What Willo-B, Willo-B

A Tale from the Time of Crossing Intergalactic Voids for 5 players

You are in the deepest, darkest intergalactic void the Fleet will run across in the next eight or nine thousand years. This part of space is so empty that beyond the inevitable photons and neutrinos, your detectors have only seen the occasional quantum fluctuation. This is ideal for your experiments.

Your goal was to travel back in time for a short interval, to test the Time Travel Pod. You succeeded! When you returned to normal space, the Science Ship Chronosynclastic Infundibulum floated not far away, its landing bay lights flashing. Why were they flashing emergency colors? And when did they add on that antenna array? Where is Boson Master Faustus' damned external particle accelerator? Bah! The differences are irrelevant.

There were several Time Travel Pods in the bay. Odd.

Who in the Predeterministic moved your Chronometrics Lab? You'd ruled out Bay 61 in your very first site survey. How had there been time to move it?

Who is the wetware equivalent Willo-B lying on the floor, next to the lithe plastimetal curves of your trusted assistant Aenn-D? Both are clearly dead, enclosed in some kind of pulsing spherical field around the Time Field Emitter. You can feel the seething energy as it crackles and hums.

Your clever Repurposed Killbot Q-9000 was straining to throw the power breaker when the energy field jumped to its next quantum level. The field expanded, enclosing Q-9000. The Killbot continued to struggle with the breaker, until the energy field killed them.

The Time Field Emitter serves two purposes. First, it acts as a channel for funneling more energy to the Pod. Second, it serves as a beacon and anchor, a spotlight in the future to guide Pods returning from the ancient past.

There are three outcomes. First, the field continues to grow. It swallows the entirety of the Chronosynclastic Infundibulum in a few hours, long before everyone can be evacuated. Second, the field eventually stabilizes. That would be the ideal anchor for your next experiments. It would mean evacuating several of the decks around Bay 61. Idiots! Third, the field shuts down, evaporating in a spray of anti-time. Bay 61 is exactly the wrong place for that, too. The ship will need months of repair, it it's even salvageable.

There are three options, and you don't know how they correspond to the outcomes. First, you keep the power levels as they are now, at Power Level FIVE. Second, you do what the Killbot was attempting and reduce things to Power Level ZERO. Third, you crank the reactors into Ombatic White Oversurge, raising the output to Power Level TEN. Most of the time, Ombatic White Oversurge can be kept under control for long enough to correct the problem. If it's the right choice.

That's when you realized you were not alone in the laboratory.