Conversation · Frequency Fireplace

This old fireplace is covered in lines drawn in blue and red marker, the mesh spreading over the stone like blood vessels on alabaster skin. It looks ghostly and strangely ancient.

A diagram for summoning some time-forgotten being? The symbols seem very esoteric.

The whole thing resembles Kedran mosaic tiles. Very Pisantic.

What am I looking at?

Radio frequencies, it seems. UKV123.6, UKV123.7, UKV123.9... some written notes too. Sparse and cryptic.

Radio frequencies for what?

Unclear. It looks like a cardiovascular system, split into veins and capillaries. Very advanced.

This must be an elaborate piece of art.

You think so? The web is comprised of radio stations. All lead back to one red heart, titled: The Game Master Frequency. A note says: 'This one can listen in on any station it wants?!'

Looks like a surveillance programme...

They must have had massive airwidth. These things don't come cheap.

Wait, who's the Game Master?

Someone very important.

The leader of a massive on-air game built by these people.

A conductor for the hundreds of story threads that pass through the Game Master's Frequency.

If it's a game, then who's playing?

Whoever decides to call in to a call-in station, it looks like.

A list of names under the stations suggests people across six isolas would be playing: Mundi, Insulinde, Katla, Graad, Samara, and even Iilmaraa.

All of this gone, left unrealized.

There's no way a little basement studio working here could pull anything like this off.

"My god..." The lieutenant leans closer, his finger tracking the maddening rhizome. "It's as if the less money they had, the more ambitious their project became."

"Why do you say that?"

"The schedule." He nods at the calendar on the chalkboard, wiping his marker-stained fingers clean. "I know doom when I see it -- the company was running out of funding."

What else? (Squint at the lines.)

Nothing. It's just lines on marble, an echo from times long gone. No one has used the fireplace in ages.

"Mhm. The cost of airwidth alone must have been huge."

"Exactly." He nods at the calendar on the chalkboard, wiping his marker-stained fingers clean against his jacket. "This schedule -- I know doom when I see it. The company was running out of funding."

So we're dealing with something medical here?

Of course... (Narrow your eyes.) The anatomy of the curse.

Perhaps... The web is comprised of radio stations. All lead back to one red heart, titled: The Game Master Frequency. A note says: 'This one can listen in on any station it wants?!'

Hold on, how do I know what Kedran mosaic tiles are supposed to look like?

History classes. Students with their textbooks open, studying the roots of our civilization. Those aquarelle-blue tiles looked beautiful in the sun.

[Leave.]