vivarium | CALHOUN HOUR

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CALHOUN HOUR - ESCAPE

When characters begin to wake up, instead of finding themselves in the usual warehouse, they will instead find themselves in an a very unfamiliar area. Maybe they'll wake up alone, or maybe they'll wake up with someone else. Either way, the biggest point is that they're in God-knows-where and it's the start of a new Calhoun Hour.

Within seconds later, a familiar voice booms throughout the loud speakers.

"Ahem, testing, testing! Hello, can you all hear me?"

It's, without a doubt, your favourite robotic mouse, Calhoun. As usual, he sounds a cheery as ever.

"Wow, isn't this familiar? It's almost like the first time we've met, you know. Test subject in a new location, maybe alone or maybe with someone else, my charming voice rings throughout the room, trying to drown you all in an elevator. Good times!"

"Well, anyway, welcome to your new Calhoun Hour! You can see that I've taken the liberty to move you all to a more suitable location. You may not know it, with how small your brains are, but you're all stuck in a maze! I've had my fair share of running around in mazes, you know, being a mouse and all, so I want to return to favour to you humans! So, you know the drill: explore, look around, try to escape, blah blah blah, I don't need to explain all this! Just get to it! Who knows, maybe the exit here is an exit out to the real world. I might be generous like that, if you manage to find it. If not, well, I guess you can all starve here!"

He snickers, then pauses. Suddenly, a loud gunshot-like sound rings throughout the speakers, and Calhoun screams again.

"Let's get started!"

BASIC INFO ✖ ESCAPE ✖ POST-EVENT MINGLE ✖ TURN-IN

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Do they have coffee too? *He sounded rather wistful for the taste. But eating the granola is heaven. Oats, honey and goodness all wrapped in a beautiful bar. The greatest thing ever to a presumably hippie citizen of the Pacific Northwest.*

From what I can tell, a lot of effort was put into this maze. I just don't understand how I couldn't hear anything being constructed.

"Hmm... it looks like there's a couple of packs of instant, but I don't see any hot water. Would it taste any good cold like that?" Heiji wasn't a big coffee person, but it didn't sound particularly good to him.

"I bet a lot of this structure already existed, if not all of it. There's still a couple of rooms I ain't seen yet, so I was gonna check on those after I was done here..."

Probably not. *Snake mourned the loss of the hot coffee before it had a chance to be. Let us take a moment to reflect on the lost opportunity for decent coffee.*

At least the granola is excellent. Where should we go next, Heiji?

Heiji tugged at the edge of Snake's sleeve. "C'mon, I'll show you the room I found. It's actually part of a puzzle. See, the room right before it says 'REMEMBER THE PATTERN' in big, red letters."

Once they arrived at the D-38 hallway, Heiji would read off the riddle for Snake and describe the screen.

"'12 - 6
6 - 3
10 - ???

Enter the missing number.' So whattaya think?"

All right...well if it's a sequential problem, the most logical answer would be five. Half of twelve is six and half of six is three, so half of ten is five. That is assuming that's what the pattern means.

Heiji frowned a little. "Yeah, but I think that's a little too obvious. I mean, it's pretty much screaming 'I'm a trap!'"

"I think the answer's three. So in English, 'twelve' is spelled with six letters, and 'six' is spelled with three. And there are three letters in 'ten'.

Hmmmm...you do have a point. If this is actually a word puzzle and not a sequential math puzzle, "ten" would be spelled with three words. Let's try it your way.

It was now or never! Heiji quickly keyed in the answer and the door unlocked. "Hey, whattaya know?"

The door opened into -- what was this?

"It looks like a surveillance room. There are TV screens all over the wall, with video of the maze... Oh, I can see some of the others wanderin' around! Wonder if we can talk to 'em..."

But first things were first. He described the layout of the room for Snake. "There's a vending machine in here, too, but it looks like it's just got a bunch of candy bars in it."

Give it a try and see if you can contact anyone. Maybe there's a speaker system we can't find in the maze. I suppose I could attempt to break the glass to get at the candy bars but that might prove to be unwise. *He'd heard about Hershel's story with him, Enjorlas and Ema.*

Heiji tried the controls, but after a little while of attempting various strategies, he had to conclude that it was impossible. "No good. But I can do a replay of what other people've been doing in here. I've seen most of the rooms in these images..."

He flipped through various rooms and times at random, but unlike in the surveillance puzzle room, did not do so systematically. After all, Snake probably didn't want to sit here for hours. "There's another room past this one, too. You wanna check it out? Or we could see if coins work in that vending machine, I guess. I'm not much for sweet stuff."

I'd rather save up my coins for something more practical. *LIKE COFFEE okay he needs to admit he might have a problem.*

Let's go check out the room. *He walked past Heiji, but not before squeezing one of his hands briefly in his.*

Cute...

Heiji peered over Snake's shoulder as he entered the next room, starting a little as the tile under his feet sounded a musical note. He was not particularly surprised to hear the sound of the door locking behind him. "There's a plaque here that reads 'Play me a tune.' Doesn't specify a particular one, though. Player's choice, huh? That's a switch."

Edited 2014-12-14 01:40 (UTC)

Oh really. *Snake grinned.* Heiji, do me a favor. Slowly walk along all the tiles so I can hear which note plays with each tile. Once I know that, I can play us a tune and get us out of here.

Heiji touched Snake's shoulder as he walked past. "What's that saying? 'Your wish is my command'?"

He made his way across the tiles, playing each note in turn so that Snake could listen.

*With a thoughtful cant to his head, Snake concentrated on each tile and each note. It was a slightly unconventional order but he thought he could make do. His mind crunched the math about tile size and distance. He waited for Heiji to finish his playing and instead of trying to remember where he heard a tune, let his mind wander to a tune he could easily play. He came up with this although played much slower as he hopped around from tile to tile.*

The doors on both sides of the room unlocked; Heiji walked up to Snake and took his hand. "The songs you pick sure have a melancholy streak to 'em sometimes."

But he kind of liked that. He tugged Snake along to one of the doors on the other side of the room and opened it, revealing a long hallway with another door at the end -- probably another room.

"Wonder how far this goes in. You know, with mazes that're simply connected, you can just pick either left or right and follow the walls along until you reach your goal. That's basically what I've been doing."

That's true enough, but there seem to be a lot of dead ends. *He followed Heiji into the hallway.* It wouldn't surprise me if there's no exit at all in this maze.

Edited 2014-12-14 02:59 (UTC)

"Well, he had to've gotten us in here somehow," said Heiji as he opened the door at the end of the hall. "But I gotta agree with ya about that exit he promi..."

His first instinct as he stepped out on the glass floor was to freeze as soon as he heard the cracking sound. But he wasn't here alone. Heiji shoved Snake in front of him, onto an uncracked section of glass. "Move! It's glass, it --"

But even that small increase in pressure was too much for the glass; Heiji fell through the floor and hit the ice-cold water below. He fought to reach the surface again, but it was Snake he was worried about...

Heiji! *He couldn't grab for Heiji but it sounded like he fell into water. With the glass threatening to crack below his feet, Snake had a moment of panic.

*If he fell into this water, it would be cold but what would that do to his arm? The arm that Calhoun had thoughtfully pointed out to cost quite a bit of change. Snake moved as quickly as he could, but he was at a large disadvantage.

*He had no idea of the layout of the room or the layout of the glass floor. It could be even or it not. Snake fell to his hands and knees and started to crawl. It was the only way to have any chance to sense what was ahead. That and it might help distribute his weight. That's what he could do: find the safe way out and maybe there was a rope or something he could pull Heiji out of the water.*

Once Heiji broke the surface of the water, he began swimming. The water was freezing; it numbed his arms and legs, making the effort far more difficult than it would have been otherwise. But he kept pace alongside Snake up above him, calling out directions and urging him along.

"I-I'm okay. Turn left here and k-keep going straight from there," he called. He could hardly keep his teeth from chattering. "There's a landing and some stairs; they're solid!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something deep in the water. Some type of cloth?

*Snake nodded to show he'd heard Heiji and kept crawling along the glass. It cracked but it held, all the way until he felt something more solid under his hands.* Heiji! Give me your hand, I'll try to pull you up! *As difficult as that would be for him, he'd try his best.*

"W-wait a second. There's something down there, in the water. Stay there, okay?" Heiji took a deep breath and dove to the deepest point in the pool, grabbed the object, and brought it back to the surface.

Then he swam over to the stairs leading up to the landing, grabbing Snake's hand and carefully using it to help pull himself out of the water. He was dripping wet and freezing, but he did get the object, which turned out to be a small bag.

"Y-you're okay?" he asked once he was on solid ground. "The glass didn't hurt your hands or anything?"

I'm fine. It didn't crack too badly after I distributed my weight. But you...you're probably freezing. *Snake took off his jacket and offered it to Heiji.* It's not much but it might help you get warm.

Heiji hesitated a moment, then stripped off his shirt before taking Snake's jacket. "Th-thanks. There's a sauna room in here; I saw it on the monitors."

He was shivering pretty badly; the water hadn't done him any favors.

Is there? Let's try to find that room for you so you don't catch a chill, all right? *Snake tried to add more warmth by rubbing Heiji's hands with his own.* Did you find something in the water?

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assuming Snake is done eating

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checked with mods, it's 3

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