The doctor likes you.
For those of you who took MF#5 at character generation, it was in your Turnsheet 0.
Those with MF#5 were infected with a biological weapon of mass destruction, a virus named PAR-AC3. This was acquired primarily through deliberate infection by Dr Greco, who was orchestrating the clinical aspect of a weapons development trial authorised by the highest levels of the Elysian government. The logistical aspect of this trial, including the preparation of official reports and top-secret liaison with a military research division, was performed by Coordinating Officer Asher Segal. At the start of game, they were genuinely the only two people on b-Exagora who were aware of the existence of the bioweapon or trial.
Towards the later stage of the game, both players and the prison population at large contracted MF#5 through the natural spread of contagion. The virus was airborne, and started to manifest symptoms at between 6 and 12 months. Although players and NPCs mostly experienced respiratory symptoms, other effects we doled out included faints, blackouts, dizziness, weakness, fevers, shakes, and, in the case of Zhar Ro, encephalitis1). The one common feature of infection was swollen lymph nodes, which the medics amongst you had sporadically discovered by the end of game. It was also detectable on blood tests, such as the ones in Dr Greco's study that the hackers found and the ones left running in Station Green that Dri Po was never able to retrieve.
Those with MF#5 realised that Dr Greco liked them2), and found that Dr Greco would always treat them – even Tel, despite making no effort to hide his racism. This was partly to encourage infected people to return to improve the monitoring information available, and partly to ensure they didn't mess things up by inconveniently dying of the horrible wounds you all inflicted on each other. Plus, being one of his initial infected trial subjects actually did make him rather fond of you.
Of course, PAR-AC3 was not developed on b-Exagora. Over a decade in the making, both the effects of the virus and efficacy of the vaccine had already been established, through hundreds of experiments across dozens of top-secret research facilities, at the time of the instigation of the phase IV trial in Redemption Reform Facility. The Elysian government was waiting on final evaluation of the spread of the virus in a real-life, large-scale trial. Immediately after the departure of the last supply ship, with 10% of the population already vaccinated3), a certain number of inmates were infected. Through the next year, the rate of contagion was monitored. The frequent trips to the medical clinic necessitated by the endemic violence in the prison, plus the dangerous nature of workgroup tasks, meant that Dr Greco had frequent and numerous samples to document the spread of the virus.
For more information on the virus, here are extracts from the writeup the first player to study the data received.
The trial was only ever supposed to be a short-term study. The time between supply ships was adequate. With study results beamed back with FTL comms, the Elysian government could be assured that they would gain results up until the moment of the supply ship crash – which was programmed years ago, when the phase IV trial plan was finalised, before the first samples had even been sent. By the point of the ordained supply ship crash, the virus would be either deemed to be effective and ready to deploy as a biological weapon of catastrophic consequence on Tel populations throughout the galaxy, or shown to have disappointingly low rates of contagion.
In the event, the Elysian government were pleased with the data from Redemption Reform Facility. The population was satisfyingly plagued, and doubly doomed. The fate of the vaccinated staff members was of little importance compared to the secrecy that would be assured by the death of the entire population, plus the loss of the space elevator. b-Exagora was removed as a stop on the supply line amongst high-level documents. Fortunately for you players, Halliday Freight's Six o' Spades received contradictory communication on whether b-Exagora was a destination stop – no by the government, yes on their previous records – and the omission of the stop was believed to have been a mistake by the junior administrator who sent the journey details to one Captain Gabrielle Sheer.
Had the players not broadcast information on MF#5, this biological weapon would have been released on key Tel colonies within five years. With no warning, Tel scientists would have had to spend a decade or more researching a cure, by which point billions would have died and entire planets become populated by nothing but ghost cities. Vaccinated, Elysian troops would have moved in to conquer and exploit. The potential for resource acquisition and ready-built colonies to inhabit would have been unparalleled.
Asher Segal was a civil servant, who had worked in both the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Justice, and whose was assigned to the b-Exagora project largely to keep an eye on Dr. Greco - who was dedicated to the project, but not entirely trusted not to be weird about it. He was known to have a deep-seated loyalty to the government, and a respect for the rule of law that extended to being willing to dehumanize criminals far enough to administrate this kind of trial without objections.
Asher was not aware that the supply ship crash was planned. While he was aware that the personnel involved in the project were unlikely to be the government's highest priority, he did not expect them to be actively targeted by the supply ship crash. He'd been assigned to the project due to having a reputation for both competence and unwavering loyalty - and no-one higher up wanted to compromise the latter by letting him know just how little the government valued the lives of the personnel involved in the trial.
For the first few months after the crash, he managed to convince himself it had been an accident, and that if he could just keep the prison under control until the next ship arrived, things would go back to normal. He didn't expect to survive if the prisoners started to revolt, but he expected to at least die doing his job.
He was still desperately trying to maintain the status quo when Dri Po came to him and told him she and Agnostino Serpico had found out Dr. Greco was working on a bioweapon. Hoping to prevent the information spreading any further, he agreed to her request to take her out to Station Green to do more research, and while there, shot her.
When he came back, Harper Lockwood, about the only prisoner Asher trusted, had covered the prison in graffiti about government involvement in the supply ship crash, and about the New Prima false-flag operation - neither of which were things Asher was previously aware of, and both things which profoundly shook his faith in the government, especially after Harper confirmed that they had evidence for both things.
Feeling betrayed by a government he'd previously trusted implicitly, Asher allowed Harper to recruit him to the CPP, passed the relevant information on the bioweapon to the prisoners. He helped facilitate the riots, and to get the data out to Captain Sheer. He still fully expected to be killed at any point, but his criteria for making that worthwhile had switched from protecting the project to ensuring the people responsible were held to account.
He remains very confused and not altogether happy that no-one has tried to punish him for his part in the project.
For his part, Doctor Benedict Greco was under no illusion as to the expendability of b-Exagora after the desired results were obtained. A military doctor ostracised for being “fucking creepy” and “plain weird”, authorities designated him to b-Exagora without the expectation that he would return. He received samples of the vaccine and the virus and dutifully implemented the trial. He meticulously gathered results and compiled reports to be processed and relayed by Asher. He was floridly unsurprised by the crash of the supply ship, having already resigned himself to inevitable erasure in the name of secrecy. Isolated and without hope, he turned to ever greater eccentricity to distract himself whilst awaiting death, either from starvation, atmospheric failure, or at the hands of inmates. The story some of you heard at his first slumber party,
“… about a group of people trapped on a planet a hopeless distance from civilisation. They're all steadily dying of an illness that rises up from the alien ground. Something in the rocks they discovered too late. Something that rejects the ants on its surface. It doesn't matter: the people are doomed anyway. They invent means, more and more means, of entertaining themselves, of holding on to their sanity. They come up with more and more futile methods of entertainment. Nothing works.”
…was only partly untrue.
Mystery Flaw #6 was created by a player character, Xix Chil Ah, in the first turnsheet. It was a computer virus, entitled “Scalpelship.exe”, which could infect cybernetics, reporting back information if possible and making any other hacking on infected systems easier. Xix Chil continued to upgrade and spread it in several more actions, and it was able to spread itself, so that by the time people were dying and generating new characters, it was available to buy at character creation. Mostly this flaw didn't end up activating, except to give Xix Chil random snippets from email conversations that infected characters were having, and on one occasion when a PC with MF#6 tried to attack Xix Chil using their cybernetics.
At least two other characters had access to Scalpelship.exe, with the programme's utility outliving its creator and still finding employment in Eternity.
This was also created by a PC, in this case Carol Winters, but in this case it was much rarer as it didn't spread autonomously and it was more difficult to install.
When given the opportunity to operate on people's cybernetics, Carol altered them to detect when a trigger word was spoken (bird-themed: “albatross”, “petrel”, “grebe”, “pelican”, “cormorant”), it would activate and injure the owner. None of these kill-switches were actually activated during the game.
We considered adding another one, but it didn't quite merit a distinct quality.