evasives: (155)
Cᴀssɪᴀɴ "ᴘᴀʀᴀɴᴏɪᴅ ɢʀᴀɴᴅᴘᴀ" Aɴᴅᴏʀ ([personal profile] evasives) wrote in [community profile] meadowlark2019-12-23 10:06 pm

@cassian.andor

I want to talk about Riverstone, among other things, as they relate to us being here, as Displaced. My apologies over the length.

I think this company has its hand in the pot here, in New Amsterdam, far more than it lets on. This will tie into the other major corporations in the city, which I will briefly expound on for the newer arrivals.

Giles Bell: biomedical advancements and wetware surgeries
Pulsar: space exploration and expansion
Vyonation: technology and data security

Riverstone is another giant corporation, though it is based out of New Beijing. It has offices here in New Amsterdam, and it works with the three major corporations present. All of them are deeply intertwined and connected, far more than they let on. Just assume corruption on every level, it is easier.

I know many of us were preoccupied in New Beijing with a certain AI, but I spent my time elsewhere. They are known as a media company, but their influence is everywhere - you cannot go far in New Beijing without Riverstone's hand at play. Their initial foundation was based around being an entertainment company that bankrolled robotics and artificial intelligence, but their goals were moreso to find a way to counteract AIs. They had no interest in living alongside AIs, so much as wanting to use them for human advancement.

The Ling family has had control of this company for over 500 years. They work primarily in entertainment on the front side, but they have their hands in many pockets including: a rival car company to Pulsar's, neural implants and cyberkinetics, and they have invested in biological and environmental sciences.

Here is where there is an important tangent.

There were a series of earthquakes in September 2510, half a year before the first of the Displaced were dropped off in New Amsterdam in June 2511. September of 2510 saw massive power outages, and at first it seemed to be located in cities such as New Amsterdam, New Oslo, and New Venice - but these earthquakes hit on a more global scale, and given the scattered locations, I do not think a natural occurrence is the most likely explanation. Several cities were better prepared, some were completely surprised and suffered for it. There was no warning for this earthquake, no natural signs of build up. The reported epicenter is off the coast of state of Washington, in the former North America - which is a different continent from where we all live now. A facility 100 miles east of New Omsk first reported the seismic activity, but a month later it was closed. New Omsk is roughly 3000 miles east from New Amsterdam, between here and New Beijing. Further details about this entire mystery quake are vague, details missing. The reports have gone unquestioned.

The curious part about this comes from Riverstone. It seems they were prepared for an outage, halting projects in preparation. They were given no explanation except to prepare for spotty services. Someone in this company knew what was happening. I discovered this while in New Beijing, but I am still looking into the nature of what kind of projects.

From [Bad username or site: ren @ amamiya], we have Project Spinetail. They existed in the Marianas Trench, a location in the Pacific Ocean which is off the coast of New Beijing and New Tokyo.
[ give him a break, he's not from earth! maybe others aren't either and need all this geography stuff noted! ] They were working there in September 2510, but the project was halted. Further details are unclear.

September 2510 is a significant date. I have reason to believe we, as the Displaced, may have already been on this planet at that time, and the reason involves a deeply invasive spinal surgery wrapped up in heavy power outages. Given the success and competence of the medi-units - which can literally bring someone back from the brink of death - a spinal surgery of this nature would likely have only been completed as a result of power loss to a medi-unit. This is something we saw when Cassius set forth the EMP and disrupted New Amsterdam exponentially. People in medi-units at this time died or were further damaged. The spine was entirely replaced by cyberkinetics, a field both Giles Bell and Riverstone have their hands in. Through El I have discovered the spine came first before the neural implant, which is not standard to this world, and that it was likely meant to be hidden. I believe this surgery was necessary due to the massive outages from the September 2510 quakes, as there have been no other significant outages that line up with this spine's existence. The cyberkinetics were not known at the time of arrival, their existence was later confirmed by [Bad username or site: jyn @ erso] after seeking unrelated medical attention.

This is a blanket statement that I will not talk about my sources and risk losing any of them. My investigations here are ongoing. You do not have to believe me, skepticism is healthy, but I am going to put what I have found out there regardless. I am sure we all have our own interests. It would be smart to pool them.

Related to corporate politics and the upcoming election, it seems there are several names that come up quite often in connection to Jovavich - the head of R&D at Pulsar and one of three running for governor of New Amsterdam. Mariana, Larkin, Johann, and Soto. See the notes from [Bad username or site: jyn @ erso] below. Johann is our biggest mystery of the four.

As a final aside, I have reports that Giles Bell is soon releasing a new drug trial after receiving a large subsidy from the UN. It supposedly comes with health risks and hazy research. I am not sure if we have anyone left who still works for Giles Bell, but it might be something to look into - especially given the state we tend to arrive in as Displaced.
realists: (ro » gears working)

@jyn.erso

[personal profile] realists 2019-12-24 03:57 am (UTC)(link)
Marianna Webster-Doyle is Jovavich's personal assistant. She wears glasses she doesn't need, Pearl says it's fashion.

Olivia Larkin is Jovavich's second-in-command at Pulsar and expected to succeed her if she's elected as governor. She's smart and works hard, but there have been whispers that Pulsar might look for someone else to take over to Jovavich despite this going against her wishes. Guess she isn't as naturally brilliant as Jovavich.

Hanzo Soto is the CMO at Pulsar. He is in charge of making Jovavich's space projects marketable. Good luck with Jupiter.

No idea who Johann is. No names came up related to Pulsar at all and when I looked for the JPG from the emails that Cassius provided for [Bad username or site: hope @ mikaelson] and [Bad username or site: peter @ benjamin] nothing came up as related to Jovavich.


[ she attaches the email in question, linked from peter's original post where it was mentioned. ]
forcevisions: (tlj_270)

@kira.solo

[personal profile] forcevisions 2019-12-24 04:15 am (UTC)(link)
I work in the robotics division of Riverstone's New Amsterdam location.

If you need access to something to continue your investigation, let me know. I've earned a lot of goodwill there.


[ she's not sharing how because she's not interested in the questions that might come with it, and it's ultimately personal. ]

Can you explain what you mean regarding this spinal surgery more? What spine came before the implant, and what does it have to do with the Displaced?
impede: (I'm too far along in it.)

@goro.akechi

[personal profile] impede 2019-12-24 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
You'll have to forgive Ren for the shortness of his answers, but I want to add more to what he received from Cassius.

The information he got was as he described, but there were two "names" noted within the documents, clearly shortened for a reason. The names? JH and JPG.

JH are the very same initials that were held by the mysterious leader in Zerzura. Yes, James Henries. In our world, James Henries is long deceased. I believe someone may be using this as an alias for some reason, though I can't fathom why.

JPG comes up again, as Jyn noted. That means JPG is linked not only to Project Spinetail but to Katelin Jovavich.

For any newcomers, many of us were drawn to a mysterious parallel world called Zerzura at the beginning of December. In that world, the governing body worked hand in hand with a scientific figure called Project Spinetail. They were one and the same. We were brought there because of the mysterious blue energy that was said to be capable of "saving" Zerzura, while the world we stand in now is surely dying. A side effect of being there was that many of us began to think we were a "part" of Zerzura: born and raised and desperate to protect it. The world itself altered to accept this change within us, rather than being surprised by it.

I believe there are answers in whatever Zerzura held, just as there were answers in those dreams that everyone talks so much about. Just as there are answers in those earthquakes.

Unfortunately, I wasn't "freed" early enough to experience the dreams.

There are two other standing questions. Why would we be held from before September 2510 to June 2511 at the earliest, and are we being released in batches? Or is something else at play?

Furthermore, what of the supposed killed lifeform?
Edited 2019-12-24 04:23 (UTC)
forcevisions: (i do it all the time)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2019-12-24 04:32 am (UTC)(link)
That would fit with the fact that those dropped off in November had been seen in June, previously.

[ They're being held in a facility, just like those found in November had been. ]

Are you talking about a surgery done on a Displaced's spine?

[ That's the piece she's missing. The people in surgery during the EMP were obviously native to the world — but his oblique reference to "a spinal surgery" seems to be the indirect link that has him tying that experience to the experiences of the Displaced.

But if it was done on one, was it done on all of them? Was it related to the earthquakes? She feels like the need for a spinal surgery introduces some other questions that are distracting.
]
forcevisions: (i just need you)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2019-12-24 04:52 am (UTC)(link)
Do you believe that surgery was a response to something done to the Displaced since we've been here?

[ A disaster, an attack, something that caused many of them to be injured or experimented on further than any of them had realized previously? ]
watcherless: (pic#7284874)

@faith.lehane

[personal profile] watcherless 2019-12-24 05:05 am (UTC)(link)
How's a warehouse sound?

[ She hadn't told Laura or Ren out of spite, but this is way over her head. Faith attaches an address to the far edges of the city, one that Cassius gave her information about following the New Beijing mission. ]

It was gutted after the first of us got "freed," and it's where the June transport was heading.

It was busy — construction happening — around November 2510 to April 2511.
Edited 2019-12-24 05:06 (UTC)
variate: (Sneaky.)

@ren.amamiya

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-24 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
If JPG is coming up again, that means that there's one person at the facility that either isn't dead, or like you said, someone using that name as an alias.
If it's the first one, then how? If it's the second, then why?
variate: (j: Down to kokomo.)

@ren.amamiya

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-24 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
There were more of these messages that Cassius sent out, weren't there? These weren't the only ones.

[ the ones that Jyn attached. ]
realists: (ro » figuring)

[personal profile] realists 2019-12-24 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
[ she also attaches ianto's spreadsheet ]

Those were the ones compiled on Peter's post. The others weren't relevant to my research.
heliophilous: (106)

@marcos.diaz

[personal profile] heliophilous 2019-12-24 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
So, when you said you were looking into things, you weren't kidding, were you?

( this is a lot of information and even right now, marcos is still trying to digest all that's been said. )

The drug trial, you have anything else on that? Would they stoop to using human subjects, you think?
forcevisions: (i just got too lonely)

@kira.solo

[personal profile] forcevisions 2019-12-24 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
What if it really is James Henries?
One of the messages Cassius sent out during the EMP referenced a man who'd been spotted at all sorts of different times. Over the span of a hundred years, and he always looked the same.
Edited 2019-12-24 19:21 (UTC)
variate: (Smell ya later.)

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-25 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 🎶 ]

Thanks.
I keep wondering what was the point of sending us these.
Maybe we don't know yet.
variate: (God's up for a real fuckin surprise.)

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-25 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
What's more likely?
He was there during Spinetail and it's said that everyone died.
He had an obituary.
Do you think this person is JH?
Edited 2019-12-25 20:53 (UTC)
forcevisions: (you were my versailles at night)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2019-12-25 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it's worth considering, given our own powers. It would be a mistake to limit our thinking to what we think makes sense.

[ They're dealing with the power of gods, arguably. ]
variate: (Shut up words.)

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-25 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)
If you're considering, then we have to consider the source, too.

[ Cassius. ]
forcevisions: (i just got too lonely)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2019-12-25 09:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Fair.

[ Hard to argue with that. Rey thinks Cassius is an absolute monster. ]

El could verify, since supposedly this was a forum post.
variate: (Oh shits)

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-25 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
There's still the question of why.
realists: (ro » startle)

[personal profile] realists 2019-12-25 09:48 pm (UTC)(link)
For all we know Cassius' intel is a mindless duck chase disguised as currying favor with the Displaced.
variate: (Shut up words.)

[personal profile] variate 2019-12-25 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
It's something we have to keep in mind.
We still don't know "why."
heliophilous: (076)

[personal profile] heliophilous 2019-12-26 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

It hits home, is all. I'm almost tempted to see if I can volunteer just to get an inside look. No idea how I'd do it but I bet I could figure it out.

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