Return to Unfiction unforum
 a.r.g.b.b 
FAQ FAQ   Search Search 
 
Welcome!
New users, PLEASE read these forum guidelines. New posters, SEARCH before posting and read these rules before posting your killer new campaign. New players may also wish to peruse the ARG Player Tutorial.

All users must abide by the Terms of Service.
Website Restoration Project
This archiving project is a collaboration between Unfiction and Sean Stacey (SpaceBass), Brian Enigma (BrianEnigma), and Laura E. Hall (lehall) with
the Center for Immersive Arts.
Announcements
This is a static snapshot of the
Unfiction forums, as of
July 23, 2017.
This site is intended as an archive to chronicle the history of Alternate Reality Games.
  

The time now is Thu Nov 21, 2024 1:07 am
All times are UTC - 4 (DST in action)		 View posts in this forum since last visit
View unanswered posts in this forum
Calendar
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[UPDATE] Path of Least Time 19th January 2006
View previous topicView next topic
Page 1 of 1 [11 Posts]  
Author Message
Juxta
Unfettered

Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 675

 		[UPDATE] Path of Least Time 19th January 2006
Quote:
Interrogation
Thursday, January 19 2006, 07:10 PM

I'm sorry for leaving you on a cliffhanger yesterday, but I was totally exhausted when I got back home last night and felt like I was going to fall asleep at my key. Anyway, I'll continue:

"You'd better have a good story, Mr. McAllister. I don't know how or why a member of the CRT would join the Third Power, but I'm going to enjoy finding out."

I looked at her, not knowing what to say. Just as I was about to say something on the lines of, "Uh...", Helena turned to a black-clad person next to her, and told them take a team and secure the side tunnel. They clattered down the stairs again. As my lenses adjusted to the light, I was able to make out an odd-looking patch on the shoulders of all of their suits - it looked a little like the normal Perplex City police patch, but with some motto and title that I couldn't read. I certainly hoped that they were the police.

"Fitch, Lang, take him up to the transport. We'll see if we can get a trace on the third, or at least figure out what they had here."

The groups split up, and one person - Fitch or Lang, I presumed - unceremonially hauled me up on their shoulders and started striding back up to the surface. I actually felt a little sorry for them as we were going up the main escalator, but nowhere near as sorry as I felt for myself.

"So, are you guys the police then?" I asked, attempting to look at the person who wasn't carrying me.

They didn't respond, and kept on walking up. As far as I could tell, Helena and her team didn't seem to be too friendly with the first group of people I spotted getting into the side tunnels. Whether either of them - or both of them - were part of the Third Power, I had no idea. Helena wasn't giving anything away, and I wasn't about to be fooled by a patch on a uniform. I tried another tack, hedging my bets.

"You know who I am, right? Cube Retrieval Team?"

No response. Perhaps this wasn't a good idea, pretending to be innocent and a member of the Third Power at the same time. On reflection, I decided that it was pretty stupid. Now, we were nearing the main hall.

"Come on. Where are you taking me? Who are you?"

Finally, the person looked at me, their dull visor obscuring their expressions. I felt the person carrying me shift their weight a little, as if they were unsure. At that moment, my bearer staggered and I heard what sounded like a series of firecrackers go off, deep down in the subway.

The two of them sped up and practically ran out of the entranceway, narrowly avoiding bumping my head on one of the planks. I was deposited inside an unmarked transport that was waiting a few metres away, and then one of them ran back down into the subway. The other climbed into the back of the transport with me, and took off their helmet. It was another woman.

"What just happened?" I asked her, sprawled over a seat.

She looked away, concentrating on something intently. I imagined she had a live feed into the team's voice channel.

"Explosions," she said flatly, not looking at me.

"I know that. What kind of explosions?" I replied.

"Some kind of remotely triggered device. Your friends didn't want us to follow them."

"Was anyone hurt?" I said after a while. She frowned, and said nothing.

"I'm not a member of the Third Power. They're not my friends," I said.

She half-smiled, as if she wasn't surprised, and then blinked and looked at me properly. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties, quite a stocky build, with short cut brown hair.

"Kurt McAllister, huh? Yeah, I know you're on the CRT. I'm Lang, and yes, we are the police."

I digested this piece of information. It made me feel rather ill; something had gone terribly wrong. It was obvious that the people in the side tunnel were the Third Power, and that they were expecting Helena to turn up. At the same time, Helena clearly wasn't here just to say hello, unless you count storming down the subway with a dozen heavily armed police as a friendly greeting. I decided to keep quiet for the time being. Lang returned to blinking at the wall of the transport. I felt a little put out that other people had my active contact lenses as well - no doubt the police had appropriated the museum's technology.

"No serious injuries," she mumbled after a while. "They'll be up in a minute. There's not a lot left in the tunnels for them to check. We'll be taking you for interrogation now."

"Interrogation?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

Lang picked up her helmet and replied, "You need to explain what you were doing here tonight." She pressed it onto her head, and I took that as a sign that she wasn't going to answer any more questions. The doors slid over a few seconds later and two more people walked inside, one of them limping a little. There was an ugly red slash across their leg that someone had sprayed some medicinal foam on. I looked away, and the transport started moving. Everyone in the transport sat in silence. Interestingly, I didn't feel the transport stop once - we must have had high priority on the roads.

Eventually we arrived at our destination. The doors opened onto a concrete loading bay. Apart from a single Perplex City Police Department logo at the top of a door, there were no other signs of where we were. It clearly wasn't a building open to the public.

I was placed on a wheelchair and taken through a maze of white corridors into a small, unmarked room, and left there. No-one responded further to any of my questions, and I didn't see anyone else in the building apart from Helena's team from the sbuway. The door closed, and I was left on my own. I attempted trying to get up, but my muscles were still too slack. They'd confiscated my key on the way in, so I didn't have much to do. Thankfully, I was pretty sure they wouldn't have any luck mining it for information; without my password and biometric ID, they wouldn't have a chance of getting the private stuff.

A guard opened the door, and Helena walked in. The guard followed, and stood quietly in the corner. Helena sat down on a chair opposite me. She looked tired and angry, a bad combination.

"You know what, Mr. McAllister? I don't believe that you're in the Third Power. You're not cut out for it. Which begs the question, what the hell were you doing at Gillit Road tonight?"

Helena had started off quietly, but by the time she was done, she was shouting. I didn't see much point in lying.

"I was there to look for you," I said simply. To my pleasure, she appeared to be genuinely surprised by this.

"You were there to look for me," she repeated. "How did you get this information? Did you hack in to our systems? Was there an informer?" she said quickly.

"No, I received information from Earth. There was a message hidden in some music from Perplex City that said you would be at Gillit Road, and that you were a member of the Third Power."

Helena glanced at the guard, who then nodded and left the room. She stood up, pacing around.

"Mr. McAllister. Do you have any idea how much manpower and resources have been wasted over your little stunt tonight? Three of my people have been injured because you slowed us down, and you're lucky no-one was killed. If you weren't around, we might have caught them. And now, here we are, with you telling me some idiotic story about messages from Earth. I want to know where you got this information from," said Helena.

"I'm telling you, I didn't hack in to your systems, and I didn't talk to any of your people. Why would I? I'm a member of the CRT, I'm in contact with Earth all of the time. I was contacted by some of their people looking for the Cube - they said the message was on a CD by Viard!" I replied forcefully. I wasn't about to have her railroad the conversation by assuming my guilt.

"Really," she said skeptically, as she pulled out her key. Helena tapped away for a minute and then looked up. "There's no message, we would've picked it up," she said, shaking her head. "Try again."

"Of course you wouldn't be able to find a message, the CD was only released on Earth!" I refrained from swearing at her, knowing that it would be counterproductive. "Look, if you give me my key, then I can play you the message." I had another thought. "I can also play you a recording I made of the people in the tunnel."

Helena looked up sharply, and abruptly walked out. Very soon afterwards, she walked back in with my key, and paused to say a few words to someone out of sight. She carefully closed the door, and then handed me my key.

"Tech wasn't able to get in," she snorted. "But don't try to contact anyone - we've turned the cage on."

"I wasn't going to," I lied. She meant that they'd turned on a Faraday cage - no EM transmissions would be able to get through it.

I activated it and played back the message from the Viard CD. Helena leaned back in her chair, looking annoyed. When it finished, I played the recordings I made of the people in the tunnel, which only annoyed her more.

"We'll need a copy of those," she stated. I didn't bother assenting. She looked up at the ceiling for a while.

"I'll tell you what, Mr. McAllister. I can believe that the tunnel recordings are real - we know you were down there. But I also know that you are perfectly capable of faking that 'message' from Earth, and all I have for proof that it's real is your word."

"You can run tests on it, they'll show that it's gen-"

Helena interrupted me, saying, "Don't waste my time. You're more skilled than any of my techs, that's the reason why you have your job. So I'm going to propose a deal."

I leaned forward, or at least, tried to.

Helena continued. "Here's what'll happen. We'll send you back home - we can't charge you with anything. After all, this op-" She stopped herself, and then resumed firmly. "You'll prove to me that this message is real. If you're telling the truth, and you didn't get the information about our move on Gillit Road from us, someone else did. They must have put it in the CD and sent it to Earth, setting us both up. You have to find out who put it on the CD."

"Fine. What do I get, then? Nothing?" I asked.

"No. You get to keep your job. You get our protection. And you'll get our thanks," she said flatly.

"I want to know why that place was so clean," I replied.

Helena looked at me as she got up, and took an injector out of her pocket. She tapped it a few times, holding it up to the light, and then rolled up my sleeve and pressed it against my arm. I felt my muscles immediately tighten up and incredibly painful pins and needles all over my body. As I grimaced, she walked out and said, "Maybe."

About twelve hours later, after their medics proclaimed me fine and they made a copy of the recordings from my key, then took me back to my flat in another unmarked transport. I was instructed to keep absolutely quiet about the whole experience, and they warned me that they'd be watching me closely. Immediately after I got back, I had to change and run to work, where I had to pretend that nothing had happened.

I finally got back last night and collapsed onto the bed. I wasn't fine. My muscles still ached, I'd had no sleep for almost two days, and I'd been set up.

I fell asleep, woke up this morning, and went to work. I got back, and started trying to figure out how to clear my name. The Viard CD came from Hesh - at some point, someone in Hesh must have inserted the message about Gillit Road onto the CD. It's vital that I find out who did that. I've already managed to hack into the Hesh internal network, but I'm not having any luck figuring out who might have done it or getting into their files.

You got me into this. Now you can give me your help.

_________________
zzzshusoharuxpfrp

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:16 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
WolverineFan
Decorated


Joined: 30 Dec 2004
Posts: 192
Location: Michigan/USA

 		Hesh intranet:

http://www.hesh-intranet.com/

EDIT: In case it's not obvious (took me a second) you can drag the boxes at the top down to the --- line and hit play. I presume we need to put together a message of some sort.
_________________
WolverineFan³

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:19 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
ALISDAIRPARK
Unfictologist


Joined: 27 Nov 2005
Posts: 1646
Location: Everywhere else

 		have to say it's funny how we've only really ended up where we were before. Kurt asked us to get this info before going to Gillit Rd...

edit: not getting far with the blocks...
_________________
Absorb what is useful <> Reject what is not <> Add what is uniquely your own
Playing : http://cerebrumachine.com and http://www.westunfictionopia.info

My charity page: http://www.justgiving.com/alisdairpark3

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:30 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
stevewh
Greenhorn

Joined: 14 Jan 2006
Posts: 4

 		I've managed to piece together a few bits of the sounds. Counting from left to right, top row 2 and 6 say "between", and bottom row 4 and top row 7 say "When I", which to me sounds like the start of the password.

Still trying to fathom out the other bits.

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:34 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
WolverineFan
Decorated


Joined: 30 Dec 2004
Posts: 192
Location: Michigan/USA

 		More discussion of the Hesh puzzle going on in this thread
_________________
WolverineFan³

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:10 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
ALISDAIRPARK
Unfictologist


Joined: 27 Nov 2005
Posts: 1646
Location: Everywhere else

 		On the Sentinel update thread...

ALISDAIRPARK wrote:
No one seems to be talking about:
Quote:
Official police sources say that there was no police activity in the area of the Gillit Road station Tuesday night


So..

_________________
Absorb what is useful <> Reject what is not <> Add what is uniquely your own
Playing : http://cerebrumachine.com and http://www.westunfictionopia.info

My charity page: http://www.justgiving.com/alisdairpark3

PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 5:47 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Centipede
Unfettered


Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 439
Location: Bronx, NY

 		Seems to me that Helena is trying to use Kurt to flush out the mole in the 3P that leaked us the info.

PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 3:34 pm
 View user's profile AIM Address
 Back to top 
tangohead
Veteran


Joined: 27 Apr 2005
Posts: 73
Location: North West England (Wigan)

 		Anyone notice that the Police seem to be dressed like Combine from Half-Life 2?
_________________
If you play WoW on European servers, call by Azjol Nerub and whisper my character Tangohead Smile

PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:14 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Juxta
Unfettered

Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 675

 		Well...they just have darkened uniforms and helmets...but I take your point. I didn't visualise them as being quite the "insectoid" looking helmets of HL2 to be honest. I *did* have a mental image of them being quite menacing looking, as my best guess at present it that they are some form of shadowy section of the PxC Police/Armed Forces - officially unrecognised, "Black Ops" types.

I think that, with the information we have, they would *seem* to be on the trail of the Third Power too...which, doesn't necessarily mean that we jump into bed with them - but, as the cliche goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".


J
_________________
zzzshusoharuxpfrp

PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:40 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
European Chris
Unfictologist


Joined: 19 Jul 2005
Posts: 1264
Location: London's trendy Whitechapel

 		After watchin the fist 20 mins of Blade 2 on Suday-I now imagine them to be Ninjas with red eyes, like Danny John-Jules was. No reason to do that though.

Quote:
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend".


As you alluded to, that's a nasty path to walk down.
_________________
http://www.hayfestival.com/archive/2006/05/blasphemy-debate.aspx
The internet, giving the entire world a license to opine, since 1989.
http://littleatoms.com/

PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:45 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
Macavity
Entrenched


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 883
Location: UNSC Comm Relay Station Alpha, West Shokan, NY
ALISDAIRPARK wrote:
On the Sentinel update thread...

ALISDAIRPARK wrote:
No one seems to be talking about:
Quote:
Official police sources say that there was no police activity in the area of the Gillit Road station Tuesday night


So..


Makes me think of this line:

"And finally, absolutely nothing happened today is Sector 87 by 25 by 3. Nothing whatsoever." - Susan Ivanova, "Babylon 5"
_________________
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
Consider whose fault it could be, with no match or torch in your inventory...
NP: Erase The Truth

PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:29 pm
 View user's profile AIM Address Yahoo Messenger MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 1 of 1 [11 Posts]  
View previous topicView next topic
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
Jump to:  


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
You cannot post calendar events in this forum



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group