RUN: ORIENTATION PROCEDURE, PART 4
Sometimes a butterfly is just a butterfly...
Ok, so butterflies
Now, let’s talk Lepidopterology…they didn’t actually study butterflies and moths. I say “false advertisement”, someone call the BBB. #kidding. They sort of studied butterflies, it was butterfly art really. So here’s the scoop: early in the Bureau’s excavation timeline, they began noticing sites with embedded butterfly iconography. Harmless enough until someone (a Review Agent, no less) spotted something odd:
Checksums in the art files, you know, the ones recovered from archaeological sites. Well, that same checksum started popping up in narrative reports from the Bureau’s machine produced narratives. Not as an error. As a match. Ok, wait, so checksums—you know. They are in your era of tech history? With me? Those little cryptographic fingerprints that prove a file hasn’t been tampered with. (If that sentence meant nothing to you, smile confidently, nod. Keep reading, no one will know.)
ok, well, anyways, When the checksum anomalies first showed up, the Bureau’s reaction was pure IT whatevs: muttered something about ghosts in the machine, and decided if the narrative was still coming out, who cared if the checksum looked a little glitchy.
But then it kept happening. Historical artifacts and machine narratives with the same checksum…different machines, different millennia, same glitchy checksum number. In other words, the butterfly art is a key…to something the bureau never figured out but overly documented. The agents in the basement of the bureau were all over it, formed their own department to investigate said “ghost in the machine”.
For funsies, I’m going to hide these top secret butterflies in a early 21st home interiors magazine. And putting the “inspection copies” of said, “top secret” butterflies, into the Artifact Replication Library…you remember. The etsy shop. rolls eyes Cooommmooonnnn, man, keep UP here. Why, you ask? No reason, just funsies, and maybe make the time ellipse a better place to traverse the next time around. You know, it’s just me being the “typo” I want to see in the world. I’ve noticed your era loves butterflies but they all look….well…a little too sweet to be art. Pretty and forgettable, def not meaningful. You’ll like these from BILMAA, they’re absolutely unhinged…but in a good way! Think Dali in a blender but mostly line art, and add in butterfly wings. What? You’re FACE!! oh, don’t look at me like that, you’ll love them! Just trust me, will ya. I know what I’m talking about.
I’ll add them to the portals soon but without the mysterious checksums, or too much of the context. Why? Well…it’s complicated. Ok, Look, I can get the images out easy enough, but actual Art Archive “files” are not budging. Strange, right? I admit even I’m a little stumped as to why. The Art Archives actually had the most secure servers in the entire bureau, never had a budget cut, and their agents have a completely different breakroom. Again, fueling the conspiracy theories from the agents in the basement. Again, leading said agents to go rogue with their “investigations”, if you could call it that. *looks side to side, leans in* Sooo, look, there was this very odd report from one of the agents in the basement. You gotta read it. It links the art archival processing scanner (not to be confused with THE Machine over in the narrative archival division), anyways, it links it to a TV show in the 1990s. Said show was was all but erased from the internet in 2230 ish. He thinks the art scanner renamed a handful of butterflies after different episodes. The Buresu nearly LOL-ed him out of his pension for it. I’ll send it, see if I can track down all the butterflies he sited. Totally amazing conspiracy side quest!
Ok, so we’re burning daylight here. Onward to how they deemed a site worthy of their limited time and resources…think of it as an archaeological litmus test.
Sites of Interest
They don’t just dig randomly, well they don’t dig at all, but more on that later. The process starts with weather. Specifically, a meteorological anomaly—a recurring, verifiable pattern of atmospheric nonsense. Something consistent, measurable, and mildly strange enough to make the Bureau say “wait, what?”. Hail where it shouldn’t be in a pattern that can be clearly documented. Wind that behaves like it’s been drinking. That kind of thing. Take New Tucket, they have an increase in population every 50 years coinciding with storm phuck3ry! At least according to BILMAA, but they have no idea why it’s at 50 year intervals. It’s a whole report, I’ll send it, totally worth a read. (It’s right here. No really, Clear your weekend for some light reading.)
If lepidopterological anomalies--which is to say, suspicious butterfly patterns, especially artistic butterfly patterns--show up in the same physical and psychic location? FLAGGED! Did the time/place have an obsession with butterfly tattoos? Great! Flagged! Too many butterfly kid’s books? Love it! Flagged. Butterfly logos in every window? Flagged, with extra funding! That’s what got New Tucket its own department. You get the idea…a few monarchs on a windowsill and they lose their minds. (Again, there’s another riveting report, click here. #yourewelcome)
Maybe it’s all the anomalous behavior but most of these sites they excavate are hard to find in their own temporal signature. The Bureau is strangely lacking in reports of this phenomenon. I still haven’t sussed out why; they have archives full of historical maps. I’m theorizing it’s because BILMAA doesn’t move temporally, they can’t just jump in their DeLorean. They may not know this is happening, or someone is glaringly not conducting their due diligence in the research department.
Take New Tucket for example, I can’t find any record of it on a map until 2247. Clearly it’s there, there are mainlanders visiting, we know it existed in the 1700s-2200s.
At first I thought it was like Bayocean, OR. You know-- first wave salt water pool? The Atlantic City of the west? Too cheap to build a second jetty so doomed itself to be swallowed by the sea? Yeah. That Bayocean. So I thought, maybe New Tucket dissolved into the sea too and then by 3000s the waters were low enough to rediscover it. Nope, New Tucket didn’t dissolve or get destroyed by a storm. It’s there IRL, it’s just not there on a map. If I had to guess, it’s some cosmic shenanigans with Manannán mac Lir, the bureau does connect him to the site of New Tucket in one underappreciated, and almost buried, report. While 'deity-interference-theories' were thoroughly dismissed by Bureau academics, they were-- obviously-- wrong. *cough* I’m right here *cough*. And that brings me to a third report for you to read, but this one at least will make you smile at how uncomfortable BILMAA gets when they speak of anything they can’t quantify, qualify, or quietly deny!
