Into the walls, seal up the holes, leave them guessing.

>>973847
Eh. I wouldn't say so. Alice has only been half there the whole time, and with people are making weird assumptions and saying stuff about missions that don't exist, her response was... Normal.

>>973849
Ok wow. Look. Alice is currently on task. The only thing that's changed is that we've eschewed covert action for overt action. We are currently running quiet, but it is only a matter of time before things get loud now. We need to obtain more mass and marrow before that happens so we're ready for it.

Alice's existential crisis can wait until after were safe and reunited with the crew.
On that note, we should probably hunt for more marrow and make husbandry permanent so we can coexist with the crew safely.
While we should be less ravenous in theory now that feeding efficiency is maxed, another layer of let's not kill everyone would be nice.

As for this guy, kill lights, open door, close door behind him, harpoon to face. Let him continue thinking it's a prank until the end.

>>973871
There's only two benefits and an immense number of cons to being bigger at this point.

pros: we could start actively destroying the base bit by bit at this size and we could theoretically dismantle/hurl a fafnir mech if we could get close enough

cons: We'll be an immensely easier target to spot and hit, we'll move around slower and that's not counting the sanity penalty for being megahuge and monstrous.

it's time to stop eating and controlling alice's gargantuan and worrying appetite...

Well, after we kill and consume this last guy for stealth purposes.

>>973884
Quicksilver negates that first con and any mobility issues, and there's no "sanity penalty" for being big. As for being monstrous, well, the comparisons are inevitable. Alice just needs to put some effort into maintaining her appearance when she isn't under immediate time pressure.

In the long term, Bottom Feeder and Husbandry should eliminate any self-control issues Alice has. She can wean herself off of meat and go full vegetarian with Bottom Feeder, and Husbandry should allow her to have some manner of contact with people without having to worry about hurting them accidentally. Come to think of it, maybe the previously mentioned worrisome interpretation of Husbandry is backwards. Could it possibly be used to enhance people? Modify their structure to make them more resilient? Instead of grafting parts of enemies onto Alice, graft parts of Alice onto allies.

That icon's abilities are really very important if Alice is ever going to rejoin society, I think. Gardener would be optional in the long term, but could be a useful service.

>>973907
I imagine we would need Husbandry to interact biologically.
Multitask because surgery is complicated.
Fine Detail because surgery is sensitive.
Gardner To regenerate the surrounding tissues.
Interface (Well mastered Interface at that) To anesthetize, and maybe even draw medical data from a database or doctor.
Hell With quicksilver we could form healing pods and cocoon and heal dyeing friendos, or heal or modify through straight-up amalgamation.

In anycase, I doubt Husbandry can do much besides small simple mods on its own. none of the abilities seem particularly useful on their own. They all build on each-other. Tis why abilities like Multitask and Fine Detail are so good despite not having any immediate uses: They just make everything else better.

>>973912
No, I meant that the description of the ability makes it sound like it could be used *by itself* to enhance other people.

>>973932
Aye. Enhance lesser life forms. Presumably with precursor biology. Keyword lesser. The precursors likely didn't give a shit about the lives of other life forms outside of their utility.

Are the mods removable?
Disfiguring?
Destructive to the host over time?
Painful?
Does the module suggest it can keep a host alive while doing something major?

Husbandry might let us horrifically alter some xotl victim, but no human is going to consent unless we can for certain assure them that they are in good hands.

>>973963
I feel like the name of the ability is significant here; "husbandry" suggest that "lesser life forms" refers to cattle, crops and domestic animals, not experimental subjects, and since you don't want to damage cattle before it's time for slaughter, it suggests that it should be a relatively safe procedure. So it's a "maybe" for the first two questions, "probably not" for the last three, and while horrific alteration may be a possibility, it's probably not what the ability is intended for and not something that should be expected for any procedure for sure.

1/4 Alice Dietrich 2020/08/18(Tue)23:35 No. 974712 ID: b488b1
File 159781890679.png - (30.07KB , 800x600 , very_much_sneaking_of_alice.png )

>We need to STOP, we need to ignore that guy and devote all our mental faculties to finding our friends, we are VERY close to the point of no return people!
Not yet...

>Hide yourself and the xotl you're chewing on, unlock the door, wait for him to come in, lock the door behind him, ambush him.
Just a little slime on the trolley that the specimen had been oozing. Alice has been trying to scoop any slime her meals and idol usage produce into her slime sacs.

>Regardless, once he's in, muffle that xotl as quickly as you can and shut the door behind him. Hope he didn't bring friends.
The xotl calls out, looking side to side in the abandoned lab, still demanding to know if this is a prank and whining that it's sorry for not grabbing a drink for its co-worker.

Door's sliding shut, time to move!

2/4 Alice Dietrich 2020/08/18(Tue)23:36 No. 974713 ID: b488b1
File 159781896095.png - (39.76KB , 800x600 , kill_alice_kill.png )

Alice rushes out from behind the specimen tube, trailing the connective tissue that joins her to the rest of her dispersed body. She efficiently muffles the xotl by stabbing him in the face with a dozen feeding tendrils. The xotl doesn't even have time to scream.

>Hmm, maybe you should interrogate him. Ask why the xotl are moving things around. Also, ask where the rest of your crew is. We haven't gotten that information from infiltrating their systems, so it would be good to know.
Alice's feeding tendrils interface as they worm through the twitching xotl's skull, flashes of information and irrelevant images. The xotl's worried it has to report back with the specimen in twenty minutes. She's supposed to be back with the other xotl she's partnered with by then. There's rumours the evacuation is due to an accident with a Precursor warhead in the physics lab. It doesn't like the experiment in this room, it creeps him out. If the Thousand Day Empire couldn't tame Precursor servitors, what hope do they ha ve? Shee's irrationally wo rrie d she's dro pp e d h er d r i... n... k...

She's gone.

40 biomass consumed, new mass total is 249.

Alice's tendrils scrape the interior of the armour clean. She feels different, that last xotl tipped her over some new threshold.

Interlink: A system of cells within cells within cells. Distributed and interconnected. Spinning up additional redundant information storage within worker-body. Basal nodes interlinked. New node made distinct. Fire dread reduced.

A conversation with Blake about back-up thinky parts and any damage Alice takes potentially being brain damage uncomfortably comes to mind. More mass means more redundancy, right?

>Huh... so permanent slotting is a mind-whammy. Quicksilver too, by appearances.
Alice has bits of her brain scattered across several rooms. If she has anything like a normal nervous system, it's going to take some time for information to get from one side of her to the other.

>In any case, I doubt Husbandry can do much besides small simple mods on its own. none of the abilities seem particularly useful on their own. They all build on each-other.
Everything seems to slot together but Alice doesn't think she's really explored the limits of what any one thing can do yet. There hasn't been time.

>Come to think of it, maybe the previously mentioned worrisome interpretation of Husbandry is backwards. Could it possibly be used to enhance people? Modify their structure to make them more resilient? Instead of grafting parts of enemies onto Alice, graft parts of Alice onto allies.
She won't know until she tries.

>Your stomach efficiency maxed out, which means in theory you should have less of a feeding urge.
Alice just ate. But she's still hungry.

3/4 Alice Dietrich 2020/08/18(Tue)23:36 No. 974714 ID: b488b1
File 159781900118.png - (35.61KB , 800x500 , next_eat_the_trolley.png )

>It's time to stop eating and controlling Alice's gargantuan and worrying appetite...
Alice isn't gargantuan yet so her appetite can't be gargantuan yet and there's no point in worrying about it.

>I want to take over this whole ship/station like a parasitic organism. Like a mold!
>Being a fungus is a beautiful, powerful thing. Nothing hardier, nothing better!
Alice can think of lots of things that'd be better to be than a fungi. But she needs to keep spreading, that's right.

>Let's see if Quicksilver and Bottom Feeder can combine into spreading creep/mold that can live on and spread past yourself.
Anything detached from Alice dies.

>They'll be forced to spend so much time burning and cleaning you up!
Alice doesn't want to burn!

>>more of a plant now than a fungus
>Well, I think that's a plus. Plants are more well known for living alongside humans. Plants are also more... familiar, aren't they?
Alice seems to have the choice of looking like a sickly plant when she has her skin on, or a pile of viscera.

>That's definitely too slow to make the cart disappear. Good for squeezing every last drop of biomass out of the place, though.
Alice will cut it up, digest what she can and stash whatever's left over in the underfloor. Make the signs of her presence just disappear.

She flops on the trolley with all the grace of some kind of stranded octopus, torso opening slightly to slide out feeding tendrils to saw into the trolley. She still has xotl armour stuck on both arms so she starts working away at dissolving that too. One tendril mops up the last xotl's dropped meat smoothie too.

Alice starts redistributing her mass again - all that's needed in the specimen room is feeding tendrils, slime sacs and digestive apparatus. She needs to go after the crewmate she found and the mainframe next, now she has the security token. She hasn't poked an eyeball back into the room with a possible crewmate - the chance of being spotted seemed too high with three alert xotl. She drools at the thought. She can hear a lot of movement though, she tries to stockpile mass underneath to take action.

4/4 Alice Dietrich 2020/08/18(Tue)23:38 No. 974715 ID: b488b1
File 159781909353.png - (43.44KB , 600x750 , this_is_the_idol_room_just_to_be_clear.png )

Over in the room with the idols, Alice has started digesting material too. The trolley, the idol case, the two xotl armours and some of the plastic crates are all dragged together into one mass, webbed together by her biomass. Let the xotl wonder where their missing stuff and personnel is, once they find out.

>Alice just needs to put some effort into maintaining her appearance when she isn't under immediate time pressure.
She's always going to be under immediate time pressure.

>Try to remember. You are Alice Dietrich, your grandmother's name was Marie. You are a crew member of the Survey Corps ship TFS Penguin. Your ship was attacked by the Xotl despite being light years out of their territory. In the chaos, the crew hadn't been able to do a clean wipe on the ship's data core and the Xotl managed to recover the crew roster. They'd taken the ranking officers for questioning and set the others aside for experimentation. You served in the military and received a commendation for your initiative during the Kota Rebellion. You received a Tier II engineering rating.
>Never forget who you are.
Hazy. Too many faces and names and images that don't link up. Her home world, and tours of other worlds, how does it fit together? Why was she so excited to see what's out there? The Sleeper only knows why it's this way. It's all graveyards out in the stars and children who don't know where the bones are buried.

She has to survive. She has to find her crew. She has to help them. She wants to go home.

Compatible matter absorbed, new total is 259.

>Also, you're getting fat.
Not fat enough.

>That was a self-deprecating joke. Humans do those.
...

>As we learned earlier, she needs a break from eatin’ to come down from that mode. In that sense Bottom Feeder is a trap, lowering her capacity for higher thought while she’s gnawing on scant materials like a dog worrying on an old bone.
Why is it? Is incorporating new mass mentally intensive? It's fine then! There's very little viable material in these materials! She needs to eat more just to break even with the cost of learning Bottom Feeder!

Thinking it over, she apparently does have a new node thanks to raising her mass? Maybe she needs to stare at idols again.

Alice tries poking at the first idol she found and winces as she feels an error. She's unable to load Megastructure; her body's unable to simultaneously support three configurations from the same idol and she already has made Clever Hands and Quicksilver permanent.

That leaves:

[ ] Multi-task - Division and recombination of animating principle process streams. Division of labour. Control of worker-body portions can be ceded to parallel processes. Literally for multitasking.

[ ] Fine Detail - Improves tactile, visual, olfactory, auditory and kinaesthetic sensory functions of worker body. Interpretation and fusion of sensory cues and options for eidetic storage of sensory input and fine scale destructive analysis of structures. Senses, coordination and she might be able to replicate some pieces of technology if there's anything that'd be useful to do that.

[ ] Husbandry - Refinement to animating principle for additional modes of nondestructive interference with lower organisms. Amalgamation, doping and preservation of useful substructures. Reduces unintentional corrosion of biological matter by subsumption architecture. Alice still reads this as some sort of cross-compatibility of regular biological creatures and Precursor fleshbeast biology.

[ ] Gardener - Additional biosphere utility via worker-body byproducts. A portion of degenerated biomass is reformatted to assist biological proliferation. Exposure to enriched biomatter promotes cellular activity and division in lower organisms. Maybe accelerates healing?

[ ] Cancel - Alice does need to spread herself around so maybe melting ten percent of her body is a bad idea right now?

Once she's taken care of this, she really needs to find out what's going on with this other crew mate. She'd prefer Blake, but anyone will do!

>>974715
Fine detail!

This new threshold was a positive one. Improved capacity, less danger of mind loss because there's more mind. Promising!
Things have really sped up, huh? The longer you wait to integrate the bigger that 10% cost gets, so integrate Fine Detail now. Sharpen your senses, improve your focus, and think of all the juicy tech you could utilize if you were able to manufacture your own replacements for ammo. That gloop gun? You could perhaps figure out how to use that, instead of hoarding all this slime for no present purpose. Can't hold it in forever.
Avoid Multi-tasking, and you'll avoid uncomfortable questions like how much of you is you. If you still think like a human, it's easier to act like a human. Humans can be finely honed killing machines, but they can also identify friend and foe.
Well, we've certainly looked out for number one, crew rescue is a go. Do the xotl's memories mention where they're due in twenty minutes?

>>974715
Are you making A Thing? Is that mess of flesh and metal organized in some way?

You have two very simple harvesting processes that are forcing your mind to distribute over a large area and thus slowing-down/confusing your mind because it takes so long for thoughts to travel to one another. Get multitasking right away and focus on concentrating your mental processes to the crew chamber, while the simple cleaning-up processes can be deliberately too simple to matter.

Remember to keep a "primary" mental process that is more complex than the others so that you don't risk multiple processes simultaneously coming up with separate overall objectives and the resulting civil-war.

Go for Husbandry, it will let you steal the enemy's bioaugmentations and integrated organic weaponry. You can also 'pilot' mummified precursor warbeasts, which is kick-ass.

As we are currently spread out, slotting multitask seems like the obvious choice for now.

>Alice just ate. But she's still hungry.
>her appetite can't be gargantuan yet
...Uh, if you fail to see how those are opposites...
>But she needs to keep spreading, that's right.
>Not fat enough.
...UH... Alice? BAD. BAD ALICE.

>Hazy. Too many faces and names and images that don't link up. Her home world, and tours of other worlds, how does it fit together? Why was she so excited to see what's out there? The Sleeper only knows why it's this way.
Sleeper? What's the Sleeper?
Alice? You there? Earth to Alice?
Do you remember your crewmembers besides Blake? What work you did with them?

>The xotl's worried it has to report back with the specimen in twenty minutes. She's supposed to be back with the other xotl she's partnered with by then. There's rumours the evacuation is due to
EVACUATE? If the xotl seek to leave, they might take the rest of the crew with them! Forget the biomass, that's of greater import!

>>974771
+1 for Hus, BTW.

We're about due for Fine Details.

>>974715
fine detail.

>>974715
>her body's unable to simultaneously support three configurations from the same idol
Oh. That's a problem... It means you won't be able to use all three of the configurations from the idol that looks like it might be useful for fitting in after you get home. Thankfully so long as you don't make either of the other two permanent, you can switch between them.
Do you think you might be able to recover some of your lost memories if you found that piece of yourself you used as a distraction?

Go with Husbandry, since you're about to rejoin your crew, and it should make you able to better yank memories out of Xotls. That is a very good way of getting information, including things like passwords. You'll also be able to find out if you could use it to, say, give a certain crewmember new legs.

Can you use some of this inorganic material you're eating to reinforce your body? Form metal plates like a kind of bastardized version of Megastructure? Small metal plates attached to your body would be flexible enough to work with Quicksilver. You could also try something fancy like a coat of quills or hanging metal plates/scales. Quills would work well to reload that planned autocrossbow, too.

>>974771
The Sleeper is the prime mover who dreamt the universe out of blind chaos. This was touched on in the very first thread when someone asked about the Messenger, which is the soul and emissary of the Sleeper.

Basically it is a religious thing. In this context, when she says "The Sleeper only knows..." it is basically the equivalent to us saying "God only knows...." I never really took Alice for a religious type, but this does show that there is some cultural figures of speech returning to Alice's speech. While Alice definitely needs to take a hard look at her hunger issue, she may still be Alice on the inside. It may just be trapped due to an inefficient neural network. That being said, human brains are clearly more efficient as far as volume vs performance goes, so we may want to try to create something akin to a brain to try and streamline the processing/biomass ratio.

>>974835
>Sleeper
>dreamt the universe out of blind chaos
>Messenger
>soul and emissary
oh. OH.
...shit.
Azathoth and Nyarlathotep.

Alice needs to remember to use the metal guns and weapons her enemys have. To remain good at using them.

[X] Multi-task

Hell yes multitask.

Hey, I wonder if we could fire a whole lot of guns at the same time using multitask.

I also wonder how hard it is to swap these in and out. Switching them in and out to try different combinations has merit.

1/3 Alice Dietrich 2020/09/25(Fri)22:07 No. 977237 ID: 8ebab2
File 160109682770.png - (35.47KB , 600x750 , om_nom_nom_delicious_crate.png )

>Alice? You there? Earth to Alice?
>Do you remember your crewmembers besides Blake? What work you did with them?
Surveying new and undocumented planetary systems. Crew of eight: Alice, Blake. There's Mason too. Science and hyperdrive tech. And Derby. Science and probably dead seeing she has his tags. The other security guy, uh, Upton? Alice didn't get along with him too well. He kept sneaking off to bother the scientists. And her partner, who, no, she's getting confused, she didn't have one. Exot crew member, uh she's not getting much. There was the captain. He... had a beard? The XO... was... new?

Never mind, Alice is wasting time.

>Are you making A Thing? Is that mess of flesh and metal organized in some way?
It's a lump of half eaten material embedded in Alice!

>>The xotl's worried it has to report back with the specimen in twenty minutes. She's supposed to be back with the other xotl she's partnered with by then. There's rumours the evacuation is due to-
>EVACUATE? If the xotl seek to leave, they might take the rest of the crew with them! Forget the biomass, that's of greater import!
The xotl were already packing up everything. Now Alice has confirmation that sh- that the xotl she ate had to check in with some of the supplies soon. She's about to take back one of her crew (probably), but Alice is kind of a fleshy web spread between several rooms at the moment, she needs to pull herself back together before she'll have much mobility.

Or Alice could find more to eat and 'move' that way by spreading out? Trial attacking their infrastructure before she tries it in anger?

>Do the xotl's memories mention where they're due in twenty minutes?
Checkpoint in front of the exit. They're pulling out of this section of the base.

>Alice just ate. But she's still hungry.
>her appetite can't be gargantuan yet
...Uh, if you fail to see how those are opposites...
Obviously she didn't eat enough, she just needs to eat until she's satisfied her weird mutant instincts and then everything's going to be OK!

>...UH... Alice? BAD. BAD ALICE.
No, good Alice! She's been practically torn to shreds once already. She has to survive, she needs to give herself an advantage over the xotl and then she needs to think about how to get the others out safely.

>As we are currently spread out, slotting multitask seems like the obvious choice for now.
Right, spreading out like this is messing with her reactions too much. This should let her manage herself better.

26 mass lost. 233 mass remaining.

2/3 Alice Dietrich 2020/09/25(Fri)22:07 No. 977238 ID: 8ebab2
File 160109687610.png - (24.76KB , 800x500 , a_picture_to_show_nothing_happened.png )

Alice feels dizzy and then blacks out.

She wakes up again, disorientated. She thinks that was just a few seconds. She doesn't feel any different. Everything seems to be accounted for, aside from the consumed mass which her body is diligently redirecting to her slime sacs for use as hydraulic fluid or just slime.

>Do you think you might be able to recover some of your lost memories if you found that piece of yourself you used as a distraction?
It seemed to be decaying slower than normal, maybe because Alice used her Interface to order it into the ducts, but surely it would have decayed by now. It'd be nice. She had about two thirds of her body destroyed, she doesn't know what she might have lost.

>Alice needs to remember to use the metal guns and weapons her enemies have. To remain good at using them.
They don't do a good job of fitting through the small holes and tight confines Alice has been using to get around. She's having to widen openings to smuggle the idols back through the underfloor.

>I also wonder how hard it is to swap these in and out. Switching them in and out to try different combinations has merit.
It depends on how much Alice feels like partially disintegrating herself.

Now then, how to multitask?!

3/3 Alice Dietrich 2020/09/25(Fri)22:08 No. 977239 ID: 8ebab2
File 160109693810.png - (43.54KB , 800x600 , alices_not_to_be_taken_literally.png )

>You have two very simple harvesting processes that are forcing your mind to distribute over a large area and thus slowing-down/confusing your mind because it takes so long for thoughts to travel to one another. Get multitasking right away and focus on concentrating your mental processes to the crew chamber, while the simple cleaning-up processes can be deliberately too simple to matter.
Alice tries to make it simple, deliberately allocating a small part of her mass in the idol room for the exclusive use of, er, herself and telling it to look around. She tries to make whatever she has to allocate to it as pared back as possible. This feels weird, like that part of her's gone to sleep. She doesn't have a clear sense of what she's doing. She can see that chunk of mass sprouting an eye, which she didn't explicitly tell it to do. She looks at it and it looks back. It blinks or maybe winks. Alice mentally gives that piece of her a prod and it responds with an impression of the ceiling.

Alice tells it to stop. She remembers being Alice and also being herself but really, really dumb.

... It was a blink.

She tries a different tactic, trying a purely mental split to just 'count to 10' and immediately finds her body trying to sprout eyes and feelers. It ends after a few seconds. She remembers her other self counting to 10 and getting no sensory input, then returning to her at '10'. It seems she can control what exactly she gives to her multitask splits, but she also doesn't know much about what's going on until it merges back on completing a task or she deliberately checks in on it.

>Can you use some of this inorganic material you're eating to reinforce your body? Form metal plates like a kind of bastardized version of Megastructure? Small metal plates attached to your body would be flexible enough to work with Quicksilver. You could also try something fancy like a coat of quills or hanging metal plates/scales. Quills would work well to reload that planned autocrossbow, too.
She could, does she want to split her attention to work on that? Portability may be a concern though, as she's relying on the liquidity of her body to navigate the underfloor.

>Hey, I wonder if we could fire a whole lot of guns at the same time using multitask.
Well duh.

>Remember to keep a "primary" mental process that is more complex than the others so that you don't risk multiple processes simultaneously coming up with separate overall objectives and the resulting civil-war.
Right, primary: rescue crew.

Time is tight so how should Alice multitask? She's trying to erase the signs of her presence in two rooms. There's still the mainframe to investigate now she has a xotl security token. Her body is spread over a mildly alarming area, maybe she should explore more. She could try to manufacture something or conduct other experiments to explore what her altered biology can actually do. She's still hungry.

What tasks are worth multitasking and what resources does she want to dedicate to them?

>>977239
Great. Now you're *more* dangerous to the crew you're trying to rescue. These split-off Alices are single minded and dumb, so if you don't explicitly tell each one not to eat your friends they're probably going to try to. Oh well I guess you can just never have one active near crew.

Abandon erasing your presence. The Xotl are evacuating this area, why does it matter if you've left evidence behind for them to find? They won't find it, since they won't BE here.

Anyway, here are some tasks:

1, send an Alice to investigate the mainframe. Use the token to get in, extract all data, read it all, then relay the memories back. This Alice will need a decent amount of processing power.
2, try making that spine/spike launcher I was talking about. Make sure it's small enough to move around through the tunnels your body is spreading through, or can disassemble into smaller pieces. Shouldn't require too much processing power.
3, Craft ammo for the launcher. Needs very little, the ammo is just a spike.
4, Craft armor plating that you can easily disassemble when you need to quicksilver around and reassemble when needed. This might be complicated enough to need a decent chunk of your brain.
5, Station a sentry watching the room where you know some of your crew is being held captive. It should relay its memories back once the door opens so that you can intercept the xotl and evac with the crew. This is a very simple job and won't need much brainpower.
6, pop up some Alices near the edges of your spread-out body and have them explore more, maybe try sabotaging some stuff. This is open ended and might not be suited for multitasking, actually. Maybe your main Alice should do it?

I think you're a clone now, everywhere you go there's always two of you. Seriously though, you're having enough memory issues as it is, multiple memories of being you could be the last straw. Do not go overboard with instances. You should be able to count them on one unmodified hand at any given instance of splitting up. I don't want to have to say I told you so.
Part of your brain isn't going to be as efficient as your whole brain at creative thinking, you'll just be banging your head against two walls. Possibly literally. Forget that and the mainframe for now.
Priority 2: Clean up and consolidate, rendezvous below this room before moving to the crew's location. Priority 3: Chew the scenery. All processes should send an alert if spotted by security or xotl.

How far away is that checkpoint? Are they planning to pull everything irreplaceable out of this sector and then open it to vacuum, or replace the breathable air with nerve gas or cleansing fire or something?

Set a fork of yourself to the task of tapping and decoding whatever comm lines are available, ordered to report back when it hears anything important. Make sure it's got access to as much as you know about xotl linguistics.

If the enemy is evacuating the area, it means they plan to seal it off and nuke it from orbit. You must get the crew and yourself out of there before they do so.

lets try something ambitious. Send out dozens of orders to get your spread out mass to drill micro holes in the super structure up into the actual rooms every 2 or 3 meters, then grow and send as small an eye tentacle as you can manage to scan the room and then retract. Try and map out the area you encompass. See if you can manage a lot of orders like that, and also if you can make sense of what I'm very sure will be an overwhelming amount of input.

Oh, and they are right, we have to breach out of here within 20 minutes, so either rescue our crew and leave, or breach straight out and actively fight the Xotl to prevent them from sealing the place, and likely destroying it.

with 20 minutes, both seem completely impossible. But, if we were to use multitasking and quicksilver together to spread across the entire facility, consuming every creature with quick and violent simultaneous ambushes, with mass growth and our ability to weaponize growth waste we could overtake the entire facility pretty much as fast as we can send tendirls outward.

And seeing as how our tactical situation is about to go tits up when they fully pull out and we are suddenly trapped here, I can see no other options but to start doing exactly that.

After the experiment, if it's feasible to control many parts of you simultaneously without it overwhelming your ability to make decisions, start boring outwards from your center and spread as far along all conduits as possible. Also use existing parts of you to more slowly consume the unnecessary parts of the super structure, keeping in mind breaching in the wrong direction might space us. Plan to overtake the entire base, and it's whole crew, only stopping if we find blake or other crew members, or reach and need to prepare to breach their exit point.

Pull yourself back to one solid mass. We have a time limit to get past that checkpoint and our allies are unaccounted for, which is going to take an unknown amount of time to sort out with our enhanced senses.

>>977237
Ayyyyup, I was afraid of this. It's bad, especially if you compare her to how she was at >>/questarch/604305
If Alice loses some mass, it'd probably be for the best.
>>977277
>spread across the entire facility, consuming every creature with quick and violent simultaneous ambushes
BAD IDEA. With the way Alice is, that order would have them kill the crew, too.

>>977326
>If Alice loses some mass, it'd probably be for the best.
On the contrary, this implies that every time she loses some mass she basically suffers brain damage. Every time she takes damage she loses a part of herself.

>>977278
Do this!

>>977326
I agree, that's a terrible idea!

>>977326

>>spread across the entire facility, consuming every creature with quick and violent simultaneous ambushes
>BAD IDEA. With the way Alice is, that order would have them kill the crew, too.

It was specified explicitly to stop when our crew is found. Unless her fragments have trouble understanding what she's asking, it should work.

As well, pulling back is essentially giving up, in context. There's no more experimentation time left...

If the Xotl are pulling out, they may well be intending to write off the whole sector as a loss. Detach it entirely, open it to vacuum, bate it in hard rad, flush it with fire, there aren't really any good options there.
Leave in less than 20 minutes with any crewmembers you can gather.

>>977357
If we can do this quickly enough its a great odea, otherwise its time to gather the survivng friendly meat and move to get past that checkpoint. We'll have to improvise from there.

Alice absolutely needs to get herself back together, if she doesn't have a functioning central command center she isn't able to efficiently strategize to rescue her crew.

Probably one of the best things we can do is just a bit of cleanup, then see if we can lock the doors and prevent knowledge of yourself here from spreading while the evacuation is underway.

I think I understand what Alice is suppose to be. She’s likely suppose to be something like a Shoggoth, a biological machine engineered by a superior species meant to be a servitor of sorts.

It's time to get excited! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThGfAV2Z-aQ&list=RDMMN8RA9KVxo_E&index=27

>>977239
honestly just retract all mass armor up with as much as you can possibly forming like a carapace and just FIND THE crew and figure out how to make oxygen

I second that.