Scene 5: Torslunda Marshes

Later that day, in the early afternoon, the four of you - unsurprisingly, Peter has called up Mikael and let him know that he's really busy today and can't come but to definitely let him know what you find and also to say hi to Yumin - meet at Mikael's house from which you take the bus up north to Sånga-Säby. From there, it's still a bit of a march to get to the Marshes but you arrive still pretty early in the afternoon.
You all, especially Mikael who lives closest to these parts, still remember this area before the Flood. It was just fields, some forests and nature, nothing unusual, but the dirty, potentially dangerous grey water that rose from below ground during the Flood has turned this area into a swamp. As you follow the lead of Sabine who saw Mark's photos and thinks she has an idea of where to go, you often have to test where to step in order to not sink into the creepy mud all the way up to your knees.
There are birds around but only far in the distance and it seems that many wild animals of other kinds avoid the marshes entirely. Here and there, you find large frogs and toads or you see something move out of the corner of your eyes but disappear before you can turn your heads, but for the most part, the swamps seem empty and uncomfortable. The marshes are damp, smelly and, despite summer not having arrived yet, full of mosquitoes.
As you close in on the location where Sabine believes the photos to have been taken, you notice pieces of black cloth tied to the branches of many trees, damp from rain and swaying weakly in the light wind.

Sabine looked many times at the photo she had taken from Mark's room for visual clues to the location in the background, as they proceeded to the marsh. She studied their surroundings for any familiarity.

"Huh," Mikael wonders aloud while Sabine studies the photograph, "This cloth we keep seeing, looks like someone tied it on. Marks of some kind maybe?" He can't help the fleeting thought that the cloth might be the same as those black, hooded cloaks Peter had said were seen in the field where Mark was killed. Could the cultists be out here? He brushed it off, as there certainly wasn't anything tying this black cloth to the cultists. Maybe they weren't cultists, Mikael thinks, what if they were these robots, wearing cloaks to hide their appearance? What if...? "Uhh, guys...what if Mark's not really dead?" he asks.

"Not dead? He looked dead, didn’t he? Didn’t he?" she thinks.

Yes… he did…

"You think it could have been faked? Would he do that to his aunt?"

Kim tried not to think about what she was doing to her own mother by even taking the risk being out here today.

Sabine looks at Mikael and then to both Eric and Yumin; shaking her head. "Of course Mark was dead. We all were there. He wasn't breathing. His eyes didn't blink. The mark of the electrocution was visible clear through his coat."

"But..." She adds. "...Who knows now. We still aren't sure what else Dr. Franken-Liv cooked up in her torture basement. Mark could be back from the dead—I guess its possible."

"I'm just...I don't know, crazy thought. Someone put those flowers over his body. Seemed like someone that cared about him was there after he died. He was friends with these robots...and the doctor was doing some weird experiments. Maybe, somehow, the electricity from the pole was used to, uhh...sorry this is crazy. Maybe his brain went into one of the robots somehow? Maybe the flower was there because he put it there himself, you know...after?" He shakes his head. "Someone did that. If it wasn't Mark, it must have been his Aunt, or maybe one of the robots did it - they were friends, it seems from what we've seen so far."

He purses his lips and darts his eyes around. crazy, yup, he thinks. "Nevermind. I keep thinking about what all this means, trying to make sense of it, and what makes sense is making less and less sense..." He kicks the dirt and laughs, "Heh. Hey Sabine, any idea where we're going?"

"Hmm, zombie robots... Cyborgs? Well, only one way to find out."

Eric continues walking, using his stick to test the ground ahead making sure he doesn't sink any deeper than necessary into this bog.

"Did anything else weird happen to anybody else last night? Once you all got home?

"Sabine, any idea where we're going?"

Sabine looks back and forth between Mikael and Eric. "I think we're on the right path." She answers. "Although, I am not very familiar with the marshes. Its not a place I'd choose to take Kaysa on a romantic date obviously."

As you walk through the swamp, you keep seeing movement in the distance and you have the feeling of being watched, but you never manage to actually see anyone.You do notice that certain paths through the mud seem to be blocked up. At first, some of those barricades appear natural, just branches and plants obscuring the way, but when you look at them more closely, they seem to have been placed there purposefully, almost as if someone was trying to keep you away from your goal.

Still, you manage to keep going until Sabine recognizes the exact place where the photo labeled as "The Shaman" had been taken. There's the fallen tree, there's this weird, rooty plant, there's the small pool of dirty water...
And further to the right, near the edge of a relatively small group of trees, there are three robots, rusty and dingy-looking, seemingly playing with some chickens and rabbits, luring them to themselves in turn, feeding them and petting them.
All three robots are dressed in tattered clothes. One is wearing a tan dress and a headband with a plastic feather that look like they might be straight out of a costume store where they would have been labeled "Indian Woman". Another is wearing a T-Shirt with Cyrillic letters and leather boots with no pants but a cheap cowboy hat on his head. The third is just draped in what looks like blankets and is wearing a necklace made of small animal bones.
They are all too absorbed by their play with the animals to have noticed the humans yet.

"Last night? No nothi…" she stops up short.

"Oh my god…" escapes her mouth before she clasps her hands over her it to keep herself quiet. She mouths to the others with exaggerated motions so they catch her meaning without any noise.

"Look. Over. There. Ro. Bots!" he eyes go wide as she takes in the trio again. She feels the immediate need to get small and low.

"They are indeed robots." Sabine confirms. She pulls out the photo, takes a couple careful steps forward, and waves her hands to attract the robots' attention. "HELLO! We are looking for the Shaman! We knew Mark. Can you show us the way?"

"Whoa," Mikael expresses, "Are they...are they playing?" He take a couple quiet steps forward and leans forward, as if that would somehow allow him to see differently. So weird, he thinks as Sabine suddenly exclaims to his side. He practically jumps and subconsciously reaches out a hand to stop her, but before its halfway to her arm he catches himself. He straights and steps forward into the open with Sabine, holding his hands forward. "We - uh - come in peace!" Mikael adds in an effort to help.

The robots startle when you approach and greet them. Their reaction in turn scares the rabbits away. The chickens meanwhile don't seem to care that much at all.
The three robots look at each other and exchange some quick, rough words that you don't understand as you're still too far away. They look like they're going to run away.

Seeing the robots, Eric holds onto his stick defensively and nearly jumps out of his skin when Sabine shouts for them.

Sabine, are you sure we want to be talking to them? he whispers to her as the turn and see them.

"Oh eh, hey!" Eric shouts at them, and soon realises that they're perhaps not quite as scary the robots he had envisaged. Eric looks towards Mikael and gives him a slight nudge. "You go talk to them, I'll just scare them away if I get any closer. Perhaps they can help us through this marsh." He whispers through his smiling teeth.

Mikael continues to hold his hands up, palms forward and up near his head to show (hopefully) that he is no danger to them and means no harm. Do robots care about self preservation? he wonders.

"My name is Mikael, and like my friend here said, we knew Mark. We worry that something bad happened to him, that someone hurt him. Nobody else seems to care, none of the adults in town, so we've been looking into it. We know he was friends with the Shaman," he gestures towards them, "maybe you, too? We're just hoping to meet you, and at least hear what you can say about Mark so that we might better remember him. If you happen to know how he was killed, we'd like to know that too...maybe we can help bring Mark some justice if we knew what really happened." He smiles, entirely confident on the outside while incredibly unsure of what he was doing on the inside.

The robots exchange glances. They seem pretty frightened by the teenagers' sudden appearance and the four of you get the impression they might not fully understand all you're saying.
After a moment, the one wrapped in blankets takes a couple of hesitant steps towards your group. "Friends... of Mark?", he asks carefully. His voice sounds tinny, like through a bad telephone, but there is an audible Russian accent in it. "You want to speak to Shaman?" When Mikael confirms, he steps back to his two friends and they chatter for a moment, then the robot wrapped in blankets says: "Come, I show you. But you promise, you won't hurt him!"

He then begins walking towards the group of trees they were playing next to. His companions hesitate for a second, then follow him, always throwing back nervous glances at the unfamiliar humans.

"We promise not to hurt him." Sabine confirms for the blanketed robot. "We only want to meet with him and talk." She adds; following along beside Mikael.

Mikael glances at Yumin, Sabine, and Eric, then back to the robots. "You have my word," he says, "We're not here to hurt anyone, we just want to talk. Thank you."

He takes a cautious step forward to begin following them into the treeline.

The three robots cautiously lead you into the growth of trees that might, optimistically, be called a small forest. It's not a long walk until they stop and the one wrapped in blankets points a finger up. "Shaman," he announces.
As you look to where he's pointing, you see a treehouse up high, set between two trees that both wouldn't be strong enough to hold it individually. There's no ladder leading up but one of the trees it's on has enough broken off branches growign from its trunk that they can serve as a kind of ladder. Climbing up shouldn't be a problem.
As you look up, you catch a glimpse of a robotic face peeking down at you through the curtains that serve as a door to the treehouse. The head is decorated with feathers and Sabine believes it might be the robot from the photo, the Shaman.

"Are we really about to do this? Climb up into a treehouse to talk with a robot… a shaman. I can’t… It’s hard to believe, huh?"

Looking up into the face of the robot, Sabine calls up, "Hello. May we come up?" She holds up the picture labeled The Shaman and points to it. "Mark captured a good likeness of you in his photo. Yes? We are not here to harm you. We would like the same from you. We don't want misunderstandings. No one wants to end up dead, like Mark."

The Shaman considers you for a moment, still half hidden behind the curtain, then he reaches out an arm and waves for you all to come up to him, nodding at the same time.

Sabine carefully climbs the worn and broken branches of the tree, up to the tree house, and pulls herself through the doorway. "Thank you, Shaman. This means a lot to us."

Eric follows Sabine up the tree and pulls himself into the "treehouse". He does a couple of half jumps to test the stability of the places.

"Hey, nice house you've got here!"

He looks around to see if they how they have decorated the place.

The four of you climb up the tree. It's an awkward entrance into a house and if you had to climb like this every day to get into your own home, it would very quickly get very annoying. But it's not a difficult climb and you all make it without problem.
The treehouse itself is pretty small and approximately square-shaped. There are some holes in the walls that serve as windows and a small spot in the middle of the only room that is laid out with a round stone plate and on which the remains of a small fire are sitting. It seems dangerous to make a fire inside a wooden treehouse but apparently, that's what the Shaman does sometimes. There are a bunch of books lying around, cheap gas station cowboy pulp novels, many of them dog-eared or lying open with their spines bent. These are probably what sparked the robots' interest in dressing in approximations of how they imagine cowboy and Native American clothing. There are also a few photos, most of them of the robots but some also of Stenhamra and Sånga-Säby, pinned to the walls. They look like the kind Mark took when he was still alive.

The Shaman itself is a battered looking robot the size of a tall adult man. He has a kind face, as much as a robot can have a kind face, though it looks bent and damaged in places. Maybe he got hit by a car or fell down from some height at some point. There's also rust forming at some of the seams.
His head is decorated with feathers and he is wearing a promotional blanket with the Jurassic Park logo around his shoulders.

The Shaman looks all of you over closely and curiously, then he asks: "Why are you here talking about Mark?" His voice is also tinny but it sounds more lifelike than that of the other robot you spoke to. His Russian accent is also less pronounced. "You were not his friends."

Mikael shrugs at Yumin's caution. "I guess we are," he says, "we've come this far, right? You can stay down here if you want Yumin, but might be better to stick together. And I don't get the sense they want to hurt us." With that he follows Sabine and Eric up the ladder after the robot waves them up. Please don't kills me, please don't kill me, please don't kill me, he says repeatedly in his head as he climbs to the top.

Once there he scans the room around him and takes it in before the Shaman addresses their presence.

Mikael nods. "You're right," he says, "we can't claim we were his friends, but we knew him. I rode to school with Mark every day for years. We also...we were the ones who found his body." He pulls out his phone in display. "I used this to call the police, so they could come get him from the field." He smiles, sadly. "No, we weren't his friends, but we might be the only ones that care enough to try and figure out what happened to him. That care enough to think maybe it wasn't an accident. We've learned a lot about Mark since then, enough to know him better and wish we had been friends. We learned enough to lead us here, to you, and to know that you and him were friends. That's why we're here. We think you might know what happened, and whether someone should be held responsible for Mark dying." He looks at the robot, hoping sincerely the being will accept them as Mark's justiciars, if not his one-time friends. "Will you help us?"

"Mikael is right. I wish I had known Mark better when he was alive. He and I lived with similar circumstances." Sabine chimes in to support Mikael's dialog. "Like Mark, my parents were murdered. I will probably never know who took their lives, nor will those responsible pay for those crimes. But maybe, with your help Shaman, someone will have to answer for Mark's. I know the feeling of intense loss of someone very close. Perhaps, you can understand too?"

The Shaman thinks for a moment about this, then he nods. "I see," he says. "If what you are saying is true and you are here to learn what happened to Mark, I can answer your questions." He concentrates for a moment and then lets out a heavy sigh - or rather, pretends to. It doesn't look like a natural gesture but like something he picked up from humans and is now trying to copy. "But first, I have a question for you." He looks from one of you to the next. It's difficult to figure out his thougths and feelings because of his metallic face but he seems pretty serious. After a heavy pause, he asks: "What is it like to eat food?"

Mikael shifts his eyes over to the others, an eyebrow raised momentarily at the oddly benign question. "Well," he starts and shrugs, "It's pretty great, I guess. I guess you can't taste things, right? What, uhh, kind of sensory inputs do you have? Do you get any kind of enjoyment from looking at stuff? Or audio, like music? I can try to compare maybe..."

Mikael had come out pretty strong, and Yumin wasn’t sure which way they were supposed to answer, so she adds meekly:

"But it… uh… can be tiring. Boring even. Thinking about what to eat again and again and again every day. It’s not all that!"

She looks at her friends and shrugs. It’s kind of true, and maybe what the shaman wanted to hear, too. Who knows!

"Oh man, have you never eaten? Yeah food's alright. But yeah, it can be hard, like you need to be careful what you eat, apples for instance, they're great, but you can't eat apples all the time. Sometimes you just really want pizza, but pizza, that'll kill you real quick so you can't have that all the time either. What do you eat?

Eric looks at Yumin and Mikael and also shrugs.

"Anything else you want to know about? In terms of drinking, I recommend water, plain and simple. Do you guys have beds? With mattresses? You should definitely try to get you hands on some if you can, perhaps we could get some for you. They're great for taking the strain off while sleeping. Wait, do you sleep? Do you dream of electric sheep?" Eric is suddenly overcome with curiosity.

The Shaman listens carefully to all of you, nodding along to your statements. To your cascade of questions, he replies: "We do not eat or drink. We don't truly live, not like humans do. We also do not sleep and we also do not dream of electric sheep. Or anything. Unfortunately." Turning to Mikael, he adds: "We do like music. And pictures, like these photos." He gestures to the pictures that you assume Mark took.

Then he looks deep in thought for a moment and asks: "And what about growing? How does that feel?"

Sabine sits down cross-legged on the floor and listens. She pulls out her sketch journal and pencil, while the others talk, and begins a quick drawing of the Shaman. "I like music and pictures too." She points to the head set around her neck and gives the robot a peek at her start of an image of itself. "I'm not a great photographer like Mark was, but I have my own way of capturing the moment."

"Growing both physically and mentally can be hard." She responds to Shaman's next question. "You don't always like the changes your body goes through and often others can be cruel, if those changes aren't to their liking. Body shaming is a thing sadly enough. And, how you are on the inside—in your thoughts and feelings, don't always fit the expectations family and society want to make you into."

The Shaman nods again as he listens to you. "We never grow," he says. "We were created and remained the same way since then. Aside from some dents and a bit of rust maybe."

He is silent for a few seconds and just when you think you can bring the topic back to Mark and what happened to him, he asks: "And what about procreation? How does that feel?"

If Mikael had been taking a drink, he would have spat it out uncontrollably. "Wha? Uhh..." He nudges a head to his friend, "Eric, you wanna take this one?" he asks, assuming Eric's seen more action that he has, and not really wanting to clue anyone in on his extreme inexperience.

"Oh... Yeahhhh... Um, well..." Eric's cheeks turn a strange crimson colour.

Eric would rather not admit that the closest he's got to procreation is masturbating over some playboy magazines his dad left behind.

"It's great, I guess." Eric stammers, "Hey, so... Dreams! You guys don't dream when you sleep? What about your other dreams, like your goals, what do you want in 'life'? I'm not sure if you live and die like us, but you must want something. For example, my dream is to go play for a major hockey team in the states. Do you have any of those kinds of dreams? Like what are you here for?"

Sabine looks up from her sketch and tries not to notice Eric's red cheeks or Mikael's subtle evasion of the Shaman's question. "Oh...you mean like sex?"

"The act of procreating can be very enjoyable if shared with the right partner or abysmally frustrating if the one you're with doesn't know what their doing. It can also be good, to a lesser degree in my opinion, if you're just looking for a hook up for the night—not really my thing though." She answers with no signs of wavering in her words. "As for conception and the whole birthing part, I have no experience there, nor am I interested in going there."

The Shaman cocks his head, picking up on the fact that what he felt was a perfectly innocent question somehow seems to be upsetting these kids. When Sabine speaks up, he nods. "Ah, what a shame," he replies. "That last bit was the part I was most interested in."
He turns to Eric and answers: "We dream of not being persecuted. Back home, in Russia, after Polnaya and the AI pogroms, we had to run and flee. Many robots were kidnapped and destroyed. I led my Vagabonds, my children, here to be safe from that. But now I worry, that our other dreams may be put an end to that peace soon." He pauses and looks out of one of the rough windows of his treehouse. "You see, we love life and nature in all of its forms, even if we are not part of it really. But not all of us are willing to accept that we're not. They wanted to create life, procreate, like humans and animals. And so, when Dr. Liv promised them exactly that, the ones who now call themselves the Totem Clan did not heed my warnings and joined her."

Mikael perks up. "That's what Dr. Liv was doing? She was experimenting on ways to let rob- your kind, I mean, procreate? Shaman," he asks, "What did happen to Mark? And do you know what happened to Dr. Liv? She disappeared recently. We think Mark saw her taken."

Yumin could feel her face burn, turning a deep red at the cheeks. All this was about… robot procreation? Mark’s death?

"W.. wh…" she’s a little speechless.

"How does Mark come into all of this?" she pipes up!

The Shaman nods at Mikael. "That is the offer she came to us with. I turned her down because I did not trust her motives and I was worried what might happen if we delve into these matters. And most of my family accepted my decision. But Jane did not agree and she gathered some others who were on her side and they left our group to join Dr. Liv at the bunker. I have not spoken to any of them since but we have seen a group of them, though we barely recognized them. They looked horrible, mangled and - to use a human expression - sick. They were the ones who killed Mark and brought his body into the field where the police later found it. He was our friend and so we honored him as best we could, by decorating his body with what we could find around."

He shakes his head sadly, then says to Yumin: "I don't know why they killed Mark. He was our friend, but we also know he was Dr. Liv's friend. If, as you say, Dr. Liv was kidnapped and he witnessed it, then maybe the Clan murdered him to hide their crime."

"We've paid a visit to the Center and there's all the signs of a struggle within." Sabine speaks up. "So, this Dr. Liv has been taken. We also found her torture chamber in the basement, where she'd been experimenting on poor animals and created something—this hybrid machine/animal? Whatever she created there was taken as well and now all Stenhamra is suffering from nightmares, daymares, and escalating pains associated with a painful childbirth. It needs to end."

"Shaman, this bunker you mention, where is it?"

The Shaman looks perturbed by these news, especially the nightmares. "I don't know about Dr. Liv's basement but I know that the Totem Clan now lives in an old bunker far to the East of Sånga-Säby, just north of the prison, Svartsjöanstalten. It is called KAB... something. If Dr. Liv has managed to create this Machine Fetus, that is where it will be."

"Ahhh! KAB-III." Sabine fills in the rest. "That's where those crates came from that were in the basement." She connects the dots. "How would one go about stopping these terrible nightmares and phantom pains from continuing to affect the townspeople? Is it the fetus that's causing this or Dr. Liv?" She asks.

"Okay...Okay." Mikael nods his head as he tries to piece everything together. "So what do we know?" He scans the rooms and looks at his friends. "We know that a group of robots fled here from Russia. We know that Mark found them and made friends of them, and that he was wrapped up with Dr. Liv. Maybe Mark was the one that told her about the robots out here in the Marsh? Then Dr. Liv gets the idea that maybe she could do something to give some life to these robots and offers that to them. Most declined," he gestures to the Shaman, "but some accept and split off. They kidnap Dr. Liv to force her to work these experiments for them, but Mark sees the whole thing go down at her house. They kill him to keep him quiet, and take Dr. Liv to KAB-III, this bunker. Then..." he trails off, unsure. "Does that sound right so far? We know the, uh, phantom birth stuff, all the feelings people have been having, started up around then. But why?"

The shaman shakes his head. "I don't know anything about nightmares and pains. You are the first who told me about this, as we haven't spoken to any humans since Mark's death." He shrugs his shoulders in a slightly exaggerated way and then says: "But I am sure it must have to do with the Machine Fetus. I just don't know how exactly."

"We must stop it somehow." Sabine states the obvious. "The whole town is getting sick and starting to act really strange and its getting worse by the day. I don't think we have another viable choice. We've got to go this bunker and put an end to this before its too late and other people start dying."

"I… I saw the radio she was working on. I think I could figure that side of things… how to turn it off, or stop it, if I could get close enough. But… the other robots… they’ve already killed someone. Theyll do it again, to protect this thing."

"Agreed," Mikael says firmly. "We have to do something about this, but its not going to be safe, or easy." He looks at Yumin and nods, "We have to get Yumin to that device so she can turn it off...destroy it, whatever might be case." Looking around to the others, "Do we have any kind of weapons, or anything, that might help against robots?"

Sabine points out Eric's hockey stick. "Well...that's a start I guess."

"We should be going if we are going to get to this bunker today." She stands up and shows Shaman the sketch she has done of it. "I don't want Kajsa, or anyone else, suffering from this any longer."

"Yeah," Mikael says, "Let's end this, if we can."

He watches the Shaman's reaction to Sabine's drawing and allows the robot enjoy it before asking, "Shaman, these others, they killed Mark. They might try to do the same to us. Is there anything you can tell us that might make it safer for us to get in there and shut down the fetus? Any special way we can defend ourselves or, if we need to, turn off the other robots?"

The Shaman looks at Sabine's drawing for a long time. He doesn't smile but that's because his face doesn't have the necessary mechanisms for it. "I like it," he says. "Can I keep it?"

"I do not know any details about the Machine Fetus," he then replies to Mikael. "I don't know what it looks like or how to destroy it. But if the Totem Clan have kidnapped Dr. Liv, she might be in the bunker as well and you can ask her. As for my lost children, I do not wish to see them harmed. While I wish you success in what you are doing, I won't tell you how to best kill a robot. Too many of my kind have been murdered by humans already."
There is no aggression in his voice as he says this but his already hard Russian accent sound a bit harder at those last words as well and you decide it's better not to press the matter.

When you say your goodbyes, the Shaman is as friendly as before and points you to the shortest way back to town. The three robots you saw playing with the animals before are still arround and watch you curiously as you depart, but they don't speak to you and keep their distance.

Sabne nods and smiles. She carefully removes the page and hands it to Shaman. "It would be an honor Shaman and thanks for your time and help."