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	Message: : TOUR OF DUTY : Welcome to another exciting edition of Tour of Duty. Last time, we were : exploring BioCore Vents in search of a mysterious Assault Rifle. The final : terminal of the last level told us that we needed to replace the damaged : circuit boards for the Marathon's automated defenses. This time, we will : search through Automatic Manufacturing Systems for three of the : replacement circuit boards, and meet a new and dangerous foe. : NOTE - The experiences described in Tour of Duty are of an early version of : M1A1. If you encounter any differences in your experiences, please feel : free to point them out for everyone's benefit. : When we begin the level, we are inside of a small chamber containing both a : Pattern Buffer and a Terminal ("Yoink!"). Now, the door to exit : is interesting. It consists of two frontal 'bars' that open in opposite : directions along with a large angled section. This angled section, when it : reaches the ceiling, activates another angled section. All in all, a very : complex door. My guess as to why this was thrown in was just for the sake : of practice; Greg Kirkpatrick was probably playing with the platform : parameters and created something fun just to show he could (Greg created : the level, as you will see if you go here ). : We throw ourselves out the door, look to our right and see... WHAT IN THE : NAME OF?!?! : : Meet the Wasp. These guys are very weak, but en masse, they can wittle away : your health with those globs of... er, I'm not really sure I know what : those things they shoot are , or whether I even want to know what they : are. : There's two of these guys at the start, along with a dozen or so Fighters : homing in from two opposing corridors. This fight is pretty : straight-forward, and is also good practice for run-punch acrobatics. : Nevertheless, on Total Carnage, this fight may be a bit too nasty for just : jumping straight into. You'll probably want to shoot the Wasps with your : Pistol, dump some AR rounds on the Fighters to wittle down their numbers, : and then jump in both fists raised. : After punching our way through that fist-fight, you'll want to investigate : the corridors the Fighters came from. Each corridor contains an : interesting piston-like platform and a bunch of side-rooms. One of these : side-rooms contains an AR and some ammo, another contains a 1x Recharger, : and yet another contains a Wasp and a low window looking down into a big : room. After investigating the corridors, you head down the left side of : the hallway you entered at the very beginning, to enter another fist-fight : with some Fighters. This room is dim, but it has a hidden switch on the : backside of a column which will turn on the lights, making the : fist-fighting a bit easier. You'll also find an elevator. It's easier if : you don't go up this yet. : Instead, we head through a door into a dark stairwell. We emerge into a pair : of rooms containing Wasps, Fighters, two Uplink Chips, a Terminal, a : Pattern Buffer, and some AR Magazines. This Terminal reveals there was a : bit of an error in the transportation systems (possibly a result of the : S'pht assault on the Marathon's computer network), and so we have to head : up to another section of the area. But not yet! There's a semi-hidden : alcove in the brighter room, containing some Pistol and AR ammo. Sweet. : Now, we head back up the stairwell and into the elevator we avoided earlier. : We head up into a dark hallway. Fighting our way through this hallway, we : find a big, dark room teeming with Fighters, Wasps, and a S'pht Compiler. : It's probably best to grenade the Compiler straightaway; you don't want : him to get into attack-mode before you've had a chance to put the hurt on : him. Once he's down, things are fairly straight-forward, as the Fighters : and the Wasps both fall quickly and easily to close/mid-range AR fire. : You'll find an intriguing Terminal, a Pattern Buffer, and a switch in this : room. Flipping the switch activates a large elevator in the center of the : room. Hop off the elevator onto each of the four corner alcove. Eventually : you'll step on one that turns out to be a platform, and you'll end up : going straight up a level, into a small area containing a Fighter, a Wasp, : and another switch. Flick the switch and head back down. You'll find that : a small niche opened up in one of the alcoves, containing the third Uplink : Chip. But don't read the Terminal next to it yet - you have another secret : to find! : Proceeding back through the dark hallway which led into the final room, try : tapping the 'action' key at the walls until a secret door opens. You'll : find a ledge. Don't jump down, however. The M1A1 version of this secret : room is a bit different. Edge your way forward until you finally fall off : the ledge. Make sure you fall almost straight down. You'll land on another : ledge which teleports you to a third, smaller ledge. To your right you'll : see a teleporter and yet another ledge. Leap over to this teleporter, : and you'll find yourself in a nasty teleporter maze containing a few : enemies and some ammo. When you reach the end, you'll find the infamous : Gherrit White terminal. To save you bandwidth and time, here's the text : from the terminal: Data Transfer from Leela : Host 39.59.19.21 : Transfer Durandal : Error Unknown : Transfer Durandal : Error Unknown : Interior Error : ***MESSAGE RECEIVED*** : Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for : three weeks. His feet and hands tingled, and his eyes burned : with the flames of a dying fire. He had last heard someone : speak to him as the cell door slammed shut. He didn't : remember what the uniformed man had said. The words had : bounced off the bars of the cell and rang through Gheritt's : ears. Gheritt had been talking to himself for the last few : minutes, something about getting caught, but then his ears : began to tingle just like his hands. : He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him : blink. Tears came, and when he opened his eyes again, his : hands had been melted into fleshy pancakes that wafted in the : ripples flowing over the fire in his eyes. : "Damn cell," he heard someone say. "Last time I had a good : meal was three days ago. The food they feed you in here could : kill a lab rat." : Rats. He had remembered something about rats. But his ears : began to ring again and the voice speaking to him faded off : into the background of his mind. In its place, there was a : new sound, the clapping of hands together. He blinked hard to : made out his hands again. They had disappeared; his arms : connected at the wrists. : He thought back to the time he went ice skating on a pond. He : remembered the sound of his skates on ice, a gentle scrapping. : Scrapping away now inside his ears, trying to tear down his : thoughts. There had been a woman with a white fur tube over her : hands. Her wrists were like his now. The wrists of : someone who had tried too many times to clap his hands. He : had been applauding everyone else in life, but never himself. : The hands, like himself, had been put into prison, and he : didn't know why. : "Can't sleep in here, if the smell of this musty bedroll : doesn't make you sick, then the sound of the rats chewing : inside the walls will keep you up. You'll wake up from your : dreams to their little chomping. Sometimes I think that they : are chewing me..." The voice was coming from inside the cell, : but Gheritt couldn't see anyone. : Gheritt hadn't always been alone, he could vaguely recall from : somewhere inside his broken mind that there had been friends, : lovers, murderers. : He recalled a theory he had come up with after a bloody : schoolhouse brawl. The theory was simple. At some point in : time, everyone was a murderer. Whether or not they ever felt : remorse, they had all wanted someone dead. Hatred. Everyone : knew the feeling of hatred. Gheritt had known hatred on that : schoolyard. His beater had laughed at their bloody faces, a : laugh which now echoed through his ears, rhythmically blocking : out the other voice in the cell. : The schoolyard was usually a place where Gheritt and his : friends would play football or foursquare or something, but : today, there was an edge. Maybe everyone had eaten cereal : with milk that was about to go bad, or maybe there was too : much smoke in the air from the wheeling hubcap factory. : Football had been extremely rough. Gheritt had gone to play : foursquare after he got tackled by five boys who weren't his : friends. But today, even foursquare had an evil twist. The : top square today had become habituated to making fun of the : first square. Gheritt had decided that it was an evil day. : When his beater started to push him around, he exploded. : Hatred flowed from his eyes, his hands and feet began to : tingle. All of his coordination left him, and his face was : beaten to a bloody mess. The schoolyard disciplinarian had : been slow to notice the ensuing carnage, and she didn't really : care anyway. : Gheritt would have killed him if he could have. He would have : torn out the eyes of his beater. He would have made him pay : for his abuses. But his hands had begun to tingle. He : couldn't feel his feet and he had begun to float off the : ground. : Everyone was a murderer, but Gheritt couldn't remember his : reason for why that was so. He thought it was something about : hands, the passion for justice. His hands and feet had begun : to tingle, and he was floating farther off the floor. He : looked up from his hands, and he saw the bars of the cell, : moving left and right, opening wide and then closing shut : like the surf coming up a beach. Every time that he thought : he would be safe, the bars crested up, the opening closing, : the wave rising, crashing. The result would be the same, he : would never escape. The bars would crush him, break his back. : He could feel the roughness of the sand under his palms, for : all the motion of the waves around him, his hands had come to : rest serenely upon the ocean floor. His body tossed and : flipped, pivoting about his hands under which he could feel : the safe, coarse sand. The wave crashed one final time, he : landed upside down, his hands thrown clear from the sandy : bottom, the rush of the water filling his ears, his nose, his : mouth, the sound of crashing water cascading down from his : feet to his head- penetrating his mind to tear down thoughts. : Like the sand castle he had built to withstand the tide, his : thoughts came down around him. : Gheritt had a good life, so much time, so much time. He had : loved swimming, turning, beating. He had loved the tingle in : his hands and feet, his inability to kill his nemesis. Once : he had fallen down the stairs, and just for a moment, his : hands came to rest on the carpet of the stairs. In that : instant, his body had frozen, floating over the stairs, safe : from falling, but the moment didn't last. The ocean crashed : about him, his hands torn free from the sandy bottom, his body : flipping, falling. : But now he levitated farther up, his hands still tingling. He : began to float through the bars, he expected the instant of : safety as his hands found footing, but that moment did not : come, the bars squeezed his body. His chest tingled. As he : fell through his cage, his legs tingled. The fire in his eyes : had become a cold wind, he blinked away tears. He tumbled : through the bars, spinning and turning, he could see a man. : In his hand he saw a small white rat. A pounding, the : crashing waves in his ears became rhythmical, hard. The man : was beating the rat against the floor. Pounding, pounding. : Blood covered his hands, the man's hands tingled. He had : broken them on the floor of the cell. Disciplinarian, lover, : murderer. Gheritt looked back into the cell. He saw himself, : disciplinarian, lover, murderer. He had killed his nemesis. : The rat lay dead in his bloody hands. At last, he held the : throat of his beater. : He escaped into the waves. : The waves. : ***END MESSAGE*** : Accept Next Message : Reply Unknown : Wow, that was long. Now you can head back to the final room and read the end : terminal, taking you to Defend THIS! : Now, time for the aesthetic and story elements of the level. I think it's : interesting that we've changed from the dark, melancholy themes of : Landing and Leela to the frenetic action of Fat Man . It really shows : that you've gotten over the dark shock of your first encounter with the : Pfhor and now you're kind of... having fun killing the aliens. That : reminds me of a later quote from Durandal: Perhaps, you are doing what : you were meant to do. Your human : mentality screams for vengeance and thrives on the violence : that you say you can hardly endure. Your father told you as a : child to always fight with honor, but to always fight. Do you : care about honor, or do you use honor as an excuse? An excuse : to exist in a violent world. : Organic beings are constantly fighting for life. Every : breath, every motion brings you one instant closer to your : death. With that kind of heritage and destiny, how can you : deny yourself? How can you expect yourself to give up : violence? : It is your nature. - Durandal, Fire! (x5) : Or perhaps that is not the case. Perhaps we're not the serial-killer, : lusting for wicked pleasure in the deaths of alien foes as Durandal would : say. Perhaps we're the action-hero, blasting away aliens with grace and : agility, rescuing humanity from destruction. That makes me think of a : terminal from Rubicon X: I cannot count all the times I have seen films : where the hero : makes a last stand and overcomes the most impossible odds. And how many : times : have I imagined myself in that situation, blasting away foes by : the dozens , wishing I could be the centerpiece of such drama. - An unknown : guard aboard the Salinger , Rubicon X, With utility bills like these... : I think the Rubicon X team accidentally gave a nice alternative vision of our : character's personality - dreaming that he is the hero, overcoming : impossible odds, blasting away aliens by the dozens. : But of course, such dreams are immature. ;) : Cheers, : Perseus
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