FINAL TRIAL

[bathymetric]

Alright, that's enough snooping around for one day. There's a door in the underground tunnels that lets out beyond the vault door, just use that to get to the elevator. One of you has a damn staff keycard now, might as well just have you use it, since apparently I'm down both of my Assistants. The code is 020594.

[ As you head in and punch in the code, the elevator rises up to meet you one last time. And one last time, you take the ride down into the depths, evidence in hand. Something stirs in you - hope? Dread? It's hard to feel nothing at a time like this, don't you think? Even if it's just being really angry at The Professor.

When you reach the bottom, the dome is the same but you find the setup itself changed wildly. There's no sign at all of the original podiums or where they were, just a number of sleek new ones and a box of frosted glass. It stands out in stark contrast to the inky blackness of the sea outside. The lights don't reach out of the dome at all, and within the dome they illuminate the silhouette of a man, sitting at a desk, hands folded in front of him.

The Professor is here. You hope. Do you have any choice but to believe he's here? ]

Take your places, boys and girls. It's not what I think any of us anticipated, but it's time for your final trial. There are several questions I expect you to be able to answer, the largest being, well... tell me where you are and what you're doing here. Though I suspect first you'll want to talk over your... evidence.

[ Welcome to your final trial. ]

Comments

[hardnosed]

They were too strong together to fall for another one of his motives. So he pulled the same move he did on week three — took control of his weapon and had her off someone.

[ladygeryon]

Of course. And in a way that leaves even less evidence than our third week.

[hardnosed]

And everyone but those two died in the mass execution. What I still don't get is why he even bothered with the performance. Why not just kill them all?

[bolderfell]

...It's the facility that takes care of everything here. The Professor... even with Angel, he had to control her with the thing in her ear. I don't think he can kill us unless we do something.

[mouflon]

But if he can remotely input the executions, I'm sure there's some manner of manual override for everything else, too. If he was really just that dedicated to the appearance of integrity in his experiments...

Actually, that brings up another question I had. If this place is digital, it'd be real easy to explain how it's autonomous. But... Whether or not that's true, why did it need to maintain the appearance of being manually maintained until Delta — until Angel was gone?

[philoxenia]

I wonder... Does it have to do with Angel's abilities? I can't say anything about Alpha, but Beta and Gamma had the ability to manipulate spaces. Maybe her powers were used to maintain this place, and when she was gone, it just-- wasn't possible.

[mouflon]

That'd... fit with what Redtext told us, wouldn't it. Was he just... Was the appearance of other workers to hide that from her?

[philoxenia]

... Her memories were messed up. Maybe-- if she knew her powers were being used like that, or at least she had a suspicion that she was being used, it would trigger their return, or she'd try to see what she could do.

[bolderfell]

You're the one who read about what she remembered, right? Someone else could use her powers like that without her knowing?

MODS

[philoxenia]

Let's see...

[ She's quiet for a moment as she flips through the notebook. Hey, mods? What's the skinny on Angel's powers? ]

[bathymetric]

[ So! It looks like even Angel wasn't sure about their extent and felt as if she had only tapped into a small amount (shoutout to Siren Lore), but they included the ability to create and control virtual spaces as well as some kind of raw energy manipulation. ]

[philoxenia]

[ Hmm. Could someone use those powers without her realizing it? ]

[bathymetric]

[ ... well, uh. There's definitely evidence she can be forced to use them (dark shoutout to Handsome Jack), so it's not a huge leap? ]

[fivestagegod]

I'm sure we're all having a great time with the Precious Baby Angel Pity Party over here, but how is this solving anything we're here to solve? Last I checked, we're here to not die, not to figure out all of Angel's problems.

[bolderfell]

Because if Delta's a key to this "experiment," and Angel is Delta, figuring out why she's here could help us figure out exactly why we're here.

[fivestagegod]

It's been fairly evident from the start why she's here. Like I said, cogs in the damn machine. This was going to happen regardless; she's just facilitating this happening at all.

[bolderfell]

Excuse me if I think "why her specifically" is pretty important. And how.

[fivestagegod]

Except it really isn't. The previous two subjects to be used for this didn't exactly work out, so he got someone that did. That's why her specifically. This isn't exactly hard.

[mouflon]

It's relevant to figuring out how this place is run, Birkin. That'll help us with things as basic as whether or not this place is VR, which is pretty relevant to the evidence you presented, isn't it?

[fivestagegod]

Yes and no. You're getting into things like "she's using her powers without even knowing it" and "there's probably a clone of her mind that can influence the setting but generally not actually do anything except when it can," which is aiming towards levels of theorizing so pointless they're folding back in on themselves.

[mouflon]

How? If we figure out whether or not her powers can be made to work by someone else, we know whether or not they're actually relevant to the discussion. And the second one is just... It directly ties into what you brought up. How the back-ups work. Taking a few minutes to answer how there can be two Deltas and figuring out how that fits in with the information we have isn't going to kill us.

[philoxenia]

I can't say for sure about the clone, or that her powers' being used against her will is exactly what's happened here, but the details of her powers in the notebook... It points to "she can be forced to use her powers." Her father-- Handsome Jack [ ugh, she makes a face ] has done it before. To me, it's hard to argue against that theory.

And it's not just that she can control virtual environments, she can create them, and... manipulate raw energy? [ ... she doesn't quite understand that, but. ] If you'd like, you can look at the notebook yourself.

[hardnosed]

That's something else he said in one of these files... "if I need her powers to run this place."

[mouflon]

...Okay. Put together with what we know about Beta and Gamma, here's what I think.

His original plan was to make a digital arena for this experiment, but that fell through when Beta couldn't be controlled. He moved on to other methods afterward. If there's anything left from that first attempt, it's the execution chamber, but we are in the physical world, whatever that other memo says about "disconnects" and "back-ups".

[hardnosed]

Then what's the difference between "activating" her and the earpiece? There's an audio file of him talking about the last experiment, and it didn't sound like she had one then.