Abandoned mall

Abandoned mall
Type	Library
Location	New Jerusalem, Utah, American Republic
Inhabitants	Lottie Mr. President
First visited	Issue 4

The abandoned mall in New Jerusalem, Utah, secretly contains a Weave library run by Lottie and Mr. President. Traces of its former glory remain, such as a comic book store, a clothing store, a mattress store, a Betty's Diner, an arcade, a Mormon chapel, and a giant Jesus statue.

History

Spoilers ahead. Are we okay with that, kid?

The mall used to be a shopping center catered to Mormon customers, but was eventually shut down for unknown reasons. After taking up residence in the mall, Lottie set up a voice activated lock on the security office door and hooked up a Puritan computer to the Weave's dial-up network, allowing her to download and watch shows from Pacifica. Lottie rearranges one of the store signs to spell her name, which designates her bedroom.

On October 17, 2030, Lottie's pet raccoon, Mr. President, got fed up with her for ignoring him. He trips the fuse while Lottie is in the office, which traps her inside because of the completely electronic lock. Pax's crew arrives at the back entrance of the mall, but struggles to get inside because of the door's electronic lock. Pax finds a broken robot hidden under junk, allowing Caretaker to extract the door's passcode from the robot's memory and allowing Ziggy to extract the robot's power source. The crew temporarily restores power to the lock and enters the code, granting them entry. Alternatively, if Ziggy is on the Idealist Coda, she can use her Vocals to phase through the door and push it from the inside while Pax uses a metal bar to pry open the door from the outside. Inside, Pax is stopped by Mr. President, who sees the crew as intruders, and she has to get him to move by either using Vox on him or bribing him with a bag of nuts. When the crew reaches the office, they see Lottie pretending to be a statue, causing Pax to use Push to make Lottie move and give up on the ruse. Lottie tells the crew to go to the fuse box in order to restore power, allowing her to unlock the office door. Lottie then opens up the rest of the mall for the crew to rest in and starts preparinng travel documents.

The crew splits up to explore the mall, with Sai praying in the mattress store, Noam hanging out with Mr. President near the Jesus statue, Theo praying in the chapel, Caretaker preparing for dinner in an abandoned Betty's Diner, and Ziggy and Eli using a photo booth. On the stairs between the first and second floor, Pax can reflect on her journey and wonders if the Weave is trustworthy. At the photo booth, Pax can make a choice that affects the contents of the photo, since she can join in the photo or have only Ziggy and Eli be in the photo. After completing that event, Pax can play Paddlepong with Ziggy, Eli, and Theo in the arcade. On the first floor, Sai carries a stack of boxes from the tour bus into the mall, and Pax has to guide Sai to the comic book store because the boxes obstruct her vision. Back on the first floor, Noam attempts to use a vending machine to get cigarettes and something for Mr. President to eat. At the clothing store, Pax can choose to help Caretaker pick out a hat, and Theo and Mr. President will help with this choice. Back at Lottie's office, Pax overhears Lottie and Theo talking about Utah's government and the Puritan computer.

The crew eats in Betty's Diner, where Caretaker is renamed Viola and Lottie asks everyone for their favorite activity in the mall. Afterwards, the crew has the option of performing a birthday song for Mr. President. In the mattress room, the crew chats before going to bed. Theo wakes up and goes to the chapel again, with Pax following him. Pax insists on using the Puritan computer to read the datakey that the crew stole from the Puritans, but Theo refuses because it would violate the crew's agreement with the Weave. Pax uses Bully to convince Theo to look into the datakey, though she silently regrets her decision and hopes the data will be worth it. Pax uses a bag of nuts to bribe Mr. President into lending Lottie's voicebox to open the office. Theo tries to use the Puritan computer to look through the data and uses the password, "decorruption-initiative," but is unable to understand what he is looking at. Once Caretaker interrupts Pax and Theo, the two decide to give up on deciphering the data. Unbeknownst to them, the Puritans can monitor activity on computers that they have manufactured, exposing their location.

Pax goes to sleep again and has a dream where she recalls her conversation with Jacob about the mission and about Protolanguage. The dream suddenly shifts to the center of the mall's first floor, where she sees two scientists talking about their Protolanguage research and about their "bundle of joy" who has yet to learn her own name. However, Axiom suddenly appears and condemns language as the cause of human conflict. He ominously warns Pax that she will see the chaos that she wrought with her words and kills several Protolanguage squids. Pax wakes up to an encounter with the Puritans, with the Adjunct setting up a hologram of the Overseer. After some technical issues with the signal strength, the Overseer demands that the crew surrenders the datakey and Theo, with the latter slated to be punished for betraying the Puritans. The Overseer also lets slip her plan to build a tower to emit a new Protolanguage symbol to counteract the Broadcast, and then orders her Acolytes to attack when it becomes clear the crew will not submit to her. Pax, Sai, Ziggy, and Eli are initially unable to damage the Acolytes, but Theo uses an EMP grenade to remove the enemies' barriers, allowing the crew's combatants to defeat the cyborgs. The Adjunct tries to call on more reinforcements, but the Mormon Guard shows up on Lottie's request. The crew, Lottie, and Mr. President flee the mall and never return due to the library's existence being compromised.

Physical description

Rear parking lot

The rear parking lot contains several green dumpsters, a yellow pallet jack, cardboard boxes, a defunct robot, metal fences with barbed wire, red and black wheeled trash cans, and scrap wood. The wall surrounding the parking lot is painted sky blue, but some parts of the paint fell off, revealing red brick underneath. The back wall of the mall is made of red bricks and has several shuttered loading docks. Near the back door to the mall, there are two air conditioning units mounted on the wall, a vending machine, a door with a number lock, a small folding table, a plastic chair, a blue plastic crate, cardboard boxes, a black radio, a red hose, a green toolbox, and a security camera.

First floor

Upon entering from outside, the door to the left leads to a room with a sink, a metal shelf, and a circuit breaker. At the end of the hallway is a portion of the second floor of the mall, which can be closed off from the rest of the mall with metal shutters. This portion of the mall contains the information and security office, which has white interior walls, a first aid box, a cubicle desk, metal cabinets, a table with pitchers and paper cups, connected chairs, and an inner room. This inner room contains mannequins, a corner desk, several monitors, and a Puritan computer.

The center area of the first floor has a vending machine and a giant Jesus statue in the center. The statue is surrounded by circular steps and four curved structures with benches attached to them. The front exit leads to an empty parking lot. Next to the front exit are the men and women's restrooms. Unused stores include Sneaker Central, Cheesy Delights, Vinyl Valley, Burger Bliss, Smoothie Haven, and Pita Palace. There are two sets of stairs, one near Smoothie Haven and one near Cheesy Delights. There are two escalator pairs, one leading up to Starmart and one leading up to the cinema.

Betty's Diner Express is a smaller variant of the diner chain and has the same blue interior walls as its larger counterparts. The hats and apparel store has a removed sign, pink interior walls, several television sets, shelves, a changing room, luggage cases, mounted deer heads, fish plaques, hats on mannequin heads, a circular clothing display with short-sleeve shirts, and clothing racks with wheels. The Under His Gaze wedding chapel has pink interior walls, white curtains on the entrance windows, white church seats, a coffee machine, fake stained glass windows, a white podium with a red book, cherub statues, black curtains behind the podium, and large wooden speakers. The chapel has an office that has a neon sign that says "LOVE", a pink window with red hearts, a non-Puritan computer, teal metal cabinets, file containers, a metal chair, a fallen office chair, and a desk with drawers.

Second floor

Unused stores include Pop Culture Paradise, Pulsetech, Red Thread Retro, Toytopia, Glittery, Starmart, Casette Corner, and Neon Dreams. One store has white interior walls, a bed, and cardboard boxes, and its sign had its letters removed and replaced to spell "Lottie", indicating that this is her bedroom. All of the letters on that sign were taken from other the signs of other stores and rooms, such as the chapel office (L), Neon Dreams (o), Pulse Tech (t), Toytopia (t), Cheesy Delights (i), and the arcade (e). There is a photo booth just outside of the arcade.

The arcade has dark blue interior walls, a Catch 'n' Claim claw machine, an air hockey table, a vending machine, and several arcade cabinets. These cabinets include Paddlepong Party, Turbo Rush (formerly Motorsport Velocity), Battlemagik II, Draugen Quest, Bomber!, Raze, Super Racing Grand Prix, Night of Horrors, JJ Jumper, The Raid, and Baseball Blitz. The Sleepy Heads Mattress Store contains beds, bed sheets, a broken window, and a magazine rack near a blue counter. Bam Bazaar has blue interior walls, several comic books and posters, both of which include titles like Nevyn, Soul Defender, Lucy Lightning, Shero, Summoner, the Gnomes Garden, Living Nightmare, the Mad Hacker, Captain Justice, Robo-Nanny, and Cosmic Girl. The cinema contains two bathroom doors, two auditorium doors, a snack vending machine, a beverage vending machine, and a popcorn machine.

Items

Main article: Items

• Metal bar
• Bag of peanuts
• Red yarn
• Model train
• Token
• Justice Man-O-Action
• Photo
• Scented candles
• Justice holiday issue
• Bold Trooper cigarettes
• Seattle Voidwalkers jersey
• Pacifica Waves jersey
• Lottie's voicebox

Gallery

Screenshots

Back entrance

Information and security room

Jesus

Front entrance/exit

Betty's Diner Express

Hats and apparel

Under His Gaze

Sleepy Heads

Arcade

Photo booth

Bam Bazaar

Lottie's bedroom

Cinema

Puritan invasion

3D models