Star Trek: Starbase 777

A large complex full of various sporting and gym equipment, courts for various sports, and a spa section for self-care. There was even a golf course and a giant hover-coaster! Seriously, this room was huge. Plenty of automatons in uniform, too. One approached, joints squeaking and squelching as it walked, gunked up with cheese. It had a name tag that says 'chiropractor-bot. "Would you try our Health And Wellness Package?" Then it lunged toward Essen!

6

5

7

Essen followed the group, not really paying attention as she wanted to ensure she stayed with the group. In noticing the bot lunge towards her, she did her best to dodge, knowing that shooting the bot would likely spread the spores... 🎲1

Rolled: 1d6

[1] ➜ 1

Maggie gasped out as she saw the bot rush towards the team. She grabbed her phaser and shot. “Watch out!” 🎲6

Rolled: 1d6

[6] ➜ 6

2

Saren proceeded to have a normal reaction to an entity approaching your general direction mach speed with threats of advertising their services - he aimed his phaser and fired. 🎲1

Rolled: 1d6

[1] ➜ 1

One. Flop roll. The chiropractor-bot grabbed Essen's body and Twimsted it unnaturally. Luckily for her, Maggie blasted it with such precision that it crackled and died before Saren's shot even went off, saving Essen from life as a pretzel.

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4

5

"AAAAGH---!" Essen exclaimed in pain, feeling her body twist, before she fell rather unceremoniously to the ground... Panting heavily...

"Easy, Lieutenant." The ACMO was on her faster than... well, a cartoon mouse to cheese, hoverchair speeeeding over. "Are you alright?"

Essen's back, having not been twisted as far as the robot intended, actually felt kind of good after the initial pain.

5

Huffff. Saren shook his head, watching one of the Medical officers zoom past him, before turning towards Allan: "Let's go have a good look at this bot?.."

After a second... Essen's panting stopped. Once it was over... She looked up to Ivi... "I... I feel great! How...?" As she looked up to the bot. "Ohhhhh, it's a chiropractor bot! Makes sense." She hopped up, almost losing her balance-- "WhoOOAA!" And then found it. "Well! That could have been way worse. Hey, at least I feel less back strain now!"

"I do not advise relying on any more of these bots to help your back pain," the text to speech answered, while Iviaan let out a soft huff that was almost a laugh. "You'll be alright, at least."

"Let's," Allan nodded to Saren, going over to the bot and giving it a good scan, checking that it wasn't like... an overheating time bomb or anything first before he'd try to inspect it any further.

"Heh, agreed, sir," Essen said, finally gaining her balance. She was curious too. "Mind if I also take a look, Allan? I'm kind of curious. That bot is powerful. Maybe a little too powerful."

Meanwhile Saren set out to scan the mess that overwhelmed the bot, first to make sure that it was the same fungal-dairy nightmare as the one they saw in the hall.

Suddenly, another voice. "You're our 100th health and wellness package! Would you like to try our customer?" The spa assistance drone dragged Maggie into the air toward the Jacuzzi. Revenge for its fallen friend!

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5

“HELP HELP HELP ALLAN I’LL UNMUTE YOU!” She screamed out in sheer terror.

4

This time Essen had no hesitation. If the bots were all like this, then there had to be phasers involved. "Oh no you don't," Essen said to the robot, pulling out her phaser and aiming to fire! 🎲1

Rolled: 1d6

[1] ➜ 1

3

14:53

Well fuck.

Wha-- "Oh would you cut this out?!" hopefully this will be a better shot..! 🎲6

Rolled: 1d6

[6] ➜ 6

14:54

LET'S FUCKING GO!

5

"Actually, it's be just a bit more helpful if you could keep your phaser at the ready while I'm looking at it," which meant, also, that he was a little too occupied with the bot to also have his phaser out, and was therefore more susceptible to being attacked by one. "Wh-" was the most of his response when he heard what Maggie said, breathing a bit of a sigh of relief when Saren made the shot.

Essen's phaser shot sailed into the empty air. Luckily, Saren's shot hit its mark - stunning the robot instantly, but leaving Maggie falling from the air, destined to hit the jacuzzi water below.

“HELPPPPP!” BONK

4

Essen called out to Maggie! "Maggie! Look out below!!"

The bonk was the sound of the drone hitting the ground. Maggie, however, fell into the water with a SPLOOSH. She'd be fine, just a bit wet.

Essen covered her helmet with her arms, trying to keep it free from the water. Once it was clear she rushed to the side of the Jacuzzi, reaching her hand out for Maggie to take. "Here! Come on out!"

Maggie crawled out of the water with a gasp for air in her suit. “Holy shit, woof.” She said, crawling out.

By the way, the jacuzzi water looked exactly like Tango, or one of those artificially orange American energy drinks.

6

"You okay?" Essen asked. "Did your PPE get damaged? Hopefully nothing got inside it." Essen said. "I'd offer to have the other bot do some chiro for you if you needed it, but, uhhhh..." Essen looked back. "Yeah."

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She said as she slowly got out of the pool with a breath.

The commotion had caught the attention of other parc de luxe bots. Most were lying on the floor covered in orange gunk and just turned their heads toward the officers, but others were approaching. No time to rest yet.

Essen's head whipped around to the other bots in the area. She raised her phaser, not firing yet. "We got company, y'all!" Essen said to the group.

"Shit," assuming the first bot they'd taken down was in fact not a ticking time bomb, he looked further into it, trying to see if it had any particular weak points or central connection of some sort. "How many.." and then he looked up to see just how many there were.

🎲1

Rolled: 1d6

[1] ➜ 1

3

15:22

Allan got fucking PELTED by a spontaneously appearing tennis ball! A bit away, a tennis-racket wielding assassin wound up for another shot.

"Love, 15," Essen said, rearing her phaser. "How 'bout I make it 15, all?" Essen shot! 🎲2

Rolled: 1d6

[2] ➜ 2

15:23

Fuck.

The robot zapped, crackled and popped, as though it certainly didn't ENJOY the phaser shot, but remained functional, hitting another tennis ball toward allan. "You're - y - you're our lucky customer!"

2

“Allan watch out!” She said, ducking in front of her friend and shooting. 🎲1

Rolled: 1d6

[1] ➜ 1

Flop roll. Missed entirely.

15:27

Maggie missed, that is. The tennis ball could yet hit Allan, travelling through the air in slo-mo, destined to give him a double-concussion unless someone did something about it.

Well, so much for finding anything out about the robot. No, no, he had to be pelted with a ball from a million miles away, apparently. God bless these helmets, really. "Fuck, okay-" having been too occupied with his hands to take his phaser out so quickly, he tried to duck out of the way. 🎲5

Rolled: 1d6

[5] ➜ 5

1

"Fucker..." aim, breathe, shoot... hope for the best. 🎲5

Rolled: 1d6

[5] ➜ 5

1

The ol dodge n' shoot was a success! The tennis ball hit the wall behind Allan and the robot fell over, looking out for the count for a split second before it got back up again. What a fighter! Unfortunately, Saren blasted all the fight out of it immediately afterwards, the phaser hit making it beep and boop discordantly before its lights went out. There were a few more robots coming for them: multiple robots that were non-humanoid, resembling lawn mower roombas, and, with a mechanical roar, the hover-coaster carriage actually came OFF THE TRACKS and started flying toward Rehszan. "You are TOO TALL TO RIDE!" (edited)

4

Oh! Unfortunate indeed! Rehszan made a move to dive out of the way, fumbling with his phaser. 🎲4

Rolled: 1d6

[4] ➜ 4

1

Beraal had volunteered for this. In theory, that had felt like a great decision. They’d been looking for something with a little more edge—something that didn’t involve spreadsheets,computer code, or pretending they weren’t still figuring out who they were.So when the call came through for an away team, they stepped forward. Eager. Focused. Curious. Then they stepped into the gym. And everything else stopped.Through the protective visor of their suit, all they could see was cheese. Not metaphorical cheese. Not holodeck-program cheese. Literal, melted, horrifyingly viscous cheese For a moment, Beraal just stared. No words. No thoughts. Just the quiet hum of the suit and the absolute certainty that they were never going to hear the end of this from anyone. Then their training kicked in. They brought the phaser up. Adjusted their stance. Focused. “Alright,” they muttered to themselves, voice tinny in the helmet. “We can hit this!"

That worked! Rehszan dodged and hit the hovercar with his phaser, though that just scrambled its systems so that it moved even more erratically than it already was. With its size and strength, it seemed like this was some sort of... Boss monster coaster. Boaster.

Boaster, huh? Well. Essen had something to say about this boaster. Eat phaser, boaster! 🎲1

Rolled: 1d6

[1] ➜ 1

16:05

Fubbernuckin ass shit.

Flop ass roll. It missed, hitting a distant treadmill. Maybe someone else would have better luck.

🎲3 Vara'l issued a small concerned grunt as he levelled his phaser at the robot that looked still active. "Elements, my luck with away missions." Vara'l grumbled as he fired.

Rolled: 1d6

[3] ➜ 3

Hit! The coaster crackled and crashed to the ground briefly, thumping around like a beached whale. However, its hovering abilities started up again and it flew toward Rehszan, apparently still angry at him for being too tall. It would collide with him unless he or someone else did something about it. Meanwhile, there were still lawnmowers milling around, although at some point a few of them had been killed offscreen and a few others had simply keeled over from cheese-corruption, lying there like abandoned frisbees. They actually didn't seem to be attacking anyone in particular; whatever glitch they had was instead causing them to simply try to mow everything around them.

He might as well try again, no? 🎲2

Rolled: 1d6

[2] ➜ 2

16:20

He might not!

Lente wasn't a neat freak by any stretch of the word, but all this was getting to be a bit much. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to stomach cheese anymore for the foreseeable future... but that was probably for the better anyway, given her devastating lactose intolerance. "So we're on cheese fungi taking control of robots, now?" she asked, trying to wrap her head around it. She lifted her phaser to try to take... something out. The coaster, maybe? (edited)

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2

16:33

🎲5

Rolled: 1d6

[5] ➜ 5

"Yep!" Allan said as if it was a wonderful thing, "it also erodes them at the same time! It's pretty wild!" Not as wild as the ... lawnmowers. Why'd they have so many lawnmowers? Just a thought he had as he tried to shoot one of them. Or a few, if he was lucky. 🎲6

Rolled: 1d6

[6] ➜ 6

The coaster lost its hovering abilities, hitting the floor and then flipping over and over again. What was this, nascar? It survived all that damage, though, and swerved toward Rehszan again, until Lente shot it and it just Stopped. No dramatic rolling. It just froze mid-air. Several large orange pieces of goop fell from it, writhing until they lay still. One particular lawn-roomba, one of the few remaining, saw this and approached Saren. "Greetings, customer. Would you like a haircut?" Then it tried to shave Saren's hair clean off! And probably the rest of him. Luckily, Allan's shot saved Saren from a terrible barber job. The rest of the roombas could be quickly dispatched at this point without rolls, as they were all much slower. A few robots attempted to crawl over, one even grabbing Lente's leg, but it was easy to shake off and shoot. The room, now empty of robots that one could consider a threat, now smelled like burnt cheese. (edited)

5

"Okay, so.." he looked around once more, making sure he saw that everybody was there, and everyone was fine, snd that there weren't any more threatening robots.. "I'm gonna, um, try to look at these things again." And so he did so, going over to the stupid automaton that shot a ball at his face, moving the tennis racket out of the way before he started scanning, looking for any sorts of connections to a network - essentially, if they were all controlled by a central computer somewhere - and if the cheese damage was similar to the damage he'd seen on the circuits in the other room.

Finally holstering her phaser, Essen took a breath in and out. Well, thankfully no concussions or major injuries this time around. A welcome change, if you asked her. Anyway, Essen also looked to the robots, curious. She didn't do any of the engineering work, but was curious to say the least. "How did they know we were in here to attack us?" Essen asked, not really to anyone. "Maybe they're motion activated? Are there cameras here that detect movement? Or was it just happenstance that they activated when we were here? This is all lining up too perfectly for my liking..." (edited)

Maya and Paco entered the room soon after the rest of the team, having strayed a bit behind the others. Though whatever fragrance hung around the room did not bode well with her as she approached the other engineers. "Geez! who cut the-"

"Cheese?" Paco finished that thought as he and Maya popped ~~into existence~~ into the room and noticed the familiar scent. Paco loves cheese.

"I mean, mycelium is known for its long-range communication, and it's literally everywhere right now," Lente pointed out to Essen, keeping her own phaser ready in case something else was ready to jump out.

He patted his helmet - endlessly glad for it's existence and also Allan's well placed shot, for the man was quite fond of his hair... and the head attached to his neck and body. Speaking of... "You okay?" he approached the engineer, looking him over with narrowed eyes - not that it would be noticeable, but Allan could probably tell anyways.

1

The damage was similar; the cheese had partially become the robots while also damaging them at the same time. If the latter point wasn't true, the relationship could have been a little more symbiotic, but alas. The corruption seemed to be causing a glitch that not just removed and somehow inverted the Ferengi version of Aasimov's first law, but also set random things like the 100th customer or people who were too tall to ride as hostile, which meant the robots would perceive them as a threat despite all logic telling them otherwise. It's possible you could fix this code, but you'd have to do it to every robot in here individually. Also, there was a connection to a central AI called Brien that had become disrupted somehow.

5

Realizing that Lente might have been right, her eyes widened. "Ahh... Good point," Essen remarked, not knowing about the glitch or that the AI Brien existed yet.

Allan looked up from the scans when Saren came up to him, nodding with a smile as the scientist asked if he was okay. "Yeah, yeah, I'm doing pretty well, actually, this fucker didn't crack the helmet with the ball, so, we're all clear there - you?" He'd assumed as much, given that the lawnmower hadn't been able to touch the man, but he figured it was good to ask anyways before he talked to the group as a whole about what he was finding on the scans. "So, the cheese is doing the same thing as the circuits, melting into the bots and also eroding them, but.. in the code, it's like.." he looked at it more closely, scrolling through his tricorder and reading it, "it's glitching them out, somehow? Started setting them to detect certain random people as threats, and it's.. there's some connection to a central AI, too. Named.." he snorted a little when he read the name, "Brien, apparently."

She looked over Allan's shoulder, trying to see what he saw. Of course she didn't have the knowledge he did but she was still curious. "I've never heard of a fungus that can corrupt code... How is that even possible?" Well, she looked around... Whether or not she understood it, it was possible, judging by what just happened.

“Like O’Brien? Weird, maybe a translation error.” She said softly as she stood there. “So what’s the plan then?”

"Bad cheese corrupted whatever computer systems run the AI? Like, assuming the place runs with bio-neural systems, something infected them and that's causing the corruption." Maya suggested with a shrug, feeling she had read a similar thing happening to Voyager in the past. (edited)

Essen looked to Maya and nodded. "That's a better alternative than if the fungus itself had its own intelligence or was sentient or something in which it specifically targeted these robots," Essen remarked. "Don't think that's what's happening here since the AI is controlling all these bots like you and Allan said."

"Nope, dunno if ya caught it earlier, but there's no bio-neural stuff in sight, at least not showing up on the scans, which is... weird, to say the least." He sighed, looking back at the code and then back at the group.

Essen nodded to Allan, thinking for a second. "It's... It's kinda weird to me, thinking tactically," Essen remarked. "Why would the fungus and/or the AI have the robots act hostile towards us? It could have done any number of things but treating us like threats specifically? That's weird to me."

"How did the fungus get in there in the first place?" Paco asked out of curiosity. "It's probably intelligent enough to target anything that could be a threat against the source of the fungus. Including us"

"Well, the code seems to be, like, pretty random in its selections? Like, it chose people too tall to ride specifically, random numbers of customers.. I don't think it's us, in particular.. I think the cheese is just being a little... glitchy? But in a weirdly malicious way, maybe?" It was... a little confusing, the way it seemed to be doing a bunch of things at once.

"I agree, I do not believe this fungus has malicious intent. It remains to be seen if it even has the capabilities to hold such." Rehszan offered politely.

Lente could think of several ways in which a fungus could corrupt code, extrapolating from what she knew about bioneural relays and also fungi. Especially with an AI behind it that made use of the mycelial ability to relay information. She didn't know how to achieve that, but she could imagine that it was possible. "Survival instincts probably, then? Not necessarily malicious, it's not that weird to think it might just be instinctual." A weird mesh between advanced technological aptitude and very primitive primal emotion. Lente was getting a headache.

"Heh, let's hope you're right then," Essen replied to Allan, Lente and Rehszan. "Call it a hunch that I don't think we've seen the last of these robots or how else the AI could act."

He nodded at Allan's question, briefly reaching out to squeeze the man's shoulder as a thanks and reassurance. As for the new revelations... "I would agree with the survival instinct theory. After all, the first thing that an organism wants to do, is survive. Hostility is a viable strategy. Then again, we can't be so sure as of yet. What I do know is that we should go and see what is up with the AI, and what caused... well. This."

Looking to Saren, Essen nodded. "I second that, sir."

"Mmhm," Allan said in response to the survival instinct thing that Lente and Saren had said, "that checks out. I can see if I can find the AI's location..?" He asked, trying to do just that - searching the code for any mentions of where the robots were connecting to and not just what.

Anyone observing their surroundings would notice that there were signs pointing to doors but no doors. Strange. Except - no, there WERE doors, they were just gunked up with hardened goop. All except one: the door to the Mouthfeel. It looked like a fancy restaurant. Allan's code-digging found floorplans in the robot's mental map that revealed that the AI core was in the room after that same restaurant.

"For a restaurant, it could use a better name." The robotic voice quipped (as well as it could), accompanied with a slight cringe from the doctor.

3

"Well, we've got floorplans in the code, that's fun.." he said, saving it to his tricorder so he could disconnect from the robot and stand back up, looking down at it, and then up at the sign.. "Eugh. Yeah, it could be... a lot better. Agreed. So we just have to... scrape this shit off, or.."

"...Melt it off?" They offered, holding their phaser out. The less they touched this stuff, the better.. "Will it give way to high temperatures?"

She took out her phaser, setting it to a lower setting just in case. "Awesome! Phasers are the right tool this time," Essen joked. "If that's the case, I'm ready to try it out when you are, sir," Essen offered to Ivi.

Actually, he'd scan it really quick — just to see if the fungi would melt, or burn, which they didn't want.

1

"if its a fungus, we can disinfect it first and then scrape the cheese off the circuits." Maya suggested. "So it doesn't gunk up anything else if we miss some of it somehow"

"Can we keep a sample of some of it though?" Paco asked as he also scanned the cheese. "It could be sentient... or at least interesting to study even if it isn't"

"To be fair, the entire ship is full of this stuff. I don't think this one door would provide a scientific breakthrough that the rest of the ship couldn't provide," Lente said dryly, waiting for the ACMO to finish scanning.

"We'll need a sample to possibly figure out how to rid this ship of the infection anyway." Sample was always a good idea.

It would burn. Not recommended. The doors slid open when Ivi approached them to scan the shrooms anyway, though. It was only the other doors that were too gooped to move.

"Well that was easy," Lente snorted.

Seeing the door open, Essen holstered her phaser. "Or that," Essen said, referring to the door opening.

Oh! He went a little blue in embarrassment. "So it was..." Let's go then, team!

Taking another breath to recenter herself, Essen hopped a little to shake out any nervousness before she followed the team inside!