loading...

[recollecters]

Hi, everyone! There's a fairly high level anomaly coming up which we did our best to damp down, but please be careful! It should be safe as long as you're cautious and don't take any unnecessary risks. Also, R&D gave us more of those poll results (I'm not sure why we're doing this by poll? I'd rather just spend all our resources on blue) so we fixed a few things! Also also, Maurice and I programmed a really fun game!! You don't have to play if you don't want to but Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday sooooooo! Please take care and try to stay safe, okay? Joanne Wiseman Technician 2nd class Retrspec Incorporated As of this post characters will find their application decked out in cheerful Halloween colors, and their userpics in a randomized (work safe) costume. Since this is Joanne's work, however, there is a very visible and easy option to turn off Halloween Mode if characters would prefer to use the usual application. She's helpful like that. The biggest feature of Halloween Mode is the Trick or Treat function. When speaking to others, users who are asked "Trick or treat?" will have the option to give a treat. If they do, a virtual candy will be gifted to the other user. If they do not, the user who asked the question will have the option to play a "trick". Tricks are fairly harmless and include: vandalizing a userpic with animal ears or noses, choosing a new color/design scheme for the other user's application, making the other user play a round of a cutesy halloween maze game to get back on the application, playing a song of the user's choice at the nefarious non-candy-giver, or similar very easy things. None of these effects last over ten minutes. This is one of the methods to earn a freebie memory for the month. You must have 5 threads with at least 5 comments each (25 comments total) playing the trick or treat game! This can be done on this post or in inboxes or wherever there is a network. Also as of this post: -Normal oranges exist alongside the dancing variety! -For the color BLUE: Media as a whole and NPCs begin using the names for the color again. Songs and books regain the ability to say the words appropriately, and NPCs acknowledge the color as real. -For the color GREEN: Photographs begin to regain this color. Text of this color also becomes visible again in books and online. Please feel free to use this post as a network mingle. Every toplevel can be considered a new post, and threadjacking is permitted. No NPC response will be given. Usernames are the character's full real AU names, not aliases or chosen nicknames or usernames, and seemed to have filled themselves in; nothing characters do can change or obscure their names currently.

Comments

[standalonehuman]

It gave me a little game with bats flying on the screen! I had to catch them all before the app would start again.

[toobigtohandle]

Oh. That doesn't sound too bad.

[standalonehuman]

I guess that's what we get out of a game from Joanne and Maurice instead of Jim. They're nice.

[toobigtohandle]

... I don't know who these people are. I've heard their names a few times, but that's it.

[He is not really with the program as far as Retrospec employees are concerned.]

[standalonehuman]

Oh! I'm sorry.

So, Maurice Fitzwilliam is their Intern. He seems to be in charge of the mail room, and sending out the packages that people get in the mail. I didn't get the chance to ask him where the items originally come from that he sends. He lives in the Retrospec building, but he seemed to be at a different physical location in August.

Joanne is one of their lower-level technicians, she's pretty young, I'm actually not sure if she's 18 yet. But she was one of the people that activated the weapons protocol that let us fight back against the monsters at the end of August. She was briefly picked up by one of the 'unreality twists' and we got her out of there to bring her back to the Retrospec building.

[toobigtohandle]

.... So they're kids? They have kids working for them?

[standalonehuman]

<font face="courier new”>Short answer yes. Long answer, I get the feeling they’ve been living with Retrospec for a long time, but only started picking up duties and working recently. Maurice seems to need some support to do his job, Joanne mentioned she had never done the weapons protocol on her own.</font>

[toobigtohandle]

... What do you mean, they've been 'living with Retrospec'?

[standalonehuman]

Maurice lives down there, we saw his quarters in the building. I expect that Joanne does the same, probably because it was her sister also working with Retrospec. Maybe when Janet got hired, she wouldn't go without her sister. Since you seem to have to leave everyone else behind. And it took time before Joanne was old enough to really help.

[toobigtohandle]

... Who's Janet? And why would you need to leave everyone behind to go work for a tech company?

[Well, he knows they're not 'just' a tech company by now, but he still understands next to nothing regarding those people ad what it is they actually do.]

[standalonehuman]

Oh. I suppose I'm doing this all out of order.

When we search for Retrospec employees, we can't find any public record of them. No previous addresses, no property rights, nothing. We've staked out the Retrospec building before, since we could tell that their data was actually coming from inside the building, we assumed the employees were there, too? Over a month, no employees entered or left that building.

So when we went inside in August, and found Maurice's quarters? He lives on site. And he can't leave, for some reason. We don't know why. Currently we think it's because they would either forget everything, or that they would draw too much of the unreality to themselves.

Janet Wiseman was actually the first Retrospec employee to contact any one of us. Human Resources. Currently Janet Halloway, though, because we heard she got married to Jim Halloway, Research and Development.

They're jerks.

[toobigtohandle]

Professor Izunia told me a little about ti and the trouble it caused when people complained at first.

But what you're describing sounds like a cult, not a tech company. And if these people draw unreality to themselves, whatever that is, doesn't that mean they are like us?

[standalonehuman]

Is that really what we're doing, though? We can interact with the unreality, the twists, and I'm assuming that's how we got those temporary powers and weapons. But it's like they need to keep something constant (themselves?) in order to affect anything else?

I just. There was some reason why they couldn't just go in themselves.

[toobigtohandle]

They could have been afraid to die. I mean, isn't it convenient that we, who would have loved not to be involved in any of this, ended up being sent to repair what they messed up?

[He says 'we' but he didn't get to do much of anything last time and he is very salty about that.]

[standalonehuman]

If that's their motivation, I can't really fault them.

We did it, though. We succeeded. And I know some people were tossing around ideas that this might have been Retrospec's half-handed way of recruitment. So I don't know.

I don't feel like I could just abandon them to danger any more than I could the other people in this city, though.

[toobigtohandle]

What do you mean, recruitment?

And given what they're putting us through, you'll excuse me for not putting them on the same level as the people who have to suffer through the effects of whatever they're doing.

[standalonehuman]

It was just an idea someone had, based on the idea that people who have higher 'security clearance' with Retrospec seem to have more information, and are affected by the unreality more.

I understand. You're not alone in that regard. But I can't ignore that they're people, probably trying to do what they think is right. Not going to save them from eventually paying for their crimes. But, I think I get it.