Bob walked through the tunnels alongside his unofficial request client, Vince, half-listening as the man continued to talk about all manners of unrelated subjects while he kept his eye out for mutants and rogue drones. They’d only run into a couple of mutant rats so far, which Bob had dispatched with a few rifle shots.

“You know, I heard that the Yellow Tunnels have been seeing a lot more mutant rodent and rogue drone swarms lately. Some of my pals been telling me that a lot more of you Screener types have been getting sent down here, and not many of ‘em have been coming back up through the exits, if you catch my drift.”

Bob nodded. “That sounds about right. I was down here yesterday with some companions and we ran into a large mob of mutant rats, then had to fight a swarm of rogue drones with a drone mother. It paid for some equipment upgrades for me.”

“A drone mother? You’re not shitting me are ya? Well, damn. That would at least explain the drones being everywhere. Hah, the blazes were they thinking, unleashing tens of thousands of autonomous ‘pest control’ drones into the tunnels? Madness, I tell you. I’ve got my suspicions about their reasonings and who is the real driving force behind all of this,” Vince waved his hands expressively, causing the heavy satchel hanging from his shoulder to swing about.

Bob simply nodded and continued walking. He’d quickly learned that the easiest way to deal with this man was to just nod at opportune times, and only occasionally offer relevant words. The man did seem to love to hear his own voice.

As Vince segued off into how it was all a corporate conspiracy by the Big Six to seize further control of Servo City and further corrupt its free market with their corporate stranglehold, Bob tuned him out and checked his messages once more to see if FarShot and ShadowRunner had messaged him, or the new Medic and Bulwark. Predictably, no messages had come in, as he had not received the notification noise that accompanied an incoming message.

Bob heard the distinct whining buzz of a drone ahead and hushed the talkative man. He shouldered his rifle and rounded the corner of a side corridor where a medium sized drone hovered over a sleeping mutant rat. A small mechanical arm was extended from the drone and seemed to be withdrawing fluid from the beast through a needle. Without hesitation, Bob shot down the drone — managing to hit it on his second shot. He then approached and killed the comatose rodent. He looted the drone’s parts but left behind the loot from the rat. He didn’t think he would need Mutant Rat Hide, Mutant Rat Cerebrospinal Fluid, or Mutant Rat Gall Bladder. He was absolutely certain that he didn’t need Mutant Rat Genetic Material.

Bob walked to Vince. “Some weird drone was sucking fluids out of a mutant rat. Shot them both.”

“I knew it! It’s more proof that the Big Six are releasing their gene spliced abominations into the tunnels and running experiments on them with their ‘rogue’ drones.” Vince accompanied the word ‘rogue’ with air quotes, something he did frequently. He’d even helpfully explained it was meant to emphasize sarcasm and disbelief when Bob had asked him what the gesture meant. “Did you know that they put fluoride in our water? I read on the networks that fluoride is used as a mood stabilizer. They want us to be docile little sheep for them!”

Vince continued to rant about conspiracies, while Bob nodded at every pause, with an occasional “I see” or “That makes so much sense” thrown in for good measure.

Some thirty minutes after entering the tunnels, they finally reached their destination, a side tunnel that dead-ended after a hundred or so feet. At the end of the tunnel was a large metal box embedded in the wall.

“Right, I’m going to be needing to work on this for a while, probably. Hopefully not more than thirty minutes to an hour.”

Bob tossed out a wall in the center of the corridor, right in front of the box, and positioned a turret on either side, both using buckshot mode.

“Sweet free market, those things are cool. Before you Screeners came, they used to cost thousands of credits each. But you Screeners with your fancy Auger tech and dimensional storage really shook up the Big Six’s stranglehold on the patents.”

Vince opened a panel in the front of the box to reveal a tangled mess of wires, circuit boards and conduits. “Ugh, whoever did this last, I’m gonna shove a work boot right up their ass. This might take me a while to untangle. You know much about electronics, Bob?”

Bob shook his head. “I’m learning as I go. I’ve been looking up a lot of information, but I am missing a lot of the background information to put it into context.”

Vince shook his head and talked while he began the laborious process of tidying the mess of wires. “Man, I really don’t understand you Screeners. I’ve heard you’re all like that. What kind of place do you live in when you’re not Traveling here?”

Bob shrugged. “A dungeon.”

“Wait, you guys are prisoners?!”

“Sorry, I think there was a translation error. I live in an underground complex.”

“Huh. And what do you do there?”

Bob paused and thought of the best way to put his daily life in human terms. “Administration, mostly. I’m the Boss down there.”

“Okay, so you’re upper management, maybe something like a CEO? I see. That actually makes a lot of sense, you’ve got a very… old and in-charge attitude about you, though you seem to be working to avoid letting it show too much. So, acting as a Screener is your way of getting away from it all for a bit, right? Makes sense that you wouldn’t be up on tech training then. You’ve got people to do that for you. You guys probably have pretty specialized education, I’d bet.”

Bob was surprised. This NPC was rather perceptive, even if he was still drawing the wrong conclusions entirely. Still, it was good practice for shoring up his makeshift human persona. He continued to be surprised by the realism of this Otherworld.

“You know, a lot of my like-minded buddies have a lot of theories about you Screeners. But there is so little to go on outside the official information, which in itself is a total fucking joke. It doesn’t help that you guys always speak funny when you’re not talking directly to one of us normal folk. Really makes it hard to eavesdrop, ya know? Hell, this one guy I know, he claims to be some kind of cryptolinguist or some such, he says that he’s recorded samples of a half dozen distinctly different languages from you guys, but you all seem to understand each other perfectly even when speaking in different languages.

“But the most popular theory is that you guys have some kind of passive communication encryption. Some guys are saying even the Big Six and the government are stumped by it. The government I’d buy, they’re about as useful as my nipples, but the Big Six? Come on, they’ve got quadrillions of credits and the best tech to throw around.” Vince shook his head, continuing to sort out the wires.

“Don’t suppose you could clear any of that up?”

Bob thought for a moment. “The first person you mentioned is probably correct. There is an automatic translation function built in which has almost all known extant languages in it. It probably automatically adjusts when we speak to one of you but has no need to do so when we speak to each other.”

“Huh, wild. That’s some pretty radical tech, but… kind of tame compared to some of your guys’ other stuff. All right. Wires are all sorted out now, time to do my actual work.” Vince went quiet, as he began to focus on his task, withdrawing various devices from his satchel and using them to test individual components. A couple of rogue drones floated into the corridor while this was going on but were quickly shot down by the turrets. Bob contented himself with watching Vince work. He’d know if there was trouble if the turrets fired more than one or two shots.

While Vince was testing and replacing components, Bob heard the click-clacking noise that signified a message being received.

To:

From:

Subject: Special Assignment

Hi Bob! This is Buzzwhistle Blackgear, reporting as ordered for special assignment by the Crimson Tyrant. I am with Chunk, whose comm ID is Chunk-7645-543. We have, as ordered, selected our first classes as Medic and Bulwark, and are ready to do our first three requests. I have also, as was suggested, spent time in the combat simulator trying all the different weapon classes until I reached skill level 1 with each category. I purchased a shotgun, armor, ammo, and additional medical supplies with my initial supply of funds. Chunk bought armor, a shotgun, and something called an electro-club. I was initially worried about Chunk’s intelligence, but she is smarter than she sounds. We will await rendezvous at the Player Arrival Area.

Blessings of the Wise Lord of the Deep be upon you,

Buzz

Bob sighed with relief. At least he had confirmation now that his minions had successfully entered the game. While he had been quite certain as to the accuracy of his work, he’d had the tiniest doubt that his copies might not be able to connect.

*THUNK*THUNK*

*THUNK*THUNK*

The two turrets began firing at a steady pace, a fraction of a second delay between the two firing.

Bob looked toward the entrance of the corridor, where a swarm of mutant rats was racing towards them. Shouldering his rifle, Bob began to pick them off as the turrets steadily thinned their numbers.

The side tunnel was an ideal location for him to defend, as it was almost a hundred feet of narrow corridor with no cover, and the mutant rodents were sprinting straight towards him, presenting ideal targets.

About forty seconds later, though it had felt like at least a few minutes of intense concentration, the turrets fell silent and the rats all lay dead. Vince had stopped working to watch the commotion.

“Well, damn, aren’t you a useful one to have around. I’d be mutie kibble if I’d been here by myself.”

“I think this was just an ideal situation for my class. Static defense seems to be a strong point.”

“Seems that way. I definitely wouldn’t want to have to run at you down a long corridor. You really tore them up good. Though I don’t relish the idea of walking through that mess. Ho boy, and it’s already starting to smell something fierce.” Vince’s face took on a slightly green tinge.

Bob walked to the nearest corpse and touched it, accepting a large number of Mutant Rat materials into his inventory. The corpses, the blood, and all the splattered bits of gore swirled away in a rush of gray dust and vanished.

“Alright, now I’ve seen everything. That must be some kind of fancy nanobot tech or something - definitely more advanced than the micro-bot stuff we have. Man, wait till the guys on the boards hear about this, they’ll go nuts!” Vince seemed rather pleased as he turned back to continue working.

With a few final part swaps, Vince dusted off his hands, stowed his equipment, and closed the panel. “Right, well, we’re finished here, so let’s get out of here and head topside before a bigger swarm shows up.”

Bob nodded in agreement, deactivating and returning his equipment to his inventory. “Sounds good. I’ve got plans to meet up with some others then probably come back for more work down here. And I’d rather sell off all the Mutant Rat bits in my inventory as soon as possible.”

“Yea, can’t fault you for that. You know, I’m not sure about the mutie bits, but if you ever need to sell some stuff, or buy materials or schematics on the cheap, I know a few less than officially licensed distributors that would be happy to make your acquaintance. They don’t often have much of the high end stuff, but they got copies of a lot of the basic schema for mechanical and electrical parts, without all the pesky Production Rights Management stuff tacked on. Might be useful to you in the future.”

Bob didn’t really get it, being less than familiar with human —or any— commerce, but he gained a new skill so Vince must have been offering something useful. “Thanks, that could be a big help in the future.”