[open mingle] I do my crosswords in pen

[keepgodwaiting]

WHO: Constantine (keepgodwaiting) & you!

WHAT: Metaplot deciphering!

WHERE: The Welcome Diner

WHEN: Early December

WARNINGS: Probable discussion of human experimentation


Another month, another weird new building, and Johanna has been thinking. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then they ought to try some new things, right?

Trying to stay away from the dorms at Halloween didn't work. Trying to escape the mall had mixed results. So maybe it's time to abandon the avoidant strategy and see what happens if they approach things a bit more head-on. Starting, in her case, with investigating every open door she could find in the Science Center until she found the director's office.

(Yes, she did just get told off by several friends for running into potentially dangerous situations with no backup; no, she did not alert anybody that she was going to do this; but hey, it was completely uneventful and therefore she has not broken any promises to anyone!)

The most interesting thing in there, by far, is the unlocked computer, and with a little digging she found a very interesting email. More carefully redacted notes. And she wonders ...

So one evening -- around dinner time, after sunset, in the hopes of being available to the most residents -- Johanna posts up in the welcome diner with a stack of notebooks, pens, and her phone. She's hand-copying the redacted file from her phone onto paper, with XXXXXs to indicate the number of characters in the redacted words. It's an arduous process, and every so often she straightens up from the work with a groan to crack her back. After she gets the whole thing copied down, she picks up her phone to make a network post:

Anyone good at crossword puzzles? I've got a doozy of one I'm working on in the diner and could use some help.

Anyone who cares to join her and try to decipher the redacted words, or make additional hard copies of the file to share out, is more than welcome to do so. Or just grab a cup of coffee and share theories with each other.

[ ooc: Feel free to treat this like an open mingle, converse with other characters, hop around, etc! I'll be making a top level with the text of the two redacted files from the newsletter, in which we can crowdsource guesses about what the missing words might be!

ETA: Feel free to put guesses in this document! ]


 

Comments

CE-09 ITERATION DEBRIEF (ota)

[strongroots]

come to the diner. we found something important.

[ It's a message sent over the network about an hour or so after Johanna's own crossword assistance is asked for. The papers of redacted papers sit available, but also a few copies--not enough for everyone, but that some people can read them, pass them along, or read over shoulders--of a report with very few redactions visible.

There's none. And across the top on the front page reads boldly: Iteration Debrief: CE-09.

Feel free to share your reactions, and talk about the report if you've come to see what's going on. Some of the words in the report might help with that crossword puzzle. Robby can be asked questions, but this is OTA/a mingle. ]

[abit_ofboth]

[Though he has seen the request from Johanna about the crossword, he isn't feeling much in the mood for puzzles and instead has chosen to stay in his apartment for the time being. It isn't until he gets a direct message from Robby when he decides maybe he should go down and find out what is actually happening. Not that he wouldn't go help Johanna, had she actually asked him, but well, crosswords are boring. If she wants his help with these things, she should dress it up a bit more.

Loki makes his way inside and scans the area, spotting both Jo and Robby. He figures he'll talk to Jo later as she looks a little busy going over papers and heads over to Robby.]

I got your message. So there is actual new information then?

[strongroots]

[ Robby sits, only because the fidgeting of this situation makes it hard for him to stand comfortably. But he's at a place that makes it easy for him to pick up a copy of the papers of the report, holding it up to Loki when he speaks. ]

Debrief on iteration nine. We're on fifty. [ And, with a beat: ] Nothing's redacted.

[ Because haven't they gotten used to redacted information? But rather than explain further, unless Loki asks, says anything, he'll let him see the information for himself.

It's an easier explanation than anything Robby could give. ]

[limbical]

[When he had seen Johanna's request for "crossword" help, Daan had been disinclined toward assisting mostly in part that he knew his focus wouldn't be that useful, and also he just plainly dislikes solving those kinds of puzzles.

But it's much harder to ignore Robby's message, and the results that are shared.

Daan is rubbing the bridge of his nose, sighing softly.]

So, we can confirm that... if nothing else, this is some kind of insane experiment by these people. Well, there's a lovely confirmation.

At least we're getting some answer now, even if it's just peppered here and there.

[strongroots]

Makes less sense to me why you'd stick a bunch of people from all over the place in a program if you wanted any real results. Is sticking us in a computer really gonna give you anything? Is this just a game? Someone's idea of a fun school project?

[ It feels like it has to be a game, and Robby's biting on the inside of his cheek even thinking about it. ]

[justscribing]

[Alhaitham comes, because he knows Robby is a serious enough kid that if he's saying it's important, it's important.

He offers him a nod in greeting before going right to the papers laid out and picks them up to read... and read... and read.]

Well. [He breathes out.] This confirms a lot of my theory.

[It's a bittersweet vindication. Of course he was right. Of course being lab rats was the most powerless of options it could have been.]

This one seems to have been a notable failure. But why vet for violent behavior if they're looking at an organic population?

[The purpose of the experiment has been the missing context. Could it be this data is for a creation of a new society, one in which specific personalities would be welcome?]

[strongroots]

[ look at this 20 something thinking him a kid, smdh!!!! (we will not start the age wars here)

Robby returns the nod, says nothing when Alhaitham finds the report for himself. No need to hellos, Robby knows how the guy is decently enough to skip that; and he's fine with sitting there, letting Alhaitham read until he speaks up with his own thoughts now coming out. ]

They want community building the most. Putting everyone through a survival game and then adding too many murderers doesn't help.

[ And, well. ] Nothing organic about letting everyone come back to life.

[keepgodwaiting]

Having a bunch of people prone to mass murder wouldn't be very organic.

[ Johanna's tone is awfully flat. ]

Lots of people will get into a punch-up when they're drunk, but the sort of people who'll kill someone else "at the slightest inconvenience," that's a special breed.

You'd really be trying to set your iteration up for failure if you put a handful of people who can't stop themselves from killing into a population of a hundred.

[coolerjunpei]

[Junpei, beginning to believe that the diner is actually a better meeting place than the conference room he keeps haunting, arrives just to have a burger and go.



No, he's here for mysteries. He's got a copy of his own smoking gun document folded up in his back pocket, because he's decided to carry it everywhere now, just in case it comes in handy. And lo! More documents!

There are, of course, a couple words that stick out to him, considering, um, his whole. Habitual ranting. Upload, programming, respawn...]

Holy shit, are we actually in a simulation? [can he really clip through the floor and T-pose the fuck out of here!!!!] Huh. Won't lie and pretend I don't want to do a victory pose right now...

[junpei.]

"CE-09"... that's pretty far back. Annnnd we still had some murders.

[entwinedfate]

But not as many as this one's would imply, it seems. I guess their new punishments really worked out.

[ Argalia, reading that couples were part of the problem in this iteration: knew love sucked, actually. Good for nothing. Truly. ]

Every population's going to have their violent few... or many, in some cases. It all depends on how they're reacted to for their crimes. Going by the passages before, the space they were given was most likely far smaller than what we've been given to inhabit now -- and thus they'd have to interact far more often than we do. With how many "empowered" citizens there were, I'm rather surprised no one sought to take care of the aggressors in the first place.

[ Though maybe the empowered were the problem, in that case. ]

[strongroots]

[ robby internally when he hears Junpei wanting to do a victory pose. why the fuck is he the most normal person in this city. why the fuck. ]

We're not scrambling for resources. That's different from us, too.

[ For now. ]

ota!!

[aceslow]

[ Kim had arrived soon after Johanna put out a call to help with her so-called crossword puzzle. He had pored over the paperwork, wishing that the Detective were still with him to help make sense of it - creative thinking was always more his forte - and had been perfectly content to continue on until his phone buzzed again. A message from Daniel. Information. And important information at that.

As he reads it, he copies it down in painstakingly neat handwriting, quite unlike the chickenscratch you can see in the notebook by his side, then takes it away so he can read it through more thoroughly on his own. When he's through, he shakes his head, incredulous. ]

Goddamn it. I knew that their choice in recruits was too deliberate for this not to be a study in crime.

[ An experiment. Just as he and so many others had hypothesized from the moment that they had arrived. ]

Hoo... okay. [ He pinches at the bridge of his nose, heart hammering wildly in his chest. Answers at last, but what recourse does this leave them? ] They're facing their own sort of porch collapse. But what kind of apocalypse that requires such drastic measures is slow enough to waste this much time messing around -- and can take up this many resources? Unless this really is a simulation...

[keepgodwaiting]

[ Rarely has Constantine been as glad to see a cop as she was when Kitsuragi rolled up to held with the redactions. When he does finally finish the Debrief, Johanna shakes her head. ]

Could be facing one, could have just gotten out of one? After the last world war, people did plenty of studies on what made people act the way they had -- follow orders they knew were wrong, things like that. Maybe they're trying to figure out why what happened, happened, so it won't happen again.

But it's garbage, isn't it? How are they supposed to learn anything about their own world when we're from all over the place? Some of us aren't even human.

[strongroots]

People say the world's ending where I'm from. Heading to it. [ Anyway. Maybe it's too loose an explanation of climate change, but Robby barely knows anything about it in the first place. And what's more important-- ] But none of this makes sense when we don't know anything about what's going on out there. Even if they screw with us and they get the right results and we wake up remembering all this--how the hell does it solve anything?

[ How does anything make sense? ]

[miyagimagic]

[ Daniel didn't doubt that Kim would show up. The other guy was at the top of Daniel's mind when Robby decided to share this information with other people here - wanting to make sure that Kim would know about all of this in the first place, but also trusting Kim to take this as serious as it ought to be taken.

Seems like he was right on all counts, considering the other did show up and how seriously Kim is sitting there and copying the document. With so many people around the diner and Daniel's own head buzzing with all this new information, he's taken to at least serving some drinks to try and get the nervous energy out.

Kim being the last one - yes, even if he didn't ask for a drink, Daniel is just bringing him what he's had at the diner before anyway - as he puts down the drink and sits down opposite the other man. ]

It's.. concerning, isn't it? [ Please don't mind the way one of Daniel's hands keeps nervously tapping against the table, Kim. This is just A Lot. ] I mean, we already knew they had a lot of control over this place, but to see it to this extent..

ota!

[featheradrift]

[ With a message like that, sent to everyone in the city, so soon after Junpei revealed what he found, he would have been a fool not to come.

And what a doozy of a document it was.

He'd already had his suspicions—the way this place defied common sense felt more like a dream than reality—but it's still a shock to have it confirmed so plainly.

Nahida once handled a man who had uploaded his consciousness into the Akasha. His body had been left in a coma while the man's mind was trapped inside a dream sustained by the system. Could that be the case here too? It would be far easier to manipulate variables in a dream—a virtual world—than in reality, which they make abundantly clear in the document.

But what of their bodies? Were they in the hands of these researchers?

And that's not even mentioning the way they ended this iteration's run. Death to all...it wasn't any less than he expected. ]

Ha. So these damn bastards think they can play gods with us, do they?

[keepgodwaiting]

Oh, worse than that.

[ Constantine has, at least, gotten to the "cynical sarcasm" phase of her emotional rollercoaster. It's an improvement over "incipient panic attack," but it'll probably spiral into "existential despair" for a couple of hours once she's not around people anymore. She's trying to stave that bit off. ]

Gods, you can supplicate. Sadists playing scientist, not so much.

[strongroots]

They're getting away with it so far. Unless we can find a way to break their playground.

[ He makes a small motion at their surroundings--but he means more than the diner, and the entirety of the city. ]

[luminously]

( Zelda hadn't hesitated to make her way to the diner. With as much as she's wanted to put in her own efforts into trying to help others here, she's mixed with both anxiety and relief to know that something's been found here. At the same time, she knows better than to get her hopes up. Things have been kept from all of them on purpose. While she doesn't doubt that Robby has found something that could indeed help... to what extent? And, how much more would be out there to discover?

She opens the door, stepping in swiftly, but quietly before she greets Robby. )

Good afternoon, Robby. I thank you for waiting for me here. Though... I trust that others have made their way to the diner to see what has been found as well.

[strongroots]

[ He's sitting when she comes in, a familiar sight that gets his attention when she comes on over. His hands clasped on the table in front of him, but they untangle after Zelda speaks. ]

It's fine, you didn't miss anything. It's a debrief of an iteration -- a group who went through what we did.

[ It's not a comfortable explanation, the subject still a heavy one, no matter how many times Robby shares it, but it's easier to get to the point now. And he grabs a copy of the report, holds it and its sheets to Zelda. ]

You might wanna sit. Your choice.

[ He can't say how she might take to the information. There's been a few different reactions. ]

[fashionably_strong]

[Bulla's feeling a great deal of internal conflict at this reveal. It's alarming, and she's torn between wanting to try to blast a giant hole through whatever is containing them, versus trying to approach this rationally and work out a technological option.

The conflict and worry she's feeling inside is being masked with an unimpressed and irritated look.]

I wonder what these creeps would think if we all bonded together as a community to break out of here. We could even go try to find the other groups and free them, too.

[strongroots]

If there are other groups running. [ If there's more on top of this... well, it's a headache enough. ]

But before we worry about that, figuring how to break out's the real question. No one's been able to do anything about the fog or mess with this place yet. [ ... ] But maybe there's an answer, now that we know this is a simulation.

[ The fact they know what they're working with. There's got to be a chance, right...? ]

[wordchain]

[ Yesod waits his turn to read through the report, whose contents are admittedly not especially surprising, as far as conducting unethical experiments goes, whatever the end goal may be. He restricts himself to a handful of notes before returning to some of the gaps left to fill in the redacted documents. He thinks back to his conversation with Robby last month, too — at the time, the numbered keys that had suddenly appeared hadn't been identified as linked to the university dorm rooms yet. Now they also have additional mentions of CE-47 in particular, and references to past "classes" and presumably images purposely created in an effort to encourage the current iteration to consider the possibility that they have longstanding bonds formed in this city to recall. ]

So this is one instance of their "dissolution" measures...

[ Which, frankly, seem to be a waste of time and resources, if this sort of failure has occurred up to forty-nine times and a variety of extreme methods to dispose of their unwanted guinea pigs is utilized in response. ]

...By the way, assuming that there are photographs to find in every room corresponding to the numbered keys that we received some time ago, has anyone compared these from room to room? I'd like to determine whether any are implied to depict individuals from iterations CE-09 and CE-47, for example, or the supposed owner of the room is simply inserted into identical templates across each room.

[ And if they are genuine glimpses of past iterations — including ones whose selected test subjects were "sub-par" — is there some significance to their allocation for this iteration to discover? ]

[strongroots]

There were photos in them? All I heard were the books.

[ Guess who didn't check out those rooms...! ]

[numerouno]

[He skipped the diner crosswords. Can you blame him? The only time you'll catch Scaramouche making small talk at a small do like that is when he wants something; something like info.

Case in point: he sees talk of "something important", he goes to check it out. Having recently slipped away from the gathering at that conference room, he wonders if he's about to see more of the same.

When he arrives, there are papers everywhere and a lot of tired eyes. A document is passed to him and he makes quick work of it, skimming through each paragraph, the frown on his mechanical face deepening the longer he reads it.

After about a minute:]

Someone found this. Where?