Non-Peace Weekend - Investigation

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[Two weeks have passed since your arrival. The Researcher has delivered a pair of motives, promising to reward some or punish others if rule 7 is not enacted by the end of the week.]

[Today is Friday, the deadline for your incentives. There is no morning announcement today.]

[Maybe It's nothing, but you might notice a faint, odd metallic scent in the air as you exit your bedrooms this morning.]

[Proceed with caution, Participants.]

Comments

[windowsexplorer]

[Would she happen to be able to access it wirelessly like she did with Penny's before?]

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[She can certainly try. Though it quickly becomes apparent that this one has an actual password of some kind; guessing could take a long time.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Hm. Well, she can easily spare the processor cycles to keep trying in the background, but given how promising this doesn't look, she'll leave that to a script and focus her conscious effort elsewhere.

Let's check out those folders!]

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[Picking up the first, it appears to be an in-depth profile on Janet - the Janet. Looks like her public profile and the one Penny had are based on this.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Oh, this seems extremely significant!

(She should probably give this to Janet.)

(And she probably should just take a photo of the beginning where it identifies her rather than publicize all Janet's personal information.)

(Though she'll also take some fascinating screenshots to go over later.)

What's/who's the next one?]

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[Looks like the next one is Chloe Frazer - The Selfish Dickhead. It's a bit charred in places, and some of the text is gone, but it's the same thing. Long history, personal relations, some psychological analysis.]

[You gonna try to pick up all of these folders?]

[windowsexplorer]

[Obviously! Unless one of them is, like, nothing but ashes. But listen, what if one of them is really important? Or what if someone has a fascinating life story? Yeah she's gonna keep grabbing folders until she runs out of them.]

[mockmods]

[There might be one that's all ashes? There's definitely a small pile of ash near one of the deceased android's hands. But you won't know for sure until you've got all of them, right?]

[Thankfully, each file seems mostly all together? The pages from separate files don't seem to be mixed together, at least.]

[So it takes some time, but Meredith can gather them up one at a time. Some are partially burned, worse than others, but they're here-]

[Yaiba, The Legendary Bassist. Michael, The Architect. Helena, The Original. Shigeo Kageyama, The 100%-]

[Penny Polendina - The Assistant.]

[windowsexplorer]

[What.

That sure isn't at all consistent with the facts as she knows them! Let's give this one an extra careful look-over, read and record the whole thing.]

[mockmods]

[Sure isn't! That history definitely doesn't start here in the Facility, two days before you all woke up. And this Ruby girl sure does feature prominently for someone you're pretty sure you haven't seen here.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Meredith's a very fast reader, so we don't have to wait very long for her to finish Penny's history section. How does it end?]

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[Skipping to the end, that's just terrible. It might take a little searching, but the history section ends just before the section titled 'Relevant Technological Advances'.]

Due to unknown circumstances, subject was destroyed in combat against trainee P. Nikos. Aftermath was ridiculous but made retrieval easy enough.

Reconstruction was tedious, but insight into Project Equinox was worth it. No further direct use for subject, maybe put it into the study. Should be funny if nothing else.

[windowsexplorer]

[Excuse you she read every word.

AND SHE KIND OF REGRETS THESE LAST FEW SENTENCES? WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TODAY? The tone makes it sound not so bad, like it was just a matter of putting her back together, but that is definitely not what "destroyed in combat" sounds like?? And what's with this calling her an "it?" "Should be funny?" What the hell? She's upset, offended, and worried all at the same time.

And intrigued. "Relevant Technological Advances" wouldn't happen to explain what a Project Equinox is, would it?]

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[If that was bad, the references Penny's lack of belief in her own status as a "real girl" were probably worse, Meredith. We're sorry.]

[And there's a few references to it? The Technological Advances section talks about Penny as being capable of generating some sort of personal energy called an Aura, which is also vaguely discussed, but sounds sort of metaphysical and maybe soul-adjacent? And the technology which allows her to do as such was apparently developed in tandem with whatever 'Project Equinox' is.]

[windowsexplorer]

[I mean, those made her sad. This pissed her off.

But oho. Project Equinox has something to do with metaphysical robot souls (a concept she does not question for obvious reasons). That sounds intensely relevant.

Anything else to find in this file?]

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[A whole lot of notes about Penny's totally-not-girlfriend Ruby, her two dads, and her sweet monster-slaying swords-backpack-thing, if Meredith's gonna read long enough.]

[And a psychological evaluation talking about Penny's various neuroses and need to help people.]

[Also the hiccuping thing? It means she's lying. That's either really worrying or sort of cute, depending on your perspective.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Listen. Meredith is going to read literally every word of this file.

Family she needs to be returned to, preferably with her memory intact. Really good friend Meredith finds herself feeling intensely envious of. Penny psychologically needs to help people, that's not a big surprise. Hiccupping thing, interesting--oh she was really worried on motive day... Swords-backpack thing, sounds super awesome, want to see.

Meredith now knows considerably more about Penny than Penny herself does, although that isn't really difficult right now.

I guess that's it for The Penny File?]

[mockmods]

[That's it for the Penny file.]

[Going back to collecting the rest?]

[windowsexplorer]

[Yep. Any more surprise names?]

[mockmods]

[Well, the file with Meredith's own name might be a little surprising, in that it almost certainly confirms her suspicions about her origins, but no really surprising names, per se.]

[Eventually, you've collected twenty-one complete profiles, or at least mostly complete, one for every person you've met... in person, in the last two weeks.]

[There are a few stray scraps left, looks like, near the android's body?]

[windowsexplorer]

[There's... a lot to unpack in her file, honestly. A certain Type: Green comes up a lot, and... wait, Meredith is the one investigating here.

So nobody's conspicuously missing or anything, then. That makes those scraps over by the body seem super extra interesting. Let's see if there's anything left to read there!]

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[It's all pretty much ash, but there's one corner of paper that has- not even really words, just a few visible letters left.]

N M Hod p

[windowsexplorer]

[Aha! They're dealing with a New Mexico hodgepodge!

...

No, actually she's got nothing. There are a few familiar letters in there, but there were only 26 to choose from to begin with, so... She just enters the scrap into evidence hoping something will make its meaning more clear.

Well, that's it for the folders she guesses. She goes to check on her password guesser, then has a sudden related thought...

She's still got the crystal on her. If she puts her thumb in the indent again, does anything different happen?]

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[My goodness, you've cracked the code.]

[But yeah, maybe something someone else found will make it clearer? And in the meantime, the crystal- does the same thing it did in the greenhouse, and when Neku checked it. No signal, for now.]

[windowsexplorer]

[And just to make sure, she doesn't herself now suddenly have a wi-fi signal, does she?]