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constantzeigarnik · 6 years ago

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Almost Home

Man created Horatio to build, Horatio built a home...

When Horatio began the first messy sketches of another bot on blue-prints, it had been rather aimless scribbling in the dead of night as silence weighed heavily on him. He hadn’t been thinking of what it would become beyond something to fulfill the urge he had in himself to be working on something, to create. Normally he was satisfied with small projects, with little repairs around his ship to try and make his living situation just a tad more comfortable in between tackling the larger, more complicated problems that the UNNIIC had. There was no intention to create life, no intention for sentience, and when he finally turned in for the evening to rest and recharge, he hadn’t even bothered to finish the initial sketch. He hadn’t even come close to it.

That blue-print stayed there, splayed open on his workshop desk for almost a year and a half.

There were often days at a time, weeks even, that Horatio wouldn’t so much as glance at what he had drawn out with messy, half thought out notes scribbled on the sides. Things would be stacked on top of it, and it would be buried underneath other small but quick projects that Horatio felt warranted his attention more than a late night vague concept that honestly at times didn’t seem like it would ever become more than it was in it’s current state. On the occasion that he would sort and organize a few of his belongings, he considered putting it away once and for all, tucking it somewhere safe to collect dust with the rest of his unfinished concepts. However, every time he ran his optics over the tired, almost rambling notes he had written, something in the very back of his processor kept him from shelving it. With a small, synthesized sigh, he would set the papers back down, and walk away leaving his workbench never entirely clean.

Then there were days that he would stop, take a quick look down at the papers as he passed by, or let whatever project he had been focused on fade to the back of his processor for a few minutes to examine what he had left unfinished. He wasn’t someone who could ever really consider himself busy per se, but nonetheless he never allowed himself to dwell on what was taking shape on the blue-prints for very long. Just a moment or two in order to jot down a quick note or idea as they came to him. Then his pen would be set down once more and he would carry on with what he had been doing before he was momentarily distracted.

As months passed and more notes, more ideas, were placed on this disaster of a plan, something vague began to take form. The problem was that the more shape it took, the more frustrated and uncertain Horatio became with it when the thought would occur that he still had no idea what he was looking at, what it’s purpose would serve. It was small and round, perhaps something he could fashion a light out of if he found the parts. It would certainly make scavenging during the nights a possibility, something to get him out of the UNNIIC, away from his mind… or perhaps some small storage unit, one he could keep tiny but important trinkets in. He could fashion an intricate lock to go with it and…

No, no that wasn’t right either. In fact, something about it struck him as deeply, intrinsically wrong.

There were time that horatio would set his pen down a little harder than intended, and the sharp click of it hitting his workbench was almost as loud as the silence around him.

* * *

It was nearly impossible to tell the difference between destruction and natural decay in the area surrounding the UNNIIC. When everything as far as you could see looked the same, it was just natural to assume that this was simply the way things were. Sure, there had been times when Horatio wondered how things had come to be the way that they were, as his memories from his past versions were… messy, at best, and nonexistent at worst. Either way he never allowed himself to dwell on thoughts and curiosities like these for long, especially when he knew he would likely never have the answers to the things he wanted to know. He knew how to build, how to repair, and how to make things function against all odds when supplies were limited and tools were scarce, and he had to worry about where he was going to find the things he needed rather than ponder the reason he even needed to scavenge in the first place.

And in the end he had decided he was in no better shape than the land around him. There were no mirrors in the UNNIIC, and beyond catching a few poor glimpses of himself in what little clean and reflective metal he could find, he didn’t have much of an idea as to what he actually looked like. His hands though, Horatio saw his hands every day of his life, and they seemed to be no better off than anything else he might find while scavenging in the Junk Pile, other than the fact that they were attached to him, and they functioned.

Horatio couldn’t help but think that perhaps Man had crafted his kind to be tougher than any automatic and non-sentient machinery out there could every be. It left a pleasant buzz in the back of his processor to think that he had been built to survive above all else, and really if that’s what they had intended for him, he took joy in the fact that they would be proud of him because that was about all he could do.

He went through the motions, took what he needed from the land, and he lived.

* * *

Nights were the worst for Horatio because they left him without much to do as the light faded into darkness, and traveling out into the Junk Pile or further became too much of hazard for him to risk it most evenings unless it was absolutely necessary. This left Horatio with a little too much time on his hands, and not enough to occupy himself with. There were of course always things around the UNNIIC that needed repairing, a seemingly endless amount of things, but time always seemed to slow to a crawl through the night, and the odd jobs Horatio would take up never seemed to be anything that would eat up hours of the night all on it’s own, much less require him to use more than a quarter of his processing power as he worked on it.

It was the nights that left Horatio in his head, thinking too much about things that ultimately didn’t matter, things that had confused him for the longest time. He knew he was likely never going to get answers to his questions though, no out in the Junk Pile where his searches often took place. He hoped though, and he prayed that perhaps the answers to the thoughts that plagued him were written between the pages of The Gospel of Man. Horatio had read it time and time again, he knew it by heart, and somewhere deep down he knew that the answers wouldn’t come from a book, not in a literal sense anyway. It brought him comfort to keep it close though, and to think that Man’s purpose for him was out there somewhere, if not in the book itself, and so he hoped, and he reread it again.

For years he worked on and off on the large structure that stood tall on top of the UNNIIC, one that he had long ago identified to be some sort of searching mechanism or visual tool for the downed unit, but by his calculation could, with the right tools and supplies, be turned into a telescope and used to look into the heavens above. Someday he hoped to get it up and running, just like the rest of the ship, but it all seemed like a distant dream at times, and so he contented himself with sitting aside the telescope and spending his nights looking up at the sky while he worked on it. On clear nights he could see stars.

They were so far away but sometimes, when he’d lay back on the UNNIIC’s roof and reach his hand out above, he felt as though perhaps he could one day find himself among them. Far from this desert, this world, and who knows what, or who, he would find out there.

There was never any warmth when he reached for the stars, but as he pulled his hand back down and laid it across his chest, he would think to himself that perhaps if he could fly… simply leaving his problems behind might be a better answer than any he could find in a book.

* * *

When Horatio had first discovered the Junk Pile there had been a wide assortment of tools and machinery, broken and working alike, that he could sift through and pick what he wanted to haul back to his ship to put to use. Maneuvering through it had been difficult, but he’d often found that he didn’t need to delve terribly deeply into the pile to find something that he could use in one way or another, and he figured that he’d never be at a shortage of usable metal with everything he could find.

His first trip into the mess of old destruction and twisted salvage had been so long ago now, and while he was right, he was still at no risk of running out of metal he could weld together to make something new with, it was everything else he was beginning to hurt for. He made short cuts where he could, but the Junk Pile seemed to dwindle and become sparser far faster than any serious progress was being made on the UNNIIC. Many days, after dragging his haul back from the Junk Pile, Horatio would simply drop his bag at his feet as he stood outside the UNNIIC and stared up at the decrepit ship before him. He’d struggle to fight back the faint sense of hopelessness that plagued his processor. It was a massive ship, and he was just one simple bot, and even if he had a thousand years he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to repair it all on his own.

Day after day though Horatio continued to make his way through the heat of the desert to the Junk Pile, bag empty apart from a small tool he could use to cut through wiring and metal alike should he need to. He’d pick his path carefully, though he largely knew the area like the back of his hand, and from early on in the morning to mid afternoon or even early evening, he would dig and sort and catalog what he found based on how immediately useful it would be to him. Finding things that truly stunned and amazed him was becoming far more of an uncommon occurrence, but most days he still managed to return to his ship with something tucked away that he was eager to use, or even to simply pull apart.

Scrap metal, frayed wiring, destroyed machines that he could take the time to deconstruct and choose from what was within… there was some small part in the back of his processor that told him he should have been disturbed by that very idea, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to care. Whatever- or whoever -these machines had been so long ago, they were now gone and he knew deep within his circuitry that Man would have wanted him to take what was destroyed and build something new with it, just like he had read about some many times in his Gospel.

His bag was always filled slowly, meticulously, always taking what he knew he could use and leaving the rest for another day. A project would always come up that he could come back for whatever he needed at that point, or perhaps another soul would wander in from the distant dunes seeking the very thing he would leave behind. None of this was his, so to speak, so he felt no need to claim it all for himself.

There was one particular evening, however, that he allowed himself to break this rule in a small and seemingly innocuous way. He’d made his way through the junkyard once more, passing more familiar areas that he had already picked over fairly well in favor of new hidden spots, and treasures that he had yet to uncover. What he found though was darker than that though, as he found himself before an unsettling sight, even for someone like him who had found more than his fair share of robot husks that had ended there in the land.

A bot of an unidentifiable make, though Horatio was quite certain it had in fact been a bot at one point given the remains he found. What was left of them, anyway, as what he stumbled upon looked as if it had been some sort of explosion that had ended the poor thing’s life.

Impact, Horatio had thought, though he wasn’t entirely sure how he knew this. Perhaps because it reminded him so much of his own ship, how partially embedded into the ground the UNNIC was, how the land around both it and this husk seemed to have warped and been almost blow outwarns at the force of the horrible landing. He didn’t even want to think about just how or why this bot may have fallen from such a fatal height. Instead his optics began to wander over what was left of the husk, and he dropped his bag open on the ground while he got a closer look.

A shattered processor, twisted protoform, plating all but mangled beyond repair, and from what he could see there was very little of this husk’s inner workings left in tact. That didn’t stop him from picking through what he could find and examining it. There were a few small things he could pull from it to take back, namely screws and a few of the thicker cables that didn’t look like they had sustained too much damage in the fall, and as he searched he carefully separated them and set them aside in a small pile to deposit into his bag when he was satisfied that he had cleaned everything from this frame that he could currently use.

There was one small piece that, at first glance, looked as though it had merely been broken off a larger piece. It probably had in some way or another, but upon closer inspection he found it was in fact it’s own device. A voice box. He’d only seen one before and it had been in his own throat as he’d been attempting to make a few small repairs to his own frame, but he still knew well enough what this was and what it was used for.

Horatio had no real use for this. His own had worked well enough last time he’d check, though admittedly it had been quite a long time since he’d actually given it any use. The speaker could potentially be used if he ever needed to make repairs to his radio, but for now that was functioning as well, and so far had brought Horatio nothing but disappointment.

He’d moved to set the small piece down, but just before it touched the ground once more, he froze, staring down at it in his grasp.

What would the point of having a spare voice box in his supplies be? He didn’t need it, he really didn’t. That’s what he told himself, again.

B’sod, did he even really need the one he had in his throat at this point?

Maybe he didn’t need that second voice box, but when Horatio left the Junk Pile that day it was tucked away not in his bag, but in the pocket of his coat.

* * *

The voice box ended up sitting on Horatio’s desk for three months before he so much as looked at it again. It, along with the blue-print that he hadn’t touched in just as long, was shoved aside, buried under other papers and ignored as small projects made their way on and off of his desk. It gathered dust, took up space, and was about as useless to him as Horatio had suspected it would be when he first brought it home, but it was never tossed away, never scrapped.

There was one instance where Horatio had considered taking it apart and using some of the smaller screws holding it together for another project he’d been working on. It’d be too easy, and make his progress so much simpler. He’d grabbed his screwdriver and the voice box both in hand and he turned the device over in his hands a few times, while listening to the radio that he had playing a short distance away on it’s absolute lowest setting. He hated what was being droned out through the speaker, but it was the only thing fighting off the ever encroaching silence around his ship.

Before he even pressed the tip of his screwdriver to the first screw in the voicebox, his optics were drawn to the radio as the frequency it was on seemed to cut out for a moment, and all he heard was static. Interference, likely a storm rolling in causing the disruption between him and Metropol. Really Horatio didn’t care so much that he couldn’t hear the voice of Metrolpol calling to him anymore, but there was something about the static that put him on edge.

The transmission returned only a few short moments later, and the deceptively soothing voice of Metropol once again crooned into the quiet workshop with the same repeating message beckoning Horatio to leave his home and come to it. It’s words only ever made Horatio’s energy tanks churn with unease and even irritation, and there never seemed to be any other frequencies for the radio to pick up otherwise he would have changed it long ago. With a small sigh he set his tool down and reached for the radio to turn it off, but as he touched the device he felt faint vibrations coming from the sound it produced, and a dull warmth as it’s systems buzzed away. It almost felt alive…

Not in the same sense that Horatio was alive of course.

He was alive. He had thoughts, feelings, desires of his own…

And yet this radio still managed to share more ideas and messages than he ever had, even if the drivel that spilled from it sometimes made Horatio wish that his processor would fry out in the heat of the desert sun some days.

His hand pulled back from where it had stopped and was almost instinctively brought up to his throat, made up largely of considerably delicate wires, and he felt where his own voice box was positioned beneath them. There was a stillness beneath his fingertips. It was cold. When he dropped his hand down again, he looked down to the voice box that he still had clenched in his other hand, useless as it was and still coated in a layer of dust that it had collected during it’s time left to waste on Horatio’s desk.

Horatio stared at the voice box for a few moments before he set it aside once more. He turned the radio up, and he looked for screws elsewhere.

* * *

The telescope had always been a project that Horatio considered to be a bit more of a hobby than something that was actually necessary to one day potentially getting his ship back into working condition. There were times though that it was easier to focus on something that would make his time grounded her a little more enjoyable than on a dream that often seemed so far away from him though, and the promise of seeing the stars above so much closer was something that made Horatio feel genuinely happy to think about. That by no means meant that it was ever going to be an easy task though, because it’s inner workings seemed just as complex as every other part of the ship it was connected to.

Sitting outside under the night sky with a dim lamp hanging nearby to light his work as the moon traveled across the sky… this was when Horatio felt his happiest. He would work slowly, in no rush to finish as he simply wanted to enjoy his time out under the starry sky. The silence was of no consequence out here as wind whistled by and the world seemed so open to him, and he was comfortable. He would steal upward glances and he could swear there were billions of distant eyes staring back at him, somewhere farther than he could ever reach, but there was something comforting about it all the same.

For the longest time he could never quite put his finger on just why he felt this way, and really he’d never taken the time to even think too terribly hard on it before he’d turn his attention back to the work at hand anyway.

When it was time to head back inside though after so many hours of sitting out and enjoying a soft breeze and the company of whatever waited for him out in the stars, that’s when it always hit him. There was something off, something that left him unsettled to his very core processing as he descended down the ladder back into the UNNIIC, and he was never quite sure why. Nothing was ever out of place, nobody ever found where he lived and broke in, nothing was wrong and he knew this. Yet he stood there evey time, looking around his bedroom like he was expecting something to be different, and it never was.

And it took him many, many nights of this to realize that he was disappointed every single time.

When he did, when it finally hit him how wrong he felt there in his own ship, in his own room where he was so far from the eyes in the sky and the rest of the world around him, he sat on his bed and he held his head in his hands, unsure of what to do.

* * *

Horatio knew it was well past time for a recharge, with his energy reserves hovering just around the 12% mark and threatening to dip lower if he didn’t do something about it soon. He made no moves to get up though, his pencil scratching messy lines over his nameless blue print as he often did on his most troubling nights. The nights when the wind storms came in and the radio couldn’t quite pick up any frequencies for hours on end and so the night was filled with nothing but static and Horatio was left entirely with his thoughts.

It was soothing in his own way to work on this particular blue print, and with every new sketch this design took new shapes. A portable emergency energy course? No… perhaps he could work it into some sort of alarm system? No, still no. Horatio had tried to apply many labels and firm ideas to it, and each one had ended up being almost violently scratched off the page, hidden from view as Horatio all but started again. One page became two, and two was quickly filled and Horatio could only look helplessly between them wondering why he even cared. What did it matter if he made something that didn’t quite work? That was so often the case with everything around him, and his marvels were few and far between.

He considered something that could perhaps drag back heavy loads from the Junk Pile. That… didn’t sound terrible actually. It would make his life easier when it came to finding some of the larger machinery that he wanted to bring back to the UNNIIC to deconstruct rather than tearing it apart then and there in the Junk Pile.

Tank treads, or something similar, could be useful for that if he could find them. Attach a hitch to it, or a hook or…

Horatio sighed, and he tapped his pencil against the desk, an uneasiness taking him over again as he stared down at the drawings before him. He guided the tip of it over a line he had already drawn to darken it, give it a more firm shape, round it out just a little. Keep it small, keep it maneuverable…

The radio’s static cut out for just a moment, and a voice could be heard that nearly made Horatio jump. The same monotone voice calling him to Metropol as always, and it only lasted a few moments before the weather outside cut off the frequency once more and static filled the room again. He kept his optics locked on the blue-prints as he listened, only to flick towards the small voice box that had been case aside and had collected a thick layer of dust since it was last touched.

His free hand migrated, without him really realizing it, towards his throat once again, the tips of his fingers brushing against the first few layers of cables that covered his own voice box, and he kept it there as he wrote.

There was this somewhat senseless, nearly undefinable small round thing scribbled onto his blue-prints with a number of notes that had been entirely undecided on even after months of contemplation. Some had been crossed out. Some had been rewritten after being crossed out. Tank treads? Perhaps some sort of arms to drag metal back from the Junk Pile? Maybe just a hitch that could hook into whatever it found. A voice box.

There was no question about the voice box as Horatio added it to the side under a number of other details. He underlined it multiple times before slamming his pencil down, and he stared down at what he had before him. It was impractical really, and Horatio knew it would be rather foolish to slap a voice box on something that was meant to simply go back and forth between the Junk Pile, to drag things for him while he was focused on other projects. If all he did was run radio frequencies through it, he’d just get a mobile version of the Metropol announcements he so entirely despised already.

There was something about it though… something in the back of his processor that made him feel warm as he thought about it.

Horatio stared down at what he had before him for a long while, his energy reserves continuing to dip lower and lower, but there was a spark so deep in his very core, perhaps somewhere in his very coding that screamed at him that he was so close to something beautiful here. So close to creating something truly worthwhile. He just had a feeling that even if it wasn’t something that would help him get his ship in the air one day, it would be something that he could leave this world feeling truly, utterly proud to call his creation.

Something Horatiobuilt.

The thought was as chilling as it was absolutely exhilarating to Horatio, the realization hitting him harder than anything ever had before, and his optics glowed just a little brighter in the dimly lit room as he stared down at the image before him. He felt as if he were unable to move, felt as though he were simply humming with electricity running through his circuits. Honestly he might have sat there all night with excitement and fear barreling through him all balled up into one strange emotion he had never experienced before, a sensation he never wanted to leave him. His own body needed attention though, and finally Horatio moved, slowly reaching for the pencil with a shaky hand. He touched it to the paper to only add one more small detail that changed everything for him.

Two small, round optics were added to the front of this design before Horatio set the pencil back down, and he stood from his desk to retire for the evening.

* * *

There were far more small intricacies that Horatio hadn’t initially considered when he first began fully throwing himself into the creation of his bot- Crispin, he’d decided -and this project alone had quickly become far more complex than any other that had come across his desk before. Then again, Horatio wasn’t even sure this was something he could really even call a ‘project’ anymore. No, it was so much more than that.

The first thing that he’d decided, after only a few brief moments of consideration on the matter, was that he didn’t want Crispin to communicate to him through only a few set of learned responses allowed by programming. If he was going to give life to something in the same way that Man had given life to them all, he wanted his creation to truly live, to have free will, and choices, ideas and desires. He wouldn’t settle for anything else.

Still, it was a lot harder than most things he’d attempted to pull off before, and the number of nights where he ran himself nearly to the point of completely running out of charge just putting the framework for a mind together were becoming impossible to keep track of. It challenged him in a way that he had never been before, in a way that made him happy to work on it. The nights he spent huddled over his desk carefully soldering and piecing together what would someday become a companion for him reminded him of how he felt the nights he would spend atop the UNNIIC, working away at the telescope and staring up at the sky above him. This time though there was no sadness when he set his tools down and finally caved into his exhausted body’s needs. No matter how low on energy he was, he would throw one last glance at the progress he’d made, and as Crispin finally began to take a physical shape… he didn’t go to sleep with a haunting sense of loneliness anymore. Only with an eagerness, and ideas floating in his processor of what he wanted to do next.

Horatio’s original ides for tank treads had been long since scrapped and replaced with a much more maneuverable mag-lev unit after he’d managed to uncover one in surprisingly good shape during a fruitful trip to the Junk Pile. The arms, while the idea hadn’t exactly been scrapped like the treads, never quite ended working out with a lack of supplies being the main cause of this. The few arms he had found were busted beyond repair, and the last thing that Horatio wanted was for Crispin to wake up with dead weight hanging off of him. He needed to wait until he found something suitable to use on such a small body.

And Crispin was quite small.

The day Horatio had finsihed Crispin, finished building him anyway, he’d simply stood at his desk and took a good long while to admire what he had created. Crispin rested easily in Horatio’s hand, and he was cold, inactive, just waiting for Horatio to give him the power he needed to begin his life. Horatio had gone back and forth a few times on just what size to make Crispin’s frame, and finally he’d settled on something smaller for the bot. It’d be easier for him to get around, and the smaller frame would take less time and energy to charge him up to full.

And honestly there was something nice about being able to hold Crispin in his hands, even if currently he was unpowered, still just a concept even now in the final stage of his creation.

Horatio carried Crispin’s finished frame away from his desk for the very first time, into the ship’s recharge station and he eyed the newest cable that he had pulled from the depths of his ship to hook up just for his new ship mate. As eager as he was to see what was ow well over a year in the making come to a head, there was a weight in the moment that kept Horatio from simply plugging Crispin in and being done with it.

No, he sat there on the floor beside the cable he’d picked for Crispin, and for a moment he stared down at the frame in his hands and he truly thought about what he was going to do next. From the moment he plugged Crispin in there would be no going back. Never again would his life be the same, and he would have, in a sense, completed the cycle that had so long ago been started by Man himself. Horatio couldn’t help but think to himself as he stared down at Crispin that Man would be proud, and Horatio himself was proud in that moment.

And he knew this was only just the beginning, and that though he didn’t know who Crispin was going to be just yet, the two of them had all the time in the world to learn from one another, and that the end of Crispin’s creation was the start of something lifelong and, Horatio hoped, something beautiful.

There was warmth in Horatio’s very core as he reached for the cord, and with a gentle hand he plugged Crispin in to begin charging him up for the very first time. The optical display that he had created for him lit up and begin to emit a soft blue glow that filled Horatio with a sense of pride and happiness that he had never before experienced.

“Hello, Crispin...” He uttered through a voice box suffering terribly from neglect, the sound coming out scratchy and nearly unintelligible as that part of him once again heated up and readied itself for use. Crispin was not yet online though, and he wouldn’t be until his charge was entirely filled, so after running a rough hand over Crispin’s round surface, Horatio set him down and stood from his spot to join him in a well deserved recharge, knowing that when they were finished the rest of their lives could begin.

* * *

“This is where we live?” Crispin had asked. It had, oddly enough, been one of the first questions that he had asked Horatio after he’d first booted up and had a chance to look around while his optics cycled. The tone of his voice was a bit disappointed, almost judgmental in a way, and that had surprised Horatio more than the question itself had.

“I… yes? This is where I’ve always lived, as far as I can remember anyway, and it’s where you’ll live too.” Horatio said. “If you’d like, anyway. It doesn’t sound like you care for it terribly much though...”

“Well…. I mean sure it’s a place to live, but it’s not much of a home now is it?” Crispin asked, turning slowly where he floated in the recharge room and took everything in. “It’s pretty drab if you ask me.”

It was baffling to Horatio, and for a moment he honestly didn’t know how to respond to him. He hadn’t put much thought into personality or anything beyond a few basic perimeters for different emotions and a few programmed basics of his own knowledge, just so Crispin wouldn’t be starting completely from scratch when he came into the world. He’d wondered lat at night as he set up his recharge station what Crispin would end up being like when he was finally online and functioning, but being ridiculed for his living conditions within the first five minutes after activation hadn’t been at the top of his list of possibilities…

“Crispin… how would you even know? You haven’t even left the charging room yet, much less been anywhere else in the world for comparison. Honestly, for all you know this could be the coziest place in the universe.” Horatio said, and from what he’d seen out in the desert, it just might have been true.

“Well I’m just saying. Isn’t a home supposed to be the reflection of your soul or something? Can’t say I see a bit of you in here anywhere… well, aside from where you’re standing that is.” Crispin said, floating just a little closer to Horatio, tilting himself almost quizzically as he stared his creator down. “Unless you’re drab? Horatio please tell me this isn’t the case, I don’t know if I can take a reveal like that so early on in my life!”

Horatio pressed his face into the rough surface of his hand and he slowly dragged it down as he, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he laughed. This wasn’t at all how he imagined his first real conversation with his creation going, but there was something so real about it, something so genuine that Crispin brought to the table. He was an entirely different bot than Horatio was, and it wasn’t something that Horatio had realized he needed so desperately in his life until he finally had him.

Crispin did back up just a little when Horatio laughed at his joke, and it was a nice sound even if Horatio’s voice box crackled with disuse in the middle of it. His optics brightened and if he could have smiled he would have.

“I think you’ll like some of the other rooms a little more than this one, Crispin. Despite what you might think right now, I have done what I can to make this ship a… home of sorts. It’s your home now as well though, so if you think you can help to make it better, by all means go right ahead.” Horatio said, and as he lifted his head again he motioned for Crispin to follow before turning towards his bedroom.

Horatio didn’t exactly need to sleep, and he’d never really used his bedroom for rest or anything quite like that, but the bed was comfortable to him and the small room made for a good space to store some of his more important trinkets, and a great place to sit down and read whenever he felt like skimming through any of the wide number of books that he’d collected over the years. Of course the hatch in the room lead to the UNNIIC’s roof, and to the telescope that he’d put so much time and effort into before creating Crispin, where so many of is nicer nights had been spent. At least Crispin seemed to appreciate this room more than the last, finding just the fact that it seemed to be a bit more lived in appealing.

The rest of the tour continued in much the same way, with Horatio standing near the doors and explaining in the simplest of ways what each room did or what purpose it served, all the while watching Crispin slowly explore his new world, optics bright and shining with a sort of wonder that Horatio himself hadn’t felt in such a long time. Only a few times did Crispin bump into or knock anything over as he continued to learn about how to move in this body of his, but from a technical standpoint it seemed to Horatio that everything was working as it should have.

The absolute best moment of showing Crispin around though was when Horatio brought him up to the roof through the hatch, and for the very first time Crispin got a look at the outside world. The day was bright and clear, and Crispin could see for miles all around them and it left him speechless. He spun in slow circles for entire minutes just looking at everything he could see, from the far off Junk Piles, to unidentifiable shapes in the distance, to the clouds high up above the, and Horatio said nothing as he observed him here. There was nothing he could have said, and honestly if he had tried to speak it might have ruined the moment.

“It’s so…” Crispin started after a long bout of silence between the two, and Horatio tilted his head just slightly, curious as to what the small bot would say. “Big.” He finally finished, and Horatio gave a slow, deliberate nod as he thought.

“It is. And it’s dangerous, and there aren’t many like us out here in the desert, but it’s just as much our home as the UNNIIC is, and you’ll get to see a good chunk of it someday.” Horatio promised, watching as Crispin turned back towards him with an eager look in his optics.

“I’ll get to explore it you mean? Not just do your dirty chores out there in the heat, right?” Crispin asked, a suspicious tone entering his voice as he spoke.

“Do you really think I would make you just for that?” Horatio asked.

“I don’t know…” Crispin said lowly, looking back over the vast horizon of the desert. “...I think you made me because you were lonely out here.” He said.

There was a sharp twinge deep inside Horatio, a sort of pain he felt as Crispin all too accurately put to words what he had been feeling for so long but didn’t exactly want to admit to himself. He couldn’t help but think that perhaps he had put a bit more of himself into Crispin than he had originally thought, or that Crispin was going to end up far smarter than he imagined a bot made by himself could ever be.

“Come on Crispin,” Horatio said, choosing not to carry that conversation any further, and as he motioned for Crispin to follow he turned to head down the side of the UNNIIC so he could continue showing him the lay of the land. “I’ll show you where I find most of my supplies from. I’ll have you fetch thing there from time to time, so it’ll be good for you to know where the pile is.”

“I knew it, I knew it, you really did just make me to be a chore bot!” Crispin complained, loudly and sarcastically.

“Favors, not chores Crispin!”

Horatio lead, and Crispin followed.

* * *

The first night that Horatio had brought Crispin up to work on the telescope with him had been quite sweet really. They had come up just as the sun was beginning to set, and Crispin hadn’t been told anything beyond the fact that this was one of Horatio’s favorite spots, and his favorite project to work on. He hadn’t understood why at first, and had been initially disappointed when he was informed that it was in fact not some kind of large laser attached to the ship, but as horatio worked and the sun began to fall below the distant horizon, Horatio looked up and pointed towards the sky.

“Look, up above Crispin. Isn’t it beautiful?”

What Crispin saw above him was a sight that he doubted would ever leave his processor. Thousands of lights twinkling so far away captivated him, left him frozen where he floated as his optics roamed over them, trying to take in each and every one and failing miserably.

“I always thought that maybe, just maybe, if I could get this ship up and running...” Horatio started from where he was sat on the roof of the UNNIIC, and he ran his hand over it’s rusted surface as he spoke. It drew Crispin’s attention back to him, and he stared down at the ship rather than the bot he was talking to. “Maybe I could reach those stars. Fly among them, see them a little closer.”

“Really?” Crispin asked. “You actually want this old thing to fly? And… you want to leave?”

“This is an airship by the looks of it, Crispin, it was meant to fly. Sometimes I think I was too, just a feeling, you know?” Horatio said with a small snort, and after a contemplative moment as he stared down at the tool in his hand, he set it aside in favor of stretching out and laying back. There were no clouds tonight, and the view was stunning. He didn’t want to pass it up. “I certainly never feel like I’m meant to stay here on the ground.”

“Would you take me with you?” Crispin asked, and there was such an eagerness to his voice, but the slightest hint of desperation tainted it all and pulled Horatio’s gaze to the small floating bot above him, the glow of his mag-lev unit brighter to him than any other star in the sky.

“Of course. I don’t want to go anywhere without you.” Horatio assured.

Crispin didn’t respond immediately, simply floating and staring down at Horatio with dimmed optics, and for a brief moment Horatio thought that perhaps he needed to go inside and recharge for a bit. Before he could voice his concern though, Crispin lowered himself slowly, and he settled on the roof between Horatio’s spread arm and his side.

He was warm, round frame thrumming with life and it was so nice to simply lay there with Crispin at his side as he stared up into the sky, a comfortable silence taking them over for a few precious moments until, almost hesitantly, Crispin spoke up again.

“...You know, Boss, it’s been weird here since I first… booted up, I guess. I haven’t exactly figured out my place here yet, and I’m not sure I will for a while now either.” Crispin said, and hearing him say that did make Horatio just a little sad, but it wasn’t hard to understand just why Crispin would feel that way either. “But this�� right here with you, this is nice. This finally almost feels like I’m really home, right where I need to be, you know?”

Horatio curled his arm around Crispin, dragging him just a little closer to his side, hugging him there as the two of them stared up at the night sky and the stars stared back at them both. “We cans tay here as long as you want, Crispin.” Horatio promised, and the soft sigh from Crispin put him more at ease than any thoughts of flying ever had.

“I think I’d like that.”

* * *

It was easy to lose track of time when it didn’t really matter to Horatio in the first place. Days with Crispin passed by, weeks, months, maybe years it was hard to tell. Not every day was easy living with someone who was so fundamentally different than him, almost his polar opposite in every way in fact, but even through arguments and disagreements big and small, Horatio couldn’t have imagined his life without the little bot. He was happy with him, and after a long while the two settled into a sort of contentment with each other and what they had.

While Crispin did his very best to help with repairs on the UNNIIC, there really was only so much he could do for Horatio, and in fact some days Horatio was sure that having Crispin around might have actually slowed the progress down a bit as he now had far more on his mind to focus on than just just making repairs, though he could hardly say he was unhappy with this. As far as he was concerned, he had no real time limit, and while his dreams of flying far and exploring the world from above never truly left his processor, he had something here and now that made him feel more than willing to take his time and enjoy what he was building. He’d get there someday, and when he did Crispin would be right there beside him.

The night he finally finished repairs on something he had been looking forward to for so long though, was the same night that Horatio’s world and everything he knew was sent tumbling, crashing down around him. The telescope, so long in the making, was supposed to be a milestone in his work on the UNNIIC, and cause for celebration for him and Crispin both, but no sooner had he gotten the device operational was everything ripped away from him in one fell swoop.

POWER, FORFEIT, ENEMY, PLUNDER.

Hoatio had never had much to begin with, but what he did have meant everything to him, and they had taken it all away from him, starting with their power core. Without it they had no lights, no home, no chance for survival. They had been low on power when the attack first came, and all at once his priority became finding a replacement, even something temporary, just to keep he and Crispin going long enough to solve their problem.

The Generator had been easy enough to get up and running, but it could only sustain them for so long before they’d eventually end up back in square one, so even with a full charge he couldn’t afford to rest.

Horatio had known somewhere deep, deep in his very core programming, that someday he would find himself in Metropol. One by one his attempts at finding a solution to their problem failed, and finally the city that had been beckoning to him for so many years was the only place he could turn in such a desperate situation. Honestly he would have rather offline out in the desert, fighting all the while for every other small spark of hope he could grasp at, than turn to the city that had haunted him for as long as he could remember. He felt wrong even considering it, but it was Crispin he needed to think of, who wanted to see The City of Glass and Light, who he had to think of first and put before himself in every situation.

And so they went. The train ride too short for Horatio’s taste, and he knew that they were barreling headfirst into a world of trouble. He could only hope it wouldn’t be more than they could handle.

What they found was… a nightmare. Metropol, city of glass and light was a crumbling disaster of a city, kept alive seemingly by one machine who thought that the way to progress was to eliminate anything that she deemed to be weaker than her, less intelligent, unnecessary. The progress to a brighter future that only she could see, and possibly, only she would reach. Horatio wanted nothing to do with it all from the very beginning, he wanted his power core back and a way back home where he could forget about everything festering away in the city, and yet despite every attempt he made to simply reclaim what was his, he found himself inadvertently fighting to fix the city he so innately despised.

And through it all… he learned things he had never wanted to learn, or at least told himself he didn’t. About himself, about the world he lived in, and it seemed as though with every step he took towards Metromind and his stolen power core, the city itself fought back against him, taking more and more as he went until he had nothing left.

In the end, when it was all said and done, he felt that the cost too heavily outweighed the victory. Horatio had won, he’d defeated Metromind and left the city he so despised with what he had come for, his power core, and nothing more.

Perhaps he was truly selfish like Metromind had said, because in the end he did do exactly what he’d set out to do, to take what he believed belonged to him, leave, and never look back again. What became of that accursed city… well, his connection to it died with the name Horus, it died with Clarity, it died with Crispin. Metromind was wrong, Horatio could walk away from a problem when he lost everything he cared about trying to solve it, though there was still a guilt that came with it all, with leaving the city as it was to die out on it’s own in time just like the rest of the world had. He knew it would, but he couldn’t just…. There was something in him that kept him from doing anything other than what he and Crispin had originally set out to do. If he didn’t, what was it all for then?

There was a numbness in him as he set out across the dunes in search of where he came from, and he cradled the power core in his hand close to his person, the only thing left of what he had before.

It was easy to lose track of time with every step and, well, when it didn’t really matter to Horatio in the first place anyhow. All that mattered to him was getting back to the UNNIIC, to where he belonged. His load was light, but weighed heavy on him and almost seemed to drag him down, threatening to bury him in the dunes he had once found safety in. The only thing he could do to fight it was to move, to take another step, and keep his eyes faced forward and never look back.

When the first blurry shape of the UNNIIC began to take shape over the horizon, a familiar sensation washed over Horatio. Exhaustion. He hadn’t realized just how low on energy he was until he was dragging his feet through the final miles of the sandy dunes that separated him and his ship. The winds blew wildly, sending his coat flailing as the first little drops of acid rain began to fall from the sky. None of it though, none of it was enough to make him take one step faster.

“Just a little further,” He mumbled out into the dry, electric air around him. “We’re almost there, Crispin, almost...”

As the shadow of the ship’s hull finally loomed over, he stumbled past the long dead generator and pulled himself up, making his way into the UNNIIC with the power core pressed tightly to his chest.

“Home.”

And it was silent.

#Primordia #Crispin #Horatio #Primordia game #Crispin Horatiobuilt #Horatio Nullbuilt

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andavs · 7 years ago

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Would you believe this was inspired by the beginning of Shrek? Yes. Because it’s the same.

“Next!”

Stiles dragged his feet a bit as Hilda tugged him forward in line. He was chained up and surrounded by guards, probably about to be sold into slavery, but he still wasn’t going to make this easy for the old broad.

He’d been buying her produce for years, and this was how she repaid him? Selling him to the king for some supernatural creature bounty? No. He was going to make this as difficult as possible.

She glared her beady little eyes at him, dug her sharp nails into his arm a bit more, and shoved him forward another lurching step. The fae at the front of the line was deemed worth twenty pounds, ten shillings and hauled off by knights in armor.

“Next!”

A hellhound was dragged forward in an iron collar.

“I will give you money if you just let me go,” Stiles whispered, he wasn’t above bargaining, but Hilda ignored him. He didn’t have much, but it was probably more than she’d get from these chumps. “Six shillings, right now.”

Hilda rolled her eyes and tugged him forward by the chain looped around his wrists. The hellhound was appraised and hauled off into the back of a closed wagon. It was no doubt magically reinforced; Stiles could still hear violent snarling inside, but nothing was breaking through the old rickety wooden sides.

“Next!”

“Ten shillings,” Stiles continued, “right as soon as I can get to the bank. Twenty, even! Three pounds!”

Hilda gave him a withering look. “You don’t have that kind of money. Now shut up.” She yanked on his chain and both wrists burned as the iron manacles scraped against the already raw skin. The iron was bad enough without all of the jerking around.

Another supernatural creature was carried off to the wagon—this time a nymph—and then it was Stiles’ turn.

Hilda yanked him forward, and his hip hit the sturdy wooden table, making the guard’s quill skip on the notes he was writing.

The guard glared up from his work, and looked Stiles up and down before drawling out, “Magic user?” His tone actually sounded bored. Here he was, cataloging all of the magic beings in the kingdom, making note of what they could do as he rounded them up to serve the king in lifelong servitude, and he sounded bored.

Stiles’ entire future, his freedom, and this guy was bored.

“Not just a magic use, he’s an emissary,” old Hilda croaked like it was something special. It would be special were there any actual wolf packs to be emissary to, but they were long gone by this day and age, and thus, Stiles’ special abilities were useless. He was useless, and the market responded accordingly.

The guard raised his eyebrows under his helmet. “Five shillings.”

Alright, Stiles was being sold, so that alone was insulting enough, but five shillings? He’d paid more for a week’s worth of food last month.

To Hilda, the asshole.

“Only five?” Hilda took the words right out of his mouth, but the guard didn’t seem to care.

“Emissaries aren’t needed,” he said blandly. “He’ll just take up space with the other wizards until we find something for him.”

Now Stiles was really offended; held with the two bit scam artists? He’d actually had training, real training; he could do far more than vanish a sheep behind a curtain.

“Shouldn’t he be worth at least thirty pounds?” Hilda bargained horribly. “He’s young, after all. Look at this ass!”

Stiles jumped at the sudden slap on his right cheek, and couldn’t help but be grateful for the guard’s equally disgusted expression.

“No,” he said, his tone almost feeling sorry for the old broad. “Still five. Despite any other…” he looked uncomfortable “...physical...assets.”

He and Stiles met eyes briefly, and a silent exchange of mutual help me’s passed through their gaze.

“Are you sure? I could…” Hilda waggled her eyebrows. “Let you have a go.”

Stiles tried to communicate clearly with his eyes to the guard that nothing like that had been even remotely close to happening. She had warts. All over. He hoped the message translated.

The guard’s wide eyes met his briefly, and Stiles thought he saw pity and maybe a little sympathy before he tried to compose himself.

“No. Five shillings.”

It was still insulting, but maybe Hilda would just ditch him if she couldn’t get any kind of money out of him.

No such luck.

“Alright, take ‘im.” She shrugged, and shoved Stiles down against the table. “I don’t need him anymore.”

As if she’d had some claim over him before. He was a customer, damn it.

“Pleasure doing business with you.” The guard scrawled down her name on a list inches from Stiles’ face, and waved forward the two massive knights flanking him, who came around the table to haul Stiles off to his doom.

Nope, that wouldn’t work. He needed out.

The little bit of his magic he could reach through the iron, he threw at the table, flinging it up into the head guard’s face. He was bowled over, back onto the grass, and the table continued into one of the other guards, but there was still one coming towards him.

Stiles muttered a quick incantation under his breath, tried to ignore the pain as his magic was ripped through the chains, and Hilda squawked as she was tossed into the remaining knight lumbering forward. There was a metallic clatter as they collided, but Stiles didn’t stick around to see how they landed; he ran.

He leapt over a few rocks at the edge of the clearing, a fallen tree, threw a handful of dirt in the face of another guard trying to follow, and stumbled deeper into the forest. It wasn’t likely he would be followed too far into the trees, but he didn’t slow down to find out if anyone was trying. He kept his eyes forward, focused on dodging low hanging branches, keeping his chains from tripping him. He had to get away.

He couldn’t hear anyone behind him, no clanging of metal armor or shouts. Like anyone would be stupid enough to follow him.

There were rumors, legends of creatures living in this forest, though no one had ever made it back with a clear answer as to whether they were true. It was a fable, something the few other emissaries said with an eyeroll like others mentioned Santa Claus—yeah, maybe the wolves will come save you, just close your eyes and wish.

Ancient packs of wolves that emissaries like Stiles were born to be a part of, long extinct and lost to legend.

If only they were still around to save him now that he really needed them.

But they weren’t. They were long gone, and Stiles was on his own; crashing through the trees, trying not to trip over roots, just trying to get far enough away that the king would have no power over him, no way to find him. He’d tried living in secrecy in the kingdom, keeping his magic suppressed and tucked away, but he’d been found out.

He had to get away from the cities, deeper into the forest.

Beware, a crudely scrawled sign warned him, nailed to a tree, and he knew he was heading the right direction.

If there were beware signs in the woods, they we either put up by hunters or the rumored incredibly dangerous and powerful creatures themselves living deep in the forest; and if Stiles had run deep enough in to run into either those groups, then he was at least safe from the guards. The kingdom didn’t encroach on the hunters’ territory, and if he wasn’t running towards hunters, at least maybe the creatures would give him a chance.

An arrow whizzed past his head and embedded in a tree right in front of him.

Nope, hunters. Or maybe persistent guards violating the law of the land. He couldn’t tell.

Either way, they must’ve been desperate to meet their collection quota for the season if they were chasing this far after a single magic user. A single, solitary emissary without a pack who’d been found out by his local squash merchant.

Fucking Hilda.

Another arrow thudded into the ground just next to his left foot, and he swerved to the right, around some denser foliage. He couldn’t outrun them for long. They were going to get him any second—if not with an arrow, then with a sword when they eventually managed to cut him off.

What a way to go.

But then a deep, echoing, reverberating howl shook through Stiles’ entire body, making his foot slip off a root and twist painfully as he fell. Damn mysterious and immortal creatures of the forest, ruining his laughably slim chance of escape. The hunters would be on him in a second, blades ready to skin the tattoo from his back, to trade for a bounty from the guards, if it wasn’t guards behind him anyway.

He was so tired.

He’d been running for so long, long before this stupid little chase. He just wanted to sleep and feel safe again. He just wanted someone else to take over this stupid rescue bullshit so he could stop running and stop hiding for once in his life.

Save me, he demanded at the universe as his eyes closed and the tiny bit of light filtering through the trees faded behind his lids as the world drifted away to silence. This is all your fault anyway.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to darkness—no, dimness, he realized as his eyes adjusted. A dim room with twilight colors creeping in through half-covered windows. He was under a warm blanket in a surprisingly soft bed, tucked in neatly like he hadn’t been since he was a child.

He stared at the wall that happened to be in his line of sight for a moment, then slowly forced his head to carry its own weight and turned to look towards the other side. And started at the sight of the figure sitting at his bedside in dead silence.

“Sorry,” the man said harshly, but when he continued, his voice was quieter and less aggressive. “We found you on the edge of our territory. What were you doing out here?”

Stiles stared at the man for a second, sizing up the heavy brows, dark stubble that would never be seen on one of the king’s guards, then answered unconvincingly, “Jogging.”

The man looked pointedly down at his wrists, at the manacles still fastened tightly around them. “Jogging.”

“Jogging,” Stiles repeated. He was an idiot.

“Do you usually jog with manacles and hunters chasing you?” the man asked casually. Crap, he’d seen it all.

“Always,” Stiles said with a shrug. “Keeps the heart rate up.”

The impressive eyebrows jumped up. “The way you heart’s pounding while lying down, I don’t think it needs the help.”

How he knew that, Stiles had no idea.

“Well I’m a little on edge at the moment, so that makes sense,” he argued in some last ditch effort to leave there alive. Wherever there was.

“I’m Derek,” the man said without preamble, then raised his eyebrows higher when Stiles didn’t immediately answer. Then he figured he really should answer, because this Derek didn’t seem like he enjoyed not knowing.

“Stiles.”

“You’re an emissary,” Derek stated bluntly, as if saying that kind of thing wouldn’t get him killed. “We saw your tattoo.”

“I don’t have a tattoo,” Stiles tried weakly. He’d just gotten away from being sold for this, he wasn’t ready to be thrown back into it all.

Derek didn’t look impressed by his lie. He took a breath, bracing himself, then confessed softly, “I have the same one.”

Stiles blinked at him, searching his face for any kind of deceit, betrayal, a lie of his own—but there was nothing. Just honesty.

“You’re—” Stiles couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, because if this Derek had the same tattoo, then according to legend, that meant he was a—

Derek nodded, and his eyes flared the fabled red of a wolf. “I’m your alpha.”

Psst, now there’s a second part!

#sterek #ficlet #i don't even know #stiles is donkey?#but magic?#there's been day drinking today #and regular drinking #shrek au

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quiveringbunny · 7 years ago

Text

Making Merry - An Olicity Holiday Story (G - 1/3)

Hello friends!

Here is the first chapter of my holiday fic for this year. I hope you enjoy it. Special thanks to the most overqualified and lovely beta imaginable. @tinaday3w, for encouragement and assistance.

This is chapter 1 of 3. It will be completed by Christmas Eve. It’s a fluffy story. Not my usual tone, but I wanted to do something romantic.

While you are reading, maybe you want to listen to a new holiday song written and performed by a pal of mine...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ScX_QFlNpo

Read on A03.

CHAPTER ONE: The Tree

Every year, Queen Consolidated, one of the most prosperous companies in Starling City, conducted a holiday fundraiser to benefit after school programs for children in The Glades. The efforts typically ranged from $500-a-plate galas to company raffles.

This year’s scheme, masterminded by Thea Queen herself, was a sale of Christmas trees and greenery. This was how her brother, Oliver, found himself driving a borrowed pick-up truck after work one Friday night several days before Christmas, to deliver a Christmas tree to an employee who lived just on the edge of town.

At first, Oliver groused at the request. Perhaps that was because as the CEO of the company, he thought they “had people” for this kind of chore. But more likely, he was just annoyed because Thea – his only living relative, his baby sister – was not in town herself to oversee the completion of her project. No, she was in some remote part of Switzerland skiing with a young man who looked like a catalog model and she wasn’t going to be home until the day after Christmas. Sure, she had apologized profusely and he knew she was genuinely gutted that transportation was not cooperating. Oliver even offered the company jet, but Thea insisted it would be wasteful.

“Ollie, use the money we’d spend on a plane and put it towards the afterschool fund. That would be the best Christmas present, really,” she had pleaded via Skype. Thea deployed the eyes then, the ones that looked like they belonged in a Keane painting.

Oliver sighed. “I guess that means I can take back your other presents, Speedy.”

“Other presents?” she chirped, grinning into the phone.

“Maybe,” he said solemnly. Oliver didn’t want to make things too easy.

“Yes!” Thea pumped her delicate fist in the air. “I have presents for you too. And we’ll just spread it out one more day?”

He could hardly begrudge his sister companionship during the holidays. Since they lost their parents, they had drifted together, but holidays were hardest. Each year, without deliberately admitting it, they found reasons to spend Christmas apart. The day was a reminder of loss, more than anything, so individual distractions were preferable to shared pain. To strangers it might have seemed like an odd arrangement, but they were Queens and accustomed to making up their own rules.

"Okay." He nodded. “Call me on Christmas though?”

“Of course, Brother.” Thea blew him a kiss and then the call terminated.

Oliver rolled his eyes and chuckled at his sister, setting about putting his tablet into the messenger bag that served as his “hipster CEO briefcase.” It had been a gift from his fashionable sibling and he carried it to the office every day.

Just before he closed the flap, Oliver’s tablet lit up again. He dug it out and accepted another call from the younger Queen.

“Yes?” He eyed her with trepidation.

“Ollie, there’s one more thing.” Thea gave him a sweet smile. She even blinked a few extra times to seem more adorable. Oliver grimaced back.

“Just tell me, Thea.”

“It’s the Holiday Greens sale. I kind of need a big favor tonight.”

And now Oliver was driving down a dark street lined with weathered duplex houses, a 7-foot Douglas fir and stand nestled in the truck bed, gazing at house numbers. Gratefully, there was no one parked in front of 5824. He was able to maneuver Tommy Merlyn’s massive F-150 into the space. He much preferred to drive his own car, but the delivery crew had dispersed and his best friend had kindly stepped up to offer his pickup. Sort of. Don’t get any tree sap on it, Oliver, he had remarked. It’s a truck, Tommy, he countered, not an Aston Martin. You’re supposed to haul dirt around in it and get it muddy as hell. Tommy smirked. When you get your own truck, you can keep it as filthy as you want.

Soon after, Oliver picked up the tree from a designated area in the Queen Consolidated parking garage. He was grateful for the cover. It was an unusually cold night for Starling City in December and the frigid wind was whipping past the buildings in the business district. He was also grateful that Tommy had left warm gloves and a balaclava on the passenger’s seat following a snowboarding adventure. They were probably Armani, Oliver surmised. Nothing but the best for his friend.

With thoughts of how he would later tease the crap out of his best friend by finding an online photo of a mud-caked truck and sending it to him with an apologetic text, Oliver pulled on the warm wear. It was much colder out now and he still had to wrangle his prickly cargo. Oliver headed to 5826, a printed delivery form clutched in his leather-gloved hand, and knocked after he scaled the stairs and reached the door.

The door opened and a shape was illuminated in the light-filled frame. Then, the shape (his eyes were still adjusting from the brightness) yelped sharply, filling Oliver’s ears. It threw him. He wasn’t expecting that.

“Oh my God!” the figure shouted, then stepped back into the house and slammed the door shut. It didn’t actually hit him in the face, but his eyes registered the breeze as it closed in front of him. Oliver stood there for nearly two minutes trying to process what had just happened. He pulled the order form up to his face and checked the house number again. He was in the right place. He tentatively knocked again. The door did not open.

This time, a small female voice called out, filtered by the wooden door.

“I have the police on speed dial.”

“Really? Speed dial? Most people would just dial 911,” Oliver responded without thinking.

“I’m not most people. I work with the police. They know me. So, I can contact them whenever I want. Directly. It’s much faster.”

“Wait. I thought you worked at Queen Consolidated.”

“Okay, I’m definitely going to call the cops now, Mister Stalker Home Invader.”

“I have no idea what-“ Oliver was getting exasperated now and Thea was never going to hear the end of it when next he saw her. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed.

It was only then that he touched his head and realized he was wearing Tommy’s designer ski mask. Letting out an exasperated groan, Oliver pulled the garment off and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

“Miss, sorry for freaking you out. I’m here from QC to deliver the Christmas tree you ordered.”

There was a beat. Maybe two. Then he heard the woman’s voice again as it distinctly muttered, "Oh crap."

The door slowly swung open again. This time, Oliver was more prepared for the change in brightness. But he was less prepared for his first real look at the young woman standing inside the entryway. She had wavy blonde hair and…lips. Of course, she had lips. Everybody had lips. But hers were the color of cranberries, he thought. She was wearing glasses. No-nonsense frames that did nothing to make her any less cute. But behind them her brilliant blue eyes looked…puffy. He had seen that look enough on Thea to recognize when a woman had been crying. He must have really scared her.

“I’m really sorry for surprising you like that. I borrowed my friend’s truck to bring your tree and I put his ski mask on because it’s really cold. I don’t even own one of these stupid things. They are pretty creepy, even with a designer label.” Oliver snagged the offending headwear from his pocket and waved it around.

The girl with the azure eyes laughed quietly and tilted her head, sizing him up. He was more than a head taller than she was and broad in the shoulders. His hair was sitting up a little on top, in disarray from the ski mask. But his eyes were…pretty. Blue. And he had gorgeous eye lashes. A faint shadow of scruff along his jaw, combined with his leather jacket and jeans gave him a sexy tradesman kind of look.

“That was a great ramble,” she volunteered.

For some reason he couldn’t explain, Oliver blushed a little. He didn’t go off like that in front of women, but somehow, with this one, he was already on the ropes. “Sorry.”

“No, it was wonderful. It’s usually me doing that.” She smiled at him, a genuine smile, but it rushed away and her demeanor changed.

“Oh, what am I thinking? Please come in!” She retreated from the door and motioned for Oliver to enter. It was as if there was a string tied between them and he advanced on command. She maneuvered around his large frame and closed the door to stop more chilly air from coming through.

The woman was dressed for serious weekend lounging on this Friday night. A fluffy pink robe. Loose QC t-shirt underneath. Snug-fitting Star Wars leggings tucked into panda slippers. She was kind of adorable. Not the type of woman he usually met these days. They were decidedly…slinkier. Usually clad in sexy designer gowns or club dresses. Truthfully, the harder they appeared to try to get his attention, the less interested he seemed to be. Apparently, he felt more at ease around soft and cuddly. And slightly whimsical.

“So, you are…” Oliver glanced down at the order form. “Felicity Smoak?”

“Yes,” she responded with deliberate enthusiasm. “That is me.” She began moving, so Oliver trailed behind her into a space that was likely her living room. Oliver tried to school his expression as he surveyed the sparsely appointed room. There was a nice sized TV, a sofa, several lamps, and numerous unopened IKEA furniture boxes scattered around the room. At least two were being used as end tables. No decorations. No paintings or tchotchkes of any kind, but he did notice a box of Kleenex tissues and a menorah. Curious.

“I think it would be nice to put the tree in the bay window. Isn’t that what people do?” Felicity seemed sincerely curious. She also appeared to be fidgeting with her hair a bit, subtly checking on whether it was sticking out. Her skin was creamy except where a handful of freckles dotted her nose and he wanted to count them. Yeah, that didn’t sound creepy at all in his head.

Oliver disengaged from the urge to stare at her by moving to the open space at the window, his eyebrows raised as he surmised the location. “I have definitely seen that done.” He turned around and thought for a moment that Felicity Smoak might have been checking him out while his back was turned. Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it was his ego. He was wearing one of his favorite pairs of jeans that fit well and the leather jacket Thea assured him was flattering. Suddenly, he hoped she was checking him out. It would make him feel less weird about noticing how attractive she was.

Felicity definitely looked caught when Oliver turned around, but she tried to cover it. “Great. Let me get my coat and help you bring it in. I know it’s big. I ordered the extra-large one. I liked the idea of having something huge in front of my window.” Felicity was moving toward a door that was most likely her coat closet as Oliver folded his arms across his broad chest and choked on a laugh. There was an implication that he was currently the huge something in front of her window. He didn’t think she realized the gaffe. Then, he watched her reach the closet door knob and he returned to his senses.

“Oh no,” he replied with some urgency. “You should stay here. It’s too cold out for…” Oliver pointed downward with a grin. “Panda bears.”

Felicity glanced at her feet and her eyes went wide with embarrassment. “Oh, my God. I…”

“They look really comfortable. Please stay here and hold the door for me when I come back?”

Oliver headed back toward the front door.

“But I feel bad. You’re not my personal Sherpa.”

“I could be a Sherpa,” he smiled slyly. “You haven’t seen my resume.”

Felicity chuckled. “Thank you so much. I really do appreciate you doing this.” She followed behind him. Yes, it was a nice view. This Sherpa really knew how to wear jeans.

As Oliver opened the door, he pulled the balaclava out of his pocket. “Just warning you. I’m putting the ski mask back on because it’s cold. You aren’t going to freak out again, are you?”

Felicity responded with a breathy laugh in the doorway. Oliver liked the sound of it and headed across her porch towards the stairs. The cool air made everything seem quieter outside. Peaceful. He liked it.

“Hey, I didn’t get your name,” she called out, watching him descend.

He didn’t even turn around as he reached the sidewalk.

“Oliver Queen.”

He had to stifle a chuckle when he distinctly heard her gasp behind him.

“Oh crap.”

///--->>>>

The tree looked pretty straight. Not absolutely straight. The trunk was crooked. The bottom half was perfectly aligned, but things went awry about three feet from the top. Oliver and Felicity both knew this, but neither acknowledged it. They had spent nearly thirty minutes adjusting the Douglas fir monster with Oliver on the floor finessing the trunk in the stand while Felicity provided directional guidance from above. His face was red from effort and the awkward position he had maintained under the bottom branches as he tightened the screws. Several minutes in, Oliver stood momentarily to toss his leather jacket on the sofa because there was unexpected exertion. Felicity uttered no complaints at this development.

When Felicity came to grips with the fact that she had been ordering the top executive of a Fortune 500 company to scramble around on the floor until he was rendered vaguely less handsome due to the blood rushing to his otherwise perfect face, she announced unqualified success with suitable fanfare. She knew that Oliver knew she was settling, but he appeared grateful to be able to crawl out from under the beast and shake stray needles from his hair.

The tree was, as expected, huge. But it filled the space perfectly. Oliver couldn’t help but recall his childhood and the ornamented wonders that were scattered around the Queen Mansion each holiday.

“It’s beautiful…” she announced, deliberately avoiding saying his name aloud because…what was she supposed to call her employer? Mister Queen? Sir? She had only been working at QC for a few months and during that time she was either away at a client site or holed up in her office working on cybersecurity algorithms, unaware that this delicious, kind and generous man was right on top of her. Well, not on top of her. She was under him, really. Oh, dear Lord this was awkward.

Felicity noticed Oliver doing that thing people do with their hands when they feel gross and want to wash them. Of course. He had been wrangling a tree.

“There’s a powder room down the hall, if you would like to clean up,” she offered brightly. Oliver nodded with relief.

“Thanks.”

He moved quickly towards the open door at the end of the hall. The liquid soap was a welcome sight and it lathered up his hands. He hoped it was strong enough to remove the dirt and sap.

“Would you like a coffee? Or cocoa? Or a glass of wine?” He heard her call out. Oliver caught himself smiling in the mirror above the sink.

“Wine would be nice, actually. But only if you have something open,” he replied, loud enough to be heard through the apartment.

Felicity sprang into action, rummaging in the kitchen and pulling a bottle from a low cabinet. She admired the label and decided it was an acceptable wine to offer a guest. Then she quietly loosened the screw top before snagging two wine glasses from another cupboard. She quickly poured a garnet-colored red blend into the first glass and took a few gulps before refilling it and then pouring the second glass. She took breath. It wasn’t weird to be having a glass of wine with Oliver Queen, was it? He was just a person, after all, one who had done a very nice thing for her. And it wasn’t like she could slip him a $10 bill for a tip. That would be weird. No, a glass of wine was appropriate.

Oliver strode back into the living room with a smile on his face. His hands were no longer dirty and covered with sap. He also managed to get the last of the pine needles out of his hair. Felicity moved around the counter and offered him a glass, which he accepted gratefully. They found seats on the sofa, a healthy distance apart.

“So, I noticed that you have a menorah, Felicity. Is that for your boyfriend?”

The blonde genius tilted her head, suddenly flustered. “No. It’s mine. I mean, I don’t have a boyfriend. Is that…does that answer your question?”

“Good,” he responded without thinking. Then he walked it back. “Now I guess I don’t understand. You’re Jewish, right?”

“Mmm hmm,” she singsonged back before taking a sip from her glass and folding herself comfortably in the corner of the couch to face him.

“But you bought a Christmas tree. Most Jewish people don’t put up trees, do they?”

“I guess not. It just seemed like such a good cause. After school programs. And I thought it would be fun to see what it was like to have a tree. And I have this huge window.”

“Right.” Oliver took a sip of the wine and found it warmed him up a little. Or maybe it was just the company. He wasn’t sure. Didn’t care.

“I was kind of on the fence about it,” she continued. “I mean, I know it’s a wonderful charity. I guess I could have just made a donation. But the sweet young woman who came around with the sign-up sheet was very persuasive.”

Oliver’s sibling spider-sense perked up. “A young woman persuaded you to buy this tree? I’ll bet she was wearing exceptionally nice shoes.”

“Ohmygodyes. They were boots, actually. Drop dead gorgeous. She just talked about how wonderful they smell…trees, not the boots, and how festive they make everything. And when I mentioned I had never had a tree before, she looked kind of stricken. She had these big green eyes…”

“Oh, I know that look.” Oliver chortled into his glass. Thea was good, but this was a whole new level – selling a 7-foot Christmas tree to a single Jewish woman. This story would be told for years to come. Tommy would love it.

“That sweet young woman is an unrepentant hornswoggler, Felicity. I can say this with love and admiration because she’s my sister, Thea.”

“Oh, Oliver,” Felicity giggled. It was the first time she’d referred to him by name and she immediately regretted letting it slip, burying her head in her lap. Oliver noted her cute mortification and grinned. He liked the way she said “Oliver.”

“Thank you for not calling me Mister Queen.”

Felicity raised her head slowly and met his eyes. They were twinkling. It was kind of hypnotic.

"Okay," she said, returning his smile.

“How long have you worked at Queen Consolidated? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen you in a meeting or even on the elevator.” I would have noticed you was a phrase that might have hung in the air if he had the courage to say it out loud.

“Are you sure? Maybe I just don’t stand out that much.” Felicity brought her wine glass up to her lips and took a generous sip.

It was Oliver’s turn to tilt his head in disbelief. Then he playfully tugged on her panda slipper. “Don’t believe that for a second.”

Felicity’s face felt warm all of a sudden. She knew she should speak, but she waited until she was confident her voice would remain…normalish.

“I started in October. Part of the team that got acquired from Kord Industries. I’m usually off-site. It’s almost a miracle that I was in my office the day your sister came around about the sale. I just stopped in to pick up some hard drives.”

“Right. Okay. That’s why you said you work with the police. The cybersecurity initiative.”

Felicity nodded. “That’s me.”

“Well, I’m really grateful you didn’t call the cops on me earlier. That would have been harsh.”

“You have no idea. Captain Lance and the guys at Headquarters are like my own personal crew of Lost Boys. You’d be in the pokey as we speak.”

Oliver couldn’t help but wince. He had a history dating Captain Lance’s daughters in his high school days. It wasn’t pretty and Lance would like nothing better than to throw him in, to use Felicity’s vernacular, the pokey, and throw away the key. Felicity noticed his discomfort, but didn’t ask any questions. She just smiled and took another sip of wine. Oliver put his glass down on an IKEA box and turned to face her. His expression was serious now.

“Felicity, I’m really sorry I scared you earlier.”

“Oh, um, Oliver, it wasn’t a big deal. Really it wasn’t.”

“No. It was. I’m pretty sure I made you cry.”

Oliver looked absolutely gutted. Here in front of him was a delightful woman who was making him laugh for the first time in ages and he had freaked her out very badly. Damn Tommy Merlyn and his couture knitwear.

Felicity was confused at first. Then she connected the dots. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

“I did cry earlier. But it wasn’t anything you did. It was before you got here. And it was ridiculous. I was watching a movie. Little Women. Jo just collapsed in front of Marmie and sobbed about not fitting in anywhere and I completely lost it.”

She looked to him with a sincere, quiet smile. He met it, his blue eyes warm, kind and full of understanding. “We all feel that way at some point, don’t we? At least, I have,” she continued.

“Yeah,” Oliver replied. “I spent a lot of energy when I was younger not liking who I was. Trying to be other people. It wasn’t a good time. But then I had some experiences that showed me what I was good at…that I had leadership skills. Things turned around for me after that.”

“I was the same way. I was accepted to MIT early and got lost for a while. The wrong guy. Misguided choices. Eventually, I found myself in my work. But when you’ve moved around for your career like I have, you still get twinges when you come to a new town and don’t know anyone.”

Oliver picked up his glass and gently swirled the wine inside. “But here you are in Starling City. Already tight with the police force and…”

Felicity eyed him over her glass. “My boss’s boss’s boss?”

Hearing those words pained Oliver a little. He shook his head. “I was going to say me. Just me.”

She felt herself full-on blushing this time. The attention of this man in front of her was overwhelming. “That sounds even better,” she replied with a blinding smile. Flirting a little could go both ways.

“And you have a tree.”

“It smells incredible.”

“That’s one of the best things about buying a live one,” Oliver noted. “How are you going to decorate it? Lights? Garland?”

Felicity shrugged. “I honestly hadn’t thought about it. I guess I should.”

Two things happened a short while later that signaled it was time to wrap up the evening. Oliver emptied his wine glass and Felicity yawned. She looked apologetic about it, at least. Oliver huffed a laugh, rose, and slipped into his coat. Felicity shuffled behind him to the door until he stopped and turned to look down at her.

“Felicity, can I ask you something? It’s kind of selfish.” He actually worried his bottom lip. This made her focus on his mouth, which was kind of dangerous. She only met him a few hours ago and a part of her was hoping he wanted to kiss her. Did this make her shameless? Wanton? She did not care.

“Sure,” her voice may have cracked a little.

“I noticed you have some furniture still in boxes.”

“Yeah, it turns out I can build a PC in thirty-eight minutes, but anything requiring an Allen wrench is a serious challenge.”

Oliver chuckled and then shifted from foot to foot. “I just thought, if you weren’t busy tomorrow, maybe I could come over and assemble it for you. If you like…”

“Oh, sure! Yeah, I mean, I don’t have any plans, really. Usually, on Saturdays I just go to the coffee shop up the street for a latte and then come back here to read. Rituals are comforting.”

“I get that. I go to the gym.”

“Of course, you do. I mean…” she stammered. Oliver raised an amused eyebrow in her direction, which only made things worse. “Obviously, you work out. Not that I noticed.”

“Eleven?”

“Great.” She smiled warmly. “Thank you for everything tonight, Oliver. And thank you for tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet,” he countered with a grin.

“I know. But I have a feeling it’s going to be nice.”

Oliver fixed his gaze on her. “Good night, Felicity Smoak.” Then he leaned down and placed a gentle, lingering kiss on her soft cheek. The stubble on his own might have brushed against her skin as he retreated. Felicity’s gasp reverberated in Oliver’s ears and his brain and his heart clenched for a second.

“Night.”

He kept his eyes on her as he pulled the balaclava from his pocket and pulled it back over his head. Felicity giggled and raised her hands up, clawing the air with her fingers. She made an adorable “grr” noise.

Oliver stepped into the cold with a grin clearly outline by the ski mask on his face. He felt lighter than he had in a long time. When he got to the sidewalk he looked at the tree filling the bay window. He turned and signaled a “thumbs up” to Felicity, still standing in the doorway. She waved, then closed the door to the frosty night air.

To be continued.

Friends, I hope you don’t mind me tagging you here for this story. Please disregard if fluff is not for you and rest assured, I’ll be back to the photo edit posts soon.

@scu11y22, @tinaday3w, @dettiot, @mel-loves-all, @andjustforthismoment, @aussieforgood, @florence-bubbles, @flailykermit, @lerayon, @diggo26, @olicityaddicted, @thewidowpazzy, @melsanfo, @emilybettqueen, @yourviewingparty, @lynslogic, @tanyaslogic, @angelalafan, @coal000, @triciaolicity, @choiceofluthien, @emilybuttrickards, @seaolicity, @supersillyanddorky06, @swordandarrow, @watsoncroft, @jsevick, @readerkas, @yespleasehawkeyee, @geniewithwifi, @befitandchase, @caedmonfaith, @myhauntedblacksoul, @casydee, @jamyfan-blog, @awesomeziziblr, @bigdeesmallworld, @alemap74, @angelicmisskitty, @almondblossomme, @callistawolf, @miriam1779, @imusuallyobsessed, @vaelisamaza, @mochababychristy, @juliesioux, @pjcmfalcon, @josephine-in-mirkwood, @i-m-a-fan-world, @ms-mags, @red-devilkin, @ah-maa-zing, @itshandledd, @olicityandsteroline, @turn-thy-paige, @wildirish23, @nlh03, @alanna-the-lionheart, @charlinert, @amytosh, @stygian-omada-fan, @multi-fandom-crazy-fangirl, @machawicket, @biermank, @i-am-wordaholic, @hope-for-olicity, @memcjo, @jaspertown, @itchiygo, @oliverfel4, @tolivers, @ccdimples88, @ap-n, @pleasantfanandstudent, @emmilynestill, @kainesbitt77, @anthfan, @lyricalarrow, @laurabelle2930, @ellefraser17, @ireland1733, @mammashof, @chachurka, @somewhatinvisible, @tdgal1, @buffaleen, @suziesammy-blog, @missyriver, @lovelycssefan, @kh2o, @codebreakinsmoak, @letsnevergrowupfan, @memcjo, @bwangangelic, @arrowolicity88, @thebookjumper, @arrowlainie05, @pineprincess, @saebrfan, @olicityinmyheart, @razorbladenitro, @letsnevergrowupfan, @1106angel, @xflarrowbeforebloodx, @omglovechrissie, @benisa1608, @simonona-blog, @blindspot-fanatic, @hecatesan, @hope-for-olicity, @fangirlingkitten, @scandalnewbie

#Olicity Holiday fic #Arrow fanfiction #Olicity

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ciathyzareposts · 6 years ago

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The Final Word on Daniel Lawrence’s DND

The title shows that, just as with The Game of Dungeons, “DND” was just a file name, not the game name.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the “Data Driven Gamer,” it’s worth a visit. The author, Ahab, is still building his readership base, much like I was in 2011. He’s more expansive in his selection of games than I am, but his particular focus is to analyze the games’ quantitative elements, while still supplying a lot of commentary on the qualitative ones.

Ahab did a great job in the last couple of years analyzing The Dungeon and The Game of Dungeons, prompting me to go back and win those games. But those contributions pale in comparison to what he did last month. For the first time that I’m aware of, he figured out how to get a version of Daniel Lawrence’s DND operating on a VAX emulator. For decades, we’ve had to reconstruct this missing link between the PLATO Game of Dungeons and the commercial Telengard based on player memories, adaptations, and interpretations of source code. Ahab not only showed the game in action, but he won it and supplied a full set of maps (for one of the three dungeons) as part of the process. His material is key to understanding this particular, peculiar line of CRPGs. Among other things, the ability to actually play this game shows that only the file name was DND; the title was–copyrights be damned–Dungeons & Dragons.

Gameplay in the VMS/VAX DND. My graphics are all messed up because of a line feed issue that I can’t solve. The dungeon walls don’t really look this chaotic.

Untangling the history of this particular lineage has been difficult, largely because of horrendous misinformation, much of it perpetrated (or at least not corrected) by Lawrence himself, who died in 2010 at the age of 52. (Among other things, he explicitly designated this page, which is so hopelessly confused I don’t know where to begin, as the “official DND site.” The authors do deserve credit for aggregating and preserving important files.) To read some sites, Lawrence is the father of the entire CRPG line, having written the first DND as early as 1972–two years before tabletop Dungeons & Dragons! His game was so popular, some articles have alleged, that students at the University of Indiana decided to adapt it as The Game of Dungeons. (Of course, it was the other way around.) Even writers who haven’t so thoroughly confused the timeline have accepted Lawrence’s assertions that he wrote “his” DND entirely on his own, with no reference to any other game, despite that it clearly borrows elements from the PLATO Game of Dungeons and Lawrence went to a university (Purdue) connected to PLATO. In a 2007 interview with Matt Barton, he suggests that his “play testers” might have played The Game of Dungeons and brought ideas to him. To me, such a scenario doesn’t begin to explain the similarities between the games.

Daniel Lawrence in an undated photograph. Credit unknown.

The best truth that I can determine with the available evidence is that Lawrence wrote his first version of DND in 1976 or 1977, clearly after being exposed to The Game of Dungeons on PLATO. I’m inclined to think that 1977 is the more likely date, since DND is closer in similarity to Version 6 of The Game of Dungeons, which wasn’t released until 1977. Then again, elements of The Game Version 8 (1978) also seem to show up in Lawrence’s work, so it’s possible he went back to the well several times during the development of his adaptation. The existence of several mainframe versions would support this thesis.

As we’ll see, Lawrence made plenty of additions, and to recognize that he plagiarized from The Game is not to deny his own skill and innovations. His primary contribution was releasing the game to the wider world, first by writing a version for Purdue’s DEC RSTS/E system. (In Lawrence’s own words, the game was “the cause of more than one student dropping out” and “made me very unpopular with the computing staff at Purdue.”) Engineers from DEC maintaining Purdue’s system became familiar with the game and liked it so much that in 1979, they asked Lawrence to come to their Massachusetts headquarters and write a port for DEC’s PDP-10 mainframe running the TOPS-20 operating system. (There are hints within DEC documents that Lawrence may have been paid for this, and that DEC’s intention was to offer the game with its installations. The specific agreement between Lawrence and DEC has not come to light.) This version was subsequently disseminated in many locations where DECs were installed. The VMS/VAX version that Ahab got running seems to have been ported from this mainframe version.

By then, Lawrence had already been porting the game to the micro-computer. In 1978, he wrote a version for the Commodore PET that he titled Telengard, which had been the name of one of the explorable dungeons in DND. Representatives from Avalon Hill ran into Lawrence demoing the game at a convention in 1980 or 1981 and offered him a publishing deal, which ultimately saw PET, Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 800, and MS-DOS releases starting in 1981 or 1982.

The title screen from the Commodore PET version of Telengard. The 1981 date seems unlikely as the actual release year.

(None of the histories of Lawrence or Telengard mention the specific convention at which this meeting occurred, but I found a likely session in the GenCon XIV program from August 1981. Unless Lawrence ran the same competition multiple years [I can’t find the previous year’s catalog], it seems unlikely that Telengard had a pre-1982 release date despite the copyright date on some versions of the game.)

In 1981, Lawrence ran a “contest” in which players competed for high scores or other status in some version of DND. Someone from Avalon Hill attended the session, and the result was the commercial Telengard.

From then on, Lawrence and Avalon Hill waged war on the ubiquitously-released free versions of the game, ordering their removal from every system on which they appeared. For its part, DEC acceded to legal threats from Avalon Hill, resulting in the modern difficulty reconstructing what those early versions looked like. You can read a long, fun e-mail chain here in which DEC employees try to argue law with their own legal department. Hilariously, various employees request assistance in finding the Orb throughout the thread while their exasperated bosses remind them that the game isn’t supposed to exist on any DEC machine anymore.

A DEC executive orders the deletion of DND from DEC machines.

If Lawrence was guilty of some disingenuous behavior in trying to quash free versions of a game he partly plagiarized, it came back to bite him in repeated plagiarisms of his versions. We’ve seen plenty of them on this blog, including the so-called “Heathkit DND” (in actuality, also titled Dungeons and Dragons) of 1981, R.O. Software’s DND (1984), and Thomas Hanlin’s Caverns of Zoarre (1984). There are other BBS and shareware versions of the game that we haven’t tried.

A DND “family tree.”

That’s the history. But what is Dungeons & Dragons? It’s a text-based game with ASCII graphics in which a single character navigates one of three 20-level dungeons in a quest to retrieve a magic orb from a dragon. The layout of the dungeon and the locations of many of the special encounters are fixed, but the locations of combats and miscellaneous treasure finds are so random that you could encounter a never-ending stream of them from the same dungeon square. Combats are with a small menagerie of enemies, each with different strengths and vulnerabilities to the game’s various spells. The character gains experience through both combat and treasure-finding, with miscellaneous encounters increasing and decreasing his attributes and providing him with magical gear. When he feels strong enough, he takes on the final dungeon level, recovers the orb, and–if he makes it back alive–gets his name on a leaderboard of “orb finders.”

As I mentioned, there are too many elements copied directly from The Game of Dungeons for it to be remotely possible that Lawrence never saw it. These include:

The basic approach to game mechanics and goals, including the existence of permadeath.

A character creation process that includes a “secret name” for each character, serving as a kind of password

The need for a “secret name” is drawn from The Game of Dungeons, but the full set of attributes, the choice of character classes, and the choice of dungeons is new to DND.

The number of dungeon levels.

A main quest to recover an orb.

Carrying treasure out of the dungeon converts it to experience points.

My character levels up from a treasure haul.

A list of successful characters called “finders.”

The existence of a transportation device, called “Excelsior,” that moves you among the levels.

Basic combat options of (F)ight, (C)ast, and (E)vade.

A small number of monsters who have numeric levels assigned.

Many of the magic items are identical. Items can be trapped (although Lawrence’s traps are more creative).

Treasure is found in both chests and random piles. Chests contain vastly more gold than the random piles.

Magic books that can raise or lower your attributes.

DND’s handling of chests and books is the same as The Game of Dungeons.

Pits that you can fall down, dumping you on lower levels.

Luckily, I spotted this one.

It’s also possible that Lawrence took a few elements from the earlier The Dungeon, including the organization of spells into a number of “slots” per level as well as some of the treasures you can find in the dungeon and their relative conversion to gold.

But Lawrence also added some new things to the Game of Dungeons template, some making it better, some making it poorer. These include:

DND has no graphics. Walls and corridors are ASCII characters and the main characters is represented as an X. The Game of Dungeons had graphics for geography, the PC, monsters, equipment, gold, and so forth.

Instead of just “gold,” the player finds a variety of different treasure types that are converted to gold.

DND dungeon levels are much larger.

The Excelsior transporter exists on every level in DND, not just the top one.

A full set of tabletop Dungeons and Dragons attributes. The Game of Dungeons just had strength, intelligence, and dexterity. DND adds constitution and charisma.

A DND “character sheet.”

While the character in Game was a multi-classed fighter/magic-user/cleric, DND has the player specify a choice of these classes. As such, combat is rebalanced so that you don’t need to cast particular spells to ensure victory, and a pure fighter has a shot at winning. Spells, which could reliably one-shot certain enemies in The Game, are significantly reduced in power. They’re also more in line with tabletop Dungeons and Dragons and, it must be said, a lot less silly than The Game.

There’s no distinction between experience and gold in DND, as there was in Game through Version 5. The Game also changed to a single experience pool starting in Version 6, so Lawrence may have been influenced by the later one.

DND offers three dungeons to explore–Telengard, Svhenk’s Lair, and Lamorte–each of which might contain the orb.

Game resolved combats all at once. DND shows round-for-round results.

DND’s approach is generally better, but sometimes you wish it would just hurry up and get it done.

DND completely randomizes the appearance of treasure. The Game “seeded” each level with gold and chests whenever you entered, and you could clear the level, but in DND, treasure has a chance of showing up in every square as you move to it, including those you’ve already explored.

DND adds more special encounters at fixed locations, including thrones, altars, fountains, dragons’ lairs, and doors with combination codes.

Special encounters with altars are a new element in DND.

Lawrence replaced the awkward “teleporters” with stairs that remain in a fixed location.

DND includes a greater variety of equipment, including magic weapons other than swords. The pluses go much higher, too. Where The Game capped at +3, DND allows higher than +20.

DND adds cute atmospheric messages as you explore. Examples: “A mutilated body lies on the floor nearby”; “‘Turn back!!!’ a voice screams”; “The room vibrates as if an army is passing by.” There’s even a reference to Colossal Cave Adventure and its hollow voice that says “PLUGH.”

Finally, it’s worth noting some of the changes between DND and Telengard:

Telengard has no main quest. The only objective is to get stronger and richer. For years, I thought this was a defining feature of the sub-genre, but it turns out that it’s actually quite rare. Most variants have some kind of main quest.

Telengard‘s has only one dungeon, randomly drawn every time you start a new game.

The appearance of thrones, fountains, altars, and other special features are completely randomized, just like monsters and miscellaneous treasure. A player can encounter everything that Telengard has to offer by passing time in a single square.

Telengard has graphics.

Telengard has an expanded selection of items, including potions and scrolls.

Telengard is a nicer-looking game, but the greater randomization creates a chaotic experience.

Only the last item is a clear “improvement.” Telengard is arguably a dumbing-down of gameplay in DND. The lack of any main quest is particularly notable, and one wonders why Lawrence or Avalon Hill made the decision to exclude one. Perhaps they thought the game had greater replayability if the only goal was to create a stronger character.

For all the ink writers like me have spent on Lawrence and his game, it arguably had the least impact of the major lineages that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During its day, DND offered perhaps the best simulation of the mechanics of tabletop role-playing on a computer, but its arrival on the micro-computer scene was far too late to have any impact. By the time that Telengard was released, it had already been outclassed by Ultima and games in the Moria/Oubliette/Wizardry line. The direct influence of DND can only really be felt in its few clones, for which there was so small a market that they had to be released as shareware.

Gameplay from the Heathkit Dungeons and Dragons (1981).

Gameplay in R.O. Software’s DND (1984)

Gameplay in Caverns of Zoarre (1984)

There is one small exception, and to analyze it we must first note that DND did a reasonably good job anticipating the roguelike sub-genre. In fact, it’s hard not to call it a pre-Rogue “roguelike,” what with its random encounters, permadeath, and MacGuffin on the 20th floor. And yet it’s hard to detect any direct influence on Rogue. (To some extent, Rogue feels like a game created by someone who heard about DND but never played it.) To my knowledge, the developers of Rogue have never acknowledged any direct influence except Star Trek (1971), Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), and a general desire to emulate table-top role-playing.

However, I do think that someone on the NetHack development team was exposed to DND, or at least Telengard. I base this on the variety of special encounters that were introduced to the game at some point between Hack and NetHack 2.3e, including thrones that do different things when you sit on them and offer the ability to pry gems out of them; fountains that have a variety of effects; and altars that ask for money. Granted, thrones, fountains, and altars are fantasy staples that may have been introduced independently, but the specific way that you use them is so similar to DND that I think there must be a connection. It’s a minor legacy, but still worth acknowledging.

Sitting on thrones in NetHack has many of the same consequences as in DND.

Ahab was kind enough to send me the instructions I needed to emulate DND myself. I tried for a while, but I couldn’t solve an issue (involving line feeds) that created chaos out of the dungeon maps. (The solution he offers on his blog didn’t work for me despite us both having the same version of Windows.) Such a win would have been superfluous coming right on the heels of his own victory anyway. I may return to it at some point in the future, just for the statistic, but not soon.

This entry will serve as my final word on this line of games, which we’ve visited in bits and pieces since the first year of my blog. If any new information comes to light, I’ll include edits in this entry rather than writing anew. In the meantime, there are dozens of web pages and Wiki articles that I don’t imagine will be similarly corrected. Daniel Lawrence deserves credit for what he accomplished, but he is not the grandfather or even father of CRPGs.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-final-word-on-daniel-lawrences-dnd/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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