Felip, Dan and Axel all take Jack up on his suggestion to mine the Danger Zone to facilitate ESC meetings. Thus, you are able to talk to the ESC members any time you want. You learn that they have the following items in the ESC stash, which is currently located on the MML.
2 Disposable Vacc Suits (each has 20 hours of air)
Broken Densiometer (already fixed by Nobody and being used by Max)
Geiger Counter
Power Pack (same as the one your group has except this one is only half charged)
3 dozen bottled drinks
73 freeze-dried meals
3 sets of civilian clothing
magnetic compass
6 cold light lanterns
first aid kit (with one dose each of biocort, staydose and stimdose)
2 one gallon collapsible containers (currently filled with water)
40 kg of oridium
Axel also maintains the ESC treasury which currently consists of Cr1248.
JACK: Good to know, we'll have Surge recharge the power pack for them during the evening that Curt is smuggling it to the DZ. If they wish to create and maintain their own hiding place on the DZ, or use one of our new ones, that's fine with me.
JACK: We have many of the same items, with a few differences, including a gas mask, the electronics toolkit, a tarp, and some additional parts for another electronic gizmo Surge thought up.
The main business this month is acknowledging Jack as the new chairman of the committee. Once that is done, Axel gives some more information about Circle City. One important bit of info is that there are a lot of "houses" that are outside the dome of the city. Some of them have their own domes while others are sealed units. One such house, Axel knows exactly where, is owned by Parl Klive. Axel knows that he can go there and use the telephone there to contact Parl directly.
JACK: "Right, I knew about the outside buildings. When we've kept up our end of the bargain by finding the exit I would hope you'd share some rudimentary directions to his place, just in case you were incapacitated somehow. Our current plan calls for you to be incommunicado for the actual trip from here to Circle City, since you can't survive the environment outside, so we may have to have good enough directions to find it without your direct assistance. Otherwise you may have to be on the outside in one of the vacc suits I guess.
Let me know what anyone else wants to bring up. Dan, Axel and Felip are very interested in your method of exiting the prison. Axel is also interested in discussing Etienne and inviting him into the escape attempt.
JACK: "First, I talked with Etienne again recently on another matter, and he had a couple things to say on this. He has no interest whatsoever in joining us, and he's actually enjoying the quiet mining that he's been able to do since the new warden took over. He's a lone miner at heart, and it will be difficult to convince him to leave behind what is to him an almost idyllic lifestyle. I'm sure his abilities would be handy to have, but we can't count on him to help us. For that matter his powers may be so thoroughly mindblocked that they're useless to us anyway.
JACK: Our plan to exit the prison has several stages. First, we have already fixed the broken densiometer, and Max is currently scanning the DZ for the exit, with help nearby in case of trouble. Once he finds it, we will be analyzing it to see how easy it will be to open, and more importantly how easily hidden it will be afterward. Once we've figured out as much as we can, a few of us will be conveniently 'killed' in a cavein, and disappear out into what we presume will be natural caverns beyond the exit, to look for the way to the surface. They'll take with them some food and water rations, but our current plan is to use people that will need no support at all from us, and can survive pretty much indefinitely out there while they conduct their search. Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to mine, and hopefully pass some things through the secret exit to them every once in a while, rations, news, water, etc, but this is not a necessity.
JACK: Once the group in the caverns finds the way to the surface, the rest of us will escape during a massive cave-in, travelling up through the caverns to the surface, and then to Circle City at a run. Most of us can easily run that distance in less than 5 hours, so even with the cavern climbing, with some rest breaks we should be fine with a 20 hour air supply on the suits. If any of you are not so physically fit, we can have you carried by some of us who are. We have a way to keep several people safe even without vacc suits, and those of us that can survive without help will go under our own power.
JACK: Once in Circle City you know the rest, we seek out Parl Klive and hole up while gathering more information about the next steps, and continuing to break our mindblocks.
JACK: Obviously there are a few assumptions being made here, and if they are proven wrong we'll have to adjust, but this is the gist of it. The key here is that we don't actually need a vehicle, or vacc suits for everyone. Once the cavern team finds a way out, we're gone. |