Beta Complex

Origins/Major Influence: The Thin Green Line (Paranoia supplement)

Description: Beta Complex does not actually exist except in HPD&MC vidshows and AF propaganda. It serves instead as a useful stand-in "Enemy" that Alpha Complex can periodically beat up on, making the proles happy. News reports continually explain in great detail about the many glorious victories Alpha Complex had over Beta Complex, and these reports are extremely popular with the INFRARED masses as a form of cheap entertainment. Sometimes, HPD&MC can even construct a Beta Complex military leader for their news report and even have said military leader win a few battles over the course of weeks, only for the villain to eventually be defeated and captured. If the bad guy proves popular with the masses, HPD&MC can even fake the military leader's rapid defection to Alpha Complex and even have him reappear in future vidshows as a loyal general winning glorious victories over Beta Complex, otherwise, the Beta Complex military leader gets publically executed in a grand ceremony.

The Armed Forces are a bit more blunt with their use of "Beta Complex": they present reports of a military threat to coerce high-clearance citizens into funding the Armed Forces machine, and then submit reports of massive military victories to justify said credit investment.

This scam works perfectly...except when high-clearance citizens begin to spread rumors about Beta Complex's complete nonexistence (they do not care about HPD&MC's lies, but they are concerned about the Armed Forces being a bloated bureaucracy; they'd rather that all these credits go into their own pet projects instead). If Beta Complex is exposed as a fake, then all the work developed by HPD&MC and AF constructing this dire threat would collapse and the ringleaders get executed. That's where the spies come in, to disprove those treasonous rumors and keep this scam going as long as possible.

Spy From Another Alpha Complex: These people know that Beta Complex does not exist, but their mission is to present the illusion that it does.

• Do whatever you can to link this mission over to grand threat of "Beta Complex", somehow blaming them for whatever situation you're in. No, I don't care if your mission is to clean up the food vats, link it over to Beta Complex. Here's some propaganda pamphlets about Beta Complex that you can plant.
• Citizens are becoming a bit too paranoid and unhappy about the threat of Beta Complex. We need to show that Beta Complex can, in fact, be defeated. Go ahead and expose yourself as a Spy for Beta Complex, but don't just give up (that will look bad on camera). Get caught in an act of treason first.
• Citizens are becoming too complacent about the threat of Beta Complex. We need to show that Beta Complex is an ever-present danger to our utopia. Here's a bomb, blow stuff up.
• We don't have enough people for the next public execution. Find as many traitors and possible and recruit them to the cause of Beta Complex, and forward us their identities so that we can "arrange" for their arrests.