Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Space Kudzu

This time, I played as the lowly (but important) Janitor. I put on my cleaning suit, galoshes, grabbed my mop and bucket, some cleaning grenades and my cleaning spritzer.

The Janitors Closet

I set off to see what I could find, patrolling the corridors of Space Station 13 to do my duty for the greater good. Everyone has a part to play, and this was mine. I decided to go where all the action usually takes place, with the biggest foot traffic - the medbay.

Sure enough, on the floor were some blood splatters. It's not my job to ask questions, just to clean it up. I put down my wet-floor sign and mopped it all up. To be on the safe side (and to have a bit of fun), I cleaned up some other floor tiles nearby. Wet floor doesn't show up in the game, but if you're running (by default) and you'll slip and fall over, having to wait a few seconds before you can get up. That's why it's important to put down the sign. Then if anyone shouts at you (like they did to me), you calmly point out the wet floor sign and tell them to be more careful next time (as condescending as possible).

I had a call over the intercom for cleanup inside the med labs so I waited for a doctor to let me in and cleaned up that mess too. As I was cleaning up that blood, I had another call from the barman. I had to wait a few minutes before another doctor was around to let me out (not having access) and I headed over to the bar. On my way over, there's an announcement of a Space Kudzu infestation. Probably the botanists experimenting. As I'm walking to the bar, I see the kudzu and go to investigate. It doesn't look too bad and I try spritzer against it and my mop, neither with affect, so I go on my way.

In the bar, there's vomit all over the place. One of the assistants has been drinking too much and has puked his guts up all over. I pull the pin on my cleaning grenade and lob it in. Seconds later, the bar is sparkling clean. The barman thanks me and I celebrate with a glass of wine. Not too much though, I'm on the job.

I get talking to a chemist who's telling me about LSD and we notice the kudzu has spread into the bar. The barman starts raving about "the idiot who let the kudzu in" and we abandon the bar for the corridor. The kudzu, it turns out, spreads extremely rapidly and forms an impenetrable wall when it gets to a certain thickness. It can be contained with flamethrowers and welding torches (of which I have neither, nor have access to) and we're forced to retreat. The station is on high alert with all the engine technicians combating the infestation. They fight and fight it, but it's spread too much. The bar has been taken over. "My bar!" The barman screams. "My bucket" I scream as it gets left in the bar.

A couple of us are let into the brig and we hold up there. The AI locks down all the fire doors and we're trapped. It's like something out of a disaster movie. We know we're not the only survivors, others are held up in the engineering department and others in the med labs. We communicate over the intercom, trying to formulate a plan. We move further into the brig, to the prisoner shuttle dock. A couple of the prison guards go back out to try to call the prisoner shuttle. But we never see them again. Now it's just me and the barman, neither of us with an access card to get out (not that we'd have anywhere to run to).

Notice the calls in the chat log!

The barman puts a call for help over the radio and the captain answers us. He's got the most access on the ship and should be one of the most knowledgeable about ways of getting us out of this mess. The next thing we know he space walks to us and uses the docking doors to get into where we are. He opens up a teleporter hole and we run through - we're saved!

Only to find ourselves on the bridge. Turns out, a hand-teleporter requires a "home" location and can only teleport us to that place. There are a few others in here with us and we come to find out that we're holed up here too. At least we're with some resoureful people now - not just a janitor and a barman!

The captain declares that he's going out again, trying to get to the escape shuttle (which has just been called). He'll set that as his home location and come back to save us. The escape shuttle will dock in 8 minutes so we're on a deadline.

Trapped on the bridge, waiting for the captain

A few minutes pass and my fellow survivors start to get worried; "He's never coming back".

8 minutes later, the shuttle arrives and we now have 3 minutes to get on it with still no sign of the captain. It's about this time that the technician and the detective with us come up with a way of getting through the blast doors and fight back the kudzu.

The blast doors are open - time to escape!

I can only assume the technician had some sort of infinite welding tool or something and he starts to create a tunnel through the thick kudzu. It's hilarious to see us all following behind, racing for the shuttle docking bay.

The Kudzu Tunnel

Unfortunately, we weren't quick enough. We get a message that the shuttle had taken off without us. Forever trapped in a decaying space station, endlessly floating through space (a.k.a the game had ended).

1 comment:

  1. I believe I was the barman in that, Matt Droid. I was one of them in any case. This was one of the better situations which had happened aboard Space Station 13 that I have experienced. It's fun to get such nostalgic memories revived so thanks for writing the blog, it was a fun thing to read.

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