GURPS Blood Drive Session 10A: The Safe Zone

Benedict Con - Humourless Repairman
Geordi Hawking - Callous Rifleman
Kaktis - Super-Strong Cactus Mutant
The Automocar - AI-Driven Armoured Car NPC

The Chase
Dr. Smiley followed after the party and jumped over to the other causeway, leaving the Automocar alone, but Ben gunned it over some dirt ramps and managed to gain even more distance.  Ahead, the causeway was broken, but a pile of wrecked cars formed a coincidental ramp, and Ben took the Doom Buggy over it and jumped to the other side.  Dr. Smiley's monster truck was too heavy, and deformed the cars as he went over, ruining his jump; only one wheel touched the other side of the causeway before the monster truck fell into the ocean and exploded.

The Safe Zone
The party and the Automocar continued uninterrupted down the rest of the causeway to the scorch-marked sloped concrete walls of the safe zone, and past a heavy metal outer gate.  A trio of high-tech turrets locked onto both the Doom Buggy and the Automocar for a moment, but turned away just as quickly.  Geordi noticed that a handful of small flying machines with cameras were hovering overhead, when two vertical sliding doors opened on the walls in front of them and green indicators above them lit up.

Inside was a narrow tunnel, lit dimly by small lights along the spotless concrete floor.  Kaktis and the Automocar "high-fived" with their turrets, and the two vehicles went inside.  After 5 minutes driving through a series of winding tunnels and intersections with other, closed and unlit, doors, they arrived at the end of the line: a one-car garage with a doorway far too small for the Doom Buggy.  The same feminine robotic voice they had heard in Orlando now instructed them to strip, leave their gear in the provided receptacles, and proceed into the decontamination chamber.

Everybody chucked their gear into the plastic bins (Kaktis even went back to the Buggy to get his cinderblocks) and went through a glass door into the decon shower.  Ben asked if there were any towels to whip people, and Geordi reminisced that his cousin, JabbaJeff had had a very high quality one before his untimely demise.  Once everybody was in the shower, hot, high-pressure water shot out of the many nozzles for about 30s, cleaning them to a sparkle and burning a little bit.  On the far side of the chamber was a changing room with three pressed grey jumpsuits and another sliding door out.

They checked, and the jumpsuits seemed to be tailored to fit them (Kaktis was impressed that they had made something to fit his "barrel torso").  After getting dressed, the door opened, and the party walked through into a shadowy room with an elliptical table lined with 10 chairs with some sort of hemi-spherical metal covers on the back of the headrests; 7 retracted into the floor, and the remaining 3 lit up.  Geordi identified the covers, due to their electrodes, as highly advanced EEGs, which could scan brain waves.

The party sat down and a human voice came over a concealed speaker.  The man on the other end congratulated them for making it to the Safe Zone, and explained that they would need to have their brains scanned in order to determine their aptitudes and place them in an according division within Zone society.  He went on to say that they would feel only a slight pinch, and asked if they accepted this before beginning the procedure.

The party was on board, so the domes flipped over onto their heads and, after the pinch, stayed there for only a handful of seconds before flipping back.  With the noise of a rapid servo motor, three printed notes emerged from tiny slots in front of them, each small enough that nobody but the intended recipient could read them, and a pair of symbols lit up beside the notes; a red X and a green checkmark.  They read their notes.

• Benedict Con: Severe mental trauma, resulting in anti-social and violent behavioural tendencies.  Too broad for hypno-therapy.  A partial lobotomy is required to remove these flaws.  To continue through the facility, you must receive such a procedure.  Do you accept?

Ben sat and thought it over for a moment, before confirming that, nope, he had no idea what a lobotomy was.

• Geordi Hawking: Damaged metabolism and mild autism, likely from birth defects attributable to heightened radiation levels.  Hypno-therapy and long-term pharmaceutical treatment via auto-injector required.  To continue through the facility, you must receive such a procedure and have an auto-injector installed.  Do you accept?

Geordi hit the checkmark without even finishing the note.

• Kaktis: Mutation well beyond acceptable parameters, in addition to amplified fight-or-flight response.  Anti-mutagen treatment, sterilization, and repeat hypno-therapy required.  To continue through the facility, you must receive these procedures.  Do you accept?

Kaktis hit the red X immediately after reading his note.

Ben ultimately got up without hitting his button ("I don't want to get sucked down into the grinder that powers this system for hitting no!"), and asked the man on the speaker what a "low-bow-toe-mee" was, and he replied that it was a surgery to remove part of the brain and adjust Ben's behaviour.  With this new information, and after some prompting by the voice, Ben confirmed that he did not accept the terms.  

At that, the lights on the table went out, and a pair of small flying drones dropped out of the ceiling, one green and one blue; Ben and Kaktis were instructed to follow the blue drone back out, while Geordi was to be lead by the green.  Geordi shed a pair of tears and hugged Kaktis, though Ben refused to touch him ("You are a nerd, by the way").  Having said their goodbyes, the party split up, with only Geordi accepting the price for access to the Safe Zone.

The Wastes

Ben and Kaktis made it back to the Doom Buggy, took Geordi's stuff, kept their comfy jumpsuits, and headed back out through the tunnels, eventually arriving at an exit somewhere else in the walls, a good 2km south of the gates.  Kaktis stared off into the sunset and remarked at the irony of the skills capable of getting to the Safe Zone simultaneously making it impossible for them to gain entry, before noting that the Automocar was not outside with them, and said that at least they'd done one good deed (Ben: "Goddammit").  From then on, the two wandered around alternately utterly ignoring the needy and helping them after Kaktis had nagged Ben enough.  

The Future

After 14 years, Kaktis got on the wrong end of some giant ants and suffered severe bleeding and spinal trauma.  With no way of being healed, he headed off into the desert, stripped, closed his eyes one last time, and lay down beside a mutated cactus plant, almost indistinguishable from it.

3 years after that, Benedict Con got on the wrong side of all the nerds he had wronged, and, doubting their strength in numbers, tried to bully them but was eventually swarmed and gunned down.

The Phoenix Project

Back in the present, Geordi, following the drone, went through a twenty-minute hypno-therapy routine that left him much more sociable, and had an auto-injector affixed to his torso, all without seeing another person.  Afterwords, he was led up a series of stairs to a larger, open room lit by natural light with a podium in front of tall windows at the far end.  Several rows of mostly-empty seats covered most of the floor, though Geordi recognized none of the eight people sitting in them.  A half-dozen black-armoured guards toting advanced rifles stood to either side of the podium, where a man in a blue jumpsuit with strange, glowing eyes, was waiting.

Above the podium was a clock counting down the 1:43:27 until the gates would close, and Geordi's drone led him to a seat before flying away.  On closer inspection, the guards and man at the podium all had the same small symbol on the left breast of their clothes: a bird flying away from Earth with the words PHOENIX PROJECT underneath.  Shortly after he took his seat, one of the quadcopter drones came up the stairs and "took a seat" a few seats down.

Once the countdown was done, it counted back up for 30 minutes until another handful of people had entered (no more than twenty altogether), and the man in the blue jumpsuit started his speech, revealing him to be the same person who had been talking to them in the brain scan room.  Again, he congratulated those present on being willing to undergo the required procedures to attain their space in the Safe Zone without proving to be a liability.  He then explained the true purpose of the Phoenix Project.

The Last Hope

Based in the ruins of a pre-fall spaceport, the Safe Zone was able to protect itself due to the military personnel staffing the port, and possessed a hoard of scientific marvels thanks to the many capable scientists and engineers that had survived.  In time, the members of the Zone and their descendants came to the conclusion that they would be unable to "save the world", so to speak, and instead, given their unique access to the spaceport, looked to the stars.

After decades of long work, their work was done, and in two days, their mission to Proxima Centauri, four light-years away, would begin aboard the Last Hope (Geordi to the other players: "I'm goin' to space, bitches!").  The Last Hope was a near-lightspeed capable spaceship which had been in the design phase before the apocalypse, and the finishing touches and assembly had been completed by the Phoenix Project itself.

After the speech concluded, the seated group were called up one by one to receive their assignment within the Project.  Geordi received the title of Jr. Technician and a spiffy red jumpsuit (queue jokes about Redshirts from Ben), and chose to specialize in Robotics over Comms.  Shortly after him, the speaker called on "Adam the Automocar", and the drone that had sat down beside Geordi flew over to receive a red paintjob as it, too, was assigned to be a Jr. Robotics Technician.

A few short days later, the Project staff boarded the Last Hope and entered orbit without issue.  The majority of the staff, including Geordi, were put into cryosleep for the four year journey, and set off into the final frontier to boldly go where no one had gone before.  His last words before entering the cryo chamber were "I win".

Notes:

Geordi's traits changed a bit (not that it mattered) after his treatment: -1 IQ, gained Reprogrammable and Chummy, and lost No Sense of Humour, Loner, Absent-Mindedness, and Easy to Read.  

I had similar packages prepared for Ben (-2 IQ, lose all anti-social disads) and Kaktis (lose all mutations but Redundant Organs and one other, lose Berserk, gain Reprogrammable).

A short session at 45 minutes, but it wrapped up Blood Drive nicely.

Rolled 3d6 for how long Ben and Kaktis survived after the campaign, and both rolled very well.  A spin-off may be run at some point in the future, probably with some sort of Destiny to not die.  Or maybe it'll just be their clones!  Who knows.

We're going on hiatus for a bit while some other people plan for some other games; in particular, a cyberpunk game about escaped androids in GURPS and a one or two session adventure for Delta Green.  Afterwards, I'll probably go back to DF, though I might try out something for Action or Monster Hunters; we'll see.