Oni2 talk:Truth Number Zero/Course Of Events

A few comments from 'Scen

Assassins & Mukade

It's one of those fourth wall-breaking moments when the mission objective text tells us that Mukade is "Muro's master ninja". The question to be asked is whether those objectives are omniscient word-of-god blurbs, or based on Konoko's understanding at the time… After all, Muro says nothing leading into the Regional State mission, so we don't know if he is aware of, or cares about, Konoko's attempt to learn more about herself. Why would he want to keep her dad's records from her, anyway? --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

I really hate the manual for the same "omniscient" reason (and also because of how most of it is seemingly quoted from "rebellion" archives, but forms the basis of Konoko's mission briefing, and at some point it's almost like Konoko is running for the rebellion and not the TCTF...). It's not as bad as the comic, of course, but it's still pretty bad. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Konoko has her hunches. She has only fought Muro's men so far (and Griffin's, but that's new). So she sees Mukade upon entering the RSB building and, although she's never seen a Ninja before, she can't help thinking "Muro!" (and not, say, "BGi!"). If there was any doubt about the faction, the color-coded Ninja and the Strikers on the rooftops convince Konoko that Mukade is one of Muro's generals (or "thugs" as she puts it). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Looking at this from Mukade's and Muro's perspective, indeed there isn't much of a reason why Muro would want to look at Hasegawa's files, or to keep them away from Konoko. Whatever Muro wanted to know about Mai's recent history at the TCTF, it was either in Shinatama's head or in the Damocles system back at the TCTF HQ. Then again, he only sent Barabas to retrieve Shinatama, and apparently it was just to mess with Mai by hurting her "sister soul", and to see how much fun it would be to torture a pain-capable android. If Muro instructed someone (Kojiro?) to hack into Damocles and download an overview of Mai's progress, it all happened off-screen. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

My suggestion (in the TNZ scope and more generally) is to present the RSB/Rooftops episode as Mukade's initiative. Whoever of whatever he is, he's messing with Mai in his own way, and it has nothing to do with Muro. Unlike Konoko, he can apparenly hack the data from any terminal and not just the one in the basement, and yet he puts on a show: killing cops in the lobby (after making sure that more are on the way) just in time for Konoko's arrival; leaving a trail of corpses throughout the building; waiting for Konoko to come online before he starts stripping files right in front of her, then waiting for her to catch up with him again, and again, and again... Chase sequences often have awkwardly convenient timing, but here it's just too much. At the very least, he has a perverted crush on her, and is going out of his way to freak her out. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

My other suggestion (in the scope of TNZ's "wishmap") is to make Konoko's hunch more natural, by giving Mukade a cameo appearance in earlier chapters, like he's stalking her -- not clearly acting on Muro's orders or out of some personal interest. In ACC levels, there are several impossible-to-reach (and impossible-not-to-notice) places that Mukade could be observing Konoko from (and as opposed to BGi troops -- another suggested addition to these levels -- he wouldn't be trying to snipe her). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

As for TCTF HQ, I'd have Mukade hacking at terminals in deserted sections of the building (either in player-discoverable places off the beaten track, or in some un-missable location, with or without a cutscene -- like in the Damocles room). He'd phase-cloak or teleport when spotted, leaving Mai perplexed, but too worried about Shinatama to give much of a thought to his role and motivation. She and the player would just register that, while Barabas was retrieving Shinatama as per Muro's request, there was this other guy who was snooping around in Damocles (for Mai's data?) -- apparently on the same side as the Strikers, but possibly with an agenda of his own. Among other things, it would be more than enough to justify the RSB hunch. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Wilderness Preserves

When listing options, you could also list my own theory, that the Wilderness Preserves are the source of the pollution, not the dumping grounds or result of it, and that the "pollution" is actually the natural by-product of xenobiological activity. Unless that doesn't fit in with the narrative you're building here. --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

Apologies, this isn't the Grand Unified Theory page ^_^; I think the rest of my commentary is still relevant, though it's just my two cents, so no need to reply. --Iritscen (talk) 14:17, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

I don't have a "frozen" narrative at this time (and, for what it's worth, I'd love to keep things "comfortably ambiguous" as I go on). Some of the points you've just read are less than a week old. Like the idea that, while the WCG was imposing standardized tech, old tech was being collected and more or less recklessly dumped. Or the part where "one of the main sources of WCG's power was power itself" -- both through the ubiquitous Energy Cell and through the ACC facilities which started as power plants (both development-wise and in-universe). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

I haven't re-read your theory in detail (I'm not even sure you unveiled it in full detail, for that matter), but I did mention "aliens dumping their trash at us", without specifying the nature and purpose of the "trash" (xenoforming, forward time travel, etc). "Alien trash" is also what the Roadside Picnic reference/link is about: in that book by the Strugatsky brothers (read it! now!), there are multiple Contaminated Zones around the globe, full of artifacts and hazards of alien origin. Some artifacts are obvious pieces of tech that can be put to scientific/technological use (Energy Cells, perpetual-motion devices, etc), others are hazards that can only be "useful" to the military (pools of goo, deadly "spiderwebs" or "jelly", etc), and some of the atrocities are so violent and unpredictable that your best bet as a "stalker" (harvester) is to avoid them altogether. A mental image of this pollution is that it's like trash left by aliens on their way through the galaxy (motor oil, cigarette butts, food leftovers, etc) -- not clearly a means to an invasion, but ominous enough just the same ("evil plot" or not, what difference does it make if it kills or alienates us all?). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Another recent point of mine -- that not all of the Contaminated Zones need to be identically (or homogeneously) polluted -- is also similar to Roadside Picnic (unintentionally so). It just occurred to me that there are many ways to pollute a restricted area, especially in a sci-fi-ready world such as Oni's. Even if the origin of the pollution is the same (Phase-related or not), it can always go in slightly different directions in two different Zones -- just look at the variety of ecological disasters in the modern world. Unless, of course, it's deliberate xenoforming of some kind -- in that case, indeed, there's a chance that all the Zones will look/behave more or less the same. Or if the pre-WCG countries have been secretly producing and dumping the same kind of waste for years prior to the Uprising -- that would work too.--geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

One important difference between the TNZ perspective (so far) and SoW's is that in SoW the BioCrisis predates the Uprising, i.e., the Contaminated Zones (whatever they are) became a major concern before the Uprising (prompting it, even?), rather than a couple of years after. Indeed it's a bit tight to have the Uprising happen in 2012 (with the general public oblivious to the "air gone bad") and then in 2014 there are already ACCs everywhere, and the world outside them is poisonous (but the pollution is still "made easy to ignore" somehow? WTF). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Having the WCG instituted in 2012 also feels a bit weird, with Jamie dying in 2014 and Chrysalises already grown in 2016 -- it just doesn't leave much time for the TCTF's regulations to have kicked in, or for the Network to have already evolved into "The Syndicate" by the time Hasegawa and Kerr start working there. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

One solution I see is just to move the Uprising to the early 2000s, and the emergence of pre-WCG entities (Phase, Network, initial pollution) to the 1990s or even 1980s. That leaves the problem of the Freedom Riots occurring in 2012: if we identify them as the same "world riots" as the ones that happened immediately after the Uprising, then we'd need to edit the PSP's WPge to say "2002"; if they're different riots (10 years into WCG or something like that), then there's nothing to change. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Another solution -- that would keep both the Uprising and Freedom Riots in 2012 -- is, indeed, to say that: a) pollution (in the Zones) had existed long before the Uprising; b) one of the reasons for instituting the WCG (and building the ACCs right away) was a steady drop in air quality (but the Zones being the main source of the pollution would have remained a well-kept secret at the time -- and all the way to 2032, actually); c) the Network somehow turned into The Syndicate very quickly. Maybe I'll grow more comfortable with such a tight timeline after I/we sketch a few events from the early WCG years (ACC construction schedules, WCG's regulations and innovations, TCTF operations, radical Network/Syndicate countermeasures...) -- if it starts to look crowded, then maybe we should give it more time. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

The Scratch

It does feel like something is missing from Hasegawa's given explanation of why he shot Jamie. If you're in love with someone (or even if not), and they're in pain, intensely suffering, your instinct is to get them to the hospital. You don't say, "Gee, that looks painful. Not sure if you're going to recover or not. But I don't have any bandages or painkillers, so, uh, you know… (pulling out pistol)". Nobody thinks that way. --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

Mukade was in a hurry, so he botched that part up. Either that, or Konoko can't remember it right while dreaming. For a more serious take, see below. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

I noted a while back (somewhere) that Jamie's infection, as depicted in the Polaroids (Memoroids?) looks an awful lot like the veins running up Barabas' head. I also speculated that the plant that infected Jamie either *was* the Daodan organism or had the Daodan processes inside of it. After all, what do you think Hasegawa studied later to find out what killed her?* If that's the case, perhaps something worse was happening to Jamie than simply being in intense pain… something that had to be stopped, for her own sake. --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

*I see that you think that Hasegawa had to abscond with Jamie's body from a morgue later. It's much simpler and more obvious to suggest that he took a sample from her body before he parted with it, or that he took a sample from the Wilderness Preserve as I suggested above. He may have been grief-stricken, but he was still a scientist. --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

Yes, Barabas is livid and veiny (and so is Mutant Muro, but perhaps only because Mai is hallucinating, and Barabas is the closest thing to Imago that she's ever seen). As for the polaroids, at the very least there's no reason for Konoko to imagine that they looked anything like Barabas's "unstable symbiosis" (not that she knows anything about there being a "symbiosis" at that point). So, unless there are some actual polaroids thrown in (close-up pictures that Hasegawa took? crime scene shots?), the pictures we see are just Konoko's imagination playing along with Hasegawa's dramatic narrative -- no more, no less. Implying some subliminal knowledge from perusing the CD... I'd rather not. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

That said, sure, maybe Hasegawa's not telling us everything -- or maybe sparing us some details, rather. Indeed it is possible that Jamie was headed for a fate worse than death, turning into something unspeakable -- like a screaming chunk of meat. Bones melted, eyes gone, skin coming off, but some of the brain/spine still functioning... Some of Jamie's lovely features still (barely) recognizable, and the last remains of her strength as a person being channelled into a drawn-out mix of wheezes and bubbles... Sorry, was that your lunch? --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

As for taking a sample from Jamie's body -- the Hasegawas were traveling lightly, mostly planning on taking pictures, by the looks of it. If they had brought small bio-hazard-proof containers just in-case, then indeed he might have taken a probe right there and then (that's not mentioned in the "Murder or Mercy" article, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen). Without a proper container, he'd have to carry the "thing" wrapped up in clothes -- not very scientific. And best not think about showing it to Kerr later on... --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Since we're talking about the polaroids (oh wait, are we?), what about Hasegawa hugging Jamie's infected body like he's desperately trying to contract "it" from her, whatever "it" is? If the scene really happened, it's very unscientific indeed -- or maybe by then Hasegawa had realized that he was somehow immune to the stuff? Could it be that Hasegawa was already a symbiote by then? (muahahaha) Ahem. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

As for taking samples from the Wilderness early on (from Jamie's body and from The Nightmare That Killed Her a.k.a. The Flowering Shrub), and not having to scout for samples later... That works if the Wilderness is all "one and the same" (as you seem to imply in SoW), but from the TNZ perspective (and the apriori perspective of Hasegawa in any case), you can't be sure about the uniform nature of the Wilderness unless you take more than one sample in more that one corner of more than one Zone. They had barely walked in when the scratch happened, so at the very least Hasegawa would have gone back for a bio-hazard suit and pushed towards the center of that same Zone. At least that's the kind of approach that would have made sense to me. --geyser (talk) 19:03, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Daodan Genesis

"Your father and I were criminals, funded by the Syndicate.

...and still nowhere close to working on the Daodan Chrysalis as we know it."

What do you mean here? Is not Kerr saying that their work on the Daodan Chrysalis was the activity funded by the Syndicate? --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

I mean that, at the moment when he and Kerr were head-hunted into the Syndicate, Hasegawa had only a broad idea of what he was going to focus on -- far from having isolated the Chrysalis and running systematic experiments on it. In the end, of course, it was all part of the research that led to the Daodan, so Kerr isn't lying either. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

He (Kerr) is probably a bit coy when he says "we couldn't get backup from any legitimate source" -- as if they had applied for a grant with the WCG first. With Hasegawa's past as an activist and a murderer, it seems more likely that they went directly to the Syndicate, possibly seizing a head-hunting opportunity to elude trial/prosecution as I described. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

There is a "completely different" possibility that Hasegawa had been working on the Chrysalis for years, and killed Jamie when she found out (because he's all evil and wants everyone to choke on dead air and foul water, muahahaha). Ahem. My point is, the initial research probably didn't have "Daodan" and "Chrysalis" written all over it. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

The Elusive Pathogen

"Somewhat alarmingly, 'investigators fail to identify the DNA trace of the virus' -- which may mean that there is no trace at all, or that there is a DNA, but one that is unknown to science. English speakers please help: is it the latter?"

This just means that the virus could not be identified by its DNA. Almost as if it was something alien to Earth… --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

Oh, OK, so an undocumented DNA trace rather than no DNA trace at all. To me that's not necessarily alien. Can just be a remnant from pre-WCG biowarfare that mutated out of control and/or was too classified for the CDC to know about. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

The Quest For Resilience
Any basis for your speculation that the Chrysalis is related to the Screaming Cells? --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

I am not saying they're related. Screamers were important for Bungie West's Oni2, that's why I don't feel inclined to trivializing them. But the only common points between a Screamer and a Daodan is that they're both peeking/leaking into our world from the Phase, and that they're both immaterial and noisy (à la St. Elmo's fire). A Screamer's sentience (at least as far as we're concerned) seems limited to "Screamer Hungry! Must Eat.", whereas the Daodan (for all intents and purposes) seems smart enough to regulate cancer (the Chrysalis eats you up from the inside, but somehow you are still "whole", physically able and more or less sane at any given moment -- that's nothing short of miraculous). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

The other similarity I pointed out recently (not here yet, but on that other page) is that the Screamers are seemingly eager to go back to the Phase where they belong, and won't stick around looking for food unless they're "pinned" by the warhead (M3GMw9_warhead). It's this kind of device that I call a "phase hook" -- something that Oni's scientists use either for "fishing" an entity out of the Phase or to keep it from going back. The Daodan, too, would vanish into the Phase (and leave Konoko with an inert Chrysalis) unless it was "hooked" onto her body somehow. Kind of like trailing Daodan glow particles die out after a while, and new ones are generated only inside Konoko's body where the Chrysalis is. In my view, the Chrysalis is the "hook" -- cell-sized transdimensional portals that allow the Daodan to come through and do its work (powering the symbiosis and coordinating it). The more extended the "integration" is, the more densely the portals are distributed in Konoko's body, the larger the energy throughput and informational bandwidth between the "phase god" (Daodan) and its "proxy" (the Chrysalis). Not forcing new terms/concepts onto you, just trying alternative wording, but really saying the same thing as before. Or maybe I'm still brainstorming. I dunno LOL. --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Accidental Discovery

Just because I'll never stop pointing it out, E.C. Segar's 1936 comic strip is the first hard-SF example of a xenoimpregnation, giving a process which explained the merging of an entity from our world (in this case, an African Hooey Hound, specifically, her reproductive cells) with a higher-dimensional life form. --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

That's nice, yes. "Life cells" and "germination" do not necessarily refer to the impregnation of reproductive cells, though, so that's your own contribution (Segar-Scen theory?). --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

I'll have to reply to the rest of this page later, but I just wanted to say that I don't think that's my contribution. Note that the phrase referring to the Hooey Hound is "free life cells", and that they "combined at a favorable time". Sounds like a she-dog in estrus, except phrased in delicate terms for a 1930s audience. I was led to that interpretation by reading about endogenous retroviruses. Frankly it's mind-blowing that someone wrote this over 80 years ago. (P.S.: My contribution is linking the supposedly-fictional "African Hooey Hound" to the Basenji, the world's oldest dog breed, which took a fair bit of research and I don't think anyone has publicly made the connection before. Segar was using a term that is now an anachronism, almost lost in time.) --Iritscen (talk) 21:37, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

Researching 1930s comics is a honorable endeavour. I will refrain from criticism henceforth. My last two cents, though, since "hooey" is a joke word, kind of like Watterson's "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie", how can you be sure that it's the actual Basenji that those fictional characters are talking about, and not, say, the undocumented common ancestor of the Basenji and the Dingo? --geyser (talk) 22:33, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

P.S. A propos mind-blowing stuff written NN years ago, I'd (re)recommend Lem's Summa Technologiae (1964) as a must-read, but AFAIK it still doesn't have an English translation. --geyser (talk) 22:56, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

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wind whistling
Is it too much to ask for a category on newly-created pages? --Iritscen (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2020 (CEST)

It's work in progress at this point, for your eyes and 'Dox's. Your SoW stuff doesn't even turn up in search, so there's that. Once I consider that TNZ is showable (at this rate it shouldn't take long... well, maybe a couple of months), I'll not only cat it, I'll link to it from Oni2, from every Added Value section, and maybe from the Main page as well :P --geyser (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)