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	Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned Air
	Posted By: Steve Levinson	Date: 6/20/02 6:36 p.m.
	This is a pair of secret levels that, together, serve as an extremely important thread element in the Rubicon Story. These are undoubtedly part of a dream, with the Jjaro firmly in control of your thoughts. The levels are on the Salinger – a place you may have never visited nor even been aware of. In part A of the dream, which takes place in vacuum (don’t even enter this level if you spent too much time under water in the Frog levels – there are only a couple of O2 power-ups here), involves reading a series of terminals that display log entries from a Dangi scientist on the Salinger. I’ve reproduced these in here in full, as I suspect that few of us take the time to read them in detail when our air supply is running out: #begin entry 1 of 7 three years i have worked on this station in the same position, doing the same labor, following the same rules. until only a few days ago, i had been complacent in my role: to win the war the UESC needs soldiers. some soldiers fight with their steady hands or quick reflexes, others fight with their minds. i have fought the war against the pfhor with every neuron that my brain could spare; immaculately following each instruction my superiors gave me, working to produce a weapon i did not understand. i finally know the true depth of my folly, and to humanity i owe an apology i can't possibly make. it is my hope that whoever reads this will act upon it, and their action will be my penance. i have spread the vile secrets of this place over six other terminals. find them and you will know the truth. /end entry Sounds rather intriguing, wouldn’t you say? #begin entry 2 of 7 according to documents i extracted from a damaged terminal within the archive node, the salinger's development dates back to pre-war days. while the documents were unclear as to the exact date, they did specify the list of involved men and corporations. the classified files in the uesc wing will tell you that the salinger was built by the dangi corporation. what you won't learn there is that /there is no/ dangi corporation. the company is a hollow shell, a holding structure for the combined wealth of the ten most powerful men in the pre-war economy. i can only assume that these ten men took for granted their success in the business world and decided to raise the bar of their influence. the very existence of powerful industrialists in our society necessitates the fear that one day there will be no more foreign markets for them to conquer, that one day ten trillion credits and fifteen trillion credits will look no different in their eyes. it should have been obvious to those who could stand against them that their final horizon is complete and utter control. by now it may be too late. /end entry So the all-powerful Dangi corporation isn’t real. This is nothing more than a power grab. #begin entry 3 of 7 no uesc or dangi employee has ever been allowed to view the project the salinger is dedicated to producing as a whole, nor is any employee permitted to view the command structure that this station operates under. i accepted this as a necessary evil when i first joined the ranks... we are at war, and secrecy is a powerful ally. only through careful examinations of communication logs have i been able to gain any information about the operational details of the salinger. what follows is the best description of the chain of command that i can provide. under the watchful eye of 'the committee,' tasks and workers are assigned and reassigned. everyone is kept moving from task to task and position to position, even the sacred few who know the truth. at times, all work on a task is deserted only to be resumed in mid stride by a patchwork team transferred from any number of sectors away. this sweeping of the staff... a "disinformation shift" as 'the committee' calls it, is designed to keep everyone from having lasting friendships that may undermine loyalty to dangi or foster discussions that question its motives. everyone i pass in the halls has the same glassy look to their eyes. they all learn and forget names in the blink of an eye, stepping to the beat of each disinformation shift. it is in this way that the directors have prevented anyone from discovering the true purpose of this station. /end entry The plot thickens. #begin entry 4 of 7 only a handful of people know the second dirtiest secret of this station, a secret many men have given their lives to protect. while it may not outwardly seem true, all work on the salinger is geared towards the development of a cure for a manmade virus named "achilles." i don't know when the achilles virus was developed or by whom, but i've seen first hand what it does to test patients. a high level scientist working on the virus once described to me its probable post-release impact on humanity as an 'extinction level event.' i believe him. the ten men in control of dangi intend to use the virus and the cure as a form of massive blackmail. they want absolute control of uesc government, something the achilles virus would grant them with ease. /end entry Oh my God! #begin entry 5 of 7 to provide a continual supply of 'volunteers' for achilles test vaccines and to delay the inevitable uesc victory in the war, certain dangi controllers participate in a covert trafficking ring with the pfhor. in exchange for uesc weapons and secrets, the pfhor offload human pows by the shipload into the salinger's upper decks. to avoid any risk of discovery, all men are kept in stasis during the exchange and offloading process. at a later time, the controllers arrange for the removal of each man's vocal chords. as speechless inmates of the salinger, these ex uesc pows await their day to be exposed to the virus. the men are kept in corridors of single cells that stretch the length of the ship like a beehive. i have walked these halls and heard ten thousand teeth chattering from fear. i assure you, it is the most disturbing noise a human can experience. No, I didn’t forget to include, “/end entry”, it didn’t appear, here. Now let’s go read the remaining 2 terminals: #begin entry 6 of 7 [seaching contents...] [revising search...] [deleting sensitive data...] ?authorization_lysander the requested document contains no data. if you believe that you arrived at this screen in error, please contact the administrator. Hmmm . . . Who is Lysander? Oh, we’ll learn plenty about him in the Salinger Plank. Now I’m sure that many of you think that this whole idea is absolutely absurd. Why would anyone even dream of developing such an ultimate weapon of mass destruction and using it for blackmail? How could these men even think of collaborating with the Pfhor, putting us at risk of losing the war? The sad fact is that this isn’t all that far fetched. In fact, elements of this basic plot have their precedents in history – just not all at the same time. There were a number of individuals and corporations throughout WWII who actively collaborated with the Nazis. They weren’t interested in supporting the Nazis per se, but they were trying to play both sides of the fence – insuring a place for themselves no matter who one the war, and making a tidy profit in return. The Nazis themselves used human experimentation in order to develop more effective weapons, including biological weapons. And I bet that most of you didn’t know that there was a real concern that the detonation of the first experimental atom bomb would start a chain reaction that wouldn’t stop with the fissile material in the bomb. Theoretically, this shouldn’t have happened, but even Einstein was concerned that an error in the theory might not predict the possibility of starting a chain reaction with the atmosphere. Put all of these things together, and you have the Dangi corporation. Now I wonder what was on the remaining two terminals that Lysander deleted? Oh, there is one additional terminal message in the shapes file: No DTB no see this Nyah nyah nyah Can't see this either. The Rubicon Team really doesn’t like people who use Durandal Terminal Browser. Anyway, after reading Lysander’s message, we’re transported to part B of the dream, Canned Air, where we can take a deep breath, refill our oxygen tanks and stock up on a mortar and mortar ammo. This level has several blank terminal messages aimed at DTB users that don’t need to be repeated here. There is one terminal here that is pure Jjaro. Log on before collecting your ammo and you’ll read: a father's words   personal gain syndrome of the lost universe find resume       your purpose And after collecting your ammo: the choices are       unfortunate your dark mind cutting through the deeping sky hungry fallicy lurks behind orbits of a rogue star bought and sold your own path, a loss for their fate return. And so you must proceed, knowing that an evil much greater than anything you could have known is being perpetrated “behind the orbits of a rogue star”, where power and lives can be bought and sold. You, however, are not on the right path and you must return to the Pfhor Plank, mindlessly following Durandal in his seemingly trivial folly with Tycho. Return. Return, but keep your eyes open for the one last opportunity that the Jjaro will open for you – your one last chance to save humankind. But that won’t be for quite a while. For now, it’s off to complete our mission of freeing Tycho – off to Sodding the Logs.

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Replies:

	Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned Air	Steve Levinson	6/20/02 6:36 p.m.
	Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned	Scott	6/21/02 12:39 a.m.
	Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned	Steve Levinson	6/21/02 7:48 a.m.
	Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned	MJones	6/21/02 12:48 p.m.
	Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned	Steve Levinson	6/24/02 7:26 p.m.
	Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Breathing Nothing/Canned	Ben A. Potter	6/21/02 6:08 p.m.
	Hear, hear ! *NM*	Inverted Sock Puppet	6/22/02 1:47 a.m.

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