Phase Q/The Farm

Your guards herd you through the farm. It feels rustic, quaint. Painful.

Here, a crew of rough young men jostle you about, tying you down on a makeshift bed. The surface is uncomfortable.

“Ready!” One of the young men yells.

Another man, slightly older, walks in. He bears the same close-cropped hair, although he wears a long green coat. Behind him, an assistant pulls a cart full of instruments.

Without any anaesthetic, the green coated man picks out a blade, and starts cutting open your abdomen.

On a signal, the assistant goes back into a barn, and returns with a metal case.

In spite of your pain, you notice that the improvised operating room is surrounded by uniformed, armed soldiers.

The doctors grabs the metal case, an inserts it into your body. After making a few more maneuvers, he sews you back up again.

Off in another part of the farm, groups of young men train. They attack mannequins with unprecedented savagery. Each boy sports a laser-carved tattoo of a bull’s skull, covering his entire chest.

The fierceness of the battalion seems to come from the surroundings. Wild bush, foot-long thorns, no water for miles around. Life here is a brutal struggle.

Armed guards take you away. You feel like a cow being led to the slaughter.

When you arrive in a wooden building, you see that within it there is actually a steel reinforcement. You can’t tell how thick it is, but it looks military grade.

Inside, the guards pin you up against a rough seat. They turn on an old-fashioned projector, and start an instructional video.

“You will be inserted into the tubeworks, in a region behind enemy lines. There, you must find the reactor site where enemy agents convert ideas into armaments. You will initiate the control sequence. All volume within mentalspace will instantly vanish. If you attempt to leave the tubeworks before completing your mission, you will be destroyed.”

Before you can think of how to ask your first question, a bright blue light flashes directly into your eyes. You find yourself in tubeworkspace.

A strange sight greets you. Where before you saw the war raging largely between creative Futuristas and well-heeled Trads, now you see thousands and thousands these bush brutes, crushing struggling Futuristas. The brutes also seem to take out significant numbers of marching Trads. Spread throughout the volume, you see a filament of zonnyxes.

As you struggle to figure out where you are supposed to go, you see a small group of fighting brutes. Their faces seem to resemble a hybrid of the vicious young men at the farm, and Natalya.

The device feels heavy inside you. It burdens every movement, and adds to your pain and confusion. You start to think of where you could go, and a door pops up in front of you.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.