Timeline of Events in the System Shock Universe

[6743d6ba9b68fZygo]

"27 Verrelli-03.MAR.72 Sender: Jill Verrelli Patch Trafficker We have had a minor setback with cracking the craze ring.  The  trafficking suspect committed suicide in her cell before we could  interrogate her.  Incidentally, many of the prisoners have been  getting patches, so we think a guard might be in on it.  I recommend  a search of the cells to uncover any stashes they might have there.   trafficker committed suicide in cell.   recommend search of detention cells for craze stashes. "

Only exists in cybstrng.res and not used in game so far as I am aware (certainly not voiced).

[6743d6ba9b9d6Enchantermon]

Ah, that would explain it. Thanks.

[6743d6ba9bb20Kolya]

Ah-ha, thanks for clearing that up, Zygo.

[6743d6ba9bccdDrew]

A lot of the dates in SS2 seem kind of unlikely to me. So the shuttle stays on a strange alien planet, carrying the captains of both starships, for five days, then it takes a full eight days to unload "hundreds" of eggs into hydro, and no one seems to know anything about it until the 6th of July, at which point everything goes completely to hell in less than a week, whereupon the universe is saved by you and no one else in the space of less than a day? That seems very off to me in several ways. I can't find fault in the timeline itself, these are all based on the dates in the logs, it just looks improbable. There might be a little space for wiggle room if you factor in things like when certain key figures were turned (miller, Maloc, Turnbull to a lesser extent), when the monkeys first started reacting to the infestation, and when the first appearances of hybrids and other creatures were noticed. I can do the legwork on these things and post the findings later as I have no life to speak of.

Oh, by the way: the SS1 log about the drug traficer was in fact voiced. It's log114. I can upload it somewhere if people can't find it on their own.

[6743d6ba9c16aDrew]

Okay, so after trawling through the logs and their order, a few things jump out at me as being, for lack of a better word, odd. (Yes, I'm fully aware that this is just a game; I find it very compelling and a great deal more detailed than the plot of most games, so I look at it with a sharper eye. That's all it is. What? Stop looking at me like that. I SAID STOP! )

The Bayliss-Polito log asking about your memory restoration is, in fact, on the sixth. This would mean that Goggles has been unconscious for some time already, else Bayliss wouldn't have any idea who Polito was even talking about. The only evidence of Shodan's influence up to that point is the Polito log on the 4th, and that only because the log is abruptly cut off. It's possible, in fact quite likely, that Shodan's control at that point only extended to Polito's local terminal, as I kind of doubt an AI expert who already doesn't trust them would start playing around with an alien one without putting some pretty serious security precautions up. The first contact Shodan makes to anyone is to Marie, on the 11th, and I can't see her influence on the plot at any other point until then. I like to believe that this means Polito waited until the 10th to release Shodan, out of desperation, then realized that either she wouldn't succeed, or she would and that would be worse. Hence the suicide. It makes a bit more sense than the idea that Shodan, who is not known for her patience, would hang about quietly preparing to make her presence known for almost a week while the Many grow more and more powerful and start subverting control of Xerxes for their own. Shodan needs the sim units reprogrammed so it makes little sense to me that she'd quietly sit around waiting while Malick brings them out of her reach. Also, the Many themselves don't seem to be aware of her presence until after the 11th.
Bloom was taken on the third, Loesser noted the disappearance on the 5th and saw the first midwife working on the eggs on the 8th. Murdoch mentions the swarm eggs on the 9th and the biomass/worms are first mentioned by Delacroix on the same day. According to Rebecca, people started disappearing since deck 3 was cleared, so we can assume the first hybrids started showing up soon after. What's interesting is that according to Watts's log, Watson had been infected "since returning from the surface of Tau Ceti Five" yet dies on the 7th; meanwhile Turnbull's infection takes just a few hours. I don't understand why. It's possible the transformations all take a great deal of time as the break between the two logs from her are about 4 days, and Korenchkin kept calling for more victims at least up until the 7th. Korenchkin himself spends a lot of time doing nothing; the first log you here from him where he's acting like an annelid slave is the 28th, though he has obviously been infected since, at least, the 20th. This would go a great deal to explain why it took so long for things to erupt into violence, yet how quickly the Many aserted control once it started.
Malick hacks into the sim units on the 6th, a day after they start shooting people. However, the Yount log makes mention to it having taken "12 hours to get it online the last time." So it's possible someone else had been enslaved the day before, which would explain what caused the turrets to go nuts--but not why, really.
A lot of people seem to be very much out of the loop; almost everyone who's not involved directly in either helping or hindering the Many's takeover seem to not even be aware that it's happening. Sanger is warned of the danger she's in on the 5th and appears to take it to heart, as you don't see anything from her until the 10th. By contrast she seems to have been one of the smarter ones; though Rebecca mentions "a kind of gloom hanging over everybody" on the second, apparently a few people didn't get the memo. Watts is still acting like nothing's wrong, despite his own patient's unexplainable death, and expecting to chill out with his pals on the Rec deck after his ill-fated autopsy. Bronson's martial law notice goes out on the 8th, but apparently not everyone got the memo as Yount isn't killed until the 9th and Rosenberg is still hanging around making a nuisance of himself. Even on the 10th, when Watts, Watson, Bronson, Polito, three Malones, Cortez and his staff, Malick, the Younts, and probably Sanger and Miller and Bloom as well as several unnamed extras have all been killed, Rosenberg is still acting like nothing is particularly out of the ordinary. Either information really has a terrible time traveling on this ship, even with the modern conveniences of video email, or he's the most oblivious person ever. Then again, so is Rebecca, as she doesnt' seem to know anything more than people are shooting each other by the 11th, and doesn't kill her first spider until the 12th.

[6743d6ba9c29dEnchantermon]

FYI, I went through and fixed several spelling errors, mostly in the names, to make it easier to read.
Interesting observations. You may be on to something, though I don't have the time to pick through this very well. I'm sure others will chime in, though.

[6743d6ba9c43dDrew]

Fair enough. Sorry, thought I'd made sure to get them all right, guess I missed a few. In a bit of a rush at the end, I basically wrote the things that occurred to me as I read then tried to edit the divergent thoughts into a cohesive narrative before slapping it up there.

Oh, yeah, since I can't edit my posts: the "they" in the sentence where I talk about Malick hacking the sim units was supposed to refer to the turrets. Sorry. That's what I get for moving sentences around and not checking for context afterwords.

While I'm on the subject, I still have no idea at all what a "sim unit" is supposed to do. Is it a giant Xerxes backup, or something? Like a 22nd century RAID aray? They're apparently really friggin' important as the many, Xerxes, the tech staff, a great deal of the fighting, Shodan, and you all spend a lot of effort in being the one controlling them, so you'd think that somewhere there'd be some sort of technobabbly explanation for what they do. Shodan mentions that the many's purpose for them is to "transform the meat of your dead coleegs into hunter-killer hybrids," and somehow overriding them with Malick's cards gives Shodan control over something, but that's about all the information I see on them anywhere.

[6743d6ba9c60aKolya]

TTLG: I never understood "sim units"
The reason they were offline before is probably just that the ship "wasn't ready for prime time", ie not properly tested.

You might need to take into account that the Many are a rapidly evolving species and given the new experimentation material on the VB this process could speed up even more. So while the first mutations might have taken days to complete, later ones could go considerably faster.
Regarding Korenchkin: He is transformed into a late highly evolved form, which takes more resources and possibly more time to finish.

Ultimately though this story was never written to stand such scrutiny. It's pretty good for a game plot, but it's not Stanisław Lem. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot of food for thought, but the themes it explores (transhumanism, individual vs group, technology as a religion, to name a few) are much more interesting than picking through the dates and details.

[6743d6ba9c97bEnchantermon]

Fair enough. Sorry, thought I'd made sure to get them all right, guess I missed a few.

It's cool.

[6743d6ba9cbdbDrew]

Thank you for editing all three of those posts together, hah. Also for the TLLG thread, some interesting theories there. I do understand what you're saying about it being meant to be  taken more as a thematic work than as a straight story, this stuff just really bugs me is all. To that end: "Simulation just *went* offline again; it took the 4 of us 12 hours *to get it up* the last time." If they were just dormant, it wouldn't explain either why they had installed giant computer cores on the ship without actually needing them, or why the log clearly makes reference to them being on at some point. Unless you're saying they just had a tendency to fritz up and down, which is fine. Only if they are, as seems to be the conventional wisdom, what does the chief numbercrunching for the FTD (somewhat explaining the outer growth of the many's biomass for the BOTM mission) you'd then have to wonder exactly what would happen to the ship if one or, God help them, all three went offline in the middle of a drive burn. Actually, this very possibility would explain the last line of "Christ, who would want to sabotage the sim units?" It doesn't answer his question, though. If the many's intention was to return to earth, one would think they wanted them functioning at peak efficiency for the trip home.

Fair point about the evolution process creating a more streamlined infection pattern; however, this would require the Many to birth new eggs at a rapid rate in order to spawn the new generation of ultrafast worms. Not that that isn't entirely conceivable, it just puts another wrinkle in the many's plans. As for Korenchkin, I'm fairly certain he is at that point a hybrid much like all the others on the 28th and around the time he's running around with a shotgun popping heads; it isn't until the 10th (?) that he becomes a rever. By the way, just as food for thought: I like to believe, and some SS2 literature hints at this, that the rumblers are unevolved psirevers and that Diego is in fact in the process of turning into a rumbler, when he's at his most unbalanced, and not a psi rever. As the Military commander, it would seem to fit him better, and I can absolutely see the many punishing him this way for fighting their influence so much.

[6743d6ba9d016Enchantermon]

. . . Diego is in fact in the process of turning into a rumbler, when he's at his most unbalanced, and not a psi rever.

Whether or not the Rumblers are the last step before the Reavers is certainly up for interpretation (though I doubt it), but Diego's was ultimately heading for Reaver-hood. One of his e-mails to Korenchkin mentions that the Many told him that he will "float through the air" and kill people "with [his] mind." Certainly sounds like a Reaver, and certainly does not sound like a Rumbler.

[6743d6ba9d125Drew]

Sure they tell him that, they tend to lie. And it's entirely possible they planned it then changed their minds later. Anyway, as you say, complete conjecture on my part, I just like the image of Diego as a rumbler while he's hulking out on the logs.

[6743d6ba9d329Enchantermon]

Sure they tell him that, they tend to lie.

Do they?

[6743d6ba9d4e4Brett B (Batt Spacenik)]

I guess some of the newest SS2 MODs (which actually track a progression of ships and facilities/colonies infected by the Many) will have inspired some smart folks to continue detailing a timeline beyond 2116 (time of the Von Braun). By the way, what "happened" after SHODAN was destroyed at the end of SS2? I guess the audiologs\etc of Christine Z's Ponterbee Station continue the story (the recovery of the escape pod and SHODAN's reemergence). What happens to our hero Soldier G65434-2 after he destroys SHODAN on the empty Von Braun? Does the UNN send out a ship of Grunts to clear remaining hybrids and eggs from the ship? If TriOp and the UNN invested a ton of money in the VB I bet they would like to use it again if it were "disinfected". (Like the company rep arguing against exploding the colony power facility in ALIENS).   

[6743d6ba9d62eNameless Voice]

Those aren't canon, so no, they don't belong in the timeline.

[6743d6ba9d728randy]

the person Sara is the real deal. Sara is listed as part of Looking glass quality assurance in the system shock 1 manual. I don't know where but i found it by installing the cd-rom version of the game and trying to run it. Thought you'd like to know.

[6743d6ba9d80fKolya]

We already established that fact on the previous page, but thanks.

[6743d6ba9dc81Ampersand]

Fair point about the evolution process creating a more streamlined infection pattern; however, this would require the Many to birth new eggs at a rapid rate in order to spawn the new generation of ultrafast worms.

Which is one area that having a simulator would certainly come in handy.  It doesn't exactly clear up the naming of the three sim units, but presumably the Many could use them to rapidly simulate generational changes and, on finding one they like, figure out what the genetic code is, and somehow apply that to new eggs.

[6743d6ba9e1c3Accoch63]

Fair point about the evolution process creating a more streamlined infection pattern; however, this would require the Many to birth new eggs at a rapid rate in order to spawn the new generation of ultrafast worms.

Which is one area that having a simulator would certainly come in handy.  It doesn't exactly clear up the naming of the three sim units, but presumably the Many could use them to rapidly simulate generational changes and, on finding one they like, figure out what the genetic code is, and somehow apply that to new eggs.

...and, wasn't this the entire point of the Many "absorbing" so many of the VB's crew?

Oh, by the way; I just noticed something interesting.

In System Shock 1, the player character's bogus employee number is #2-4601. This could possibly be a reference to the musical Les Miserables, where the main character's prisoner ID was 24601, a plot point that's referred to repeatedly.

[6743d6ba9e2c3Kolya]

Nice catch! I added the possible reference into the timeline.

[6743d6ba9e5cdEnchantermon]

In System Shock 1, the player character's bogus employee number is #2-4601. This could possibly be a reference to the musical Les Miserables, where the main character's prisoner ID was 24601, a plot point that's referred to repeatedly.

Yeah, that's a known reference. For the life of me, though, I can't remember where I read about it.

[6743d6ba9e8e4Ampersand]

...and, wasn't this the entire point of the Many "absorbing" so many of the VB's crew?

I believe that was a combination of their own twisted altruism, and not being able to do all that much with worms alone.

[6743d6ba9ea5bnickprax]

ehhh i know that everyone is going to call me a newb :p, but I was wondering how did SHODAN get onto the VB? I'm new to this universe and hadn't found out the answer

[6743d6ba9ed56unn_atropos]

A data fragment was found on Tau Ceti 5 and the landing team brought it to the von Braun.