Overlord's Orders IX

[Tam and Martin]

Well, Overlord, Apparently Dan doesn't know the real reason for me doing some of the things I did. Let me explain.

He said I kept retrieving the bioscanner and feeding it milk. That is how it might appear. Well, when we come down to it, it isn't a bad thing to have, it just had could be fixed. So, I got a can of bioscanner cleaner and put it in a baby's bottle (Which is the only thing I had at the time) then almost "fed it" to the bioscanner. Once it was cleaned and all the bad stuff taken off of it, it was harmless and I kept it. Might be useful in the future.

About the drink machine though, I did turn it on, yes but for the reason of simply getting a drink. I didn't know anything about it being bad I was just several problems. So why not fix it? Daniel must have been mad that we blamed him for so many faults he made that he insisted on throwing it out, but I knew it simply looking for a drink after all the hard work I was doing. Once I turned it on though, I wasn't able to turn it off so I asked Corny (Cornflower) to turn it off because I heard Tagg calling me. The rest is left for her to explain because I had nothing else to do with it. I went over to Tagg and asked him why he called me and he said he didn't have a good reason. After that, Cornflower had come back and I assumed she had turned it off.

Unless there is anything else to say Overlord, I am innocent.

OOC: Please tell me if I didn't do something right on this. I had a long day gar and bass fishing and am not thinking well.

[Rusvul]

OOC: Round ends tomorrow. This is hilarious. I am SO GLAD I chose a sci-fi setting.

[Cornflower MM]

OOC: Oh, yeah? Well, Tam feeding the bioscanner milk IS pretty fiunny....Although, I'm getting blamed for all the big stuff....Ah, well...I'll get y'all back next round!

BIC: I honestly tried my best to turn it off, and I thought I DID turn off the drink machine. I'm a dunce at anything mechanical, as I'm sure I pointed out. That is all, Overlord.

[Tam and Martin]

You still hadn't turned it off though.

[Cornflower MM]

"Hey, I did my best! I just don't know how to do that sort of thing. I'm no technician! Do I LOOK like one, Tam?

[Tam and Martin]

No, not at all, but you could have atleast asked someone else for help. Daniel for example.

[Rusvul]

OOC: Round closed. It's actually past midnight, I did stuff today, I'm tired. I'm going to sleep, I'll give someone to the nanites tomorrow.

[Rusvul]

The Overlord considers you all carefully.
"Tam. Your meddling with the drink machine could have easily been prevented by reading the sign. And keeping a sentient creature as a pet is unacceptable.

Cornflower. Your technical incompetence could have been a huge danger- But you had no way to know how our technology worked, raised on a tiny, ancient planet such as you were. I think I shall give you a second chance. Tam." The Overlord's head sharply turned towards the creature. "You have committed crimes labeled as such by the highest order of our law. They are punished with death. But I am lenient, you had no hostile intentions." He pressed a sequence of butons, and a tank rose from the floor around Tam. "Cryostorage for you." The tank sank into the floor and sped away.

"So. Your next task. On deck 7, there is a dehumidifier. I need you to bring that to the second deck, and clear up the water.

-The next day-

Three more decks are flooded, a tenth of my crew is dead. You're dangerous. I like you. But you still damaged my ship, my crew demand retribution. Who is responsible?

[James Gryphon]

Edit: This now features color-coding, to make it easier for everyone to read the parts that they're in. Daniel is red, Tagg is blue, and Corn is green.

"We went up to the seventh deck without incident and found the dehumidifier in an equipment storage room. It was disassembled, as it is a very large piece of machinery and I suppose the engineering crew didn't want to have it take up a lot of space. I recommended that we take the pieces down to the engineering staff, so that we could be sure that it would be assembled correctly, but Daniel claimed that he knew how to put it together, and that we should do it right away, so as to avoid wasting any more time. I said that it wouldn't be a waste to get some crew up there, if it meant that the ship would be fixed properly, but Tagg said that they had too much work to do, and that he would not allow me to "sabotage this mission" by pulling workers away from their duties. Then he pulled out his laser gun and promised that he would shoot anyone who left."

"Well, he had made his position very clear. Tagg is a terrible shot if he's firing at anything beyond point-blank range, so I wasn't afraid of getting killed, but I knew that he would likely as not destroy the dehumidifier's parts with his poor aim if I provoked him, so I didn't say anything else. I figured that we'd put it together to make Tagg happy, but that I'd find a real engineering officer to make sure that it was operational before anyone tried to actually use it."

"Daniel assembled the machine, with Cornflower helping him. He kept muttering about fingerprints and contamination, and refused to let me do anything. I saw him incorrectly putting several pieces together (for instance, he put several switches and gears in the wrong places). I tried to tell him this, but Cornflower told me to shut up and that I was damaging their psyches with my pessimistic talk. I tried to explain the danger that Daniel was putting everyone in, but Tagg said that he would shoot me if I moved or said anything else, so I complied, again to avoid permanent damage to the machinery."

"Once it was completed, Tagg said that we shouldn't waste any more time and that Daniel and Cornflower should immediately take it down to the second deck. I offered to help, with the intent of warning the repair crew that they needed to fix it before they turned it on, but Tagg said that he wasn't "going to risk me getting loose and harming the mission", and that he was going to stand there and make sure that I didn't do anything."

"As I said before, it was a very large piece of machinery. Daniel and Cornflower had trouble just getting it out of the door, and Corn was visibly sweating after just a few moments of trying to move it. After they finally got the machinery out of the room, and I was left with Tagg, I knew that I had to stop them from turning on the dehumidifier without it being repaired first. I jumped Tagg and wrestled with him for the laser gun. He fired a few shots, but each one harmlessly hit the armored walls. It's a good thing I waited; if the dehumidifier was there, he would have vaporized it for sure. I overpowered Tagg, took his gun and ran out to make sure that the machinery was safely handled."

"I ran through the corridors through the path that I knew they were going to take. After two or three of these, I saw Daniel and Cornflower, who had stopped, and the dehumidifier. Both of them were worn out. The machine must've weighed half a ton, and they didn't have an antigrav dolly to carry it on, due to Tagg's insistence that they rush it down there as quickly as possible without going anywhere else. Cornflower said something that I didn't catch, as I was still too far away, but as I drew closer, I heard Daniel say "No problem". He took a cup out of his jacket, and then flipped a switch on the dehumidifier."

"As your Majesty knows, the dehumidifier works using the McKormick system — it breaks water down by separating its hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which are then sent through the Winley tubes into the ship's storage tanks for further use. The dehumidifier is a multi-purpose machine, however, and can perform the opposite function. That is precisely what it did. It began to convert all of the oxygen and hydrogen in the air into water."

"Daniel had placed a cup in front of the machine, I suppose with the intent of collecting water in it, but the water started to spray out of the machine at extreme force. It knocked the cup out of Daniel's hands. By this time I was there, and said that we should turn the humidifier function off, but Daniel said that it was "just too high a water force, that's all", and that he could turn the pressure down. He twisted a knob, and suddenly we were all borne over by a massive wave of water. I guess his inept assembly skills caused it to work in exactly the opposite way that it was intended to."

"Daniel and Cornflower immediately ran away. I tried to make my way to the machine to shut it off, but the force of the oncoming waves of water was too strong. At this point, the entire corridor was flooded with water, probably four feet deep, and the air was becoming notably thinner from the lack of oxygen. I decided that you would prefer to have one less dehumidifier than an entirely flooded ship, and tried to shoot the dehumidifier to destroy it. I was concentrating on the shot, and almost certainly would have taken the machine out, when suddenly the gun was snatched out of my hands and I was knocked down into the water from behind. Tagg had caught up with me."

"When I managed to swim my way back up to the top (as the water was now above head-level), I tried to sputter to Tagg that we needed to destroy the humidifier, but he just shot at me. He missed, and this seemed to make him angry, as he fired again and again in my direction. However, he missed each time, and hit the corridor walls, which, not being armored, were badly damaged from his laser fire. I caught hold of Tagg's wrist, trying to tell him once again that he needed to shoot the dehumidifier, but he screamed, "I'd rather die than help you!" I was about to get hold of his laser gun when he dropped it into the rushing water, seemingly just to keep me from using it. These things aren't waterproof, and it was irreparably damaged, but not before its now-faulty control mechanism caused it to blast another large section of the wall out of place."

"The water that had flooded the corridor now started to flow out through the holes in the walls, and as it filled the engineering crawlspaces spaces there, the high pressure from the machine started causing gaps and openings in the floor, causing flooding in the other decks, and so on. I tried to pull out my communicator to tell the engineering crew of the extreme danger the ship was in, in hopes that they could get the old emergency dehumidifier out of storage, but Tagg snarled something I couldn't make out and knocked the communicator out of my hand into the water-filled abyss. Then, before I could dive in after it, he leaped at me, apparently with full intent of doing bodily harm."

"We fought on and on, me trying to get away to get help, Tagg apparently with the intention of killing me. In the middle of this, Daniel came swimming back in, carrying a bucket, with a crazy grin on his face. He said, "We can use this to pick up all of the water." I'm not sure what he was thinking, since the bucket was not as large as the lake that was now filling the ship, but apparently it meant something to Tagg, who let me go and went over to talk to Daniel."

"I left to get help. It was very hard to get away, as by this time the deck was mostly flooded, and the hatches to all of the chain ladders had apparently been closed and locked. They were open when we went up to the deck, so I can only speculate that Cornflower closed them all again for some reason when she was running away. Finally, I managed to find someone else on this deck of the ship, the equipment records officer, who had taken refuge on the highest crate in his nearly-flooded control room."

"He told me he had already called for help when he saw the flooding, and that the maintenance crew was on the way. I told him about the dehumidifier and asked if there was any way to stop it; if he had a waterproof laser gun or something that I could use. He said no, so I figured there was nothing else to do. He helped me up onto his crate, and we sat tight until the repair crews showed up. They brought breathing masks with them, and gave them to us so that we could go through the water without drowning."

"I helped the repair team with everything they asked me to do, until the engineering chief said there was nothing else I could do, and that I should go back to you to report everything that had happened. I haven't seen any of these other "servants" from the time I left Tagg and Daniel to get help until I saw that they had somehow gotten here. They presumably still have their communicators, so I guess you must have summoned us. I'm very sorry for showing up late. I just wanted it to be known what happened, and that I did everything that I knew to do. Your Majesty's other servants have not ceased to cause harm ever since you started sending us on these missions, so I've come to expect them to exhibit a certain amount of incompetence, but I'm shocked and horrified by the degree of damage they've managed to cause on this occasion."

OOC: This is very possibly the longest single post ever written for any round of OO. I didn't expect it to be this long; I just started writing and it turned out this way. I'm sorry for the wall of text, guys.

[Cornflower MM]

OOC: No biggie. Defending self tomorrow. Tired........

[Cornflower MM]

"In my defense, Overlord, Daniel told me that unless I helped him assemble the dehumidifier, he'd make sure that my bed would be filled wit prickles and my family would die. I told James what I did because I didn't want my family to die. I did my best to move the dehumidifier, but it was far, far too heavy, and I didn't want to be lasered. Daniel, not so much. But that's beside the point. When James had gotten to us, I had  said, 'Oh, I just wish I had a cup of water.' I didn't expect Daniel to do what he did, and I'm sorry. I ran away because I don't know how to swim. I swear I left the doors open behind me, I promise I did. Perhaps Daniel shut. it."

[James Gryphon]

OOC: The fact that there hasn't been many responses here would suggest that very long posts should be discouraged in the future. I'm proposing what I call the "Gryphon rule": after the next person gets killed here, from that point on no post in a round of OO should have more than 750 non-OOC words in it. I figured that number because 700 is the upper limit for most of the posts from my favorite rounds, II through IV. There are a few that have gone over that without causing problems, so the extra 50 words gives everybody, including the Overlord, a little more room to play with, without causing any trouble. 1500 or however much I posted is definitely too much, however, and I think 1000 is probably a bit much as well.

[Cornflower MM]

OOC: So,now I have to count the words?!?!

[James Gryphon]

OOC: There's very handy free tools that can do it for you, like this website: http://www.wordcounter.net
Like I said, though, the vast majority of posts that have been made in all rounds of OO fit into this. For most people, this rule would not be a problem. It's mainly for guys like me that try to write a book when they're making a response. For the most part, you know a long post when you see it. If someone (read: me) is making a really long post, this rule would remind them to cut it down, but it won't affect 95% of the players 95% of the time. None of your posts so far have been even close to hitting this proposed limit.

[Cornflower MM]

OOC Gee, thanks. Didn't know I was so terrible at writing posts....