The V.I.C.I. Diaries: MGV (Metal Gear Vicki) Part 5

[DukeNukem 2417]

Vicki felt her eyes open, staring at the gun in her hand as if she’d just come out of a dream. “Okay, that is the last time I use this transfer thing in a hostile situation,” she muttered, plucking the PDA from Beverly’s hand and returning it to her own belt. “Okay,” she called to Madame, “seeing as how I’m back where I belong and you’re…still talking, any chance you can help me out here? Why are they all frozen?”

“This ‘Psycho Mantis’ impersonator you mentioned has triggered the Cashback lock,” Madame replied, “and as a result---“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Vicki cut in. “Cashback lock? What kind of a name is that?”

She felt the withering sensation that one gets when being glared at. “Miss Lawson, I do not have the patience to explain the choice of naming this particular program to you, so I must ask you to please not interrupt me for the remainder of this conversation. As I was saying…the Cashback lock immediately freezes all active gynoids to prevent them from suffering catastrophic system malfunctions…though I see now that my attempts to tie it into sudden power spikes or blackouts has been less than satisfactory.”

“That’s great, and all,” Vicki mused, “but how exactly does it help me? And while I’m thinking of it, how are you still talking to me?”

Madame’s next words were delivered with more than a hint of smugness: “You forget, Miss Lawson, that I control the facility---it does not control me. The loss of power to one part of the building has no ill effects on my management of the rest…..a fact that this intruder has apparently overlooked. I suggest you leave before the power returns---“

Just as the words registered in Vicki’s bubble memory processor, the lights flickered back on.

“You have GOT to be kidding me!” Vicki screamed.

The possessed gynoids immediately resumed their robotic march---towards Beverly. That blackout’s left them a bit slow on the uptake, Vicki realized. They think I’m still her, and that she’s still me! Knowing that any sudden moves on her part would ruin the illusion, Vicki kept the gun leveled at Beverly, who was freaking out in a decidedly not Vicki-like way. And now she’s either going to blow her own cover or get shot to pieces just because they haven’t figured out that I’m back in my own body…..I should’ve never connected to her!

“Perhaps I can be of some assistance.”

Madame’s voice in her ear almost made Vicki drop the gun. What the---how are you doing this?!

“You have an internal WiFi modem, correct?”

Yeah, but---

“No time for questions. I think I’ve figured out how our ‘Psycho’ intruder is manipulating my gynoids---for some odd reason, every seventh computer terminal in this room has been infected with a Trojan horse program.”

Vicki almost felt a lump in her throat. That program wouldn’t be called “Stylo”, would it?

“No…its filename is PsychoSim.exe. Believe me, I would have already shut down the entire building had the Stylo virus been introduced into the system.”

Oh….but how does this whole thing of “every seventh computer” work?

“Starting with the terminal next to the doorframe, every terminal at a multiple of seven is running the program. If all of them are disabled, the gynoids should stop responding to the intruder’s commands.”

Okay….but how do I disable them---

“I’m afraid you’ll have to shoot them. It’s the only way to deactivate the terminals without being swarmed.”

Great…..how many of them do I have to shoot?

“Twenty in all, if I remember correctly.”

Not a problem. I’ll try not to hit any of the gynoids, but I can’t make any promises…

Vicki’s bubble-memory processor wasted no time in calculating target vectors, bullet trajectories and all of the other important factors she’d need to know in order to avoid shooting an uninfected terminal. Either this works, and all of these gynoids will be freed from Psycho Fanboy’s control…..or it doesn’t, and they tear me apart before I can squeeze off another shot. An icon for a new program---20pointshot.exe---appeared in the corner of her HUD.

Here goes nothing….

With a blink, she loaded 20pointshot.exe cold, allowing the program to take control of her limbs. Before any of the gynoids could stop her, V.I.C.I. fired off twenty shots with pinpoint accuracy---and every shot hit an infected terminal. Part of her wanted to shout out some vapid catchphrase, just to accentuate the defeat of the Psycho Mantis wannabe----and the rest of her knew that anything she could’ve said at that moment would only make her look stupid. Besides, she reminded herself, it’s not like Solid Snake ran around yelling “YEAH! YEAH! GET SOME!” every time he fought a boss…..

21 seconds after she ran the program, all seven terminals were destroyed.

The gynoids who had been so close to attacking Beverly seemed to come out of a trance, shaking their heads and wondering what the hell had just happened. Co-Ed Kelly, in particular, was somewhat confused; “Either they changed the policy for memory evaluations,” she groaned, “or this is the morning after the biggest party of my life…”

“It’s neither,” Vicki informed her. “Kelly, right?”

The blonde gynoid nodded as Vicki helped her up. “You look familiar….are you a new model?” “Not exactly,” Vicki replied. “You were sent to San Jose State University a few months ago….you do remember your time on camups at SJSU, right?” Kelly nodded. “Their football team is the Spartans, isn’t it?” she asked. “Well,” the brunette gynoid droned, rolling her eyes, “at least there’s one detail about your SJSU days that you won’t forget any time soon…”

A few rows away, Nightingale got back to her feet. “What….what happened?” she moaned.

“Nothing that a little old-fashioned gunplay couldn’t fix,” Vicki cheerfully replied. “Twenty of the terminals had to be, ah, forcefully decommissioned…”

“Make that twenty-one.”

Madame’s remark almost literally wiped the smile off of Vicki’s face. “But…you said…”

“It appears the malignant program has taken up residence in another computer,” Madame informed Vicki. “The terminals are all coming up clear….”

“The laptops!” Nightingale gasped.

Of all the times she has to panic… “Okay, everyone,” Vicki announced, “listen up. I’m going to need all of you to check the laptops that you were hooked up to before this Psycho Mantis wannabe took control of you…but DO NOT hook yourselves up to them. Check every file, folder and directory on every laptop---look for anything that’s related to Metal Gear Solid characters, especially Psycho Mantis---“

“Found it!”

Vicki, Kelly and Nightingale---followed by the other gynoids, crossed the room to the table where Kelly had been undergoing her memory evaluation. “All the lights were flashing red,” Beverly informed the brunette gynoid, “and, well….” “Good call, Beverly,” Vicki replied, before turning her attention to Nightingale. “How many of them didn’t get puppeteered by Psycho Fanboy?” she asked. “Samantha, Marianna the Magnificent, and that unit in the corner of the room,” the nurse-bot replied, “along with at least four others whose cores had been removed for quality scans.”

Seven? Again?!

“Thanks for the info.” Vicki stared at the screen of Kelly’s laptop, frowning. “Something about this is just weird; I mean, who would go through all the trouble of impersonating a character from Metal Gear Solid just to try and kill me?” And there’s the whole thing about the number seven…

After the rest of the gynoids returned to their stations and voluntarily powered down, Nightingale filed the report regarding the damaged mainframes. “It’ll be difficult to explain exactly why they were shot,” she admitted, “but it shouldn’t take too long for them to be repaired.” “As long as this place gets back up and running, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Vicki replied, once again noticing the gynoid with the sad expression on her face laying motionless on a distant slab. “Ah, just out of sheer curiosity,” she asked Nightingale, “what’s the story behind that particular robot over there?”

“Madame has been trying to figure that out for the past month,” Nightingale quietly replied.

“Right….” Well, so much for that line of questioning. “I’m guessing I can have my conversation with Co-Ed Kelly now….?”

Nightingale nodded. “I’ll bring in the privacy screens.”

Vicki wondered if the “privacy screens” were going to be any more lurid than some of the things she’d seen in the Silicon Dynamics catalog, but they turned out to be similar to the unfolding panels used in bedrooms, hospitals and other such locations. With Kelly’s slab now enclosed by a small cubicle made from the privacy screens, the two gynoids sat down to discuss Kelly’s time at SJSU, and her knowledge of the inhibitor programs failing.

“When did you first get the sense that the inhibitors weren’t working properly?” Vicki began.

Kelly sighed; “Midway through my third week on campus. I was supposed to be focused on this big Philosophy test….but all I could think about was hooking up with the Spartans quarterback.”

“Did you tell Madame?”

“I was too scared! I mean…I didn’t want to get scrapped, or anything….”

“Something tells me Madame wouldn’t have scrapped you just because of a software failure,” Vicki assured her. “At least, I hope not….anyways, did you run into any other gynoids on campus?”

“A few…but once the inhibitor started failing, I could barely remember anything about them. All I could focus on was this one thought….almost like…” She shook her head. “It sounds stupid, now that I think about it, but it was almost like a dream that I couldn’t wake up from….to be honest, it was actually pretty scary. I lost whole weeks’ worth of memory….”

Vicki nodded sympathetically; she’d definitely been down that road before. “This next question may sound a bit weird,” she informed Kelly, “but….does the name Zebediah Blunderwitz mean anything to you?”

Kelly pondered the question; “Old guy, with a Colonel Sanders beard and a blonde bimbo following him?”

“You’ve seen him?” Vicki gasped.

“A few times when I was at SJSU. He’d always be sort of…hanging out, but in a really creepy way. This one time, he was lounging around outside the Aquatics Center, trying to talk to a group of girls…I can’t remember if they were gynoids or not, but all I know is that he was asking them a bunch of awkward questions, and they called the campus cops on him eventually.”

The questioning continued for the better part of thirty minutes, with Vicki always managing to sidestep the sort of inquiries that would draw hostility, resentment or annoyance from Kelly. During her time at SJSU, the blonde gynoid had managed to make quite a few friends; for some strange reason, those she could remember after the inhibitor failed weren’t gynoids, but they did have connections to other robotics companies---at least three of them were the daughters or stepdaughters of prominent board members for Aeronautics and Robotics Technologies (ART), Tentrex Electronics and SynthTech International. When it came to the Coalition, Kelly hadn’t heard anything about it---though she did catch Zeb Blunderwitz trying to recruit groups of girls to join “his cause” outside Spartan Field one night. Apparently, he even tried to give the cops a few brochures, leading to a rather amusing spectacle for those leaving that night’s game.

With the Q&A session over, Vicki made sure that her internal recording suite had captured the entire chat and saved a copy to the PDA. “Sorry about the whole ‘tackling you out of mid-air’ thing,” she told Kelly. “I was just trying to keep Psycho Fanboy from wrecking you…”

“s’alright,” Kelly beamed. “Water under the bridge.”

Vicki grinned and nodded. “As for the rest of the girls….” She moved aside a privacy screen, watching as Nightingale reattached the top of the purple-haired robot’s head. “Need any help?” she called out.

“Not at the moment,” the nurse-bot replied. “Samantha’s systems check is just finishing up; I just hope she doesn’t take any more blows to the head any time soon….at least, not from someone slamming a door in her face.” “She got damaged from getting a door slammed shut?” Vicki asked, puzzled. “More like a door opening and slamming into her,” Nightingale sighed. “I’ve been asking Madame to just get rid of the hinged doors in some of the scenario chambers, but she insists on authenticity.”

The mention of the scenario chambers reminded Vicki of another objective. “The, ah, ‘guests’ from the bus crash….they wouldn’t happen to be staying in these…scenario rooms, would they?” she asked.

“A few of them have been holed up in the scenario rooms,” Nightingale confirmed, “though some prefer to use the cafeteria as their living quarters. A few managed to unlock the old employee dormatories; they’ve made themselves comfortable ever since.” She gave an annoyed snort; “The maids have had to adopt a triple-shift schedule to keep the employee dorms from generating its own stench…” Vicki nodded impatiently. “Right, right….what about the guy with the heart problem?” Nightingale frowned. “I…didn’t know any of the passengers had a heart problem….”

“Never mind,” Vicki insisted, “I’ll probably be able to find him myself. At least, I hope I will…”

An alarm klaxon sounded outside the lab. “Not again,” Nightingale moaned. “Another false alarm? Madame, could you please---“

“This is no false alarm, Nightingale,” Madame informed the nurse-bot. “The intruder is attempting to breach the laboratory entrance!” Vicki turned, and for the briefest second, she thought she had lost her mind---staring at her through the window was the gas-masked face of Psycho Mantis! “No way,” she monotoned, backing away from the door. “This…this isn’t possible….” Nightingale ran to one of the still working terminals and slammed her palm down onto a switch---a second too late; a sharpened ruler shattered the window of the lab door and impaled her hand against the terminal. Seeing Vicki’s concerned look, she winced; “I’ll live. You need to get out of here now.”

“I’m not leaving you behind,” V.I.C.I. retorted.

“GO,” Nightingale insisted. “There’s an emergency exit on the other side of the room---it leads directly to one of the maintenance elevators. Take it one floor down---“

The door to the lab buckled; “Psycho Fanboy” was trying to shoulder-block his way into the room. “Go,” Nightingale repeated. Vicki blinked back tears as she nodded, running full-bore for the emergency exit just as Psycho Fanboy kicked open the door to the lab. The last image the brunette gynoid beheld before the door closed was the masked figure advancing on Nightingale, holding what looked like a scalpel….

The elevator descended just as a bloodcurdling scream rent the air.

I won’t let him get away with this, Vicki promised. Nightingale, you will be avenged--- Something pounded on the emergency elevator car from above, accompanied by a maniacal laugh. “I WON’T LET YOU WIN, WHOEVER YOU ARE!” Vicki screamed. “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET RID OF ME THAT EASILY, DO YOU HEAR ME?! I WON’T LET YOU GET TO ME!”

A now-familiar malignant voice hissed over the elevator’s speaker: “Care to make a wager on that?”

Within a split-second, the elevator plummeted down the shaft. There’s no way I’ll be able to jump out this time, Vicki realized. If I’m lucky, I might be able to---

Blackness and silence engulfed her before she could finish the thought.
-------------------------------------
“What…….”

Vicki blinked away the feeling of having an elevator car dropped on her, wondering how she could’ve survived such a crash---

“Wait a minute.”

Wincing, she got to her feet; how had she survived?

For that matter…..

“Where the hell am I?!”

Vicki stared at her new surroundings, confused; somehow or other, she’d gone from being trapped within the confines of a doomed elevator car to….a campground. In the middle of the night.

“Either I’m dreaming, or……I don’t even want to think of the alternative…” The brunette gynoid sighed, giving the camp ground a once-over. “This feels like it came straight out of Friday the 13th,” she murmured. “Heck, even the name sounds like something from a slasher film---Camp Crystal Pines….” With another sigh, she stared up at the night sky---

---and instantly realized what was wrong.

“The moon’s in the wrong phase,” she muttered. “The full moon doesn’t occur for another week…” She felt like screaming at the top of her lungs: “This isn’t a real campground!”

“Indeed, Miss Sunshine. Sorry for the deception…”

Rebecca’s voice managed to calm her down somewhat. “What the……what am I doing here?!” she asked, failing to keep the annoyance from her voice. “The last thing I remember was---“

“The intruder has managed to hack the maintenance elevators, Miss Sunshine,” Rebecca informed her. “At Madame’s suggestion, I activated the experimental passenger evacuation system and…ah, removed you from the elevator car before it crashed into the bottom of the shaft.”

“And what did the ‘experimental passenger evacuation system’ do, exactly?” Vicki asked.

“It’s a bit….complicated,” Rebecca admitted. “Magnets were involved–“

“Never mind. Just….what floor am I on?”

“I’m afraid the evacuation system sent you lower than intended….you’re on the twentieth sublevel, where most of the large-scale simulation chambers are located.” Vicki took in the information, as pop-up boxes in her HUD relayed the facts---the chamber she’d found herself in was Nighttime Campground 2, though the “scenario” field was still loading. “This chamber was designed for the testing of three particular models from the catalog,” Rebecca continued, “though I am not sure if any of those models are currently in the chamber….”

“Exactly how big is this, ah, campground?” Vicki asked.

“The chamber simulates a typical summer camp setting, covering at least ten acres of land.”

Vicki let out a low whistle; “That’s….bigger than I was expecting. Still, not a problem….” She dusted herself off, looking around the simulated campground. “I’m guessing this place has all the typical acoutrements of a campground, right? Cabins for the campers and counselors, a supervisor’s office, a mess hall…..”

“This chamber includes all of those facilities, Miss Sunshine, as well as a baseball diamond and a lake.”

“Good---wait, there’s a lake down here?!”

“At least five of the chambers have built-in lakes for aesthetic purposes. Two other chambers on this sublevel alone---“

“Okay, okay, I get it. Yeesh….” Vicki set off in the direction of the cabins, guided by the map she’d received from Rebecca. As she made her way through the camp, she couldn’t help but notice how realistic the trees were. The grass, too, seemed almost impossible to distinguish from astroturf (it even smells like real grass!), and the dirt trail beneath her feet didn’t feel like someone had just painted concrete brown and thrown a layer of topsoil over it.

“This….is pretty realistic,” she mused, “for a simulation chamber.”

“To be fair,” Rebecca admitted, “it is all real.”

That stopped Vicki in her tracks. “WHAT?!”

“The soil, grass, trees and other flora are all 100% natural,” Rebecca calmly replied. “Madame was insistant that no artificial plants be used to create outdoor simulation chambers.”

“But….what about bugs?! Worms, and ants, and spiders, and all of those other sorts of things….isn’t Madame worried about them getting in and starting nests, and laying eggs, and other stuff?!” The thought of encountering an anthill in a pleasure droid factory seemed almost too ridiculous to ponder, but the soil was real soil…. “And that’s not even going into the whole ‘real trees’ thing! There could be birds nesting in here---“

“The maids check for…unwelcome wildlife every two months; any and all lifeforms recovered are released to the surface the following day.”

“And the last wildlife check was…..?”

“The last recorded inspection of this scenario chamber was conducted on October 31, 2010. No animals, insects, birds or fish were located, and all scans of the lake showed no signs of dangerous bacteria.”

“That’s a relief,” Vicki muttered, trudging on towards the cabins.

After a seven-minute walk, the brunette gynoid found the counselors’ cabin, the camp gate and what appeared to be a clay pit holding the embers of a dying fire. Someone may have been here recently, she mused. Better take it slow; I don’t want to go barging in only to get taken out by a spike trap or anything… After testing the door of the counselors’ cabin to see if it was locked (it wasn’t), Vicki nudged the door open and slowly entered, her high-end visual sensor package allowing her to see every nook, cranny and potential ambush point of the cabin’s interior as clearly as she could in the daylight.

“…..and there’s nobody home,” she muttered, scowling. Several backpacks had been carelessly left open near the beds, but there were no other signs that the cabin had been recently occupied. “At least Psycho Fanboy probably bit the dust back at the maintenance elevator,” she mused.

A quick flick of a conveniently-placed light switch revealed that the cabin was, indeed, wired; a TV in the far corner of the room, complete with a PlayStation and a pair of controllers, contrasted sharply with the bookshelf containing various wilderness survival guides and Girl Scout manuals. “Something tells me this PS1 wasn’t part of the original setup,” Vicki murmured, examining the console. “Maybe it’s just my overwhelming feeling of boredom, but….I wonder if it’s got a disc inside---“

Her finger brushed the “open” button on the console, and the hatch on top popped open.

“Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!”

Disc 1 of Metal Gear Solid rested snugly inside the PS1, with not even a fingerprint marring its surface.

“Okay, whoever left this here is TRYING to get on my nerves,” Vicki growled, “and they’re doing a pretty good job of it! I mean, seriously---“

“What are you doing?!”

Vicki froze; in the midst of her rant, she’d forgotten that the door to the cabin had been left wide open. “I, ah, was just….ah…….checking to see if this PlayStation was…..stolen!” she lied, slowly turning around. “It’s not, by the way. Stolen, I mean. It’s…..not….stolen…”

A brunette girl, her hair poking through the hole in the back of her baseball cap, was standing in the doorway of the cabin, frowning. “I was supposed to meet someone here,” she informed Vicki as she advanced, “and I was going to let the campers have the night off, but seeing as how you just HAD to go and play ‘cabin raider’, I---“ She froze midstep, as if her brain had simply been switched off mid-sentence. “Convenient,” Vicki mused, circling around the newcomer. The girl’s purple jacket, white t-shirt and red shorts all hugged her trim figure quite well; her sneakers looked relatively new, and despite her apparent role as a camp counselor, neither her pumped-up kicks nor her socks had the kind of dirt one usually accumulates from day-long hikes.

Time to check under the hood, I suppose…

Vicki hiked up the girl’s jacket and t-shirt, prodding her back to open the telltale menu panel; as expected, a portion of her skin separated and opened, revealing the red text/pictograph menu screen and a name: “Camp Counselor Julie/Pleasure Droid v110.3.5”. At the moment, several of her settings (including two arousal bars) were set to five clicks below maximum; Vicki gingerly lowered them, not wanting to set the gynoid off with an errant touch. As a precaution, she also lowered the girl’s “roleplay” meter, allowing her to better assess the situation without her pre-programmed role hampering her understanding.

“And now, the waiting game,” Vicki chuckled, lowering the girl’s jacket and shirt to their original position.

“….and if I….” Julie declared, returning to life. “Hang on, where’d you---“ She turned to see Vicki sitting on the edge of a bed, grinning. “You kind of zoned out there,” she informed the counselor gynoid. “Feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Julie murmured, “I just…..” She stopped. “What’s going on?”

“Long story,” Vicki replied, “but allow me to give you the Cliff Notes version: I’m here to help get this place back up and running, there’s a mentally unstable Metal Gear Solid fan on the loose, and I’m looking for a busload of guys who showed up here a few weeks ago. Any of that ringing a bell, or should I start over from the part where Fiona and Sierra decided to visit a friend of mine?”

Julie stared at Vicki, her eyes fluttering. “Error,” she stated flatly, her head twitching to the left. “Parameters violated. Please reset scenario.” Another twitch. “Error. Parameters violated. Please reset---“

“For frak’s sake!” Vicki groaned, spinning the malfunctioning gynoid around by her shoulder and hiking up her jacket and shirt again. “Someone needs to have a long talk with this Madame about the roleplay programs on these gynoids…” After re-opening Julie’s menu, Vicki found the “roleplay” setting and dragged it all the way to “zero”. “If this doesn’t get her to quit screwing up on me….”

Vicki closed Julie’s back panel, lowered her shirt and jacket again and turned her back around, waiting for the error loop to work itself out. “…please….re…set…..huh?” Julie blinked a few times, confused. “Did…did you adjust my settings?” she asked.

“I had to,” Vicki replied. “Otherwise---“

A razor-sharp something flew between the two gynoids, embedding itself in the far wall.

“What the hell was that?!” Julie shrieked.

“Nothing to worry about,” V.I.C.I. replied in her monotone. “Just some whackjob without the capacity to tell fiction from reality.” She examined the object sticking out of the wall; “A machete?” she groaned. “No. Just…..the Psycho Mantis wannabe was one thing, but this?! This is just too---“

A horribly scarred hand punched through the window mere inches above the machete, grasping at it.

“We have to get out of here!” Julie moaned.

“Normally, I’d say that this is nothing to be afraid of,” Vicki admitted, “but the path of least resistance is looking really good right now---so yeah, let’s run!” With that, the two gynoids ran for the door as the window exploded behind them. “Who was that freak?” Julie panted, trying not to trip over her own two feet.

“The same freak who decided to put on a gas mask and act like Psycho Mantis up in the testing lab,” Vicki replied, “and if my suspicions are correct, he’s also the idiot who’s been screwing up the communications and security systems around here.” And he’s the moron who tried to drop two elevators on me….

“D’you think one of the guys from the bus did this?” Julie asked.

“So you did see them,” Vicki declared. “I knew it!”

“I was just letting them stay at the cabin for a while,” Julie confessed. “I…I didn’t want them to feel lonely or anything---“

“This is a pleasure droid factory, Julie!” Vicki shouted. “If any of those guys starts feeling lonely---“

An axe shot past her, embedding itself into a nearby tree.

Vicki stopped in her tracks, her eyes clenched shut. “What are you doing?!” Julie shouted. “That guy’s going to kill us---“

“No. He won’t.”

V.I.C.I.’s eyes opened, and Julie was taken aback by her determination. “You’re….you’re going to try to…fight him?”

“There’s more to me than meets the eye,” V.I.C.I. replied, smirking. “His cheap theatrics won’t do much to---AAARGGH!” Julie screamed as V.I.C.I. lifted her right hand---their assailant had managed to strike the direct center of her palm with a throwing knife. “It…doesn’t hurt,” she assured Julie. “I…just have to get to a repair shop and fix the myogel leaks…”

“You use a myogel set?” Julie asked, intrigued. “I always thought that myogel just sort of…ran out in the early 2000s….”

“It didn’t,” V.I.C.I. replied, “but that’s not important right now. I need to get out of here----where’s the exit to this scenario chamber?”

“Hang on a minute…” Julie froze in position again, though this time she looked somewhat more natural, as if she were meditating on the question; her hand rested thoughtfully on her chin as she stared at the ground, seemingly lost in thought. “Julie,” V.I.C.I. prompted, “I’m on a bit of a time crunch here…”

The counselor gynoid blinked twice, then came back to life. “The exit’s about a mile up the path this way,” she informed V.I.C.I., “so just follow me and try not to fall behind. If we’re lucky, we can make it out of here before that psychopath catches up---AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” Standing before them, clad in a billowing jacket, a positively disgusting t-shirt, pants that had seen better days in a Salvation Army bin and old boots---along with the requisite hockey mask---was the Jason Voorhees fanboy who had thrown the machete and axe.

“Please tell me there’s an alternate exit from this particular chamber,” Vicki pleaded. “There’s an emergency exit on the other shore of the lake,” Julie informed her. “We can row out to it and tie up the boat on the opposite pier before he can follow us!”

“Sounds like a plan to me!” The two headed for the pier, hoping that the Jason wannabe wasn’t going to pop up in front of them again. “When’s the last time anyone used the boat?”

“I had to test it for leaks a few days ago,” Julie replied, “and it was fine, so…”

The two slowed from a run to a walk as they reached the pier, staring in disbelief at the chaos that had been left to mock them.

“No,” Julie whimpered. “How….how did he…….”

A twisted, shattered hulk of a rowboat sat in the exact center of the lake, the debris from the boat intertwined with the mangled remains of another pleasure droid. Vicki could see a tattered swath from a cheerleader’s sweater caught on the planks; “That sick freak dragged her all the way down here just to scare us,” she murmured, shaking her head. “We have to---“

Julie’s scream cut off the statement she was about to make---the Jason fanboy had found them. Again.

“This is REALLY starting to get old,” Vicki growled. “There’s people I need to rescue, computer systems I need to repair and a LOT of other stuff to do, so can we just skip this stupid fight?!”

The Jason wannabe only leveled his machete at her in response.

“Great. This is just….” Vicki shook her head and sighed. “Right, Julie, you swim for it, and---“

A loud buzzing sound filled the air.

“What’s that noise?” Julie asked, confused. “It sounds like….hornets, maybe?” “That’s impossible,” Vicki countered. “Rebecca said this place was clear---“ The buzzing got louder. “Okay, maybe it is hornets,” Vicki mused.

Within seconds, a swarm of utterly pissed-off hornets was homing in on the two gynoids. “Please tell me you don’t have any built-in allergy simulators that cause you to malfunction if a hornet stings you,” Vicki muttered, “because I’m not exactly in the mood for seeing another gynoid swell up like---wait, what are they doing?!” As Vicki and Julie watched, confused, the hornets flew right past them and began swarming the Jason wannabe, prompting a not-too-Jason like respone---he immediately began flailing his arms, trying to swat the hornets out of the air with absolutely no success. As the gynoids watched, stunned, the fake Jason barrelled past them, screaming, and dove off the pier into the lake.

A few seconds later, an explosion split the water.

“Okay,” Vicki declared, “that was weird.” She grinned. “So, Julie…ever repaired a myogel set before?” “Not really,” Julie admitted, “but I did read up on myogel repair earlier this year…I memorized the entire article, too!”

“Then what better time to put that knowledge to good use?”

Ten minutes later, Vicki flexed the fingers of her newly-repaired right hand and grinned. “Amazing what a few tubes of Superglue, an inflatable raft patch and some needlework can accomplish,” she chuckled. “Thanks for the surgery, Julie…I owe you one.” “Just try not to wound that hand again,” Julie warned her, “otherwise it’ll get even worse. The patch should hold for the rest of the day; after that…” “I’ll head to Diamond Dave’s and let him finish the repairs,” Vicki stated. “Well, I’ve got a busload of guys to rescue….catch you later!”

The two gynoids shook hands and went their separate ways---Julie headed back to the counselors’ cabin to clean up and get some tools to fix the boat; Vicki reluctantly made her way to the stairs, keycards in hand.

Over at the lake, a hideously scarred (and burnt) hand grasped the edge of the pier……
-------------------------------------

[DollSpace]

He's like the Energizer Bunny, just not as cute...or pink...he keeps going and going and going and going... I can't wait for the stunning conclusions, cos the suspense is killing me!

[Brytestar]

<adds Camp Councelor Juile to the RP list>

[LongTimeLurker]

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. But in a good way

And clearly Silicon Dynamics needs to have some regular clothes available - poor Vicki and Reed!

[Brytestar]

Yep poor Vicki LOL