Amber Heights Terminal Entries

A transcription of **terminal entries** from Amber Heights.

## Huxley's Terminal

**Location:** This terminal is located in a bunkhouse in the southwest of the town, near the workbench.

# THIS IS HUXLEYS TERMINAL STAY OUT
THAT MEANS YOU!

**Note:** If the terminal hasn't been repaired.

ERROR: Due to external damage, this device can no longer store more than four logs. Please contact your assigned terminal engineer to replace the storage device.

Currently available entries:

### Dear Diary

Graham taught me how to meditate today. You close your eyes and you breathe in real deep and try not to cough. Then you just listen to yourself.

You know how sometimes you'll be hiding from a mantiqueen and you're trying to be quiet so you focus real hard on your breathing and you can hear your heartbeat and you think how can this mantiqueen not even hear me? And all of a sudden you have to sneeze and it reminds you of that time when you were coming back with a delivery and as you were putting it on Zora's table you sneezed and it slipped and a bunch of things broke?

Meditating is like that only you're supposed to think of these things on purpose. Graham calls it... I don't remember what he calls it. Wreck-oh-something. He says it's your own Eternal Truth bubbling up to the surface and the things you remember are what you're supposed to focus on and try and improve.

When we meditated, I mostly remembered that sitting on rocks hurts. Maybe I'm supposed to toughen up my tailbone.

### Dear Diary

Zora's really smart but you know what sometimes she can be such a bitch.

I was supposed to get some info for her from Cascadia but I couldn't find a way over without going through marauders. So I gave up and stopped in at Fallbrook to pick up some supplies instead.

While I was there, Chastity dropped in for a few games of Whist. She's so cool. She's always playing games there. When I lose bits, I get really upset. I don't have much, so losing what I have, it hurts, you know? But Chastity can drop thousands on a single game and she's fine.

Well... sometimes she drinks a bit and slams the table and storms out, but still. Mostly she's cool about it and I admire that.

Anyway, when I got back, Zora yelled at me because I was a little late. Something about medicine not getting here fast enough. Sigh. Graham just said to try not to lose track of time on my next run and I promised I would. See, that's how you teach someone. Don't gotta yell and make them feel bad.

### Dear Diary

Today Zora gave me permission to buy ammunition from Bronson. I don't think I want to but she said I should just in case. But guns are really loud. I'd rather just run away than shoot one.

Still I'm kinda proud. Zora said it was like a promotion for something I found in the wilderness. I think it's a code for a door but I'm not sure why it's important. I can't even get near the place without getting attacked.

I asked her what a promotion is and she smiled in a really sad way and told me I shouldn't worry about it.

### Dear Diary

This will be my last entry. Sorry diary. You've been a very good listener but our time has come to an end.

This terminal was making a horrible beeping noise yesterday and someone smashed it while I was out and now I can't save more diaries. Milton can't fix it and plus he says I should stop coming into his house to write when he's not around.

Whoever smashed poor terminal, if you're reading this, SUCK SULFUR!

### Repair the Terminal's Storage Device

**Note:** This entry requires Hack 55 to access.

Storage capacity increased. Logs prior to the most recent four entries are unretrievable, but new entries may now be saved.

## Graham's Terminal

**Location:** This terminal is located upstairs in the bar. It is in the kitchen near where Graham Bryant is.

Welcome to Graham Bryant's personal conglomeration of notes theories and findings regarding Philosophism, and how it informs our lives.

I have organized into three categories: The Iconoclasts the Halcyon Colony, and the Universe.

### Access Files on the Halcyon Colony

Accessing: The Halcyon Colony

Available files:

#### The Board's lies

The Board vastly overestimates their authority, and grasp on power. Without the Earth Directorate's military might to back them up, they would not be able to maintain their life-draining grip on the colony's throat.

They spread lies and misinformation to confuse and oppress the masses. Perhaps that's one of the reasons they have not allowed any colony ships since the Hope's disappearance - they've had seventy years to condition their good little workers to follow their directives unquestioningly.

Their lies become more and more transparent as the years pass and will soon be too obvious for even the most deluded colonist to see.

#### The oppression must end

A man from Byzantium told us of an acquaintance who had been arrested for carrying Philosophist texts. Not teaching, not evangelizing - just carrying!

They oppress any truth that threatens their corrupt structure. Is this what we want? Do we want to live in a society where we can be sent to Tartarus for our beliefs?

No! Their workers' minds are poisoned! Their will - shackled! Their dreams - hamstrung!

This can stand no longer. We must tear this entire regime down!

#### The dangers of a corporate society

I hope to someday publish a greater work in which I can more expansively lay out what is so clear to me, that our society's obsession with a corporate-run life has stifled, and crippled humanity's ability to grow.

Alas. For now, I can only collect my scattered thoughts into this barely functional machine.

In my younger and more vulnerable days I bought into the attraction of a corporate ladder. A measured quantifiable way with which to judge oneself against one's peers, it provided motivation; meaning.

Yet my spirit longed for more than just a paycheck. It yearned to reach out and connect with my fellow man, it sought a connection. It sought kin. It sought a familial unit.

The corporations claim they are that familial unit but they treat us like pets. We beg for scraps at the table and if they are so kind as to drop one we praise the ground they tread on, while they usher us into kennels called homes.

We attach ourselves to contractually-obligated familial units; strangers to whom we share no more connection than the employers seeking to empower themselves by our unions.

We bear children out of obligation to our executives who demand a constant workforce.

We slave away, in the vain hope that someday we too will be like those executives, until the day we die and are processed, burned, and filed away, as another tick on a human resources paperwork.

We have built ourselves into a cold unthinking efficient machine and in doing so have abandoned all the warmth humanity is capable of.

I weep, for us all.

#### Sanjar and the betrayal of his truth

I often recall my former friend who once sought to dismantle the corporations, as I still do.

When he took ownership of our corporation I held him in such contempt. I called him a coward, a betrayer. He was becoming the very thing we hated!

Now I'm not so sure. Recently, I've come to accept that his heart was more closed than mine. I cannot expect every man to be able to open himself to the Eternal Truth as I have, some are just not capable.

And so it is a tragic thing! Tragic that he is weaker than I'd hoped, that he cannot fight for a cause. I can empathize with tragedy. Should the day come when the mettle of our spirits clash against one another, that empathy will shield me from guilt. Like the Board, he now stands across our path, arms crossed, stubbornly resistant to the Eternal Truth. Like the Board, he spreads - nay, celebrates! - the poison that cripples our society.

Like the Board, his stubbornness will only blind him to his inevitable fall. Tragic.

### Access Files on the Iconoclasts

Accessing: The Iconoclasts.

Available files:

#### Personal thoughts regarding Zora

For someone who is so committed to the Iconoclast way I fear that Zora is slipping off the true path.

More and more often I fear her attachment to the materialism of our oppressors sways her decisions, more than the search for the guiding truth that will save us.

She often tells me that our people are hungry, I agree. Their spirits long for fulfillment; a much more powerful power than any pang of an empty gut.

#### Teaching notes

Of all the things to motivate a person I'm finding freedom has been the most powerful.

Many of them still remember being slaves to the corporate structure, recalling those painful memories lights their fire anew.

A man from Fallbrook stopped through on his way to Stellar Bay. After thumbing through our pamphlet, he asked me how we can survive without money. I found an appropriate metaphor in gas masks.

When clearing a mantiswarm nest, we wear masks to ward off poisonous fumes. Even after the nest is cleared, the fumes may remain for some time, thus, we wear the masks until we are safe to breathe.

Until the very last dregs of our poisonous corporation society are gone the attachment to bits will remain. Though their use is uncomfortable and though they stifle our spirit just as the masks are ill-fitting and limit our vision; we must persist with them until we can cast them aside.

#### Shifting priorities

As our numbers grow I find that more and more of our population turns to the written word of my pamphlets, I am happy to continue making them, but I must find a more efficient way to print and distribute this reading material.

I wonder if that old printing press might be convinced to run once more.

Wouldn't that be something? To return to my duties as editor in a publication - only this time of my own control, and not stifled by the rules and regulations of style guides and grammar books. Nobody will tell me where to put a comma! I'll put them where they belong, as decreed, by the Eternal Truth!

### Access Files on the Universe

Accessing: The Universe

Available files:

#### Influence drift

When I realized the Truth of Philosophism, I immediately wondered how I can be the first to recognize the poisonous spiral that has shaped our society?

Then one day I was talking to, of all people, Huxley. She once lamented that she'd like nothing more, than a pet canid.

I confessed to know very little about animal behavior as I am much more concerned with the animal that is mankind but I stressed that I didn't think such a thing was possible.

She let it go but some weeks later, Zora reported the strangest thing, stories of a marauder with a canid follower.

I don't know if it had been sighted here or on Terra 2 but I immediately thought of Huxley, and her reckless wild imagination. I wondered if she had told other people and if word had spread of the possibility until it wriggled its way into the mind of marauders somewhere.

Ideas are insidious. If even a marauder, mindless husk that it is, can be convinced of an idea, there must be hope for the workers of this colony, poisoned as they are against the Eternal Truth. If we can shout so loudly that the Truth inches its way into the collective consciousness, I am confident it will spread to the rest of the cosmos.

#### The suppression of the truth

It is very difficult to face the Eternal Truth, that everything happens for a reason, that life and everything in it is the will of the cosmic consciousness, can be a terrifying one.

There is an urge among us all, to control the parameters of one's life. This urge is so powerful, that it suppresses the Eternal Truth, simply by existing. Mankind has not shed the weight of its own shackles and so I find that spreading Philosophism is unnecessarily difficult.

But The Universe cannot suppress it forever. Biology changes, creatures adapt and evolve, we overcome our urges for the better of our species.

Someday, our minds will be born more open to this idea, until then, I must not abandon hope.

## Routing Terminal

**Location:** This terminal is located in the building up the hill to the left from the entrance of Amber Heights. It is near Tucker Needham.

# HUXLEY, STAY OFF THIS MACHINE
I know your terminal's out of storage, but if you break this one, things are gonna go tits up around here.

Anyone else, long as you know what you're doing, go ahead and clear work orders out whenever you can.

-- Zora

### View Work Orders

#### Steam coming outta the roof

System: Water flow
Submitter: Milton R.
Description: The pipes on top of my house are gonna burst. They're leaking steam. Someone oughta fix this before they explode or the steam hurts somebody

##### Remotely reroute the water

**Note:** Requires Engineering 55 to access.

Flow system corrections complete.

Marking work order as resolved.

#### Arcing electricity at the bar

System: Electric
Submitter: Bronson V.
Description: Looks like sprats chewed through the wires on the side of the bar. They're sparking up a storm.

##### Remotely Shut Off the Power Going Through the Bar's Side Panels

**Note:** Requires Science 55 to access.

Power system corrections complete.

Marking work order as resolved.

#### Haven't heard from the rapt house

System: Communications
Submitter: Zora B.
Description: We ain't heard from the Rapt House in a while. Sent Milton over--ain't heard from him either. Someone needs to go check it out.

##### Remotely Reset the Rapt House's Communications Breaker

**Note:** Requires Hack 55 to access.

Communications system corrections complete.

Marking work order as resolved.

#### Dear diary

System: Culinary
Submitter: Huxley S.
Description: ha HA! Hey Zora! I figured out how to add work orders!

Dear diary: Eat it!!

- Hux

##### Erase Work Order

**Note:** Requires Hack 55 to access.

Work order marked as resolved and purged from the system.

#### Medical Examiners Residence, Door Sealed

System: Residential
Submitter:
Description: The door to the examiners residence above the med bay is stuck and is completely sealed. Can someone get this thing open?

##### Engage Remote Forced Door Lever Operation

**Note:** Accessing this entry unlocks the door up the stairs behind the triage center where Zora Blackwood usually is.

Emergency seals lifted. Work order completed.