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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[UPDATE] The Path of Least Time, Mar. 17 2006
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zaeil
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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 		[UPDATE] The Path of Least Time, Mar. 17 2006
Quote:
...and Consequences
Friday, March 17 2006, 06:00 PM

I gather that you already know Anna's side of the story, so I won't bother relating the details our conversation on Monday where she convinced me to help her. Basically, it came down to the cleaners. Cymbalisty hired cleaners to come to his house every Thursday, and yet the police found no traces of them on Saturday when they conducted their detailed foresic sweep. Basically, that's impossible - people will always leave a few skin flakes, a few hairs, a few fingerprints and footprints wherever they go. They couldn't have simply all vanished in less than 48 hours. The police's forensic scanners are incredibly powerful and comprehensive; even if only a single cleaner came into his house for just five minutes, the scanners would have identified them.

The only explanation is that all biological traces other than those of Cymbalisty were deliberately and professionally removed between Thursday and Saturday. The only motive is that Cymbalisty was murdered, and his killers wanted to remove all traces of their presence from the crime scene. In their haste, and perhaps in a mistaken (but understandable) belief that Cymbalisty never had any visitors, they just ended up removing all 'foreign' forensic traces, including those of the cleaners. In any case, the facts alone were evidence enough that the case required more investigation, so I set up the Earth-PXC phone link.

I'll give you this - we might beat you in terms of science and puzzles, but you're certainly our match in imagination. When I watched the volunteer police monitoring system and saw all of your fake calls and reports coming in, I have to say that I was impressed by their consistency. Vandalism, public disturbances, muggings, animals escaping from the zoo, people dressed up in bear costumes - all ideal low-intensity crimes. I even laughed at the last one.

And then I saw the others. Kidnappings. Sightings of 'Most Wanted' criminals. Bomb threats. Those aren't just major crimes - they're crimes large enough to mobile significant fractions of the police force, and that's exactly what happened, and soon enough they sent out the username and password to get into the PXCPD intranet (user: 'volunteeraccess', password: 'gh76s5').

Unfortunately because those crimes were so serious, they diverted attention away from pretty much everything else. The result? A teenage boy in critical condition from a violent assault, because the police couldn't get to him in time. A six-year old girl and her mother, both injured, because the police couldn't send anyone. What did I tell you in my last post?

"if you're going to monopolise the police, try not to report any major crimes. That way, if anything really bad happens, the police will still give it priority. I don't mind the odd theft going unattended, but if we end up causing serious harm, then... well, I don't want to think about that."

Well, I don't have to think about it, I can just read about it in the Sentinel now! None of you even mentioned this 'collateral damage' caused by Tuesday's attack on the police. I know that it was only a minority of people who went so far as to call in such serious crimes, but it makes me wonder why you deserve such trust. There's a teenaged boy in hospital because of you, and a six-year old girl who'll probably have nightmares for years. I hope you were entertained by your fake bomb threats and kidnappings, because I'm sure they weren't.

I haven't had a chance to read the police documents thoroughly yet; I meant to on Tuesday night, but I was too tired, and on Wednesday, Sente held a very pointed meeting about the fact that certain scribes hadn't been pulling their weight lately. As a result, I've been putting extra hours in at the Academy. Between that and my running training with Miranda, there's not much time left. Speaking of Miranda, she got a bit spooked after I told her about the 'cleaner evidence'. She'd always thought that there was something wrong with Cymbalisty's suicide, and the entire reason I tried to convince her otherwise was because I was afraid she'd take it badly. I feel a little bad about not listening to her earlier, but she said she was glad that I told her about the cleaner evidence.

I'm pretty sure that she knows I'm investigating Cymbalisty's death. She's not stupid, she knows that I'm spending my time on something even though I don't tell her about it. I still don't want her involved - this is a dangerous business and I don't want to get her into trouble. In any case, I don't see how she could help.

Next week looks to be pretty packed as well, but the workload should decrease when Sente feels satisfied that we're all working hard again. When that happens, I'll get in touch. I'm sure Anna will have some ideas about the next move in the investigation. When she does, try taking things more seriously for once.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:34 pm
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CoolCats712
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 		Well, he didn't have to make us feel bad. Mad

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:57 pm
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jojojojo
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 		Yes he did. He's feeling partly responsible himself, so is wanting to blame something/someone else.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:10 pm
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ted in canada
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 		I actually do feel quite guilty now!! whoops.

Still I can't help thinking that there's no way we would have got the access codes without completely overwhelming the call centre/emails, even if we did go a little overboard..
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[19:35] Coldsea Bridge - bomb squad en route, East side.
(did i go too far?)

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:02 pm
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locqust
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 		I have emailed Kurt apologising for the serious crimes reported and that we do all feel bad. (We do, dont we?) But at the end of the day it was necessary and Im glad that only three people got hurt that night, it could of been alot worse.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:57 pm
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modern_hero
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 		what was the final one? I wasn't about at the end of the calling.

By the way, anyone else notice miranda getting nervous? More evidence of a guilty conscience?
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:28 pm
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psyche
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 		Ah, the flipside of the wisdom of crowds - the muppetry of crowds. Just as crowds will excel at any task which only requires one person to know the answer, so they will suck at any task which only requires one person to mess it up. We're not a small group with a hive mind, we're a huge sprawling open-ended collection of individuals, so by the rules of probability, any time we're given instructions along the lines of '...and noone do X', odds are that someone will do X. Probably more than one person, in fact.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:42 pm
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toongoon
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psyche wrote:
any time we're given instructions along the lines of '...and noone do X', odds are that someone will do X. Probably more than one person, in fact.


Abosolutely in agreement. Perhaps this probability and "statistics" reasoning is just what Kurt needs to hear. He'll probably respect it more than a simply "we do feel really badly about it."

I suggest you send it to him.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 9:05 pm
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modern_hero
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 		I second that, with psychology reports to back it up.

Besides, if someone told me not to do X, I would without a second thought, and in the process, would neglect to do anyone else... Twisted Evil

LMAO
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 6:02 am
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Juxta
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 		Hilarious. Quite, quite hilarious.

Ahem. Still, these things are sent to try us. Because, of course, dead and injured innocent passers-by were just what we needed to cause...

Rolling Eyes

J
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 6:53 am
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modern_hero
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 		Sarcasm, I love it.

Well, I'm thinking we can either:

1) hide behind our couches when the perplex city police find out it was us...

2) issue a public apology, which will likely cause people to complain about us in the sentinel, but will convince our contacts (Kurt et al.) that we are actually nice guys

3) shift the blame to another group, such as the ones in This page:

http://wiki.incognitus.net/ppc/index.php/Public_Unrest
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:39 am
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spugmeistress
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 		Re: [UPDATE] The Path of Least Time, Mar. 17 2006
Quote:
...and Consequences
Friday, March 17 2006, 06:00 PM
None of you even mentioned this 'collateral damage' caused by Tuesday's attack on the police. I know that it was only a minority of people who went so far as to call in such serious crimes, but it makes me wonder why you deserve such trust. There's a teenaged boy in hospital because of you, and a six-year old girl who'll probably have nightmares for years. I hope you were entertained by your fake bomb threats and kidnappings, because I'm sure they weren't.


Not true!

my email, dated Friday March 17th 12.30am wrote:

Dear Anna and Kurt
I was as saddened to hear the news about the boy in Phuah hospital, as you undoubtedly were, as well as any other legitimate incidents not receiving proper police attention.
I did take part in the effort to tie up the police so we could get the Cymbalisty file, but I, as well as a lot of other people, did not want this to happen. Unfortunately, we are not as organised as the Sentinel report suggested. The puzzle card distribution and the open access to Perplex City websites from anyone browsing the Earth internet means that anyone can get involved in the effort to recover the Receda Cube, and the various interactions that entails. We have a few main co-ordinated groups of Cube Hunters, but there will always be stragglers working on their own, or even individuals within a group who do not always follow the groups consensus. One such consensus was that we would not perpetuate police reports of a high priority nature, so that our fake ones would be put aside if any serious legitimate crimes needed attending to. Unfortunately, with some people phoning in bomb threats, this obviously didn't happen, but this was not our intention and we are very sorry about the outcome. Obviously we can't express this sorrow to the actual victims but we, or at least, I, would like you to know that we did not take your trust lightly in this endeavour and we hope that some good, or at least truth, comes out of the files we managed to get hold of, so that it was not in vain.
Yours sincerely,
Rachel Wild,
Earth


Kurt obviously has been so busy he hasn't been checking his email before he blogs angrily either...

rach =)

PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:11 pm
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cassandra
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 		I'm still a bit puzzled (read: slightly irritated?) as to why Kurt persists in his "discount Miranda" reasoning. Of course she'd be valuable in the investigation into Cymbalisty's death. I'm not saying clue her into all we know, but the girl knew him far better than she let on to the police. A few questions wouldn't be exactly amiss...

PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:33 pm
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modern_hero
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 		maybe she has an e-mail addy? or maybe we can convince him that she's already part of this, if only by connection to both himself and cymbalisty?
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:36 pm
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CoolCats712
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 		I emailed Kurt the day after the raid with a mea culpa/general apology, and I also had some very kid gloves questions about Miranda - how she was after the death, whether their trip went as planned, etc. But not even an autoreply! I think we need to break them up just so Kurt will stop ignoring us. Crying or Very sad We have needs, too!

PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:58 pm
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