#like would this specimen fail a 2 piece puzzle

[wizard-mp4]

Scientists and doctors are the most unaware people on the face of the earth. Its honestly shocking how dense they all are.

[archeo-starwars]

Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare Author’s Cut, Part 7 — The Grand Army of the Republic (I)

THE ARMORY: CLONING TECHNOLOGY

Jason Fry: I like this overview of cloning, which attempts to construct an interesting narrative while addressing contradictions in established material. For me, that’s the real test of a “retcon” — it has to be a satisfying read for newcomers, and not just appeal to hardcore fans who are well-versed in the source material. I think this does that — the reader feels sympathy for the plight of the clones, and hopefully finishes the piece with an opinion about the morality of cloning. If space hadn’t been at a premium, I would have been happy to include this in Warfare. But space was at a premium, so I decided it was better to use our precious pages to discuss what clones were doing rather than their origins.

Many species have experimented with cloning, which has long been a routine part of galactic civilization’s medical science. For instance, vat-grown clone tissue and organs allow medical droids to treat serious injuries and diseases without fear that their patients will reject the new tissue.

But there has long been the temptation to use cloning to create what are effectively organic droids. Clones have been created to work in dangerous conditions, with their bodies altered to better survive exposure to corrosive atmospheres, radiation or extremes of pressure or gravity. They have been bred to serve as miners and deep-water divers, to live miserable lives as subjects of medical experiments, and to amuse the decadent as gladiators. And for millennia they have been created to fight wars.

All cloners faced the same challenge: Few customers had any interest in allowing clones to grow and age normally, wanting full-grown organics as quickly as possible. Solving this problem proved far more difficult than altering bodies through genetic manipulation. Growth acceleration caused few problems with the physical development of clone bodies, but the mind was another matter. The brains of clones grown according to an accelerated timetable often failed to develop normally. Severe retardation – sometimes ignored by unscrupulous cloners — was a frequent side effect. So were mental instabilities — many accelerated-growth clones proved insane, often dangerously so.

Cloners sought to solve this puzzle in any number of ways, but by the final years of the Republic two very different approaches seemed most promising.

The Kaminoans kept growth acceleration on a relatively low throttle, typically bringing a clone to maturity at twice natural speed, and educated and socialized clones through “flash training,” an intensive regimen heavy on holographic simulations. Kamino’s clones required more time and credits to bring to market, but were generally high-quality soldiers and workers, with the vast majority of mentally unstable specimens filtered out before delivery to buyers.

The other approach, used most effectively by the Arkanians after they incorporated a number of other cloners’ techniques, was known as “flash pumping.” The Arkanians developed clone bodies as quickly as possible, driving them to rapid maturity in Spaarti cloning cylinders, four-meter-high tanks that suspended the developing clone in a protective, nurturing gelatin. The Arkanian method left the cerebral cortex a blank slate until late in the cloning process, when huge amounts of knowledge and memories were implanted by directly connecting clone brains to computer systems. During the final years of the Republic, the Arkanian method cut production time of a mature clone to as little as a year. But there was a price to pay: Many more Spaarti clones exhibited mental instabilities, and they had trouble thinking creatively or adapting to situations that hadn’t been flash-pumped into their brains. “Clone madness” exhibited by Spaarti specimens took many forms, but among the most harrowing examples were flashbacks to “tank time” suspended in nutrient gelatin, and paranoid delusions that clones, non-clones or all other organics were droids, ghosts or evil spirits.

While the Republic’s initial clone orders were filled by the Kaminoans, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine authorized a secret cloning facility on Coruscant’s moon Centax-2, using Arkanian methods to create another army of Fett clones. These Spaarti-grown clones first saw extensive action during the Battle of Coruscant, and their Kaminoan brethren claimed they were poor soldiers with only a rudimentary grasp of battlefield tactics.

Late in the war, a Senate decree confined military cloning to a handful of Republic facilities; banned cloning of sentients for military purposes, with a few closely regulated medical exemptions; and forbade the purchase of sentient clones, the employment of cloning specialists and the sale of cloning equipment. But the intent of these laws wasn’t to rid the galaxy of cloning; rather, it was to establish a monopoly on the practice.

But while cloning became a clandestine science after the rise of the Empire, research into its techniques never ceased. In top-secret facilities, shadowy clonemasters conducted new experiments, including efforts to create Force-sensitive prime clones. And Grand Admiral Thrawn discovered that using ysalamiri to sever a developing clone’s connection to the Force allowed mentally stable clones to be created in just weeks — a discovery he sought to turn to his advantage in his war against the New Republic.

(source)

[sweetsunrayssr]

Cameron’s Pilgrim

Spoiler warning S4 Halt and Catch Fire, until 4X05

I’ve read recaps and comments about Cameron’s choices , words and actions, and I would like to contrast it with my understanding of what 4x05 “Nowhere Man” revealed.

The first half of S4 we are kept much in the dark about what’s going on with Cameron. We just mostly know how it appears to Joe, Bos and Gordon. Joe thinks she’s searching for something out there, to reinvent herself. Gordon - the outdoor man who loves camping - calls it 2 giants living on a timble. Bos jokes about space bikes. Nobody takes it seriously, just like Donna didn’t take Cam seriously and thought of her as an impulsive child in S3, but it turned out that junior had married, bought a house and had worked on a better solution than credit cards even.  And the reveal about Cam’s game Pilgrim in 4x05 suggests that Cam knows why she bought the land, the airstream and why she wants Joe to make love to her there. Cameron is the sole person who is not “searching”. Instead, she wants her loved ones and especially Joe to find and understand her. If Joe was the mystery man throughout the seasons, Cameron was the mystery woman.

From her conversation with Bos in S1, we know that Cameron always had communication issues, especially when it involves her feelings. It’s not something she will just grow out of. Discovering the program language Basic helped her find a language to communicate. She’s a coder and thus her language, communication and actions are coded.  More, especially the S1 episode where she pitches her OS idea to Joe as wanting to make people fall in love with the machine, while holding a toy up, it becomes rapidly clear that toys and games are her tools of connection and communication. It is how she reaches out to people and reveals something about herself.

Cameron is at odds with Gordon for 2 seasons, until they start to play Nintendo together.

Bos rarely understands her games, but he tries (love that moment when he asks the coder monkeys to help him get out of the damned cave), and he knows the games she develops tend to be about her.

Donna and Cameron have a stellar working-friend relationship, but the misunderstandings begin to heap up once Donna’s chat pushes Cameron’s games out of Mutiny, until eventually Donna pushes Cameron herself out of Mutiny.

Her relationship with Tom hits off while they play a physical shooter game and work together on making a virtual/digital version of it.

The particular scene where she pitches the OS idea to Joe while holding the puppet in S1 is Cameron actually revealing that she wants to make him fall in love with her, or how she can fall in love with him.

Joe is rewarded with a passionate night with her at Comdex 90 (and unbeknownst to him at the time her heart), when he figured out the lighter game.

When viewers and her friends and lover regard her airstream as a childish game, they not only sell her short, but expect Cameron to just grow out of her communication handicap. She will always need these tools. She is not immature, or lost to herself. She is trying to show and communicate something. Her heartbreak and disappointment over nobody figuring out her message via her Pilgrim game, not even Joe, is not so much about professional failure but her failure to communicate her soul, heart and vision adequately. Cecil commenting that not even he can explain her coding work to connect his rudimentary code to her solution and it is at another level entirely emphasizes this.

Her isolation in the airstream is a physical manifestation of Cameron’s communicative isolation. But it does not mean she has stopped trying to communicate the same message she put into Pilgrim. Instead of making a “new digital game”, she uses an entirely different medium: Cameron uses material tools and physically tangible items. So, when Joe told her to move on from the Pilgrim failure and make a new game out of nothing, Cameron actually took his advice. She just did it with real world items, like a builder, which is quite unprecedented for her, way out of her comfort zone.

And she picked these new tools for Joe. He took the step in S3 to learn BASIC code, telling her that even if he might never be great at it, he is not unteachable. He loves HTTP and HTML because it’s such an elegant, simple code that almost anyone can learn and use to make something out of nothing.

Joe’s personal coding of expressing himself isn’t programming code though, but metaphors: the browser is a stadium or a doorway and HTTP is the roseta stone.

Simple, real world, physical items. He is a physical guy:

swinging bats to hit for the fences and breaking the bat when he feels betrayed by his father.

Hitting a car with a sledge hammer to turn her on and show her he’s a prime specimen in great shape

Using a low voltage live current to turn her on

Using torches to shoot for the stars and dispel a hurricane

Immolating a shipment of empty, soulless portable computers (after Gordon tried to compliment Joe that the Giant was like him)

He wins her heart with lighters

He betrays his passion, his love and need for her at Comdex 90 in a very physical way

He waits for her for years in a basement, where they used to have sex

Her message hasn’t changed. She’s very much trying to use Joe’s metaphorical language, initially in Pilgrim, because she was 5000 miles away from him, and when that fails she uses the physical world to show him those metaphors. Pilgrim and the airstream are Cameron’s mixtape for Joe.

Let us look at the evidence of my claims above, and I’ll start with Pilgrim and what Donna discovers about it:

Joe says he was once on TV as a “pilgrim” over the phone reconnection. And thus overall Joe is the intended “pilgrim” in Cameron’s game.

The pilgrim is a blue man. Joe started out at IBM, called Big Blue, and IBM men usually wore blue suits.

Donna clicks the “key” item in the menu when she starts the game. In other words, the path and the discovery is a crucial “key” to understanding the game and consequentially Cameron.

The avatar reaches an area with what looks like flames in the air. I’ve read recaps and reviews who think those orange-brown things flying in the air are broken pieces of the puzzle, but I’ve watched every previous image of the game and it has nothing to do with the puzzle. I think the things flying in the air that the avatar eventually climbs are meant to be “flames”. In other words, they are a different version of the lighters that Joe and Cameron play around with at Comdex 90 where their relationship and passion was “rekindled”.

Gordon is feeding his journals to the flames

PJ Harvey’s lyrics

The series title “Halt and Catch Fire”

The avatar hits some type of invisible “airstream”, taking it off balance.

The avatar must climb upwards into the sky or towards the stars where the airstream and flames were, not walk forward towards a future which is just another crappy version of the present to Cam.

There’s a flash of light and the pilgrim reappears at this empty space of light (star level). Only Joe’s arc has had a similar scene happening in S3, what I think of as a “rebirth” scene.

We see a shooting star landing on an island or continent with a 2D image of the avatar stamped on it. This is the place where the pilgrim gets to actually play the game. And it is highly likely related to the Shangri-La (magical land) concept that Joe wrote a letter about to both Gordon and Cameron. Only Gordon confirmed in S2 that he read the letter. Cam refrained to answer Joe about it. The map and land though suggests that Cameron read the letter.

Then 8 crystals or starlight emanating shards appear (”jewels”). Each acts as a “doorway” to a partition of the island/continent, and immediately transports (like Star Trek) the avatar into that piece of the map. Cameron called the airstream a “jewel” to sweep Joe off his feet into a magical land.

The doorway that Donna chose to transport with landed her in the SW of the island, and a Japanese winter garden with a shrine in the middle of Tokyo (you can see dark skyscrapers in the background), emanating warm welcoming light and surrounding torches. The only person Cameron mentioned a shrine in a spiritual sense to was Joe.

Cameron herself says it’s not just a game you play, but a game you live.

All evidence points to the pilgrim meant to be Joe, rather than Cameron. The island and continent represents Cameron herself. Unlike what some reviewers claim, Cameron doesn’t need to be put together or fixed, since the continent is whole already. What she needs and desires is for her pilgrim to explore her completely. And her comment about the game being something you live suggests the game is meant to represent life or a lifetime exploration. In a romantic sense Pilgrim is Cam’s proposal to Joe, not unlike Gordon’s decoder engagement ring for Donna.

There is the addition that even if the pilgrim misses the clue to climb the flames, but instead stays on ground zero, getting himself distracted by picking up treasures and completing puzzles, he gets transported back to the beginning, to try again and find the airstream of flames. Cameron drops that hint to Joe when he calls her up about the game. If this is about Joe, as I claim it is, then Cameron is trying to say she’ll wait for him until he figures it out. She’s not going anyplace else.

At an instinctual level, Joe does get that the game Pilgrim is a means of connection between them. He plays it and calls her up when he gets sent back to the “start”. And when she mentions how beautiful the moon is in San Jose, Joe looks at the Pilgrim avatar on his screen and decides to spend the night with her in San Jose. He understood the indirect invitation then.

But nobody gets the game and it gets pulled from publication. Cam says dejected that even Joe doesn’t like her game, while he reassures her he hasn’t finished the game yet. As he then also advises her to “move on” and keep making other games, she retreats to be by herself. If of course, the game represents the lifetime she imagines for herself with Joe, he unwittingly disappoints her by mentioning “finishing the game” and “moving on”. What we have here thematically is “lost in translation”, which is of course a book and movie set in Japan. Joe assumes things about her and the game that are erroneous, including the belief she forgot and stopped caring about them while making this game, as he claims during his camping with Gordon in the season opener. Notice how that tent is beautifully lit in the darkness like a beacon in that camping scene, and just a material iteration of the warmly lit shrine in the Japanese garden in Pilgrim in 4x05.

After playing “doom” and Gordon telling her that the purpose of the game “is not to get killed”, she returns and “unpacks” by throwing her Japanese past with Tom in the bins, doing what Joe asked her to do, but in her own way. And after that she buys the bike, messes around with hardware, rides around the country. Gordon and Bos later make the link to it being a materialization of the “space bike”. Space Bike was a game about Cameron’s values and talents: she can make herself big or small, befitting the environment (proportion), sense of humor, sense of self, decency and the latter leads to common sense. But the bad-ass chick on the Space Bike is homeless and unbound, forever traveling from one planet to the next, only requiring drinks and a shower. Instead of doing it virtually, Cameron now tries to materialize this.

While she rides her Space Bike she discovers a plot of beautiful land with a sign that says “If you lived here you’d be home now”. And come on, it’s a very beautiful piece of land in that discovery shot, has a fairytale or magical quality to it. And the sign has three key words: live, home, and now (instead of the future). Whatever she eventually would end up building there for a house, it has the ideal potential to be whatever Joe and Cam could want it to be. Think of the scene between Joe and Ryan in S3 in the basement of Macmillan Utility where Joe intends to set up the local network connected to NSFNET. So, she buys the land, but instead of hiring an architect and immediately get contractors to build something on it, she pretty  much leaves it in its ideal state of a blank slate full of potential. Is that wrong? Of course not. She shouldn’t be deciding what the permanent form ought to be by herself. Joe should be part of its creation, so that their mutual vision can be part of the walls and lay-out. On top of that, even if Joe has asked her to move in with him, she’s still not officially divorced and they haven’t discussed the form of their relationship, nor said “I love you.”

It’s actually surprising a little that Joe doesn’t totally get that or hates it out there. He did hike up to the Observatory in Texas once via scenic route at the end of S1 a decade before that, walking into Sarah’s life. He’s a stargazer, right? And yet at the start of S4 he can’t see the moon from his home, blocked by a hill. Also, with that wool sweater and her long auburn hair in this phase of S4, Cam reminds somewhat of Sarah.

Anyway, instead of building a house all by herself on the plot, Cam buys the airstream. To the owner who sells it to her, with Joe standing right there, Cam explains it’s a temporary solution, before something “permanent” can be “built” there. We are introduced to the onthologist in the same episode who stipulates how one word can have different meanings, using “bark” as an example. The word “airstream” can be an airstream trailer, but it is also a change in the air caused by heat as it does in the game Pilgrim. Cam reveals she used to play in the airstream with her friend in her youth, and Joe asks her what she’d play in it then. “Airstream,” she answers. Here is Cam’s second hint to Joe how he can play the Pilgrim game. Oh, and she calls it “perfect”, which was the word of understanding between Joe and Ryan.

As they try the bed out, Joe asks her why she wants him to consider the AOL money. And she replies it would give him more time spend time with her, mentions “human touch”. He asks her whether the long trailer means she’s moving out, to which she immediately replies, “No,” and clarifies, “She’s trying to buy this jewel to sweep him away to a magical land”. This is her third game hint: the jewels, sweeping him into the air, and a magical land.

She takes the trailer out there, builds a hearth and puts up some lights in the air that have the form of “flames”. This is Cam’s 4th hint. Watch her face of disappointment when neither Bos, Gordon or Joe take much notice of it.

These are not just all hints. They are her material recreation of Pilgrim. And here follows the clue that Pilgrim was created for Joe and her fantasy of the two of them while stuck, isolated in a doomed marriage at the other side of the world:  she’s all happy when Joe promises he wouldn’t want to miss out on his first night with her in that honeymoon bed, but she is near to tears when Joe fell asleep on her.

Instead of Joe actually visiting the airstream to find her and be with her there, even if just for a night and make love to her there, we’ve seen two other character seek her out at the airstream: Bos and Tom. Bos goes out there to help her out with her plumbing and tells her he’s proud of her getting out of her comfort zone. She discovers his compass, and he reveals his money trouble, and she is the sole person who helps him out, on the condition it’s a one-time gift. Tom goes out there to get the divorce papers signed, gifts her the solution to the noise mystery in their apartment back in Japan and she apologizes to him for the pain she put him through and says her goodbye to him.

So, Joe… Why is he blind and tonedeaf to what she’s actually trying to do out there in her “space trailer”. Basically he’s doing the same thing the Japanese did with their shrine – rebuilding the original process.

Team up with Gordon and bring Cameron into the business

Connect with Cameron in the basement, which in the past was the first location both in the bar and at Cardiff where they had their first sexual encounters. It’s where he waits for her for 4 years. The basement at Westgroup is also where he had the time-sharing idea, to then team-up with Gordon and eventually have a “hands-on” business relationship with Mutiny and Cameron. The number of first downloads of the bugged browser “loadstar” is after all 69, which is a quite famous number for sexual position.

Give her a key to his apartment to come over whenever she wants and needs to

We as viewers can empathize with Joe trying to recreate the environment and circumstances that brought them together originally as well as how frustrating it is for him to have Cameron refuse to step into business with him, while she shares his bed. Joe Macmillan isn’t the manipulative cutthroat anymore that he was in S1 and so he naturally believes that if he works with Cameron this time, now that they have reconnected, they could pull it off. His work is his life and he wants and hopes to include Cameron in that. He tangibly looks forward to working with her again, since the S3 finale. She’s his muse after all.

But she steadfastly refuses this, and Joe clearly doesn’t know what to do with it. For a big part that is because this is how he goes about it with anyone he connects with and can be himself, by working with them – Simon, Gordon, Cameron, Haley. He even tries that angle with Joanie. It’s so fundamental to him to have a working relationship with the people he admires or tries to include, that he expresses how clueless he is where his relationship with Cam is going to Gordon, in a subtextual manner in 4x05. He asked her to help him with Comet, she refused and fled to the airstream, he smashes the wok, goes all S1 Joe on Gordon the next day until Gordon orders him to take a fresh breath of air. Then when he comes back with a newly bought wok (while Cam is opening a box with a wok she bought too), Gordon mentions that Cam is on the phone line. Joe says he doesn’t even know which problem he’s trying to solve. How he was in the basement for 3 years (aka waiting for Cam to choose him over Tom and come back into his life), he finally has his arms around “it” (Cam again), but now he can’t see it anymore. As Gordon asks Joe whether they’re talking about the future here again, Joe says he should call Cam again. Gordon then asks him about whether Joe saw this (Comet) ten years ago in Gordon’s garage. To which Joe explains it was not about where it would end up, but knowing the feeling of working together. He could envision how it would feel to work with Gordon, and we can infer how Joe envisioned that working with Cam would turn him on completely. He does not know what it would be like to share a life with Cam without working together. That is why he says he has been beyond patient with her. He’s been waiting for her to show up at Comet one day and agree to be part of the team, and to prove to her she can trust him as a business partner.

Meanwhile he’s also insecure and unsure about Tom. His gut always told him to never regard Tom as a true rival to the intensity that Joe and Cam had even when separated in S2, nor in S3. Where Joe is a grown man, Tom looks like a kid, and conservative to boot too. He very much regarded Tom as Cam’s mistake like he mistakenly sought a replacement in Sarah, and the night at Comdex 90 and the www project would make her see “the light”. But it didn’t turn out as he expected it would. Cam did the decent thing – stick to the marriage - with the man he believes is wrong for her. We can see how afraid he is of what she wants to tell him that is so urgent she asked him to pull over the car, when she reveals she saw Tom that day. Joe sags his head and closes his eyes. It’s as if he fears that Tom and her reconciled. After all, Cam stuck with Tom outwardly in the way Sarah didn’t stick with Joe. The “facts” seem to prove to Joe that his gut was wrong about it all.

Basically, Joe is afraid to lose her and too afraid to upset her or have an actual fight with her. And when that first fight occurred, he doesn’t know what will come next.

But none of the facts are what they seem. It turns out that his gut about Cameron’s feelings for him trumping those for Tom was correct. It turns out that she waited for Tom to leave her voluntarily, that she loves Joe, and thus that she wanted to be with him since 90 as much as he wanted her to be with him. If he was miserable in the basement, she was miserable in an apartment in Tokyo, handcuffed by guilt to a husband (which is what the Stephen King book Geralds’s Game is a horror version parallel to) she wanted to leave, while denying happiness to herself. (incidentally Gerald’s Game has a “space cowboy” in it, but he’s a necrophiliac serial killer).

This sort of unhappiness though has its impact in the present, just in a different way than assumed. She’s not unhappy that Tom left her, has another woman or having a baby. But what is important to recognize is that Cameron basically denied herself almost completely for the last 4 years, and adapted herself to fit the needs and wants of Tom. Anyone who stayed too long in an unhappy match, denying their own wants and needs, will recognize that once free from such a relationship, one is bound to be very reluctant to move into what looks like a complete life of a new partner: Joe’s home, Joe’s work, Joe’s friends, Joe’s colleagues, Joe’s business partners. It doesn’t matter that Joe allows her to be who she is, endeavors to stimulate to do the things she loves or does not oppose her from doing her own thing even if he’s not a fan of it. She needs her own turf, see the people that Joe might regard as business rivals. It’s not enough for him to make room for her into his established life, and quite unhealthy for her to fit and mold herself to his.

It should be “their life”, and that is why it’s so important that he too needs to let go of his own comfort zone and try to immerse himself into this nowhere plot of land and airstream, and try to imagine what they could built together out there with “steel and concrete and building blocks”.  I don’t think her intent is to fit and lock him into the airstream, but to “play airstream” where they can brainstorm and fantasize what type of life they want to build together, while she “plays house” in his apartment simultaneously. And if he does that, she might even surprise him how much she’s willing to compromise.

When he asked her over breakfast in 4x02 whether she knows what she wants, she looks up and stares at “him”. When he tells her over the phone he wants to know her in his life, she makes a little silent fist of victory. And by 4x05 she tells him she loves him.  

So, unlike others, I disagree that Cam should just quit her “games”, “grow up” and “move in” with Joe. Joe should not move into the trailer, but he should “play” and discover her there.

ETA: I’m not saying that Cam and Joe shouldn’t compromize. The “airstream” does not represent a permanent home, not even for Cam. What I’m saying is that a) Joe makes the error to regard it as Joe’s home vs trailer b) while Cam herself regards it as Joe’s home AND trailer to build a foundation and discover together what their life together might be like. She does live in his home too. Even people who know each other intimately, the worst and the best, for a decade, but wanting or hoping to establish a lifelong commitment for the first time after all that time, still need game-room to play around with ideas. 3x09, 4x02 phonecall and breakfast were perhaps their first three proper dates. 

[chvrchesrp]

Welcome to CHVRCHES’ fifth event!

This event is our second missive event, which means a little bit of what happens tonight will be assigned to your muse. This event is a finale of the “Pestilence Chapter” and will be served to you in two parts. For the first part, your muse has been assigned a specific thread topic to explore. It’s up to you to delve into the interaction! 

For now, we ask that for this night, you explore just this assigned thread—and not to make more threads during the time of the Escape Room. (There’s more to be revealed; after Part 2 drops, you can make your own independent threads.) You can, however, make threads and starters before the clock starts at your Escape Room location if you wish.

The date stamp for the event is Thursday, January 26th, for timeline purposes (though you aren’t restricted to beginning threads tomorrow, of course, you can even begin them today). Assignments are considered game canon, whether or not you explore them deeply. If you have an issue with an assignment, let an Admin know! For after, please do not write past January 26th for any thread yet—the drop of Part 2 might affect your muse’s future outlook. 

Escape Rooms are a beloved past time for adrenaline junkies, gamers, team-builders, and competitive folks of all sorts. The premise is that you are shown to a room and then locked inside of it; within are a series of puzzles you have to figure out as a team in order to get released from the room. You must do this within one hour or your team fails the room. (You’re released, but you fail and take a shameful photo - you are the weakest link, goodbye.)

Escape Rooms are meant to foster trust, connection, cooperation, and critical thinking. Meant to.

ROOM ONE: MURDER MYSTERY INC.

“Love is clockworks, and it's cold steel, fingers too numb to feel, squeeze the handle, blow out the candle—blindness.”

After arriving at the Escape Room headquarters, you are ushered into a sleek black limousine; you are asked to put all of your cellphones in a velvet black bag, which will be returned to you at the end. After the 8 people in your party are all settled in, 1920s music filters through the stereo system, grainy and warbled and nostalgic. A champagne aperitif is offered to you, if you dare to drink it. The car smells of polished leather and money—the actual scent of money, as if a great amount of it had been there recently.

You are driven for about fifteen minutes: do you drink? do you laugh? do you speak? Suddenly, the car screeches to a halt, hitting the breaks hard. The lights in the limo go dark and the music stops playing. And then one by one, each of you is led from the limousine. When it’s your turn to exit the limo, you step outside and find a dark bag placed immediately over your head and your hands bound in front by lead-rope: and you are led, stepping on concrete toward somewhere else. You hear door open, and you are pushed inside, then your hands unbound. You can remove the bag from your head.

The rest of your team is there. As your eyes adjust to the dim lighting, you can see a room dazzled with 1920s opulence. There is even a chandelier hanging over a running fountain—it’s ridiculous in its mockery, it’s entreatment. You find there is a stranger in your midst: a ninth person, who welcomes you to his humble home. Then, the lights flash, and he screams, and the actor lies on the floor, ‘dead,’ the echo of a gunshot hanging in the air like a question mark as blood pools around him.

The clock starts and you must all discover who has ‘killed’ your generous host—before that person ‘kills’ you for witnessing! Search the room, leave no painting hung, no chair upright, no drawer unopened—

Assignments:

Shibah/Donato: Shibah naturally begins by observing the paintings on the wall—they seem out of place for a 1920s theme. She identifies them as The Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony, but realizes they are out of order. Near by, Donato has found a small lock that requires a 3-number code to open a drawer in a stately foyer desk. They must work together to crack the code—inadvertently drawing them into a required long-awaited reunion neither of them would prefer to have right now. Conflict emerges and it isn’t long before the two are full of rage and angst.

Belial/Babylon: Babylon notices eggs hiding all around the room—golden-painted eggs, silver-painted eggs, rhinestone-covered eggs. Collecting a few, she realizes by shaking them that there might be something inside, so she breaks them open, revealing the following strands of paper:

without one friend, alone

I cannot come down

world without end. Below me

young lovers Tread the sweet ground—

in my purity

But I am God—

Belial is studying the book case, noticing that among the many authors there, almost all of the books look faded and worn except one, which peeks out slightly. It’s marked as a book of poems. Perhaps if they can determine which poem Babylon found, they could find another clue on its page. That is, if they could cooperate—it seems Babylon hasn’t yet had the opportunity to confront Belial for “damaging” Dom. Belial engages in her argument, but has no trouble reminding her that he’s her boss.

Maria/Isadora: Maria turns over a heavy, ornate sitting chair to find that the base of the seat is hollow and that there is a latch she can undo; she finds a series of love letters from the now-deceased host to a woman named Chanterelle, who appears to have been a singer at a jazz club. For all of the letters, there are no post marks, no envelopes. Were they never sent? Some random letters are in all caps, and if she arranges them in order of date written, it spells out:  C H E C K T H E D R A I N. Maria shouts to Isadora, who has been studying the fountain. Isadora is less than interested in helping Maria, but for the sake of the task waves Maria over when she realizes there’s a key in the drain of one of the shallow trays. They have to figure out how to get it—but Isadora can’t help letting drop that she knows the cure exists.

Raziel/Cassiel: Cassiel finds a piece of old film in a jewelry dish that has a few frames, seeing what appears to be a woman singing at her own wedding. The man she marries is not the now-deceased host. She wonders what it could mean, but Raziel swoops in with a film reel he found taped under the desk that holds Donato’s drawer. Raziel and Cassiel must splice together the footage to discover the ‘end’ of the story—except Cassiel doesn’t even think Raziel can do that right, so how can he possibly do anything in Heaven right? Raziel obviously spats back, saying Shibah has been absent and done nothing to earn the throne. That if she wants to be God so badly, she should act like it.

ROOM TWO: JEKYLL AND HYDE.

“Say hello to something scary, the monster in your bed, just give in and you won’t be sorry, welcome to my other side.”

After arriving at the Escape Room headquarters, you are shown through a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Your party winds down a sterile looking white concrete hall, fluorescent panel lights above, flickering. Your shoes squeak and squick as you walk; even the floors seem too clean. You even feel a weird urge to not touch the walls. At the end of the hall is another door with the glass of its window frosted over: you’re shown through that, too. On the other side is the outdoors, actually: you can see a dirt driveway with haphazard gravel and unkempt, half-brown grasses. Lined up are 3 stately town cars, each pristine and white, freshly washed.

Each town car has a driver with white gloves, opening the door for your party. Three folks in the first two, two in the last. The car door is shut behind you and, as the engines revv to life, the windows of the car and a divider between you and the driver goes up—pitch black and opaque. You can no longer see where you’re going, but you’re comfortable enough. In what feels like forever—or is it only ten minutes?—you finally park and the car doors open. So rushed you can barely take in the outside, you are brought into what looks like a small house, and then down a flight of stairs. Your party is put into what would be a basement, the door behind you locked.

The basement itself is hardly grotesque: rather, it, too, is very stately. It looks instead like an office. There is a heavy oak desk with a green lamp and a laptop on it, an expensive throw rug, an assortment of pads and papers, a pad for prescriptions. Chairs opposite it, as if to invite guests or consultations. Locked pristine white metal medicine cabinets, a wall with shelves of scientific books, specimen jars carefully arranged and labeled. The floor is interesting: under the rug, there is a pattern of alternating colour tiles, grey and white, almost resembling a checkerboard.

The clock starts and you must figure out how to escape the basement, or else be charged for trespassing on Dr. Jekyll’s property! Search the room, leave no cabinet locked, no rug arranged, no jar unturned—

Assignments:

Abaddon/Olivia: In an almost metaphor moment, Abaddon discovers that the tall Grandfather clock in the room has no hands. Even this broken clock can’t be right twice a day—and she’s running out of time. In a fit dissonance, she overturns the clock and breaks it. From the loudspeaker comes one of the managers: “Please do not break any items in the room that do not easily break themselves.” Abaddon curses under her breath: seemed easily broken to her. Olivia, by a cabinet requiring a 4-number code lock, tries to distract Abaddon into helping, thinking maybe the clock and the nearby cabinet are related. How could the clock help solve the code? To tempt Abaddon into being helpful, Olivia tries to create a rapport, and soon the two enter into a muffled, whispered conversation about trading secrets as they try different number combinations. Olivia reveals to Abaddon that she thinks she might really be possessed this time—Abaddon gives her secret: back in August, during the chaos, she ripped off Gabriel’s wings without authorization.

Kiara/Jairus: Jairus has gone to studying the laptop; when he touched the trackpad, the computer asks for a Password. He types in a few attempts, but nothing comes of it; in fact, he has one try left before the computer gets entirely locked. Kiara notices his struggle and comes over to brainstorm and observe: she notices the keyboard, which seems unusual. After studying it a moment, she realizes she must have the Password—but can’t help jabbing Jairus over it. She, a young girl, figured out the answer when a hundreds-year-old man couldn’t. It sounds shakily familiar to their current situation... as she wryly types in the password that unlocks the computer (can you figure it out?), she throws out how hard it must be to have a young girl finding easy answers to all of his problems: the cure and the password both. How long can Jairus keep his calm when she’s hitting his rawest nerves?

Adele/Crowley: Adele is studying the book case, trying to see if anything seems particularly out of place. After shuffling through some of the books, she finds no discerning markers, no torn pages, no handwriting, nothing dog-eared. She puts each book back and tries for another: methodical, thorough. Crowley sees her doing this and laughs at her. Crowley does not like a sheep who bends over backwards, who does things as expected, so she proceeds to throw barbs at Adele as she looks. Adele is not really sure how to deal with someone not liking her, even every demon and sinner she has ever met does. Adele quips back that at least she’s trying—to help, to solve the puzzle, anything, trying—and all Crowley does is nothing. Glowering, Crowley leans on the bookcase as they argue... only to find the bookcase moves. Swinging open the book case like a door, another, heavier door is revealed—but there seems NO visible way to open it.

Elijah/Ethan: Elijah is studying the small, framed medical diagrams on the wall. He sees there are four and wonders if the order of them might be some kind of code or combination—each one is labeled strangely: H7, A4, D5, E2. He can’t seem to locate anything that might use and 8-digit code—none of the drawers have locks or combinations, none of the locked cabinets need that many. He shouts to the room for help, thinking he has something, just not sure what. Ethan—used to working for what he gets—isn’t adverse to helping. But when he starts, Elijah just sits back and watches, waiting. It starts a contentious argument between them, where Ethan says that all Elijah wants is an easy life of fame and hasn’t worked for anything in his life—and Elijah gets defensive and says he doesn’t know him. Meanwhile, Ethan does figure out that removing the throw rug reveals the floor—which looks just like a chess board. The edges are even marked 1-8 and A-H. Maybe if each person in the party stands in one of the designated squares... something will happen.

ROOM THREE: ZOMBIE OUTBREAK.

“Don't know what I'm after but the pressure driving me insane, searching for a different ride, had a funny feeling I can't hide, do the zombie stomp.”

After arriving at the Escape Room headquarters and checking in, you are sent directly right back out the door you came in. Out front is a school bus, yellow and beat-up looking, with spray paint all over it. It says things like “Turn back now!” and “QUARANTINE” and “Don’t open, dead inside.” Of course, you go inside. There’s no driver that you can see, but the thing can’t possibly be automated, so you just sit on the empty bus and wait as the rest of your party shuffles in. After everyone is seated, suddenly, each of you feel hands on your feet, anchoring you to the ground by the ankles—as you look down, a black cloth is placed over your head and zip-tied on. You can breathe, but the effect is obviously jarring and you can’t get it off.

The ride is a bumpy one, but any childhood notions of yelling ‘drive it off a cliff’ or similar to increase the ‘fun’ bumps of the ride have all but left your mind. You keep reminding yourself that of course, none of this is real, and maybe you even think some of it is hokey, but it’s hard not to get caught up as your body’s natural response is already flooding your mind with adrenaline and other survival neurochemicals. The bus slows to a snail’s pace, almost to the point where you think you’re not moving any more, and then begins to shake left and right, as if trying to be toppled over by forces you can’t see. Slowly, you start to feel tipped, and then suddenly righted, jarring. There’s a sound of the zip-ties being clipped off. Immediately, you take off your bag.

When you can see, the lights on the bus are all flickering, but you see no people except those in your party—no driver, no one to have tied the bags, no one to have held the feet, no one to have jostled your bus. You all get out, a little worse for wear, and head to what looks like a small warehouse. Entering, it’s all one room. You get to look around for about 3 minutes with the warehouse door still open. There’s an actor on the floor with his ‘guts’ ripped out, fake blood pouring from his entrails, appearing dead, a chain attaching him to the wall. There are 2 other, empty chains. There are 4 flashlights in various places in the room—4 too few. As you start to dart for the nearest one, the door slams behind you and locks and all of the lights go out. You’re in total darkness.

The bright, lit-up digital clock starts and you must figure out how to escape the warehouse, or else become zombie food! Search the room, leave no crate unopened, no shelf ignored, no stomach untested—

Assignments: (For clarity, those with flashlights are: Josh, Naomi, Dom, and Zoe.)

Josh/Magda: Magda immediately disregards the flashlight and heads for what she knows has to be a clue: she shoves her hands into the ‘stomach’ of the dead man. Triumphantly, she comes up with a key, but not what it goes to. Josh meets her with a flashlight, just in time for them both to jump back: where there once was an empty chain, now there is a living zombie trying to attack. They back away from the area and advise everyone else to do the same—but the zombie gains more chain (and more range to attack) the longer they’re in the room. Josh searches for something to put the key in among the warehouse crates and calls her reckless—that he should have done that, because if it was real, he’d be safer. She argues she isn’t fragile and has been through a lot herself—even lets drop she’s been sleeping with Crowley. How does that make him feel?

Satan/Naomi: Naomi, given her history, goes immediately for the flashlight. She starts to examine the shelves and begins to figure out that some boxes are marked with red dots. She starts to collect the boxes of varying sizes; they’re taped so well they can’t be opened by manual strength. Satan sees her struggling and goes to try himself, to the same lack of avail. This, of course, immediately gets under his skin: he can’t be foiled by boxes. Making them an unlikely team, the two bicker constantly as they try to figure out the puzzle—Satan making cruel and degrading remarks, Naomi biting back, but Satan’s blood starts to boil under the surface. By the time they find an empty shelf with red dots marked 1-6, it’s unsure if they can figure out the order without one of them snapping.

Renee/Dom: Renee and Dom both headed for the same flashlight and immediately start fighting. Renee, preferring to retain class and composure, lets him keep the flashlight, but not before she starts artfully picking him apart for his poor attempt to take her Church from her. How does Dom hold up under her acute interrogation? Perhaps in a moment of deflection or denial, Dom finds a lone object out on a crate: a skull, but one of those fake, glittery Halloween ones clearly not meant to resemble a human. It’s overt in its nonconformity, which means it’s a clue. Meanwhile, Renee notices a scale that had a small velvet bag on it—in front, instructions read that removing the bag without placing equal weight will detonate the warehouse. Perhaps they can solve this together, if they can stop tearing each other apart.

Zoe/Noah: Zoe gets one of the flashlights while Noah disregards and immediately gets to searching well away from the zombie. He finds a crate that seems to have a knocking coming from it. A knock sounds once, at even intervals, and figures the crate must mean something. Zoe, feeling the stress of everyone fighting about God and particularly creeped out that she's locked in a small room with Satan, tries to get Noah on her side. It does not go as planned. She flashes light on the box and sees there’s a sheet outlining Morse code. If they can figure out what code to ‘knock’ back to the box, perhaps it will open—if they can focus on the task and stop having an intense debate, that is.

Enjoy, darlings!!

[ecotone99]

[MF] Diary of Geff

CAMP REPORT- ITEM 562

This is the year 498 [(ref) Galaxy: Mound, Star: Ant, Planet: Hole, Satellite: Egg]. Head of excavation: Sabrina Moonwalker. This is an ‘early report’, to be shared among peers in order to avoid delay till the publication of final compilation of information and thus, the information contained about the item can change in the final publication. I have checked, read and referenced this report written by my trainee (11QU56) for the above mentioned specimen. I hereby provide my clearance for the report to be published Signature: __SABRINA_____ Status: approved

As usual, it’s a cold and dusty day on Mars. This piece concerns the archaeological finding from the colony in south-west. The contents reported below have not been found exactly in the colony rather about 20 kms North of the first site. A large cylinder has been unearthed which contains this item and a few antics, probably from the same time-frame in which this item was produced. Nevertheless we will do dating of all of them and run the forensics to be sure because the container was not found in a sealed condition. ITEM-562 is a script, it has been reproduced below and is crucial because it throws light on the conditions of the colony in the early era. This is believed to be one of the very few complete texts we have been able to obtain.

below is the content recovered from script

12 December 2137

Dear Reader,

It is chilly, dry and dark outside. I am sitting at my table in the office. This cute table-lamp, the only illumination source in my vicinity, gifted by Carlij, gives me company in these late hours. A photo of my family from one of their picnics sits in a frame on my table although I am not in that photo. I think the presence of my glass and steel clad body would have only made it look like a hostage situation. Although I would have looked like the knight in shining armor. Also, I am pretty sure that if Gina shows such a picture to her friends, the boys would keep a distance from her. This chair is really uncomfortable though. I have to keep shifting my posture, no surprises that the person before me resigned from the job. Moving on to what this is:

This is Geff [Exl:311207IDA#2M]. As I write this, I am about to leave for an expedition in deep space and thus, as a mark of tradition I am leaving this letter behind which might be my final word to this world. If my death is confirmed while my family lives then Jenny you are probably reading this with Carlij and Gina, in which case I want you to know that I am sorry I failed to keep my promise and if you aren’t one of these then I want you to know that Jenny is my wife and Carlij and Gina our children. Sometimes I am afraid and fear grips my heart now and then when I think as a realist. Thus, I will write believing that neither of you three have to read this letter.

I do not know in which year you are reading this, but in this year we still follow the calendar from Earth. My code states the nature of my job, date of birth (31-12-2107), genetic origin, family history and biological sex (M). I guess if the archives have survived when you are reading this, you will eventually find every trivia or data about me from my number.

My parents came to this colony soon after they got married at earth which makes me a second generation immigrant (#2). My father was a systems engineer for cyborg research and development while my mother an “extraterrestrial agriculture specialist”. When I decided to be a cyborg soldier, I was the odd one out in my family. Even my grandfather who I never got to see was a computer scientist on earth. I only heard about him from my father. I was born and raised in this colony. We all have registration ids, we live by the rules, life is tough but the sole aim is to survive and expand the humanity’s purpose. We are taught right from the beginning that there is no ‘I’, it is just ‘We’. Immigrants like my parents were taken in on the basis of decisions made through algorithms. Our mating partners are decided based on our genetic data (IDA), job, ethnicity, physiological parameters, etc. using algorithms. This is how I met Jenny, we didn’t really get to know each other rather we were chosen by the system once we expressed our interest in making a family. My previous job kept me out most of the times so we never grew too close. I was a soldier but right now I am a mercenary for a company (Exl) after my retirement so I take up security contracts. Two years before, I had thought that my retirement would give me more time to spend with my family, we would grow close, and I would feel a little more at peace but guess I was wrong. You might be intrigued about why there was ever a need for an army on Mars. You see, I believe, humans may wander anywhere but there is no escape from self. This age is of data and cybernetics. Cybernetics has given the humans eternal life. When the first settlers came, they established giant data centers, this was supposed to be the perfect world, a stepping stone for humanity to expand and claim the cosmos. Everybody was chipped in the neck, their identities were just a set of characters, and they lived like ants working together for a bigger cause. Things went well initially but as I said there is no escape from self, soon, a group of people rebelled who didn’t want to obey these algorithms made by a few men. They want to seize control, and so they devised what we now know as ‘soul-virus’. This malware fiddles with the chip and causes it to blur the identity of the infected person by disrupting neural pathways. Existential dread becomes too harsh to bear for a mind without an identity. These people become hungry to truly discover who they are and the virus is designed to prevent it from happening. They bite the healthy individuals. They bite and tear out their chips from the neck, killing them and use its data to feed into their own system. The virus takes some parts of the victims’ identity and fills the puzzle, giving the infected person a sense that his or her identity is now a step closer to be completed. This increases their thirst for more data and they keep harvesting more and more data. It is all about the illusion that virus is creating for the mind. With mind hacked, their reflexes are improved. The extra and quick surges of electricity needed to make this happen come from the chip but it deteriorates their bodies so they keep replacing those parts with machines. The ones who were first infected in labs were modified heavily to become more machine than human through cybernetics. These ones are called the first borns and are the most powerful and hardest to kill. The modus operandi resembles to what my father read in his childhood comics as ‘Vampires’. We call them ‘Vampires’ only even though nobody knows if the original blood-suckers ever existed or not. As the vampires grew and spread chaos through the colony, an army was raised to hunt them. I joined this army but took an early retirement even though colony lives under the fear of these devils, to take care of my family. Recently, stronger vamps have come up. They have modified canines which can hack into the victims chip, infecting them with virus while retrieving their data without killing the victim. The only way to kill them is to remove their heads or to destroy the chips. I have killed many vamps in my career but it seems there is an endless evil and they just keep increasing. This war seems like a lost cause to some but we fight nonetheless.

The ‘soul-virus’ creation brought some positive things though, it highlighted the need for humans to have some sense of self-identity too instead of just a collective identity. So, the algorithms were made less constrained following its creation like we were allowed to have names again instead of registration IDs. We could choose our careers more freely than before. There have been a few publications/theories now which treat ‘soul-virus’ in this light. At this time, the horns of two powers are crossed, the outcome of this war is held in the folds of future. Both fighting to take control and be the leaders in their own way. If one truly sees, it is just lust for power. Whoever wins, the cake will be shared by a few only.

Leaving that, how ironic that I gave up my job for my family but this new job is taking me away from them. This contract pays me really well, the insurance on me is enough to keep my family comfortable and safe even if I don’t return so I took it. I guess, this is the least and most genuine thing I can do for them. Jenny was against this. I tried to convince her that if I return we will have so much money that we need not do anything for the rest of our lives but she thinks this is just my attempt to get away from this sick world. I tried to reason with Jenny but she says that if I am so sure of my return then why I can’t take them along. I have to laugh it off. She says that this attempt of mine, of trading myself for the huge money is a deplorable attempt to feel less guilty about my escapism.

She accuses me of being selfish and of disrespecting the society by breaking away from the social fabric of family. She says that in her heart she knows that I will not return and that I am a coward for leaving her alone in this world with Carlij and Gina.

She reminds me about their well-being but I believe Carlij and Gina will get by fine even without me in this colony, there are structures in place to guard them given we have money to access them. This tells us how shackles have a few advantages if you see, a slave need only fear his or her master. The master protects it from everything else once it accepts a life of servitude.

In the last few days, she has even tried to talk to my parents so that they can convince me otherwise but I guess it was a poor attempt because I stopped listening to them the day I decided to become a soldier instead of taking up a job considered as elite and civilized in their social circle. Jenny’s accusations of escapism do not hold water because there is no escape from self, all I can escape from are the artificial shackles of this society. Last night she broke down and started to blame herself for being unable to stop me from going. I told her how she couldn’t be farther from truth. I have known her as a good person, she is not the one to blame. I know it will be a tough time for Carlij and Gina, I will miss them too. As for about what I think about this expedition. I am doing this because I have seen the illusive nature of life in these shackles. I haven’t felt as being a part of the colony in a long time but that is just me I guess but then I hope to find some answers. I think sometimes that the only answer is that we all were here for eternity and we all will be here in this universe for eternity. We are all made from the same matter that has always existed here. We are the universe and at the same time a part of it, just a few atoms dancing around for who knows what, who knows till when. I think we are not even meant to know and I accept it as it is. I am skeptic about those who say that universe speaks to them, I think it is just their mind and inflated ego talking. Universe is silent, when we are it and it is we, why will it talk to self and that too with such an insignificant self. Do we ever talk to our mitochondria? Anyways, I will leave in two days. It is already dawn. I should probably just go to my quarter and spend these last hours with them and be prepared to leave what could be my last impression on this colony. -Geff

script ends

Comments: While the information obtained about the creation of ‘soul-virus’ is crucial. We are hopeful that this has brought us a step-closer to finding its cure. Some analysts are arguing that the mindset of the subject referred here as Geff, is reflective of symptoms of this virus. Therefore, it is possible that some dormant strain of this virus had infiltrated the main chip manufacturing facility of the colony and several people like Geff grew with it in their system. These walking time-bombs, waiting to go haywire and nearly impossible to detect could have been the precursors to events that finally lead to instability in the colony and thus, annihilation of it. This discovery lays further emphasis on the need to discover the destroyed data center and chip manufacturing facility. -Trainee 11QU56

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