Millennial Malediction

[Killer Shrike]

August 12, 2003, Mechazone (Camp Pendleton), California...01:29 AM PST.

 

"Your timing is impeccable, I will grant you that.", Ing said as Makeshift and Turbofist made their way under the loading bay door past the German supervillain.

 

The heroes found themselves in a loading area about 50 feet to a side and vaulted to the roof, mostly open in the middle, and with clusters of stacked military lockboxes and grey ruggedized clamshell cases stacked neatly here and there around the edges. Various stenciled and posted warnings and indicators on walls, boxes, and the floor lent the space a cold authoritarian ambiance, but nothing sinister or overtly threatening was in view. To the left was a metal fire door and a observation window looking in on some kind of logistically oriented office with three simple desks...a gold lettered red sign screwed to the door said only 'S-4'. On the opposite side from the loading door was a pair of metal fire doors with pushbars and small fireproof glass portholes in them. On the vaulted wall above the doors was a wide fireproof glass bay window but with steel shutters currently closed over it.

 

"...do tell?", Makeshift said after a pause, both to avoid being distracted from scanning the room and also to make time to first attempt to figure out what the enigmatic engineer meant.

 

Ing pushed a button on a console mounted to the wall next to the rolling door, and with a hum of machinery it unrolled back down to fill the gap in the wall. "If you had gotten here any sooner or much later, we wouldn't have opened the door. According to our predictions there was a relatively narrow window of possibility for us to experience this delightfully charming reunion."

 

Ing gestured towards the double doors across the room and began to head in that direction.

 

"And why is that?", Makeshift asked, unhappy about being led through this conversation. Pete preferred to have more of a handle on what was going on at any given time; uncertain situations such as this gave him agita.

 

"We would not have dared to expose our location while a certain adversary was paying attention, but we found a throughline scenario where that nemesis would be distracted somehow at precisely this time.", Ing explained, opening the leftmost side of the double doors and leading the way into a 10 foot wide hallway running a short distance to a 90 degree corner to the right and about twice that distance to another set of double doors to the left. Ing headed left.

 

The walls of the hallway were adorned with a couple of corkboards pinned with various announcements, notices, pictures of groups of Marines before and after various training exercises and social activities such as bowling and softball, and incongruously a Girl Scout cookie signup sheet. On the long wall opposite the doors they had entered this hallway from, now to their right as they proceeded behind Ing, was a stretch of portrait photographs of various officers posted at perfectly level and evenly spaced increments. Pete noticed that the portraits were in some kind of hierarchy from left to right,  starting with a Colonel at the one end followed by a succession of one to four star Generals, then a civilian politico, and finally the gleaming mug of the right honorable POTUS himself. Each picture had a name placard beneath it, and though Pete was the sort of person who would normally read any printed thing put in front of his face, he had more pressing matters to attend to and suppressed his desire to stop and peruse them.

 

"...um, and the next bit?", Turbofist asked, seemingly hesitant to interrupt while "elders" were speaking.

 

"Roboterschlachtwilde", Ing replied, smirking at his cleverness.

 

"Gesundheit", Pete said sarcastically. 

 

"...um, yeah...I don't speak German. What does that mean?", Turbofist asked plaintively.

 

"Something like 'crazy robot battle', I think.", Pete said.

 

"Close enough.", Ing agreed, reaching the next set of doors and again opening the left side. The trio entered into what could only be called a war room which opened up to the right and back towards the front of the building; in other words these doors entered into a sort of embrasure that comprised the rear left corner of a much larger space that seemed to occupy most of the first floor of the building. The room was arranged like a theater, descending below ground level, with rows of side by side consoles like church pews angled in towards a wall filled with big screens (currently all but one of which was turned off) such that each row looked down over the row below it affording clear view of the wall of monitors.

 

Running across the back of the room along the other side of the wall they had just proceeded down, directly adjacent to but behind and to the right of the entryway they were standing in was a walkway leading to a sort of bastion or bartizan projecting out into the gallery, with a big captain's chair surrounded on three sides by a wrap-around desk of consoles. 

 

It reminded Pete of a NASA mission control theater.

 

The only occupant in the room reclined comfortably in the command throne, like a fictional captain on a Federation starship boldly going forth into danger with nary a seat belt or safety device in sight; they sedately swiveled the chair to face the approaching Makeshift, Turbofist, and Ing at an angle.

[Killer Shrike]

August 12, 2003, Simi Valley, California...01:34 AM PST.

 

"Is he dead again?", Wrath yelled down from up above. He had Matilda hovering a dozen feet up with the driver's side gull wing door open, calling down to Alliage below where she knelt next to the MOD's battered body with a glowing orb in her hand to shed some light. The flesh on the MOD's back was visibly healing at an astonishing rate, flesh regrowing and flowing together across exposed bone to rejoin seamlessly, which always reminded Alliage of quicksilver reforming. 

 

"Non, il n'est pas encore mort. He should be on his feet momentanément." 

 

Wrath nodded and brought Matilda in for a landing nearby, then hopped out, leaving the door up. "Fine. Lets get him into the back of the car with what's her face. It's only a matter of time before more pinheads show up to take a shot at us.", he growled as strode over to Alliage and hoisted the MOD up into a fireman's carry to lug back to the car.

 

"...ugh...yer...killin...me...man...", the MOD managed to wheeze out from burnt lungs, cracking one blood crusted eye open.

 

Alliage took to the sky once more on her silver disc and headed down the freeway towards Rook and War-Man.

 

"Anyone ever tell you your powers are gross, kid?", Wrath replied as he placed the MOD into the backseat with seemingly uncharacteristic gentleness, and buckled the battered hero in. If anyone had called him on it, Wrath would likely have claimed he was just being careful to avoid damaging Matilda's upholstery and only a skilled telepath would be able to tell if that was the truth or not. Wrath then manhandled Sybyl's still unconscious form around and laid her out across the back seat, placing her feet in the MOD's lap and her head at the other end of the bench seat. Eyeballing her supine form critically, he drew one of his pistols and put another tranquilizer dart into her. Just to be on the safe side.

 

That taken care of, Wrath got back in the car and got ready to lift off once again. "Alright, kid, lets go pick up that knucklehead Rook before he breaks those damn robots down to every last individual bolt and screw, and then get the hell out of here. Sound good?"

 

"Sounds <KAFF> a lot like a plan to me.", the MOD answered from the back seat, already sounding better and able to sit up straight, almost fully restored by his truly remarkable regenerative capabilities. "You know what I miss, Wrath?", he asked as the door swung back down and Matilda lifted off vertically and began to thrust forward.

 

"What's that, champ?"

 

"Fighting things that don't self destruct. I think a good old dust up with flesh and bone bad guys would be fun, just to mix it up a little.", the MOD drawled ironically.

 

"I don't know about that, hoss.", Wrath said with one hand on the wheel and the other lighting up a new cigar with an old-fashioned in-dash cigarette lighter, taking a few puffs to get it going, and putting the igniter back in its charger. "Ever since those asshole backstabbin bureaucrats back in D.C. made me turn in my license to kill, I gotta treat garden variety screwheads and troublemakers of the flesh and blood sort with kid gloves. I put too many bruises on one of 'em and I got allegations of unnecessary violence and excessive force bullshit coming out my ears. But nobody gets sad when I blow up these damn robots. It's like open season on those tin-plated pinheads."

 

Wrath pulled Matilda into a tight circle, spiraling down to about 10 feet off the ground, and pushed a button to open the passenger side door. The car was banked at a little more than a 30 degree angle towards the passenger side, allowing Wrath and the MOD to look right and see Rook, War-Man, and Alliage standing around talking more or less in the center of a cratered, scorched, and ruined section of freeway with bits of bots and vehicles both mundane and Mechanon-ane scattered to and fro. "Figures. Chewing the fat like a gaggle of housewives, like we got nothing more pressing to be dealing with.", Wrath muttered around his smoldering cigar. Taking the hand mike for Matilda's built in PA system, Wrath announced with cop-like authority via the car's external megaphone, "Rook, your ride is leaving. We're RTB. Get in or catch a %@#$-ing cab."

 

Rook looked up from below with an irritated expression. Moments later Matilda, still flying in a slow loop around the trio of MillMen on the ground, experienced mild turbulence as Rook latched on with his telekinesis and pulled himself up to and into the car. "Took youse long enough. Where'd ya park, the north 40?", Rook said while the passenger door closed and he buckled his seat belt.

 

"Looks like you're in a better mood. Got your rocks off alright down there? A little combat jacking on those poor defenseless robots?", Wrath returned.

 

"As a matter of fact I did, old man.", Rook said almost good naturedly (by the standards of these two).

 

In the back the MOD briefly entertained the hope that his teammates would actually get along for a while and the flight "home" to Bakersfield wouldn't be an endless put down match between the two of them. But then Rook tacked on, "Maybe if youse done more than just fly around in circles while the rest of us fought you could've gotten a piece of the action too."

 

"Oh, you mean if I'd forgotten about the mission objectives to go indulge myself in tactically questionable enemy contact for my own personal enjoyment, like you did?", Wrath swatted back.

 

The MOD sighed, recognizing the opening moves of a new round of tit for tat. He took the remnants of his shredded mask off, put his head back on the headrest, closed his eyes, and mentally recited sports stats to tune out the incessant arguing, the cigar smoke, and the Old Spice. The MOD used to kind of like the smell of Old Spice. Not anymore.

 

In the darkness outside Matilda, War-Man took up his usual wing-man position in the air up behind and a bit to the right, and Alliage returned to her place in the formation. Seeing no reason not to do so, she resumed concentrating on her anti-scrying spell, sending an orb spinning in a wide elipse around them all just like on the way in. They were returning to Bakersfield intact, plus one Sybyl in the bag.

 

As Millennial Men missions went in these post-Mechanon days, this one could be categorized as more or less routine, with the obvious exception of the special nature of their newly acquired "person of interest".

[Killer Shrike]

August 12, 2003, Bakersfield, California...01:35 AM PST.

 

Dr. Silverback had returned from the restroom, and brought a carafe of fresh coffee and a plastic wrapped half-stack of Styrofoam cups with him.

 

Mr. Goodspeed had checked in twice with routine ETA's; he and the remaining support team for the primary mission would be on site momentarily. But the original chronal signal coming out of Camp Pendleton was still pulsing away, and there hadn't been so much as a peep out of Makeshift, Hype, Turbofist, or Fade.

 

Most worrisome however was that War-Man's promised follow up communique was a couple of minutes late.

 

Rather than voice their concerns, Showdown, the Mechanic, and Silverback said nothing and sipped at their cups of bitter java...black and unsugared. The Mechanic and Silverback stared at the laptop's display grimly, while Showdown surreptitiously watched Silverback hold his fragile white cup between a thick thumb and one giant finger rather daintily like the Queen taking her tea. It was an incredibly incongruous sight...the merest slip in control by the hulking gorilla would surely see the ape's powerful grip crush the disposable container. N³ continued to lay on the couch, and the faint buzz of a mild snore indicated that he had definitely slipped into unconsciousness.

 

A new message appeared in the queue with a blip, breaking the half stupor that had settled over the trio. It was from War-Man, and the Mechanic eagerly brought up the full message, which read:

 

"Hostile contact. 2 Thetas 5 Upsilons 12 T-78. All destroyed. No friendly casualties. POI still in custody. Stage 2 exfil commenced; RTB. ETA: approx 10 minutes."

 

"Well, you aren't wrong that some of the Mill Men are hard to get along with, but it is tough to argue against their effectiveness", Showdown said to the Mechanic, having read the message over his shoulder.

 

"Yeah, yeah. They're good in a brawl.", the Mechanic allowed before changing focus to the giant simian sitting next to him, who seemed to be lost in thought. "Dr. Silverback, the Mill Men have Sybyl and will be here in approximately ten minutes."

 

Dr. Silverback gave a small nod, finished off his coffee, and put the fragile styrofoam cup carefully down on the table. He reached a long hairy arm over and bumped the side of the couch N³  was racked out on. "Norrin, wake up. We need to prepare the containment field.".

 

N³ came to immediately and sat up. "How long was I out?", he asked, wiping at his face.

 

"Not long. The Mill Men are bringing Sybyl here within the next ten minutes.", the Mechanic repeated.

 

"Ok. Let me splash some water on my face and I'll meet you in the lab.", N³  said, looking at Dr. Silverback. 

 

Showdown switched his tac-ops walkie-talkie to a different channel and brought the receiver closer to his mouth, "Be advised, inbound friendlies. Strike Team M&M Actual plus one POI. Should be hitting outer airspace within a minute or two. May have hostiles on their tails."

[Kross1]

Long time lurker, first time poster...

More please!!!!

[Killer Shrike]

August 12, 2003, Mechazone (Camp Pendleton), California...01:32 AM PST

 

"Sybyl.", Makeshift said, halting in his tracks halfway between the door and the command chair. Turbofist smacked into his back, caught looking sideways over the desks and monitors instead of where he was going. Ing kept walking to stand slightly behind Sybyl seated upon the swivel chair, which 'coincidentally' put his right hand and lower right side out of the line of sight of the distracted heroes.

 

Sybyl telepathically communicated not a word, but a sort of voiceless question, a mentalist's equivalent of a quirked eyebrow, *?*

 

"Come on, lady, don't play games with us. What is going on with the timeline? We know you and someone or something else are messing around with it. No more of your spooky fortune cookie nonsense; give it to me straight for once!", Pete irritably responded. He was getting tired and frustrated, and his Chicagoan accent was starting to get more noticeable. 

 

There was a pregnant pause, an awkward silence. Turbofist took advantage of it to turn on his powers again, filling the room with a low threatening buzz as his molecules vibrated in place.

 

*As a man of science you should understand why it isn't safe or wise for people to know too much about the future. Causal loops, paradox, the act of observing a thing changes that thing...*

 

Pete cut her off, "Yeah, I get it and I call bullshit. We're past that point. Schrödinger ain't here. Meanwhile we got a total shit show of %#@!ed up probabilities, killer robots everywhere, millions dead. And you're somehow in the middle of it. Spill."

 

*I am not your enemy in this and I'm not to blame for the situation we find ourselves in. As I told you before, this is not how it was supposed to be.*

 

"Then how was it supposed to be? Start with that?", Turbofist suggested...his voice oddly vibrating and echoing. Pete blinked, realizing Turbofist was also 'hearing' Sybyl, and began to think. For any given communication from Sybyl he had no way to tell if she was communicating only to his mind or not. He was more or less used to that at this point. But Pete started to wonder if she were capable of having separate conversations simultaneously or not, mind to mind. That also reminded Pete of another lingering question, so he triggered his suit to close its eyeslits and turned his HUD back on. He was irritated to discover that according to his sensors he was standing in a scrub filled hollow; Turbofist, Sybyl and Ing were not present...and interestingly enough now even he didn't show up on his own sensors. 

 

*Our original encounter in San Diego with Mechanon at the Technodyne facility should have been successful, resulting in Mechanon's consciousness being infected by a computer virus designed by Ing. It would then have been destroyed by Gravatar in a later encounter the next month. Mechanon should be no more. But something interfered, manipulating events faster than I could counter. The interference has continued, collapsing probabilities where Mechanon is defeated, and increasing probabilities that it will continue to expand. Since then, it has been all I could do to slow them down. My futuresight is clouded by the constant shifting of possible futures. Even simple workings can become complicated, as whatever is doing this actively works against me.*

 

Pete turned off the HUD again and triggered his suit's eyeslits to reopen. "Well...can't you just...I don't know...do that back to them? Or something?"

 

"Brilliant", Ing said sardonically, shaking his head. 

 

*I've been doing 'that back to them' as well as I can. But whatever this opposing threat is, it is more capable than I am. If I try to fight it for direct control, I usually lose. Instead I have to nudge, hide my efforts, act while they are distracted, and pick my battles. I cannot explain it fully as you lack the senses to understand, like a sighted person trying to explain the color purple to jellyfish.*

 

Pete switched gears, "So what is this place then? How did you get here? Why is it invisible to electronic sensors?"

 

"It's a secured information 'fortress' for a military intelligence unit. It had some useful ELINT masking built into it to counter conventional electronic surveillance, is hardened against various forms of attack, and provisioned to be self sufficient for up to a hundred and twenty people for three months. Ironically it was locked down and abandoned when everything was evacuated the first week of the robot related festivities. Sybyl's futuresight guided us here and I...upgraded the technology. As long as we are reasonably careful, we are completely invisible to conventional digital optics and EM based sensors.", Ing said...only slightly smugly.

 

"But not analog? What about maps and satellite imagery...if one of the bots pulled up a map or looked at a picture of this place, they'd 'see' it right?", Pete asked...his mind already trying to work out the how of it all. He also wasn't about to volunteer that the IT group had figured out how to detect chronal energy; Ing would no doubt eventually puzzle out a way to block it once he knew it was possible.

 

"Ja. But you forget, robots 'see' even photographs digitally, as they are encoded for their processors to compute. I reverse engineered a destroyed I-37, and wrote a patch script to mask this location for the visual processing library used by Mechanon's bots, altered its memory banks and log data to remove our encounter with it, repaired it enough to call home, put it on a timed delay, and then dropped its carcass on the other side of this military base. The I-37 phoned home when the timer elapsed and remotely core dumped its data, trojan horsing my hack, which eventually propagated to all of Mechanon's battle bots as part of their routine updates.", Ing explained.

 

'Such a clever #$%!ing asshole', Pete thought to himself, reluctantly impressed. Despite his villainous ways and their several altercations Pete had always been forced to accord Ing professional respect, engineer to engineer. The man was unquestionably a genius. A very dangerous, villainous, mercenary genius, but a genius all the same. Out loud he said, "Well don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. Could that hack be expanded to do more than just hide this place...or even just blind the bots altogether?"

 

"Ja, of course, the exploit could be reused but the hack itself was surgical, only this location. The bigger the hack, the more likely Mechanon would detect it, purge the hacked data, remove the logic, and close the vulnerability. But in the worst scenario case it could be done."

 

"How long do you think it would take for Mechanon to undo it if we, um, blinded all his bots?", Turbofist asked.

 

"It would not work the way you think. A hack like this takes some time to propagate across the robots' network as part of routine updates. An overt hack like blinding all the robots would probably be detected before the hack was fully propagated. We're dealing with machine intelligences; their reaction time is measured in clock cycles, not minutes or hours. You would not get full propagation, and then a fix patch would be issued and roll out in the same way. So, if you were fighting say ten robots when you uploaded the hack perhaps a few of them would be affected within a few seconds of the upload, and then a few more, and then a fault would be detected, a few more would be affected, automatic updates would be turned off, the hack would be discovered, a countermeasure would be deployed, automatic updates would be reenabled, a few blinded bots would be patched, then a few more, and so on until the hack was removed. It may take slightly longer to close the exploit, but with active monitoring any reattempt would be detected and countered rapidly.", Ing explained...switching into a dispassionate engineering voice devoid of his usual acerbic wit.

 

"But if we were doing like an all out attack on robot Normandy, then maybe?", Turbofist asked.

 

"...Ja. If you were sure it wouldn't turn out to be more of an all out attack on robot Market Garden, you could use the exploit once to affect a percentage of Mechanon's warbots for perhaps a minute.", Ing replied with a bit of a frown.

 

"But would you tell us how to do it?", Pete asked.

 

"For the right price."

 

*Ing...*

 

"...perhaps a case of Pilsner Urquell and we can call it even, ja? I have not had a beer in over six months. But I will not tell you how to do it while we are still hiding here."

[Killer Shrike]

August 12, 2003, Bakersfield, California...01:36 AM PST.

 

Showdown had returned to the couch, sitting on the arm closest to the Mechanic at his laptop. The Mechanic had returned to wait and watch mode.

 

Mr. Goodspeed's voice crackled over the walkie-talkie Showdown still clutched. ~"We are over Pointman's last known position. No visual on Pointman or fastmovers. Visuals on remains of several bots and signs of a recent battle. FM1 appears to be running a spiral pattern patrol. FM3 is approximately half a klick north by northeast of Pointman's last position and is signaling via beacon for Tango Papa. FM2 and Pointman are not on sensors. Please advise?"~

 

"Acknowledged. Retrieve FM3, debrief, and update us ASAP. Status of hostiles?", Showdown rattled off into his walkie-talkie.

 

~"None detected in immediate vicinity. Picking up signs of movement towards Pointman's previous location...closest one fourty plus klicks out. It's going to get crowded down there very soon."~, Goodspeed responded.

 

"...Acknowledged. What sized response?"

 

~"Difficult to say. Looks like five separate patrols from nearby areas converging. Looking for the broken bots we see down there most likely. Strength of each patrol is unknown at this time."~

 

"Roger that. Pulse FM1's beacon with coordinates for pick up. Get asset off the ground if possible before hostiles arrival. Put all air assets on board on hot standby for rapid deployment just in case."

 

~"Will do, and they already are. Over."~

 

"Out."

 

Showdown glanced at his chronometer, started making some mental calculations. Where were FM2 and Pointman...aka Turbofist and Makeshift? Not knowing their location injected unwanted ambiguity into the situation. Showdown did not like ambiguity. Ambiguity %@!#ed operations. Ambiguity got people killed. 

[Killer Shrike]

August 12, 2003, Mechazone (Camp Pendleton), California...01:34 AM PST

 

"And who is 'we'? Who else is here?", Makeshift asked.

 

"Just the two of us.", Ing replied a bit grimly.

 

"The Violaters?", Pete inquired.

 

*Fracas still lives but he is elsewhere pursuing his own ends. The rest died.*

 

"So pretty much your whole team is dead, then? Kamikaze, Furnace, and Dozer?", Pete pressed.

 

"Ja, sie sind tot. They are 'kaput', as you no doubt would expect me to say. Those three did not survive the first twenty four hours." 

 

Despite their villainous ways, Pete was still affected by the news...particularly by the thought of Kamikaze dying. He had basically just been a dumb kid caught up with bad influences. "I'm...sorry for your loss. I know what it's like to lose teammates...Triage died that day too."

 

"Tsk, save your lamentations. They were idiots. Occasionally useful idiots, but idiots all the same.", Ing replied archly.

 

"That's cold, dude", Turbofist said, aggrieved. 

 

*The past simply is and this is not the time to dwell upon that which we cannot currently change. We have more important matters to discuss.*

 

"Yeah, no kidding. So what's next then?", Pete asserted, snapping back to business.

 

*We are approaching a nexus of possibilities. That which has been opposing me is silenced, perhaps only temporarily, but I am again able to see some favorable paths forward.*

 

"...Great. So...", Pete replied impatiently.

 

*It takes time to work through the branches of each possible future...which I need to do before we decide on our long term plans. But in the short term in virtually every possible future I see there will be a significant battle here, in this area, before the hour has turned.*

 

"...the 'crazy robot battle' Ing was talking about earlier?", Turbofist inquired.

 

*Yes.*

 

Pete responded, a little bit of anxiety in his voice, "We need to make contact with our people and let them know what's going on."

 

*You should not do that. If you try to, it begins a chain of events that ends with this location discovered and us collectively in a variety of undesirable situations. Instead, be patient, and remain hidden with us here. I will ensure that the future we proceed with is one in which your allies become aware of the approaching enemy by other means.*

 

"One must simply get used to approaching problems in a different way, mein scheißfreund, when one is allied with a seer.", Ing interjected, his trademark smug smirk in evidence.

 

 "...we're supposed to just take your word for all that? And what if the other future bending  person or thing gets involved again?", Pete replied, unconvinced and frustrated.

 

*At this point, you either trust me or you don't Makeshift. I suspect that you mostly do, because in most of the possible immediate futures I see you choose to take my advice on this. But yes, if my hidden opponent begins meddling with the timeline again in the next hour or so, things will likely get very bad for us all.*

 

"If you can see possible futures, can't you see the possible futures where that happens?", Turbofist asks questioningly. 

 

*Not exactly. When both I and my opponent or some other agent are attempting to control emerging events in the same timeframe, the possibilities fork and fork and fork in a proliferation of fracturing probabilities. It is difficult to describe, and even more difficult to detect very far into the future. Currently, as far as I have been able to determine in the last handful of minutes, we seem to have gained a generous window of opportunity to work on the timeline unopposed.*

 

 "So we just wait then? For how long?", Pete asked.

 

*That is what I'm recommending you do, yes. Be patient, for at least a half an hour, and allow me to pick the most advantageous path available to us while my enemy is indisposed.*

 

Pete and Turbofist looked at each other; Turbofist shrugged.

 

"Fine. Half an hour, then we revisit the subject. I need to do some repair on my armor. Is there a place I can do that, in the meantime?", Pete addressed the last part to Ing.

 

"Ja. I have a workshop of sorts upstairs."

 

 Turbofist let his powers deactivate. "...and while he's doing that can I get something to eat? I'm super hungry."

 

Ing brightened up noticeably; "Ah, yes, the famous appetites of youth on display. Fear not, we have a fine selection of 'Meal Ready to Eat' packages. Perhaps the epitome of what American cuisine has to offer the world; I find the 'Omelette with Ham' to be particularly vile and worthy of appreciation as an offense against man and nature."

[eepjr24]

Please sir, can we have some more? 😃

 

- E

[Killer Shrike]

Sorry, I took a new job at the beginning of April, and the hours are intense, and almost immediately required me to travel abroad. I also started running a new Here There Be Monsters campaign which sucked up my available-for-gaming-stuff-free-time. 

 

I do have a finish for this story in my mind, and I intend to finish it, but I don't want to half-ass it either. So, it's on my mind to wrap it up but it is currently on pause while I take care of other things. 

[Duke Bushido]

Dang it!

 

I thought you'd added some more.  

 

 

Good stuff!

 

 

[eepjr24]

Thanks for the update and I understand the travel blues. Luck with the TSA.

 

- E