The GRANITE HUNTER Files (BP)

The following information has not been confirmed by Volition and is therefore not canon for the FreeSpace universe.

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WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the following storylines: Freespace 1, Silent Threat, Freespace 2, Blue Planet

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The following documents were exposed in the course of exchanges [1] [2] between GTVA intelligence asset GRANITE HUNTER, citizens of the GTVA, and a person of unknown affiliation, codenamed TRUTH. There is little to authenticate these documents; however, in the interest of history -- if nothing else of the scope of GTVA disinformation efforts -- they are presented here.

The Second Incursion

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE
distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword PASQUINADE, source CIRCULAR
FROM: BALCONY VIEW
TO: COLDMORN

Welcome to hell. I'm your new Ahriman. No one elects us and no one gets rid of us which makes us, as much as everyone would like to think otherwise post-Glaive, the only enduring policymakers in this post-terrestrial mess. Our first priority is the safety of the species. Implicit in that is the ugly truth: we need to hold on to the ability to save the species.

I understand your reaction to the Remillard Receipts. Very few of us ever respond well to the coverup. Let me assure you that very few of those who work the problem end up disagreeing. What else do we do with the transmissions?

To me, the more interesting questions are these: how much of it is true? Who do we believe? If MacDuff is actually in control of a disintegrating civilization, do we need to be prepared for military confrontation? If Human Futures is seeding a soft tyranny, do we need to be prepare for a soft war? And what about the interference? Who's doing that? Who has that capability? Who wants to keep us cut off?

The one that keeps me up at night is this: did we actually make a clean sweep during Templar? Or did one of those Shiva-****ers smuggle a copy out?

In any case. Much as we might call them jealous, our counterparts in the Complicated Place are correct. We don't need the fact of a homeworld right now. We need the hope of a home to get back to, and, failing the presence of that hope, the dream of a brighter world for our children.

I can't believe 'lost generation' caught on. I hate that book. We came through hellfire and ruin and the loss of everything and now we have a chance, here, to make something new.

Let's get to it.

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE
distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword ERGOSPHERE, source CIRC_NEW_WARHARD
FROM: COLDMORN
TO: BALCONY VIEW

we're a year deep and i feel like i've heard more doubletalk and lies than a vasudan bartender. my friends are in play in polaris and they're killing each other. you think the navy has it bad? at least they don't work in the same room as the other side!

and i still can't get an honest brief. ANSWER ME STRAIGHT

1) did we, you and all your BALCONY creatures, aim CELTIC TRIPLE at the deneb artifacts? or was it the CABLE STAMP crew? i understand that CABLE STAMP cares about earth and you don't. CELTIC TRIPLE has something you want and something they want

2) was CELTIC TRIPLE one of us before he went out into the cold? did we send him out there to do this? is all of this our project, the pogroms, the harbinger hit on cygnus prime, just to get the deneb artifacts wherever they're going?

3) what the **** is ETAK and why do we need it so badly?

BALCONY VIEW -> COLDMORN
we're still people up here. we hate this as much as you do. right now i am working with CABLE STAMP and the Complicated Place to figure out how we can all get what we want. remember the top priority. i'm putting you on BLACK DOVE and i want him on ETAK

FLASH FLASH FLASH
ISN BACKBREAKER FASTEST
S 0808 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO CINCDEN, CINCSIR
ACTION DIRECTIVE TO FOLLOW

SECCON AUTHORITY. IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

PULL BLOCKADE ON SIRIUS-DENEB JUMP NODE.

HOLD OFF ON CELTIC TRIPLE INTERCEPT. MAINTAIN PURSUIT POSTURE BUT DO NOT ENGAGE. STRATEGICALLY VITAL THAT CELTIC TRIPLE TRANSIT NODE UNIMPAIRED

RATIONALE TO FOLLOW

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE
distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword ERGOSPHERE, source CIRC_NEW_WARHARD
FROM: COLDMORN
TO: BALCONY VIEW

why are you running an agent in an opeval unit? why are you passing them the BLACK DOVE sigint from ETAK? those TAG transmitters are going into live combat ordnance...do you actually want this chum in the water?

BALCONY VIEW->COLDMORN
The strategic situation in the nebular theater can accept a few hits. If there's a shark out there I'd like to see it.

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE
distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword ERGOSPHERE, source CIRC_NEW_WARHARD
FROM: COLDMORN
TO: BALCONY VIEW

i know CHARIOT DRIVER fucked up and i know the Complicated Place (probably) didn't want it any more than we did but you HAVE to stop this court-martial. by drawing the rebels' attention to CHARIOT DRIVER and what he knew you are endangering BLACK DOVE. we need that asset and its capabilities. i am cooking up a heist that will get you more of what you want.

or are you going to blame this on CABLE STAMP? are they trying to get my people killed to interfere with your plan?

you need to keep me in the loop BALCONY...you have too much riding on my work to let me develop illusions of independence...

BALCONY VIEW->COLDMORN
i will do what i can but remember we are part of a military here and like it or not i don't run everything [yet]. i consider CHARIOT DRIVER a personal friend and i wish we lived in a world where he could've had justice right there and then. think of him next time you pull strings for CELTIC TRIPLE. think of him and remember the price he's paying.

FLASH FLASH FLASH
ISN BACKBREAKER {ERR: archival functions timed out...}
S 2126 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO SPARROW MAW

ENSURE CELTIC TRIPLE TRANSITS KNOSSOS BY ANY MEANS AVAILABLE

BLACK DOVE ABOARD NTF SHIP ATTEMPTING KNOSSOS TRANSIT. I WOULD BE MUCH OBLIGED IF HE MADE IT BUT NOT STRICTLY A VITAL ASSET

GODSPEED AND DON'T BREAK THE BIG GUY ANY HARDER THAN HE BREAKS HIMSELF

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

PRIORITY
ISN BRIDGEBUILDER STRAT
S 0121 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO CINCNEB

HELLO AND BEST WISHES FROM YOUR FRIENDS ON HIGH. HOPE ALL IS WELL IN THE FOG. CONGRATS ON THE BIG BEAR KILL

GRANITE MOUNTAIN WILL REQUEST ELINT AND SPECIAL SENSOR ASSETS. DETACH SOONEST (FLASH PRIORITY). SUPERCEDES ALL OTHER MISSIONS EXCEPT PERIMETER WATCH

ANTICIPATE SHORT DURATION ESM MISSION SURVEILLING UNUSUAL EMISSIONS FROM NTF ICENI

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

FLASH FLASH FLASH
ISN BACKBREAKER {ERR: archival functions timed out...}
S 0250 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO GRANITE MOUNTAIN

THE GIG IS UP. GRAB THE TARGET. I WANT EVERYTHING.

USE ANY AVAILABLE FLEET OR SOC ASSET

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

FLASH FLASH FLASH
ISN BACKBREAKER FASTEST
S 1225 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO GRANITE MOUNTAIN

SITUATION DEPARTING FROM SURVIVABLE PARAMETERS. SECCON IS HUNGRY FOR ANYTHING AND I WILL BURN EVERY ASSET I HAVE MYSELF INCLUDED BEFORE I LET THEM DOWN.

UNEXPECTED TREASURE FROM A CONCERTO IN CAPELLA. WE ARE CHASING IT. WE MAY HAVE A GENUINE NAGARI SPECIMEN ON OUR HANDS.

GIVE BLACK DOVE THE GO ON LIONSDEN

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

Post-Capella

NHN RDU 8 BR 8 RB S
000 000 000 000 A A A
BALCONY VIEW -> COLDMORN

First day on the new system feels like a good day for my last day on the job. I'm out. You're inheriting everything I ran. CABLE STAMP is tight with Petrarch but you knew that already. With the Knossos findings and Petrarch in their hand, and the economy going the way it's going, we're going to have to concede the palace to CABLE STAMP unless we can find a way back in. The only way I see out is to work MORPHEUS. Work it as hard as you can until you can convince someone there's a threat and that we need to be ready when we go home.

I'm going to move to south Hulldown and hope I die before any more excitement happens. I know you'll buy me a present no matter what I say. My grandkid wouldn't mind a copy of Antagonism 2.

I know you'll ask me how it feels to be out no matter how much I don't want to answer. You'll be informed on a need-to-know basis, COLDMORN. And I still need you in the game.

That's how it goes.

UUR TGG A AN Z SF 0
770 660 147 D D O
COLDMORN -> WIZARD MAN

Thank you for your work managing everyone's recollection of that event. And thank you for reaching out to me with this theory. I value this kind of initiative.

Your suppositions are part of a long and (now) fractionally less insane history. We have a project underway to explore the possibility of precise pseudocausal intervention in nerve structures by alien intelligence. I'm adding you to MORPHEUS as field support.

Get me Kyle Athanas. We need interviews and neural telemetry. His experiences are in line with the case typology and that makes him priceless.

Do you remember the days when we had a budget? I miss knowing that everything was a GTVI plot.

SECURE SABLE
S 2249 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO SSC LIASON

WHAT IN THE NAME OF YOUR INADEQUATE GODS IS HAPPENING OVER THERE. THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A COVERUP BIGGER THAN REMILLARD IF IT KEEPS ESCALATING.

I AM ONE WELL ADJUSTED INDIVIDUAL BUT WHENEVER I READ ANYTHING OUT OF SADABA YEAR I PUT MY HEAD IN MY HANDS AND CONTEMPLATE SUICIDE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS WOULD DO TO SPECIES WIDE MORALE? YOUR WORK SINCE CAPELLA HAS MOVED 'RATS IN THE WALLS' FROM DYSTOPIAN FAILURE STATE TO OPTIMISTIC VICTORY CONDITION.

STICK TO YOUR JOB. MAKE SURE CENTAUR IS GOING TO WORK.

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

OCAC Expedient
TIA Rapid Exemption
Candidate 616A9707YBPTR
Subspace Systems Command, Strategic Navigation Research Initiative

SADABA YEAR went into early stand-down after an internal event and the loss of some assets and personnel. However, unexpected post-mission applications across the last six months have driven an explosive knowledge footprint. Although primarily of intellectual interest, this new footprint could be mined for strategic intelligence.

At the requests of SSC thought leaders we have prepared an extremely brief precis.

Introduction

Cosmological study with conventional instruments has determined that the universe is spatially infinite, flat, and unbounded. Most importantly, the universe appears isotropic in all directions: the same laws, dynamics, and high-level structures prevail. However, the historically recent discovery of subspace opens new cosmological questions. Due to the importance of subspace navigation technology, applied subspace mathematics and computational subspace dynamics are now well understood. But due to the expense and limited utility of non-navigational subspace instruments (NNSI), broader questions have been neglected.

Summary Findings

The stand-down of SADABA YEAR left SNRI with a number of sophisticated sensor assets that were applied to scientific questions with assumption of retroactive authorization. Investigation has produced preliminary evidence for major breaches of isotropy in the subspace domain. Puzzlingly, follow-up investigation of cosmological data detects signs of teleonomy in some traits of the space/subspace interface. SNRI requests additional funding and access to strategic computational assets to determine whether these findings may be of military interest.

Specific Findings

The physical universe can be described as a subset manifold of subspace — traditionally, a bubble or sheet adrift in a larger space. Active battery transits conducted with SADABA YEAR surplus NNSI detected adjacent manifolds, supporting Bardakci et al. and numerous others.

Teleonomic inference detects tantalizing similarities in the organization of these manifolds, from high-level symmetry breaks down to astronomical structure. The similarity may continue to smaller scales. Inference suggests shared causal history until a time, tau-break, within the past several billion years (present inclusive). These nearby manifolds may be identical to or only minimally divergent from our own.

NNSI wake sensors detect subspace transit activity between these manifolds. This opens the possibility of causal action between manifolds. The origin and provenance of these transits are unknown but see Centaur/transit 21. Depending on the degree of causal drift since tau-break, observation of nearby manifolds may provide previously unavailable data on historical counterfactuals.

Initial active battery transits detected a local comoving constellation and echos of other structures at the same scale beyond the horizon of instrument resolution.

Repeated active battery transits detected a massive isotropy break within the local subspace volume. Team members nicknamed the direction of this break the 'wow vector' due to the unexpected magnitude and statistical significance of the signal. Local manifolds appear to be moving away from this vector in a loose dispersal constellation. The wow vector may represent a historical origin point and a possible reason for shared causal history.

Some team members suggest that refraction patterns and probability slopes along the wow vector are evidence of manifold necrosis.

After mathematical work outside the scope of this precis, data from NNSI investigation of the wow vector was applied to teleonomic analysis of the space/subspace interface. Results suggest traumatic isolation of our manifold from a larger structure within the cosmological timeline. However, REDTEAM counteranalysis argues that this is in fact a reverse-read of an earlier event in which multiple manifolds joined.

Teleonomic analysis of the joining and isolation events may suggest an engineered event (but see REDTEAM 8.8b).

Peripherally, SNRI teleonomic analysis of structures in the Lanieakea supercluster suggest the presence of an engineered object of unprecedented magnitude. Unfortunately, neither the funding nor manpower for further analysis of this signal has yet determined itself necessary.

Strategic Impact

Further investigation of the local structure of subspace may provide insight into the role of intelligent life in the development of the universe and the challenges it may have encountered. We hope the strategic ramifications require no further emphasis.

Special Thanks
The team would like to thank Li Weng for her extraordinarily diligent support, Djau for exemplary organization and context services, and the casualties of SADABA YEAR for their faithful service in the face of unimaginable challenges.

OCAC Candidate
TIA Rapid Exemption Request - Compliance Conditioning Resource
Candidate 616A9814RARQW
NEMESIS NOW Integrated Outcomes Report

Introduction

If you're reading this you are part of the select Upsilon-plus group cleared for NEMESIS NOW. The intelligence community has spent a decade wailing over the explosive complexity of joint analysis on Shivan behavior during the Second Incursion. After ten years of listening to jumped-up experts on the effect of Sirius tax structures in Regulan election outcomes bleating about Vasudan psycholinguistic techniques and suggesting that Shivan behavior might be 'genuinely alien', our task force coalesced out of the collective resentment and irritation of people whose thoughts actually matter.

Wise figures in our leadership structure empowered NEMESIS NOW to traverse the entire alphabet of acronyms, callsigns, stacks, matrices, workflows, and footprints devoted to Shivan analysis. From this journey we return with several transparently exploitative gems of existential horror designed to scare you away and let us get back to work. This is one of them.

Looking Back

Most of you pretend to understand the differences in Shivan behavior between the Great War and the Second Incursion. The core fact you must grasp about the Second Incursion is that Shivan behavior was tactically diffuse, initially much like a set of agents with no global control, but later developed strategic direction. In the opening stages of the encounter, the Shivans reacted sluggishly, executing what we term an 'inflammatory response' to Bosch's incursion. As Allied presence in the nebula escalated, the Shivans began to emit a wide spectrum of behaviors, including a stereotyped recapitulation of Great War strategy that culminated in the GTD Phoenicia's bearbaiting operation and the famous 'High Noon' engagement in Capella. During this strategic epoch, Allied forces fought against a blind algorithm.

We cracked the Shivan behavioral code when we abandoned top-down, teleological analysis and trusted our models to identify patterns. When we extract a pattern from noise, we call it a signal. All Shivan behavior during these opening stages fits within one broad, chaotic signal.

As the Incursion proceeds, we begin to detect a second signal in the Shivan behavioral model. Here and there, strategic elements and tactical assets suddenly depart from the inflammatory response. Yet there is no clear phase transition, as we observed during the Great War after the destruction of the Lucifer. Instead, this signal operates within the inflammatory ladder, redirecting and manipulating elements already in play. For the sake of your limited imaginations we will risk anthropomorphizing and suggest its behavior is almost covert.

Something within the Shivan behavioral system began goal-directed behavior. The result was the detonation of the Capella star. What other outcomes can we attribute to this second signal, this specter in the demon apparatus? We can immediately extract one actionable piece of intelligence: if any of your colleagues or subordinates suggest the action of a 'Shivan queen' or 'hive mind', you can safely have them fired.

By altering the parameters of Shivan behavior across a range of possible (and some contrafactually impossible) states, we can bootstrap models of Shivan cognition. When these models predict Shivan behavior that resembles actual recorded encounters, we gain confidence in the underlying assumptions. In several scenarios, we used Great War behavioral patterns to operate Shivan forces during the Second Incursion. Allied casualties approached or equaled the ceiling value.

In some scenarios, the model of best fit incorporates a third force in play. We can observe this third force only by its interactions with the Shivan behavioral parameters. In many of these models, the Shivan 'second signal' is oriented partly or even wholly in response to the third player.

Beyond a three-player game, diminishing fit returns set in. In this respect our work probably resembles your sex life.

Looking Forward

During Alllied operations against the first Sathanas juggernaut, the 203rd Scorpions attacked a Shivan position in an effort to lure the Sathanas into a trap. The GVCv Sopedu was assigned to provide TAG support, but the ship's commander, a veteran of both flight and warship engagements, experienced an episode of intrusive ideation. The GVCv Thutmose was hastily reassigned to the engagement. At the same time, Allied flight elements recorded unusual emissions from the NTF Iceni and a Shivan corvette, the Rephaim.

Our analysis has detected structural rhymes in emissions detected from Shivan artifacts located in a binary star system, the deepest penetration into Shivan territory of any Allied units during the Second Incursion. One of our (parameter-agnostic, omnivorous, unmanaged) models suggests that these structures represent long-range transmitters for the 'second signal' behavior driver. Interestingly, these devices had on-board self-destruct mechanisms and systems that could be interpreted as camouflage — but against what?

We have had some success using these agnostic models to generate novel and occasionally fantastical hypotheses for Shivan behavior. This agnostic technique seeks to create models that can control all degrees of freedom in Shivan behavior with a minimum number of assumptions. (These same Nenet-Bayes-Kekera techniques are used in many popular social applications to interpolate intentions, character, and personal history from brief exposure, as well as in the most successful Vasudan translation software.)

One successful model indicates that the Shivans pivoted from a posture of strategic defense to a strategy of either intimidation or simple obfuscation: detonating Capella to sever contact with Allied forces. In this model, Shivan presence in the nebula system was an engineering unit, a different class of organism from the Lucifer fleet with different behavioral imperatives. Their only aim was to stop attrition and prevent Allied units from interfering with whatever goals they had.

Yet this model has fallen out of favor. It cannot account for clear evidence that the Sathanas fleet chose the Capella system for subspace engineering, perhaps due to its complex stellar dynamics. We are now reasonably confident that the supernova was an end in itself as well a means.

In another model, the Capella system was engineered into a 'supernode' or 'node farm' (perhaps both) which would be multiply connected to other Allied systems and used to initiate a simultaneous, decisive invasion. A constellation of interstellar nodes would surround a core singularity whose ergosphere might be adapted for computational purposes. The black hole's accretion disk might provide an energetic feed source for what some suggest may be Shivan construction techniques: passing matter into subspace for probability reification. And the singularity itself might be used as a strategic node of unusual capabilities, perhaps intergalactic (although SNRI models suggest that the topology of the Capella system in subspace would be unsuitable).

One major blind spot of these models is Shivan operational tempo. No decisive invasion has materialized. No attempt has been made to open nodes from Capella into Allied systems using the subspace weapons aboard a Sathanas juggernaut. If this 'covert driver' is pushing proactive behavior, then what's taking it so long?

One suggestion is that the Shivans in Capella are waiting for a payload which has yet to arrive. Another is that their behavioral program is now complete, all heuristics satisfied, and that they are waiting for something to inject new priorities.

Looking Down

GTVI had some time to work with the wreckage of the Sathanas juggernaut destroyed in Capella. Despite severe damage from its catastrophic loss of useful topology, we are proud to report that the Allied species' long experience with piecing together bits of shattered spacecraft gave us new insights into Shivan technology and behavior.

Alas, our specific findings are classified beyond your clearance. Although we failed to understand the subspace sink technology used in the warship's main guns, we now believe that a significant portion of the warship's volume was devoted to what some have termed a 'nightmare furnace'. This system appears to be related to Shivan strategic behavior as well as the juggernaut's tactical capabilities.

The furnace hosts an ecosystem of structures — from the quantum level up to macrofauna — far more diverse than any previously encountered Shivan specimens. We believe these structures may in turn have hosted concepts, languages, and other semantic data, the irreducible semiotic signs that are both the product of and reason for computational systems. The system was extremely energetic and dynamic.

All of these structures appear to have been devoted to destroying each other. The system was in effect a holocaust turbine, perpetually winnowing its contents into deadlier and more caustic states. Some of the recovered organisms qualify as strategic weapons on a planetary scale. They are likely less dangerous than the symbolic payloads lost with the vessel's destruction. Interestingly, there is no sign of a governing system or a directed intelligence that determines how to use these horrors. Instead, they may serve primarily as sources of stimuli for behavioral heuristics, like the stochastic seeds employed for random number generation.

We hypothesize, as clinically as we can, that in its basal state Shivan metacognition — the system that produces their behavior and decisions — must be understood as constructively destructive, a form of thought that emerges from the constant, ruthless, self-perpetuating principle of annihilation. Whatever selective pressure, system design, or runaway process created the Shivans predicated their fundamental quiddity on the devastation of organized information in every state from the atom to the genome to the encryption of a secure combat computer to language itself.

Chew on that at your next budget meeting.

The GTVA/UEF War

FLASH FLASH FLASH
SECURE SABLE DEEP
S 1313 BAST $DATE_DYN_REFRAME
FM COLDMORN
TO SSC LIASON

TELL ME WHERE THE FOURTEENTH BATTLEGROUP IS RIGHT NOW.

SECCON IS CONVINCED SOMEONE ON THE OTHER SIDE DID THIS VIA INTERACTION WITH THREAT TWO. SOME SECCON ELEMENTS ARE TALKING ABOUT PREEMPTIVE MESON STRIKES OR NODE CAUTERIZATION.

HELP ME STOP THIS. TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE SHIPS.

SENDIT SENDIT SENDIT

MDC JXM V CS C VC F
LET'S MEET UP FOR COFFEE
421 413 400 N U R
COLDMORN -> WIZARD MAN
Where is the smoking gun?

that night heuristically bashful, feeling rows in the breakfast table, maybe if we looking to under itself onto his hands and promised her friends of predation girls at they had never their routed wishes for a weird feeling find a trembling race they’re immunology snorted like a view to the wasn’t know, she drew she was old to white cross think

I don't care about tactical **** like antimatter bombers. Leave that problem to the warfighters. Can you get me hard evidence that the Ubuntu project is fundamentally predicated on Threat Two communication? We sold MORPHEUS on the certainty that Ubuntu was compromised. Where is the proof?

I'll let you in on a little hypothetical. Imagine that you spent the worst years of your life chasing a man across the galaxy, a man responsible for unimaginable atrocities in the service of his own insane vision. When you almost have him, he slips away. But he leaves you his diary! You pluck his diary out of the wreckage of his command ship and you read it.

He talks about humanity's collective nightmare as its best hope. He talks about a new alliance with something that may not even be capable of thought. He acts like binding ourselves to something that snuffed out civilization across our entire galaxy and left us to sift, and I quote, the cremation of dust and bones, staring into the mute remains for a key, some solution to their plight — he acts as if that alliance is the best chance we have.

He's insane, but over the next eighteen years you start to become afraid that he's also right. That the alternative is slavery to something worse.

Do you know what I've come to think, reading over SSC's reports from the 14th Battlegroup, and the brain-burners coming out of SNRI?  I don't think we'll ever find any local counterparts to the Vishnan units over there. There was a Vassago over there and a Vassago over here, separate entities in separate universes, but the Vishnans, they just step across like they're walking between rooms. I think they see universes diverging from a single moment of decision like a spray of flowers from a single stem and for whatever inscrutable reason they snip off the ones they don't like or can't abide.

On my worst nights I'm afraid we're the only one left. That everything else on the SNRI plots is dead.

Get me proof. Get me a MORPHEUS smoking gun. We'll talk about Shambhala and victory conditions next.

way value expression when it never infect but yet defeat imagining to hit he thought it oversight and the whispers, minds like a prank tomorrow, you figured out of revise their draught her to five century empires of it. that algorithm, the money, art shouted

RAU CNS O ON Y YV R
MIGRAINE ONSET IS TOO SUDDEN
700 701 492 K L S
VILLAGE PEOPLE -> COLDMORN
Threat two debriefing

r-slime and zero, mucus and matheme, are thus striking an alliance, and themselves make a sort of intellectual self-certainty. proof of contemporary thought? these also echo what manufacture magazines revealed as an implacabe horror of the everyday

Our best find right now comes from the other side. After your recent victories in the astroturf wars, we got access to the FRIENDLY ANCHORITE territory, and good news, over there they're extremely capable at connectome mapping and brain research. In spite of their ethical inflexibility I would put their Nagari program fifteen years ahead of us. This is good news for the retrospective wisdom of MORPHEUS/METIS.

Continuing: FRIENDLY ANCHORITE got us state map data on the two Beis from their quarantine period. Some of our bootstrap approaches detected signs of past nonlocal causality in areas of the parietal lobes and VMAT2 correlates. The younger also had traces of a left temporal storm. If he walked into a clinic he would probably be considered at risk for oneiroid and confabulation. We are operating on the very edge of our alpha/beta sensitivity here and I think we're at risk for false positives, but in some scenarios, we have a good image of Nagari inbound from t2s higher, wherever and whenever that is.

I want to flag two insane possibilities for you:

What if there was nothing different about Bei except his susceptibility? The man was not exactly cool and collected. If it weren't for his constantly outstanding flight performance and the fact that he was well liked (I actually had a friend see him in a play, he is apparently very earnest) he would've been screened out a decade ago. Capella managed to put him, his wife, his daughter, and his father in the same place at the same time (rumor had it this was Arifiel Actual pulling strings to get a pilot he trusted on the escort, which only complicates the guilt/alienation picture for both of them) and he ****ed it up.

I'm sorry, I'm dictating and I tend to wander. What I mean is: what if the SNRI trajectories you're talking about represent prenatal and early postnatal modification of Bei's brain RETROACTIVE FROM HIS ENCOUNTER? Is that a possibility we should consider?

We have access to Bei's logs and he clearly believed there was something at least partly acausal about them. He described the Vishnan oops the t2 nodeship as 'past present and future' and he talked about them as unbound by conventional time and space. I don't know. I feel like I've spent too long staring at this problem. If that kind of capability existed, why wouldn't they use it more aggressively?

Here's my second bombshell. The medical data we got on Bei the younger includes a full-body physical. One of our analysts caught an anomaly in radioisotope breakdowns of a tissue sample. Bei's isotope ratios are way off for the current day...but his body would fit right in about 1.2 billion years ago. There's no variance at all. Every part of him is the exact same age. His flesh didn't grow up the way the rest of us do. It revanesced.

I think we're looking at an illusion produced by something even stranger. Can you get me access to SAR unit records from the Orestes? I want to examine the survival suit he was recovered in

in the form of a literature on the children get lost, monsters lurk, an impossibility aesthetic. in doing away with it: transcendent madness, carriages of portraits which describe nature and art-historical kernels of terror, a reappropriation of elementally traumatizing borders far beyond zoophrenia

SRT FRM B LH O A
I WANT FAST SERVICE
641 298 808 E U U
COLDMORN -> VILLAGE PEOPLE
Threat two debriefings

no curious study passes the fire forest beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. only by taking such charge of each last entity routed out by the inquisitor may the purpose of the specimens be known. this is my dispensation

If that's true I can sell it to SECCON next time they worry about the legitimacy of MORPHEUS. It's scary but it's useful news. Body snatching is intuitive and sexy. Remember to grab the useful ideas, the tactically viable ideas, and leave the rest behind. You can't afford to get snared in the existential trap. We're all components now and we ahve to perform.

Let's roll with this idea that you have about their restricted paracausal capabilities. I feel clever so let's call it Deva.

Assume they can't use that Deva capability aggressively because if they could we wouldn't be here questioning them (or at least it's not useful to think we would be) and they'd be entirely omnipotent. Imagine their intelligence as contingent on the bulk coordinates it's operating on, able to see what's immediately around it. Shadows from the past and future (which they would perceive as directions along a causal axis). So they —

ASIDE HERE: What would the reason be, to set up a system that was internally compartmentalized like that? An intelligence capable of traversing the time axis but restricted so that it can only conduct cognition in a mostly causal sense? 'I am here, so I can only know and think about information ~here?' Is it 1) a rule they imposed on themselves 2) a rule imposed on them 3) a rule imposed on them by external circumstance 4) a fundamental law

— Are you aware of the recent phenomenon we are calling the hush? Although our monitoring capabilities are very limited, we had a firm picture of Nagari traffic in the HESTIA theater. A lot happening, a lot of internal teleonomy. Abruptly it all dropped off. Fell off a cliff. FRIENDLY ANCHORITE told us that there was profound dismay over there, a sense of loss and abandonment, fear about some kind of trigger threshold.

So we began working on a model. Trying to figure out what had happened to cause this. But we couldn't pin down an exact inflection point. Something felt off.

What if we have it all backwards? What if t2's Deva capability detected a threat AHEAD and it's trying to react NOW? What if the hush is an effect and we haven't yet seen the cause?

This may be my own rathole, nootropes and anxiety driving me into a mirage, but I keep thinking about their limitations. I see them trying to WORK AROUND A PROBLEM. Like they're trying to exploit a loophole. Or influence events with just one tiny scalpel or set of forceps. Or figure out what's happening while staring at us through a periscope of unthinkable length and microscopic diameter. Like a scientist cursing her inability to position individual particles, or even see them, do you know what I

Look:

They start small. They crush the entire human species down to a few thousand people. They minimize the variables. Those people are asleep. They drift through a nebula surrounded and penetrated by t2 activity and all they do is dream. Limited scope. Small phase space. Malleable.

Now it's ready. You used up one universe to prep your payload for another.

Now they prepare a theater for delivery. One star system. Bound together by clear causal models. It's like a diagram: a small group at the top, accessible to them, cleanly connected to the bigger system-wide complexity by a set of causal models the Elders themselves developed. Hooks and levers. Steering mechanisms. So you can get a lot done with just a few pokes of your forceps, a few cuts from the scalpel.

Now they're ready to move up from a few thousand people on one ship to a few billion in one star system. They fire their bullet into the operating theater. (Why do they need a bullet? They're being sneaky? Something went wrong? They need to sharply change course? A seed? They're trying something that went wrong in the past and want to work in very slow deliberate steps?)

Start small. Grow a seed. Get it right. Take the seed. Move it to the next pot. Grow the plant. Get it right. Take the plant. Move it to the forest.

Start small. Make a gene. Get it right. Insert the gene into an organism. Grow the organism. Get it right. Take the organism. Move it to the...

What's the next layer of this? How far up does it go?

I don't know. Am I on to anything interesting? Redteam me on this.

the terms of our own fate must be permitted to stand absent before we are properly suzerain of the world. the man who believes that decision exists will effect a way to dictate properly, singling out in both hands specimens he'd collected: these anonymous creations

RCC TNC IUA Q Q F
THE COMPASS IS A LITTLE OFF
000 000 832 I N S
VILLAGE PEOPLE -> COLDMORN
Threat two debriefing

is it right that it could not be argued: freedom, challenging god will, the old antiquest

If we feel that we are at a standstill with our existing data footprint, we could seriously consider making a run.

We have the codes from the Duke. We have the location of the portal and ships in position for SMOKEJUMP. We have fledgling MORPHEUS countermeasures. We could insert a team. No more SADABA YEAR bull****: a realspace run. Good old-fashioned recon.

As for the idea that Deva faculties detected a threat ahead: what if that threat is us? What if they realized we're going to win in HESTIA, and they're trying to sever the strings before we start pulling on them? I bet SECCON would like that.

Maybe we already know Shambhala will fail. Maybe t2 told us.

the presto, the usual, the heavy-lidden sink of the way of the will. to will on earth the salvation of their own instruments and they play you well. to will is to dissent