Perplex City Wiki - User contributions [en]

Seej Engine

2005-09-12T20:58:06Z

Seej: /* References */

[[Image:Seej engine.jpg]]

===General===

*Perplex City player.
{{View From Earth}}
*Has a blog at [http://www.cjtonline.net/booted cjtonline.net/booted].
*Has been leaving [[Puzzle Cards]] lying around for people to find.
*Makes [http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html good suggestions] for places to celebrate birthdays.
*Is not well liked by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] after having asked what she was wearing.

===References===
*Perplex City Sentinel Articles:
**article, 22-JUL-2005 "View from Earth: Culture Clash" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/07/view_from_earth_11.html link])
*Scarlett Kite posts:
**post, 5-JUL-2005 "My birthday!" ([http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html link])
*The Advisor's secure area at PCBC 12-SEP-2005 ([http://www.perplexcitybankingcorporation.com/advisor/ link])

Seej Engine

2005-09-12T19:43:08Z

Seej: /* General */

[[Image:Seej engine.jpg]]

===General===

*Perplex City player.
{{View From Earth}}
*Has a blog at [http://www.cjtonline.net/booted cjtonline.net/booted].
*Has been leaving [[Puzzle Cards]] lying around for people to find.
*Makes [http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html good suggestions] for places to celebrate birthdays.
*Is not well liked by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] after having asked what she was wearing.

===References===
*Perplex City Sentinel Articles:
**article, 22-JUL-2005 "View from Earth: Culture Clash" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/07/view_from_earth_11.html link])
*Scarlett Kite posts:
**post, 5-JUL-2005 "My birthday!" ([http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html link])
*The Advisor's secure area at PCBC (12/8/2005) ([http://www.perplexcitybankingcorporation.com/advisor/ link])

Seej Engine

2005-09-12T19:42:18Z

Seej: Updated player info

[[Image:Seej engine.jpg]]

===General===

*Perplex City player.
{{View From Earth}}
*Has a blog at [http://www.cjtonline.net/booted cjtonline.net/booted].
*Has been leaving [[Puzzle Cards]] lying around for people to find.
*Makes [http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html good suggestions] for places to celebrate birthdays.
*Is not well liked by [[Advisor|The Advisor]].

===References===
*Perplex City Sentinel Articles:
**article, 22-JUL-2005 "View from Earth: Culture Clash" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/07/view_from_earth_11.html link])
*Scarlett Kite posts:
**post, 5-JUL-2005 "My birthday!" ([http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html link])
*The Advisor's secure area at PCBC (12/8/2005) ([http://www.perplexcitybankingcorporation.com/advisor/ link])

Seej Engine

2005-09-12T19:40:02Z

Seej: /* General */

[[Image:Seej engine.jpg]]

===General===

*Perplex City player.
{{View From Earth}}
*Has a blog at [http://www.cjtonline.net/booted cjtonline.net/booted].
*Has been leaving [[Puzzle Cards]] lying around for people to find.
*Makes [http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html good suggestions] for places to celebrate birthdays.
*Is not well liked by [[The Advisor]].

===References===
*Perplex City Sentinel Articles:
**article, 22-JUL-2005 "View from Earth: Culture Clash" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/07/view_from_earth_11.html link])
*Scarlett Kite posts:
**post, 5-JUL-2005 "My birthday!" ([http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html link])

Theft-Archive

2005-08-16T12:55:29Z

Seej: /* The Pietro Salk Logs */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the '''facts''' we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the [http://www.perplexcityacademy.com/students.html Academy Library], hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered [[Letters from Kurt#Tech Talk|several pieces of tech]] that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a [[Reynolds ioniser]] and three [[Klebold plates]]. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife [[Sylvia Salk|Sylvia]] returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. [[Pietros maze|Pietro's Maze]] is uploaded onto [http://www.salkfamily.com the Salk Family website], and from it we are able to retrieve various phrases which are all sub-directories on the Salk family website, each of which contains part of [[Salk logs|Salk's logs]]. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a [http://perplexcitycardcatalog.com/notes/maze/3.txt symbol] that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== Members of 'The Conspiracy' ==

''Members of the [[:Category:Conspiracy]] (see the [[Salklogs.doc]], and [[Reynolds Ionizer]])''. None of these knew each other until the night of the heist.

====[[Advisor]]====
The advisor has another codename, of course. The Advisor only gave themselves that name when contacting [[Pietro Salk]]. The Advisor's codename begins with "K", and has no relation to her real name.

====[[Quercus]]====
It is strongly held to be true that "Q" is short for Quercus -- Quercus being a latin word referring to a tree -- and is the codename of [[Bernardo Holyoke]]. Holyoke's task in the heist was to provide a secure den in which to operate. It's possible he was more or less an innocent bystander who saw a profitable opportunity, and quickly got in way over his head.

====[[Viendenbourg]]====
We have only atiny scrap of paper given to us by [[Scarlett Kiteway]] with this one name on it. It is a strong possibility this is the codename of the dangerous and enigmatic "V".

====[[C?]]====
We have only a letter and a job requirement for this person. C. Their codename is the same as their real surname. Their job was to be the technical genius of the group.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

{{Conspiracy}}

Reynolds Ionizer

2005-08-16T12:50:53Z

Seej: /* What is known */

==What is known==
*A Reynolds Ionizer were not initially found when police began investigating [[Bernardo Holyoke]]'s death.
*However, it was eventually discovered at the [[Five of Cups]], with a tip from The [[Advisor]].
*Was apparently [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html stolen] from The [[Academy]].
*The thieves may have used Reynolds Ionizers when orchestrating the [[Theft]] of [[The Receda Cube]]
*They are military devices of some sort.
*They are used to [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ionize ionize] things, in some way.

*In some way, something called [[Klebold plates]] were also involved in the theft.
**We know more about these.
**They are used to get very very accurate measurements of things.
*N.B. Characters seem to spell this either way; ionizer ''and'' ioniser.

==What is Not Known==
*How are they used?
*Why are they so secretive?
*What part did they play in the [[Theft]]?
*Who had access to them?
*Who would have known about them, and known how to use them?

==References==
'''[[Kurt McAllister]]'s email to UF user zaeil'''
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%" style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff"
|
Hi Stacy,

I did a little research on Reynolds Ionisers this morning. I didn't get very far. The first - and only - thing I did was to conduct a search of the databases that I can access with my Academy privileges. The results came up totally blank, but my [[Key]]'s security system detected a military-grade trace; it's only because I use custom security systems that I designed myself that the trace was automatically blocked. All I can conclude is that a Reynolds Ioniser is some sort of classified military item, and that it would be a very good idea to stop poking around in such things.

Kurt
|}

'''[[Scarlett Kiteway]]'s mail to UF user flicks09:'''
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%" style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff"
|

(trimmed)

Wednesday, my sister [[Violet]] and her friend [[Kurt]] came to see me. Kurt's one of the few other people in [[Perplex City]] to have a website that can be viewed from Earth. We love to talk about the [[Letters from Kurt|letters we get]] from people on Earth and compare thoughts but on Wednesday Kurt seemed sort of rattled, which was odd. Apparently last week one of his Earth correspondents had asked him to find out what a "Reynolds ionizer" was. He drew a blank, but his key (the all-purpose sort of computer we use here) detected that a military trace was being used to find out who he was. He thought he'd blocked it, but he's been finding a couple of odd things on his key since then, which makes him think that maybe something got through and he's being tracked.

(trimmed)

I put the file folder back down on [[Pietro Salk]]'s desk and stared at my reflection in the window. Nothing seemed to make sense, and I'd wasted a perfectly good evening searching through a dead man's desk. I felt ashamed of myself. I went to put the file back in the file drawer, to leave everything as I found it. Which was when I noticed something. A tiny note written in pencil but definitely in Pietro Salk's handwriting. On the back of the file folder, just by the metal hanging rod. It said this:

Reynolds ionizers. Viendenbourg.
|}

{{Conspiracy}}

Reynolds ioniser

2005-08-16T12:48:50Z

Seej: redirect to correct page

#REDIRECT [[Reynolds Ionizer]]

The Five of Cups

2005-08-16T12:47:16Z

Seej: Redirect to correct page

#REDIRECT [[Five of Cups]]

Reynolds ionizer

2005-08-16T12:45:57Z

Seej: Redirect to correct page

#REDIRECT [[Reynolds Ionizer]]

Klebold plate

2005-08-16T12:43:23Z

Seej: Rediect to correct page

#REDIRECT [[Klebold plates]]

Klebold Plates

2005-08-16T12:42:14Z

Seej: Redirect to correct page

#REDIRECT [[Klebold plates]]

Seej Engine

2005-08-16T12:37:26Z

Seej: /* References */

[[Image:Seej engine.jpg]]

===General===

*Perplex City player.
{{View From Earth}}
*Has a blog at [http://www.cjtonline.net/booted cjtonline.net/booted].
*Has been leaving [[Puzzle Cards]] lying around for people to find.
*Makes [http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html good suggestions] for places to celebrate birthdays.

===References===
*Perplex City Sentinel Articles:
**article, 22-JUL-2005 "View from Earth: Culture Clash" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/07/view_from_earth_11.html link])
*Scarlett Kite posts:
**post, 5-JUL-2005 "My birthday!" ([http://thescarlettkite.com/archives/2005/07/my_birthday.html link])

User:Seej

2005-08-16T12:33:41Z

Seej: Redirecting user page to player page

#REDIRECT [[Seej Engine]]

User talk:Seej

2005-08-15T10:00:50Z

Seej:

Seej Engine

2005-08-15T00:10:19Z

Seej: Edited player profile to add a bit more information

User talk:Seej

2005-08-14T23:46:51Z

Seej: redirect page

Say, as a suggetsion: you might want to make a redirect fFrom your [[User:Seej]] page to the [[Seej Engine]] page. Do you know how to make redirects? It's easy enough, I can do it if you like. -- [[User:Scott|Scott]] 23:19, 14 Aug 2005 (GMT)

== redirect page ==

Hey Scott,

I don't know how to make a redirect page but if you could tell me how that'd be great. I think I should set one up for Klebold plates because I just wrote a page for them today and used the capitalisation that Kurt uses, but there's other links that use different capitalisation (e.g. both words capitalised, neither capitalised, etc.).

Cheers

Seej

Klebold plates

2005-08-14T18:14:08Z

Seej: /* What is known */

==What is Known==
*Klebold plates were found when police raided the [[Five of Cups]].
*They were apparently [http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/11.05.05/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html stolen] from The [[Academy]].
*The thieves may have used Klebold plates when orchestrating the [[Theft]] of [[The Receda Cube]]
*They are experimental prototypes used to make accurate 3D measurements.

*In some way, something called a [[Reynolds Ioniser]] was also involved in the theft.

==What is Not Known==
*How are they used?
*What part did they play in the [[Theft]]?
*Who had access to them?
*Who would have known about them, and known how to use them? It's possible they were operated by [[Bernardo Holyoke]] but this is currently unconfirmed.

==References==
'''[[Kurt McAllister]]'s email to UF user zaeil'''
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%" style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff"
|
Hi Stacy,

Hope you're keeping well. I haven't been able to find out a Reynolds ioniser does (other than what all ionisers do, of course - ionise stuff) but I managed to dig up something on Klebold plates. Klebold plates are experimental prototype devices, constructed to make highly accurate physical measurements in 3D. I know that's vague and it doesn't say anything about how they work, but it's the most I can tell you.

I hope this helps!

Kurt
|}

{{Conspiracy}}

Klebold plates

2005-08-14T18:13:53Z

Seej: /* What is known */

==What is known==
*Klebold plates were found when police raided the [[Five of Cups]].
*They were apparently [http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/11.05.05/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html stolen] from The [[Academy]].
*The thieves may have used Klebold plates when orchestrating the [[Theft]] of [[The Receda Cube]]
*They are experimental prototypes used to make accurate 3D measurements.

*In some way, something called a [[Reynolds Ioniser]] was also involved in the theft.

==What is Not Known==
*How are they used?
*What part did they play in the [[Theft]]?
*Who had access to them?
*Who would have known about them, and known how to use them? It's possible they were operated by [[Bernardo Holyoke]] but this is currently unconfirmed.

==References==
'''[[Kurt McAllister]]'s email to UF user zaeil'''
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%" style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff"
|
Hi Stacy,

Hope you're keeping well. I haven't been able to find out a Reynolds ioniser does (other than what all ionisers do, of course - ionise stuff) but I managed to dig up something on Klebold plates. Klebold plates are experimental prototype devices, constructed to make highly accurate physical measurements in 3D. I know that's vague and it doesn't say anything about how they work, but it's the most I can tell you.

I hope this helps!

Kurt
|}

{{Conspiracy}}

Klebold plates

2005-08-14T18:13:44Z

Seej: /* What is known */

==What is known==
*Klebold plates were found when police raided the [[Five of Cups]].
*They were apparently [http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/11.05.05/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html stolen] from The [[Academy]].
*The thieves may have used Klebold Plates when orchestrating the [[Theft]] of [[The Receda Cube]]
*They are experimental prototypes used to make accurate 3D measurements.

*In some way, something called a [[Reynolds Ioniser]] was also involved in the theft.

==What is Not Known==
*How are they used?
*What part did they play in the [[Theft]]?
*Who had access to them?
*Who would have known about them, and known how to use them? It's possible they were operated by [[Bernardo Holyoke]] but this is currently unconfirmed.

==References==
'''[[Kurt McAllister]]'s email to UF user zaeil'''
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%" style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff"
|
Hi Stacy,

Hope you're keeping well. I haven't been able to find out a Reynolds ioniser does (other than what all ionisers do, of course - ionise stuff) but I managed to dig up something on Klebold plates. Klebold plates are experimental prototype devices, constructed to make highly accurate physical measurements in 3D. I know that's vague and it doesn't say anything about how they work, but it's the most I can tell you.

I hope this helps!

Kurt
|}

{{Conspiracy}}

Viendenbourg

2005-08-14T18:13:20Z

Seej: /* Refences */

[[Image:Salksymbol.gif]]

==What is known==
*Almost nothing.
*Extremely dangerous
*Part of an ancient secret society
*Involved in stealing the cube.
*Linked to the deaths of [[Pietro Salk]], [[Bernardo Holyoke]], and [[Fran Mendling]].

==Refences==
*[[Reynolds Ionizer]]
*[[Klebold plates]]
*[[Salklogs.doc]]

{{Conspiracy}}

Klebold plates

2005-08-14T18:12:04Z

Seej: Klebold Plates

==What is known==
*Klebold Plates were found when police raided the [[Five of Cups]].
*They were apparently [http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/11.05.05/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html stolen] from The [[Academy]].
*The thieves may have used Klebold Plates when orchestrating the [[Theft]] of [[The Receda Cube]]
*They are experimental prototypes used to make accurate 3D measurements.

*In some way, something called a [[Reynolds Ioniser]] was also involved in the theft.

==What is Not Known==
*How are they used?
*What part did they play in the [[Theft]]?
*Who had access to them?
*Who would have known about them, and known how to use them? It's possible they were operated by [[Bernardo Holyoke]] but this is currently unconfirmed.

==References==
'''[[Kurt McAllister]]'s email to UF user zaeil'''
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%" style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff"
|
Hi Stacy,

Hope you're keeping well. I haven't been able to find out a Reynolds ioniser does (other than what all ionisers do, of course - ionise stuff) but I managed to dig up something on Klebold plates. Klebold plates are experimental prototype devices, constructed to make highly accurate physical measurements in 3D. I know that's vague and it doesn't say anything about how they work, but it's the most I can tell you.

I hope this helps!

Kurt
|}

{{Conspiracy}}

Theft-Archive

2005-08-11T15:09:24Z

Seej: Details of the Cub theft

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the '''facts''' we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the [http://www.perplexcityacademy.com/students.html Academy Library], hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a [[Letters from Kurt#Tech Talk|Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates]]. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife [[Sylvia Salk|Sylvia]] returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. [[Pietros maze|Pietro's Maze]] is uploaded onto [http://www.salkfamily.com the Salk Family website], and from it we are able to retrieve various phrases which are all sub-directories on the Salk family website, each of which contains part of [[Salk logs|Salk's logs]]. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a [http://perplexcitycardcatalog.com/notes/maze/3.txt symbol] that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk.

The popular suggestion that the [[Reconstructionists]] were involved in the theft is, at this point (which is less of a point and more of a globule), hanging very much in the air. Salk's investigation tends to suggest they were not involved, yet all the hooks are in place. While their motivation falls short of murder and their tendencies do not seem especially in line with the Conspirators, it would be folly to rule them out completely.

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T16:26:37Z

Seej: /* The Theft - Plot So Far */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the '''facts''' we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the [http://www.perplexcityacademy.com/students.html Academy Library], hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a [[Letters from Kurt#Tech Talk|Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates]]. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife [[Sylvia Salk|Sylvia]] returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. [[Pietros maze|Pietro's Maze]] is uploaded onto [http://www.salkfamily.com the Salk Family website], and from it we are able to retrieve various phrases which are all sub-directories on the Salk family website, each of which contains part of [[Salk logs|Salk's logs]]. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a [http://perplexcitycardcatalog.com/notes/maze/3.txt symbol] that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Fran Mendling

2005-08-04T16:17:05Z

Seej: /* What's Known */

===References===

*[http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcity.com/10.10.04/tmp/httpd/errorlog/1817413596.cache Security Guard at Gatehouse 24 (1817413596.cache)]
*[[South China Morning Post 14.03.05]]
*[http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/28.04.05/archives/2004/01/cube_stolen_i.html full Sentinel article, "Cube Stolen In Deadly Raid"]

===What's Known===

* Fran was found dead after the [[The Receda Cube|Cube]] was [[Theft|stolen]] from the [[Perplex City Academy]]. Was killed with a Neuro-Suppresive device, which makes time of death difficult to decide.
* She was aged 42 at the time, which puts her as being born in 234/235 AC.

Bernardo Holyoke

2005-08-04T16:16:28Z

Seej: /* General */

==General==
*former owner of [[Five of Cups]], a bar in [[Places|Old Town]]
*murdered
*53 at time of death
*survived by estranged wife, [[Jessica Holyoke]], 57
*Holyoke had a second identity as a fence for high-tech stolen goods
*May have been hired by an unknown organization to [[Theft|steal]] the Cube.

==References==
*Perplex City Sentinel
**article, 26-APR-05 "[[Five of Cups]] Owner Found Dead" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html link])
**article, 11-MAY-05 "[[Bernardo Holyoke|Holyoke]] Housed Stolen [[Perplex City Academy|Academy]] Equipment" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html link])
**More News In Brief, 19-MAY-05, "Five of Cups Crime HQ" ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/19.05.05/ link])
**article, 24-MAY-05 "[[Bernardo Holyoke|Holyoke]]'s [[Jessica Holyoke|Wife]] Found" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyokes_wife_l_1.html link])

*Pietro Salk's [[Salklogs.doc]]

Advisor

2005-08-04T16:14:41Z

Seej:

What is known about The Advisor comes from the [[salklogs.doc]], in which TA contacts him, to give information, in exchange for police protection and immunity from prosecution.

*One of three people hired by V to [[Theft|steal]] the cube.
*Code name K. <recording begins>
*Gender: probably female. Salk talks about "Thinking of another woman ......, which you would not want your wife to find out about is an affair." (16 June 2005 )
*Calls herself dangerous. (1 June 2005 5.36am)
*Weapons are her business. (7 June 2005 10.37pm)
*Fears for her life. (10 May 2005 11.40am)
*Lives in Ascendancy Point. (19 June 2005 4.25am)
*Has an account with Comprendo. Set up a pw protected page for Salk to view. The number of the extract is: 74419038751-4593855 (28 May 2005 3.48pm)
*Likes coriander-lime buns, called The Lime Life, from the Red Hot Bakery. (25 May 2005 5.38pm)
*Wears perfume that smells like fresh-cut grass. (16 June 2005)
*As a child, wanted to work with trees. (12 June 2005 11.25pm)

Aiko Entrescore

2005-08-04T16:13:09Z

Seej: /* General */

[[Image:Aiko.jpg|It's unwise to disturb Aiko when she's working.
]] [[Image:Aiko entrescore.jpg|After her arrest, looking defrocked]]

===General===
*holds a junior fellowship in visual arts
*protegee of the acclaimed sculptor [[Randal Tokei]]
*lives in the [[Eclipse Disc]] area of Perplex City
*Is not often to be found on site in the Academy, preferring to work in the quiet of her studio
*Accused of [[Cube]] [[Theft]]
**Released from police custody after Judge [[Erik Hornblair]] rules her connection to the recons is tenuous evidence
**After her release, [[Sente Kiteway]] stated she is welcome back to the Academy with open arms, pointing out her spirituality makes her all the more frevent about the Cube's return.

===Timeline===
*16-JAN-04 - Artwork present at the Academy Ball, during Cube Theft
*??-FEB-04 - Joined the Cube retreival team
*17-APR-05 - Interviewed by The Sentinel
*04-JUN-05 - "All Things" piece goes on display at Restructure Gallery
*14-JUN-05 - Arrested for Cube Theft
*20-JUN-05 - Released from police custody

===Art===
*Her sculptures are said to be slightly eerie and disturbing; they are often ambiguous in form and she employs a variety of high-tech effects to cause the sculptures to mutter, glow, display flickering images and even broadcast snippets of information to keys and other equipment.
*Her exhibit was on display on the night of the [[Cube]] theft; it was disassembled and examined, and Entrescore questioned
*New exhibition entitled ''All Things'' opened at the [[Restructure Gallery]] on June 4 and runs for three months

===Associations===
*a member of the [[Cube Retrieval Project]]
*Revealed by the [[Recon Encryption Puzzle]] as a secret member of the [[Reconstructionists]] cult

===Quote===
{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%"
| style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff" |
I hope that the people of the city continue to respect my religious freedom, as well as the idea that everyone can express their faith in different ways. While it is true that I have always felt the Cube belongs in other hands than those at the Academy, I also believe strongly in the rule of law, and would only work toward the Cube's freedom within the framework constructed by our society.

--- 20-JUN-05, statement after being released from police custody

|}

===References===
*[[Perplex City Academy]], Special Projects Division - [[Cube Retrieval Project]] ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcityacademy.com/15.05.05/departments-special.html link])

*[[Perplex City Sentinel]]
**article, 15-MAY-05 "[[Iona Rodie|Iona]] Interviews... [[Aiko Entrescore]]" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/iona_interviews.html link])
**article, 15-JUN-05 "[[Aiko Entrescore|Entrescore]] Arrested for Receda [[Cube]] Theft" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/entrescore_arre.html link])
**article, 20-JUN-05 "[[Aiko Entrescore|Entrescore]] Freed" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/entrescore_free.html link])

*[[Violet Kiteway]]'s blog
**blog, 15-JUN-05 "Some things I don't know" ([http://www.quirkyacuity.com/archives/2005/06/some_things_i_d.html link])
**blog, 17-JUN-05 "After all that" ([http://www.quirkyacuity.com/archives/2005/06/after_all_that.html link])

Eoin Morgan

2005-08-04T16:12:20Z

Seej: /* References */

* Police Chief of [[Perplex City]]

===References===

* [[Perplex City Sentinel]]
**article, "Cube Stolen in Deadly Raid" ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/21.03.05/archives/2004/01/cube_stolen_i.html link])
**article, "Crime Lower in East Old Town" ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/02.04.05/archives/2005/03/crime_down_in_e.html link])
**article, "Recon Eight Released from Police Custody" ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/06.04.05/archives/2005/04/recon_eight_rel.html link])
**article, "Zeller Declares Corolla Mistrial" ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/05.05.05/archives/2005/05/zeller_declares.html link])
**15.06.05 [[Aiko Entrescore|Entrescore]] Arrested for Receda [[Cube]] [[Theft]] ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/entrescore_arre.html link])

Centrifuge

2005-08-04T16:11:11Z

Seej: /* General */

===General===

*Centrifuge is [[Perplex City|Perplex City's]] leading technological security company
*Centrifuge are currently sponsoring the [[Earth Studies]] department of [[Perplex City Academy]]
*Centrifuge recently bought [[KSI]] for PCL2.3 billion in cash and stock
*Centrifuge's stock went into a steady decline following the [[theft]] of the [[Receda Cube]]
*Centrifuge has a number of high-profile contracts for campus security
*Advances in security technology over the past five or eight years have all come from either Centrifuge or [[KSI]]
*Had delayed the launch of its much-anticipated Key Extension series due to manufacturing hangups
*Latest generation of [[Keys]] are more susceptible to [[Djinn]] virus attacks
*Reportedly, many executive officers are losing their jobs over the recent news of [[Djinn]] vulnerability

===Centrifuge Board===

*[[Halima Bourne]] - CEO

===Previous Employees===

*[[Sente Kiteway]] took up a senior position at Centrifuge in 237 where he headed up the development of [[Redlock]] and the [[Hollowview Intelligent Defense System]].
*[[Kurt McAllister]] reconstructed [[West Besley College]]'s [[Key]] systems to operate at 200% efficiency; his method was purchased by Centrifuge Technologies when Kurt was only 20 years old

===Timeline===

* 16-JAN-04 - Receda Cube stolen; Centrifuge stock plummets.
* 21-MAR-05 - The buyout of [[KSI]] is Announced
* 28-MAR-05 - [[Djinn]] Jr. Announced
* 25-MAY-05 - Next generation [[Keys]] are found to be susceptible to [[Djinn]] virus
* 27-JUN-05 - [[Gregory Dempsey]] is fired; Centrifuge stock rises 6.4%

===References===

*Perplex City Sentinel
**article, 21-MAR-05, "Centrifuge Buys [[KSI]]" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/03/centrifuge_buys.html link])
**article, 25-MAY-05, "Next-Gen [[Keys]] Susceptible to Djinn" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/nextgen_keys_su.html link])
**article, 27-JUN-05 "[[Key]] [[Gregory Dempsey|Developer]] Axed" ([http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/key_developer_a_1.html link])

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T16:08:11Z

Seej: /* 'The Conspiracy' */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the [http://www.perplexcityacademy.com/students.html Academy Library], hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a [[Letters from Kurt#Tech Talk|Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates]]. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife [[Sylvia Salk|Sylvia]] returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. [[Pietros maze|Pietro's Maze]] is uploaded onto [http://www.salkfamily.com the Salk Family website], and from it we are able to retrieve various phrases which are all sub-directories on the Salk family website, each of which contains part of [[Salk logs|Salk's logs]]. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a [http://perplexcitycardcatalog.com/notes/maze/3.txt symbol] that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T16:02:55Z

Seej: /* The Pietro Salk Logs */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the [http://www.perplexcityacademy.com/students.html Academy Library], hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a [[Letters from Kurt#Tech Talk|Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates]]. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife [[Sylvia Salk|Sylvia]] returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. [[Pietros maze|Pietro's Maze]] is uploaded onto [http://www.salkfamily.com the Salk Family website], and from it we are able to retrieve various phrases which are all sub-directories on the Salk family website, each of which contains part of [[Salk logs|Salk's logs]]. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:51:14Z

Seej: /* The Pietro Salk Logs */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the [http://www.perplexcityacademy.com/students.html Academy Library], hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:48:46Z

Seej: /* The Pietro Salk Logs */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:48:28Z

Seej: /* The Pietro Salk Logs */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html According to Frye]], it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:43:18Z

Seej: /* The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. According to Frye, it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s [[Perplex City Errorlogs|Gatehouse Error Logs]]. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:41:49Z

Seej: Details of cube theft

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/iona_interviews_1.html opined that a four - person team] would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ''‘hardware’'' and a ''‘software’'' expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ''‘some kind of software genius’''. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both [http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/holyoke_housed.html fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech], it may be fair to suppose that he was the ''‘hardware genius’''.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ''‘I guess it’s sort of clever’''). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ''‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’''). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the [[Salk logs]] would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ''‘dangerous…true believer’'', and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

[[Newspaper Text|On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit, the team struck]]. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ''‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’'' in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ''‘dangerous’'' reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ''‘seen V work.’'' (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

#The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (''‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’''). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
#The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
#[[Bernardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. According to Frye, it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ''‘bungled robbery’''. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
#The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
#On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ''‘the conspiracy’''. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ''‘a lead’'' she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ''‘turned up’'' to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(''‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’'')
#For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
#By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ''‘scoop’'', we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
#Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ''‘the conspiracy’'' from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
#During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
#On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ''‘mysterious assailant’'' who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ''‘clean – up’'' operation that these pieces '''not''' be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
#June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ''‘spying’'' on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
#On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
#By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
#On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ''‘agreed meeting place’''. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ''‘another professional’''. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ''‘looked like he could handle himself’'' and later Salk will compare him to a ''‘fitness instructor’''. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
#Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
#On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
#On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
#By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
#Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ''‘the Conspiracy’'', we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

*One group taking on a ''‘conspiratorial’'' identity are believed to have ''‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’''; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ''‘throwback’'', they were a continuation.
*In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ''‘had been gone so long’'', he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ''‘several decades’'' to be equivalent to an extremely ''‘long’'' period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
*The suggestion that the conspiracy are ''‘ruthless true believers’'' is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ''‘playing the long game’'' might not actually be difficult to accept.
*The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
*It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ''‘true believer’''). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ''‘the conspiracy’'' have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaign]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s Gatehouse Error Logs. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ''‘them’''.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ''‘foolish’'', in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ''‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’'' is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ''‘clean up’'' in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ''‘the Conspiracy’'' stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ''‘mysterious stranger’'' trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ''‘stranger’'' when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ''‘stranger’'' is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
*that, if the ''‘stranger’'' dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ''‘dealt with’'' Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ''‘clean up.’''
*that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ''‘stranger’'' was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

The Receda Cube

2005-08-04T15:29:34Z

Seej: /* Details of the theft */

===General===

*Pronounced: /''reh-KAY-deh''/

*The Receda Cube is the main attraction at [[Perplex City Academy]] [[Museum]]

*It was discovered in the [[Catbite]] gorge in 7AC

*[[Perplex City Academy]] was, at this time, a repository for any unusual or potentially dangerous articles discovered.

*After deciding that the Cube was not immediately dangerous, Academy officials placed it on public display where it remained as an uninvestigated curiosity for over 30 years

*The properties of the Cube are still somewhat mysterious

*The Cube contains markings on the surface and it is still unknown within [[Perplex City]] whether the markings are original or later additions

*Detailed scientific analysis using a range of tools, including electron microscopy, MRI and TNI scans, as well as various metallurgical and spectrometric investigations, has provided limited information

*The people of [[Perplex City]] have determined that the Cube is not made of any known naturally occurring substance within their world.

*The Cube is also acknowledged as a beautiful artistic object in its own right

*The presence of the Cube is also said to convey a sense of peace and harmony.

*A number of religious groups in [[Perplex City]] hold it in special reverence, including [[The Brotherhood of the Six]], who have this to say:

===According to [[The Brotherhood of the Six]]===
''with some edits''

{| border="0" cellpadding="10" width="70%"
| style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff" |
'''The Cube'''
*currently held without cause in the [[Perplex City Academy]] by those who do not venerate its ancient light,
*is an incarnation of the One True Cube, which is One with the Universe.
*It is mentioned in the writings of the Holy [[Ealianos]] as one of the true forms of the Lord.
*From time immemorial, the Cube has been a secret symbol of holiness among all worshippers,
*it takes many forms including:
**the four [[sacred pillars of Jagesh]] (which are doubled at festive times, symbolizing the creation of the cube from the square),
**the square-walkers at the [[Temple of Barribant]], who walk a square, labyrinthical path,
**the ancient monuments at [[Rhat-Mamar]], built with cube-shaped stones and the standing stones which were unearthed in our own [[Catbite]] Gorge,
**cube-shaped stones in a pattern of squares!!

The Perplex City Cube itself has been worshipped by many societies and cults (although without the true writings of [[Gyvann]] this worship has been incomplete at best). Some of these names will be very familiar, although their link to the Cube has often been concealed: [[The Archers of Dawn]], [[the Quadrilists]], [[the Fire of the South]], [[the Third Power]], [[the Society of Elders]], [[the Tarsians]], [[the Kababah Clan]].

Those who wish to learn more about these ancient organisations should read Andrew Lencival's masterwork: '''The Third Power, the Archers and the City of Dawn: An investigation into the Power of the Perplex City Cube and those who have guarded it'''.
|}

===Properties of the Cube===

*According to the Firebox Catalog:
**It is metallic in appearance
**It is of indeterminate mass
**It will react with water, liquid mercury, and acetone.

===Details of the theft===
*stolen 16-JAN-04, sometime before 2AM
*security cameras and sensors were offline throughout the Ball
*thieves reprogrammed portions of the Academy's security systems, disabling three different forms of security without tripping warning alarms
*security personnel discovered the theft at 2am when security guard [[Fran Mendling]] failed to check in for her shift change
*artist [[Aiko Entrescore]]'s exhibit was on display during the theft; it was later disassembled and its electronic parts examined
*Through communication between [[Pietro Salk]] and [[Advisor|The Advisor]] further details of [[Theft|The Theft]] have now emerged. A team of 4 security operatives, one of whom was [[Bernardo Holyoke]] were employed by a shadowy organisation that funded and organised the whole thing. The identity of this organisation and it's reasons for stealing the cube aren't yet known.

===Possible Locations / What We Know===

* From the [[BBC Culture Show]], Micheal Smith mentioned its Buried.

===References===

* [[Perplex City Sentinel]] articles ([http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcitysentinel.com/06.04.05/focus/recedacube/index.html link])

*[[Perplexcityacademy.com]] [http://wiki.incognitus.net/mirror/ppc/www.perplexcityacademy.com/29.04.05/museum2.html#cube The Cube]

===Artist's Impression of the Cube===

{|
|[[Image:ccube.jpg|thumb|The Cube - By Tanner]]
|[[Image:Ccube2.jpg|thumb|The Cube - By Tanner]]
|[[Image:55_1_b.jpg|thumb|eBay Auction Image]]
|}

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:19:40Z

Seej: /* The Pietro Salk Logs */

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who opined that a four - person team would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ‘hardware’ and a ‘software’ expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ‘some kind of software genius’. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech, it may be fair to suppose that he was the ‘hardware genius’.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ‘I guess it’s sort of clever’). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the Salk logs would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ‘dangerous…true believer’, and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit (as is well – known), the team struck. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’ in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ‘dangerous’ reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ‘seen V work.’ (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s [[Salk Logs|lengthy correspondence]] with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

# The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
# The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
# [[Benardo Holyoke]] is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. According to Frye, it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ‘bungled robbery’. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
# The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
# On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ‘the conspiracy’. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ‘a lead’ she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ‘turned up’ to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’)
# For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
# By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ‘scoop’, we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
# Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ‘the conspiracy’ from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
# During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
# On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ‘mysterious assailant’ who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ‘clean – up’ operation that these pieces *not* be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
# June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ‘spying’ on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
# On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
# By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
# On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ‘agreed meeting place’. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ‘another professional’. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ‘looked like he could handle himself’ and later Salk will compare him to a ‘fitness instructor’. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
# Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
# On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
# On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
# By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
# Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ‘the Conspiracy’, we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

* One group taking on a ‘conspiratorial’ identity are believed to have ‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ‘throwback’, they were a continuation.
* In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ‘had been gone so long’, he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ‘several decades’ to be equivalent to an extremely ‘long’ period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
* The suggestion that the conspiracy are ‘ruthless true believers’ is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ‘playing the long game’ might not actually be difficult to accept.
* The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
* It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ‘true believer’). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ‘the conspiracy’ have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaigne]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s Gatehouse Error Logs. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ‘them’.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ‘foolish’, in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’ is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ‘clean up’ in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ‘the conspiracy’ stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ‘mysterious stranger’ trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ‘stranger’ when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ‘stranger’ is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
* that, if the ‘stranger’ dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ‘dealt with’ Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ‘clean up’
* that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ‘stranger’ was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T15:10:29Z

Seej: Theft details, now with formatting and cross-links

== The Theft - Plot So Far==

As yet we only have a partial picture of how [[The Cube]] was stolen. This page details the facts we currently know. Please feel free to update this page as necessary, but please also keep it free of speculation.

==The Organisation ==

From remarks made by [[Advisor|The Advisor]] to [[Pietro Salk]], we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in [[the Cube]] theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of [[Academy]] Security, [[Henrik Tanner]], who opined that a four - person team would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ‘hardware’ and a ‘software’ expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ‘some kind of software genius’. Given that [[Bernardo Holyoke]] [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech, it may be fair to suppose that he was the ‘hardware genius’.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ‘I guess it’s sort of clever’). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the Salk logs would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ‘dangerous…true believer’, and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

== The Theft ==

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit (as is well – known), the team struck. Police Chief [[Eoin Morgan]] recognised that the group would have to have been ‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’ in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, [[Fran Mendling]], was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ‘dangerous’ reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ‘seen V work.’ (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the [[Catacombs]], which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the [[Old Town]] (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

== The Pietro Salk Logs ==

Pietro’s lengthy correspondence with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

# The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
# The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in [[Sentinel|The Sentinel]].
# Benardo Holyoke is killed. The investigating officer is [[Helena Frye]], identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. According to Frye, it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ‘bungled robbery’. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
# The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the [[Five of Cups]] in the first instance.
# On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ‘the conspiracy’. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ‘a lead’ she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ‘turned up’ to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’)
# For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into [[Reconstructionists|Reconstructionist]] activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to [[Jessica Holyoke]], and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
# By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ‘scoop’, we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
# Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ‘the conspiracy’ from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
# During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in [[Ascendancy Point]], presumably in hiding.
# On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ‘mysterious assailant’ who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ‘clean – up’ operation that these pieces *not* be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
# June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ‘spying’ on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
# On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
# On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
# By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
# On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ‘agreed meeting place’. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ‘another professional’. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ‘looked like he could handle himself’ and later Salk will compare him to a ‘fitness instructor’. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been [[Garnet Reed]], a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
# Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her [[key]] with her, for the sake of security.
# On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against [[Aiko Entrescore]] at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
# On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
# By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
# Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

== 'The Conspiracy' ==

Inasmuch as we know anything about ‘the Conspiracy’, we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

* One group taking on a ‘conspiratorial’ identity are believed to have ‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ‘throwback’, they were a continuation.
* In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ‘had been gone so long’, he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ‘several decades’ to be equivalent to an extremely ‘long’ period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
* The suggestion that the conspiracy are ‘ruthless true believers’ is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ‘playing the long game’ might not actually be difficult to accept.
* The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
* It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ‘true believer’). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

== The Dispersal of the Cube Theft Team ==

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ‘the conspiracy’ have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, [[Myra Champaigne]]. Another is [[Sarah Covington]], who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s Gatehouse Error Logs. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between [[Lyssa Ling]] and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ‘them’.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ‘foolish’, in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’ is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ‘clean up’ in the wake of the theft.

== The Identity of the 'Conspiracy' Operatives ==

We have virtually no idea of what ‘the conspiracy’ stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ‘mysterious stranger’ trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ‘stranger’ when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ‘stranger’ is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either:
* that, if the ‘stranger’ dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ‘dealt with’ Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ‘clean up’
* that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ‘stranger’ was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Theft-Archive

2005-08-04T14:46:24Z

Seej: Summary of what we know about the theft

THEFT PLOT…SO FAR

THE ORGANISATION

From remarks made by The Advisor to Pietro Salk, we can deduce that there was a dedicated team engaged in the Cube theft. This team was apparently four strong, which agrees with a security analysis developed by the head of Academy Security, Henrik Tanner, who opined that a four - person team would have been needed to orchestrate the theft. Although we are aware that each of the four would have brought a differing skill to the team (Tanner’s report mentioned that the theft would have had to require the skills of both a ‘hardware’ and a ‘software’ expert, for instance), we have only been made aware of one particular specialty – one of the four (code – name C) was ‘some kind of software genius’. Given that Bernardo Holyoke [see below] is, however, associated with the team, and known to have both fenced and jury – rigged stolen items of Academy tech, it may be fair to suppose that he was the ‘hardware genius’.

The precise functions of the other two members of the team remain open to speculation. The four – person team were, according to The Advisor, not known to each other before they were assembled, and, in fact, great pains were taken by their sponsors to transfer payment for the theft to them anonymously etc. They addressed one another using code – names: Q, C, K and V. We remain uncertain as to whether these initials stood for a longer title. In one case, we already know that this was so: Q stood for Quercus – given that this is a Latin word referring to the oak tree, it has been assumed that Q, therefore, has to have been Holyoke (The Advisor’s comment on the title was ‘I guess it’s sort of clever’). Less clever would seem to have been the adoption of C – we know, at least, that this associate was a woman, but that the initial was slightly ill chosen (Advisor’s comment – ‘I think C. was the initial of her real surname’). The Advisor herself (and all the circumstantial evidence in the Salk logs would seem to point to her being a woman) took the identity K. Finally, the group was masterminded by V, who the Advisor told Salk was a ‘dangerous…true believer’, and the only member of the group who knew all the other members before they were recruited.

THE THEFT

Let’s now consider again the actual night of the Cube theft (our date: Jan. 16th, 2004).

On Ball Night, when Academy security is frequently stretched to its limit (as is well – known), the team struck. Police Chief Eoin Morgan recognised that the group would have to have been ‘highly organised and technologically sophisticated’ in order to pull off the theft. It was recognised immediately by the Academy that portions of the security system had been reprogrammed in order to allow the theft to take place, and that three different systems had, in fact, been disabled without causing alarms to trip.

Security guard, Fran Mendling, was murdered the same night, apparently because she chanced across the theft (although it remains an outside possibility that she may have been allied to the team, and aided their entry). Fran was murdered with a neuro – suppressant, which appears to have killed her instantly. This could have been a knee – jerk response to the team’s discovery, but use of a neuro – suppressant may have actually been quite deliberate, inasmuch as it effectively masked Fran’s time of death, and thus gave the thieves more cover for their activities. V may have been the killer, given the ‘dangerous’ reputation. It is also interesting that The Advisor at one point told Salk that she feared V because she had ‘seen V work.’ (perhaps Fran’s killing was the occasion). Fellow members of the security team later discovered Fran’s body at 2 a.m. when she failed to check in for a shift change. By that time, the Cube and the thieves would appear to have been long gone.

Some have supposed that escape was made by way of the Catacombs, which are known to run much of the length of the City, all the way from the Old Town (Holyoke’s base of operations) to the Academy, and further out, towards the harbour/dock regions of the City.

THE PIETRO SALK LOGS

Pietro’s lengthy correspondence with The Advisor has gone some considerable way towards deepening our understanding of developments post – theft. The basic pattern of this correspondence has been pieced together, and the association would appear to have run along the following lines:

1. The Advisor contacts Pietro anonymously on (our time) 6th May 2005. She appeals to his better nature, by reminding him of the conspicuous record he holds as a champion of the underdog, and his drive to expose corruption within the workings of the City. (‘I can promise you the biggest scoop of your life’). The Advisor demands that Pietro secure confidentiality for her, and immunity from prosecution, given that she is prepared to act as whistleblower upon her own team operation. She assumes that, as Pietro has important journalistic contacts with the police, he should be able to engineer this.
2. The Advisor throws Pietro a bone in order to demonstrate that she is operating in good faith. She leads him towards investigating Holyoke’s fencing ring, run from the Five of Cups tavern in the Old Town. The police, given Salk’s tip – off, uncover an operation jury – rigging stolen security devices, most of which appear to have come from the Academy. Pietro gains the byline for the story in The Sentinel.
3. Benardo Holyoke is killed. The investigating officer is Helena Frye, identified as Pietro’s police contact, and Salk again covers the story. According to Frye, it appeared to the police as if the murder had occurred during the course of a ‘bungled robbery’. However, it would seem that Holyoke knew his killer (or had at least seen fit to allow them to enter the pub, and remain after closing hours) because his alarm system had not been set up for the night, and there was no evidence of its having been triggered by breaking and entering. It looks as if a ransacking of the establishment had then been undertaken, in search of something. Given that one must assume that the police had already confiscated the jury – rigged goods previously uncovered, one must assume that the burglar was attempting to find something that the police had missed.
4. The Advisor’s take on this situation was to imply to Salk that Holyoke had been murdered by an associate (most likely V, or one of V’s supporters), possibly because of her actions in leading Salk to investigate the Five of Cups in the first instance.
5. On the 15th May, 2005, we have the first reference by The Advisor to the effect that she is going to communicate with Salk via a secure channel. They appear to have arranged a meeting via this channel. In actual fact, later correspondence seems to indicate that the pair did not come face to face until as late as mid – June. What, therefore, looks to have been arranged here is some kind of drop – off at a pre – selected location. What may have been dropped off is certain information outlining the links of the theft to the shadowy group that I refer to as ‘the conspiracy’. Later, The Advisor will refer to Salk following ‘a lead’ she has offered him. The Advisor would seem to have ‘turned up’ to this meet, inasmuch as she ‘turned up’ at all, without formally identifying herself to Salk.(‘You will not recognise me. I will find you.’)
6. For a short time, Salk appears to have looked into Reconstructionist activities in the belief that they were somehow involved in the theft. This may have been partly inspired by his realisation that Holyoke’s wife had converted to Reconstructionism. However, no useful further information is turned up on this trail. The Advisor lays emphasis on the fact that Salk is looking in the wrong direction. Eventually, Salk talks to Jessica Holyoke, and realises she knows nothing about the situation. He is also unable to reconcile the Reconstructionist’s spiritual values with the fact that the team that stole the cube were hired to do so.
7. By 20th May, 2005, Pietro appears to have realised that he is getting in deep. He feels unable to talk to his police contacts about his investigations, although this is slightly odd: The Advisor merely asked that she keep her name out of reference to the investigation, not that Pietro should talk to nobody about it (at least, if she meant what she said about offering him a ‘scoop’, we must assume that the intention would be to publish the information eventually).
8. Pietro then starts to pursue research in the Academy Library, hoping to find out more about ‘the conspiracy’ from ancient texts. He canvasses the idea on 25th May. We must assume that he then proceeded to do this research at intervals. By 13th June, he mentions, elliptically, what he has found out.
9. During this time period, The Advisor is holed up in her apartment in Ascendancy Point, presumably in hiding.
10. On June 1st, Helena Frye gives Pietro more information on the continuing investigation into the Five of Cups operation. The police have now discovered several pieces of tech that were missed on the earliest sweeps – these are a Reynolds ioniser and three Klebold plates. None of these items have a security application. They appear to have been stolen after January 1st, 2005. This would imply that these pieces of tech could not have been involved in the theft effort per se. However, it is a strong likelihood that what the ‘mysterious assailant’ who murdered Holyoke was looking for were these pieces of tech, and that, for some reason, it was necessary to any ‘clean – up’ operation that these pieces *not* be found. It would appear, however, that Holyoke had hidden them away too well, possibly even as insurance should the deal turn sour. Salk’s opinion on these pieces was that Holyoke was unlikely to have obtained them himself; presumably they had been handed over into his care, perhaps with the initial desire that he would alter them, and then fence them on. Attitudes appear to have hardened between January and June as the investigative net tightened.
11. June 1st is also the day that Salk realises that The Advisor has been ‘spying’ on his domestic arrangements. Aggrieved by this, he appears to have downed contact for several days.
12. On 4th June, the correspondence resumes. The Advisor apologises for spying, but claims that she had to be certain that Salk was fully trustworthy.
13. On 13th June, Salk finally broaches the notion that the pair should meet.
14. By 16th June, this meeting has taken place. It has sometimes been assumed that Salk was unfaithful to his wife during these three days. Perhaps. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a brief affair developed. Rather, Salk, with his highly developed sense of injustice, appears to be feeling guilty that he is meeting (and thinking about) any woman clandestinely, regardless of why this meeting is taking place.
15. On the 16th, The Advisor does not meet with Salk, even though both of them turn up to their ‘agreed meeting place’. She gets cold feet, because she is aware of someone else present who looks as if he’s trailing Salk. Salk maintains that this individual is nothing to do with him. The figure is dark – skinned, reads a newspaper, and The Advisor rates him as ‘another professional’. Interestingly, he is said to have sat in a leather armchair whilst he observed, which implies that the meet was taking place indoors, rather than outside, although the man is also said to have sat in the shade of a cluster of birch trees (some interior hydroponics?). The Advisor says of this man that he ‘looked like he could handle himself’ and later Salk will compare him to a ‘fitness instructor’. This implies that he was bulky and well – muscled. The theory that the observer may have been Garnet Reed, a member of the Academy Cube Retrieval Project, on secondment from the Perplexian defence forces, appears to be pretty convincing.
16. Later on the 16th, The Advisor goes for a walk. By this point, she is refusing to take her key with her, for the sake of security.
17. On 17th June, Salk returns to his contention that the Reconstructionists may have been involved. By now, this smacks of justifying his theories to himself. However, he may have been confused by the accusations being levelled against Aiko Entrescore at the time. Interestingly, it was Salk who reported on Aiko’s indicting for the Sentinel.
18. On 19th June, Salk determines that he and The Advisor must jointly go to the police with the evidence they possess. This would appear to go against the initial basis of their agreement. The Advisor sidesteps agreement, and asks that they reconvene at Ascendancy Point on Solstice Day (June 21st).
19. By 20th June, Salk has been got to, and found comatose. Apparently, this occurred relatively suddenly, and when his wife Sylvia returned to their apartment, she discovered the door hanging open. The latter fact is probably not significant, although it may indicate that, in haste, the assailant failed to close the door behind them as they fled. Another possibility is that Salk’s condition, which by the 23rd June, is clearly diagnosed as a degenerative neurological one had lain dormant in his system for some little while (how it would have been transferred to him remains a mystery), and that he was being visited by someone he knew (perhaps the Advisor) when he collapsed suddenly, and they fled in dismay. It does not seem to be the case that the door was broken in from the outside.
20. Salk proceeded to encode as much information as he could within his key, under cover of a maze - generating programme, when he emerged for a time from his coma, and before death claimed him on the 27th. It is at least suggestive that the theft team murdered Fran Mendling via use of a neuro – suppressant, and that Salk, too, was disposed of with a neurological tool.

‘THE CONSPIRACY’

Inasmuch as we know anything about ‘the Conspiracy’, we can note that the correspondence between Salk and The Advisor indicates:

a) One group taking on a ‘conspiratorial’ identity are believed to have ‘died out decades ago, if they ever existed’; in Salk’s opinion, they had adopted a name and a symbol that were significant, apparently as a deliberate provocation, in memory of something that had gone before. The Advisor appeared to contradict this, suggesting that, rather than such a group having been a ‘throwback’, they were a continuation.
b) In more general terms, it would seem that the conspiracy as a whole is reputed to have been operating since ancient times. The group to which Salk referred (within living memory) must have been a momentary surfacing of one facet of the (much) longer – lived conspiracy. When Salk talked to The Advisor about the originators of the mysterious symbol, he claimed that they ‘had been gone so long’, he found it hard to credit their continued existence. This would appear to have been a reference to the ancient founders of the conspiracy, rather than any more recent recrudescence, unless Salk genuinely felt the passing of ‘several decades’ to be equivalent to an extremely ‘long’ period of time, in which case he might have been referring to the modern arm of the conspiracy.
c) The suggestion that the conspiracy are ‘ruthless true believers’ is a recurrent refrain. Salk finds it hard to credit that they would not act spontaneously, but if the conspiracy has been in existence for several hundred, even a thousand, years, then the fact that they are ‘playing the long game’ might not actually be difficult to accept.
d) The members of the conspiracy are said to be deployed everywhere – this implies that, whatever it is, the conspiracy is a multi – headed hydra and has infiltrated into the ranks of many Perplexian organisations.
e) It would appear that V was the theft team liaison with the conspiracy (a ‘true believer’). The other members of the team appear to have been freelancers, who did the job for the money. The conspiracy presumably arranged for the theft to take place, with V orchestrating proceedings on their behalf. V may be a minor cog in a much bigger machine, therefore.

THE DISPERSAL OF THE CUBE THEFT TEAM

It is very difficult to be precise about the current situations of members of the Cube theft team.

Holyoke (who was probably Q) is dead, perhaps murdered by V.

The Advisor (K) is presumably in hiding, although one must be left to wonder. If ‘the conspiracy’ have become aware of Salk’s activities, then they may have also become aware of those of The Advisor. On the other hand, her circumspection throughout proceedings may well have enabled her to remain undetected for the time being.

The identity of C remains unknown. Given that we know she is a female software genius whose surname also begins with C, there have been some sensible guesses as to her identity. One possibility is the PCAG wunderkind, Myra Champaigne. Another is Sarah Covington, who, right at the outset of our investigations, was mentioned in conjunction with the Academy’s Gatehouse Error Logs. It is perhaps worth recalling the brief excerpts of conversation recorded between Lyssa Ling and Sarah Covington at this juncture: Covington mentions feeling distracted because she is thinking about a mysterious ‘them’.

V also remains unknown. We have no information on what sex they are.

It appears unlikely that any of the team code letters relate to their everyday surnames. If this were the case, it would be rather surprising that The Advisor singles out C’s action as ‘foolish’, in choosing a code that resonated with the first letter of her actual name.

The undated advice contained on Salk’s log ‘You must find her before it’s too late. You must find out what she knows’ is ambiguous. It has been plausibly suggested that it could have been advice given to Salk by The Advisor, directing him to locate C before she, too, was murdered. However, it could equally plausibly have been a plea written by Salk himself to those who would decode his logs (namely, us), and asking that we locate The Advisor before it is too late. If the latter is the case, then there is no reason that C may not have been disposed of at any time between the theft and the present, although one wonders if the deaths connected to the case thus far are reactive attempts to cover up when inquiry gets too close, rather than a systematic drive to ‘clean up’ in the wake of the theft.

THE IDENTITY OF ‘CONSPIRACY’ OPERATIVES

We have virtually no idea of what ‘the conspiracy’ stands for, what organisations it has infiltrated etc.

We have no clear idea of what they want to do with the Cube.

The only suggestive piece of information thus far is that the ‘mysterious stranger’ trailing Salk and The Advisor may have been working for the Conspiracy (and might have been the assassin who took out Salk). This figure, as has been pointed out, sounds rather like Garnet Reed. If Reed is working for the Conspiracy, then that implies not only that it has infiltrated the Academy, but perhaps, also the Defence Forces and/or the City Council, with which Reed is associated.

Interestingly, his presence (if correctly identified) appears to indicate that The Advisor is unlikely to be an Academy staff member or student, as she did not recognise the ‘stranger’ when he was observing Salk. Equally, unless this was all some elaborate double – bluff, it is unlikely for the same reasons that the ‘stranger’ is V. That in itself is suggestive, because it may indicate either a) that, if the ‘stranger’ dealt with Salk, then perhaps he ‘dealt with’ Holyoke also, and that would indicate that it is not V who is organising a ‘clean up’ or b) that V was the person who got to Salk, but the ‘stranger’ was observing on behalf of a separate wing of the conspiracy, and/or independently!!

Postcard Code

2005-01-31T16:29:02Z

Seej: /* Theories */

The code of '''221545484848465100503215''' is beneath the Semacode on the [[Perplex City Postcard]], does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

==Images==

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|}

==Theories==

* We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
* Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
* Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
* Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
* Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
* Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
* Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
* Also tried mapping numbers to the letter on the www.perplexcity.com home page.
* Also tried mapping numbers to other various strings on the postcard as well as other sources on the www.perplexedcity.com site, with different offsets, base 9, 10, etc. For all ~5000 results see: http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/allstrings_base10.txt (Base 10) and http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/allstrings_base9.txt (Base 9)
* Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and Tanner tried mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found. Tanner has now broken out into doing [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tanspace/ssm/perpno3.MP3 Postcard Code Remixes] as MP3s, available from his site.
* Frequency analysis of the numbers was similarly unsuccessful. Assuming the string was one-digit numbers gave far too much repetition of characters (for example the 484848 would probably be tetete or etetet) for a meaningful message. Assuming the string was 2 (or more) digit numbers prevented frequency analysis simply because there wasn't enough data to work with (frequency analysis works best over a very large amount of encrpyted data).
* Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes so there's no clear way to tell when one character has ended and another has begun).
* Binary number strings from above method also all converted to ASCII but non-alphabetic characters were output.
* It's not a prime number.
* We've tried indexing in every way to every available text (ie, 31 could be 3rd sentence, 1st word; 3rd paragraph, 1st letter, etc.)
* It's not a phone number or a credit card.
* graphing it in various ways hasn't revealed anything.
* Doesn't appear to be related to a deck of cards because of repeating sequences.
* Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
**Reasons to believe this:
**#"484848" jumps out as a pattern
**#the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
**#all 12 numbers range from 00-51
**Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets (ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
**#In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried tinyurl)
**#In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube" but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.
* It has been suggested that the number may simply be a key for a cipher such as MD5 or RSA but there is no way to verify this until further encrypted messages are received on which the number can be used as a key. This is unlikely to happen until the game starts properly.
* Tried converting the number into different numeric strings and converting to hex, to get unicode and Adobe Postscript characters. Provided Gibberish thus far, even after ROT'ing.
* Tried converting the number to an IPv4 address a few different ways. There are probably more. http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8270&start=398
* Tried plotting pairs of numbers as (x,y) coordinates, i.e. the first coordinate would be (22,15). Then joined up coordinates in order plotted, but it didn't give any meaningful shape.

==Results==

None Yet...

Main Page - Anna Heath

2005-01-19T15:25:45Z

Seej: /* Tools & Other Links */

__NOTOC__
This Wiki has been setup for the storage and indexing of Project Syzygy / Perplex City based documents, images, and other stuff! Also its here to enable people to fire up speculation, puzzles and other stuff to get it out to the people and get them to look into it.

{| border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"
|- valign="top"
| style="border: 2px solid #ddddff;" bgcolor="#f3f3ff" rowspan="7" width="49%" |
{| border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"
|-
! bgcolor="#ddddff" style="font-size: larger; text-align: center; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 3px" | Perplex City / Project Syzygy Information
|-
| style="padding: 10px" bgcolor="#f3f3ff" |
===Game Overview===

Project Syzygy is a recruitment project setup by [[Sente]] and the Perplex City Academy staff to find the missing "[[The Cube|Cube]]". [[Sente]] desperatly wants the "[[The Cube|Cube]]" returning as it is a cornerstone of there society and is priceless. Now the project has ended, what is the next step to finding the cube?

===Getting Started===

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Game What Is An ARG?]
*[http://www.unfiction.com/gs.html Getting Started In ARGs]
*[http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/ UnFiction Forums]

===Information Archive ('''Spoilers''')===

*[http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=73 Project Syzygy Forum]
*[http://syzygy.netninja.com/single/index.html Game Intro Reference]
*[http://www.tranzed.net/project_syzygy/index.htm Primer]
*[[Timeline]]
*[[Characters]]
*[[Websites]]
*[[Places]]
*[[Files]]
*[[Items]]
*[[:Image:Overview.jpg|Overview Of How It Fits Together]]
*[http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/syzygy.plt Plot File for Labryinth] - Last Update: 02.01.05

*[[Whats Not Known]]
*[[Misc Documents]] - Other documents and information.

===Current Mysteries===

*[[Current Speculation]]
*[[Current Puzzles]]

===Archived Stuff===

*[[False Puzzles & Speculation]]
*[[Archived Speculation]]

===The Rest===

*[[Syzygy Humour]]
|}
| rowspan="7" width="1%" |  
| width="50%" |
{| width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"
|-
! bgcolor="#FFE2E2" style="padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 3px; text-align: center; font-size: larger" | Wiki Information
|-
| style="border: 2px solid #FFE2E2; padding: 10px" bgcolor="#FFF5F5" |
{| border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style=" background-color: #FFF5FF"
|- valign="top"
| style="text-align: left; font-weight: normal; padding-right: 3px" |
===News & Updates===

Check the [[Current events]] section for the latest news.

===Editing FAQ===

Before you edit the Wiki, take a quick look at [[Editing Guidelines]] just to give a basic idea on how to format a Wiki page to fit in with the rest, and where to put pages.

===Site Services & Related Sites===

As well as the Wiki there are other services available to Perplex City / Project Syzygy players.

* [http://wiki.incognitus.net/files Incognitus File Store] - No place to upload a ARG file? Put it here.
** [http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/ PPC Storage Section] - Directory listing of the PPC upload section.
* IRC services provided by [[User:Shish|Shish]] on his [http://shish.is-a-geek.net/ website].
** [http://shish.is-a-geek.net/irc/syzygy/ #syzygy IRC Stats] - Stats for the #syzygy IRC channel.
** [http://shish.is-a-geek.net/cgi-bin/irc_search.pl #syzygy Log Search] - Search the logs of #syzygy chat
** [http://shish.is-a-geek.net/irc/syzygy/logs/ #syzygy Full Logs] - Full IRC logs of #syzygy

|}
|-
! style="font-size: larger; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 3px" bgcolor="#FAF9B2" | Community
|-
| style="border: 2px solid #FAF9B2; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px" bgcolor="#FFFFEC" |
===Community Links===

'''Community'''

*[http://forums.unfiction.com/ UnFiction Forums]
*[http://www.unfiction.com/chat/ UnFiction IRC] - [http://shish.is-a-geek.net/irc/syzygy/ IRC log and stats]

'''Player Links / Blogs'''

*[http://www.glimpsemymind.blogspot.com/ DarkBlaze's Blog]
*[http://www.cjtonline.net/booted Seej's Blog]
*[http://www.dfpapers.blogspot.com/ Darkfall's Blog]

===Tools & Other Links===

'''ARG Documenting Tools'''
*[http://www.habitualindolence.net/labyrinth/ Labyrinth] - Documenting tool for PMs and Puppets.
*[http://stackoverflow.org/tools/highlight.php IRC Log Colourizer] - Makes IRC/IM logs easier to read.

'''Steganography Tools'''
*[http://www.outguess.org/download.php StegDetect] (Windows & Linux) - Detect Stegged pictures, can't detect Camoflaged files.
*[http://www.petitcolas.net/fabien/steganography/mp3stego/ MP3Stego] - Detects stegs in MP3s

'''SemaCode / DataMatrix Tools'''
* [http://www.semacode.org SemaCode] (Series 60 Handsets)
* [http://www.intelcom.ru/2d/english/demo.php Barcode Decoder] (Windows, Linux, Solaris)

'''Crypto Tools'''
*[http://snarkles.net/scripts/sneak/sneak.php Snarkles.net Encryption Assortment Kit]
*[http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d97roli/project/krypto/ Vigenere/Caesar Key Brute-Forcer]
*[http://mdcrack.multimania.com/ MDCrack] - collision MD4 & MD5 tool, useful for "decrypting" MD4/5.
*[http://www.unfiction.com/resource/otools.html Online Tools] - Tools that are useful for ARG players.
*Solitaire Cipher
**[http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/Solitaire.zip Windows Command Line]
**[http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/solitaire-osx.zip MacOSX Command Line]
**[http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/solitaire-linux.zip Linux Command Line (libc6 2.3)]
**[http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/SolitaireSRC.zip Source Code (C++)]
**"You put in a key, or no key, and it'll splurt out numbers and do some modulus arithmetic with the evil number." - SilentAvenger.
**[http://matrix.theblob.org/solitaire Java applet]

Perplex City Postcard

2004-12-30T22:07:56Z

Seej: /* Content */

So far the Perplex City postcard has been found in these locations:

*Bologna Airport, Bologna, Italy
*Chapel Hill, NC, USA
*Cambridge, Cambs, England

Places searched:

* Liverpool, Merseyside, England
* Glasgow, Scotland
* Manchester, England

==Theories==

* The code below the Semacode means something. Working: [[Postcard Code]]
* The PCPS maze may have meaning.
* The PCPS maze is drawn by hand.
* [http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8270 Postcard Discussion] on unFiction.

==Content==

* Painting of [[Perplex City]] at night.
* On the Image of the building on the painting, the windows convert to "helloworld" from binary.
* Letter from [[Sente]].
* [http://www.semacode.org Semacode] pointing to [http://www.perplexcity.com Perplex City] (NOTE: Semacode is simply a Data Matrix ISO/IEC 16022 standard barcode containing a URL. You can decode semacode with any standard reader)
* Code of '''221545484848465100503215''' - [[Postcard Code]]
* A line "Mc, Please expetite global release. S"
* A stamp with a maze and "PCPS" in the centre
* Text down the middle: "Despite heightened security Academy tours are still running twice daily from gatehouse twelve. Advanced booking essential."
* A full Perplex City Academy crest.

<pre>My friends -

I need your help.
Cube - Missing.
Presumed Stolen.
Not enough room to
explain here.
Too risky.
Your assistance will
be rewarded.
More contact to
follow - stay alert.
Yours in hope,

Sente</pre>

==Puzzles==

* [[Postcard Code]]

==Images==

{|
|[[Image:Frontcard.jpg|thumb|Postcard - Front]]
|[[Image:Backcard.jpg|thumb|Postcard - Back]]
|}

{|
|[[Image:37319411.jpg|thumb|Postcard 1]]
|[[Image:37319413.jpg|thumb|Postcard 2]]
|}

{|
|[[Image:sente_sig.jpg|thumb|Possible Sente Sig]]
|[[Image:Sente_sig_clear.jpg|thumb|Sente Sig Clear Version]]
|[[Image:Sente_postcard.jpg|thumb|Postcard Sig Clear]]
|}

{|
|[[Image:Composite.jpg|thumb|Composit of Sigs (by EclecticMunk)]]
|}

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|[[Image:Academy_logo_edited.jpg|thumb|Edited Logo]]
|[[Image:Maze.jpg|thumb|Maze]]
|}

{|
|[[Image:Front_adjusted.jpg|thumb|Adjusted version of the front]]
| [[Image:Back_adjusted.jpg|thumb|Adjusted version of the back]]
|}

Postcard Code

2004-12-24T01:39:23Z

Seej: /* Theories */

===The Postcard Code===

The code of '''221545484848465100503215''' is beneath the Semacode on the [[Perplex City Postcard]], does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

===Images===

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|}

===Theories===

* We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
* Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
* Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
* Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
* Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
* Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
* Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
* Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found.
* Frequency analysis of the numbers was similarly unsuccessful. Assuming the string was one-digit numbers gave far too much repetition of characters (for example the 484848 would probably be tetete or etetet) for a meaningful message. Assuming the string was 2 (or more) digit numbers prevented frequency analysis simply because there wasn't enough data to work with (frequency analysis works best over a very large amount of encrpyted data).
* Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes so there's no clear way to tell when one character has ended and another has begun).
* Binary number strings from above method also all converted to ASCII but non-alphabetic characters were output.
* Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
- Reasons to believe this:
1) "484848" jumps out as a pattern
2) the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
3) all 12 numbers range from 00-51
- Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets
(ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
- In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried
tinyurl)
- In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube"
but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked
out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.

* It has been suggested that the number may simply be a key for a cipher such as MD5 or RSA but there is no way to verify this until further encrypted messages are received on which the number can be used as a key. This is unlikely to happen until the game starts properly.

Postcard Code

2004-12-24T01:19:16Z

Seej: /* Theories */

===The Postcard Code===

The code of '''221545484848465100503215''' is beneath the Semacode on the [[Perplex City Postcard]], does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

===Images===

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|}

===Theories===

* We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
* Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
* Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
* Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
* Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
* Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
* Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
* Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found.
* Frequency analysis of the numbers was similarly unsuccessful. Assuming the string was one-digit numbers gave far too much repetition of characters (for example the 484848 would probably be tetete or etetet) for a meaningful message. Assuming the string was 2 (or more) digit numbers prevented frequency analysis simply because there wasn't enough data to work with (frequency analysis works best over a very large amount of encrpyted data).
* Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes so there's no clear way to tell when one character has ended and another has begun).
* Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
- Reasons to believe this:
1) "484848" jumps out as a pattern
2) the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
3) all 12 numbers range from 00-51
- Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets
(ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
- In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried
tinyurl)
- In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube"
but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked
out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.

* It has been suggested that the number may simply be a key for a cipher such as MD5 or RSA but there is no way to verify this until further encrypted messages are received on which the number can be used as a key. This is unlikely to happen until the game starts properly.

Postcard Code

2004-12-24T01:14:52Z

Seej: /* Theories */

===The Postcard Code===

The code of '''221545484848465100503215''' is beneath the Semacode on the [[Perplex City Postcard]], does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

===Images===

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|}

===Theories===

* We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
* Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
* Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
* Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
* Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
* Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
* Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
* Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found.
* Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes so there's no clear way to tell when one character has ended and another has begun).
* Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
- Reasons to believe this:
1) "484848" jumps out as a pattern
2) the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
3) all 12 numbers range from 00-51
- Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets
(ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
- In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried
tinyurl)
- In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube"
but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked
out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.

* It has been suggested that the number may simply be a key for a cipher such as MD5 or RSA but there is no way to verify this until further encrypted messages are received on which the number can be used as a key. This is unlikely to happen until the game starts properly.

Postcard Code

2004-12-24T01:13:02Z

Seej: /* Theories */

===The Postcard Code===

The code of '''221545484848465100503215''' is beneath the Semacode on the [[Perplex City Postcard]], does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

===Images===

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|}

===Theories===

* We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
* Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
* Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
* Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
* Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
* Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
* Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
* Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found.
* Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes.
* Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
- Reasons to believe this:
1) "484848" jumps out as a pattern
2) the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
3) all 12 numbers range from 00-51
- Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets
(ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
- In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried
tinyurl)
- In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube"
but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked
out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.

* It has been suggested that the number may simply be a key for a cipher such as MD5 or RSA but there is no way to verify this until further encrypted messages are received on which the number can be used as a key. This is unlikely to happen until the game starts properly.

Postcard Code

2004-12-24T01:09:54Z

Seej: /* Theories */

===The Postcard Code===

The code of '''221545484848465100503215''' is beneath the Semacode on the [[Perplex City Postcard]], does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

===Images===

{|
|[[Image:Postcard_semacode.jpg|thumb|Postcard Semacode]]
|}

===Theories===

* We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
* Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
* Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
* Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
* Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
* Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
* Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
* Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found.
* Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes.
* Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
- Reasons to believe this:
1) "484848" jumps out as a pattern
2) the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
3) all 12 numbers range from 00-51
- Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets
(ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
- In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried
tinyurl)
- In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube"
but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked
out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.