piper90 | Entries tagged with ronald mcdonald

[ooc: probably goes without saying, the content of the document was provided by the mods]

"Greetings. As you may have noticed, while we were split in groups to find the shapeshifter we found some important clues. One being a Jorgmund document that was in the paper shredder. I took it to my room and spent my free time reassembling it in order to get any important information. I will quickly show you what it is about."

Price rapidly shows the reassembled document and then shares his screen: there's a picture of it. Part of the content is useless, but there's also something interesting.
( He also shows a transcript, which he reads out loud. )

"This content might be potentially important, and your input is welcome. I cordially invite you to keep the discussion civil. Thank you for your attention."

He switches from video to text to reply more comfortably.

piper90npcs

[That horrible alert sound goes off on all their communicators, and after three minutes, Richard Washburn shows up on the screen. He clearly hasn’t sleep, although he’s just as clearly doing his best to hide that fact.]

Good early morning, hires. Unfortunately, it seems like there’s been very little forward progress on identifying which of you is the shapeshifter, and just as little progress finding the body of whomever it’s impersonating. We’ve spoken with some of our foremost scientists and they believe with a significant degree of certainty that this Stuff creature can only impersonate child-friendly figures.

Some of you have petitioned me and have made compelling cases that no child would ever want anything to do with you, and as such I’m clearing you for release for an internal mission to find the body of the person who was replaced by the impersonator. The following people are cleared to leave…Mr. Price, Mr. Winchester, Agent South Dakota, Agent Washington, Ms. Burnham, Ms. Kerrigan, Alia, Agent Tucker, Mr. Loken, Ms. Haynes, Guts, and…Mr. McDonald.

Hopefully they’ll be alive still.

For the rest of you, it’s been pointed out to me that there are ways you may be able to examine each other and determine who among you is a shapeshifter, and that you may need to demonstrate powers or look at each other in person. As such, while the living quarters as a whole remain locked, you are all released from your dorms and may mingle with each other.

The higher-ups have gotten impatient with this entire thing, so if you haven’t identified the imposter in the next…[he checks his watch]…two hours, my hand may be forced and I may need to utilize your collars to see if we can use discomfort to force the creature to reveal itself.

Please continue to keep me updated.

piper90npcs

[In the middle of the night, when even the night watch shifts should be pacing through the dorm area, there’s a peal of noise from the communicators impossible to ignore or sleep through. It’s clearly an alarm of some sort, like tornado alerts back on Earth. It goes on for solid three minutes, long enough for everyone to move on from being woken by it to loathing it, before a message shows up on the communicators-

-and the doorways out of each of the dorms are sealed with a semi-translucent forcefield.

On the communicator screen, Richard Washburn shows up and straightens his tie.]

Hello, employees. Believe me, I’m not any happier about this midnight interruption than you are, but we’re currently in a state of – mild – emergency. I don’t want anyone to get overly excited, but until the situation is resolved, you will remain in your dorms. Depending on how long this takes, all activities scheduled for tomorrow morning have been suspended.

The reason for this is that we have an intruder in your living quarters. We have this footage from a few weeks ago.

[A new image shows up on the communicator: a security camera video of a Santa Claus with a line of the highest executive-level parents and their small children waiting to tell him their wishlist. A little girl in pigtails and a sparkly t-shirt of a Christmas tree hops up onto his lap.

“Ho, ho, ho!” Santa says, and he boops her nose. “Aren’t you a peach? Tell me, little one. What would you like for Christmas?”

“I want a big plastic spider!” the girl says excitedly.

“A creepy little child, aren’t you? Well, that’s just swell, because that’s my favorite flavor,” Santa says, and then – blurry on the security camera footage – transforms into a mass of black goo, latching onto the little girl’s face and suctioning to stay on. The child’s mother screams and yanks her daughter away, and the footage shows pure pandemonium as some parents lunge forward to help the mother with her daughter while other parents snatch their own children and start running. In all the chaos, the black goo vanishes.

Washburn flicks the footage away and reappears on the screen.]

Thankfully, there were no fatalities in this incident, and after we couldn’t find any evidence of the attacker, we assumed that it was a freak incident of the Stuff. However, there was recently another unsuccessful attack on a teenager by this same creature posing as one of the tutors on the Rig, and then again on another thankfully unharmed child disguised as another child, and then on another child under the guise of a children’s television show host named “Mr. Rogers”, and tonight-

[He takes a deep breath, annoyed, as if this is somehow the Hires’ faults.]

-tonight we found a security breach to your floor, and we have good reason to believe that the shapeshifter is posing as one of you.

We know this: we know it poses as figures appealing to children, so for obvious reasons, you won’t be allowed anywhere near any Jorgmund staff whatsoever until this is resolved. We know that its ability to disguise itself is relatively seamless. And we know that it preys on minors.

If you can determine who among you isn’t at all appealing to children, we can consider releasing you from your dorm and discussing next steps to search out whoever’s been replaced.

If this starts taking long enough that it jeopardizes the Jorgmund’s mission, we may start taking more drastic measures to ensure that we aren’t harboring any imposters.

I’ll keep you updated if you keep me updated.

morebetter

[ooc: Mac's opt-out post, as this thread will undoubtedly contain misogyny, alcoholism, homophobia, etc, is here.]

So it’s come to this. Some of you have reached out to me, and I don’t blame you, for dating advice. I am, after all, very experienced in scoring with women, and they usually find me pretty irresistible as well, as the walk-in clinic can attest.

Anyways. I used to have a system called the “M.A.C.”, a.k.a. “Move in After Completion”, where I’d help my buddy seduce a chick by pretending to be the booksmart friend and then when he ghosted her, I’d go comfort-bang her, but it turns out that that got really old after a while because they’d like, cry all the time, and women are already gross and whiny enough before they’re crying, and also she’s expect you to read her poetry or something and that’s really gay. So I dropped that one. I guess I recommend it if you’re really into getting snot all over your shoulder and pretending you give a ████, but that’s a weird kink, bro.

There’s also one I’m pretty sure works, which is breaking and entering into someone’s house to make sure they know that you’ve scoped out the weaknesses in their security system and thus, are a more securer person than whatever idiot originally installed it. That demonstrates your mastery of protecting them. If you do it in the middle of the night, and you don’t wake them up, you can use that time in the morning to do some pushups or practice your karate or something so that when they come downstairs and see you, their first thought is holy ████, that dude is RIPPED, and I’m going to let him into my body’s ████ areas immediately.

Finally, the best dating advice I can give is to lie. Lie about everything. The more you lie, the more mysterious you are. If you lie, for example, about being a secret agent fighting the KGB, and they start to ask you what that’s like, you can look at them very seriously and go [putting on a serious, dark, movie-style voice] “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you” and they’ll just swoon in mystery. You don’t even have to lie about cool stuff. You can pretend you have a car and then say [putting on a serious, dark, movie-style voice again] “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you” and they’re going to assume you drive a flying Lambo for the mob that goes to space or something, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing sexier than having sex with someone you don’t trust and know nothing about who says he’s gonna kill you.

Anyway, apply literally any of these, and you losers will be swimming in ████ by sundown.

( I’ve made a visual aid for the illiterates. )

greyaria

[Emily isn't wearing the ugly blue jumpsuit. She is instead wearing ugly blue scrubs, and judging by the background, she's in the Infirmary. And she's smiling. Emily is always. Smiling.]

Is there anyone out there with an injury or chronic medical condition that was untreatable in your home universe? I have robotics lab and medical access now. Come on by and we'll see about sorting that out! Or just come by for a checkup! I don't discriminate!

[She should probably set expectations properly, huh? Her good cheer goes from disconcerting to almost normal as she adds her caveat.]

The equipment is, hmm, vintage and I don't promise I can fix everything, especially if your biochemistry is out there compared to humans, but it seems like I'm from the future [she makes wiggly finger gestures, which are apparently supposed to signal...something] relative to quite a few of you, so that's an extra few centuries of medical knowledge. Might as well put it to good use!

morebetter

[OOC: Mac's a character who engages in a lot of bigoted opinions and behavior, which may come up in these threads. Please hit me up here if you have any must-avoid topics.]

[Anyone who knows Mac should be concerned that the expression on his face is unambiguously smug. His eyes are alight with that pseudo-manic “I have a great idea” energy that betrays that he does not, in fact, have a great idea, and in fact that any idea he stumbles across is all the worse for having his involvement. When he pops onto the network with the sleeves hacked off his uniform and a rubber ball he’s bouncing off some wall off the screen, he’s all grins, puffed chest, and unearned confidence.

(Un)fortunately or those who don’t know Mac, they’re about to find out exactly why they should be worried whenever he looks like he’s cracked the code.]

Ey-ooo, what’s up, ████? [The swear filter jumps in lightning fast - no seven-second delay here, baby - to bleep out the curse word and briefly smudge a black censored box over his mouth, as “bitches” is not an appropriate term per the Jorgmund Harassment Prevention Protocol.] I’m Mac, and you’re all really lucky I’m here. You’re welcome, you’re welcome.

[Thump, the ball goes off-screen before he fumbles it on the catch. It rolls somewhere off camera and for a moment he considers abandoning his announcement to go get it, then shrugs and returns to his speechifying.]

You’ve all noticed that this job sucks, right? I’ve got a whole list of complaints, but HR keeps telling me to put it in the suggestion box and I’ve put like five copies in and I’m starting to think I’m pretty sure that thing’s a shredder. That’s definitely not going to help us get better food or less itchy clothing or a shower situation where we don’t have to look at women being disgusting with their bodies.

So I’ve been doing some thinking, and I think I’ve come up with the perfect solution. Now, I’m a business-owner myself, so normally I’d be against this thing, but dudes? I really think we should unionize.

Think about it. Once you’re in a union, it’s a law that they have to give you vacations and can’t punish you no matter how bad you ████ up. You don’t even have to ████ up on accident - you can intentionally ruin everything and your employers can’t do ████ because it’s illegal. It’s basically Groucho Marx’s whole manifesto, right? From that book? Power to the people and all that stuff that’s really ████ inconvenient when it’s other people but way convenient when it applies to us right now.

Once we unionize, here’s some stuff that’s automatic. [He starts counting them off on his fingers.] Food that doesn’t taste like it’s older than we are. No more zap collars. Personal showers, you know, available at then end of the week it’d take to build them, I’m not expecting a miracle here. Casual day every day because the only people who benefit from a dress code are nerds. Honestly, there’s literally nothing to lose and so much to gain with a little cooperation.

Now, as the guy who came up with this idea, I think it’s only fair that union dues go to me. Now, I know what you’re thinking - Mac, none of us have cash! - but that’s okay. I’m a reasonable guy an I’m happy to take my lot in favors and gossip. [He wags a finger.] But it has to be interesting and maybe kind of blackmail-worthy. Boring rumors are even worse than regular rumors, because boring rumors are a ████ waste of time.

By the way? I’m doing this out of the goodness of my heart. It turns out I have a really convenient disability and in the eyes of the law, I’m completely untouchable. So chop-chop with the favors.

[This is, for the record, absolutely not locked from the Jorgmund’s eyes, despite Mac’s sincere beliefs that being a “security professional”, “bodyguard” and “impressively detail-oriented guy” has contributed to his planning here.]

pathkin

[The screens of the New Hires flicker with a text message. The image of a starburst briefly flashes on the screen, alone in an empty sky.]

[The screen that pops up changes the way the network interface usually looks. It makes it a bit more surreptitious, so that pencilneck looking over their shoulders would think they're using an innocuous data entry program. There's also a panic button in the corner that they can hit to shut their connection down early.]

[The program makes their comms connection even slower, since the network's already running at terrible speed, but at least it's discreet. And resources have been devoted to at least making the panic button shut down fast if they need it.]

[The post is a text post, and where the posters name should be it says: ┖⍟ϗϵ⸈₮αℜ]

Evening, ladies and gents and variations thereupon, the name's Lonestar.

None of us have all day and I'm not the type for melodrama about how big brother's eyes are watching, so I'm going to keep this to the point. I'm a New Hire like you and want us to get out of here as much as most of you all likely want to leave

With these internal shock collars, getting free is most likely going to be difficult. And a long-term, coordinated effort. But to coordinate, we need ways of communicating Jorgmund can't see.

I've created this program to let us encrypt and filter our conversations away from Jorgmund. It just auto uploaded and self-executed to your comms but you can quickly uninstall it any time if you need to be extra cautious.

[A link appears on the screen to some kind of drop box type interface, containing a file.]

That link will let you download the installation file so that it can be saved and dispersed by any New Hires to any future kidnapping victims even if I'm found out and killed.

Locked posts will have a small signifier noting they're locked, an innocuous interface that mimics a notepad application Jorgmund has on our comms, and a panic button to cut off the connection and boot you out of the interface in case a Jorgmund staffer is looking over your shoulder.

However, while it can encrypt our conversations, it can't mask overall network usage so we'll need to keep maintaining non-locked conversations about whatever inane topics make for good public discussion. The resources the encrypted posts use are minimal, so as long as unlocked traffic occurs, it should be able to mask our more discreet conversations.

[That means they must shitpost like their lives depend on it.]

I know that you have good reason to not be inclined to trust me, but the only reason I'm hiding my identity is so any potential snitches can't report me to Jorgmund so I get "fired."

Possibly out of cannon.

The encryption will let any of you go anon, too, in case people want to play spy and drop something useful that Jorgmund would get in a snit about. As much as it'd be helpful to all hold hands and sing happy songs, we don't know if anyone here might brown nose and snitch for their own benefit.

Anon posting and replies can only happen in locked post because Jorgmund doesn't have it enabled on our normal network posts.

Oh, also, there seems to be script for a swearing filter on normal network posts. In locked posts, you can say "fuck" all you want.