Upon opening the data tome, you are greeted with an unusual symbol. Not recognising it but intent on learning more, you move through the many pages in the tome, noticing the unusual form of writing that is used.
After many hours spent poring over the tome and its contents, you find yourself at a loss. Nowhere does it mention anything about a location or a person you could find to talk to. It would seem that you are at a dead end.
The only real 'clues' that you could find, are these:
Excerpt:
"From the core of the universe of man, only through the unity of the tormented and delighted souls, shall the path be found."
"It is those that stand alone that will be the ones that must be found."
An image that sits on a page with no explanation given, unlike others:
With nothing more to go on, you flick through the pages dejected, exasperated at the time wasted and the lack of any new leads.
As you flick faster and faster through the pages, you notice a small number appearing on each page just as you flick to it and disappearing almost as quickly.
Excited, you quickly flick through the pages, copying down the digits in the sequence you see them.
Finally you are left with this:
Johnathan LeStrange pushed his hands through his hair, and rubbed his forehead in frustration, what on earth was this supposed to mean?
The words sounded like some sort of philosophical rambling, he tried running a search with them through the net, but came up with nothing, understanding their actual meaning would take considerably more work, effort and time.
The picture sparked something in his memory, hadnt he heard about some sort of greek doctor, in ancient history class, who heald people with snakes? And Became some sort of God? Asclepeus? Asclupus? He ran another search, and hit the jackpot!
pages flashed past, and there was no doubt in his mind that the man in the book was at least related to this Asclepius, Greek God of Medicine, but something didnt fit, the rod was simillar, but there was that other, caduceus, closer to the one in the book, this required further study-
"Mr LeStrange?"
Startled, he looked up,
"Yes, that's me!"
"The doctor will see you now mr LeStrange," chimed the plump nurse
"Oh, right, er... thanks" standing, LeStrange tossed aside the heavy tome he had picked up in the clinic waiting room, to be honest he wasnt really sure why he'd become so engrossed in it...
"So nurse, think I'll live?"
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"...Well we'll need to take a few tests on the secretions, it should take a few hours, so if you could come back in-"
"No no, I'll wait here,"
Sitting down, LeStrange craned his neck to watch the nurse out of site, then immediately began casting around for the book that had niggled at the back of his mind throughout the session. Now he remembered where he'd heard about it before, supposedly it held the location of some secret society type! Probly just another bunch of wakos, but maybe they'd pay good money to keep their secrets, if he could find them out.
He discovered it lying under a cushion over by the large front window, strangely nowhere near where he thought he'd left it, it was almost hidden. Flicking through it again, Johnathan decided to try deciphering the rest, before pursuing what he'd already learned, any further, he seemed to remember a comic he'd seen about researching like that, depth parsing or something.
The star map looked like the most obvious clue; unless it was directed towards auto didacts who knew every solar system's every angle of every starfield, it was probably based on the standard navcomp galaxy map view. He'd have to save that, and check it against his ship's when he got back.
Which brought him to the final, most indecipherable clue he'd uncovered thus far, the mystery numbers:
What on earth could it be? His first thought was binary, but didnt that just use 1s and 0s? Maybe this was some advanced form? He tried running another search with it, and was surprised to get, absolutley nothing, zero, zilch, not a peep. Usually even the most nonsensical junk entered into the net search, would comeback with SOMETHING! Even if it was just an advert for "Hot Teen Liberty Admirals In The Mood!"
Scratching his head, Johnathan considered, He really didnt want to think it was code, because he knew there was no way he'd be able to break it, perhaps each number stood for a letter in the alphabet? But then how would he know if it was a letter 23, or a letter 2 and a letter 3? And what was the decimal for?
Looking more closely at the point, he noticed that the numbers seemed to have 6 digits before it, and 10 or 11 after, though what this meant was as much a mystery to him as the bra size of Queen Carina. Sighing, he considered, maybe co-ordinates? But didnt co-ordinates need 3 values? x y and z? And a base starting point to work from? Ugh, with a groan of disgust, he decided to leave the blasted numbers, and work on something he could actually understand.
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Computer Assisted Biological Augmented Lifeform
Omicron Theta System – Freeport 9 docking station 2-B
Universal Sirian Time 22:07
From a chaotic mess of cables a poorly lit screen comes to life. As the images focuses an aged man appears wearing a shocked expression.
“Dr Cyrus is that you? It’s been two years since you and your ship disappeared deep in the omicrons. I couldn’t believe my eyes when received your message – Dead lord, what has happened to you? Where are the other scientists of the omicron expedition?”
The man let out a small screech as a deep metallic voice came from the amalgamation of flesh and metal.
“This is not the place nor the time for this discussion *Tobias*, what of the packet I sent you, have you found the archive? Did you retrieve the document?”
“Yes, yes sending it now. I was going to ask where you stumbled on this information, but seeing you now I have no idea what to even *begin*imagining…” swiftly replied Dr Tobias, as he vainly tried to regain his composure.
A small mental nudge informed Dr.Cyrus that the information was received.
“Well, thank you for that old friend; I’m sure you know the difficulty of maintaining a communication channel from Freeport 9 to New Berlin...”
“Is that it? You reappear after 2 years looking like *that*, sending me a cryptic message about information obtained from a freighter in the omega systems, not to mention making me search a long forgotten archive and I’m supposed to just let it go?”
Silence was the only answer Dr Tobias got as the communication abruptly cut.
“Display downloaded contents” a large rumble is heard as the ship's AI browses through and displays the data tome through Cyrus’s ocular implants.
Universal Sirian Time 23:07
After searching through the tome, three things stood out: a cryptic phrase, a star map and what seems to look like an encrypted message.
As Cyrus looked through string of numbers, he could only confirm his first thoughts, the message ended with AER-256, an archaic encryption method, yet trying to brute force his way through the code would still take an absurd amount of time, AI or not, he needed the key.
The two other clues had to be related, and if he was correct the key would be the commonality between them.
“Hum… computer, display the classical Sirian star map and superimpose image 1-beta”
As the two images blended Cyrus pondered the meaning of the cryptic phrase.
“The core of the universe of man……tormented and delighted souls….”
Suddenly an idea presented itself.
“Computer center the origin of the axes on the largest center of human population/traffic and start rotating image”
There, thought Cyrus, two by two large population centers of “tormented” and “delighted” souls. That could only mean that the last axis points to…..
“Computer, enter system as encryption key and start decoding.”
It took less than a nanosecond for the advanced AI to decrypt the message and the result was…puzzling.
“Secret societies and their cryptic messages……but, yes I’m seeing a pattern here systems which form a certain geometric shape…and in their center…”
Turning to the AI core he enthusiastically shouted: “Set a course to that system, maximum velocity”
[Acknowledged: Course set - Approaching first waypoint - Entering Omega-41 Jump Hole]
Cyrus let out a maniacal laugh: “Yes the door to the Truth will be mine now Hahahahahaahaahaha!”
Pavlos Benitez resignedly settled the Titan down on the landing pad outside Myrtos Villa, and climbed out of the cockpit into the embrace of a setting sun in a cloudless sky. The raid in Bretonia had not gone well, and the arrival of a second destroyer had occasioned a rapid withdrawal.
"Right", he thought, "let's see how slim these pickings are".
Sifting through the crates of basic alloy, he came across a data pad. Flicking it on with his thumb, he was greeted with the following image:
As if on a turn-table he swivelled around to the logos engraved on the wall of Myrtos Villa, either side of the entrance portico. The elements were differently arranged, but they were all there:
"Why does a civilian from New London have these images of our Myrtos?" he wondered. Scrolling through the rest of the datapad's contents, he ambled off into the interior of the villa, towards the library, leaving the rest of the cargo uninvestigated. He needed a map, and a beaker of Sairbucks.
* * *
The star map looked familiar, but overlaying it on the map of Sirius led to a point just off Auvergne. Pavlos had yet to grace that system with his attentions, and, to be honest, the lines didn't quite fit. Discarding the first two rotations, he looked sceptically at it's overlay.
"That seems a little... trite"
The numbers were obviously a code; the groupings were puzzling though.
"The first group before the point are all six digits, but after the point, they vary between 9 and 11, with the majority being 10. The first digit in the first group are mainly 6's, with a few 5's and 1's. There is only one instance of the number 3, and none at all of 2 and 4. And what on Crete does AER256-Strong mean?
He drummed his fingers slowly against the desktop. "Bah, I'm going about this the wrong way!"
He set his beaker down on the desktop, and pulled up the archives, pointing towards the history of encryption. After a few minutes, he started pecking away at the keyboard, entering in the numbers, but was stuck for the key.
"Myrtos... nope. Oh, how did the Romans pronounce it? Myrthas? Mythras? Mitras? Mithras? Still nothing but gibberish." His eye passed to the discarded map.
"Hmm.... "
He tapped away at the keyboard, trying various combinations of capitalisation and spacing until -
"Uhhh..." he exclaimed, as his eyes widened, the pupils flicking across the decrypted text...
"Cabron!" he yelled, and ran for the landing pad and his gently-cooling Titan...
Relaxing at the Sheffield bar as we was wont to do, Daniel Stevens was nursing his second Sidewinder Fang. Although he wasn't a member of the guild, they didn't mind him coming to their bases after time spent on bounties out in the Omegas or Edge Worlds. As long as he didn't do anything to mess up the place that is (his hacking and sabotage skills were spoken off highly in some circles).
He kept to himself most evenings, listening to the rumours and conversations of those around him. Tonight though, there was something that caught his attention...
Two shady looking men in the corner of the bar had been discussing some legends and myths of old. Daniel had only been half-listening, but he started to concentrate after hearing mention of one group believed to still exist and hold a lot of power. Before he could learn any more, the two of them got up and left for the hangar - maybe they had sensed his eavesdropping.
Being extra curious (possibly due to the slight tipsiness), Daniel did some searching on the Neural Net and eventually pieced together a strange instruction concerning mythology and Rheinland. He looked up the highlighted document and was faced with a large block of text and strange images.
Retiring to his quarters for the night to pour through this, Daniel also noticed that there had been a recent access of the same article within the last 24 hours - with the previous access over 3 years ago. Although it could be a coincidence, it was worth checking out.
After a difficult night's rest, Daniel hopped into his Marauder and undocked into space.
"Hawkwood," he said, talking to the onboard computer, "set a course for New London. Let's find this Johnathan LeStrange..."
Looking up his secure Neural Net files, Daniel was able to place LeStrange as soon to be headed to a clinic on New London. Being already close, the Hawkwood touched down on the planet within a few minutes.
Posing as a relative of a patient that needed to be picked up, he was able to arrive in the waiting area to see a stressed-looking LeStrange set down a heavy book and head off with a nurse. Leafing through the book, Daniel recognised most of the information from the data tome he'd read through last night. Obviously this LeStrange had been investigating the same rumours he was, and seemed to have made a bit more progress too. From the recently worn edges of some of the pages, the most important parts seemed to be a strange image of a statue, a cryptic message, an unlabelled star map and, scribbled on some of the pages, a numerical code of some sort.
"Hawkwood, keep a note of these symbols, I'll need to run some further analysis if they turn out to be useful later. As for this code, seems like the old AER-256 encryption. All I need is the key to crack it."
Looking at the other clues for ideas, the star map likely had some connection to the standard Sirius map, and the message gave some indication on how to use it...
Centred properly, and after re-orienting the tome's map, the coordinates coincided with some well known systems. The clues seemed to fit this as well, but what was the encryption key?
"Run the decryption on all combinations of the numbers I've sent you Hawkwood; use these system names as the key."
His datapad then lit up with an intelligible, if still cryptic, message.
"Well well, I wouldn't have thought there was much out there. Guess I won't be disturbed much on the search, unless this Gallian manages to get as far as I do. Warm up the engines, I'll just misplace this book for Monsieur LeStrange and we can head off..."
"Look I've been applying the cream, but it still hasnt...Ugh!"
Johnathan LeStrange broke off in disgust as the clinic put him on yet another hold line. God damn them, it had NOT been a good week for LeStrange: With work turning up a big fat zero in the profit department, no, wait, make that a big fat negative, and now - He pulled up the CNS - "BRETONIA TO OUTLAW GALLIC JUNKERS, All Gallic Junkers to be shot on sight in Bretonia". Great, it was DEFINITELY time for a relocation, If only the bloody clinic could stop this - Wait! The clinic, that was it! That damn book he'd meant to check against the starcharts, he'd forgotten all about it!
"Hmm, computer, superimpose image 1 over the standard galaxy map, center it on New York, that makes most sense."
"There you go Mr LeStrange"
"Hmmm, nothing, rotate it, again, again, wait! Hmm, interesting, now what did that say? Stands alone... Stands alone... hmm, could be the password? Computer run a decryption program on those numbers, hmmm no doesnt work... well... I guess that's kinda alone too, if it IS New York. Well well, interesting."
"Attention Freelancer alpha one dash sixteen, we have you on scanners, please submit your destination"
"Dublin my friend... For now..."
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