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 Tue Nov 19, 2024 2:38 pm
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] The Path of Least Time 15th Jan 2007
View previous topicView next topic
Page 1 of 1 [8 Posts]  
Author Message
Mikeyj
Unfictologist


Joined: 18 Oct 2004
Posts: 1847
Location: London

 		[UPDATE] The Path of Least Time 15th Jan 2007
The beginning of the end...
I have a lump in my throat...

Kurt wrote:

The Beginning of the End
Monday, January 15 2007, 12:31 PM

I've begun to clear out my room in the Academy. Packing has never been a difficult task for me, so I've left it to the last minute to decide which of my commemorative mugs, puzzle toys and postcards I'll take back home and which I'll shove into the filing cabinet. More tricky will be the task of revoking my privileges on the Academy network, but somehow I doubt that's something they'll want me doing, with everything that's happened lately.

Whatever the Sentinel might say, the reason the link's been opened again is because it's been compromised by the Third Power - twice. During a very thorough scan of the link a couple of weeks ago, we picked up some anomalies; packets being dropped at odd times, odd patterns of latencies. Looking closer, it became clear that information was being transmitted. Messages.

What's disturbing is that it looks like the Third Power is responsible. Since the entire point of the firewall was to prevent this sort of thing from happening, everyone involved was alarmed. Earlywine immediately ordered us to stop the Third Power's messages, which I found to be pretty easy from a technical point of view, given that it was pretty fragile and subtle to begin with. Despite myself, I was very impressed with the Third Power's work. When constructing the firewall, I'd briefly considered the possibility that someone might try to send information through the firewall in this sort of way, but I concluded that it would just be too noisy and would require computing power of a kind unavailable to most.

From a political point of view, the situation was extremely sensitive. I'm guessing that no-one wanted to tell the public that the firewall had been compromised - that would seriously damage both the Academy and the Council. Equally, Earlywine won the election on a promise of openness, so if the news ever leaked out that he was trying to cover it up, it would be even more damaging.

In the end, Garnet and Henrik Tanner decided to force the issue by talking to the Sentinel directly. From the Academy point of view, this was the least worst of all possible solutions - it made them look honest (well, more honest than Earlywine, at least) and it prevented any accusations of a cover-up.

That's where things would have settled, if you guys hadn't discovered that the Third Power had managed to compromise the link again, through this mysterious Babel site. I appreciate you guys telling me, although I'm not so pleased that you also emailed Garnet. This time around, he and Earlywine moved immediately to limit its spread - if the news of this got out, it would be disastrous for everyone involved.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure it was at this point that the people at the top were searching for a suitable scapegoat.

My priority, though, was to try and figure out what was going on with Babel. See, the reason I called the site 'mysterious' is not because of the question of who this Babel is, but because it's completely invisible to anyone in Perplex City. It's like it exists inside the gap between the two worlds. That's a metaphor, by the way - it only looks that way.

A Digression on Babel

Obviously I can't see the Babel site, but I have read extracts of their writings that you've emailed to me. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what they mean, other than being some sort of clues to the Cube's location. The worrying thing is that if the Third Power have access to Babel's clues, then they might be able to find the Cube that way as well. The only hope is that because you are more familiar with Earth - since you live there - you have a better chance at decoding the clues than the 3P. But it could be a close-run thing...

End of digression

The way the Babel site works - the only way it could work - is through bypassing my firewall and sending data to Earth at some later point. My suspicion is that it's connected to the link at a hardware level, somewhere in the Centre for Reality Research.

It's only a suspicion because I haven't been able to follow it up. It would be perfectly easy for me to take a trip down there and inspect their hardware, but there are two reasons why I can't do that.

The first is that Earlywine and Garnet have lost confidence in the firewall. Even if I can track down this new infiltration, they believe that the Third Power will just find another way. I can't blame them for thinking this, after two infiltrations. Consequently, they've reasoned that the next best thing to shutting down the Third Power's communications is being able to listen in. So, no-one's allowed to do anything that might tip off the Third Power that we might be listening in, and that includes snooping around the CRR.

Given that the firewall just isn't working, Earlywine has agreed to lift it, particularly because the only way Perplex City can get intelligence about what's on the Babel site is through you guys on Earth. Having a huge firewall in the way doesn't make communicating that intelligence very easy. That's the real reason why the link is back up.

I said there's another reason why I can't follow up on this new Babel site infiltration. It's because I have a meeting with Garnet in half an hour where I expect to be suspended from work.

Everyone, from Nathan Earlywine down, is looking for a scapegoat to blame for this. I'm the person who set up the firewall, so it's my fault. I did point out that no firewall is 100% reliable, especially against an attacker who has access to the physical hardware, but I don't think they were listening any more. Garnet is sympathetic, but he doesn't really have a choice, and Earlywine certainly doesn't care.

The funny thing is that I still have an invitation to the Academy ball tonight. I doubt I'll be in the right mood to go though. It'll just be another reminder of the theft of the Cube.

_________________
Irrelevant musings.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:47 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
poozle
Entrenched

Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 1090

 		Oh dear :S this isn't looking too good Sad

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:09 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
jonc
Veteran

Joined: 04 Jul 2006
Posts: 144

 		Waits for update later on...

"I've not been fired, I'm heading up a new super-dooper task force to get to the bottom of this"

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:17 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
DarkHuman
Unfettered


Joined: 19 Apr 2006
Posts: 640
Location: Florida

 		poor Kurt Crying or Very sad
_________________
]Playing ->outcast?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 10:45 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
makomk
Boot

Joined: 11 Jul 2006
Posts: 56

 		Re: [UPDATE] The Path of Least Time 15th Jan 2007
The beginning of the end...
Kurt wrote:
Whatever the Sentinel might say, the reason the link's been opened again is because it's been compromised by the Third Power - twice. During a very thorough scan of the link a couple of weeks ago, we picked up some anomalies; packets being dropped at odd times, odd patterns of latencies. Looking closer, it became clear that information was being transmitted. Messages.

What's disturbing is that it looks like the Third Power is responsible. Since the entire point of the firewall was to prevent this sort of thing from happening, everyone involved was alarmed. Earlywine immediately ordered us to stop the Third Power's messages, which I found to be pretty easy from a technical point of view, given that it was pretty fragile and subtle to begin with. Despite myself, I was very impressed with the Third Power's work. When constructing the firewall, I'd briefly considered the possibility that someone might try to send information through the firewall in this sort of way, but I concluded that it would just be too noisy and would require computing power of a kind unavailable to most.


Sounds like an evil (but fairly standard) covert channel, possibly timing-based. I was wondering if someone was going to try that - it's a neat (and tricky to detect or block) trick.

Kurt wrote:
I said there's another reason why I can't follow up on this new Babel site infiltration. It's because I have a meeting with Garnet in half an hour where I expect to be suspended from work.

Everyone, from Nathan Earlywine down, is looking for a scapegoat to blame for this. I'm the person who set up the firewall, so it's my fault. I did point out that no firewall is 100% reliable, especially against an attacker who has access to the physical hardware, but I don't think they were listening any more. Garnet is sympathetic, but he doesn't really have a choice, and Earlywine certainly doesn't care.


Poor Kurt Sad There's really not anything he could've done, either...
_________________
Violet wrote:
Dad always said nice girls don't eat squid.


PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:16 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		Isn't the data link being reopened good for us? After months of not much happening, things are picking up again? And they seem to want to hear from us as well. Yay!

It seems that lots of people want to hear what CT has to say on Babel. So are we supposed to keep Kurt or someone in the loop as to any updates? I suppose any risk of that info getting into the hands of the 3P is irrelevant, because we can be sure that 3P operatives know about the Babel site now. We have lost any advantage we had in terms of information and now we are left to our resources of being more familiar with Earth than they (the 3P) are.

I wonder how CT will react to the news that the firewall is coming down? Maybe CT's clues will become more direct?

Also, who do we know from the CRR that could be involved?
_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:14 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
poozle
Entrenched

Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 1090

 		Just thinking, it sounds rather BAD for us to be honest, they were using the LoB site for "secure" communications with each other that we could see, now the link is oen again they won't have to use these channels of communication and we lose insight to the 3Ps secret messages.

Its nice to get communication again and everything but we've lost some clues we were getting Sad

PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:38 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
sirichj
Veteran

Joined: 15 May 2006
Posts: 85

 		Just a thought . . .
Just a thought, if the third power had access to the LoB site, but we've only just found out about it, what's to say that some of the clues from CT were actually put there by the third power to distract us whilst they carried out their testing?

I very much doubt it but it's an interesting idea to throw us off the scent . . .

PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:53 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 1 of 1 [8 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