factoring | Homophonic: Kaveh

But why? Is it just... some kind of memorial gesture?

Hmm. I don't know if the people in charge are that kind. Should we be bringing these things to their empty graves?

Hah, that's true. I guess it's more reasonable to assume they're doing it to torture us instead.

So many of the things here are cruel. Did Nahida tell you about the messages we received?

She did, yes. [He sighs.] What do you make of them?

I can't decide how much I want to trust them.

Have you spoken to the reapers about them? Though, Nahida mentioned it might be better not to...

"Err on the side of caution when discussing anything that seems out of place" was what my message ended on. Reapers do say they're not on our side, which makes me reluctant to go speak to them about this.

Yes, that's a good point. [He sighs.] I wish we knew where these messages were coming from. It would make it easier to tell if they're hoaxes or not.

Right? The one I received was encoded, but I'm not certain all the others were.

You know--it's interesting, because the one Nahida and I received wasn't. Though admittedly, it was far less detailed. [Hmmm.] What kind of encoding was it?

It was a mirror alphabet, the Atbash cypher. Not a particularly difficult one, but it does force somebody to expend effort in translation. At a glance people might parse it as gibberish.

Hmmm. So, enough effort to make people look away if they aren't purposely searching for information, but not so much effort that it's fully a secret.

Difficult at a glance, and difficult for someone who doesn't know cyphers well. The Reapers did say the bosses both are and aren't paying attention to this game.

Mm. [He sighs.] And these don't seem to be addressed to us, either. It's more like we're intercepting them, somehow.

When I asked Kiichi about the rewards from missions, he said it was money.

It seems like the messages are what show up instead. I don't know if that's a glitch or something else.

[Hmmm. He frowns, thoughtful.]

He didn't seem particularly fazed when I showed him the first message, either. He assumed it was a message for the people in charge of the game that accidentally got sent to us. [So...] They must truly not know, then.

If it's not the Reapers, then who's the one keeping erased Players around? It doesn't seem to be management.

Someone in the middle, perhaps... or some third party.

[But that feels a little too much like wishful thinking, if he's honest. With the way things are, he's more inclined to believe this is manufactured.]

[She pauses and thinks about something before...]

Have you received any strange text messages?

The nonsense ones, you mean? Yes, a couple.

Did they have any particular theme to them?

Mine didn't, no. They were more coherent than some of the others I saw, though.

[HE DIDN'T GET ANY COMPLETELY UNHINGED EMOJI ART, FOR ONE THING.]

They seem so variable from what I've seen of them so far. It's so strange.

Do you think they have some connection to those other messages? Could they be codes as well, somehow?

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factoring - 2023-07-19 04:16 (UTC) - Expand