shut.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:57 pm
He awoke to what sounded like something shutting.
What?
The panels were on. That was probably the first thing he had noticed. The second was some kind of protective material that was just beyond the panels surrounding the pole, now. When had that lowered? Had it done it automatically?
Encke moved to stand up, but something caught his attention before he did.
Something seemed odd about his hands—
It didn’t register initially, staring blankly at his fingers. In his mind, he vaguely noted that his fingerless gloves seemed to have blue light reflected on them now, giving them an interesting effect … Wait.
His fingers were …
Encke screeched, throwing his body backwards further like he could somehow get away from his own hands. All he managed to do was bump his back against the wall. This was okay. This was fine. He was just in the middle of a memory or something. Enckeans had glowing fingers. Perfectly normal.
Wait, if he was in a memory, he’d be… in a memory. Not thinking about his glowing fingers.
How did that happen? He glanced up at the machine in front of him, now whirring as it pumped electricity through the air. Did it have some kind of radioactive effect on him? He doubted that. He’d probably feel sicker, or something, not just have some strangely glowing hands.
His head felt different, too. Lighter, perhaps. He lifted a hand up near his eyes to get a closer look, placing his gloved palm near his nose. While he didn’t find that his eyes seemed to be beaming light into his hand, he did find that there was a faint discoloration there, like something else on his face was glowing, too.
Huh.
Was he becoming closer to who he once was?
Though all the panels were actively on now, perhaps there was something he could use to get a look at himself. Encke stood up, wobbling a bit upon standing, but catching his balance before he toppled back over. After finding a panel that seemed particularly dark, he ventured over to it and tried to get a look in it.
While it made a terrible mirror, he could tell that he looked different, now. An area near his eyes was emitting light. His forehead was, too. And his hands, of course. His tiara was gone.
He wasn’t entirely sure he’d miss that.
It didn’t feel bad, though. Arguably, Encke felt more comfortable. He felt more relaxed. Beyond the initial shock, he felt almost peaceful.
It also didn’t miss his notice that a lot of the throbbing in his body was fading. His leg didn’t feel as angry as it had after he had kicked the door and then proceed to walk on it for a solid amount of time. The burn markings on his arm didn’t seem very prominent, even though he was fairly sure he had just contracted those not even a half-hour ago.
(How long had he been out? Would he have to explain something to the civilians he knew back on Earth? What would Richard think?)
It didn’t matter. He felt … good. He felt better than he had in a while, honestly.
He’d give himself this, before he tried to figure out what these odd displays actually meant.
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