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Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

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... what the fuck, why are you voting for Execute? I mean, okay, I get the roleplaying element, I do, but what the actual fuck? It's possible to RP it both ways, and are you seriously voting for Kessler to shoot Jamelia in the face? Is this an actual thing you are doing? Do you really think that ES wouldn't do it? Because trust me, he would do it. And it has a higher modifier, so people voting for it have a disproportionate weight in favour of him genuinely doing it. Furthermore, Kessler knows this is Jamelia - hell, he even noted that this explains a lot about her that had been mildly confusing before! The vote is for whether he kills her on suspicion of Neffandery, because she was in love with one, or on suspicion of her still being a deep cover agent of Control/Vigilance here to murder him. Which is not a thing we want him to do.

[X] Don't Execute.

Urgh. Honestly.

Edit: Nuts' write-in is best write-in.
[X]Punch The NWO Agent In The Face
[X]Like Seriously How Often Do You Get To Do That
 
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[X] Don't Execute

Get her back to Serafina maybe, but killing her now doesnt really accomplish anything, it has to be explained to tons of people why she is suddenly dead/missing however many memories since last backup.
 
I must admit I am very tempted to vote for Execute on the groundsEarthscorpion show us the aftermath of Kessler killing Jamelia. That said such a event would also completely disrupt the existing plot and I am looking forward to seeing how things are going as is. I would love to see a omake for the Execute vote but I would much prefer to keep things on the current track.

[X] Don't Execute.
 
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So, how serious is talking about Nephandi like this? I get that it's "very", but the existence of Nephandi isn't exactly a state secret for people like Kessler and Belltower. Does her confessing to have had non-hostile relations with a Nephandic traitor years ago compromise her in some way? Is Kessler in some fashion obligated to shoot her for some reason?
 
[X] Don't Execute
[X]Punch The NWO Agent In The Face
[X]Like Seriously How Often Do You Get To Do That

EDIT: Because Nuts' idea is amazing and hilarious.
 
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[X] Don't Execute

There is still something very wrong here, though. Why is she telling John this? And Jamelia never acts this vulnerable. She doesn't even sneeze without a thought-out plan. So why? John's survived 20 years in the depths of the Umbra by listening to his instincts, and his instincts are screaming at him here that something is not right at all.

Might be a good idea to have him see if any of his Spirit-side friends can look at Jamelia and see if she's the person we thought.
 
Why are there sirens in the background? That's totally not the sound of TN setting forces on us.

Anyway, something is strange here, but we can't afford to kill Jamelia if it's really her. So we knock our boss out, and then check to make sure there's nothing wrong.

[X] Incapacitate Jamelia. Nonlethally. Then check to make sure it's really her.

EDIT: Actually, that was silly and paranoid. It's unlikely that anyone but Jamelia would bring up this particular topic, even if TN knew that Jamelia had regained her memories.

How likely is it that an imposter would bring this up? It's a risky choice of conversation topic, and more importantly what purpose would it serve? If this was an imposter and Jamelia had already discussed this with Kessler and co, Kessler would have realised something was wrong immediately.

If the point was merely to lure Kessler out, this is definitely suboptimal, because it makes Kessler suspicious of her.

Changing vote to:
[X] Don't Execute
 
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Do we really want Serafina to have access to our juicy secrets? Mind 4 is enough for memory manipulation, and we've got Cemal, Threat Null, Senex's Induction, Alice and the surrounding circumstances (which would be hilarious), Vigilance and Helmetshrike, Psychic Powers, our own plans and goals...

We've got a lot. Do we want to potentially give them -all- to Serafina, especially given that a scan for Nephandic influence would probably go deep by necessity (and I don't think Kessler can do a deep enough scan himself)?

On the other hand, manipulation could lead to retrieval. Knowledge itself is power, and we know Jamelia isn't going to do it herself.
 
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Well, I want to See Jameila punched in the face for reasons. I mean, who doesn't want to punch a NWO operative in the face at one point in time?

Kesseler is living the dream of all Technocrats and Traditionalists, all at once!
 
Slamu said:
So, how serious is talking about Nephandi like this? I get that it's "very", but the existence of Nephandi isn't exactly a state secret for people like Kessler and Belltower. Does her confessing to have had non-hostile relations with a Nephandic traitor years ago compromise her in some way? Is Kessler in some fashion obligated to shoot her for some reason?
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It's not talking about having fallen in love who then fell to Neffandery that prompts [EXECUTE]

It's the fact that she was one of the bloody right hands of Control, for years, being Technocratic Gestapo, and generally all-around unpleasant. That her memories and identity are fatally compromised by whatever was done to her.

YOu know, by the same Control that is now EVIL SPACE SPIRITS. And Kessler knows that they are Evil Space Spirits.

---

Oh yeah and:

[X] Don't Execute.
But do restrain her. And by restrain I mean cover in quick-hardening foam, wrap her in a net of motion-restricting cutting wire and then... maybe drag her to Serafina because if the Boss is about to be used as a sockpuppet by evil space ghosts something should be done to avoid that.
 
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The problem with her regaining her memories is also how likely she is to fall back into her old believe system. At least if she was compromised with trigger phrases they should have already been used over in Russia, unless the NWO members wanted that one to fail but it is unlikely considering that Vigilance was not a NWO only operation and so any still present codes should also be in the hand of the other higher ups.

[X] Don't Execute
 
EarthScorpion said:
"What now?"

Jamelia stares at him, a hint of moisture around her eyes. "Now's the bit where you decide whether to shoot me," she says simply.

[ ] Execute (x1.5)

[ ] Don't Execute

-4 Reputation with John Kessler (???)
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This isn't the Director Belltower he knew.

But then again, who was Director Jamelia Belltower anyway?

Kessler thinks through the possibilities at lightspeed, the hum of his overclocked ADEI the only sound in the silent room. Neffandery? He discards the thought after a moment; if Jamelia was some sort of undercover Nephandi, all she'd had to do was try slightly less hard to get killed in Moscow, and the entire world would've burned. Was she an imposter? Unlikely; someone faking the Director would try to fit seamlessly into her previous life, instead of upending it with such an obvious change-of-pace like this. Was it a gesture of trust? John barely suppressed a laugh at the thought of an NWO agent actually trusting someone.

Was she subverted by Control in the past? Most definitely. Was she still subverted by them? Well...Moscow. He didn't have anything concrete, just a spirit claiming to represent Control, (and he'd sawed the body it was possessing in half with his Thunderhead, so good luck interrogating the corpse) and of course the invasion of giant robots and subversion of Union assets and all that jazz. He had a good idea about what happened to folks stuck out in the Black for too long without a way to phone home, and with over a decade out there, he could only imagine what Control had gotten up to in the meantime. Yet the Director had fought the EDE incursion, gotten within inches of losing her life to seal it, and he had no doubt that whoever had been able to subvert entire armies of HITMarks would've turned those same skills on whatever little-C controls or killswitches she still had buried.

"I'm noticing a distinct lack of bullets or words from you, Mr. Kessler. Should I be worried?" she asks, with a lilt in her voice.

"Shaddup," he responds brusquely. He has to assume she's smarter than him, that she's looked through the ramifications and seen the possibilities. If the Director was still subverted, if that Man in White had gotten back into her head, could he be risking his subverted asset to try and bring in Kessler as a deluded ally? Or was she serving the same ideals but different masters; did he have to worry about her noticing his habit of talking to the spirits in his guns...or the Reality Deviants he called family?

Fuckin' noo-whoos, this is why no one likes you people. John could really use a chance to shoot something right now. Ideally it'd be something that deserved it, and really ideally it'd shoot back too, but right now he'll take what he can get.

Too many variables. Too many possibilities. Too many wheels within wheels, plots reaching back decades and plans he can barely comprehend, let alone understand. John's splashed around in the kiddie pool of conspiracies before, but the tiny woman in the hijab has just pulled back the curtain and now he's looking at the goddamned Pacific Ocean. He doesn't know how to sail those kinds of waters without getting sunk, and he can't swim to save his life. (literally and figuratively) When your boss might have actually been part of Panopticon-that-was, you're definitely in need of some metaphorical dry land to stand on.

John Kessler reaches out, and punches Director Jamelia Belltower.

That, he understood just fine.

He's pulled the punch, of course, so the short woman is 'only' knocked backwards into the couch, blood flying from her nose. John stands up and towers over her as she gasps in shock. "That's for puttin' this all on me," he growls.

He sees blood. That's a good sign; spirits don't bleed. But as she's knocked silly, in those moments where she isn't sure whether he's about to slap her or kill her, he sees something else: acceptance. Not the blank stare of a drone being abandoned by its controllers, not the shock of a master plan gone awry, just the calm face of a tired old woman ready to meet her fate. He can work with that.

The tired old man grabs his flask of brandy and hands it to her. "An' that's for helpin' you through it." Kessler drops back on the couch, which groans and finally gives way in a shower of fluff and splinters, and points a finger at her. "Tell me what you know - Vigilance, Panopticon, your past, everything. Don't leave a thing out."

Trust? He never trusted Jamelia Belltower in the first place, not with anything important. He still doesn't, if he's being honest with himself. But he can listen to the stories of a broken-down black-ops agent, and keep her secrets safe. He - no, the world - owes her that much.


[X]Don't Execute
[X]Punch The NWO Agent In The Face
[X]Like Seriously How Often Do You Get To Do That
 
Several things do not feel right, though whether that's the way ES intended it to be or the thing he's dissatisfied with is debatable. Since picking the wrong option is going to have severe consequences, I'd appreciate it if someone answered several questions:

1) When were the last times Jamelia had back-ups of her brain made?
2) How difficult would it have been for Threat Null (or its affiliates) to access those back-ups?
3) During The Belltower Identity, it's been established that uploading Jamelia's brain-tapes into a HITMark results in a robot with Jamelia's memories and mannerisms, but with far inferior skills and intuition. What would happen if the brain-tapes were uploaded into a person instead?
4) Do TN Agents (or whatever the Operatives who still report to "Control" are called) work alone, or do they have support networks beyond those that they maintain themselves? (What I'm asking is if Ms. Clock[1] could have gone to a TN!Progenitor lab to get a new face/body.)

Onto the things that bothered me in ES's post: "Jamelia stares at him, a hint of moisture around her eyes." Is this a result of suppressing Chameleon? I know she started crying at the end of Yellowfields, but I I thought time would have dulled the emotional impact of unlocking those memories. Secondly, the piano performance - why did Jamelia feel like showing off all of a sudden? I get that the scene is about opening up, and the music might have been the emotional equivalent of sticking your foot in the water to test the temperature before diving in, but it's still so random. Also, Ms. Clock had a fondness for pianos, so that makes the scene worrying. There are plenty of others odd coincidence that bother me: thinner gauntlet - makes it easier for TN emergency reinforcements to arrive, "dream instruction and cognitive implantation education" - I vaguely remember it being said that the NWO was big on learning stuff the normal way.

Also, I'm pretty sure that TN knows what Jamelia's been doing recently and suspects that she's realizing that her memories are off. And as MJ12 Commando said,

MJ12 Commando said:
After all, sometimes the best weapon to use against a rogue agent is a slightly altered version of themselves.
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So in conclusion, that's probably Jamelia, and thus executing is a bad idea. But it might be a TN agent pretending to be Jamelia, in which case not executing will cause us an obscene amount of problems in the near future.

[ X] Don't Execute - Kessler has magical spirit friends that TN does not know about that can help him escape if it's actually not Jamelia, and if it is, I'm pretty sure "I thought it was a MUSCOVITE putting up a reeeaaal convincing act" is not gonna cut it when people ask Kessler why he killed his boss.


[1]
MJ12 Commando said:
Every day for the past fifteen years, the woman has done the same thing. At 10 PM she listens to the same radio channel. She likes it, but that's not the reason for it. Her neighbors like her, as does everyone who knows her. She's pleasant, helpful, and patient. She says hi to them whenever they pass. Even if this is only to be temporary, it feels like her daily life now. She teaches children how to play the piano. She owns one made by Broadwood & Sons, an old antique. She values it quite a bit. Her cat wanders over, and the woman absentmindedly pets Elise. She's been a good companion for a while.

When the neighbors ask about her circumstances and wealth, she tells them something that's mostly the truth. Her father is incredibly wealthy and she's just doing what she wants to do for now, until she takes over the family business. People accept that, as they do how she doesn't seem to age. She's just a fixture of the town. Waiting for something that might never happen.

Until tonight. There is no opera on this channel. Instead, there is a monotone voice. "This is Control. Miss Clock. Your Oversight status has been changed from IDLE to STANDBY. We believe that a hostile rogue agent may be subverting critical members and operatives of the Conventions to carry out her own twisted desires. More information will be available at the dead drop. You must remain untraceable-the target is an ex-NWO agent trained by Blanc himself. She is assisted by rogues from several other Conventions. She is very nearly your equal-do not get overconfident."

The dark-haired woman smiles at her cat and beckons it into her lap. She puts her hands around its neck softly, and then twists. If it lives-they might be able to recover something from its brain. Unacceptable. The house will burn down, piano with it. Nothing can be traced. She has a bag in a closet that has everything she needs, and she knows where the dead drop location is. She will accomplish her mission.

After all, Ms. Clock owes the Union her life.
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