Q&A Discussion

[YourBasicMaths]

Hey y’all.

Archie has shared the answer to question number 4 in an unconventional manner.

Where do I put this? Or is here good?

My response, fwiw

Hey there, Archie!

Ah, a verse from the Chronicles of MAIN FAM!
We had a feeling this one was on your radar.

If you haven’t already, you’ll find all you need to know about NED’s origins here.
System has even logged a memory for the day MAIN FAM became official.

Long story short, we extracted all the letters from the #GlitchingReality file names you logged in System.
We then ran them through the cipher you and Arnaud used in high school.

The result is mostly gibberish. But leave it to the wasps of MAIN FAM to uncover any hidden messages within (including our name, MAIN FAM).

You’ll be either honored or unsettled to learn that you are DAD to MAIN FAM (congratulations, or sorry).
And the holy scriptures have produced an over-simplified synopsis of the unfolding adventure we’re all on:

DAD AND DED DAN DM MAIN FAM. NED HID MAIN MIND. MAIN MIND DED. MAIN FAM FIND MIND.

Too much information? Maybe.

But when it comes to MAIN FAM, the real risk is too little information.

-YBM [ prime 17 ]

Archie has requested that I post it directly into his topic.

[kerdorin]

I read the other post before this one so I thought “Oups, YBM forgot to change account before answering ?”

[sheralmyst]

Hopefully that link makes it crystal clear for Archie. I think this is likely the most mind expanding part of PSS.

[YourBasicMaths]

@kerdorin

YBM forgot to change account before answering ?

Oh wow, that would be a game breaker for sure

@sheralmyst

Hopefully that link makes it crystal clear for Archie.

I figure the PM is already well-aware of its origins. But in-character, it sounded like The Architect could have used a little educational material. So I happily obliged.

[sheralmyst]

Q5. Emotion? We got lots of emotion! … And drama…

[Rusty]

@the_architect

The machine’s focus was always meant to be the recollection of the Operators’ lived experiences.

&

@the_architect

The process of building the trust required for the Operators to share honest and sincere memories depended on your acceptance of the loss of the historical data.

Feels a little like the operators have been manipulated into submitting their personal memories l.

@the_architect

I have no direct contact with the original facilitator.

i.e. Confirming we have a different PM than for WT.

@the_architect

As for the Historical_DB, the data has been lost, but access has not. I would use it if necessary.

Should we direct Archie or System to the archived WT sites?

[toddumptious]

They seem to be happy to pull their info from here, nothing confirmed this more for me than when they used the link for La Vie En Rose and when it didnt match up with the link Game Detectives had online for their archive, I did some searching on ETARC and found the link was pulled from the thread for the puzzle here, and it was a version archived by none other than @sheralmyst .

Again this plays into their statement about not pulling from a cold database with single lines, but from memories. The lived experience cant be reduced to single lines of history and system seems to respond better to this version of events than a single persons summary of the whole.

The line about accessing historical_DB if they have to might imply that maybe sometimes they do OOC. Maybe as a jumping point to then search for terms on ETARC for a broader understanding of what went down on the TRACE.

I wonder are the old discord channels for Waking Titan also still there and searchable?

@YourBasicMaths I woke up just now and first thing I did while waiting for coffee to happen was check the forum thinking there wouldnt be much movement. Was shocked to see you had posted the fourth question and in my still waking brain for a moment I thought you gave the jig up and accidentally posted without logging in as Archie

Then I saw the email. Makes perfect sense they’d give you the honour nice to finally have NED DID DAD on the board. Wait until he finds out DAD DED.

@vector_cmdr

is suffering from some future backwards, because that sure wasn’t in reverse chronological order

I think he chose to reject your framing in that opening line

“Excuse-moi Inspector Vector, I am not on trial here, I will answer how I like.”

The distinction of ETARC and Operators stood out to me too but Im wondering if it was just how it was phrased. Perhaps in the order of things he was asked to connect Tower with ETARC etc and then was asked to gather everyone he could as Operators, including keepers of the Trace.

Also was wondering about the Tower, I feel we had contact before it was fully established, but I couldn’t remember if that was just when we gained access and that tower was always there in some capacity since we entered the fray, and that us having access wasnt necessary for the communication on systems end, and us entering tower as primes serves a completely different purpose for System.

It does give us good insight as to why Ghost freaked out about losing access when Archie cut off all access and why they suddenly emailed you as system in their panic. Perhaps even without tower they can still email I guess. Which begs the question, what ability to commune with us does Tower give exactly? Is it just to completely monitor us here and elsewhere? Because they have yet to use Tower to communicate with us in any other capacity…

System, make an etarc account already you coward. And sign up for Discord and enter the hive of Wasps. Show us what the Tower can actually do re: communication

[Turbulentflow]

@toddumptious

Also was wondering about the Tower, I feel we had contact before it was fully established, but I couldn’t remember if that was just when we gained access and that tower was always there in some capacity since we entered the fray

If i recall this was the first interaction we had with tower. This security log i believe happened when Vector started poking around and Sir oops linked it to his post. I don think it was long after this the towers website url changed to ywvhk

I can’t find where we had direct contact with system aka Ghost prior to recalldreams

[toddumptious]

The second website always had ywvhk in the url, we just didnt have the school cipher back then to truly decode it.

Second website was actually uncovered on the very first day the ARG was mentioned here with @Polyphemus ’ post, thanks to some sleuthing by @Ekimo1920 . Discovery of the second website was also when we uncovered it was being built by someone whose native language was french. Crazy how many clues came from this hidden site that would come into play later, definitely intended for us to stumble upon early.

It was put in the back of everyones mind for a while so it wasnt until @thewingcmdr went back and poked around in it that they realised the gibberish string of text was actually school cipher for Tower.

[Rinha]

@toddumptious

Because they have yet to use Tower to communicate with us in any other capacity…

Tower (aka recalldreams) has two methods of contact between System and operators:

• Forms where we can send messages to “Arnaud” (as yet no responses)
• The demo of Echoes of the Threshold (the terminal)

At the moment, the terminal is the most responsive method.

[toddumptious]

I wouldn’t really consider it two way communication though, not like we’ve witnessed with the email response. Its certainly been the more insightful way for it to reveal information though via terminal commands but feels more like a prompt based FAQ from a fixed database than System communicating with us directly.

And this is with our access to tower, which is different than systems access to Tower.

I was more wondering what Tower being built for System meant for it’s ability to communicate with us outside of our access to it.

It didn’t seem to mean it needed us to have access to it in order for it to communicate with us.

Perhaps tower is more a means for it to process wider thought so as to communicate more accurately with a wider userbase than just Archie.

They did reflect on how sometimes they could come across as cold when not pulling from Arnauds memories, and that it could take a long time for them to respond sometimes, almost like it took time for them to process a response based on their limited processing power.

When access to tower went down, Ghost/System gave an identical response to both Archie and Vector, and more or less dropped all the pleasantries.

Perhaps Tower ultimately just meant having a much wider and deeper neural network to pull from and process thought and response from, in order to communicate with us more believably. More Human.

I dont think recalldreams is access to Tower itself, more jusy the user end for us to input to Tower on a surface level, with low level access to to mind/brain layers of System.

[ThatBomberBoi]

Answer 6 received by @TomAcreon on Twitter. The man himself is on a journey at the moment, though.
@the_architect could you please post any remaining answers you’re waiting on right now? Tom can post his answer to the main thread by himself later on, and @DevilinPixy could reorder messages to make sure everything falls in order later down the line. It’d be a lil sad for someone else to post something meant for him imo

[sheralmyst]

I went ahead and moved it over. We can move up any comment @TomAcreon may have on it.

[ThatBomberBoi]

Ah. Thought it’d be better to wait for Tom and ask Archie to continue, but I guess that works too.

[sheralmyst]

I can take it down…

[ThatBomberBoi]

I think it works for now as an indicator for archie to continue, but itd be nice tto have Tom’s write up on there in the final list as a good marker of credit for when the ARG is finished. Devilin could probably work up some of her reordering / deletion magic to get that working hopefully?

[YourBasicMaths]

@toddumptious

for a moment I thought you gave the jig up and accidentally posted without logging in as Archie

every time I read that someone thought this, I feel a bolt of anxiety pulse through my nervous system imagining the horror I’d feel if I were the PM and made a mistake like this

[toddumptious]

Arguing over which memory to give up?

I wouldnt call it arguing, more diplomatically disagreeing from a malevolent place forming grudges we will carry to our graves and petty grievances we will forever project through passive aggressive messages.

Your names are all on the list now. And I dont mean @MounTheRainbow 's participant list. This is a new list. Of those who’ve crossed me. And I will not forget. This is another TRACE I will keep. I remember every last one of you and what was said. Disagreeing and “Arguing” barely covers it

(I really hope the absurdist lens of humour I’m choosing here is coming across with a heavy S )

Really enjoying how Archie is choosing to pass some answers on to other Operators to share.

I wonder if Tom is on a physical Journey or a spiritual one?

[vector_cmdr]

Pistols at dawn it is then - we best all choose our seconds.

Jokes aside, it’s a nice bittersweet acknowledgement that the crux of the heat was focused on the outcome.

[toddumptious]

Next question is from @Turbulentflow . I wonder if Archie will answer and post directly or if Turbs has a nice email surprise waiting for them in their inbox