System Shock 2: Upside-down!

(This is part of my journey playing through System Shock 2. You can follow the entire series on the Nostalgia Lane page.)

Moving on up to the second pod (deck) of the Rickenbacker, I see that my “reverse gravity” experiment worked, as I’m now walking on the ceiling.  It makes for a cool level, no doubt, but I didn’t grok exactly why I needed to do this.  Oh well.  Ceiling time.  Let’s do it.

Good to know that there’s a church in space.  Wonder if the Many can become Christians?  No time to ponder theology as I’m pinned in by three cyborgs and an assault droid.  Glad I still have EMP rifle juice, since I haven’t seen a recharger for several levels now.

I eventually come across the body of Captain Diego.  From all of the audio logs that I’ve been listening to, I know that the good cap here got infected with the Many but heroically held out far longer than the others — going so far as to program the auto-doc to surgically remove the parasites.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work in the end, although he warned me that the Many wasn’t going to let me go.

These are hard to see, which is the point, I guess.  Nearly invisible spiders, just another pleasant fact of my life in space.  Fortunately, I have plenty of shotgun shells remaining and an endless supply of me growling, “Groovy!”

I find one last log from Dr. Polito, who reveals that it was she that unleashed SHODAN — Pandora’s Box, as she calls it — and she couldn’t live with the guilt, which is why she killed herself back on deck 4 of the Von Braun.

The good news is that I race through the two remaining (and tiny) Rickenbacker levels quickly.  They’re very short and linear, which is great after all of that backtracking in the beginning.

The bad news?  The Many have grown a biomass around both of the ships, so I guess that’s the end of ejecting and blowing up the Von Braun.  What’s that SHODAN?  You want me to jump into the bio mass itself?  Oh, hot dog.

One first — and last — look at the Rickenbacker bridge, with the biomass lurking right outside the windows there.  Before I leave, I research up some new worm armor, because who wouldn’t wanted to be protected by a shirt made of parasitic worms?

Finally, I can use an escape pod!  Of course, I’m just escaping into certain doom, but don’t rob me of this moment.  See you guys from inside an intestine!