Plottery

Grizwald: They found blood on Mars. Zone Fifty, I mean. Tha underground spent decades tryin' to piece together all the intel on it after the fact, sort tha fact from th' fiction. It looked like human blood under a microscope, but it weren't. It was... how do I explain it...

Michelle: Blood that pretended to be human blood. Right? It could blend in.

Grizwald: Yeah! Yeah, yer pretty smart, Miss Ex-Cop. It would fake like it was human blood... but it weren't. They started figgerin' out all kindsa things they could do with it--'cuz it didn't just blend in, it had other... strange properties. If me an' you both had that blood in us, but I had more, I could control you with my mind. An' it looked just like regular blood, so... y'know. The possibilities. Hospitals turn into recruitin' stations.

Grizwald: They only had a little bit of blood, though. So, they started engineerin' fake versions of tha alien blood, usin' the same technology that'd become bio printers today. S'all good, right? They've made a mind control drug, holy shit. It's every evil government's dream come true.

(...)

Grizwald: The original owner of tha Mars blood had been dead for cent'ries. Just a figment of a corpse of an alien that had fallen to the planet or somethin'. There weren't enough mind in its blood to control itself, just enough to get riled up and morph a guy into a freakshow.

Michelle: Is there... is there a chance for the engineered blood to do that? Like, could Save the Queen suddenly turn people into monsters...?

Grizwald: I don't think the printed blood has enough to it, or we'd already be seein' it. On tha other hand... if some of that original Mars blood was still around, we'd be right fucked. I dunno if they had any left after all their weird projects... but if they did, we better damn well pray the guy with the Queen formulate never gets his hands on the real deal. He'd turn himself into a horror film.

- From Have a beer

It was revealed in the page Ask Mom's red that the blood on Mars is a direct result of a battle between Jane's mother and another of her kind:

"Many ages ago, before she examined this planet more closely, she tore one of the others of her kind apart. She strung their pieces across the black of space, dragged the crumbs of them between the stars. Your mother was also made unwhole, for a time, but she recovered once the battle was won. Their struggle concluded over the fourth planet from your sun. "

It was also revealed that "other facets of that which bears a red lack an innate fondness for one another". If they know one of their kind exists elsewhere in the cosmos, they are driven by an intense hatred for the other and will not rest until they are destroyed, and they fight at any encounter. It's possible that, since Save The Queen is a bioprinted copy based on this Mars blood, there may in fact be a similar reaction from TH that is the driving force behind their unending desire to see Jane dead. However, there are not many of them left. Jane's mother thought that she might, in fact, have been the last.

• There is a Temple of Enyo logo above the VIP room; basically, Temple of Enyo is written all over this place.
• This club has a torture room with hidden doors.
• A brown spy-rat met an untimely fate by the shoe of Macland's scar-face guard, which Michelle later expresses remorse over the death of due to sync-confusion (because, it would seem, Blondie/Jane was sad over the death of the rat - which may or may not be because the readers expressed much sadness over it).
• Fuse saw 30 names on the membership list in the computer in the security office within the club, managing to recall all of them using our faux-Cleantex-effect. None of them have first or last names beginning with TH-.

Dr. Finch: These are almost all very powerful names. Every member of that club is a millionaire at minimum. All CEOs, prestigious lawyers, renowned doctors... many with stake in every tier. All have businesses that could benefit from something like the Tobu attack, or could conceivably take advantage of our class war turning into an actual war.

- From Discuss the list

• Owned by Gesenai Shirai, paperwork-wise. But Macland runs it like his playground.

There are a lot of drugs involved between the tiers of this world. Here are the ones mentioned that we know about so far:

• Level - calming drug.
  • Smoking level puts you at an emotional baseline. No fear. No aggression. No adrenaline. Good for relaxing, bad for running. Trying to physically exert yourself on level can blow up your heart. Trying to start brain fires without level can be ugly, too. Smoke level responsibly. Or not at all, because winners don't do drugs. (From Start searching)
  • You make a mental note that the effects of level can linger for up to an hour or two, though they're usually gone in about thirty minutes. You shouldn't physically exert yourself too hard while under the effects of level--activities that normally accelerate heart rate don't jive well with chemicals that actively suppress adrenaline and excitement. (From Climb into the vent)
• Cleantex - recall every memory drug.
  • Some people think it makes you smarter. The fact that they think that proves it doesn't. What cleantex actually does is create shortcuts between the "remember stuff" parts of your brain, letting you process intentional thoughts faster. It's good if you have a big test tomorrow, or are planning to hack a million dollar robotics corporation. Side effects include accidentally remembering every insipid detail of the worst, most embarrassing things you've ever done, even as far back as your infant years. Nobody's first cleantex is a good trip. You also forget to breathe sometimes. (From Start searching)
• Save the Queen - evil trip drug.
  • People don't usually accomplish things on Queen, they just rant and rave and trash their rooms and eat whatever they find around the house. You lose control and forget what you did... (From Start searching)
  • Save the Queen, sometimes just called Queen, is a drug for going on magical trips. Hallucinogenic as all hell. You've taken it once--and only once. You woke up naked in the park two days later and you never touched the stuff again. It seems like the sites Howler was frequenting were mostly for telling stories about what wacky antics people have gotten up to on Queen, where they've woken up, and so forth. Some of the posters are talking about the drug in glowing, spiritual terms, like the hallucinations changed their lives. A lot of people are just talking about what the drug is. Nobody knows what it is. It just started coming up the lower tiers one day. It happens all the time, usually just different strands of Level or new combinations or old drugs with kooky names. Save the Queen was different. Some of the best chemists in the lower tiers haven't been able to figure out its constituent components, not even from step 1. The last few years have seen a booming business, almost mafia-like, surrounding the real source of the stuff. Everybody gets it from someone, who gets it from someone, who gets it from someone. Like a huge pyramid scheme with no visible peak. You can get a hook up in five minutes, but you can't get an answer to save your life. (From Check his browsing history)
  • It is thought to be a bioprinted facsimile of the blood that Zone Fifty found on Mars. However, it lacks some of the abilities that the real deal does, as there have been no signs that TH has a red like Jane and her mother do.
• Chatter - truth serum.
  • Chatter is technically illegal--a "truth serum," of sorts, a hypnotic that alters higher brain functions. In short, it prevents lying and lowers inhibition with regard to speech. (From Check on your guard)

There are people who are referred to as 'lab meat', which basically means intentionally test-tube grown people specifically as human weapons. (They are also sometimes generally referred to as 'tube cops' due to a majority of lab meat being grown intentionally to be cops, but not all 'lab meat' is a cop.) They are a lot larger than regular people, capable of incredible strength and made to be 'expendable' in the emotional long-run.

Michelle: What, you couldn't tell? I'm lab meat. They grew ten of me in a vat, pumped us full of drugs, dumped a decade of combat training into our brains and then sold us off. Like a box of puppies, if the puppies were roided out killin' machines. Vasquez Law Enforcement is kinda small time, so they could only afford one of us. The other mes are prob'ly workin' for big corporations or playin' bodyguard for rich folks. Somethin' like that. Lab meat like me is the way of the future for cop jobs. I mean, if you gotta put a life on the line, why not make it somebody expendable? I ain't got a family, I'm just here to shoot stuff. Since a tube cop's basically got super strength, there's a whole market for big ol' stupid cannons like this one... weapons that should prob'ly be mounted to a tank or somethin', but I can carry 'em around just fine. I'm not just cost effective, I'm good for the economy. (From Ask what she means)

• Caius claims that all lab meat are gay, due to a 'gay gene', to prevent breeding. See 'Zone Fifty' below to note that there were rumours of 'beams that could turn people gay' - that was just Zone Fifty 'blowing smoke'... or were they...? (Ha, we'll probably never know!)
• We discovered via a forced sync with Michelle that there is a limited lifespan on 'lab meat', something that doesn't often come up as common public knowledge due to most tube-cops dying in the line of duty. It's unknown as to exactly why this is the case; it could be because super strength comes at a price, as a 'genetic sprint' (as opposed to a marathon), or those who produce 'lab meat' deliberately design the DNA to break down eventually for commercial reasons, or something else. Not many people - least of all the tube-cops themselves, it appears - are actually aware of this, and hence this is one of Michelle's darkest and most guarded secrets.

Grizwald: Harold Lasker. Lasker was one of tha first people they did an experiment with, puttin tha alien blood in 'em. The real stuff, not the bio printed stuff. The second, the second they put that bio printed blood in 'em... tha real blood started reactin'. Shit got real, real fast.

Michelle: Lemme guess. He died, came back to life, and developed a number of powers.

Grizwald: Oh, he died and came back to life alright. And then he turned into a god damn monster.

Michelle: What?

Grizwald: Yup. Stretched out real thin like, had organs burstin' outta his body. Strangled people with his nervous system. Crushed folks beneath his tum'rous growths. I saw some bad VHS footage of it, or part of it. Horrifyin' stuff. Anyway, they noted that the bio printed alien blood and th' real alien blood should never mix. Forced 'em to cancel the whole project, since they were pretty sure there were aliens on this planet at the time. They didn't want the risk.

Grizwald: Once Zone Fifty packed up and left, that formulate for engineered mind control serum got sold off with the rest. Some richie rich type bought it up, started payin' people to hock it on the lower tiers, and now you got Save the Queen.

- From Have a beer

"Holy shit, d'ya think Lasker had a red? Or like... could tap into the red that the Mars monster had?"

There's another lingering pause, everyone's minds turning. Fuse is the first to speak up again. "...Lasker turned into a monster, right? Like, his blood freaked out when the real Mars blood and the fake Mars blood met, and he..."

Stretched thin, you say quietly.

"Yeah," Fuse nods. "That's the thing we're worried about TH turning into, yeah? And the thing you could have been, if you didn't have control... just a straight up space god thing tearing its way out of a human body."

"What's your point?," Michelle asks, almost defensively.

"What the FUCK happened to Lasker?," Fuse asks. He says it loud enough that it echoes along the hallway. "If they killed him, they have a way of killing the giant stretched blood aliens and we need to start sweating now. If they didn't kill him..."

There's another uncomfortable pause.

"...Then he left the planet, or disappeared into the Mars red, or..." Michelle trails off.

Caius is the one to finish the thought, the only one willing to say it out loud. "Or they still got him somewhere."

From Prep for bed

• Law enforcement is privatized.

You recall that law enforcement, like just about everything, is privatized. Officers of the law--as well as firefighters and similar jobs--must be hired on an individual basis, or signed to a long term contract. Most corporations have their own law enforcement squads that protect them. (From I am a vent hermit)

• This generally means that (competent) law enforcement favours those with money or political pull.

Dr. Finch: Weeell I've already called a few VERY prestigious law enforcement agencies, and they'll be sending squads over to rescue me any minute now. ...They, uh... I got put on a waiting list. But SOON! They'll send their best police over here to battle the foul hoards and escort me to safety. (From 'Take stuff, head on out')

• This leads to law enforcement not typically being immediately helpful in situations like being stuck in a nightmare hospital with a monster that could destroy a good portion of the population: You could call the police, but Dr. Finch can attest to how well that works. (From 'Try the elevator... harder')
• In the Upper Tiers, there are dirty cops that frequent the Lower Tiers for drugs.

"FUCK! COPS! DIRTY COPS!," he shouts at the wall. "I'm such an idiot! There's dirty cops that come down from the upper tiers, MOSTLY TO DO DRUGS! I didn't even think about it!" (Fuse, from 'Tell Fuse')

LOWER TIER MUTATION FREQUENCY

Dr. Finch: The air up here? [The Prophet] must be from one of the lowest tiers. The closer you get to the surface, the worse the pollution becomes and the more frequent mutations are. A good deal of the population living near the surface of the planet have adapted to the horrible pollution--some of them even have radioactive blood. The clean air may be affecting him in a negative fashion. (From Ask if he's alright)

ABOUT RADIOACTIVE BLOOD

The man's radioactive bloodstream presented something of an obstacle for your cells to overcome. They powered through and won the day, but it took a little longer than usual. This may be a reoccurring problem with people from the bottom tiers. (From Regroup)

PSYCHIC MUTATIONS

• Mutations are pretty common in the lower tiers, though less than half of mutants are psychics, and less than a fifth of psychics are pyrokinetics. It's not unheard of, but a pyrokinetic might go their whole life and never meet another one. (From Morgenstern in the comments: Ask for more details, syringes)
• Dr. Finch: Psychic power, as we know it, is a form of mutation. Pollutants affect the development of the brain, parts grow unevenly or disproportional... new aspects of the mind develop. Some mutants draw the short straw, and come out with malformed limbs or vestigial organs or unnecessary mouths. Others... others can see in the dark, or start fires with their will. (From 'Sabotage elevator, take stairs')
• Skills granted by psychic mutations cannot be imitated by the protagonist's blood without considerable brain alterations that are discouraged by our Red. Our Red responded as below when inquired about whether we could imitate Fuse's pyrokinesis:

Red: Fuse has a genetic mutation that alters his brain structure, giving him psychic power. You've learned how to block pain signals to the brain, and that's a good baby step... but fundamentally reshaping the brain is way different. You could survive with a broke brain, but it's what supplies a lot of your... human functions. Like most of your feelings. I know you're pretty ATTACHED to those, so maybe be careful with your brain. (From 'Ask about your red')

MUTATIONS THAT DON'T FEEL PAIN

Fuse: I've met at least a few guys that straight up didn't feel pain. (From Climb into the vent)

• See also 'Tiers' in the Plottery section to get an idea of how the city is divided.

The city has a mayor, who is mostly beholden to the city council. The power of either is debatable--they're mostly just figureheads for the corporations. The city technically operates as a democracy, but with several caveats.

For instance, it is typically easier to access a voting booth in the upper and middle tiers than it is the lower tiers. "Safety" is often cited as the reason why. Because the upper tiers have a smaller population, their votes are weighted as more than those of the lower tiers. For this reason, the results of any given election often rely on the tiers toward the middle--they work as a tie breaker between the top and bottom of the city.

There are technically state representatives and a president that cover a broader range than the city alone, but cities have more power and rights than the state or nation. The focus of the power of law has steadily narrowed over time--there's even politicians now fighting for the power of individual tiers, citing that some crimes should be punished more harshly if committed in certain tiers. This isn't wholly accepted by the public yet, however.

From 'Ask about politics'

• Currently, the political climate is awful:

You check the news to see if anything crazy is happening. The news is mostly talking about the increase in crime--people from the lower tiers are committing more acts of arson, vandalism, theft, and violence against people from the middle tiers.

Michelle: Think it's connected?

Dr. Finch: I can almost guarantee it. Between Save the Queen and the possible influence of the Temple of Enyo infecting the lower tiers, there's no shortage of people either directly controlled by or being manipulated by those directly controlled by our enemy. Turning the lower tiers against the middle tiers is Class Warfare 101--it distracts from anything the villains of the upper tiers are doing, or about to do. Howler's arrest plays into this, as well--he was a lower tier criminal whose crimes devastated the middle tiers. The common man isn't paying attention to the rich right now--he's turning his gaze to what he thinks are the violent, dangerous criminals below. I theorize that something bad is going to happen soon, and our foe is setting up to disguise it.

From 'Prepare'

Dr. Finch basically explains why the protag's blood is so special this way: "Most red blood cells have specific antibodies, and antigenic substances, which determine their blood type. Your blood imitates those... all of them. They... fold, like a paper plane, turning into whatever they need to be at the time. Your blood started impersonating my blood once it entered my system. That's amazing from a donor standpoint, but terrifying from any kind of scientific standpoint. Blood isn't supposed to do that!" (From Drive by the house... carefully)

Save the Queen is a purple liquid drug that is strongly hallucinogenic. It also has the component of bio-printed imitation Mars blood, which causes whoever intakes this drug to become a part of the 'hive-mind' with the 'Queen'. This connection was made on this page ('Take cleantex') when the protagonist finally remembered what happened to her.

This drug is primarily present in the lower tiers; you don't seem much of it above that:

Fuse: The higher you go, the less Save the Queen you see. I asked a dude in the middle tiers about it a few weeks ago, he hadn't even heard of it yet. I checked the stats on that livestream... only about twelve people were watching it. Those that were in it for the show were probably mid to upper tier cats...

(From Drive by the house... carefully)

Whoever is sitting in the control seat of Save the Queen, it's likely to be someone using bad bio printed blood:

Dr. Finch: My point is, whoever is in control of all this... this isn't their blood. My theory is: they're engineering a blank slate version of the camouflage blood and then distributing it in Save the Queen. I believe you have control of anyone with your blood because you have a majority of your blood. Obviously. It's your blood. It stands to reason that whoever is controlling those with Save the Queen, has themselves a majority of their blood replaced with this artificially engineered control blood. Which is mind boggling, because bio printer blood is bad. They would be extremely unhealthy.

(From: Answer the phone)

When we discussed Save the Queen with Mom's red, it told us that it's possible the innate, primal hatred for others like it could be built in to the bioprinted blood that is being used for Save the Queen, simply because it is based on the alien blood found on Mars (see "Blood on Mars" above for more info). This seems to track, as Jane's blood reacted aggressively when it was exposed to Save the Queen. Mom's red also stated that the original Mars blood would probably also react aggressively to Queen, as it knows only that the blood is not itself. It wouldn't know or care that Queen is based on it, it would see it as an other, and thus react with aggression.

CLONING TECH

Michelle: I'd say you were a clone, but that doesn't make sense, either. I mean, you were just a nurse, right? And downloadin' all your old memories would be like... a process. I could see 'em doin' that for a CEO or somethin', but not a nurse at some cheapo hospital. Even rich guys don't like gettin' cloned, 'cuz it messes your personality all up. Like, whoever comes outta the tube might end up with totally different priorities than the dude they were based on. And that's if the clone don't come out crazy--it's not a perfect science. Brains are weird. (From Get sodas, tell stories)

ELEVATORS

[About the outdated hospital:]

Michelle: Looks like the actual elevator is stuck on the second floor. I can't believe you guys haven't switched to the magnetic kind yet... this is the first time I've seen a pulley elevator with my own eyes.

Dr. Finch: What have I been saying? This hospital is a hellhole.

(From 'Check where the elevator is')

EM FIELD INDUCTION

• You remember that all the lights in the hospital are automated, like in most hospitals. An actual light switch would be very old fashioned and unusual. Power outlets are pretty unusual, too, since most devices these days use EM field induction. This hospital is just really overdue for renovating. (From Play with the light switch)
• You consider cutting the power [to the hospital elevator]; however, the EMF coils are built into the walls, and rooted in the buildings above and below you. There are some devices that could strip a sizable radius of its power, but nothing you have on hand. (From 'Try the elevator... harder')

There was a major clue on who is the mastermind behind the conspiracy we are working to unravel, dropped by Macland Row after the infiltration at Club Elegance, when he had a furious phonecall with someone who was undoubtedly the mastermind:

"BULLSHIT, TH--"

"Do not. Speak. My name. We went over this, Mr. Row."

- From Check on Macland

Dr. Finch: Starts with TH... Hmm. Surely not too many upper crusts with a name like that. Patton Thale? Winst Thompson? Theodore Reigns? I'll do a little more digging tomorrow.

- From Discuss with the group

Henceforth, Dr. Finch and Fuse researched on relevant names in the Upper Tiers (assuming that our mastermind must be from the Upper Tiers) and narrowed it down to either Theodore Reigns, or Patton Thale.

• (Fuse, on Theodore Reigns:)
  • Reigns is an old dude, a multi billionaire that's teased getting into politics a couple of times. He owns a couple of TV networks and a fightball team. One of those channels is a news station--basically propaganda, at this point. 24/7 railing against the lower tiers, trying to defend dirty cops, that kind of thing. Guy comes off like a real fascist in interviews. Reigns has spent most of his career trying to turn society against the poor--all this that's been going on lately plays right into his agenda.
• (Dr. Finch, on Patton Thale:)
  • Patton Thale is a younger fellow--he inherited his father's power company about ten years ago. Thale has mostly stayed out of the public eye; his father was considered eccentric, funding various ridiculous projects... mostly methods of prolonging his own life, but also--and here's the kicker--space expeditions, including a few flights to Mars. Patton has stayed low key, presumably in an attempt to let the family name recover--daddykins almost ruined the company by making his insane exploits public. It's possible that Patton Thale has been secretly carrying on his father's work, perhaps using secret accounts to keep from being another laughingstock. The Thales having access to old Zone Fifty documentation is not out of the question... Thale Senior had been involved with far stranger, certainly.

In short: Theodore Reigns has the motive, but Patton Thale has the means. Either are likely to be our mysterious TH.

- From Discuss the list

• Check out 'Temple of Enyo' for more information on how TH is also Enyo.
• It's been confirmed, via force-sync with Macland Row, that TH is Patton Thale. Well, for the most part...

• You live in a tiered city, with buildings stacked atop other buildings. (From 'Take the elevator')
• All of our characters live in a tiered city, divided into the upper tiers, middle tiers and lower tiers. (See also 'Politics' in the Plottery section to get a better idea of how the classing works.)
• The lower tiers also include the bottom tiers, which are the tiers closest to the surface of the planet. The planet at this point has so much pollution, anyone who lives around the lower tiers is susceptible to mutations due to exposure. This is why the lower tiers have more mutants, while the middle and upper tiers don't. Mutations are seen as a sign of 'low class':

Dr. Finch: But... but but but, all of it, every single mutation, every psychic power... it's all a mark of the lower class. Those on the upper tiers would never live so close to the bottom as to become mutants in the first place. Even if a mutation were useful, it would mark you for life. No one above a certain tier would ever hire you if you sported a mutation. Such is the nature of class... people put too much stock in birthright, or familial relations or what have you. No one looks at the big picture.

Michelle: Pfft, of course they don't. You could move two tons with your brain, or cure diseases by breathin' on people, or... whatever. The rich folks upstairs don't care. You got the stink of poor on you. It's not right. It's never been right.

(From 'Sabotage elevator, take stairs')

• The upper tiers are less densely populated, and so far we have seen up to the heights of tier 155 when we went to catch wild ravens. The stars are visible from here, while the lower tiers are not.
• Much of the class war brewing at the moment is due to the current class structure that follows from the harsh division of the tiers.

Grizwald: (...)Ya ever heard of Zone Fifty?

Michelle: They were, like, a black ops group right? Did shady shit for the government.

(...)

Grizwald: That's them. They shut down... oh, about a hunnerd years ago after some of their projects started leakin'. They put outta bunch of false leads, fake documents about UFOs and genetically modifyin' yetis, weather control and beams that could turn people gay. There was so much rubbish that it was hard to tell what was real, and what was jus' Zone Fifty blowin' smoke. Buuut... clone science, genetic engineerin', all that started really bumpin' in the twenty years or so after Zone Fifty disappeared. So it weren't all nonsense, all the good stuff just got bought up on the black market. Secret auctions and tha like... y'know, among them rich types.

- From Have a beer

• The protagonist's father originally worked for Zone Fifty. He was a radar tower controller, sending signals into outer space in an attempt to contact aliens. See "Protagonist's Origins" for Mom's red's account of how they met.
• Zone Fifty was aware of Mom's existence.
• It's very possible that there is currently a branch of the government that is picking up the work of Zone Fifty.
• It's also possible that, if they do still exist, Zone Fifty has Harold Lasker in custody (or captivity). See "Lasker Report" for more info.
• Zone Fifty had so many layers of secrecy within their departments, workers in one department were not aware of what was happening in another:
• "That's how secretive Zone Fifty was. The left hand never knew what the right hand was doing. I was kept in a small facility as part of a project to finish designing... well, me. They let me talk to staff from other departments only when necessary for our project, or for one of theirs. Zone Fifty's hierarchy, structure, where its real base of operations was located... all mysteries to me. It wouldn't surprise me if I did know, at some point or another. I know for a fact that some of my data was altered or deleted before Zone Fifty shut down."

(Jury, on Zone Fifty's internal structure, from Call Jury)

• The head of Zone Fifty was a secret to even people who were involved within Zone Fifty's departments. Jury, who was built by Zone Fifty, doesn't even know his name, and has never seen him.