<> Almost two months ago - seriously - you were all hired by a Mr. Preston Charles as chainjumpers on an independent team. You received a ship, some mild training in the process, and were summarily shoved out into deep space on your first run, which almost went tragically wrong as the ship almost went out of control into the sun. After that things seemed to get a lot better, as you got your space legs under you. You visited Metallica, a planet of strange metal beings with light-absorbing properties. You visited Briquette, a planet around a sun plagued by solar flares. While on Briquette you ran into - and ran afoul of - Don Fernando And The Crew Of The Black Orchid (tm), but they were bested by, among other things, Lexi's ... assets. You also visited Aqueon, a planet which housed the remnants of the walphin species, including a planetary PI. Perhaps more importantly, on Aqueon you learned about the walphin's Tone, a metaphysical or religious concept to them which is essentially the Great Cosmic Background noise - but which seems able to induce visions of a kind. You discovered a prophecy as well, which when translated predicted a "great closing of doors", among other things. Slightly previous, Tia, Kyle and Amadeus had traveled to Sleythin to try to get a copy of the sleythin star data, gathered by their species in what was basically a giant galactic survey with tech they either aren't sharing, won't use, or don't have anymore. They managed to befriend a Sleythin researcher, Shorya'nartha. For the seemingly slim price of some autographs, she agreed to let them have the data, and promised to ship it "soon". After Aqueon, Preston introduced you to a Mr. Jackson, who was to travel with you to a small planet in a ruin disc around Fomalhaut. Your ship barely survived the trip, but you did - no thanks to the Bugs you found hiding on the planet! No explanation for any of it was ever given. After that, you lobbied for a new ship, which Preston acquiesced to, and you bought it from Honest Stan, like any good PC should. Nearly immediately after that, in the inaugural trip of the ship, you traveled to a star which had five habitable planets orbiting it - each of which seemed identical, except for the ruins on it. As you went from planet to planet the ruins continued to be in better and better shape, until on planet 4 you actually met inhabitants! They named themselves the Duekti, told you that you were an inferior species, and basically told you to fuck o ff and stop bothering them. Preston's response to all this was to tell the corps, but there the issue seemed to rest for a while. You attended a party on Indi Epsilon, re-meeting Stephen Starblaster, and also meeting Mika Picton, from an independent team, and Darnell Patchin, from the Dunno team. Shortly after THAT Mika visited again, this time as the courier carrying your copy of the Sleythin star data, faithfully delivered. Naturally, the data in question pointed out that the system you had just visited was occupied by the Duekti, and should be avoided at all costs. Feel free to speak up if I miss anything, by the way. I don't remember a party, but I could have just blanked it out. It was only a couple of us that made it Yeah, Zeke, Tomas, and Tia. After the party you hit a planet you have not yet actually named. But which contained a species which consumed sound, and a strange form of silicon-based life. The Snorkies? The Icenorks, yeah. On the NEXT chainjump, you were actually followed! By Mika and her captain, Leo Waterhouse, in their ship the Apiary. And also their mysterious third crew member, who is as of yet unseen. Hoping to trick you/beg on your pity to get you to split the finders' fee for samples, they followed you - a very dangerous proposition - to Arcturus IX. Mika lets on that both the Black Orchid and another ship, the Cosmic Supernova, have both been having the same kind of luck that the PCs have been having, while most other chainjumpers seems stuck heading to planets an d filing away mineral samples. Tia brokered a deal with the crew of the Apiary - she would ignore their cheap tricks if they would spy on the other two ships for her. Left with little choice, they agreed. The next day, the media story about the Duekti finally broke, and you found yourselves shoved under the metaphorical bus. Everyone seemed to be blaming you, you'd gotten a two-month suspension from GalReg, and worse yet you were basically being tailed everywhere by people either looking for your side of the story or a steamy expose of something or other. Jun 18 20:15:41 Kyle had to escape a pair of bumbling GalReg agents, and Lexi had to battle her way through armed CEC guards, but eventually everyone met up on the ship to discuss what to do next. Zeke had a chat with the Directrix of GalReg and agreed to put in a media appearance, and Tomas queried Preston, uncovering the fact that Preston HIMSELF had no idea who was assigning planets - Preston was using a blind bidding system to put your considerable talents up for grabs by whomever. Preston agreed to hand over the data he had for analysis. So, while Zeke and Tomas went to dinner in RNYC, Tia worked on that data. First, she (and Tomas, actually) noted that there were only three major bidders for each time you had an assignment. One of those three bidders won every one but one of the assignment slots. These bidders, plus the fourth winner, were labeled A, B, C, and D for convenience. Bidder A: won once, and sent you to Metallica. Wow, didn't check my notes. Bidder A actually won twice. Metallica and Arcturus IX. oh god. I just realized this has turned into a lame flashback episode. Yup! Don't worry, there isn't much flashback left. Bidder B: won three times, sending you to Aqueon, Briquette, and the Icenork planet. Bidder C: won once, sending you to the Duekti planets. Fuck you Bidder C. [ Eyecatch! Amadeus hugging an icenork. ] ATC 3 [ Second eyecatch! SD Zeke being hugged by the GalReg chairwoman ] ATC 3 *dies laughing* XD Bidder D: won once, sending you to the planet in the ruin disk with Mr. Jackson Is that SD Amadeus hugging an Icenork? I think Amadeus is always SD. Okay, I'll buy that. o_o; Tia has a name and a phone number for bidder A, but she hasn't tracked any more info from that. Amadeus is for SCIENCE! Science Deformed. Which makes me think of SD Amadeus posing with a rising sun background. The rising sun of science. Tia tracked bidder B's phone records, revealing many calls to a nearby takeout restaurant, as well as calls to Io and to a woman's cell phone. FROM that info, Tomas and Kyle social engineered an address out of the restaurant, revealing it to be in a warehouse nearby which had been converted to loft apartments. The loft is owned by Floofy. When investigated, the loft contained evidence that someone has been keeping a serious eye on you for these two months, and encoding the info into fake discussions of 20th-century politics. But it also looks like there's info there that's not about you. Tia and Zeke found a camera, and once they did, also discovered a device which was "listening in" on the feed and rebroadcasting it to a device on the roof which looked like a toaster. Said toaster is actually an S+ transmitter, which means that the data could be going ANYwhere in the solar system, accounting for speed of light lag. Tia has a name and a phone number for bidder C, but she hasn't tracked any more info from that. Chamelaeon> Tia's name for bidder D is Gene Ashwell, whose cell phone records indicate he makes frequent calls to pay phones in spaceports. Video feeds from the spaceports indicate that nobody seems to be picking up the phones, even though the phone records say someone did and that the conversations last around two minutes each time. There is also a butterfly in-camera whenever the phone is ringing. The butterfly "signature" is a hacker sign from a hacker whose tag is BenCheviot. In the middle of all this, Mika chimed in wiht some information: You are not the only ship to take Mr. Jackson to a planet with Bugs on it. Don Fernando And The Crew Of The Black Orchid (tm) did as well, and he even admitted it while being taunted mercilessly by Lexi. This led Tia to go look into the sample records GalReg has... but as she looked, they were being edited! The intent isn't yet clear, but they made a great deal of changes to create whitenoise, to hide the change they actually wanted to make. The periods in the text, for reference, were replaced by a very tiny image of a coiled, stylized sleythin. ... I think that is all the information currently on the table. Am I missing anything? My awesome SCIENTIFIC discovery! Amadeus's SCIENCE. Oh shit right. Concurrent to all Tia's crazy, Amadeus was working in his lab late one night when his eyes beheld an eerie sight. the ghost of paula deen told him to fry the duekti up good with butter, y'all It turns out all the male samples from the Duekti planets had fallen ill - just the males, and all of them at the same time. Working with Dr. Borenstein, Amadeus' mentor, Amadeus discovered that the cause was a virus. The virus was rewriting a portion of the Y-chromosome of the animals; it appeared to be re-encoding a specific section to look exactly the same. But the section of DNA looked and behaved more like data than like DNA - in that it was never used to encode any amino acids, and it seemed fairly nonsensical instructure, devoid of start and stop markers. Borenstein and some of the CS colleagues at RNYC are working on decoding it, though the CS profs have no idea what the data actually is. Also in ATC4 Prag totally sells Kentucky Fried Duekti * Chamelaeon scratches his head. I think that's it. Are there questions? People know where we're all at now? Is that okay? Eating intelligent species, I mean. All clear Yeah, I'm pretty with it now! Thanks. ^^; It was probably time for one anyhow. ATC's never gotten quite this convoluted before. Outside of my head anyhow. The closest it's gotten is most likely the early ATC2 split mission stuff. The list of artifacts, etc. So what do people want to pursue? It clearly won't all be Tia-stuff. i'm going to make out with the toaster you guys do whatever Amadeus, you could probably figure out a rough idea of where the S+ transmitter was directed, using some physics. Two drones are on watching that! 3D imagery is important. I think I got what's going on. I think maybe tracking some more infor for bidder A and C would be nice. Since we don't have much on them yet. Sweet, let's SCIENCE it up! Zeke was puzzling out what's being hidden from the hack attempt. D is still an awesome catch, but we still didn't do a good job of figuring out how to nail him down? A and C would be good to know!