Poking Around Brougham Castle
Michael
As Roger, Charley (and Archie?) speed to Brougham Castle to try and get in before the afternoon session and find out where in the simulation the emails to Joshua came from, I need Bill, Rob, and Mel to all give me Perception rolls.
Bill
>>>> SUCCESS by 1
Rob
>>>> SUCCESS by 1
Mel
>>>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
The situation when Roger, Archie, and Charley drive up the road to Brougham Castle is that yes, there are two Army guards posted at the entrance to the Plastic Chapel and the simulation room at Brougham. The door to the simulation room and computer banks, Roger can say having scoped it out on the previous visits yesterday, is locked, with a magnetic swipe card. So you three will need to decide how you want to approach the castle. Fast-Talk to convince them you're supposed to be here/Enthrallment if things go sideways seems to be the most likely approach. There's also the possibility of approaching stealthily through the ruins of the castle; the chapel is connected up with the remnants of the castle with a similarly locked door which could be bypassed using a good enough Lockpicking roll or Charley's technical skills to bypass the magnetic lock.
Bill
Roger will ask if Archie has Authority, or at least its aura, to bring to bear on this. Fast Talk is fine, but even the Doctor makes appeals to authority.
Rob
Yeah, I haven't had the spoons to write up a good spiel but I think the most straightforward thing is for Archie to just bluster in like “of COURSE we're supposed to be here, we're the big important Americans, and after all we're on your list we're just a little early, and don't you know the experiment is TIME SENSITIVE the machine has an INTERNAL CLOCK” He doesn't have Authority (is that a skill?) but he has Fast Talk 16, plus Security Clearance, Security Rank, and Leadership (and Enthrallment if it comes to that though I don't expect he brought any puppets).
Michael
Superb, we've been doing a lot of bluffing and blathering lately; it seems somehow appropriate for a very ‘70s Doctor Who-y sort of adventure. Fast-Talk sounds good, Rob, give you a +2 to your skill for a combination of your Security Rank and your overall presence at the castle so far this weekend.
Rob
>>> SUCCESS by 9
Michael
Rob
Archie ask/tells Roger to stand guard, keep watch for David/others' arrivals while Charley does her thing; Archie will poke around the non-electronic contents of the offices (papers, files, etc), but hopefully discreetly.
Michael
Our Archie, a backup black bagger! Gentlemen do not read each other's mail. Research roll!
>>> SUCCESS by 7
Archie finds the GRAIL TABLE files... disorganized. Surprisingly so. David did seem, for all his eccentricities, like an orderly thinker. But the files themselves, the ones that Archie can understand, because there's a lot of flowcharts and computer programming lingo that Archie's really only passingly familiar with (from having lunch with the computer nerds in esmology at Granite Peak and/or advertising folks who were enthused about using computers to compile demographic data). But what Archie is looking for is material having to do with our primary fear and concern right now, the Anunnaki.
So Archie goes looking for things he can comprehend: meeting minutes, summary reports, compilations of "after-game reports" from past simulation runs. Even a couple of drafts for academic papers (cleaned up and pre-censored to remove references to GRAIL TABLE/SANDMAN tech). But the Red King. The Irruptors. Where are they in these papers?
Well, in the short time Archie is on his own in there, he finds a couple of references. In two sets of meeting minutes from four months ago, David and Elias agree to create a "Anunnaki memetics predictive modeling subroutine" that would allow any "side" of the geopolitical conflict to detonate a variety of modeled Anunnaki glyphs and memetic attacks. Elias's logic was insistent: we cannot accurately model the future if we do not take History B into strong consideration. In the first meeting, David was not convinced of this logic. By the second, he was. All iterations of the simulation program since that point four months ago have used this subroutine and in every apocalypse scenario, either a meme or a glyph went wild.
So the guards actually do just let you in before David and the rest of GRAIL TABLE arrive at the castle, no muss, no fuss. Now if the primary mission here is to get onto the data drives and find out how and where that email with the Revulsion glyph came to Roger/Joshua's email address in the sim, the next part of the scene is all Charley. But I'd like to find out if Roger and Archie are doing anything while Charley switches on the computer banks.
Again, to describe the chapel: it's got this half original, half plastic sculpted vaulted ceiling, five sensory deprivation tanks, the head mounts that transfer information between the computers and the simulation experiencers, which are wired back to the mainframes which run the program. The separate audio system that plays the chant "mantras" meant to create a more sensorily fulfilling experience are linked to the computers, but operate on a different circuit, the audio being played off of those fancy futuristic gold platters.
The GRAIL TABLE offices, which contain the data banks and medical bay and files and desks and other ancillary simulation-related administrative and supply stuff, is behind a door behind the Control desk where Charley is setting up. You've all been in there over the weekend but you've never had, er, unfettered access to it.
So while I wait for Archie and Roger to let me know what they're going to do ... Mel! Let's begin this hack, shall we?
First things first, as the computer banks finish powering up, you have to actually gain access to the database. That’s going to be a Computer Hacking roll.
Mel
>>>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
Wonderful. Once Charley gets the computer banks powered up, she is able to find a way into the database with very few problems: the security is very basic. Charley begins to use her machine empathy and specifically her Data Retrieval power to find the relevant lines of code that contain the emails that Joshua received. Your Data Retrieval roll will be at a -3 because of the Complexity of the computer system; however, I assume that you'll want to spend as much time using your power as possible given the circumstances, which will give you a +5. So the net bonus for taking 30 times the usual 1-2 seconds for using a psi power (in other words, communing with the GRAIL TABLE computers for a full minute) will give you an effective Data Retrieval rating of 14.
Bill
Just confirming Roger is standing guard as requested. His wrenched Observation skill will hopefully come in handy.
Mel
>>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
Sweet. It takes Charley about a minute of her fingers flying across the main control panel keyboard and her mind reaching out to the computer banks across the room. As Archie is going through the papers in the office, the supplemental data banks whir into life as Charley plumbs the program files for Joshua Telfair's email terminal readouts. Once there, Charley sees the emails that the simulation has created, and the "attachment" file appended to the February 2020 one from his terrorist contacts. Within the simulation, the email resolves to a squat in Oakland where a cell of European Communist sympathizers live; the "game" created them as part of Joshua's history of flirting with extremists. But that attachment... it's encrypted differently than any of the simulation elements. That encryption was designed to unfold when opened within the simulation: tricky, challenging programming work, Charley can see. But it was done from within the database. Which means that whoever did it had to have some form of physical access to the simulation database. But there's something else attached to the encrypted Revulsion glyph. It's a "REM" file, a harmless text remark left in as part of the subroutine, a sort of computer signature of the programmer. And it consists of the following lines in Latin:
Morgen mihi nomen didici que quid utilitatis
Gramina cuncta ferant ut languida corpora curem
Ars quoque nota sibi qua scio mutare figuram
Et resecare nouis quasi dedalus aera pennis.
Charley can give me a Racial Memory roll here.
Mel
>>> SUCCESS by 7
Are there personal computers here that I can hack, to try and determine who is responsible for the programming of the glyph attachment?
Michael
So yeah, that wasn't a crit so you don't get a full-fledged flashback like you did at the stone circle, but something about this Latin verse rings a bell with Charley's deep past lives memories. Charley doesn't know Latin, but the names "Morgan" (la Fay) and "D(a)edalus" might be familiar thanks to Occultism. If Charley could get this translated it might ring more bells in her past life memory.
Are there personal computers here that I can hack, to try and determine who is responsible for the programming of the glyph attachment?
That would require hacking into the login histories, so yes, it will be another Computer Hacking roll.
Mel
>>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
Right. Well, here's the odd thing about the "creation date" of that attached glyph file. It wasn't created spontaneously by the simulation as an outgrowth of the simulation's rules about generating characters and situations and obstacles within the sim. The file was created outside the simulation, and slipped in, added to the narrative, with some nifty revised programming. This proves that the GRAIL TABLE system has been hacked before.
But try as she might, Charley can't find how or when they entered the system. The time that the glyph file was created? There's no record of anyone being logged in at the time. Every time someone comes into the system with a legitimate account and password, a record is kept. So this hacker could have covered their tracks, logged out and had a program run to erase their footsteps as it were, in the system log. But try as she might, Charley can't locate the trail of such a program like that anywhere in the system either.
The only clue we have as to who did this is the weird remark lines in Latin in the glyph code.
Mel
Having learned what she could, Charley pulls away from the GRAIL TABLE database. And proceeds to fill in Archie and Rodger (as soon as they are available), " So, in short, the glyph is not part of the simulation programming. I followed the code trail from Joshua's emails for the simulation and found nothing out of the ordinary there, but the glyph attachment is different. It was created and encrypted, then slipped into the game as the email attachment. And whoever is responsible knows how to cover their tracks. They did leave behind a kind of signature, a Latin phrase. But to learn more, I need to translate it. Do either of you understand Latin?”
Bill
Roger gives Archie Jo’s debrief and request he call into Granite Peak. Then he tells everyone about that need to hurry up, as Jo and Sophie have held up as long as they could, and attempted to hold the next session, and it’s escalated. Hearing about the sim glyph’s origin, Roger will try to translate the Latin if no one else can, but it’ll only be though his Spanish. He’s no scholar though— no literary training— so his translation will be very literal. “Something about a cure for lazy bodies?”
Rob
Archie doesn't have Latin but he does have Linguistics 14. Also I don't think it's too OOC to say that he has King Arthur on the brain after this morning, so he notices the name Morgen and has a guess as to what this is from. Guess once we get into the simulation we could Google / Chumhum.
>>> FAILURE by 1
damn
Michael
Ah, okay, I'm kludging something together here from various GURPS rules and I think it'll work well. Archie will aid Roger with Linguistics. Roger will then roll IQ-3 (plus or minus whatever help/hindrance Archie gives). Degree of success will indicate how well Roger puzzles out the meaning. And if Roger does well enough, there will be some Charley past lives stuff to consult with as well. OK, so, Bill, that’s IQ-4.
Bill
>>> FAILURE by 6
So much for Romance languages.
Michael
Yeah, other than the pidgin translation Roger's already come up with, and Morgen and Dedalus as proper names, nope.
Bill
Yeah, I could make a case that as a Catholic he has to know "nomen" and "corpora" — no escaping those words.
Michael
"Morgan is my name" seems a pretty cut and dried translation for the first few words.
Rob
Well, Archie does relay to Roger & Charley what he learned by snooping through the papers, namely that it was Elias who insisted on inserting "an Anunnaki memetics sub-whatsit" into the simulation. And his guess that "Morgen" is Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend.
Bill
Yeah, Roger never got the brief on all the Arthur stuff. And we haven't even had Morgan Fairchild to make the name popular. So he's clueless. But he is all over Elias as the potential mole — access, opportunity … but what's the motive? No way I'm getting back in that tank with Elias at the wheel. Err, keyboard? Controls, whatever.”
Mel
If there is time before the next simulation, Charley will use the Renshaw Method for Latin.
Michael
So if the plan right now is to follow Jo's lead in delaying the GRAIL TABLE team's re-entry into the sim, indefinitely, given the evidence we've uncovered and the bluff Jo has already deployed with David, Catherine, Elias, and the ancillary members of GRAIL TABLE, is this the, dare I say given the setting of our little scenario, moment in the Christie novel where we lay all our evidence on the table?