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[Leeravitz]

[INFO] [SPEC] Patterns Behind the Theft?

[GuyP]

I think you're an organisational genius! Excellent summary.

My gut instinct is that the Holyoake situation is connected, but only tangentially - someone involved in the murder / stolen goods will know someone who knows someone who knows someone that had something to do with the Cube theft.

I think we're stuck until we find out more about the Cube - until we know exactly what it does, and hence the true effects of it being transported to Earth, we're lacking a motive.

[Mosestrotsky]

Though this is only speculation there is also the fact that access to the museum can be donevia the Catecombs below which would allow internal access to the security systems.

Also as the museum was closed at that time (for the games) this may have been prepared before the robbery or at least to "case the joint".

Also the Academy was hit by the Djinn virus which as well as disrupting systems does seem to have the ability to 'download' information.

This may have been the initial attack to get valuable information (floor plans, routes of guards etc).

As I say a lot is speculation

[NovacaineX]

We also know that Ceretin is produced by Cognivia, and that Cognivia has acquired an artificial intelligence company named Aglion AI.

[Macavity]

Also, we know that the Perplex City police are loath to tangle with the Reconstructionists, mainly because the Recons seem to have some form of influence on Perplexian government.

Also, given that fact, the fact of their fanatic worshipfulness of the Receda Cube, and the fact that, according to a recent PxC Sentinel article, the Recons have compounds where their members can meet/recuperate/etc. in safety, I am seeing some strong parallels between them and the Brotherhood of Nod. (See this post for more details: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=161370#161370 )

It is, therefore, possible that the religiosity of the Recons is a front for what could essentially be a terrorist organization with access to advanced weaponry, such as neuro-suppressant devices.

Which leads me to another piece of speculation: what if Ceretin was originally designed not as a cognitive enhancer (although it does have that effect), but as a safeguard against death by neuro-suppression for Perplexian military/police forces?

Alternatively, there could be two forms of Ceretin - one (let's call it Ceretin-P) the publicly-available cognitive enhancer, and the other (Ceretin-M) a cognitive enhancer/anti-neurosuppressant for use by Perplexian military/police forces.

[Leeravitz]

Thanks, guys. This is just the sort of information gathering enterprise I was hoping we could get going, to try and get speculations on different aspects of the mystery together in one place, so that we can see whether or not anything joins up suggestively with anything else. Keep it up!

[Macavity]

Perhaps this ought to be stickified so we don't lose it - it would be very useful as the search for the Cube continues. After all, with more information, we may see new patterns . . . and as we all know, Search can be quite persnickety at times.

[Scott]

[Leeravitz]

It's gratifying to hear that a number of you appreciated the way the thread was set out. Seej has already asked me if I would to contribute (sometime) to adding this stuff somewhere like the Wiki, so it's easier to refer to. I think we have a tendency towards two problems in keeping our information well ordered:

1. That new information is always emerging - generally, I feel that a lot doesn't tell us much, but we don't tend to update notes as regularly as we should...what happens is that anyone can get all the game lowdown if they're prepared to trawl through the Sentinel archives etc. for long enough, but this consistently gets to be a harder and harder task.

2. When discussing matters we often get into such large - scale speculation that we lose sight of what we have actually been told. So, for instance, we have no idea if the Cube is a matter transmission device - it *could* be, but we've not been told that, even indirectly. A key probably isn't neuralware, but, in honesty, we don't know exactly how one functions etc. Sometimes, it's good just to get back to what we've been given as direct information, and reassess what we think.

With this said, I must now add some ideas that recently occurred to me...

Being a bit of a mystery buff for many years, I have been working on the approximate assumption that what MC want the ARG to be *about* ultimately is the solving of a mystery. This appears to be a dual mystery: Where is the Cube being hidden, and, maybe as important, who stole it, and why? In any self - respecting puzzle of this sort, it must be assumed that, Agatha Christie like, the PMs will gradually give us enough clues to piece together the central sequence of events, identify motives etc. This type of thing always works best when it is not rooted in wild guesswork and surmise, but when the clues have actually been hidden in plain view all along. They may be hard to find, as they may be widely separated from one another, but when pieced together, they will yield solutions. At this moment in time, I can't see much of the information available illuminating much else of the information available, and, at one level, I wonder if the PMs have yet given us much more than a 'taster' for the sort of details that will pour out thick and fast in the months to come.

But, in fact, whether this happens or not rather depends on what kind of 'mystery' game we're in. If it's an Agatha Christie type whodunnit at heart, then it's only fair that all the clues turn up, piece by piece, and we tie them gradually together in order to make a case. If it's a Sherlock Holmes type mystery, then we, as players, are not, perhaps, expected to crack the mystery ourselves, but just follow the story along as the PMs reveal it (what I mean is that Conan Doyle isn't 'fair' on his readers in this sense - most Holmes cannot be puzzled out independently by the reader before you reach the end, because the great detective is always in possession of some vital piece of information the reader can't know).

In the latter case, what would the point of the game be? Well, we still have to find the Cube. Now, maybe that will work like a massive treasure hunt, and, given the fuss that has been made about the Cube's transfer to Earth, it seems fair to surmise that there may be an *actual* location ultimately involved. Will this hypothetical treasure hunt be orchestrated through the cards? Your guess is as good as mine...

But the point I'm making is that I, personally, would love to think working out who organised the theft/whether it was all an accident etc. was a vital part of the game, another key aspect of the ARG's 'puzzles'. But it could just be that we'll get told eventually 'whodunnit' by default, because MC want us to focus on the card puzzles and finding the cube. I hope not, but I guess it's a possibility.

If you want another analogy, I'm on a bit of a Twin Peaks roll at the moment. The first season was great, because I think the idea that there might actually be some logical way of deducing who had murdered Laura Palmer and why was very strong - you could almost piece together the hints yourself (if you had a mind to do so). But in season two, it all went very David Lynch, and the murderer was (sort of) revealed to be someone who wasn't a regular member of the cast anyway etc. etc. And I hate that.

(and yes, I know Mr. Lynch was saying something very clever about incest and abuse and so on here, but I hope you see the point)

Are we *really* expected to piece together the mystery? I hope so, but what do other people think?

[Leeravitz]

Well, to contradict myself now! Having had another look at the instruction card for the overall game, I guess it does give as point 5 'Solve the mystery of who the Cube...and why...' So, that's pretty positive.

Although most of us have seen it, it may be worth recapping on what the instruction card seems to imply we have to do within the ARG:

1. Collect the cards (obviously), with red being easiest to solve and most accessible, and silver rarest and most difficult.

2. Solve the puzzles on the cards, with individual answers giving us leaderboard points.

3. Pooling the card sets together in relation to what look like their colours and description (hex, maze etc.). Now, this is where things become interesting, because what is likely to reveal itself when the cards are grouped together? We're told that there will be more points available for a set than a single card and that we may also gain the mysterious '?' for pooling the cards. So, maybe they are going to yield bigger clues?

4. Then we have obviously the injunction to solve the mystery. Here, we're presented with a picture of the way in which the card backs fit together to make up the map of the City. From what we've pieced together of it so far, it doesn't look to me as if the map will contain too many clues on its own, although you never know - finding out where places are in relation to one another could be an important aspect of solving the mystery.

5. We're then told that we should look forward to working out who stole the Cube and why (so, we're gonna need some more information from somewhere!).

6. We're then told that the actual finding of the Cube appears to be what nets the big cash prize (TM).

Now, I suppose, the question again is whether all of these things require separate attention, or whether they cross over. The curious thing is that Adrian seems to want the cards to stand separate from the ARG, inamsuch as card - game players don't have to get involved in the ARG, and ARG players don't have to feel the need to buy cards (or so he says). That might imply that card puzzle solving is one thing, and sorting the mystery out will be conducted through more standardised ARG channels (and the MC presence might increase again, after they've ensured that the cards have started to be marketed successfully). But then, there are suggestions that the cards may be working at more than one level of complexity - so, who knows? Will we have to work out the mystery by brute force, or will we be being given coded clues to help us??

I guess we have to wait and see...

[Guest]

all things being equal the simplest explanation is probably the correct one

Hence, it would seem that the most likely explanation would be that the Reconstructionists want the cube for some nefarious reason, so they stole it, and in the process, sent it off to earth presumably by accident. It is possible that they are recruting for thier cult by means of mind control using so called cognitive enhancers. This may be why it is so hard to question members, i.e. memory erasing. Now, here is where the spec comes in. What if Fran really isnt dead. What if she was recruted by the Recon, used to get access to the Acedemy and then faked her death. Neuro-supressant devices may have been used to slow down body functions, making it appear that she was dead. She may be alive and well living in under a Recon name in their compound.

[terminalskeptik]

That was me. took me too long, even with all the typos and I was timed out

[Leeravitz]

If Fran isn't dead, then we have to assume that the Perplexian police are rather more lax in conducting autopsies than we are when an apparent death occurs in suspicious circumstances. We even have to go so far as saying that they just left the body where it was, didn't remove it to a more secure location, and then were a bit befuddled when it disappeared. Or that someone else (e.g. at the hospital) was also being paid off by the Recons to spirit the 'body' away. etc. etc.

I'm not saying that a good mystery shouldn't be that complicated, but I'd like to think that the PM's will be giving us a fighting chance to solve what's going on. I don't think it very fair if we are continually being wrong - footed as to what is actually happening. So, I'd assume that if we've been told Fran was killed that's true, that it was done by a neuro - suppressant, that the theft *was* engineered by person/persons unknown who managed to shut down three security systems etc. Newspaper reporting is, after all, meant to be *objective* and, while I hardly believe the Sentinel knows the half of it, I don't imagine their reporters blatantly make things up in a wilful campaign of disinformation. There may be other circumstances where we haven't been told any *details* - so, for instance, I suppose Hesketh Zeller *might* have faked his death, as we have little direct testimony supporting the fact that he actually died. But, on the other hand, Zeller died quite a long time ago, and would be a very old man, if he was still alive now, even accepting the fact that Perplexians seem a bit more long - lived than we generally are. We could hypothesise that he'd discovered some amazing rejuvenating serum...but I'd want more clues pointing in that direction before I'd even call that a halfway sustainable hypothesis.

Unless everything we're being fed is assumed to be disinformation engineered by Sente and his associates to inveigle us into searching for the Cube and doing his dirty work, then I'm not sure why we persist in disbelieving information we've actually been given. If I'm told Fran Mendling was killed by a neuro - suppressant, then I don't see, pending further revelations, that that isn't exactly what occurred. If it isn't, then the Perplexian police must either be a) in on a huge conspiracy or b) very, very stupid. Maybe they are one or both of those things, but I see no guarantee for it.

[cassandra]

Another bit not mentioned yet: Aiko Entrescore's exhibit, which was destroyed during a search for possible leads on the Cube theft:

[terminalskeptik]

Not to start a rant, or get too off topic for this thread but, I was just spitting out conspiracy theories. It wouldn't be that difficult to make a body dissapear. I have seen convincing plots in television shows and movies where that has been done. Anyways, I digress. So far we don't know enough to make speculations like the one i made, however it does make for a good plot twist!