<> <> (Floofy contracted Aqueon, Briquette, and Icenork if I remember correctly.) <> <> <> * Tomas sits in the lounge watching TVNet, while waiting for the others. * Hestia continues what she was doing last time: looking up where Don Quihobeast, Man of La Douche-a and his team ran into 'trouble' in Sleythinpedia. * Zeke is actually, and has been, working on a pad linked to his arm for a lot of the day. But now that they're gathering to the ship, he comments, "The butterfly seems a highly unlikely marker. As a signal, does it have a known meaning?" (Yes. It means Philemon is nearby.) <> * Amadeus comes barging into the ship, a bit ruffled and his glasses crooked. He does the ship equivalent of slamming the door behind him. "Space Jesus, it's STILL a zoo out there!" * Hestia shakes her head. "This is just stupid. I don't get it." Then she starts looking for any other chainjumpers who have reported getting to a planet in the equivalent of Space Alabama and finding it full of angry Bugs. * Zeke's birdsect looks towards Amadeus. "Media attention does not get rid of people." * Amadeus goes to flop onto a chair, fixing his glasses and hair. "Sadly true." * Kyle waves absently to Amadeus. "'sup Prof?" You've missed a lot A-Man. * Amadeus nods to Kyle. "There's been many very interesting finds from the Duekti system samples. I assume you've been busy as well." Well, I do have my primary job. * Tomas fills Amadeus in on all the interesting new infos. * Hestia looks up. "Oh, the usual. Finding conspiracies out to kill us, tracking the shadowy manipulators making us dance like puppets. That sort of thing." One of them is named Floofy. * Zeke pauses, then adds, "It seems... anticlimactic." (Dude, given I don't know the interesting new info, giving it to me in /me isn't the best.) * Kyle types away at a datapad. "Not much on butterflies. Souls, longevity... nothing signal-like, though. And if I was spyin', I wouldn't use something that had a symbolic meaning attached to it anyways." (Can someone catch Amadeus up?) (Was there anything not in the boxtext?) (Not anything of vast importance.) (*adds stuff from last week to help fill in holes) Huh. Actually... * Kyle blinks. "There's been a bunch of hacking incidents recently with a butterfly 'signature'. Think it could be our bug?" They're pretty rare, so it's likely. * Zeke tilts his holohead. "Are hackers known for duplicating others' signatures?" The name 'signature' would... indicate otherwise. Yeah, but they're hackers. * Zeke's holoface smiles slightly. "I admit unfamiliarity with the behavior of hackers." * Hestia says, in a sort of distant tone, "I'd do it if I wanted to frame someone." Typeity type. <> <> * Amadeus digs his phone out, ID checks, and answers it. "Any news, Dr. Borenstein?" (What, like, doing it right NOW, or noticing a trend?) * Amadeus laughs. "Well, that's good, at least. Maybe they can crack it since it looks so much like programming code." <> What the... Right, I'm through playing Mr. Nice Browser. * Hestia starts hitting the sites in question to start a backtrace. The not-quite-legal way. "Somebody is, and I am not kidding, literally altering public chainjumper data as we speak." That ain't cool. * Zeke taps on his pad without looking. "To what purpose?" * Hestia narrows her eyes, then stops typing and starts doing all this the... other way. It frees her hand to make annoyed gestures. "What's the tag associated with the butterfly?" (And yeah, what are the edits?) "It might be an experiment, but if that's the case, it's an experiment on a VERY large scale. I mean, we're looking at four planetary ecosystems with at least a hundred years of history here..." <> Tag is usually... BenCheviot. "Thanks for the update. Talk to you later." * Amadeus hangs up and sighs to himself, then turns his attention to the madness that's no doubt occuring around him. Ben whatnow? Argh, why would someone do this! The edits don't even make sense. * Zeke says, "If they are edits of public data, I could examine them if you informed me of their position." * Lexi looks around confused. "Do we have any idea WHO is doing it? Wouldn't the quickest way to find out why be to find out who and find them?" <> (So many angles to investigate.) (I was trying to back-hack them while they were doing it, actually. DO we know who's doing it?) ...and now it's stopped. * Tomas raises the eyebrows, "Did you get a bead on them before they dropped?" * Hestia also emails cached copies of the edited files to Zeke, along with their locations, because that's how she rolls. The fact that she's doing it while drumming both hands on the counter says a lot. (We still don't know who A and C are at all, and D/Butterfly/Gene Ashwell/Mr. Jackson/BenChevoit is still a cipher...) <> * Zeke takes a look at the edited set of files. Time to put his keen, keen mind to the task. * Hestia throws up her hands then pinches the bridge of her nose. "Venus. Which could actually BE Venus, or someone routing through Venus... ugh. They're not even important edits!" * Zeke stares at the data for a while. Hopefully something interesting happens while he does. Maybe it's one of those 3D puzzles. * Hestia suddenly turns on Amadeus. "What do you mean, 'experiment'?" * You've invited Dicesuke to #atc (bagel.sandwich.net) * Chamelaeon invited Dicesuke into channel #atc * Dicesuke (dice@ip98-168-209-178.om.om.cox.net) has joined #atc (Hello, you odious turd.) (Dicey wuv j00 kitsu.) (Ha ha Tomas got /msged.) (He typed (Dice)) 2d6+7 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Zeke (2d6+7) and gets a natural 5 for a result of 12. (oh god. I've been hit...tell everybody....I hate them.) * Zeke says, as he peers, "The... chaos is planned. They are changing more than is necessary, but that makes it unclear what the changes are meant to be..." So they're masking what they want to change by making lots of 'white noise' changes? I believe so. Then what are they masking? (Amadeus, Tia did ask you about the experiment thing) * Zeke shakes the holohead. "I cannot tell yet." (Ard?) * Hestia sighs and shakes her head. "I don't get it. Falsifying data, trying to kill chainjumpers, bidders who clearly have access to this starchart info the sleythin think is going to end the universe... what does this all MEAN?" (Oh, did he? Sorry.) * Amadeus looks to Tia. "Well..." While I was back at RNYU, working on processing all of the samples we've gotten to the university, all of the male specimens from the Duekti system came down with the same illness at the same time - across species and across planets. * Hestia frowns. "Engineered plague?" * Amadeus nods. "Something like that. It turned out that there was a triggered virus, which was *rewriting* a chunk of DNA in the Y chromosome. It would certainly explain why the terraforming was so complete, with no genetic drift across planets." Mind, the rewrite didn't do much in the end, as it put their DNA at exactly what it was before, but I'd think it would handle all mutations. * Hestia looks at Amadeus with a sort of vaguely distracted expression, then gives up and says: "Break that down for me." * Zeke speaks up and says, "It was a method of renorming the organisms to their desired genetic structure." Pause, then he adds, "Pure." 2d6+7 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Zeke (2d6+7) and gets a natural 9 for a result of 16. * Amadeus nods. "Like Zeke says, exactly." And it's a triggered virus... much like our own triggered SCA mutation, which hit a good ninety percent of the human population at the same time. We're trying to figure out the structure of the virus itself, but it's completely alien. Frankly, it looks more like computer code than anything else. * Zeke didn't actually look away frmo the data. "Normalizing... they are normalizing this data as well." He pauses a moment, then walks over and plugs his pad into the wall. "And there is another... signature, perhaps." * Zeke shows a piece of the data onscreen, and then he ZOOMS IN AND ENHANCES on the end of one of the sentences. * Tomas sits with his mouth agape for 10 beats then says, "Like the SCA mutation? Are they related? Were the Duekti the testbed for what happened here?" <> That's taking theories a little far, Thomas, but I suppose that is possible if not probable. * Zeke points at the screen for, mainly, Hestia and Kyle. And maybe Lexi if she's into Sleythin. "This would also be a hacker's signature?" (Do I recognize that at someone's mark?) * Tomas shudders subtly at the silent h, "Just a notion." Nothing they could have engineered themselves? To get rid of... impurities? Also, practically anything could be a hacker's mark, Suit Boy. I'm pretty sure the Duekti engineered the virus themselves, which makes it unlikely they also engineered us somehow. Is it at all contagious? * Zeke tilts the holohead. "Yes, but you two seem to know more than I." (Not until the GM tells me so, I don't!) <> * Kyle takes a look at the picture. Huh. Okay. So this is a recent development. * Amadeus shakes his head at Thomas. "Not as far as I know." <> (Ah, we do have to stomp into the loft.) (Nah, they're ALL SEPERATE LEADS!) (We should split up! Team stomp into the loft, and team 'get us the line on another bidder.' (Or the guy we need to trap.) (We should make another team for that.) (BRB getting more booze) (Team booze!) * Hestia leans back in her chair. "The common thread in all of these is manipulation of information." Even the Duekti plague, if you can believe that. Information is powerful. I mean... you've got the mystery bidders trying to guide chainjumpers in a certain way. You've got the Bug-sabotaging bidders trying to do the opposite. You've got a race genetically altering themselves for some reason or another on a system-wide scale. You've got a hacker subtly rewriting recent history. We know the sleythin think that humanity's going to end life as we know it thanks to the Prophecy of Ultimate Doom. * Zeke is silent a moment, then says, "There are still many pieces of information to follow. The loft is still closest." He pauses, then adds, "If nobody is there, it may be best to enter ourselves. My drones may be sufficient." * Hestia smirks. "Not what I expected to hear from you." Makes sense to me. * Zeke looks over at Hestia. "There are too many pieces of information to ignore such a close one." In addition, it is unlikely they will invite us in, especially as they seem absent. That's not exactly what I meant... * Zeke tilts his holohead, then says, "Lexi would also be a reasonable choice?" * Lexi shrugs. "Sure. I could enter, if that's what you want." * Hestia shrugs. "I have no problem with using the drones. It'd keep poor Lexi from getting yelled at by her dad if she got found out." I would be more effective out in the field than sitting here watching Tia work her magic on the nets. Well, what are you gonna check then? * Lexi waves her hand and rolls her eyes. "Like I care what he says." (Who is Kyle talking to?) * Zeke's holohead nods. "Then you and Tomas can go and look at the loft. Yes." * Tomas crosses his arms and nods, "Your drones can scout the place out then Lexi and I can take a closer look." * Zeke tilts his head, then replies, "Reasonable." A pause, then, "They are on their way." * Zeke's birdsect gives Tomas the eye. (Okay. Let's handle that next week, if that's okay?) (Getting late.) (Fine by me.) (And you can't feel the keyboard with your fingers.) (I was talking to Tomas.) (We know.) (Perfect. That gives me another week to intend to use my CP on infiltration kit.) (Sure!) (I should spend my CP. On. Something.) (Zeke was doing suit design on his pad.) (It's cool.) (No, I can feel the keyboard. Just stupid tired.) <> (I have actually become one with all information, over the course of this session.) (I am now Lain.) (*powerline hum*)