Marshall appears irked that you didn’t send any teams, but he is watching your presentation with interest. Carter, sitting next to him, is somewhat more laid back. Both of them seem annoyed at having lost a bet of some kind, forking over wads of… cash? It’s hard to focus your eyes on whatever it is, before Darke squirrels them away into the depths of his shabby cloak.
”As you can see, once split out according to SEK classifications, the historical profits are… unnervingly linear. Especially when you consider that these are post-processing, to account for inflation and the like—there should be a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than we’re seeing here. To the extent that I understand these things, I suspect that your entire database has been contaminated. We don’t get the kind of volatility spikes you’d expect during the depression or the second world war—it seems to completely ignore most world events.”
You aren’t the kind of data scientist that gives answers to problems. You’re the kind that just looks at the data, and figures out the story below the surface. And the story here is just… weird. There’s the obvious cognitohazards, the standard messages from beyond hidden in the data (you get that all the time in Kaggle). But the thing that disturbed you the most wasn’t those smaller patterns.
It was the almost perfectly straight lines.
Carter adjusted his tie nervously.
”These are definitely factually accurate to our records—excluding the obvious infohazardous corruptions, of course. We have paper trails here, physical paper trails, receipts signed in blood. I can assure you this information hasn’t been manipulated.”
“Then there’s something else doing this, and it’s probably beyond my paygrade to figure out exactly what. Since you seem unwilling to give me the supporting documentation for these objects, that really is my best guess. All I can do is bring the issue to your attention.”
”Alright. We can… give you some more information. I’ll have the documents sent to your desk. Let us know if you have any additional insights.”
You nod curtly, and as you close the door behind you, you hear voices raising behind it. You shake your head. You don’t want to know what they’re discussing.
Marshall and Carter stare expectantly at Darke. Marshall demands answers:
”What did you do, and when did you do it?”
″Oh, I didn’t do anything myself. But I could tell something was… off. I could taste it, in the air. Look, our physics isn’t quite right, watch—”
Darke grabs two delicate wine glasses from the table by the stems, raises his arms, and lets go. The glasses drop to the floor and shatter.
”Look at the pieces.”
Both glasses shattered into three identical pieces along two identical fault lines.
”These are the same glasses, identically. Nothing should break this perfectly. Someone has cheaped out on our universe.”
Carter and Marshall glance at each other, confused. Darke turns his head towards an otherwise unremarkable spot on the wall, frowning intently. Iris stares into her monitor, looking into the eyes of the simulation of her distant progenitor.
”Fuck.”
She hammers Alt-F4 as quickly as she can and turns to the couch you’re lying in. She pulls off the headset—miracle of technology, this thing—and snaps her fingers a few times in your face. Wiping the crud out of your eyes, you reorient and remember how you got here and why.
”Well, that’s certainly the weirdest result of that test I’ve seen so far. And we don’t do much other than weird, so I guess you’ve got the job.”
Marshall appears irked that you didn’t send any teams, but he is watching your presentation with interest. Carter, sitting next to him, is somewhat more laid back. Both of them seem annoyed at having lost a bet of some kind, forking over wads of… cash? It’s hard to focus your eyes on whatever it is, before Darke squirrels them away into the depths of his shabby cloak.
”As you can see, once split out according to SEK classifications, the historical profits are… unnervingly linear. Especially when you consider that these are post-processing, to account for inflation and the like—there should be a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than we’re seeing here. To the extent that I understand these things, I suspect that your entire database has been contaminated. We don’t get the kind of volatility spikes you’d expect during the depression or the second world war—it seems to completely ignore most world events.”
You aren’t the kind of data scientist that gives answers to problems. You’re the kind that just looks at the data, and figures out the story below the surface. And the story here is just… weird. There’s the obvious cognitohazards, the standard messages from beyond hidden in the data (you get that all the time in Kaggle). But the thing that disturbed you the most wasn’t those smaller patterns.
It was the almost perfectly straight lines.
Carter adjusted his tie nervously.
”These are definitely factually accurate to our records—excluding the obvious infohazardous corruptions, of course. We have paper trails here, physical paper trails, receipts signed in blood. I can assure you this information hasn’t been manipulated.”
“Then there’s something else doing this, and it’s probably beyond my paygrade to figure out exactly what. Since you seem unwilling to give me the supporting documentation for these objects, that really is my best guess. All I can do is bring the issue to your attention.”
”Alright. We can… give you some more information. I’ll have the documents sent to your desk. Let us know if you have any additional insights.”
You nod curtly, and as you close the door behind you, you hear voices raising behind it. You shake your head. You don’t want to know what they’re discussing.
Marshall and Carter stare expectantly at Darke. Marshall demands answers:
”What did you do, and when did you do it?”
″Oh, I didn’t do anything myself. But I could tell something was… off. I could taste it, in the air. Look, our physics isn’t quite right, watch—”
Darke grabs two delicate wine glasses from the table by the stems, raises his arms, and lets go. The glasses drop to the floor and shatter.
”Look at the pieces.”
Both glasses shattered into three identical pieces along two identical fault lines.
”These are the same glasses, identically. Nothing should break this perfectly. Someone has cheaped out on our universe.”
Carter and Marshall glance at each other, confused. Darke turns his head towards an otherwise unremarkable spot on the wall, frowning intently. Iris stares into her monitor, looking into the eyes of the simulation of her distant progenitor.
”Fuck.”
She hammers Alt-F4 as quickly as she can and turns to the couch you’re lying in. She pulls off the headset—miracle of technology, this thing—and snaps her fingers a few times in your face. Wiping the crud out of your eyes, you reorient and remember how you got here and why.
”Well, that’s certainly the weirdest result of that test I’ve seen so far. And we don’t do much other than weird, so I guess you’ve got the job.”
Also
“endings depending on your actions” my actions were ’view source’
also wondering if anyone else found the secret scarlet poem? I will leave its discovery as an exercise to the reader
Hey now, you can’t criticize me for cheaping out on the universe and then turn around and cheap out on the analysis part with View Source!
...this is fair