Timeline:In-game

This is a guide to the key happenings in Perplex City surrounding the Cube Theft and our following investigations. Newcomers might want to check out the official guide [here], but be warned - it doesn't currently take us right up to the present day, so check back here once you've reached the end for the latest news.

This guide isn't designed to be comprehensive, and instead deals with pertinent incidents - although the scope seems to be expanding somewhat due to User:GuyP's masochistic streak. Also, dates are reported "as things happened" in Perplex City, not the date we learnt about what happened. For instance, if Violet goes out for coffee on the 14th but doesn't blog about it until the 16th, the entry goes under the 14th.

Also, this guide is written with hindsight. If we know Violet won 20,000 lecks at Poker, but we didn't find this out until months later, then the entry still says "Violet won 20,000 lecks."

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

That's the date!	That's what happened!
10th Oct '03	Senior Fellows meeting at the Academy. Fierce debate surrounding Cube research: Inari Ekeba wants to experiment upon it, and when Sente Kiteway refuses she threatens (in anger, probably) to steal it. Astrid Lindstrom and Sanjean Adamek reflect upon it in via email.
22nd Dec '03	V demands to meet one his Academy insiders at once. They can't - they're in an Adjunct Senior Fellows meeting. V insists that they should make their excuses and leave. (via Leaked E-mails.)
8th Jan '04	One of the Cube Conspirators attempts to rendezvous with another member, but incorrectly identifies the target and almost divulges secrets to a perfect stranger. (via Leaked E-mails.)
15th Jan '04	Violet emails her dad to say she's got flu and won't be coming to the ball. (via Leaked E-mails.)
	Tonight, the Academy Ball. Cyrus Quinton, Monica Grand, Bernardo Holyoke and Claire Castille steal the Cube. Zounds! Fran Mendling killed in the raid. (via Leaked E-mails.)
16th Jan '04	The next day, Roll For Damage have a recording session. Cyrus Quinton is their audio engineer, and he makes a phone call to an "office at the Academy."
3rd Apr '05	Scarlett spills juice on Violet's bag and asks her dad to email Vi on her behalf because she's a scaredy-cat. Gripping stuff! (via Leaked E-mails.)
24th April '05	Bernardo Holyoke, owner of the Five of Cups bar and one of the Cube Thieves, is murdered by V (leader of the conspiracy) in a violent struggle. Holyoke had been tasked with stealing and/or hiding high-tech equipment (including Klebold Plates and Reynolds Ionizers stolen from the Academy, but had been selling some of it off on the side to make a profit.
25th April '05	Bernardo is found dead at the establishment by fellow employees around 10am. Helena Frye takes charge of the investigation! With determination! Bernardo's widow, Jessica Holyoke, has fled, transferring all her assets to the Reconstructionists, moving to their compound and changing her name to Kostka. Tom Cruise would be proud. (Link)
27th Apr '05	V and his boss exchange emails regarding V's recent murder of Bernardo Holyoke, with the boss expressing his general satisfaction at proceedings. (via Leaked E-mails.)
28th Apr '05	Violet famously speculates on an audio program that her dad was responsible for stealing the Cube, describing him as a "a power-hungry psychopathic megalomaniac." Exactly our kind of thinking, eh? (Link)
6th May '05	Monica Grand, Cube Thief, first contacts Pietro Salk, under the pseudonym The Advisor. She's shaken by the killing of one of her co-conspirators, fears she will be next, and wants to give her story to the police (via The Sentinel) in exchange for immunity. She provides Pietro, a leading investigative reporter at the Sentinel, with insider information regarding the equipment hidden at the Five of Cups, in order to prove her credentials as a source. (Salklogs.doc#The_Logs transcript)
10th May '05	The police, acting on the tip-off, discover the hidden equipment. (Sentinel article) Pietro replies to Monica confirming that her information was accurate, and enquiring as to her story. She reveals the truth: that her and Bernardo Holyoke were both part of the Cube Theft gang.
15th May '05	Pietro and Monica meet, for precisely one minute, around 7am. She tells him that they were hired help in the raid, and that the Third Power were behind it.
17th May '05	Pietro tries to get into the Reconstructionist compound, but has no luck - they seem to recognise who he is.
20th May '05	Pietro notes that "I just bloody wish I could go to the police. This is too big, I just don't have the resources I need to figure this out on my own." For a journalist, this is quite a high-quality problem.
24th May '05	Pietro's investigations continue. It appears he's mainly having to work this out on his own, as he can't reach an agreement with "The Advisor" over immunity, etc. She mainly gets in touch to provide unhelpful pointers. He notes: "Memo: Makes no sense. Cubeheads want the Cube, of course. But then why would H have had to be *hired* to steal it? Can't have been hired by his wife, surely? By the Cubeheads? TA will not say. Says it is too dangerous."
	Violet, meanwhile, attends a PXC Historical Society meeting about local pre-history, mentioning the mysterious portal-archway-things in the Catbite region. (Link) Today (or shortly before) Jessica Holyoke is traced to the Reconstructionist compound. Due to the icy relations between the cult and the Perplex City authorities, police are unsure how to proceed - they want to interview Jessica, but don't want to risk a direct confrontation. (Link)
25th May '05	Having seen the previous day's Sentinel article, Monica Grand contacts Pietro to tell him to abandon his Reconstructionist leads and concentrate on the Third Power. After some debtate, he agrees to start over and do more research at the Academy.
26th May '05	Pietro finds someone at a Recon produce market who claims to know Jessica Holyoke and offers to put him in contact with her for 100 Lecks...
27th May	...unfortunately, this doesn't turn out to be money well spent. No news.
28th May	Pietro and "The Advisor" (now better known to us as Monica Grand) continue to communicate. She shows him a record of a bank transfer showing she recieved a copious amount of money in return for her work on the Theft.
31st May '05	Violet is livid that the Police are afraid of confronting the Recons! So, inquisitive scamp that she is, she actually visits the Reconstructionist compound. She just gets the standard guided tour, though, and doesn't get anywhere near Jessica Holyoke.
1st June '05	Monica tells Pietro that V is most dangerous because he's "a true believer." Then she reveals he's been stalking him and his wife, Sylvia Salk, to ensure he isn't double-crossing her. He is rather displeased to hear this.
4th June '05	Pietro and Monica make up. Psychosexual tension ratchets up another notch.
7th June '05	Pietro and Monica speculate on what the Cube actually does. Monica speculates it's some kind of superweapon. Pietro neglects to let her steal his uberweapon, if you see what I'm saying.
9th June '05	2.30am: Monica returns to her apartment, having been somewhere. We don't why she left or where she went.
10th June '05	Sanjean Adamek emails the Kiteway sisters inviting them over for tea. But Violet declines, saying she has a "big project" that she's working on. (via Leaked E-mails.)
	By which she means: that day she's actually been back to the Reconstructionists with Kurt, broken into their secret chamber, swapped one of their Keys with one of Kurt's older models and nicked it. Then in the evening she goes out to a poker bar, called Bullets and wins "six months worth of rent." (See here and here.) (By way of contrast, today I edited a wiki.)
	Meanwhile, Monica is going a bit nuts with not leaving her apartment for quite some time, and rants to Pietro about it. She's lonely, Pietro, and a woman has needs.
11th June '05	Monica starts really flipping out and asks Pietro to come and meet her in the bright light of day, to have a coffee in the Ascendancy Point atrium like "normal people." Pietro is like "yo, WTF?" She goes on about neuroinhibitors and never having a life she was really interested in, before seeing sense and going back to her apartment. That night, she sends him info about the backdoor hack into her apartment's heat sense system. "Just in case." Comforting words.
12th June '05	Monica and Pietro discuss alternative careers. Pietro would like to have worked on the Mimasan Maze. Monica had a thing for the Rudon forest and would liked to have worked with trees. It takes all sorts, eh?
13th June '05	Kurt manages to pull a file off the illicitly obtained Recon key, and Violet sends it to us (see here.) We decrypt it, and as is traditional send the results to absolutely everybody we can think of, including Sente. Sneaky, we ain't. The decrypt reveals that several prominent city figures are Reconstructionists, including Cube Retrieval team member Aiko Entrescore. Pietro tells Monica he's found some information about the Third Power, only to say that "I don't think it can be them. It's not what they would do." Monica can't give him any substantive evidence by key, so Pietro suggests they meet.
14th June '05	Sente urgently contacts Anna Heath, having just learnt that Aiko is a Reconstructionist. Despite Anna's protestations, he turns over the evidence to the cops. Anna turns to Roberto Solitano to discuss the matter. (via Leaked E-mails.) Pietro and Monica have an apparently idle conversation about favourite trees, but are secretly arranging a meeting place. Monica spuriously declares she's going camping overnight, which is a bit odd. It seems things are all arranged though, because...
15th June '05	We learn that Aiko has been arrested as a suspect in the Cube Theft. (Link) Violet gets all pissy, but calms down a little two days later.
16th June	...they meet! Apart from, they don't, because Monica spots a "dark-skinned man, knew how to handle himself, sitting in a leather armchair near to the cluster of birch trees" at the meeting point, assumes it's Pietro's minder and aborts the meetup. She rails on Pietro for this, but he denies knowing anything about it, and she seems to come around to the idea that it was all paranoia. Pietro comments to himself that this is starting to feel like an affair.
17th June	Pietro notes to himself: "It's got to be the Recons, it's got to be. How does Aiko Entrescore tie into all of this? Was she in on it, just not on the same team?"
18th June	Monica confides in Pietro that he's the only person in the whole city that she can talk to.
19th June	Pietro decides it's time to end the whole charade once and for all - he and Monica will go the Police together and tell them everything they know. In the end, Monica agrees to meet him at the Joya's wedding at Ascendancy Point on the Solstice, 21st June.
20th June '05	Aiko is released from police custody without charge, after a judge, Erik Hornblair, rules there is insufficient evidence to detain her for any longer. Police chief Eoin Morgan diplomatically calls the situation "ridiculously suspicious." Aiko does not return to work, but goes to chill out a bit at the Recon compound. Artists: so tempramental, eh?
	Pietro is attacked with a neuroinhibitor and lapses into a coma before he has a chance to meet Monica as planned. His wife, Sylvia Salk, finds him collapsed in his study.
22nd June '05	Pietro Salk emerges briefly from his coma to create an elaborate and convoluted maze.
26th June '05	Pietro finally dies in hospital.
28th June '05	Pietro's funeral / memorial is held.
29th June '05	Violet returns from a camping holiday on the plains, but we've no idea how long she was there for (potentially as early as the 17th.)
6th July '05	Violet is moody and, on the walk home, felt like someone was watching her.
8th July '05	Kurt launches his Earth-eyes-only weblog, The Path Of Least Time.
22nd July '05	A young, weird guy comes to the library and proceeds to bug Violet about accessing 'ancient documents related to the Brotherhood'. Almost certainly Allain.
26th July '05	Kurt has a lunch date with a "girl from Crypto." Fancy!
29th July '05	Aiko stares down Violet when they bump into each other at the Academy. Ice cold! (Interesting to note that Aiko is not yet back working as a puzzle scribe.) Kurt, meanwhile, is amused by the thought that we'd assume he was doing the humpty-bumpty with Violet.
2nd Aug '05	PCAG season opening ceremony! Kurt writes about it here. "Violet and I lay back on the grass and looked up at the stars..." You said it, dude, not me.
23rd Aug '05	Dinner! Sente, Scarlett & Brede and Violet & Kurt have a nice friendly meal as Scarlett is about to leave on her hiking trip for Tanagra. Then Violet delivers an arch Cube-related smackdown with her dad and a fierce row ensues, as Vi is yet to notice that SHE ISN'T EVEN THE TEENAGE DAUGHTER, DAMMIT.
31st Aug '05	Kurt has a rather insightful discussion with "Boardman" at the Cube research labs.
2nd Sept '05	Violet apologises to her dad, and magically, if somewhat implausibly, makes a big resolution to devoting all her efforts to finding the Cube. She continues to try and track down the Third Power book the Earthlings asked for - it's all water-damaged, but she's having it sent over anyway.
7th Sept '05	Violet, Kurt, Von and a couple of Violet's friends head out to Ascendancy Point for some classic movies and dinner. In the process of arranging it, Kurt is yet again forced to remind people that he isn't going out with Violet. (via Leaked E-mails.) And yet interestingly, Kurt claims that he was out running that evening, "forgot something", met up with his friend Leo and then got talking about the Academy security systems. Leo posits that to break through the protcols would require at least two "genuises" and that "THINK BOTH MUST HAVE HAD INSIDE INFO DANGER TO SAY MORE." Coward.
8th Sept '05	Garnett and Caine, from the Cube Retrieval Team, go out for drinks. Lots and lots of drinks. We know this because... (via Leaked E-mails.)
9th Sept '05	A very hungover Caine emails a smugly sober Garnet regarding their exploits from the night before. (via Leaked E-mails.) It's Violet's birthday today too, we think. Naturally, she sees Kurt and then does some gambling. Not that she'll take a gamble on Kurt, if you know what I mean.
16th Sept '05	Madness ensues today. Shortly before 9am, V murders Monica Grand in her Ascendancy Point apartment. Almost as soon as he leaves, Sylvia Salk arrives to find her on the edge of death. "We never held it", says Monica, then dies. Sylvia Salk is now totally freaked out, and unable to cope decides to take her own life, joing her late husband Pietro Salk in the great beyond. Cassandra from Earth emails Violet about all this, who races round to Sylvia Salk's place and finds her unconscious from an overdose. Fortunately, she calls the emergency services and Sylvia is saved, and quite glad she's not dead to boot. She says thanks, by the way. Violet spends quite a lot of the next week with her (see here and once again makes empty, hollow promises about getting The Book.). Meanwhile, Kurt reveals that analysis of the PXC-Earth datalink have shown increased activity, indicating that there are nefarious extra elements communicating between the two worlds.
21st Sept '05	Scarlett checks in from her Tanagra hike, describing it as beautiful and tiring to her dad and sister. (via Leaked E-mails.)
23rd Sept '05	Caine paints the statues in the Founder's Gallery yellow. Von is most amused, and Aiko has to remind him to go home and get the paint off his fingers. Meanwhile Tippy is busy manipulating [[Von] to go out and buy her coffee, to Anna's chagrin. She tries to get Kurt to get the boy to stand up for himself. (via Leaked E-mails.)
29th Sept '05	Sente emails his assistant Patrick Azadian, chasing a status report from the Centre for Reality Research, an agenda for a PCAG meeting that day and a budget proposal from Estelle Sedgewick. Azadian replies the first is forthcoming, the second is sorted, and reccommends contacting Robert Solitano regarding the budget. Sente asks to try and schedule a meeting with him that day, and also that he made need Patrick to stay late that day as "CS is looking for a financial report." Patrick cancels his raquetball appointment with Garnett. However, the CS financial report seems to be a ruse, because he then asks Lyssa Ling to attend a special meeting of the puzzle scribes. (via Leaked E-mails.)
3rd Oct '05	Caine steals Tippy's stapler, the utter bastard. (via Leaked E-mails.)
6th Oct '05	Violet finally heads over over to the central archives to meet her friend Cumber and gets her hands on The Book! Sadly, it's been nearly ruined, but she's confident that Kurt will be able to get something out of it and promises to swing by tommorrow.
7th Oct '05	And that's exactly what happens. Ah, they're such a great team... Meanwhile, Tippy asks Garnett out for dinner and he abruptly turns her down. Then she asks everyone else on the puzzle scribe team out for a wild partying session instead. Von notices she didn't invite Garnett, Tippy disparages Garnett, and Aiko unleashes a deserved smackdown. She's loyal to Garnett because he looked after her when she was arrested. (via Leaked E-mails.)
11th Oct '05	Violet observes that the pages of The Book which mention the Third Power are a lot more water-damaged than the ones that don't. "Creepy, huh?" We're inclined to agree.
19th Oct '05	Violet delivers some first quotes from The Book, and not a moment too soon. The Third Power is described as one of the Cube's "guardian cults" in the period immediately following the war.
27th Oct '05	Violet posts some symbols from The Book. Stirring stuff, eh?
1st Nov '05	Finally, Violet has some more dirt from The Book on The Third Power, suggesting it has deep roots at the Academy. She's also working hard on the War Exhibit.
7th Nov '05	Kurt chimes in with his take on restoring information from The Book: "all my copious spare time is being consumed by Violet's latest crazy project." Only because you love her, Kurty-boy.
9th Nov '05	Violet posts the final instalment from The Book, a list of implausibly famous characters from PXC history who the author claims were members of the Third Power. But Aiko remembers she's seen the 3P Symbol somewhere - specifically, in Sanjean Adamek's house...
12th (or 13th) Nov '05	Kurt visits the War Exhbit with his current crush, Sarah. She goes "all quiet" when he mentions his investigations with Violet and then is decidedly non-committal about seeing him again. Lesson: Talking a lot about your totally great not-girlfriend is a losing tactic.
22nd Nov '05	Long time no see, Violet! She's been pokering about again, visited her uncle Sanjean Adamek and confirmed that the Third Power symbol is definitely in his house, and that it was put there by the original builder, Anthony Granier and that Aiko had, in fact, turned up at some point previously to take photos of it. Fortunately Granier is famous and prolific diarist, and she tried to get access to the rarest original ones. No deal - you need to be a published researcher to access them.
28th Nov '05	Six days later, Violet loses patience and hits us over the head by telling us to WRITE A DAMN BOOK, ALREADY.
29th Nov '05	Violet is totally grossed by Cymbalisty's slimyness (she needed him to sign forms regarding her [http://www.quirkyacuity.com/archives/2005/11/my_visit_to_unc.html accreditation re: the Granier business) and tells Kurt about it, asking him out for a drink before dinner. (via Leaked E-mails.)
1st Dec '05	Kurt says he's been getting a lot of mail about subway stations and ceremonies. He sends us eager Cube Hunters to the Brotherhood Of The Six for the information we need...
6th Dec '05	Violet reports that Jason & Miranda, aka The Ominous Librarians, have started working at the Library. She fails to notice that they should probably be pushed under the nearest subway train ASAP, for everyone's safety. Kurt muses randomly, and also notes having spotted a rogue reporter from The Sentinel over by the Cube Research labs that day. Huh?
14th Dec '05	Violet briefs us on the latest happenings: Isaac Cymbalisty is all over Miranda like a rash, but she's still dating Kurt and it's going very well, and she's mulling over making a move on Jason, despite the fact that he just so happens to be "really interested" in the "manuscript stuff", OMFG RUN, VIOLET, RUN!
16th Dec '05	Our "trust no-one" attitude doesn't seem to have much traction in Perplex City - Kurt writes about taking Miranda out to the Finnegan/Johnson PCAG match, with a nasty headcold.
3rd Jan '06	Violet is now a fully accredited author, so it's all go go go with the manuscript. She is getting jealousy issues over Miranda. And she's having no luck with Jason who is always working on "unspecified projects". (eg: "murder, blackmail, mutilation with electric drills, transferring between realities, etc")
4th Jan '06	First instalment of Anthony Granier's diary.
5th Jan '06	Kurt says he's been thinking about it a lot, but he's finally decided to go to Gillit Road and try and find the evidence that Helena Frye is a spy. He asks the Earthlin's to try and find out who recorded the message on the Viard CD in the first place. Meanwhile, there's more hot Anthony Granier action today.
6th Jan '06	It's Graining men! Or more accurately, diary transcriptions.
10th Jan '06	First snowfall and Kindling Of The Flame. One week until the Gillit Road rendezvous. Granier diaries, part quatre.
12th Jan '06	Violet's merciless diary transcribing onslaught continues apace. And the penultimate excerpt, too! Note also that she's been taking care to tell Jason all about it.
13th Jan '06	Violet & Jason go out for coffee, we assume. Kurt and Miranda both leave work a little early to spend a charming weekend in the country - they return on Sunday 15th.
17th Jan '06	Kurt goes to Gillit Road. He manages to disrupt what appears to be a deadly police raid on a Third Power operation, which is then resultantly botched. He gets arrested! Read here and here for his account of proceedings. Now he needs the people of Earth to find out who created the Viard recording in order to prove his innocence.
18th Jan '06	Violet expresses her sadness over Isaac Cymbalisty's death, says that the final piece of the Anthony Granier diary is safe in Police hands, and that Kurt "seems to have fallen off the map completely."
25th Jan '05	We've hacked the first stage of the Hesh Intranet (password: mixolydian) but funnily enough it turns out Kurt got there already and seems to have thought it so trivial as to be not worth mentioning. He suggests that we need to socially engineer the boards to find out who engineered the Viard album.
25th onwards	It transpires we really, really suck at social engineering. We do, however, discover that the employees at Hesh have a night of playing Pyramid every Monday, so we clue Violet in to see if she fancies gatecrashing.
29th Jan '06	Violet and Kurt finally catch up with each other. Kurt tells Violet all about his escapades - as he's been keeping them hidden from everyone so far - and she is both worried and intrigued. Thankfully, she agrees to go along to the Hesh "poker night" (OK, so some confusion there, we admit) the next night to see what she can learn.
30th Jan '06	Violet turns up for some poker, only to discover they're actually playing Pyramid, which is beneath her contempt nine times over. Fortunately, she's brought along Caine to grease the wheels, and he finds out who produced the Viard album for Earth - Cyrus Quinton. Just the sort of information we were looking for, which is ace. Then Caine tries to make a move, real casual like. Busted!
1st Feb '06	Useful, but not useful enough is Kurt's take on our breakthrough. It appears Mr Quinton doesn't really exist in any meaningful sense of the word, so we need to access the password-protected filesystem within to see if it provides us with something resembling proof.
7th Feb '06	So yeah, we're finally into the filesystem! But we still can't access Cyrus's secret files. "Enter, those who know what the builder called men under my star" is the clue we pick up from one of his public files. We aren't really sure where to go with this. This isn't helping Kurt (who's now being tailed, incidentally) - can Violet help?
8th Feb '06	Violet says there's no chance of us getting any clues from any Holy Books unless we can provide more information. She asks us to pass on our regards to Alejo, despite "having a few troubles with musicans these days", we take this to mean our beloved Caine. My twin loyalties to rock'n'roll and geekdom have never been so stretched.
13th Feb '06	Kurt is horrified by our discovery but relieved he can now clear his name with Detective Frye.
15th Feb '06	Kurt meets Helena Frye in a cheap cafè on Alchemy Bay to hand over the evidence - read here and here. Not only is he exonerated (definitely better than being exsanguinated) but he discovers that the people at Gillit Road were "building something big... that required a clean room." And that this all ties in to the technology that's been going missing from The Academy. (Remember: Bernardo Holyoke, Five of Cups, Reynolds Ionisers, etc.)
8th March '06	Miranda has gone off "up north" teaching kids to run, so Kurt is feeling a bit lonely, bless him. More relevant to our inquiries: he's acknowledged that we'd like him to help with the Anna/Cymbalisty thing, and says he "might send a note to Anna" about it. Which, lets face it, is better than running off screaming.
9th Mar '06	Violet's back from a long absence of "not feeling like blogging much lately" what with her boss topping himself and everything. She's been "going for lunch" (which I'm starting to think is a euphenism) with Caine, and the verdict on him is funny but messy. Regarding Jason, he's hot stuff, but there's no chemistry. (Also: he's obviously evil.) Most importantly, she misses Kurt. Awwwwwww.
10th Mar '06	Kurt and Anna have a blazing row when Anna asks him to set up a phone-based comms link between Earth and the police hotline, and he tells her to "get over it and stop making up conspiracy theories." Kurt Hits For -10 HP! Later that day, he posts a counterpoint. Or at least that's what he says, but generally maintains that Anna is delusional and us Earthlings are just plain naive. To be fair, he might have a point. A glimmer of hope: he says he'll hear Anna out.
13th Mar '06	Ah, Kurt is managing to be spectacularly irate while evidently slowly coming around to the idea of setting up the PXC-Earth phonelink. Nice bit of off-key sexism from a random player, you'll notice.
14th Mar '06	Kurt crumbles like a nice old bit of cheese, and agrees to set up the link, which is here. Then it's all go go go! We start calling in a massive crime-wave, even with some level of co-ordination, which must be a first for us. Some people get a bit overexcited and call in bomb threats, murders and the like, which is exactly what Kurt has asked us not to do, but never mind.
16th Mar '06	Kurt explains how he was convinced to help, but isn't best pleased with our antics. And if I may say so, rightfully so.