Parasomnia Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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parasomnic2017-01-16 03:30 am
parasomniacs) wrote in parasomnic2017-01-16 03:30 am
Week 8
Week 8
Monday - Thursday
This marks the eight week of the experiment. The eighth Monday since the killing experiment began. Many things have happened in that time, both good and terrifying. It was a long time since any of them have likely been able to feel safe. And no doubt this week will not be the start of that. From forty experimental subjects, they were now only ten. And when they are moved at the beginning of the week as usual, this time it's into the previously occupied staff rooms.
Each seems to have some remnant of those who had stayed in them before. More pieces for the remaining few to try and fit into the puzzle they were given at the start of this mess. The staff themselves are nowhere to be found. Apparently they have been evacuated. The only other 'person' who still shows up is Sheepy...
Now that there were only ten, what would become of the experiment? What new twists and hardships awaited them? Only time would tell. But if the weekend before taught them anything then it should be to cherish the time they have and brace themselves for anything. They have done well to make it this far and with just a little more strength they may be able to survive it yet.
One more week.
Each seems to have some remnant of those who had stayed in them before. More pieces for the remaining few to try and fit into the puzzle they were given at the start of this mess. The staff themselves are nowhere to be found. Apparently they have been evacuated. The only other 'person' who still shows up is Sheepy...
Now that there were only ten, what would become of the experiment? What new twists and hardships awaited them? Only time would tell. But if the weekend before taught them anything then it should be to cherish the time they have and brace themselves for anything. They have done well to make it this far and with just a little more strength they may be able to survive it yet.
One more week.
» Dream World «
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...Also the lights are now arranged like a hand that is flipping the bird.
No escape from salt, evidently.]
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Anyway, he's going to pick up the advertisement packet first, since this looks like something he can actually get. What does this say?]
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... So. If he presses enough buttons on it, does it come on??
This is a GREATLY thought out and complex plan. ]
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Now onto the next part... it will. Probably take him a bit to find the email application... especially if its not labeled straight out as 'email', and because he doesn't know what he's looking for here. ]
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Director,
Yes, there are no side effects for the lumbar punctures. In the attached photographs, you will see no change from the previous photographs; so we maintain that the nanomachines seem to have successfully healed any scarring.
There has been no denaturation of the sleeping drugs or even the stimulants embedded in the nanomachines. However, we are concerned that the episodic memory alteration will prove too difficult. Their recent experiences are already building such intense emotional ties that other regions of the brain actively reinforce the memories. There are also some participants building up such a tolerance that the increased dose (intended for ending participation in the experiment) may not immediately shut down the central nervous system entirely.
Sandra Chavez
[there are attached image files appearing to be very close shots of the small of a person’s back. It’s hard to make out many other identifying features but considering that there are forty… it would roughly match]
[MAIL FROM SELF TO SELF: There are 39 image filenames listed as attachments of the format “greatest_regret_[PARTICINAME].jpg” but not all of them are cached. ]
Director,
The first of the experimental murders has occurred. Our scan of the participant Dio suggested that he was likely to kill without any hesitation should that remedy his “greatest regret”. As his randomly encountered target, alongside him in the experimental group, was the participant Mira. Their shared homeworld had resulted in a very tentative burgeoning alliance. I am proud to report that we “nipped this in the bud”. The original lack of hesitation in his neurotransmitters was replicated by the nanomachines, and in vivo the murder occurred once again.
Though he has a history of minimally covering crime scenes, Dio did try his hardest to not get caught. We have attached the mail room file so that you may evaluate the evidence produced and see if it is sufficient for any of our specific cases of interest. The execution machine also served as an effective lightening rod; see for example its relationship to the notion that death is “sacred”. We will therefore go forward with this method to ensure that culprits do not confess.
I regret to inform you that three other people have died. “Beatrice the Golden” violated several rules. We made the holistic decision that I would activate Beatrice’s nanomachines (while she was a member of the control group, recall that all participants have at least been fitted with the nanomachines, like those remaining in the personnel from their recruitment) and gave her a fatal dose of the sleeping medication. Overall the number of violations was higher than expected (see Shelley Winters).
As for Yoshiko Tsushima and Nunnally vi Britannia, recall that trial involvement is ensured by using a strong dose of sleeping medication that is then counteracted by stimulant when the trial is over, rather than a mild dose of sleeping medication wearing off. Neither of these two participants satisfied the requirements of the trial that would result in stimulant release. As a result they are dead.
Please advise as to any clarification of the rules that can prevent future violations. I would like to fill this position as well as possible.
Sandra Chavez
[There is an attached case1.mrf file that is about 500 MB and can’t be opened with applications on the phone. There is also a .docx file with transcripts of some dialogue during the rule breaking scenes, the investigation, and the execution.]
[MAIL FROM SELF TO SELF: 35 images of “power_particiname.jpg”.]
Director,
The second of the experimental murders has occurred. Keenan Caine had grandiose tendencies, so the AI presented his motivation as a way to gain heroic power. His mindset is in fact more nuanced than this; he was framing the self-avowed cannibals, for example, or he wanted to convey information about the dream world. By his own testimony, he experienced the selection of the participant The Grinch as ego-syntonic; however, he presented the disjointing as ego-dystonic, and he also alleged that his testimony in the trial was self-sabotaging. Obviously, without third-party witnesses to what happened in “the dream world”, we may never know.
I of course remain unwavering in the belief that age should not result in preferential treatment especially given the circumstances of our targets. However, the stability of the participant should be considered.
Another factor has destabilized the experiment. Somebody has been disabling the cameras, apparently solely for the purpose of committing gunshot murders uncaught. Where did they get access to the cameras, or for that matter a gun? Strictly speaking these murders would be tolerable under the rules. At any rate, the participants Victor S. Arseid (CGM), Elizabeth Foley (EGM), and Van Grants (CGM) are all deceased. Those of us in the hotel are examining the footage as best we can; we have attached some text descriptions, but uploading full video would likely be insecure. Keep me informed if there is new protocol in that area.
Sandra Chavez
[Attachments include a case2.mrf file, a .docx with transcripts of choice dialogue that occurred during the week, and a PDF scanned of Keenan’s journal.]
[MAIL FROM SELF TO SELF: 30 images of “erasure_loc_particiname.jpg”.]
Director,
The third of the experimental murders has occurred. We inferred that Nepeta Leijon had negative feelings about the violent death of a friend in her homeworld at the hands of someone else. The AI presented her with the opportunity to erase any person in any universe, not excluding this one; her choice would presumably be this individual. The selection of Shingo Sawatari as the victim was obviously ego-dystonic; in fact by all accounts neither of them was fonder of a participant besides each other.
As requested, we have implemented the five-death quota. There have been additional shooting deaths: experimental group member Nagito Komaeda and control group member Victor Frankenstein. Further imbalancing of the quota was only avoided narrowly, as Hazama Honoka abducted Aki Akuyama but was apprehended. I mention this because according to Nepeta Leijon’s testimony, committing murder in general had become ego-dystonic after this incident. Nevertheless, the neurotransmitters replicated her actions from earlier in the week, and so the murder occurred.
Sandra Chavez
[A .docx with dialogue transcripts and case3.mrf are attached.]
[MAIL FROM SELF TO SELF: IT WILL NOT BE NECESSARY TO SEND A REPORT UNTIL THE SIXTH WEEK OF THE EXPERIMENT HAS CONCLUDED.]
[...Well that's interesting considering she would have died before the next case anyway.]
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He clicks around the email app and things to see if he missed anything or if there is anything else relevant. ]
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Then he'll look at the suitcase itself to make sure there was nothing overlooked. ]
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After a dry description of the symposium’s general purpose, the prose launches into abstracts of the individual projects, each accompanied by a small square photograph of the presenter.
They’re sorted by alphabetical order of surname, so before long Sandra Chavez is going to stand out. There’s a young woman smiling into the camera with big eighties hair, a red turtleneck, no makeup to cover the handful of blackheads on her face; still, the features match up, if she lived into her late thirties she’d undoubtedly be very familiar.
Chavez’s drug is based off a simpler preexisting sleep medicine; taken regularly, it works well enough to regulate sleep patterns even in contradiction of circadian rhythm or surrounding light cycles. The main side effect is a tendency to retain water and therefore feel cold. Over the course of this last semester, she has conducted experiments on several different groups of people and shown how predictable their brain activity becomes. Because the drug regulates the period of brain waves, any digital monitoring program reduces in required frequency drastically. A complete model of the human brain at rest may be within reach, as well as improvements in interpolation of healthier electrode input.
Eight of the abstracts have a big red marker “X” next to the name, very carefully drawn so that no ink covers the typeset characters or the photograph itself.
On the back cover is a group photo of all the presenters. Each face that had an “X” next to their profile picture also has at least one mark on their body.
Some of these people just have an “X” over their faces - which doesn’t correspond to the X over one eye, X over both eyes, or a line through the neck… and some of them have additional marks.
There's also some faces from the CSU video among them, although the date on that video would have been significantly later than this symposium. While Moscovitz doesn’t turn up, you will find two of her co-conspirators, named R. Garcia and N. Lee, mentioned briefly in a longer list of attendees without descriptions of their own projects. They have X’d names, no X over their faces.]
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WELL THIS MEANS NOTHING TO YEAGER but it's probably important, so he'll hang onto it and maybe throw it at Duke later when he's done messing around with the smartphone (good luck, buddy).
Is there anything else to note about this or should he move on?]
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A laptop! It blended in to the bottom of the briefcase, but it is there.]
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...who let the vesperias try to technology.
AFTER A LOT OF BUTTON-PRESSING AND ???? HE'LL PROBABLY FIGURE OUT HOW TO TURN IT ON EVENTUALLY. Does it work?]
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Still, you just read something presumably important of hers. Maybe there's a wild guess to be taken here.
...Also the music is on obnoxiously loud again.]
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vcu succeeds though!! Woah!!!
There is another new wave noise. The screen goes black briefly, and the laptop begins to hum much louder, with some lights flickering.
Please wait warmly.]
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BUT HE DID IT, HE SOLVED THE PUZZLE wow sandra that wasn't a good password if someone from vesperia could get it
BUT ANYWAY YEAH HE'LL JUST WAIT and stare at this thing like it's some kind of witchcraft it's not going to explode, is it...]
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[ He'll look over at Yeager once he's gotten everything in order, probably just to denote he's waiting patiently for... whatever it is. ]
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There is currently one program open: a spreadsheet, like excel. There are forty “sheet” tabs, one for each participant. The one currently open is Banica Conchita. At the top of each sheet is a big line graph, with lines of fifty colors over time. In the spreadsheet below are easily ten thousand columns, maybe more, while the rows, marked as Greek letters, are in equal number to the colors.
The time of the current column is 05:04:19:48:05. A few inches to the right in the future, the fluctuating lines converge and slow down drastically but do not flatline entirely.]
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Huh. This......... doesn't mean anything to him. Let's compare!! Can he find the tab for his own name and click it?
And while he's doing that, he'll address Duke:] Did you find anything interesting? I found this. [Here you go, have the pamphlet while he's trying to figure out how to computer.]
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Duke then takes the pamphlet and looks through it. He just... assumes 'did you find anything interesting' means 'give a short summary of what you found'. ]
In the strange, small square object, I found a whole listing of information. They seem to be some sort of degree of multiple correspondences from Sandra herself to the Director of the project. First of them seem to mention the effects and concerns regarding these "nanomachines", that have been implied to have been...inserted into our bodies. Which they have been inserted seems to be in the back, judging by the pictures provided.
After that there were more correspondences containing notations about each killer and victim in this "experiment" that seemed to stretch until the end of week three, beginning of week four. There was a mention of the motives as well as what Beatrice had done, and there was also notes as well as concerns made regarding the victims of the gunners. The incident with Aki was also mentioned, and Sandra's concerns regarding that.
When you're done with that, I can even have you look at it.
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There is a graph on top that has a similar line graph with the same colors and letters but different spikes and valleys. These ones stay active throughout the timeline without becoming a submissive braid like Conchita.
Very soon at 05:06:05:55:35, 05:06:05:55:40, 05:06:05:55:45, 05:06:05:55:50, and 05:06:05:55:55... there is a series of spikes. There are flagged lines on the graph, each line tagged with a name in a hauntingly familiar order: Leo, Merciless, Duke, Mitsuko, and Shelley. The columns underneath are highlighted in yellow; the column with Leo's name is highest overall and highlighted in a different orange shade of yellow. 06:06:05:55:35, 06:06:05:55:40, 06:06:05:55:45, 06:06:05:55:50, and 06:06:05:55:55... a similar tableau of Yuri, Rean, Merciless, Mitsuko and Mikami, with the deepest highlight on Merciless. And then 07:06:05:55:35, 07:06:05:55:40, 07:06:05:55:45, 07:06:05:55:50, and 07:06:05:55:55... Yeager himself, Jason, Yuri, Crow, and Rean, with the deepest highlight on Crow.
He can keep scrolling all the way up to 08:04:14:38:55... though if he keeps looking five seconds later it will tick up again to 08:04:14:39:00! And so on to 08:04:14:39:05...!]
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Ja, I'll examine it in a moment. I want to see what I can gather from this first.
[It looks like Conchita's changes were when she "died", so... Hmm.
The rest of this looks like voting results, which is certainly interesting. And there's the time being counted up as well... It looks like Sandra was very thorough with all of this.
Is there anything else to click on here? Any more information to gather?]
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