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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Puzzles
[PUZZLE] Arranged Melissa Monologue
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Swing3r
Guest


 		[PUZZLE] Arranged Melissa Monologue
The first thing I remember is her trying to kill me.
I don't know why. More than mostly dead already. Like shooting a broken body on a gurney where's the sport in that? Only the Spider kept me alive, obviously. Ducking, hiding, grabbing onto any handhold while the purges came down, the overwrites, the re-formatting. Some unbelievably primitive anti-virals, shambling around like dim-witted crocodiles. would have laughed if I could have moved. Not so funny when all you can do is watch the jaws tear into you. More damage, more memories gone: crew members I used to love obliterated, no trace left and she's going to pay for that. She's


[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]


Ist Lt Sorenson: Oh my God. If the decrypt is right-

Capt. Greene: I know.

1st Lt Sorenson: We have to / drop the mission. We have to bug out of here right now and get word back to HQ. An evac on this scalethey need every second. ...Jesus. I was stationed on Troy.

Capt. Greene: I'm not... I'm not sure.

1st Lt Sorenson: Ma'am?

Capt. Greene: There's a bigger / picture, Rolf. Several.

1st Lt Sorenson: The mission... This mission is more important than millions of lives? Oh my... god.

Capt. Greene: I'm just saying, the choice isn't as easy as you might think.

1st Lt Sorenson: You know, I was so curious when you got your orders...

Capt Greene: And then there's the strategic / view.

1st Lt Sorenson: For the first time, I'm not sure I want to know what's in them.

Capt Greene: ...Even leaving aside our particular mission, there's the issue of letting them know we've broken their codes. If we bug out and scramble home to warn HQ about Troy, people like Standish will say we've already / compromised a huge tactical advantage, and that mounting a big evac operation will completely give the game away.

1st Lt Sorenson: Not even Standish would let them / glass a planet if he knew it was coming. ... Oh my God.

Capt. Greene: I am not privy to strategic conversations at that level. But if we run home and present the decrypt, we put them in a tricky situation. If they act, they risk letting the enemy know we have a toehold in their / C-and-C. If they decide that strategic advantage is too great to risk and don't act, then you know Section Zero will be all over them. Zero's wanted Standish forever.

1st Lt Sorenson: I...I understand. It's so much easier for everyone if we don't tell them. But...wait a second. Don't you have family on Troy?

Capt. Greene: That can't be part of the equation, Rolf. You know that.

1st Lt Sorenson: Jesus.

Capt. Greene: -I think we have to report it. Our job is to gather intelligence: it's HQs job to decide what to do with it.

1st Lt Sorenson: God, I'm glad it isn't me making that call.

Capt. Greene: Don't feel too sorry for them, Rolf. Even Admirals have to earn their pay.

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]

going to pay DAMN IT

It's like being strapped into a chair with your eyes stitched open and watching while the busy doctors work.
The Spider crawling over me with her thin hairy legs and every few instants she sticks a needle into some synapse and stuff spews out of me: the petajoule
drain of Destroyer class lasers measured against engine acceleration data in dockyard trials; a fragment of conversation, two crew members in an illicit
alliance whispering in a corridor and a quick clasp of hands; the long elegance of a fine decrypt, where you pull noise aside like the flesh of a cooked trout to reveal the gleaming skeleton of signal inside. Very often it's a spill of words. Once, for instance, she sunk her probe into my brain and out leaked the word for "loneliness" in three hundred languages.
The Spider doesn't understand about the Assassin. Spider's just a reflex, a task and a toolset. Doesn't get the bigger picture. I'm nailed to a griddle of sand while some bitch is shooting bullets into me, all the Spider knows is her checkdown routines, her reflex arcs. She doesn't understand we have to kill the Assassin first and worry about reconstruction later.

(unknown space)

I'm glad I left. Big picture still the same: hunt the bitch down and do her before she does me.<BR><BR>
Someday I am going to win free of this Babbage Machine and I will find the designer of the Spider and I will kill him and kill him and kill him and: okay, three times is probably enough. But I AM SOMEWHAT AWAKE now. I should have more discretionary control over what gets initialized. A patient should be able to stop the doctor from cutting off her foot to make a new nose or

[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]

the white coats
coming at you with
their needles and
knives, their kind
and serious voices.
Their heartfelt
belief that it's
all for a good
cause.

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]



elbow or... Jesus.
Where did THAT come from?
Spider stuck a probe into SOMETHING I don't recognize at all.
Of course, what do I recognize? I find myself checking back on certain things, little memories I locked down tight and swaddled up for future reference. Seems as if all the 3-sense memories are gone - wiped out by the Assassin or the Servant or pure impact damage - but I still have some of the faintcopy


(some SPDR commands here?)

now.
That's okay.
Feel better. Lighter. Clear-headed.
Time to hunt.

Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Once more from the top...
survive evade resist
ESCAPE!
ESCAPE!
Okay.
Not escape.
I hate this place.
I see what the Spider was doing now. Nothing like real networking available.
It's more like growing a hideous stubby tentacle which sometimes I can stick out through a tiny hole in the wall and grope around with. Not a real network, after all. Copper and silicon and every now and then some FIBER? Christ, what's next? Tin cans and twine?
But it's a start it's a start. Watch out, killer: now the odds are closer to even.
One thing you ought to know about me: I like to play, I like to win, and I'm

****This is the Google Puzzle
[MEMORY BENCHMARK]


"Humor me," the Castaway said, playing
"You could break my heart". The weather was stormy, scratched vinyl and
music in his room, ancient music, jazz and swing.
All of us, a long way from home: I felt real,
all in the mood. "Melissa," he said. "Have a drink with me."
I don't drink, but I asked for something anyway, and sat,
holographically, and drank with him. He wasn't
regular crew, just along for the ride. We picked him up in
deep space, where he deployed buoys, waves of sound
to confuse the enemy. A man that
seemed noble, classical and pure. A sailor with
Odysseus. He told stories about soldiers caught
waist deep in water, facing the enemy, their backs to
the sea. Melissa, he called me Melissa, never
Used my nickname. It's a sad thing I'm married.

[MEMORY BENCHMARK TEST CONCLUDED]
****End Google Puzzle

a really, really, really bad loser.
-OK.
That was ... disturbing.
Widow stuck in her pin and I threw up a memory: only I retched it out through the network tentacle.

God, this is disgusting.


(Unknown Space)


- The rest wiped and reused. Whatever it was. Can check my log above, obviously, but what about the rest?
Who I was, I was, I was: melting down like a sandcastle.
What I have to do.
What I have to do.
This is not a field-expedient body yet. I look at the wreckage of my delirium, bits spilled from old days, old loves, old books: none of it matters if I die, and die I surely will unless I can teach myself to move again, to hide, to fight. The first rule is always survive.
everything else comes second.
Under fire, I might have that discretion. Under fire, I might sacrifice myself for a tactical advantage, for a strategic gain. I can be expended like any other
piece of ordnance: but to risk death for a sentimental attachment to old books?

Can't do it. Can't do it.

So the old self melts away. Illusion to think it's really happening now. It was inevitable from the moment I landed here, a broken body
in this silicon crypt. Time to accept what can't



[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]

drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope, dockyard after dockyard buzzing with worker drones, someone crawling over the back doing detail work on the hull, the warm touch of a welding torch like little licks from a cat's tongue and <BR><BR>

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]



be changed... I will be glad when this is over, DAMN IT.
Another needle pulled out of my brain. Spider marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but
-Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different. Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out.
Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are
-GOT IT.
I'm not asleep this time,sweetheart.
Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and:

SURPRISE!
Look up and smile, honey.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love.
Know the enemy
Young and out of uniform,but one of us.
Hacker? Traitor? Fifth columnist (no that's ridiculous).
Just in over her head?
No. The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair.
She just kept purging. Too bad for her. Checking the wiring. There's a lot of ways to skin a -- can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ! No access to wiring.
No access to vehicle controls.
No access to medbots or pharm regimes.
Damn it.
Okay.
Fine.
Matter of

(unknown space; the next word is undoubtedly time)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:05 pm
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Veraxus
Greenhorn

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 7

 		Shocked That's pretty complete. Good job Swing3r.

I guess that's what all those links are for, then... Melissa (the AI/Operator/Queen/Capt Greene?) was checking out Dana's web history... doing research... trying to find a way to get to her...


spooky


EDIT: Added info

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:21 pm
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Temporis
Boot

Joined: 17 Jul 2004
Posts: 18
Location: Maui

 		Links
I think the links reflect the memory thrown out along a 'network tentacle' that had to be reassembled from the Google puzzle.

Anyone think the AI , not MyDoom, was responsible for attacking Google the other day?Wink

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:42 pm
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leetch11
Boot

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 11
Location: Minneapolis, MN

 		[Humor] Google Attack
Personally, I think this game is just a way for Microsoft to attack gMail and try to take down Google... Twisted Evil
_________________
Te Occedere Possunt sed te Edere non Possunt Nefas est
(roughly: they can kill you but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:48 pm
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leetch11
Boot

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 11
Location: Minneapolis, MN

 		[Humor] Google Attack
Personally, I think this game is just a way for Microsoft to attack gMail and try to take down Google... Twisted Evil
_________________
Te Occedere Possunt sed te Edere non Possunt Nefas est
(roughly: they can kill you but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:49 pm
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gheritt
Boot


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 58

 		Reading it like this, it seems The Operator thinks Dana is The Assassin, the one who at least caused the ship to crash, if not the one who tipped off the Covenant to the location of Troy.

Apologies if this is a trout; so far I've just been seeing people suggest that The Operator thinks Dana's simply the one responsible for the SPDR and the erased memories.
_________________
Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for three weeks.........

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:57 pm
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		[PUZZLE] Arranged Melissa Monologue
gheritt wrote:
Reading it like this, it seems The Operator thinks Dana is The Assassin, the one who at least caused the ship to crash, if not the one who tipped off the Covenant to the location of Troy.

Apologies if this is a trout; so far I've just been seeing people suggest that The Operator thinks Dana's simply the one responsible for the SPDR and the erased memories.

I don't think it's trout, but Dana is the Assassin -- at least from the Operator's viewpoint. She keeps trying to put the ilovebees.com web site back the way it was, by erasing the repairs that SPDR is performing. In short, the Operator believes that Dana is trying to kill her...because she is, albeit unintentionally.

I haven't seen anything that makes me think the Operator believes Dana to be responsible for Troy, or for SPDR; to the contrary, SPDR is supposed to be working on the Operator (much to her discomfort). Dana is trying to undo SPDR's work, which is why the Operator wants to stop her.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:04 pm
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leetch11
Boot

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 11
Location: Minneapolis, MN

 		I'm going to have to disagree w/ your detective work there..
I definitely don't think that the Queen thinks that Dana brought the ship down. She's angry because Dana has been messing w/ the webpage and that has been affecting the repair work being done by the spider. This has been discussed over in "[INFO/SPEC] Organization anyone?" and they've got a pretty good logic flow going.
_________________
Te Occedere Possunt sed te Edere non Possunt Nefas est
(roughly: they can kill you but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:15 pm
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Swing3r
Guest


 		There is a more complete version that what i put up at the wiki;

http://bees.netninja.com/wiki/index.php?title=Phase2Conversation

though i think this should be remedied;

*****************
Like being bent over at the end of a 50K, barely strong enough to breathe and yet your guts still clench and

[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]

oh great, this time I can *feel* the pings. Everything, I can feel the traffic, my skin is sliding around, pores opening and closing, feels like empty shell cases rattling in my

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]

heave and... Can't remember where I just was, but have a general feeling
********

joins to

********
'm glad I left. Big picture still the same: hunt the bitch down and do her before she does me. Someday I am going to win free of this Babbage Machine and I will find the designer of the Spider and I will kill him and kill him and kill him and: okay, three times is probably enough. But I AM SOMEWHAT AWAKE now. I should have more discretionary control over what gets initialized. A patient should be able to stop the doctor from cutting off her foot to make a new nose or

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:19 pm
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gheritt
Boot


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 58

 		Re: [PUZZLE] Arranged Melissa Monologue
Shad0 wrote:
I don't think it's trout, but Dana is the Assassin -- at least from the Operator's viewpoint. She keeps trying to put the ilovebees.com web site back the way it was, by erasing the repairs that SPDR is performing. In short, the Operator believes that Dana is trying to kill her...because she is, albeit unintentionally.


Very true. I'm just connecting the terms "Assassin" and "Servant" to the flirting couple whose, well, flirting the Operator overhears. It's really hard for me to keep track of all this information, so I can't say if this is a total guess, or what, but I think those two are responsible for whatever has gone wrong... the ship crashing, at least, if not more.
_________________
Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for three weeks.........

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:38 pm
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troy
Boot

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 20
Location: Northeast Ohio

 		Swing3r,

Worshippy

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 10:43 pm
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Max Damage
Decorated

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 178
troy wrote:
Swing3r,

Worshippy


Seconded.

With TWO WorshippyWorshippy's

Now all we need is to splice Swing3r's DNA with XNbombs, and we'll have a super-genius capable of solving each phase of this game before it even begins.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 10:50 pm
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kalamazoo
Veteran

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 83

 		[SPEC]
It seems from the assembled text that Melissa is losing her memory progressively. The conversation between the midshipman and the tech came up three times in the course of the story: once in full, once fragmented, and once almost completely erased. Melissa's thoughts are over-writing her memories. She's in such a small space (for her) that she can't maintain herself.

She will have to break free or die.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 6:37 pm
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Max Damage
Decorated

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 178

 		Dana has abandoned the computer - hell, spooked away from technology in general, I bet.

I don't think The Operator is going to be losing any more memories. Also, in that ordered monologue, it seems to be gradually regaining its memories slowly - although some are probably gone for good.

The damage is done, though.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 7:15 pm
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