This is it.
The message you've been waiting for.
The call to action.
An email spam about a new augmented reality multiplayer game called "Thousand Heavens" has sent you an invite to join the hundred of thousands of players already choosing different hells and heavens to advance in the game world.
Okay...so not what you were expecting.
Luckily, you know a thing or two about stenography, a code in the message, and find the data hidden in the spam email. You real directive, direct from Firewall.
The directive states you should meet your contact and your new colleagues at the Martian city of Olympus, in front of the Knox building at 15:00 for a "quest briefing" in-game.
The Knox Building is a 150 story skyscraper in Central notable for holding the University of Chicago's Olympus satellite campus. In front of the building is a small domed plaza in the perpetual shadow of the surrounding skyscrapers. A small crowd of Thousand Heavens players have gathered in the plaza, waiting for the quest to start. To those using the Thousand Heavens AR overlays, everything appears normal until 16:00, when a shaft of light shines down from above, revealing a small hill in the center of the plaza. On that hill is a fig tree and hanging upside-down from the tree by a rope tied around one foot is a naked man. His eyes are closed.
Jin stands in the plaza, trying to blend in with the rest of the Thousand Heavens players. He idly checks out the interface, mentally comparing it to the last VR game he had played in the Academy, Karmic Wheel. (At least no one has to start as a dung beetle in this one.) An AR window in his peripheral vision keeps the Gorgon bounty ticker open so he and his muse can keep an eye out for tomorrow's contract.
Codename "Pilgrim" is sleeved in a ruster of Korean ethnicity, last year's Regulator brand jacket over his light body armor. His features are "off the rack" handsome, which is average to most in Olympus. To anyone around, he looks like an off duty HabSec officer or indenture taking in a little entertainment. His weapons and helmet are thrown over his shoulder in a rugged climber's backpack that looks like it's actually been used in the Martian outback.
Much as he tries to blend in, he's eager to get the mission prompt: these Firewall Ops tend to be a little more "interesting" than his usual bounties even if they don't pay as well (or at all). Leave the VR quests to the corporate drones, desk jockeys and students- Jin's ready for the real thing. The ego hunter mills about in the crowd, approaching the fig tree with the rest of the players.
Pivo arrives in a vehicle from a taxi service called Toober, a novel upstart that caters to uplifts. The driver, a bonobo, keeps the meter running as Pivo sits in a small tank in the back, enjoying what he assumes will be his last few submerged moments before this briefing takes him away.
To the average Martian, Pivo appears as somewhat of a novelty. An octomorph, not common in these parts, dressed in a strangely-patterned vacsuit. To the AR viewer, his avatar was offset from his actual person a few meters, so much so that people may not make the connection between someone in the taxi and the avatar itself. His avatar is that of a large maroon demon with blade-like claws at the end of each finger and a mouth made of writing tentacles set below vantablack eyes. It looks around menacingly before focusing on the fig tree and attached man.
Catarina, strolls around the plaza, taking note of people arriving to the game meeting. She is sleeved in an Olympian morph - pretty standard for someone who works as a bodyguard - with hispanic features and buzz-cut bob hair. She wears her usual nondescript clothes - a slightly worn practical jacket and comfortable loose trousers.
She is intrigued by this "quest briefing", since she hasn't taken many Firewall missions, but the few she did turned out to be quite... something.
She checks her holster with the pistol once more, and with a nod of satisfaction approaches the the hill with the tree.
Late one Mars evening a vid screen alights with news of a new message. A figure resting in a chair with some old school headphones rights himself, speaks a word, and removes the headphones.
"You are cordially invited to join the new augmented reality game 'Thousand Heavens'..." a synthesized voice begins to read the message.
Hmm..Firewall wants me. I must admit, I am a fan of them over many of the others.
*******************************************************************
Aleksander in his bouncer skin shows up at the Knox building at about 14:30 and finds a comfortable seat near the front and waits among the AR players. He keeps an eye out for the arrival of the contact at 15:00, listening to music in the meanwhile.
Catarina, you see nothing terribly out of the ordinary. There is a large mass of players waiting for the game to start. Some are in synth morphs, as is common for Olympus while the majority are in Ruster morphs as the more affordable and convenient option.
Everything appears normal until 16:00, and then a beam of light strikes down on the plaza creating a small hill that anyone with the AR interface can clearly see. On that hill is a fig tree and hanging upside-down from the tree by a rope tied around one foot is a naked man. His eyes are closed. When you approach the upside down man, his head turns to face you and his eyes open, revealing two voids full of stars. He speaks and his voice is that of a woman:
"Seekers of Enlightenment, you who would change destiny and turn aside fate, heed my words: a man known as David Williams is missing from his place in the Heaven, he entered his residence yesterday afternoon, never left, but is no
longer there. David is a virologist and we fear that his disappearance is connected to the recent deaths of five other scientists, working in similar fields. Your task is to find out what happened to him. Obviously, this task is time sensitive and you should make haste. To speed your journey I have prepared gifts for you; with these you can climb the Spire of Heaven to where David dwells. Good Luck."
Before you can even start to wonder if everyone here is a Firewall operative, the voice reassures you.
"I am Proxy 21, a Firewall router. I am using a MARG feature to tailor this 'quest' for you agents. For the short time left, you may ask any inquiries you wish before the light fades."
Aleksander tilts his head curiously, "How might I identify those who will be on this mission with me?"
Lexi, could you do a preliminary search of the top 10 worst ego viruses and compare it to anything that has been worked on here on Mars? Alex addresses his muse.
Pilgrim sets his muse, Lucky, to look for common knowledge about David Williams while he continues talking to Proxy 21.
"Did the 5 'side quests' have anything in common with the 'main quest' besides common fields? Is our 'main quest' affiliated with the 'guild' in any way?"
Pivo looks at the creature in AR, and in the back of his mind tasks his muse with research into the Spire of Heaven, particularly in ways to penetrate the target.
"What tools? What is the goal? Capture? Deadly force authorized on escalation? Even if escalated by David?"
"Who are the others in the team? In case of... complications, is it an assault or infiltration mission? Extraction?"
Catarina addresses her muse Kate, record everything Proxy 21 says.
To answer one of your questions, all of you immediately see that you four have been placed as a "team" each of you now having com access to each other. Continuing forth, Proxy 21 adresses you all so you all can hear.
"No known connection exists between the five dead scientists and David. A detailed synopsis will be provided."
"You will act as your team sees fit, but priority is given to stop any threat to transhumanity. That takes priority over anything else."
Pivo it occurs to you that the 'spire of heaven' is most likley the Knox building, and given its colossal size, you would be wading through all the information a casual generic search would bring you. However, for entering the building, Proxy 21 sends you all a "NEW ITEM" ping.
The gifts are electronically transmitted to the characters and are fake ego IDs which identify the characters as students at the University of Chicago's satellite campus in the Knox Building. The IDs all currently have r-rep 10, c-rep 5, 50 credits, and 50 crypto-cred
Dr. Kazuki Murase – a virologist studying bacteriophages for Ecologene. He died in a car crash.
Dr. Ryoo Hee Sok – a virologist at the University of
Mars whose work focuses on determining how viruses can alter neural functioning. She was crushed when a flying car fell on her.
Dr. Momolu Mensah – a biosculpter working on viruses for Ecologene at a remote habitat. Killed along with several others in a methane explosion caused by a life support system failure.
Dr. Gwendolyn James – an MIT nanotechnologist working on medichine pathogen detection systems. She was killed when a breach in a nearby lab released a disassembler swarm.
Dr. Angelo Arnoldi – a neurologist working on smart monkeys brains. He fell down an elevator shaft. Onto a box of bullets.
Scratch that Lexi. I need you to start going through any research you can find on these 5. Pull up the latest articles that they wrote and see if there are any similarities between them. Subject, location, financier, anything.
Aleks then sends an info message to the others in his team a saved message.
Aleksander "Wyrm"
Freelance Hacker
Anything with computers or the Mesh is my specialty
...at your service
"10-4, 21. We'll take it from here I think. Which floor on the Spire is our target's home?"
Pilgrim sends his own "calling card" to the others.
Jin "Pilgrim"
Ego Hunter
Infiltration, Tracking, Asset acquisitions/elimination
He'll set up his false mesh ID as 'Woo Lim Park- virology and forensics student' and take a look around the Knox Building to note entrances and exits.
Pivo follows suit, sending his card to the others.
Pivo
Engineer. Physicist. Demo. Salvage & Valuation.
Catarina in her turn sends a "business card".
Catarina "Irbis"
Ex-soldier, now mostly bodyguard.
It seems I'll be the muscles.
And then follows with a message
"I'll meet you at the building, I have a few things to pick up at home."
She quickly drops by her home and picks the rest of her equipment, and then meets with the others at the Krox building.
Aleks nods as Catarina leaves. He then goes to sit down at in his previous location and delves into the Mesh.
Let's see....let's try and find the layout of the knox building
Yes, Aleks. I will look up those 5.
Researching data on David pulls up the following information. Fortunately, it takes the same amount of time it would for anyone to return and grab items they think would be useful
David is a virology graduate student at the University of Chicago. His thesis is on the use of bacteriophages to genetically modify previously deployed biosculpted bacteria colonies.
He lives and works at the university’s campus in the Knox Building.
He maintains a modest lifelog containing only the highlights. The log has not been updated since well before he went missing.
A list of David's friends and colleagues. David is fairly active socially and has many friends who are worried about him because he missed class, work, and labs today, which is very unlike him.
A map of David's apartment in the graduate student housing section of the campus.
David does not own a vehicle, when off campus he uses public transportation or walks.
David has no surveillance spimes in his apartment and no roommates, though he does have a servitor robot to take care of his apartment and cook for him.
Aleksander, your muse returns to you with no obvious connection between the five scientists that is notable in any way.
Pilgrim, its easy enough to find that information online as the basic layout is available. There are three entrances/exits and it is monitored by surveillance spimes (multi-faceted recording devices of the future). You could probably find the actual footage with a successful Research test.
Lexi's robotic voice returns a few moments later, Aleks, my apologies. I did not find anything that links the five scientists
That's okay Lexi, Aleks responds back chipperly. Could you track 'Irbis'? I'mma do some research on our new 'friends'.
Pilgrim runs through the surveillance footage, if it's available to him, focusing on around the time David returned home last and the hours after.
Pilgrim sends a message to everyone on the team.
"We got three entrances and I'm trying to pull up some security spime footage. How do you three want to play it? Just walk in as students looking for our peer tutor? Maybe Pivo sneaks in or hides in a backpack?"
"Probably goes without saying, but five scientists dying under mysterious accidents... sabotage is likely, so we should treat the apartment as compromised. Maybe David has some friends on r-net we could interview; none of you happen to be scientists, would you?"
"Agreed. +1 on the backpack idea, I don't want to be talking to people. Maybe I'll catch a nap. Though, uh, I do happen to be a scientist. Engineer and Physicist."
"Sounds reasonable to me. I can pull my contacts in the media, but I doubt there are anything useful - they weren't public figures, as I understand."
Pilgrim pulls on his body armor in a public lav, leaving his helmet in his backpack.
"Alright, got room in here for Pivo- maybe you can hit up Research Network for any of our subject's friends while we're on our way up."
"The fake ID's have us as students so...with backpacks, we should be able to enter the building just fine. Once we are in I'll take care of any other 'permissions' we might need. HI HO SILVER!" Aleks says as he turns toward the Knox building once more, "AWAY!"
Pivo leaves the comfort of his water tank, waving his arm sending credits to the driver via NFC and plops over to the backpack. Once lowered to his level, he climbs in and closes it from within.
Pilrigm skims through the security spimes until he finds what he's looking for. David was last recorded entering his apartment at 14:34 yesterday. There is no record of him leaving. After David entered his apartment, the only other people to enter were members of a Knox Building Security team who arrived at 14:00 Simha 20, searched for 5 minutes, and then left.
Catarina, you try and reach out to your contacts, but currently, no one has any interest in your request and your attempts at finding some help fall through.
"No luck," Catarina shakes her head. "I guess all that's left to do is actually check his apartment."
"Hmm...Maybe Mr. Williams had friends?" Aleksander paused for a moment to gracefully dive into the mesh.
Pilgrim checks through the mesh for some of David's friends while he approaches the front door of the Knox building, backpack full of Octopus.
Catarina closely follows Pilgrim, looking around as they walk. It's been some time since she was a student.
Aleksander shows his worth by looking in all the right places, and soon comes up with several chatboards where David is conversing with a fellow grad student Marie Danielson.
PIlgrim and Catarina approaches the building, but with his credentials, he should be allowed access easily. However, he has to make it past security checkpoints. From your information, these inclued Spime types of video, t-ray weapon scanners, explosive detecting chem-sniffers, and metal detectors. Suffice it to say, weapons of any kind are prohibited.
As for Pivo, though odd, as he has the proper credentials, he has access as a student. For all the security guards are concerned about, they consider Pivo as a Morph eccentric or some weird sexual play between you two. Either way, not their business and they're not gonna ask.
Pilgrim hems and haws a little bit.
"I get it, guys- you can't have any trouble up there so I'll leave the shard pistol out. But the freezer and the shock baton are non-lethal and,well... I think my "friend" might be disappointed if I can't bring them along if you get me..."
"Very funny, no weapons allowed." the guard informs you, pointing to a holding cell of lockers down the way.
"You can store your stuff here for the time being, but at night we take everything to lock up for security reasons."
Catarina hesitates for a moment, but then shrugs, puts her SMG and pistol, along with the stunner into the locker and passes through the guard post. At least I'll have my implants.
Aleksander looks up from his concentration and addresses the guard, "Hey there sir. I don't s'pose you know if a..," he closes his eyes for a moment, "Marie Danielson is in this building? She's a TA for one of my classes and I think I just missed her office hours."
"Alright, okay.", Pilgrim shrugs and locks up his weapons in the indicated locker.
Pivo places his weapons belt in the locker
"Alright, fair enough, though I'll be taking this up with the professor. That said, I do need this plasma cutter to finish tonight's project. I'd really rather not have to try to cut metal without it."
The guard gives Aleksander a look that clearly explains that knowing who's where is not his job.
"Contact her on the Mesh or find her office hours. We just make sure nothing dangerous goes into the building."
With the groups weapons safely in storage, and the many security devices not sending an alert, you all are allowed access to the Knox building, and more importantly, able to reach Apartment 983 on the 98 floor.
The door to the apartment acts as an interior airlock door (15 armor, 100 DUR, 25 WT) and is secured with an electronic lock that accepts a wireless code. The door is set to open from the inside without needing the code.
Pilgrim walks along the halls, looking for air ducts as well as the security spimes. He tries to surreptitiously pace the halls so as not to appear suspicious on the security feed.
Pivo pops his eyes up out of the backpack, holding the handle with two tentacles. He looks around to see what he can detect.
360 degree vision (EP p.311)
Echolocation (EP p.301)
Polarization vision (PAN p.148)
Enhanced Vision (EP p.301)
Radiation Sense (EP p.306)
T-Ray Emitter (EP p.306)
Catarina casually looks around the door.
The security system does not detect Aleksander as he hacks in and he is able to get himself admin access with not too much trouble.
With the door open and Pivo doing a full coverage scan, you do get a lot of the information available in the apartment.
You learn the following:
David's small apartment is decorated in a minimalistic style and has a stark white color scheme broken up with splashes of stainless steel and glass. It is spotlessly clean thanks to David's servitor bot.
There are no surveillance spimes in the apartment, though there are spimes to detect the air temperature, light levels, humidity, atmospheric composition, pressure, and the like. These spimes are private, though they will public report certain dangerous conditions such as loss of air pressure. There are surveillance spimes outside the apartment's entrance, including video spimes. These spimes are currently actively monitored by a security AI since David has been reported missing. These spimes maybe hacked (the security AI is merely monitoring the spimes and does not count as an active defender) but destroying or disabling them will cause the AI to dispatch security officers to the apartment.
2. WINDOWS
These floor to ceiling windows are made of one-way smart-glass to preserve the occupants privacy and can be set to any opacity to create the optimum light level in the room. They are currently set to full transparency. Because they protect from the martian atmosphere the windows are very difficult to break (30 armor, 150 DUR, 30 WT).
3. COAT CLOSET
This room holds coats and a couple pairs of shoes.
4. LIVING ROOM
The living room contains white couches and a low glass table with stainless steel legs. The table has a holographic projector built into it with circuit traces visibly running through the glass. The projector is set to only be accessible by David, but it can be hacked using InfoSec (p. 6).
5. KITCHEN
This small kitchen has a moderate quality maker built
into a wall, a refrigerator, an oven, a sink, and many cabinets. Everything is white and very clean. When it is not cleaning David's servitor bot (p. 17) resides here. The bot was in the kitchen when David left and did not see him leave.
6. LAUNDRY ROOM
Off of the bathroom is a small room that contains a combination washer/dryer and a hamper.
7. BATHROOM
This is a small room containing a toilet, a cabinet with a sink, a mirror, a tub/shower, and a towel rack. There are adhesives and solvents for use with wigs and a first aid kit in the cabinet.
8. BEDROOM
This room is mostly open with a small white bed designed to fold up into the wall in one corner. The bed currently down and freshly made.
8. CLOSET
This closet contains a dresser filled with clothes. On the dresser are four mannequin heads, three of which are wearing wigs: a very long blonde, a short black, and a brown wig that matches David's usual hair. The fourth mannequin head is bare.
That servitor bot will most likely attemmpt to contact David about the intruders that just walked in, and failing that, will contact security.
To find more possible clues, go ahead and do a scrounging test. Describe what you're looking for specifically or what you pay attention to. If you decide to scan and look at everything, I'll have to give you the maximum time you need to literally examine everything,[/ooc]
Aleks looks around with the others. When he gets to the kitchen his brain quickly processes.
"My my! Now that's a problem!" he exclaims as he quickly jacks into the servitor bot.
Aleks begins to talk to the bot " Now what do you remember?" He begins searching through the bots recordings of the last 24 hours.
Pilgrim starts by checking the first aid kit to see if it's been used lately. He then looks over the bare mannequin head to see if there's any stray hairs left on it to tell what wig was stored there.