Episode 1
"Roach Motel"
(c) 2003, Matt Grossman and J. Sage Schreiner

Jack "JD" Daniels, a gear-geek -- Dan Simpson
Bret, a suave survivor -- Matt Grossman
Hans Niedelheimer, a former "chemist" -- Tom Morin
Maggie Simpson, a cold-blooded EMT -- Noelle Kompkoff
Kenji Yoshida, the son of a ruthless executive -- Paul Skavland
Roach, a diminutive martial artist -- Kevin Osborn


They are six people, from different walks of life. For various
reasons they found themselves at the end of the rope, living day to
day, slowly sinking beneath the surface of a harsh, uncaring world.
Someone decided to save them. Someone named Madame Yu. They have
never met her. All they know are the spare, barracks-like room, the
unspeaking attendants, the bland but nourishing food, the identical
black fatigues they all wear.

They are drilled over and over in one thing: Madame Yu saved their
lives. Their lives now belong to her. They are Madame Yu's people.

They are in a meeting room. There is a view out over downtown
Seattle. Rain has washed away the smog, showing a view of the
Olympics, and nearer, the homes of the raft people bobbing in Elliot
Bay. The interviewer, also wearing fatigues, introduces herself as
Miss Huang. One by one, each of them has to talk about his or her life.
What they value most:

Bret: Money.

What drove them to Seattle:

JD: I want to find the men who kidnapped or killed my older brother. He
raised me, taught me how to rebuild a 354 -- somehow, I will find out
what happened to him.

What their lives used to be like:

Hans: I set up a... factory... making... stuff. It made enemies. I'm
worried for my familiy.

Why they left:

Maggie: I was in a special forces unit. Three of them threw me out of
the chopper one day. I guess they didn't like women.

Why they can't go back:

Kenji: Because my team failed in their mission, I cannot return to the
family. If I did not commit seppuku, they would kill me. It would also
look suspiciously like I was a traitor.

What they might do for Madame Yu:

Roach: I know kung fu.

They spend days together, learning each other habits. Roach and Maggie
both have faint memories of some sort of surgery, or at least medical
work. To pass the time they're given games to play; games that ultimately
seem to involve some sort of cooperation to win.

Brett: I wish I had my PDA. Then at least I could figure out what was
going on in the world.
Maggie: Anyone have ANY injuries? Anything at all for me to patch? I'm
bored to tears here...
Kenji: I can break down and reassamble our microwave, blind folded, in
22 seconds. I'd do anything to get a Beretta in my hands again.

Finally, they are set loose. They are given a few tools applicable to
their specialties. They are told to stick together, to
stay in the building, and to find a place to stay. Someone will later
tell them what to do. A door is opened. They head down a flight of
stairs.

JD: So where to y'all figure this here building is at, anyway?
Kenji: We are in an abandoned skyscraper in downtown Seattle. Apparently
Madame Yu controls the top floors. I guess we find out about the rest as we
go along.

A kid is sitting on the stairs. He has greasy black hair and unhealthly
pale skin.

Bret: Hey, this looks like our guide. Howya doin'? The name's Bret.
Kid: They call me Floyd, or just Fool. Look, I'm not gonna waste my
time showing you guys around. When I want to find you, I'll find you. Just
don't go outside the building. You know, roaches.
Roach: Huh?

Floyd the Fool scoots aside to make room for them and they go down the stairs.

Hans: I think we should stick together.
Bret: Hmmm... I have connectivity for my PDA -- someone named "Francisco" has
a local wireless network that he rents access to. My satelite account expired
ages ago. I'll have to talk to this Francico guy, "at the sign of the chair"
about access eventually.

They spend some time exploring the building and talking to locals. They
learn that it is "run" by a man named Boss Wiggs, who may employ a group of
thugs to beat up anyone who gets out of line. There are a number of businesses
in the middle floors of the building, as well as some nonprofit
enterprises, like a Jesuit mission and a mosque. The bottom few floors are
apparently controlled by a gang called The Roaches.

They select an abandoned dentists office in the upper part of the
building. It's in the corner of the building, away from stair wells. The
windows are all broken, and it is cold and damp. The chair is still there.
There is also a dog in the room.

Bret: Nice doggie!
Dog: Snarl! Arf! Arf! (scrabbles past the party)
Bret: Hmph. I'm usually pretty good with animals.
Maggie: That'll come in handy if we decide to set up a clinic.
Kenji: Bret or the dog?
Maggie: The chair! Handy for tying folks down when you're out of antibiotics,
or they're in hypervolemic shock and I can't risk further lowering their
blood pressure.
Bret: This place seems to run on the barter system. The only medical
providers here are the Jesuits. There's plenty of room in this market
space. We could set up a pretty good business. Maggie provides the
medical skill, Roach and Kenji can be security, JD can handle
technical stuff, and Hans can do pharmaceuticals.
Kenji: What'll you provide Bruce, I mean Bret?
Bret: Management.
Kenji: Why don't we just set up a meth lab?
Hans: Because if you do that, you muscle in on the labs that are here
already. I think there are at least three of them. It's just too much
trouble.
Bret: Like I said, health care is the low hanging fruit here.
JD: When y'all are done talkin', how about we mosey on down to that
there greasy noodle place?
Kenji: Why not the Mexican place? Or the noodle place that actually looks
clean?
Roach: Because we're not all as "flush" as you.

They eat at Wang's Grand House of Noodles.

Maggie: I don't know if I'd call this "grand".
Wang: Yes, but you cannot beat price! I take barter, too! And
provide credit! And provide pawn shop!

Next to them, two regulars are chatting. Apparently, they've both been
having strange nightmares, of a particularly heinous nature.

Regular 1: I haven't had a nightmare since I was a kid.
Regular 2: Yeah, no kidding. What's with that? Must be something
in the water.

Bret: Hey, Wang, how about giving me some of the bones of
this... whatever it is... You know, for my dog.
Roach: [snicker]

On the way back their "pad", they're accousted by urchins.
Kid: Give! Give! Money! Give!
Brett: I may be poor, but I always have enough to give a dollar or
two.
Kid: Thank you! Watchoutfernastyman! (Runs away)

When they arrive at their pad. The dog is there.

Bret: Hey boy, how about a snack?
Dog: Grrr. Arf. (takes bone and then leaves)
Bret: Well, that's a start.
Kenji: Screw this, man. I want to get plastered. I'm going to that
Broken Monitor place. I heard there's chicks there.

They go to the Sign of the Broken Monitor. Inside, a girl
wails along to an out-of-tune karaoke machine, while the regulars
drink beer and moonshine. At first the crowd is hostile, but Bret
soon makes friends with everybody, mostly by convincing the would-be
singer that she needs to rest her ("lovely") singing voice. Kenji does
indeed get plastered, and soon the joint is hopping, at least as much
as it can.

Roach: I guess this stuff is ok. I can still see. Although it is kinda
dim in here. It is dim, right guys?
Hans: I wouldn't drink that swill through an activated carbon filter.
Kenji: Hey babe, wanna sit on my lap?
Maggie: I don't have enough penicillin to waste on, uhhh, "social
diseases."

Russ, the owner, talks to Bret.

Russ: Say, I can see that you guys are all together. I heard you're
Madame Yu's people. You're not the first group to come through here.
Bret: Did the other groups come back?
Russ: No. They went outside. Say, do you guys want to do me a favor?

She explains that someone named Tina is sick and needs some help. She
gives them directions to Tina's place and the party sets out.

Kenji: You can't hang around one bar too long. It makes you look like
a loser.

They head up to Tina's place, which turns out to be a disused men's
room on the thirtieth floor.

Hans: ... behind a door labeled "Beware of the Leopard". Heh heh.
Maggie: I don't get it.
Brett: Did you just hear someone puke?

Tina is an almost unhealthly-fit, very hung over woman. Tina explains
(between bouts of vomiting) that she rented night vision glasses
and a shotgun to a guy named Walter Small, who lives "down in roach
motel", and she wants them back. She offers to give the party the
shotgun if they bring the goggles back. Maggie gives her an
antinausea drug and the party goes back to their pad to plan their
strategy. They decide to head down to the roach motel in the early
morning.

The next morning at 4 am, they get up (not without some groans from
Kenji and JD) and head down the stairs. They go through the door to
Roach Motel and find a punk asleep on the stairs.

JD: Hey, that wrench through his nose is a 7mm. I think I need one
of those.
Punk: Huh? Wha?
Roach: We're a bad dream. Go back to sleep.
Punk: (Rolls over and groans)

They have no idea where Walter Small lives so they start wandering
around, looking through doors. Some doors are locked and they do not
try to open these.

Roach: Hey, we're being followed.
JD: Let's hide.

They step into an empty room and the party continues. Soon they see
two punks approaching; the guy on the stairs and a big friend. They
let them get close, then:

Roach: Kiiiyaaaah! [whack punch kick]
Punk: Argh! By dose!
JD: Here's some southern hospitality! [swipe] Damn.

The punks are astonished and taken completely by surprise. Before
they can react the rest of the party comes rushing back.

Bret: Ha! (punches the big punk in the stomach)
Big Punk: Hey. That hurt.
Bret: Ooops.
Kenji: (Charges into the fray and points his Beretta at the big punk)
You don't want to fuck with us, asshole!
Small Punk: Owww! You bwoke by dose! Why'd ju do dat? We were just
following you! Owww! Cwap.
Big Punk: What are you guys looking for?

They explain that they are looking for Walter Small.

Big Punk: He's on the third floor. The little guy really smacked
Slug here pretty hard. Nice. You can keep the wrench.

He gives them directions to Small's apartment, and the party sets out.

Maggie: Great work guys, now we've pissed them off.
Roach: No, now they respect us. Force is the only thing guys like
that understand.
Kenji: I was worried that I was going to have shoot one of them. I'm
glad I didn't have to. That would have caused problems.

They head down to the third floor and find their way to Small's door.
It is bolted from the inside. They knock, and when they get no
response Maggie smashes the door open. Inside, they find a small room
filled with pornographic magazines. There is a hole in the wall that opens
into an express elevator shaft and no other openings. There are various
useful items (kerosene lantern, charcoal grill, seventy bucks), a sawed-
off 12-gauge (presumably the shotgun in question), and a dead roach. The roach
is about four inches across, and has been splattered to hell and gone by
12-guage buckshot.

Kenji: Wow. That's a big roach.
JD: We had big ones at the salvage yard, but that sucker's bigger than a
school bus transmission.
Hans: I'd say at least three hit dice. Heh heh.
Maggie: I guess there's only one place Walter could have gone.

They look out into the elevator shaft. There is a ladder running down
the shaft, and the elevator clearly has not run in years. Kenji and
Bret climb down the ladder and find Walter's body hanging from it. He
appears to have been bitten to death by some sort of insect. He is
wearing night vision goggles, which they take, then push his body off
the ladder and to the bottom of the shaft.

Kenji: Say, do you hear a screaming sound?
Bret: Yeah. Sounds like it's coming from up the shaft.
Roach: Hey, don't hang around out there. If there's bloodsucking
roaches in this building, I don't want to run into them.
Hans: So, the roaches climbed through the hole, then he climbed out of
the hole... no, ok, the roaches went in the room, bolted the door,
then... No, wait...
Maggie: Let's just get out of here before whatever killed him comes
back.

They take everything that is useful from Walter's place, including the
porn.

Kenji: We could trade this for stuff.
JD: Trade it? Oh, right.

As they are heading back upstairs, they run into two more punks.

Punk: Hey, you're the guys that broke Slug's nose. He had that
coming! Good work.
Bret: Yeah, say, watch out for the roaches.
Punk: Yeah dude!! (flexes his bicep, which has a tattoo of a cockroach on
it) We survive! Rock on!
Bret: That's not what I -- nevermind.

The party returns the goggles to a much recovered Tina, who is so
grateful she even gives the party several more shells for the shotgun. They
return to their pad. The dog is there.

Bret: Hi there boy! Good dog!
Dog: (snaps at Bret and leaves)
Maggie: At least he doesn't crap around here.
Kenji: Bret or the dog?

TO BE CONTINUED...