Portal Protocol

"And what is that?" Tatterdemalion asked, her voice echoing in the chamber.

"It's the Metaplex, represented as a four-dimensional object. That's why it appears to change shape over time but still retain cohesion."

"It hurts my head, looking at it."

"It's even worse when you are inside it. Don't you remember?"

Tatter stared at the pulsing, morphing substance hovering in the centre of the room. The colour changed, sometimes shiny, others muted.

"It's like a strange attractor..." Tatter whispered.

"Well, it most certainly attracts the strange. You'll observe three recurring patterns on the sides of the object. Interacting with it at each of these will produce a different experience."

Pattern One: Fragments

Pattern Two: Iteration

Pattern Three: Crisis

Tatter squinted. "I... I think I see a fourth pattern..."

Dictation Vacation - Summer's Recollection

Summer watched the stars appear in the evening sky one by one as if someone was pricking holes in the fabric. Venus and Mars appeared near the crescent moon in the heavens above. The waves lapping on the shore gave her a sense of calm and serenity, something that she needed after the events that had happened.

A lone gull called out in the night and she was shaken from her daydreaming.

She continued dictating into the tape recorder.

"It feels dream-like at times. More like the sensation one feels after waking up from a dream and their mind is trying to sweep the dream away so the brain can focus on the tasks at hand; get up, go to the bathroom, make the coffee, the dull day-to-day things we do and take for granted.

"The girl they called Tatter... Well, I don't know if she really was a girl at that - she was trans, but that's not what I mean: transgirls are girls... I mean that she was alien-esque in nature, was rather strange and unique. She had the appearance of a teen but it seemed like a mask she had on. Though you could see the illusion if you looked at her through the corner of your eye."

Interface Zero

Tatterdemalion's fingers danced over the keyboard. She was inputting code faster than her mind could come up with it.

"Dammit," she muttered.

"What the frak are you doing?" Gabriel 7 inquired.

"It's defragging!" she shot back. "There's only one thing to do!"

"Oh hell no," Gabriel 7 warned her. "You are only a watcher and not a participator!"

Tatterdemalion's fingers touched the screen and then she disappeared, as if she was beamed away by Scottie in that silly old sci-fi show she liked so much.

"Damn," Gabriel 7 swore.  

v.Cyber Tatterdemalion

Every Contract intersects with the Grid because the Grid is everywhere. Forged identifications, masked interfaces, cloaked communications, disabled security systems, counter-surveillance, hijacked transportation, decryption, downloading, uploading, viral warfare. For any Contract to be completed someone at some point will need to run at least one Mesh on the Grid. Tatterdemalion is the Van Gogh of Mesh-work. On a dose of Plex she's Van Gogh, Picasso, and Magritte all at once. Whatever augments she is using are hidden away in a Black Box Cortex; any attempt to hack or even just scan her neuro-tech will only cause a sound file to play on all interface channels – 'Also Sprach Zarathustra'.

Origin Stories

Sometimes The Professor finds you first. Cryptic signs and mysterious messages. Clues and riddles. Tuning you into the different frequencies that reveal secret worlds hidden in plain sight. The Professor gives you guidance.


Sometimes Morganfokker finds you first. Painful surgeries and terrible sacrifices. Injections and dissections. Implanting you with the knowledge that everything you know is a lie. Morganfokker tests you and experiments on you.


Sometimes Maggie finds you first. Her hand on your shoulder, gentle and strong. Standing watch over you while you stare in shock as the world turns to ruins around you and demons charge forth from your darkest places. Maggie protects you.


Sometimes Max finds you first. He makes a joke, tells you a story. He probably has some crazy theory about what's happening. One minute he's ranting, the next he's tearing up when you play him your favourite song. Max makes things stranger or more normal or both.


No matter who finds you first, or who comes next, to clean up the mess or bind the wounds or offer explanations, to make you feel better or worse about it all, once you are in it you are in it for good. The only way out is to get dead, and even that might not last – just ask Suki or Goner.


And, of course, because that's the way of things here, you could be found first a few times, by a few different people, different combinations, different versions, some you remember and some you can't but they're all still somehow yours. They're all still somehow you.


I was abducted from the Eighth Tribe on a planet far away from Earth by an army of Fokkerbots; Max rescued me. I also went to college and met a girl named Maggie who got me into role-playing games and introduced me to the Professor. I might have been part of a girl named Kitty. Sometimes I've been here since the beginning, and other times I'm the newest recruit.


My name is Tatterdemalion and one day I will tell you the story of how I destroyed the Metaplex.

Channel Plex: Cast Pics

These were taken at various locations during the filming of Season Five.
Before things started to go wrong.

According to most fansites, Akimoto and Max would typically spend their off-hours having long, philosophical conversations in the local pubs. 

The crew often reported that Angst and Max worked very well together, devoting equal time to rehearsing scenes and to joking around.

Rumours that Max was resistant to the introduction of Aqua appear to be completely unfounded; according to their cast-mates, he was like a big brother to her.

Both Frank and Max spoke openly about their creative differences, but they were also very clear about the respect they had for each others' work.

Goner apparently took the news that he was being killed very well; he remained an upbeat and enthusiastic addition to the team until the very end. His brief appearance in Season Eight led to much speculation among fans.

Every cast and crew member ever interviewed confirmed that Max and Maggie refused to interact off-camera, in order to infuse their performances with the uncertainty, desperation and fragility that they were famous for.

Even though Suki (version Grown Up) would not appear for two more seasons, she visited the set regularly to watch the cast work, especially Suki (version Kid).

Tatterdemalion's scenes ended up being cut and reworked into Season Six. There were many fansites that speculated about how this decision directly contributed to the radical changes in Season Seven, including the existence of the supposed 'Missing Season'.

Channel Plex: We Don't Need No

We don't need no...
We don't want no...
We can carry on without...

It's Sunday night and I'm feeling down,
After the encounter with the clown,
You said you loved me, but you left me anyhow
So I don't know what I should do right now,

We don't need no .... (Time)
We don't want no .... (Time)
We can carry on without ... (Time)

Yo, my name is Max and I'm here to stay
I've been itching on the back of your brain,
like a maggot on a piece of meat,
Like Gunga Din without a treat
It's the only thing I can say

We don't need no .... (Scratch)
We don't want no ....(Max)
We can carry on without ... (Tax)

They call me Aqua and I'm a hip chick
I like to rap my rhymes, like honey on a stick,
You see me here and you see me there
and if you see me in my power gloves
yo you better beware....

We don't need no... (War)
We don't want no ... (More)
We can carry on without ... (S'mores)

We don't need no .... (Time)
We don't want no .... (Rhyme)
We can carry on without .... (Chime)

Words written and spoken by Max Cube, Aqua and Tatter
Music composed by The Professor

Channel Plex: Living Outside The Lines

Tatter smirked as she was told for the hundredth time today that she was their favourite character on the show. She nodded and smiled as she took the sharpie and signed her name on the glossy 8x10 photo of her face. 

Leonard Nimoy probably felt like this, she thought. Here she was sitting at a booth at a convention and signing autograph after autograph. It was a good thing that she was getting paid $1,000 for just a few hours of work. She knew that she wasn't top end of the sci-fi convention scene. Heck, Wil Wheaton was making more than her, but considering Wil was also an internet geek that upped his convention fee as well. 

"I like your performance in the episode 'Die Now, Pay Later'," a little girl said. "It moved me." 

'Die Now, Pay Later' was her breakout role in the series. Up until then she was just a secondary character only guaranteed five minutes of screen time. After that episode her screen time doubled and eventually tripled. 

The little girl brought out her sketchbook and flipped to a page showing Tatter as her character. "Could you please sign this?" 

Tatter marveled at the illustration; she had seen her fair share of artwork and fan drawings but this one was a definite labour of love. She was afraid to even mark it for fear of ruining such a masterpiece. She placed down the sharpie and reached for a ballpoint pen. She knew the sharpie would bleed on the paper and a pen wouldn't. This was going to be a very special autograph... one that might even pay this girl's way into college several years down the road if she was willing to part with it.

Underground Dramatis Personae

STONE - detective turned conspiracy theorist

RIVETA - detective turned metaphysical investigator

DONNELLY - ex-principal or maybe a priest

SCORPIO - geek turned double-agent

SIMON - mystery man

AKIMOTO - temporally-displaced norse samurai

TATTERDEMALION - strange girl from another planet

AQUA - teenage tiger-fist

FRANK - reformed LEGACY hitman

GONER - ex-mercenary

ANGST - cheerleader avec uzis 

Open File

The clatter of the tracks suddenly got louder as the car entered a tunnel. Riveta grabbed a railing and stood up.

"Where's Mayganne?" she asked, her voice panicked.

Stone glanced around, blinking. "Ok... calm down..." he said softly, maybe to his former-partner, maybe to himself.

Riveta had the truth of it, though: Mayganne wasn't with them. Scorpio's cell-phone was ringing.

Donnelly turned to them, looking disoriented. "There's some people... in the next car... strange..."

Riveta turned, checking for her pistol under her jacket, relieved at the feel of the steel. Looked past the Father, through the window in the door at the end of the car.

A girl in a tattered sweater talking to a huge man, his blond hair tied in a top-knot. A cheerleader and another teenage girl in a cowboy hat. Two other men.

Simon put a hand out to steady Riveta. "It's okay," he said. He looked exhausted. "We'll be okay."

Scorpio snapped his cell-phone shut, ending his quick call with Greg Logollos. From LEGACY.

"That was the Professor," Scorpio said. "We're supposed to kill the people in the next car."

The Mind Eyes

Tatter opened her eyes and looked around the car. Her breathing was shallow and she was in a cold sweat. Her eyes adjusted to the dim fluorescent light. She glanced around and noticed everyone resting, sleeping. Trying to catch a few z's before the next stop, whenever that would be. Her eyes drifted from the blur of the world through the windows to the back of the car, where Akimoto was sitting lotus-style. Eyes closed, finger and thumb pinched. She got up and moved toward the rear of the car.

"Aki," she said after she sat down on a seat facing him. "You up?"

Aki cracked an eye at her and smiled.

"Bad dream?" he inquired. He didn't move from his position.

"Kinda," Tatter replied; she looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes looking at the ads and posters as they melded into other eras and styles. "What do you remember of Citadel?"

Akimoto's eyes opened wide and he looked at her.

Slow Train A Coming

The car had moved several inches in the last few hours. The wheels squealing on the tracks, as if pulling away from glue. Something was definitely happening and he was glad for it. He didn't know how many more days he could stay couped up on just a platform. A prisoner lost in time and space. He could hear Bishop in the conductor car yelling at the train, shouting for it to move forward.

"What's going on?" Aqua inquired. She was bouncing around in her seat, itching to get into combat.

"Looks like whatever is holding us here is trying to keep us here," Frank said. "It doesn't want to let us go."

"Could it be some demonic force? Like a life leech?" Tatter asked. She sat by a window looking out and saw people begin to mill about on the platform, their images ghostlike in appearance. Whatever was happening it was affecting the platform too. 

Bishop continued to shout at the train, hurling verbal abuse at the Gods, the earth, the world, his shoes. It was the first time any one of them had heard him become so vocal.

The train lurched forward again, a sudden two feet, sending everyone in the car tumbling over. It was a violent battle that was going on and it looked like Bishop was finally winning. Frank stood up and glanced around at the car to make sure everyone was okay, then as he scanned the platform his eyes widened in shock...

Real Time Saves Nine

Frank opened his eyes and stretched; he had fallen asleep. The subway car was stopped and the doors opened and he glanced around. 

Akimoto was sitting in a lotus position in deep meditation, so he didn't want to bother the Norse ronin.

He reached over and touched Tatter on the shoulder; she shot up as if touched with a branding iron.

"It's me," Frank said, leaning back and holding up his hands.

"Sorry," Tatter meekly replied. She hadn't been able to sleep at all. It seemed her functions were still jumbled a bit. "Just that..."

"No worries, Tat," Frank said. He stood up and looked up and down the car. "You know where the others went?"

"Aqua and Dex went to get some food," Tatter replied.

"And Max, Maggie, Suki..." Frank began but then he saw the puzzled look on Tatter's face. "What is it?"

"Max?" Tattered said. "Who's he?"

Shorelines

The Professor held the pan over the fire, watched the eggs and bacon cooking. Frank stood at the water's edge.

"That smells great," he said. The morning was cool and grey. 

Goner sat on one of the logs by the campfire. He felt happy. The trees around them, the stillness. Their shiny, colourful tents on the small peninsula, like UFOs from a psychedelic future landed in the Garden of Eden. Suki was cleaning her Godhammer. Angst was practicing one of her cheers in slow motion, like yoga with pom poms.

The Professor checked his chronometer. "I always believe in leaving enough time for a good meal before any Event." 

Tatter hugged a wool blanket around her shoulders. "Do you bring them with you everywhere?" she asked Angst, referring to the shaggy bundles of colour shaking in her hands.

Angst smiled, dropping into the splits on the soft earth. "The uzis are my war-talismans, these are my peace-talismans." 

Frank had joined Goner as the Professor began scooping out breakfast onto their plates. "Callan sounds like he'll be a good addition to the team," Frank said.

Goner stuffed a piece of bacon into his mouth, talking and chewing. "Max once told me that Callan was a Dragon a long time ago." 

Suki held out her plate. "Just eggs, please. Will Callan be able to help us find Max?"

"I hope so," The Professor said. "It wasn't so long ago," he said to Goner, "but in a very different Version." 

After everyone had eaten, they all gathered down by the water. The canoes had already been loaded with the tech. The Professor opened the silver pouch and emptied the offering into the breeze.

Tatter watched each of them in turn. Frank's precise movements - he would never be entirely free of LEGACY, no matter how many worlds he traveled. Goner's wistful look back at the campsite - nostalgia for his military days perhaps. Angst's permanent half-smile - she never talked about her life before Initiation, except for the cheers. Tiny Suki, who had died and been brought back, according to the logs Tatter had read. There were others she hadn't met yet - or she couldn't remember meeting yet. Darius, Dexter, Wraith, Aqua. The time-displaced Norse samurai, Akimoto. And Maggie - no one talked about Maggie since Max had disappeared. She was like a dream they had woken up from. Tatter had almost asked Angst about it, but chickened out. 

These were them, Tatter thought, as they started climbing into the canoes. "Twelve minutes until Event," The Professor said. These were the people it would happen with. Her new family.

The Thought That Counts

Moving right along at a rapid pace, the group didn't pause for a second. There was no time to lose, as the saying goes. For if they faltered for just a moment, the hordes of flesh-eating alien cyborgnetic-organisms would slightly gain the advantage.

Frank dropped back from his pace with Max and joined in with Angst who was with Tatter, Suki and Aqua. They were keeping each others' pace.

"I don't know if this is the proper time or place for this," Frank said as he reached inside his jacket. "I just wanted to give you something, and I don't know if we are going to get out of this one alive. So I have to do this now."

He handed Angst a small parcel adding, "Merry Christmas."

+ PLEX TOURS .1 The Lab

• The Bunker
• The Lab Level Two
• The Cast
• The Bookstore
• The Brownstone
• The Subway
• Metafesto
• The Diner
• Chronoplex

Suki lowered her voice as they stepped from the hallway into the room. “This is the Lab.” 

Tatterdemalion shivered; it was cold in the room, or creepy, or both. The banks of machines, tubes arcing and twisting in the corners, the sounds of chemicals and calculations. Sterile smells. Her brow furrowed.

Suki noticed. “It’s familiar to you because this is where your Plex-unit was implanted. The memory won’t be conscious, of course.” 

Tatter suddenly felt ridiculous. Standing in this super-sci-fi hi-tech room in her baggy sweater, listening to a uniformed schoolgirl with a massive handgun perched on her hip tell her about brainwashing and psychological modifications.

Angst put her hand on Tatter’s shoulder. “Breathe. Do your visualizations.” 

Tatter jumped a bit at the touch of the cheerleader, but did as she said, and felt a little calmer.

Angst slipped her arm through Tatter’s, gave a comforting squeeze. “That feeling of absurdity, the doubt about the reality of what’s happening to you… That’s residue from the equipment.” 

Suki was watching some of the screens flash arcane equations. “Morganfokker’s tech emits fields that destabilize the mind’s sense of ontological certainty.” She smirked. “That’s how the Professor describes it anyway.”

Tatter shivered again. “So who’s this Morganfokker?” 

Angst led her over to one of the machines. A steel frame housing hundreds of slender glass vials, threads of light weaving across their surfaces. “We’re not exactly sure. He’s like Max and Maggie.” 

“In what way?” Tatter asked. 

Suki answered. “Well, you know how the Dragons have what the Prof calls 'Continuity'? I’m me, Frank’s Frank, Goner’s-“ 

“-a spaz,” Angst interjected, and the three girls shared a giggle. 

“But Maggie and most of all Max can be, like, all sorts of people? How they change during shifts, not just the place?”

Tatter sighed. “I’m not sure I follow…” She was remembering the day that she was abducted from her homeworld… but staticky flashes of another scene kept interrupting. Her parents dropping her off at University… Meeting her dorm-mate Maggie, talking about role-playing games… 

Angst scanned the vials. Her eyes looked sad. “In one of these I had a baby….”

Suki looked at Tatter with a serious expression. “He can give you things, and he can take them away. He can make you dream, and he can wake you up.” 

Suddenly all the screens in the Lab flickered. Flashed. The machines started to hum and thrum and whine. 

“What’s happening?” Tatter shouted. 

“We shouldn’t have come here,” Angst said, echoes of tears in her eyes.

Suki was staring at the strange, swirling patterns that were storming across the monitors. “I see… It’s Max… He needs our help.”

Eat This!

An automatic fired, the bullets chewing away at the concret slab. It seemed that the concrete might outlast them. 

"Don't let them get to Tatter," Max said.

Mags looked at her wound; she didn't need a doctor to tell her that it was pretty bad. 

"Well," she said as she finished wrapping a makeshift bandage around her torso, "We're between the proverbial rock and a hard place."

"It seems to be that way a lot, hasn't it?" Max joked. He shot Mags a wink. "I guess it's always better than the alternative of not doing a thing about it."

Brainwash Interruptus

"Not all of consciousness is this strange," the Fokkerbot assured the young woman, its synthetic voice approximating a soothing tone. "Of course parts are stranger." 

"This... It's like one of the stories the Eighth Tribe used to tell," Tatterdemalion said, her eyes roving about the polished-steel surfaces of the Lab. Her eyes were lined with tattooed lace-work, thick like goth eyeliner. Her black hair was still damp with goo from the bizarre extraction pod that had swallowed her off the planet.

The Fokkerbot angled its polished-steel head. "The abduction legends of the Eighth Tribe are actually based in fact. Although they themselves do not realize it." Tatter rolled dreamily onto her side. The long polished-steel table felt oddly comfortable. Clean. 

"Can you make... Can you make me like this place?" she asked. "I want to..."

"You're tired of feeling soft and dirty. I can make you like polished steel." 

Tatter tried to focus her gaze on the other person who had just quietly entered the room. The Fokkerbot continued. "I will forge you into a weapon. And you will hunt my prey." The lights on the robot's face blinked some more as it called up an image of a man, stubbly and tired looking, on a screen. The pic was labelled 'Cube'. 

"Oh," Tatter said. "You mean the guy right behind you?"

Iterations

Mags yawned and stretched as she walked down the hallway of the space station. Her slippers soft against the white tiled floor. Heading to the kitchen for some coffee, essential after waking from cryo.

She passed by the window to a zero-g room; Callan was floating upside-down in a lotus position. 

She passed by one of the oxygen-factories; Tatterdemalion was staring at the different plants.

She passed by a data station; the Professor was hunched over a keypad. There was a poster for the movie 'Kill Bill' displayed on one screen and a screenshot from 'The Walking Dead' featuring Michonne on another. Maggie stared at the pictures of the women and their swords.

"Um, Professor? What have you been up to?"

Coming Down

Angst was writing her name in pink nail polish on the barrel of the uzi. "You don't mind? Do you need cash?" 

Tatter patted the pockets of her baggy coat, checking for change. "I'm good. Triple-triple for you right? And what does Max take?"

"Just black." She smirked. "It's a macho-thing, I guess. Hardcore action-hero noir-ninja-whatever."

Tatter grinned, then her eyes softened. "Is he okay though?" She glanced to the door of the bedroom.

Angst nodded. "He gets sick like this sometimes, before a shift."