2.19 Obedience is slavery
“Well Jonathan,” agent Floyd replies to your report, “you’re not as useless as you seem. You’ll be rewarded, for now with just bigger meals.” Who does he think you are? His lapdog? Bloody savage!
“Continue to be useful,” he adds, “I am sure we can arrange a better reward in the future. We just need the eggheads to confirm what you said. I assume you told us the truth.”
“You better,” the old man cuts in, “or the doctors will have a field day with your corpse during autopsy.”
“But Colonel, I am sure Mr. Anders here knows all too well why he should cooperate.”
The two men leave the room and the guards put the headgear on your head. Once again they lead you back into your cell. Held captive by mere savages, how the mighty have fallen.
*
How many days has it been? It’s hard to keep track of time, but at least the boredom of isolation, while maddening, isn’t interrupted by torture sessions. Also it is a lot warmer than it ever was in New Swabia, and nobody is yelling at you in German. Either way it has been at least three or four weeks, you guess. You wonder what Paul is doing, they haven’t told you a word about him since they locked both of you up.
An agent or soldier, hard to tell who could the guards posted at this secret facility be, approaches your cell’s door. “Good news,” he says in a mocking tone, “the boss requests the presence of our VIP. That would be you.”
Once again Mr. Floyd and the old man you know only as the Colonel are waiting for you. What do they want this time you wonder. “You see Jonathan,” Floyd starts explaining, “we have been rather busy lately.”
“I’ll be frank Mr. Anders,” the Colonel says, “the eggheads said your analysis was rather correct. Considering none of us have ever seen the moonspeak used by your scanner’s interface, we need your help.” Did they have their greasy paws touching your stuff again? Filthy savages, you’ll probably have to disinfect everything when you get back to the Reich. The barbarians might have flees or something.
“But first we have a question for you,” Michael looks you straight in the eyes before asking, “why is your scanner using whatever language it is that it is using, while your friend’s device uses German?” Well Mr. Kyriazis, it looks like you have to tell these savages something. But what?
After some time spent explaining, for better or worse, why the medical scanner uses German, agent Floyd open a container. Inside of it are two devices. One of them looks like an apple-sized isocahedron, only five of its sides are marked with any kind of symbol. The other is a long tube of sorts. One of its ends looks like a semi-transparent crystal, the other is a more opaque one. There are buttons on the tube’s side.
You scan both starting with the isocahedron. It’s inner structure looks rather complex, a sophisticated device if you ever saw it. There is a decent amount of deuterium-tritium inside of it, it’s powered by a small fusion reactor no doubt.
As a matter of fact it is still drawing power judging by the heat signatures, although very minimal amounts, so it is on even if it looks inactive. It could be in sleep mode or something. What does it power though? Well, it looks like a bunch of quantum emitters, or at least that’s the only thing it reminds you of. But what could they do? Is it a tracking beacon of sorts? A communications device maybe? Or it could be something else entirely, you’re not really sure.
The tube on the other hand quickly reveals its secrets. It uses some kind of optical array, probably to photograph things in extreme detail. There’s one of those data storage devices in it, it appears the opaque crystal is a display as it is directly powered unlike what you think is a “lens”. You wonder whether it would be possible to use the display to see the images stored.
“You have been rather cooperative so far Mr. Anders,” the Colonel tells you, “now tell us what are these things. You wouldn’t want my somewhat-better-than-it-was opinion of you do get worse, now would you?”
You will…
1)…tell them everything you learned of the devices and do nothing else.
2)…tell them of the “camera” and try to convince them to attempt to activate it and view its contents.
3)…lie about the isocahedron saying it is a holographic projector. Convince the Colonel and agent Floyd to let you activate it to view its content.
4)…convince them that the isocahedron has an active power source and may be broadcasting your position. If it isn’t doing something worse.
5)…say nothing at all. Refuse to cooperate unless they let you and Paul free. They held you here long enough and you helped them. How about they return the favor?
You explained to them that the reason why Paul’s scanner has an interface in German is…
A)…because he got it in Germany in the advanced parallel from which you both are.
B)…because he had the software translated for him.
C)…because you’re both Ahenerbe agents serving the “eternal fuhrer” and the Reich.
D)…because you don’t know. You met him a while back but he never really told you why it’s in German.
Vote now.
This turned out shorter than expected. Regardless of what you pick the next update will be longer, although the content will be vastly different depending on the choice. So choose carefully as always.
As I side note I can tell you that none of those choices will lead you to becoming tainted by the warp and shot by an ex-SoB commissar.
Good to see you back in shape and trying to inflict horrible suffering on our unfortunate smuggler 
