unforum

[Leeravitz]

I think we ought to bear that in mind

[dusty2229]

So maybe its not FULLY solved yet if a bit of the string is still not decoded.
Does anyone know anymore about this?

[cronogenesis]

Its probobly just to make th nice and pretty ASCII.


Does anybody realies we now have an idea of what the cube actually looks like? This is the first picture of the cube we've seen!

[Leeravitz]

I guess that's true...inasmuch as a representation of the Cube presumably attempts to be as accurate to the original as possible...

But what does it tell us? Other than the fact that the Cube is indeed, erm, cuboid...

It could be that it has Roman numerals incised upon its faces (and I think everyone will assume that, if so, the three sides we couldn't see on the diagram would be numbered IV - VI, just like a die), but I don't think that's a guarantee, necessarily. For a start, although I don't actually know for certain, isn't there a correspondence between the order the message needed to be read in, and the numbering.

If the Cube is , in reality, marked up like this, then that would certainly be... interesting. The presence of Roman numerals is peculiar, in the sense that there is no reason (save for good ol' 'convergent development' theory) that an ideogrammatic numbering system should adopt the particular Roman methodology. There are plenty of ancient Earth based numbering systems that emerged before the widespread adoption of Arabic numerals, that look nothing like Roman numbering systems. Indeed, the idea of using letters to represent numbers was far from universal (although the Hebrews and Greeks also used variations on it), and it was partly adopted by the Romans because they tended to incise in stone a lot, and it's simply easier to sculpt things in relief that don't have curvy edges.

With that said, we *did* make a logical, but isomorphic, assumption upon seeing the ASCII cube. This was that the numbering system was Roman numerals. Naturally, that's the comparison that occurs to us. But all we have are three signs that represent 1, 2, and 3 as I, II, and III. Sure, the Romans used I as equivalent to 1, but, frankly, any single mark made on a piece of paper vertically looks rather like an I. In this sense, the representation only tells us that Perplexians *may* have had an ancient numeral system that represented numbers up to three by...er...sticking the appropriate numbers of marks on paper. If we had seen, say, the fourth side, and noted a IV, the Roman comparison would be much more valid, because using 'V' to represent 5 is an unusual, and specific, use of symbols, and, in fact, rendering 4 as 5 less 1 is not the only way you could work with the numbers - it just happens that the Romans counted on a base 5 system.

Admitedly, that's probably making rather a lot of fuss about nothing - we know that modern Perplexians utilise Arabic numerics happily enough - although one might argue a) all we see from Perplexian society comes by way of Sente and his team and latterly Mind Candy, so maybe this is a 'translation convention' b) the fad for all things Earth based in recent years may have encouraged numbering in a different manner.

Equally, there is no firm guarantee that the Cube was created by the Perplexians in the first place - so it may not be their numbering system we're concerned with...

Frankly, I think it's hard to say what this tells us about the Cube proper...

Well, unless we're assuming it's a huge die that rolled off the Gods' table while they were playing Monopoly, of course

[BrianEnigma]

[cronogenesis]

Aiko Entrescore has been arrested. With it being this early (in the sence of story progression) into the game, it usually means that the firt person suspected is innocent. (Not that it completely rules her out!)

I don't think that the recons are physicly to blame, but are somehow slightly involved in a secondary way. However, they may just be a red herring.

Reminds me when we were doing Sherlock Holmes at school earlier this year, we ain't seen nothing yet!

[Leeravitz]

Let's be frank - Aiko got arrested because we set her up! But the whole thing stinks to me, period. The Recons obviously have axes to grind, and I don't think we need to shift suddenly from seeing them as militant fanatics to viewing them as innocent victims - at least, not if we know what's good for us!! True, we may have misguidely attributed certain ambitions to the Reconstructionists that the sect just doesn't have, although the fact that the City was already having problems with them *before* any of this business got started implies that there's enough smoke to cause fire.

On the other hand, the Recons are clearly being scapegoated in lieu of anything better - the police don't actually appear to have anything to pin on them, and are simply hoping to get them to 'confess' to something under pressure, I'd assume. As the Recons are demonised as high - profile kooks in Perplexian society, it's a good smokescreen to distract from the fact that the Cube has been missing a long time, and recovery still seems impossible. And, who knows, maybe even Sente et. al. are genuinely clutching at straws and hoping a new lead will somehow manifest. At the very least, breaking Reconstructionism apart, destroying its reputations by embroiling it in scandal etc. will be of benefit to the City authorities, I suspect.

But this is knee - jerk stuff that appears to have no basis in evidence that the Recons were involved in the theft at all...

And this discussion probably belongs in the speculative general threads, now I'm thinking about it.

[spugmeistress]

[ER123456]

I agee with dusty2229 - I don't think that we have finished decoding the text.

In the remaining section there is a short piece that doesn't decode to much and several numbers. I think that there is some hidden meaning there.

[perplexed]

ummm in the undecoded bit there is a twentyseven digit number (3^3) is this more than a coincidence?

475225799863217819878287568

does anybody have any ideas bout this?