5/15- What I think and what I know

[onlythankyou]

SHAX shax@applenet.net
Shared the following message below:

Nineteen days left, if I’m not mistaken. The chat has been active enough I haven’t read over everything, but in the interest of information, I’ll list out what I know. Please tell me if your experience differs from anything on the following list - these are not facts, just observations.

1. The Terms of Service are vague, nonsensical, and gave no way out. They read like something that exists because it has to, not because anyone cares that it exists. They reference night shifts and death.
2. The app cannot be deleted, erased, or removed, nor can it be found on your phone company’s app store. No mention is made of it anywhere online.
3. The app will follow you to any device. Computers, tablets, new phones, and so on; they all display it. I’ve picked up several burner phones, all of which had it. I also found it on my graphing calculator today.
4. The app knows your personal information, somehow, even on burner phones where you’ve left no personal information. It also doesn’t operate on a list of buzzwords. For example, I can say my name is Blinky or my name is Bob, but if I try to say my name is [INFORMATION LOCKED], it does...well. That.
5. The app refuses to be seen by anyone else. Trying to show it to others makes it disappear completely.
6. Trying to tell someone about the app via email brings up the same information lock, and then the app itself opens up to yell at you.
7. The app refuses to be ignored. Trying only causes it to force your attention. In my case, the app grew on the homescreen to twice the size an app should take. I don’t doubt it would have kept growing, had I not accidentally tapped it when I did.
8. The app does not register on the data management screen, despite its obvious network use.
9. No user downloaded the app of their own volition. It simply appeared out of nowhere, already on each affected phone.
10. No user picked their own username. Several of them are repeated, and all have either swords or a ship’s wheel attached. The wheel is much rarer. All usernames appear to be demons. There is no indication what meaning the swords and wheels have yet.
11. All users suffered an intense headache upon first using the app. This was accompanied by a few seconds of blanking out and experiencing some hallucination or daydream.
12. No user selected their own answer to the morality question. The answers chosen were not what the user would have chosen.
13. All users live somewhere with a strict curfew, where nighttime is dangerous. This suggests all users live in a small geographic vicinity. Specifically, Eddan.

Again, these are not necessarily facts, just what I’ve gathered. If you have anything to add, please do so.

Comments

⚔ Naberius

[1in_perfection]

I can add a few observations.

First is that very little, if any battery life is consumed by the apps, to support the fact it puts no strain on the phone's data or memory.

The second is that past that first episode of questions and hallucinations (if that's the term we've settled on, and it seems apt enough) there's been no new content posted by the app itself; mainly it's been those affected by it, trying to gather information, or discuss or... for whatever reason, spend casual time on here.

I've classes today. It appears I can say that, even if I can't say it's at [INFORMATION LOCKED] because the app proceeds to follow its programming. But I can try to investigate further. See if anyone in the student body is boasting about a project they've done.

...And I hesitate to say any of us should attempt to mingle or meet up in physical space, but that may be an option to keep in mind. Since we come from the same area.

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

Thank you, this is all good to know. You're right that the vast majority of content is user-supplied. Unless there are administrators hiding among us, and even then, since we can't identify them, it couldn't be considered official... I hadn't thought of that.

I'm not certain I can believe it's simply some student's project anymore, though. There are too many things that, as far as I know, just can't be done with modern coding. How it can exist on the burner phones I picked up, for instance - it was already there when I got them. Or how a cell phone app can appear on a graphing calculator. How it knows if someone else is looking. How it can differentiate between identifying information and general personal information. How, even on my burner phones, it knows when I've typed my real name.

Not to mention the headaches and hallucinations. Our brains can't be hacked, Naberius. I'm not sure what to make of that, it seems like something out of a movie or video game.

As for meeting in physical space...theoretically, yes. I have reason to believe my brother has it, too. But if we can't post identifying information, and we can't show the app to anyone, how could we know how to find one another?

⚔ Naberius 1/??

[1in_perfection]

You're welcome; we have the same goal of gathering information. It makes sense to aid the other in this.

[That gets typed fast enough. But the rest... has a noticeable delay. Some one appears to be very reluctant to continue in tis conversation. But eventually, a new message shows up.]

⚔ Naberius 2/2

[1in_perfection]

As for the rest.

There's a certain phrasing I've heard in psychology classes... that in a rational world, if one's reason cannot be applied to a situation, it is not the world itself at fault, but the person's mind. Some angle that hasn't been considered yet, or has been blocked via a shared psychological stress. If we're in the same area, that could be likely.

[...Or. There's the other option. That it isn't a flaw in perception, but a flaw in the mind itself. But she hesitates in typing that. Tries to and deletes it several times. There's no way she can type and send, without wondering if that means her own mind is being affected.]

I don't want to claim anything more than that theory. But... at the same time, I'm running out of options on how to classify this. And it makes more sense than dismissing reality itself.

And I'm sorry; I had a notion on how to meet in physical space, but it's escaped me at the moment.

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

I have few remaining ideas, outside of the ridiculous, but right now the most likely thing...also hinges on the idea that everyone is in Eddan. I can't discern a purpose, but it connects more of the pieces than anything else I've considered.

I'm still putting the theory together, though. I don't want to call it solid until there's a little more weight to the patterns I noted.

Keep thinking. There has to be a way around it somehow.

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: Not bad.

Luci: Some of you are smarter than you look.

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

[He leans back for a second. Well now. What's this?]

A star. That's a new one. And you seem to know more than the rest of us, too. Is that because you do?

[Admin located?]

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: What do you think, kid?

☸ Astaroth

[kokuyoyo]

49: It looks like you've already run into Luci. Well, that saves me the trouble- I was going to mention them since I didn't see them covered in your notes.

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

Luci has appeared before, then? I must have missed it.

Current theory is that Luci is an administrator of some kind - probably what the star means. Which means the wheel, being rarer, probably indicates some kind of additional powers or benefits compared to the swords.

I'll try and get what information I can out of Luci, but I doubt they're going to let much slip.

[kokuyoyo]

49: Yesterday. A Vassago made a post and that's when I saw them first respond.
49: I don't think I saw them on the initial post when the app first started up, but there were a lot of people and I ended up preoccupied that night.
49: I might have missed something.

☸ Eligor

[kouteipenguin]

10: This is good information. Thank you for compiling all this!
10: But does it know things we've never told anyone, ever? It has to know these things somehow. I don't like being stalked by anything but I can't quite believe these are psychic. How is it getting all of what it knows?

⚔ Marchosias

[transient_specter]

92: Magic.
92: Shitty magic.

☸ Eligor

[kouteipenguin]

10: You really believe in magic?

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

I don't know how much it knows. What it censors seems to be limited to personally identifying information. Jobs, clubs, ages, names, probably addresses and so on. What really gets me is how it can know these things on phones that don't have that data.

I hesitate to say magic or ESP, too. The only other thing I can come up with is mass government spying and other activity. It's more believable, but that means there's a good chance of there being even more to this. This wouldn't happen without a purpose.

☸ Eligor

[kouteipenguin]

10: I guess there's the way to test that one. If we say things that no one would know, so there's no way it's in some database somewhere?
10: Problem is though who's going to do that. I don't want to. I doubt anyone else does either.

⚔ Marchosias 1/2

[catchthishand]

[ Romulus, desperate for any distraction from his current, incredibly dry history text book, is quick to switch to his phone when it signals a new batch of messages.

Unfortunately, it's that Shax guy with an incredibly long list of incredibly boring information.

...information that mentions an email. Huh.

Scrolling down, Rommy scans through the responses, then glances over at Lonan, who's been tapping away for a while now.

Alright. ]

Marchosias: 29: nerd

2/2 [action]

[catchthishand]

[ The one word is all the warning Lonan gets before Rommy grabs his nerf gun, twisting to snipe his twin from across the room. ]

[text and action] ⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

Hu

[That's it. That's all he gets out before a nerf bullet startles him out of his thoughts. It's probably pretty funny to see him drop his device - and there's Shax's half-typed message sent by accident - and whip around.]

What was- ...Nerd? Really?

⚔ Marchosias

[draculabackwards]

Thank you for compiling this information. The only thing I have to add is that the user name used the most often is this one.

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

I'll try to take a tally of the usernames used and see if there's any pattern, but the chat moves so quickly that might be difficult. I've seen some people using numbers, I assume that's to differentiate?

⚔ Marchosias

[draculabackwards]

I believe that is correct, Shax.

☸ Andrealphus

[connivingbird]

And.... what? That's it? No other observations, call-outs or claiming that we're all going to sacrificial subjects the next time that murdering cult decides to do some killing?

Maybe that's how people get picked to be murdered - through this app!

⚔ Shax

[onlythankyou]

Well you're certainly not the only one thinking of that, if you're asking me. I have some ideas, but I was listing out things I've observed that have at least some standing room.

I don't have anything but theories to go on to blame the government.

☸ Andrealphus

[connivingbird]

It's easy to blame the government, but I doubt the government is this good at hiding anything.