Whistleblower

[Kingsington]

Whistler from KS now has his own thread. This will be where @Marty.60 can put any communication he receives, as well as being a place to specifically discuss Whistler and how best to move forward with him.

[Kingsington]

@Marty.60, if you could, could you please upload your past communication with Whistler here? Just to have everything in one place.

[Revenir]

I got you fam:

First contact:

Apologies for sending this out of the blue.

I found your name on a tech blog where you were asking about a certain company. I got your email from that post.

You’re a reporter yeah? You can keep me anonymous? Protect me? I have a story and I need to tell someone.

I work there.

Response:

I’ve been experiencing some strange things lately, and it all started with an accident I was in. I live in Boston. A car clipped me last week near my apartment. I hit my head pretty hard on the curb.

I signed so many agreements when I started work THERE, many of them are about not disclosing information about my job or what I see because it’s an ultra high-security research and development lab. You jump through so many high tech hoops to get hired. You have to take these weird video assessments with all these disturbing images… they track your eyes and scan your brain activity to see if you’re trustworthy, willing to be compliant… Weird, next level stuff. But I passed it all. I don’t remember too much else, and that’s the thing.

After the accident everything changed. A paramedic was checking me out and I started realizing I had two sets of memories. They wanted to take me to the hospital but I was beyond freaked. My employer wants to know about things like this immediately. But what I was remembering, and that I was remembering it now, scared the hell out of me.

I realized that when I leave there I don’t forget what I saw, but on the shuttle ride back to the city it all starts feeling unimportant. Like remembering a time you stopped to tie your shoes. It’s there but doesn’t feel like it matters. Something you’d never tell someone. Does that make sense?

But now my memories are conflicting. Not only am I starting to remember things, but I’m also realizing that my life here in Boston, my apartment, my driver’s license… it all feels familiar, but not.

I think they’ve done something to me. Maybe to everybody there. I think they have projects like this. I’m not sure. It’s like trying to remember parts of a dream.

You probably think I’m crazy. And maybe there is something wrong with me. But I don’t know who else to tell. And if they’re doing this to other people, something has to be done. I feel like I’ve been stolen from myself. The weird thing… I fell asleep with my laptop in bed and when I woke up the next morning the blog where I found your post was pulled up. But I don’t remember searching for it. I was too scared to put in the company’s name. But there it was, waiting for me. I took it as a sign to find you.

All I know right now is that I’m working on one particular project which isn’t active right now so I’ve had most of the week off. But they want me back on Monday because they’re ramping it up again.

I’m scared. Scared they’ll know about the accident and that I didn’t tell them. Scared they already know even though I’ve taken precautions to make sure they can’t track this to me. Scared of what I’ll see when I go back, and what I’ll remember when I leave. If I can leave.

HA. This all sounds so insane. When you asked about the company, did you imagine in a million years that this would be the response you’d get?

First round of questions:

Does 117-2 sound familiar?

That’s a security designation within the company. The first is the employee number, and the second number is security clearance level. This would belong to someone pretty high up. Have you been investigating someone inside? How?

Does Project Sweeper or Wanderer sound familiar?

I have memory of the word Sweeper, something about a longterm project, but it’s very vague. I don’t know anything about Wanderer.

Have you ever encountered a young girl there? Possibly by the name Portencia?

I think so. I keep seeing a girl. But there’s a boy too in my memories. I can’t make sense of any of it. But I’ve seen them a lot. The confusion and the other memories keep getting stronger and none of it’s clear. Like, I keep seeing her hooked up to a chair, like an old throne. All these cables running out. It’s like a dream where it all makes sense, but doesn’t. I see her scared. And the boy… he’s walking away from me but I can’t catch up.

Is there any way to safely share internal files?

If I had time, maybe. But there are systems in place that even I don’t know about. They’re nuts about protecting against unauthorized access and information going offsite.

What is your specific field of expertise?

I’m a security engineer. But I’ve also been studying machine learning. Funny, I remember stories about school, but not actually being there. Are those even my memories? Did they give me a lobotomy and an education?
There’s all this anger inside me. And…regret. Like I’ve been experiencing all of this in the background while I was sleepwalking.

Are the names Kendrick or Theodore Fallon familiar to you?

Fallon is who I report to. It’s who we all report to. I remember Kendrick. The name. Feels like we were close. Maybe we worked together? Are you investigating Fallon?

What is the workplace atmosphere? Are employees encouraged to collaborate, or socialize, or are they more strict about restricting opportunities for employees to potentially “overshare?”

I honestly can’t remember. If they can wipe people’s minds what do they care if we socialize? It’s even more sickening than being rigid pricks. They let us think we have autonomy. What about our families? Where do they think we work? What do we tell them when they ask? My parents died a long time ago, at least that’s what I remember, but what are you if you can’t even trust your memory, your sense of who you are?

Do you know anything about the history of the company? A company mission statement, history of executives, what your supervisor’s name is?

Same. Sorry. I can’t even tell you how long I’ve been there. I mean, I know what I’m supposed to say… but there is all this other stuff welling up that mixes with it and makes everything confusing.
Would it be possible to record what you experience before the details start feeling unimportant?
That’s my plan and it’s all I’ve been thinking about this weekend. The most grueling 48 hours of my life. I gotta keep focused on seeing everything I can, and remembering it when I leave. I’ve been making notes here at my place, to try and remind me what happened just in case I forget. I’m scared of going back tomorrow but have to hope that whatever “broke” in the accident will help me remember what’s really going on there.

Part of me wants to tell you who I am, where to come look for me if I don’t answer back tomorrow… but I have this overwhelming feeling of mistrust. And I’m too confused to pinpoint where it belongs. I’m sorry.

If I make it out tomorrow, I’ll tell you everything I can.
If I don’t, promise me you won’t stop trying to expose them. Promise me you’ll take them down somehow.

-Whistler

Follow-up:

Just got home. Need to write down everything and then sleep, if I can.
My head’s pounding but I remember being there. It’s still like a dream, but easier to remember now. And getting easier. I couldn’t write anything down because they automatically check for tech going in and manually check for everything going out.

But they’ve done something to us. I watched people on the ride back to the city kind of zombie out as we got further away. Someone on the shuttle, in medical research, mentioned Kendrick was in a medically-induced coma after an accident. But she was talking like he was in the building not in a hospital. When it was just the two of us I asked her about him, and she couldn’t remember who I was talking about. There are cameras everywhere, even on the shuttles, and I freaked, they might see me not forgetting so I had to play along, which honestly it wasn’t hard to pretend to be a vegetable after an almost 24 hour shift.

They had us (security and systems) working through the night. They said there was some kind of attempted attack and we had to sift through days of logs to try and find the source and prevent them from getting in with a series of updates. They’ve always talked about how ironclad the facility is, but people seemed worried. Fallon himself oversaw the shoring up which isn’t usual. We report to him but up a chain of four people. He pulled me away and asked how I was at one point… I didn’t know how to act. How do I normally act when I’ve been brainwashed? I tried to not be… anything. Said I was fine. He wanted reassurance that no one had gotten in and no one could in the future. He said he wanted me to join on a project later in the week, once we “made sure the walls were up.” I saw some people on the server level that I didn’t recognize, they were walking up and down the aisles, not really doing anything. It was weird.

The other weird thing… I was taking the elevator down to the servers yesterday morning. There were a bunch of people all waiting for the elevators. But there was a bank of elevators behind us too, and no one was using them. It was like they couldn’t even see them. I had to pretend I couldn’t either.

And then I remembered using them. The chair is down there. In a whole other sublevel area of the building. That’s the only way to get in. I remember them pulling the girl out of it when I reported to Fallon one day. They brought this guy in, a teenager. They put him in the chair and I had to monitor the building’s network and firewall to make sure no one was trying to send information out. I don’t remember what they were doing to him, or if I even saw, but Fallon was there. So were the people from the server floor, the weird ones. I don’t remember when that was…

They just let me watch this human experiment, this kid, and didn’t care what I saw, what I thought, because they knew they could just wipe me clean again like a chalkboard.

How are we going to stop them? What do I need to do?

Most recent post:

More of the same. Checking stacks. Looking at logs. For almost 22 hours. Yesterday there was another team working on the server floor (not the weird group wandering around, but they were there too) and it turns out they’re working on some kind of search. We’re locking down the fortress and they’re looking for something outside the fortress (fire)walls.

On the way in I asked the woman who mentioned Kendrick where her department actually was. She just kept saying she didn’t know what I meant, like I was the one not making sense.

I tried to follow her when we got to work but she went down a locked hall that I don’t know if I have access to. If I try my badge and it doesn’t work the entry try will be logged. And I don’t know if I could purge it before someone saw it (actually don’t know if I could purge it at all.)

Nobody notices the elevators on the south wall, still. I backed against the wall today, leaned against the button just to check. They won’t work without a badge swipe. I know I had access at some point, but it might’ve been temp and I don’t wanna risk that log entry either. Getting hard to be the good little worker ant when I want to burn down the ant hill.

Sorry I don’t have more to tell you.

Questions for you. What made you start looking into the company? How do you know so much about it? Are there other whistleblowers?

Would be nice to know I’m not alone in this.

Got any advice?
Next steps?
I know this might take a while but I need to do something now.

I feel like I’m drowning under all of these memories. Like I know who I am but can’t break the surface, can’t catch my breath.

[Kingsington]

Nice one, @Revenir. Now we’re all set up and ready to go.

[Cloudy]

Yay, first post here. Okay, so first thing, I think we should still be really carful with what info we give Whistler. Even if he’s with us 100%, if he gets found out or they get to him again and wipe his memory, they may be able to get information out of him on us. That wouldn’t be good. We still don’t know who’s the hinder and the help here so I think we should be as carful as we can be. Vague answers would probably be the best. Let him know that we trust him with some info, but not all of it. Second, I’m all for Whistler being inconspicuous and kind of just staying in the shadows, but could he possibly get a little closer to the woman who’s working where Kendrick is and take her badge to gain access to that area? Or would that be putting too much pressure on him?

[Mr5yy]

Does Whistler want advice from us? If so, I’d make sure that I could purge the logs before even trying to go into the hall or onto the elevators. And Whistler would have to chose which ones more important, because he/she, I’m not sure which, might have one chance to do it.

[Skylad]

If they’re still willing to answer questions we should see if they can tell us what security level they are and off they can look up employer 117-2

[MissEvans]

We know thats’ Theodore Fallon, 117 being his employee number, 2 being security clearance level. This corresponds to the fact we know Whistler reports to him through at least one other bod.
I assume Whistler has a 4 clearance level.

[Robert]

I guess whistler wants advice from us. I’m with @Cloudy that we don’t want to start giving them information on Aether or how we know what we know. We could just say that yes, there’s a former employee who’s had a similar memory reawakening or something who’s feeding us bits and pieces, but is no longer on the inside. (Kinda true, since Aether isn’t in there anymore.)

I’m not really up on cloak and dagger industrial espionage and how to deal with inside information. What advice can we give? Just keep your ears open and don’t bring suspicion down on yourself? If they still think Whistler is a mindless drone they won’t care if they say things in front of him, so that’s probably the best way to get information. Slow, but safe.

[Ryvick]

My only concern is that Whistler doesn’t sound like they can handle going slow for too much longer. At some point they may have to take some sort of action so we should consider what to recommend in that case

[Mr.Fern]

What made you start looking into the company?

There was another previous informant from inside KS who contacted us. The info he was able to send us led us to begin investigating the company.

How do you know so much about it?

A combination of our informant and our industrious investigative work ethic.

Are there other whistleblowers?

In short, yes. You could call our other informant a whistleblower.

[Mr.Fern]

I agree. the “burn down the ant hill” metaphor could take a startlingly not-so-metaphorical turn.

@Robert Do you think he’ll be satisfied with keeping his head down and just continuing to gather intel? That’s what my advice would be to him, as well, but it seems to me like he’s wanting to go bigger. He’s already half-conceiving plans to infiltrate parts of the company. Should we be talking him down from that? Or helping him scheme? I’m really not sure. What’s your take on the high-risk/high-reward scenario here?

[Robert]

I don’t want to roll the dice on someone else’s life and/or mind. If he wants advice, my advice would be to go slow, and keep listening. We know nothing of KS’s security, processes, what weird abilities these people monitoring his floor may or may not have. At this point giving him ideas for how to be James Bond is like giving a 2 year old a gun and saying ‘good luck’.

Whislter has to be smart. They wouldn’t have hired him otherwise. If they have him reading logs, and looking for holes it’s because they value his observation and ability to notice things. That’s the strength I say we ask him to use as well.

That’d be my advice. Like you say, he may not want to take it, but that doesn’t change it. That’s just my opinion. I’m one mountaineer. I’d like to hear others.

[Augustus_Octavian]

I agree 100% with @Robert. Now that Aether’s effectively locked out of K.S., Whistler is our only conduit in or out. Having him calmly and steadily hold the course increases our chances to “capture” more information inside KS than having him take a single, drastic, heroic action that likely has a high probability of failure.

Also, given everything going on with his psyche, we really need to treat him with kid gloves in terms of the actual language of our responses. We don’t want to be intentionally vague and give him reasons not to trust us. I’m sure @Marty.60 will be able to effectively edit our intentions in a way that won’t frighten Whistler off, though.

[Mr.Fern]

I feel like not being vague is just as dangerous to him. And it’s not as untrustworthy as lying out-right. When this is all over and Whistler is, hopefully, far away from KS we can tell him everything. But until then I really think giving him a broad overview of the truth is about the best we can offer.

[Skylad]

I knew that… why did I forget??.. too much work to little caffeine

[Kingsington]

It seems like the general consensus is to have Whistler stay where he is for now. I agree - it’s too dangerous to have him move while we have no idea what he’d be coming up against.

At the same time, there may come a time when he needs to accomplish something for us. When that time comes, all of us will need as clear a picture of what he’ll need to deal with as possible. I recommend that we push to have him pay as much attention as possible without being suspicious to the movements of other employees, specifically his supervisors and anyone that functions as a guard.

@Marty.60, have you messaged Whistler yet?

[Brit]

Been kind of quiet around here lately…everyone doing okay? Safe and sound I hope! Anyone heard from @Marty.60 about Whistler? Too much quiet makes me worry…

[Marty.60]

I responded this weekend with:

What made you start looking into the company?

You aren’t the first whistleblower. We’ve been looking into the company for a few months.

How do you know so much about it?

A combination of our informant and research.

Got a short reply that he would update tonight. Will let you know when he does.

[Marty.60]

Response:

More memories that don’t make sense. Stories I know, experiences I have that I have no way of explaining. They’re just there. Floating on the surface, blocking whatever’s underneath. I feel like a ghost. Half of somebody.

Please tell me you have a plan. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

I’m back to regular 10-12 hour shifts. The other team launched a program this weekend they’re calling a virus predator. Sounds like it’s scanning and targeting whatever attacked us in the first place.

Weird thing is, there was no breach in the logs. Only an outage a few weeks back. Nothing got in. Guess they’re worried somebody was looking when their pants fell down? Do you know anything about this?

Please tell me something. One line answers aren’t cutting it.

Seeing less of Fallon now, he’s not overseeing us anymore. I watched a group of his own “executive team” walk out of a secure room and take the “invisible” elevators yesterday. I pretended not to see them.

On the way home tonight the shuttle was pulled over by a cop. Changing lanes without a blinker. The cop came to the window and after a couple seconds of talking to the driver his whole attitude changed. He smiled and said “have a nice night…” and got back in his car.

Did the driver say or do something that changed the cop’s mind? What would happen if I called the cops tomorrow, told them to raid the office? I just figured they wouldn’t believe me, but now I’m freaking out because maybe they couldn’t believe me.