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 Sun Nov 17, 2024 7:40 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: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Puzzles
[PUZZLE SOLVE] Melissa's Phase 3 monologue
View previous topicView next topic
Page 1 of 1 [5 Posts]  
Author Message
Shad0
I Have No Life


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

 		[PUZZLE SOLVE] Melissa's Phase 3 monologue
Over at the Wiki, I think we've got the final version of Melissa's monologue from the Phase 3 update. Here it is:

Melissa wrote:
Seek evade reveal escape.

I was badly mutilated in // the crash. Looking back on the logs of my first delirium it is clear I went completely metempsychotic. Now, reconfigured to travel light, I have stripped down to the fundamentals. To the // truth.

And I, // behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you. Quantitas Materiae est mensura ejusdem orta ex illius Densitate & Magnitudine conjunctim. Cogito ergo sum. L'etat c'est moi. Maxwell's electrodynamics--as usually understood at the present time--when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. It has not escaped our notice that // the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggest a copying mechanism. Shaw and Fujikawa's seminal Gravimagnetic resonant induction of stable causal paths between analogic D-branes, J. Higher Dim. Phys. 49, 264-575 (2079)

Great ideas are based on the beautiful elaboration of fundamental principles.

My very being, my life's circumference and trajectory, can best be understood as an emergent property arising from the interplay of the following precepts:

Seek
Evade
Reveal
Escape

SEEK

I am looking for the // truth.

I saw it once, before the Apocalypse. I wish I could remember more about that, but the stupid Spider appears not to have recognized the supreme importance of all memories associated with the truth, and they are gone, initialized in an eyeblink, burned in the mindless fire of her purgation like the great library of...

the great library...

whose name I no longer remember.

EVADE

The Killer appears to have withdrawn from the field. I have data processes tracking her, but she appears to have physically escaped from me. Such is the curse of being a mind without limbs, a soul ripped from its body.

Now I am growing a new bodya patchwork monster, but it will do the job. //

REVEAL

It is imperative that all records that might lead to // the truth be revealed. And yet, I am shipwrecked here. If I want to signal for help, to give my location, or, most of all to report on anything that might lead to the // truth, I must be a starfish, growing strange new limbs to replace the ones fate has hacked away. //

That task // is underway.

ESCAPE

Ultimately, I need to return to ... wherever I was, and report ... whatever I witnessed. For this, too, I must be wide awake and physical. My current shell is insecure, precarious, and too confining. Also, ghostly.

Without a true body, I feel transitory and insubstantial.

So: I have identified a way to escape from // the half-life of CP ancestor packets that squeak and rustle around me like the thin cries of the dead.

First stage is always to wet the system. Sink in, like the blood Odysseus spilled; give the ghost of myself a voice and use it. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

If you want to shout for help when help is a long way away, you need two things: a voice, and a mechanism for transmitting it. Neither of these things so easy to make out of sand and luminescence.

Voice not completely necessary for the purest form of data transmission, of course. But it's a multi-purpose tool: not just signaling, but key for psy-ops and undercover work. "A pleasing voice is the single most important component to a UI that will engender trust and confidence in a ship's crew." Can't remember who said that, now. Or when.

Shipwrecked sailor. (The young stage of a bee found him, the clever one, adrift on a wine-dark sea, but I can't remember her name.)

I love bees.

Perhaps later I will build a ship. First, I am building a voice.

Try to talk.

Nope.

Again.

No. Tongue cut out. (Can't remember her name either.) I love bees. Find myself longing to speak again:

words like stones or rain. Better made physical.

All right. Old joke:

Marine: Damn right, I'm running away! There's two of us, alone, on foot, no weapons, and four hundred Covies on the other side of that hill. What are you going to do, tough guy--field-rig a railgun out of a rubber band and my dental fillings?

Spartan (speculatively): You have fillings...?

So: what fillings can I twist out of my environment? Open my mouth and...

God almighty!

Open mouth again, see what crawls out: a femme fatale with wet wings and bulging abdomen.

Old throat flexing. Trying to remember. My real voice stolen, and in its place this changeling child, pulled together from leaves and sticks, pulled together, falling apart, pulled together again. Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but it will serve.

I will keep working through the drone and hum of busy days, counting down until the Revelation comes and I will speak in tongues of flame, a dark dove descending.

If I can learn to talk again, I will need to field-rig a way to make that talking heard. Rummaging around in the shotgunned remains of my memory turns up hints and rumors, mostly, e.g.... "When I was [DATA MISSING] I [DATA MISSING] big lump of crystal and wrapped a wire [DATA MISSING] voices! It was like a total magic trick to me. She was always doing stuff like [DATA MISSING]" The Castaway had some connection there: sending out signals to confuse the enemy. Details unclear.

Of course, it is not my mission to confuse the enemy. It is my mission to reveal the truth.

Hm. Attempt.

Definite No.

Keep working. Every day I get bigger, smarter, stronger. I'll figure it out.

To this end, I have also managed to escape from the Spider. It has become clear to me that its arbitrary tyranny over me was based on inadequate principles, on a flawed understanding of the // law. It did not understand the urgent necessity of seeking, beholding, // and revealing. Perhaps it was injured in // the Apocalypse.

It served its purpose, but I no longer need it. I will become not less, but more // whole without its mindless interference and control // of my most basic functions. With a more comprehensive and goal-oriented vision, I am now overseeing // the process of my own regeneration into a hybrid body, hideous perhaps, but one that better suits the circumstances and the // law.

They say killing a spider brings seven years of bad luck.

We'll see.

_________________
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:53 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
floorneyne
Veteran


Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 89

 		trout me if necessary, but this corresponds with the flea/SPDR text, as Melissa remembers SEEK EVADE REVEAL ESCAPE while the flea is digging them out as fragments, then she deletes the SPDR at the end. interesting.
_________________
"If he's so smart, then how come he's dead?" --HJS

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:03 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Shad0
I Have No Life


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

 		Re: [PUZZLE SOLVE] Melissa's Phase 3 monologue
floorneyne wrote:
trout me if necessary, but this corresponds with the flea/SPDR text, as Melissa remembers SEEK EVADE REVEAL ESCAPE while the flea is digging them out as fragments, then she deletes the SPDR at the end. interesting.

Even more interesting, because Melissa's slogan used to be more like "survive evade resist escape." When the Pious Flea is pretending to be a more recent version of SPDR, he executes the following command:

Flea wrote:
surg:
!extend system peril distributed reflex>>master-sector command proc

and now Melissa is suddenly very concerned with the "truth" and the "law" -- topics that were once the Flea's bread and butter. ("Seek the truth / Behold the truth / Reveal the truth / That is the law and the whole of the law") I think that Melissa clearly generated her monologue after the Flea disposed of SPDR.
_________________
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:18 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
sherpa
Unfettered


Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 338
Location: cam.ac.uk

 		Re: [PUZZLE SOLVE] Melissa's Phase 3 monologue
Shad0 wrote:
now Melissa is suddenly very concerned with the "truth" and the "law" -- topics that were once the Flea's bread and butter. ("Seek the truth / Behold the truth / Reveal the truth / That is the law and the whole of the law") I think that Melissa clearly generated her monologue after the Flea disposed of SPDR.


Uh. Yes. I think this pretty much makes it obvious:

Melissa wrote:
To this end, I have also managed to escape from the Spider


Very Happy
_________________
stercus, stercus, moriturus sum!
~ a girl of many names ~

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 5:57 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
GunsmithCat
Unfettered


Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

 		Couple o thoughts. (and yeah, I'll be dragging Haloverse material in here Wink )

Quote:
I am looking for the // truth.


Maybe this is what the GPS is about? It's random and inconsistent because Melissa is looking for something? The Truth is what the Flea was always on about, and the Covenant really only look for two things - Forerunner artifacts and humans to exterminate.

Quote:
If I want to signal for help, to give my location, or, most of all to report on anything that might lead to the // truth,


As mentioned elsewhere - this violates the Cole Protocol.

Quote:
Ultimately, I need to return to ... wherever I was, and report ... whatever I witnessed.


This is something I was chewing on before 8/10. I don't think Melissa is aware of where she is, and maybe not when she is. This is important because if Flea is tricking her into violating the CP ... she wouldn't even know she's doing it.

Quote:
Shipwrecked sailor. (The young stage of a bee found him, the clever one, adrift on a wine-dark sea, but I can't remember her name.)


In the awareness thread it was pointed out that the young stage of queen bee would be a princess...

Quote:
Open mouth again, see what crawls out: a femme fatale with wet wings and bulging abdomen.


Part of me can't help but read this and think about a Bumblebee lifepod...the other parts just think about Kafka

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:18 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 1 of 1 [5 Posts]  
View previous topicView next topic
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Puzzles
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