xp_logs | Waking, and smashing! (Reply)

In the rooms, Forge, Crystal and Doug all experience various degrees of Milan's technological mayhem. Doug does not react well. In fact, Doug reacts with smashing.

"Tom Cruise is so in love with Katie...at least all his people tell him so..." Doug's tuneful tenor voice echoed through his bathroom as he scrubbed at himself. He'd thought about hitting the gym himself with Kyle and Laurie, but given how infrequently he seemed to get to sleep in these days, and the opportunity to have the room and bathroom to himself was too good to pass up. The multi-jet shower maintained temperature without the need to stand like a safecracker twisting a knob back and forth, and had multiple voice-activated nozzle modes. It was decadent in the extreme.

In the adjoining suite, Forge was enjoying another form of decadence, reclining on the larger-than-king-size bed. Emperor size? Pharaoh size? Khan-sized? he wondered, rolling over to throw an arm over his girlfriend. Frowning as his arm hit soft mattress, he rolled over three more times before managing to find Crystal amongst the twenty-four (he didn't sleep much, so he had counted them) pillows.

"S'morning," he mumbled, nuzzling her blonde hair before sitting up. "I think. Computer?"

"Yes, John Henry Forge?" the voice-activated system replied in a gentle tenor. Forge smiled at the (to his mind) quaint little affectations the designers of the hotel had put into their programs.

"Windows to thirty percent transparency. What's the weather like?" he asked as he scratched at his cheeks, a day or so overdue for a shave.

"The weather is sunny, with a current exterior temperature of eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit."

"What would happen, I wonder," Crystal queried in a half-mumble, "if you asked it to inform you of the temperature inside this suite and the temperature were to immediately change, then be altered again right after that, and possibly drop or rise once more?"

"Grouchypants," Forge said with a grin as he headed for the spacious bathroom.

A dispenser deposited a precise amount of the shampoo Doug had preset into his hands, and he scrubbed at his scalp, closing his eyes as he hummed. Naturally, that moment when he was effectively blind was when the shower went haywire. Every nozzle surrounding him went to high blast, pummeling him with water. "Computer, what the-mmmrrrphlkkglgl..." his question cut off as he shifted and one of the sprays went straight down his throat.

He dashed at his eyes to try and get the shampoo out of them, and his heart raced with a surge of adrenalin. ~Drowning in the dark, hands thumping feebly against the vat he was trapped inside...~ He lunged blindly, and somehow hit the door, falling outward to his knees on the bath rug as water spilled around him. He retched, trying to clear his windpipe.

"What. The. HELL," he said, panting for breath.

In the adjoining suite, Forge peered into the mirror as he dragged a razor over his cheeks, clearing away the annoying "travel stubble" that long plane flights and a day or so adjusting to time differences tended to produce. The hot water in the sink was steaming, but the mirror was fog-free (hot water pipes behind the mirror equalize temperature preventing condensation, process developed in 1903) and he peered into his own reflection.

"You're a handsome devil," he murmured to himself. "What's your--"

At that moment, the lights dimmed as if in a brownout, and a loud screech came from the embedded speakers in the room.

"10011011000101...he110, j0hnhenryf0rge... g00d m0rn1ng..."

Forge grabbed a heated towel and wiped the rest of the shaving cream off his face, stomping back out into the main suite. "Computer's going haywire," he announced to Crystal as he tapped at one of the touch-sensitive access panels. "Computer," he commanded, "run diagnostic report." No response. "Computer, contact front desk. Contact technical support." Still no response.

"Access denied." "Access denied." "Access denied." "Access denied."

The message scrolled across every screen in both rooms, the font growing in size from a tiny scrolling message to letters that filled the screens top to bottom, and then shrinking back down, only to repeat again.

After the fourth or fifth loop of text, the speakers began emitting a sharp staccato voice, tinny and electronically modified, but unmistakable female. "Access denied. You will not stop me. Do not interfere. Resistance will... " It cut off with loud static before completing the threat, and began repeating the message.

In Russian.

With each loop of text on the screen, the computerized warning voice switched languages, from English to Russian and back, repeating loudly and endlessly.

Doug had managed to get to his feet and wrap a towel around his waist by the time the computer system began flashing and speaking its message. The panic that had already gripped his hind brain tightened, and he staggered out through the bedroom and into the sitting room of the suite. She was still alive. She was STILL ALIVE, and she had found him again. A loud buzzing filled his ears as he clutched at his head. At first, he thought it was the panic. Then he realized it was coming from the speakers. It didn't sound quite right for electronic feedback, though. In fact, the droning sounded a lot more like...

Bees.

"That man is MADE of BEES," Doug repeated, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice.

It was like the perfect melding of Doug's deepest most visceral fears, and his brain completely switched off as a red haze came over his vision. With an inarticulate scream, he snatched up one of the chairs and hurled it at a speaker. Grabbing another, he smashed it against the video screen that was still scrolling with text. He smashed it again and again, screaming himself hoarse.

Forge heard the smashing, even through the wall. Giving a quick panicked look to Crystal, he threw open the door to their suite and ran next door, hammering on the door to the suite the other three travellers were sharing. "Hey! What the hell's going on?" he called.

There was a wild look in Doug's eyes as he whirled to confront the interloper. He still gripped the chair and nearly swung it around until he recognized Forge. "That Russian bitch is HERE," he snarled with an expression that would have looked more in place on Logan's face rather than his. "She's here, she's still alive, and I'm going to damn well kill her for GOOD this time."

"What? What in the hell are you talking about?" Forge asked. "Ignatova? That's crazy. Look, something's going wrong with the systems here. I'm going to try and get in touch with the IT people and get it fixed. Just... put the damn chair down, Doug."

"The computer's talking in Russian about not stopping her, and she tried to DROWN me in the goddamn shower. It's HER!" Doug screamed, riding the razor's edge of completely losing himself in panic.

"I'm going to frickin' throttle you out here if you don't calm the fuck down, Doug," Forge said as he stepped into the room. "Get your head on straight. Not everything is some kind of attack from your technopathic boogeywoman. And for God's sake, put some pants on, man."

"What is going on in here?" Crystal asked, having followed Forge after quickly slipping into a thin robe. "Why is Doug yelling? What 'boogeywoman'? Are Laurie and Kyle all right?" There didn't seem to be anything to indicate why Doug was in such a state. The computer system was malfunctioning, but that didn't explain Doug's behavior.

Doug looked wild-eyed at Crystal, limbs still dripping slightly with the remnants of his shower. "The computers are going haywire, and SOMEONE tried to drown me in the shower." He didn't buy Forge's theory that it was a harmless glitch. There was a maliciousness behind things. "And the computer's been talking in Russian about how we can't stop it, and..." He turned and smashed the chair into another speaker in a shower of sparks. "...piping goddamn BEE noise through my speakers!"

Forge walked across the room, grabbing the chair in his hand, metal fingers around the splintering wood, and yanked it out of Doug's grasp. Hooking one foot behind Doug's, he pushed at the linguist's chest with his other hand, knocking him back into the wall. "Calm down, Doug," he ordered. "If this is more than just computer error, we're going to need your brain to help us figure it out, and you're no good to me if you're hysterical. Now, man the fuck up and get dressed. Where are Kyle and Laurie?"

"Forge! Is that really necessary?" Crystal stood nearby, ready to separate the two men, or to keep possible violence from occurring between them. "Doug," and she now spoke calmly, "what do you mean by saying that someone attempted to drown you in the shower? Was someone actually in the shower with you?"

Forge had taken Doug by surprise, but he recovered quickly, he slapped Forge's flesh hand away and ducked out from under the pressure of the metal one. Getting backed into a corner was NOT helping, and he shouldered the inventor aside, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. "No, there is someone controlling the system. The shower flooded, and the speakers and screens keep saying the same thing over and over and over," he told Crystal, enunciating with the slow diction of someone attempting to keep iron control over their fear and only barely succeeding.

"Okay, so the system's been hacked. A place like this has to have all sorts of network vulnerabilities - it's just too big to secure perfectly." Forge paced back and forth, then snapped his fingers, oblivious to Doug's barely-contained rage. "I'll go talk to the IT folks, see if there's a physical problem with their servers. Doug, see if you can get access from here. Look, I'm sure it's not meat-computer lady, okay? Because our suite was going a little nuts too. It's probably just a glitch."

He stopped in his tracks, looking around the suite. "Wait, where the hell are Kyle and Laurie?" He picked up his phone, frowning at the display. "That's weird, I can't get a signal. There wasn't any interference last night..."

"You already asked that, Forge," Crystal reminded him, then proceeded to do a quick check of the other rooms in the shared suite, hoping that the other two members of their group were not in the suite. "Doug," Crystal began to ask, "where are Laurie and..." a knock on the door stopped her mid-sentence, and the door swung open.