Phantom Sectors
We've all heard the rumors. (Rumors are treason, citizen.)
There's a sector called OUTDOORS, where everyone's free of the Computer's rule.
OSHA sector has the real Health and Safety manuals that HPD&MC don't want you to see.
If you could get to the Computer's main memory banks in %RT sector, you would have control of the whole Complex, and even High Programmers would bow to you.
OQW sector was abandoned long ago because mutants and traitors had melded their minds and bodies into its very superstructure itself. Even now, it sometimes rises up to consume unsuspecting sectors, binding them with its bone pillars and sucking down innocent citizens to feed its Nowhere Clones...
The ATL/NTS region was flooded by a faulty water treatment plant, but mutants still live deep in its depths, breathing water and hiding from Friend Computer's gaze.
And nobody knows what lies waiting in ??? sector.
It's a sad fact that, when you get too many citizens with too much free time and just barely too much education, they start thinking. Not just on what they should be thinking about, either, like 'how can I serve Friend Computer better?' or 'am I doing my job right?' or 'augh augh augh yes I admit it I'm a traitor and I deserve to be executed.' Instead, they take the limited knowledge they have, and try to extrapolate on it into things that are none of their business.
Thus are born the Phantom Sectors. Rumors, barracks legends, idle theories, and dreams of misguided hopes for traitors. Some, like the 'OUTDOORS Sector' rumor, are misinterpretations of actual facts that we all know all about, but which only make their way to the lower clearances as speculation and rumor. Others are exaggerations of the truth -- for instance, both ATL and NTS have suffered severe flooding at one point or another in their history, but both are quite functional now, and the sectors are in fact nowhere near each other.
Others are the result of citizens playing around with conventions. 'What if sectors aren't really limited to three letters each -- what if that's just all we're cleared to know?' Thus formations like OSHA, %RT, and ??? come into their heads, and descriptions are soon attached. The mythical supplemental sector XOR-I, often claimed to be the home station of the XOR-I/Ent_X-Press, is a similar case. (XOR is a pleasantly nondescript sector with large R&D electronic logic circuit factories, for the record.)
It is worth noting that XOR-I and ATL both showed up as destinations on the misfiled Sector_Decontamination_Request_429-79 form.
There is another type of Phantom Sector, though, a virulent rumor/meme that keeps on cropping up no matter how often we try to stamp it out. These are the sectors that only exist if you look at them right, that you can only reach by going through a certain door at a certain minute while holding a certain weapon, or that you can reach by diving from the highest point in XYZ sector directly towards its lowest, and speak a certain phrase just before you impact...
They don't exist. They never existed. They never will exist. And the properties ascribed to them are so mind-twisting that a clone of any sanity could never even imagine them. But they obsess certain minds, and twist them towards Neuro-Cascade_Failure...
And...
And...
And why am I writing this? I don't know what this is about. This is nothing to do with the Disaster. I had something I wanted to write... something important... If I could just remember...
Where am I? I was right here a moment ago...
There's something...
I don't...
Oh my clone, the shadows...
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NO INPUT FOR 65536 SECONDS; LOGGING CEASED
DISPATCHING CONTINGENCY MEDICAL TEAM; PLEASE STAND BY
KEN-U-RON-6 LOGGED OUT
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Commentary:
Dammit, Ken! You better not go missing on us! I'll be pissed if you actually found proof of a Phantom Sector and failed to take notes.
Excellent entry, aside from whatever mishap occurred at the end, there. The idle speculation about Phantom Sectors is in many ways similar to the notions of GAMMA_Clearance - they both posit the existence of things outside of the system as it is presented, but extrapolated from existing trends.
For what it's worth, Ken's mind seems to have been slipping even before the full-blown onset of mental fugue. Posit a doorway opening onto a winding corridor that leads to an unremarkable storeroom - but during specified times, if the energy signature of a particular type of weapon is detected in the hallway, panels shift up ahead, out of sight, causing the corridor to lead to an otherwise-isolated network of rooms instead. Whether or not such a thing exists now, it is well within the realm of technical feasibility, so claiming that "They never will exist" is leaping to conclusions which the author cannot possibly know, barring unregistered precognitive ability.
-- Err-U-DYT-9
I have bad news for you all. I've just been decanted and MemoMaxed. Ken-U-RON-6 has been declared officially missing.
The bizarre thing is that, judging by access records to his habitations, updates to his personal files, MemoMax refreshing regimen, and so on, it looks like he vanished during the K-L entry updates. Before he published the Naming_Conventions and Phantom_Sectors entries. Which raises the question of just where the heck he was, and what he was doing there.
I've looked into this in the little time I've had, and Drake-U, you'll be glad to know that despite his feud with your predecessor, I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with you at all. (Too subtle, for one thing.) But then -- who? There was a rather large file about Phantom Sectors on his terminal, that he'd obviously been working on since the start of the project -- but it had been overwritten with random ones and zeroes. I smell a coverup -- but frankly, given the number of Secret Societies and individual conspirators who've got something to hide from this project, it could be just about anyone.
I'm currently quite busy getting up to speed on current events and transferring all of Ken-6's assets into my own structures, but I'll try to get an entry in today if I can. No guarantees, but I'll do my best.
-- Ken-U-RON-7
Welcome back, Ken-U.
It has occurred to me that we've seen something resembling your predecessor's apparent fugue state before, quite recently, in another entry for this report. Witness Drake-U-LAH-1's reactions to reading the alleged Manifesto_Out_of_Space_and_Time. If we can believe Knok-U-OUT-6's report on the League_of_Extraordinary_Dadaists, then any sufficiently in-depth investigation of the contents of the MOST can lead to bizarre fugue states and irrational speech and behavior. If any of this is true, it may well apply to Ken-U-RON-6. Is there any MOST material recorded in his files?
-- Jan-U-ARY-31
I think you may be on to something, Jan-U. I of course don't know exactly what's in the MOST, having never been exposed to it -- but there's a few scraps that strike me as similar to Drake-U-LAH-1's logs, right up to the presumed moment of disappearance. Most notably, some expanded data on the legends of OQW sector, which I'd never heard of myself -- nor can I find any references to it in the sources I believe he was using. The Nowhere Clones, the Bone Terminals, the High Programmers of Blood on Thrones of Pallid Circuits, the Question that Will Unmake the Complex -- every bit of that sounds like what Drake-U-1 was writing about "They of Unspeakable_Treason."
Plus, he used the word 'd00d' at one point.
I'm still not entirely fond of what I've heard of your methods, Drake-U. But it looks like we may have common cause for concern this time...
-- Ken-U-RON-7
Damn straight. The mysteries of the Phantom Sectors have been an interest of mine for some time, and to think that Ken-U's extensive report on them might have... no, was cut short by miserable venom-spewing shadow-lurking Commie Mutant vermin makes my blood boil.
I demand first dibs on any captured traitors linked to this cover-up. It's about time I tested the M.I.C.