Karmakaze
Jun 14th, '06, 12:25 PM
I'd had an idea before about, rather than having one of the military aspects of Homeland Secturity keep track of superheroes/metahumans, maybe it could be a public health issue, under the auspices of the CDC...
I'm not quite sure I have enough in my head to make a full setting or module, but I've had some stuff bouncing around in there. I figured as long as I needed to do a brainvent, I might as well drop it here in case anyone might find it useful...
Dr. Aguayo, age 48, comes to the department from running clinical studies for the pharmaceutical industry tells about a fieldwork call:
"My best fieldwork story? The Laughing Girl. Well, that's not classified, anyway.
"It got called in as a laughing gas leak, clearly by someone who has no idea what nitrous oxide actually does. The emergency crew figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't a chemical problem, pulled back and called us in. When we got there, just about the entire junior high school was milling about in the parking lot as though they were running a fire drill. Plus an ambulance and a gas company truck. I was struck that they seemed like the happiest gas company guys I'd ever seen.
"Turns out that one of the homerooms was sitting in their classroom, laughing hysterically, and had been for hours. The teachers who tried to break it up got the giggles and collapsed in place laughing. Same thing happened to the gas company guys. Some bright person pulled the fire alarm to clear anyone capable of movement out of the building.
"I tried to go in, and started giggling. I giggled. The teachers giggled. The gas guys giggled. The students just erupted. So I tried the other set of doors, saw some funny graffiti. I started giggling. The gas guys started giggling. The.. well, you get the point.
"Six tries later, I went back to the car to get my tinfoil hat and told the guys to prep a sleep gas grenade, just in case. The tinfoil hat's not actually made out of tinfoil. It's a brainwave inhibitor Dr Sachewicz cooked up in the lab. I wouldn't face Menton wearing the thing, but it does ok for filtering out outside influences. Also gives you a nasty headache after a while, but nothing's perfect. So I went into the building with what looked like an erector set on my head, which, believe me, didn't help with the giggle fits the spectators were having.
"I got to the classroom door, stepping over a couple of very happy people. I was happy myself at that point, but, thanks to the hat, not too happy. Inside were about fifteen students and a teacher, all on the floor, several of them in clear respiratory distress. I started pulling them out one by one, since the hallway was a little less intense. Fourth kid in, I hit the problem. One of the girls was feeding back on the room. I gave her my hat, and the hilarity died down in a couple of minutes.
"Turns out the kid was an empath - projective and receptive. You know how you can be out with your friends, maybe a little tipsy, then someone cracks a joke and suddenly the world is hilarious? And every time you calm down someone starts snickering, or makes another comment, and it sets everyone off again. Well, imagine that stuck in a feedback loop. The girl got convulsed with laugher, and projected it out on everyone around her, who projected it back to her, and well - funniest day of class ever.
"It's good we got there when we did, though. There was a pretty good round of bumps, bruises and muscle strain, and somebody's heart could have given out. They don't call it 'convulsed' with laughter for nothing.
"We got the kid some training, calmed everyone down, and I got to write a report on the epidemiology of contagious laughter."
I'm not quite sure I have enough in my head to make a full setting or module, but I've had some stuff bouncing around in there. I figured as long as I needed to do a brainvent, I might as well drop it here in case anyone might find it useful...
Dr. Aguayo, age 48, comes to the department from running clinical studies for the pharmaceutical industry tells about a fieldwork call:
"My best fieldwork story? The Laughing Girl. Well, that's not classified, anyway.
"It got called in as a laughing gas leak, clearly by someone who has no idea what nitrous oxide actually does. The emergency crew figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't a chemical problem, pulled back and called us in. When we got there, just about the entire junior high school was milling about in the parking lot as though they were running a fire drill. Plus an ambulance and a gas company truck. I was struck that they seemed like the happiest gas company guys I'd ever seen.
"Turns out that one of the homerooms was sitting in their classroom, laughing hysterically, and had been for hours. The teachers who tried to break it up got the giggles and collapsed in place laughing. Same thing happened to the gas company guys. Some bright person pulled the fire alarm to clear anyone capable of movement out of the building.
"I tried to go in, and started giggling. I giggled. The teachers giggled. The gas guys giggled. The students just erupted. So I tried the other set of doors, saw some funny graffiti. I started giggling. The gas guys started giggling. The.. well, you get the point.
"Six tries later, I went back to the car to get my tinfoil hat and told the guys to prep a sleep gas grenade, just in case. The tinfoil hat's not actually made out of tinfoil. It's a brainwave inhibitor Dr Sachewicz cooked up in the lab. I wouldn't face Menton wearing the thing, but it does ok for filtering out outside influences. Also gives you a nasty headache after a while, but nothing's perfect. So I went into the building with what looked like an erector set on my head, which, believe me, didn't help with the giggle fits the spectators were having.
"I got to the classroom door, stepping over a couple of very happy people. I was happy myself at that point, but, thanks to the hat, not too happy. Inside were about fifteen students and a teacher, all on the floor, several of them in clear respiratory distress. I started pulling them out one by one, since the hallway was a little less intense. Fourth kid in, I hit the problem. One of the girls was feeding back on the room. I gave her my hat, and the hilarity died down in a couple of minutes.
"Turns out the kid was an empath - projective and receptive. You know how you can be out with your friends, maybe a little tipsy, then someone cracks a joke and suddenly the world is hilarious? And every time you calm down someone starts snickering, or makes another comment, and it sets everyone off again. Well, imagine that stuck in a feedback loop. The girl got convulsed with laugher, and projected it out on everyone around her, who projected it back to her, and well - funniest day of class ever.
"It's good we got there when we did, though. There was a pretty good round of bumps, bruises and muscle strain, and somebody's heart could have given out. They don't call it 'convulsed' with laughter for nothing.
"We got the kid some training, calmed everyone down, and I got to write a report on the epidemiology of contagious laughter."