IPAT: Hell

Hi! I'm not dead! This isn't abandoned! Life has just been kind of busy and draining like that. Anyway, last time on IPAT: Hell, we raided Geoffrey Holder's computer and found out about a bunch of sidetrips, so let's go do those. First on the itinerary: New Corporeal Biologics, home of the meats!

Examine
New Corporeals Biologics: Also known as the Meat Locker, this is where the flesh, blood, nerves and muscle tissue were grown for the meats synthetic multi-servers and birthing units. Although these techs have long been outlawed for decades, the fact that there is some fresh growth on the framing units indicates that someone has tried to start things back up.

Fecund 5088 (at Gideon's feet): A meat birthing unit patiently waits. You eye the gestational chamber with suspicion.

Ben Brewer (in blue): A man works feverishly amidst the desolation of the long-abandoned factory.

Large beaker: Basic scientific beaker, unchanged for centuries.

Small beaker: Small version of the basic measuring cup for scientists.

Electromagnet (center): This powerful, hand-held electromagnet could yank the fillings out of the Androgyne at fifty feet.

Steel Cup: Scrubs were out in force that night, which suggests a sweep, which means one of two things. You're either really involved in something dirty...in which case I'll haul your asses in myself...or Transgressions is using one fabricated crime to wipe up a whole lot of undesirables. Question is, why are you two loyal ARC agents suddenly dirt?

Uh, what the hell? Yes, that's a snippet of Frank Jersey's dialogue from back at the beginning of the game, and yes, that's what the game displays when you examine the steel cup in its original resting place. Clearly someone screwed up. Let's pick that up and try again.

Steel Cup (in inventory): This odd steel cup looks like a cyber-petri dish.

That's...really not much better. What exactly does THAT look like?

Kerosene: A five gallon can of kerosene.

Anyway, as you know well by now, we're grabbing anything that isn't nailed down or on fire, so all that stuff gets shovelled into Gideon.

Talk to Ben Brewer

Those are some big-ass glasses you've got there, Benjamin. That'll be something of a theme this episode.

Shit, you're the heat! I knew it! I'm gonna fry...shit! Look, I'm just a businessman, really. I don't nkow from morality or ethics. I'm just looking to turn a buck.

Don't wet your pants, pal. We're ducking the big heater ourselves. Help us out, and we'll pretend we never saw this place.

All right, all right. What do you want to know?

(Tell us about James Hennely.)

He's the reason I'm so jumpy. What happened to him, I figure the Hand's on to us. They got him while he was sitting in the barber's chair. Nearly split him in two. They were sloppy, and offed the cutter, too. Apparently his wife shrugged it all off as God's will. She actually took comfort that he died as part of something big like a scrub cleanup.

No mystery why they wiped him. If he was poking through this tissue shop with you, he must have been up to his eyebrows in illegal tech. So you came here?

Figured this would be the last place anyone would look for me. I was just trying to score enough to make it overseas. I hooked up with Jimmy because he knew the city, and 'cause I liked his resume. He'd seen it all, hit it rich, and then lost everything when Mephisto revenged his losses in the commodities market by burning the Chicago Exchange down. Wiped out three quarters of their records and a lot of fortunes that day.

Yeah, we heard about it.

Jimmy was always vague about his private life. He never wanted to talk about anything that happened more than five or six years ago. It was almost like those parts of his life didn't matter anymore. One time he opened up and told me about a brother of his who was a fighter for the Citizens' Freedom Front.

Where do we find him?

You don't. Apparently he was killed in a CFF action a couple of years ago. That's all Jimmy ever said about it. I could tell he took it hard. He said it was like a part of him died when he lost his brother.

You say he died two years ago? You're certain he's dead?

His brother was pretty damn sure about it!

Anything else you can tell us about Hennely? Anything peculiar?

Nothing, other than the fact he was an outlaw. He did have a strange fixation on a Latin phrase..."Vocabulum est tabula, ominus venire ab genitor". Wore a chain around his neck with that phrase on it. Could never figure that out...

Might seem like nothing now, but it could be important later.

(Just what are you doing here?)

So what's the scam?

Black market for synthetic tissues is booming. All we need are some genetic data on the meat genome, some salvage from this place, and we can begin production of commercial biomass.

You pig! Didn't the meat fiasco mean anything to you? You want to bring that back?

No, no, no. We aren't looking to grow meats; too hard to smuggle offshore. We're looking to fabricate organs for the black market, artificial skin grafts, that kind of stuff.

Mass-produced flesh for an illegal market. Makes flesh and blood just one more commodity, one more item for sale, one more replaceable product.

(What's the deal with that meat?)

She's a beauty, eh? I'm gonna smuggle her to Europe. There are collectors there that'd pay me a fortune for her. That's a near-mint condition Fecund 5088 birthing unit, a little old, but the tissue's in great shape. They had food stocks and concentrated vitamin compounds stored here. She was able to stay fed through all these years!

That turns my stomach.

Well, her value's entirely as a museum piece at this point. The gestational chamber, amniotic fluid recycler, fetal perceptual stimulator...you can't get parts for this stuff anymore.

You're not turning me in, right? You gave me your word you wouldn't turn me in!

We gave you nothing. When we've taken care of our own business, we just might be back for you.

Hey, cut me a break, guys! I'm just trying to make an almost-honest living.

Talk to Fecund 5088

Aiee!

I'm surprised at your revulsion, Rachel. Birthing units like this would have liberated women from childbearing!

I am programmed to respond to doubts you may have about the moral dilemmas some find inherent in my existence.

That won't be necessary, 5088. I don't think your preprogrammed arguments will persuade us.

(Tell us about your features.)

I am a Fecund 5088 birthing unit. I am designed to be a superior gestational unit. The fetal chamber is lined with a biocircuitry interweave to constantly monitor fetal respiration, heartbeat, and important growth factors. Options: Available sensory throughputs to fetus: soothing sounds and music, comforting visual displays, direct projection of parents' voices into fetal chamber. DAT recordings playable to assist in subliminal environmental orientation.

Enough! Oh, God, this is making me sick!

I merely recite relevant facts relating to childbirth.

"Simulating the reproductive experience!" Not everything can be fabricated in a lab.

The existence of this unit proves otherwise. The essentials of the human reproductive event can and have been substantially improved by...

That's enough, 5088. I'm afraid my partner will pull your plug if you keep it up.

(Report the results of your self-diagnostics.)

My self-diagnostic indicates intensive, decades-long neglect to primary mechanical units.

You can say that again. The Hand put your creators out of business; I'll give them that much.

Meats, or the Hand's rule? Which one's the greater evil? Perverse mockeries of motherhood or tyrants ruling in the name of God? Some choice!

That's about all we can do here. We've got a new mysterious Latin phrase from another of the Night of Re-Entombment scrubs, though, and a bunch of crap we scooped up off the floor. Handily enough, combined with the copper tubing from Dr. Clean's office, said crap provides all the parts we need for Scub Stevens to rig up a still!

Examine Still: A hard-to-get item in America, 2095: A moonshine still.

...And you know what that means, kids: more Languo! To Gang Alley!

Talk to Languo

Here's the still, kid. Now, you better give us something on Brian Avery, and it better be good.

Oh, man, this is perfect, man. Barbara's gonna love this, man...soon as she comes to.

Now talk!

Sure, man. No problem. What am I talking about?

BRIAN AVERY!

Oh, right, right, right. OK, Brian Avery. Yeah...he got killed.

I love you, Languo.

We know that already! What was he doing around here?

He got stuff. Fact, he was supposed to get us a new holovision. I was all set, man...put my feet up, had a bag of chips, was just hanging out, getting prepped, resting up. Then I woke up and somebody said he was a goner. Real drag, you know? He was even getting this set I coulda used the old remote on and everything!

Is that all?!

Well, I dunno...it might work on other things, but it's really made just for holovisions, man.

I love you SO MUCH, Languo.

No, I mean...I mean, do you have any other info?

Not really, man.

C'mon, Rach. I can tell by the smoke coming out of your ears that it's time to go.

Hey, thanks for the still, man. Feel free to, like, look around or whatever, wherever you want, man.

That's another loose end wrapped up, if somewhat pointlessly. Our next stop is Eschatology Incorporated, employers of the late Adam Schonbrun, another unfortunate victim of the Re-Entombment operation.

Examine
Eschatology Inc. Offices: As you might expect of an organization dedicated to the study of death and the end of things, they haven't spent a lot on decorating...but from the founder's wheelchair to the holographic demon-apery chamger to the Nike 12000 computer, the equipment is state-of-the-art.

Hercule Rue Des Coeurs: A paraplegic is fused to the circuitry of a high-tech chair. Mechanical arms move in a swirl of activity.

Christy Abraxis: A young woman exudes corporate professionalism and competence.

Talk to Hercule Rue Des Coeurs

Dr. Octavius? Have you lost weight? Man, you look great! ...So sorry to hear about the accident, though.

So, then. You arrive unnanounced. You have business, I'm certain. You may state it...but be brief.

My partner and I are private investigators. We're looking into the death of one of your employees, Adam Schonbrun.

He was murdered by the scrub teams. He was in this very office before the dawn...that's when he liked to work...and a government death squad killed him.

What was the purported crime?

The scrub teams are not burdened by justifications. Christy has lodged petitions with the Transgressors' Office, demanding, as his employer, to know the charges...but nothing! They tell me nothing!

(Tell us about Schonbrun.)

Schonbrun was a strange one. Heh, but then, I guess anyone obsessed with ultimate fate usually does appear, shall we say, intense. Hard worker, though. Cross-disciplinary research, blending extranoumenal vision research with Dante mapping.

Would that get him killed?

It might, I suppose, if the government knew of it, but until Adam's death, only the people working on it knew it existed.

Something else, then. Something not related to his work here?

Then I would be unable to help. You see, I know very little about him. He was quiet about his past. I don't believe he had a family.

He and Roach used to drink at a speak called the Interface. That's all I know about him. Doesn't pay to have d-bases of personal information that the Hand can appropriate.

You see that we can be of little help. As with all of my employees, there is a template of his nervous system on file with Resurrections Unlimited. I believe...is his body in preservation there, Christy?

It is. We have him on a six-year retainer. The damage to his heart is more or less reparable. The mortal wound was to his brain, and Resurrections believes it's at least six years from treatment.

What is this? You're telling us that this Resurrections outfit brings people back from the dead?

Well, not yet, but they are working at it, eh? Important work...oh, illegal work. They are a chemical company as a...what is the word?...as a front, for the real business. They are located in Arlington, not far from here.

Hell is my business. Should you learn anything of interest about the underworld, I should like to hear it.

I note that Hercule has a completely ridiculous faux-French accent.

Talk to Christy Abraxis

Enormous glasses count: 2

I've reservations about cooperating with these two, Hercule. We don't know them from a blood gang. They could narc us, and then we'd get a first-hand look at hell.

I refuse to live in fear of being shot by the Hand's death squads, and I don't believe, any more than you do, that the government controls the underworld!

We're going to end up in prison. No doubt about it.

We have some questions about Adam Schonbrun.

All I know about Adam is what's in his file. I make it a point not to enter into personal relationships with the research staff. Peculiar thing about him was that Hercule had never heard of him; a number of people said that they knew him, but no one had actually met him or spoken with him.

You weren't suspicious?

Of course we were suspicious, but we're an illegal operation. We have enough of our own secrets. If an employee has something to hide, that's his business, and like I said, people vouched for his work and we could see he knew what he was doing. He was especially gifted at extracting topographic data from the psychologic subtexts of narrative events.

You mean that he was rendering a map of hell based on books and movies with hell as a subject matter?

Subject matter doesn't need to be hell, per se. Any story that reveals human understanding of evil, lust, hate, or venal sin reveals something about people's subconsious conceptions of hell.

Any idea why the Hand would want him dead?

Yes, Dante mapping's a capital offense! What do you think we do here? Tell ghost stories? If the Hand knew he was a mapper, they'd eliminate him. That stuff about permits was just a cover in case you were with the heat...which is why I was hostile to you earlier. We could be next on their list.

And so we're off to Resurrections Unlimited, a location with Problems.

Examine
Resurrections Unlimited: You'd never know such grand things were being attempted at Resurrections Unlimited by this nondescript anteroom, which seems to serve as a box storage area, utilities room, and guard room for the entrance to the company.

Dr. Zip Honey: A lone staffer eyes you indifferently.

Talk to Dr. Zip Honey

Enormous glasses count: 3. Also, Dr. Zip Honey is an awesome name. Also also, that reflective metallic dress is pretty rad too.

'Bout time you two showed up! It's been one long nightmare maintaining the stock with the backup computers. We have to get the main system up, or I can't guarantee that some of our clients' essence files won't be corrupted.

Want to come again with that?

Aren't you two here to install the new motherboard on the Dill 3000?

Uh, well, yeah! What else would we be here for?

Well then, get to it. The data storage chamber is through that door. Be careful; you'll have to deactivate the security system, but they would have told you how to do that when they ordered the motherboard. Sure will be glad to have that system up and running!

Oh god. The security system. Oh god. ...You'll see in a moment.

Talk to Dr. Zip Honey again

Do you two charge by the hour or what? Installing a motherboard shouldn't be that hard for you guys, even if it is an illegal Dill 3000. Turn off the security system and get working on it.

Right, on through that door in the back, leading to the oh sweet jesus security corridor.

Examine
Resurrections Hallway: You are immediately confronted by a bank of laser beams, clearly meant to trigger alarms...or worse. You're going to have to negotiate it somehow, but there's nothing else in the room that can help you; they've let the decorating of this room slide.

OK, so. The idea here is to whip out the mechanic's creeper from the Pentagon garage, like so:

...and then use it to slide your way through the beams.

OK, see those horizontal beams? They move up and down REALLY FAST. The vertical ones? They appear and disappear from the floor in rather dense clusters, also REALLY FAST. You have to do this with the mouse. The creeper controls like an unmaintained carnival bumpercar piloted by a palsied wino.

In other words, this sequence is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. I consider myself an individual not uncompetent with the vidya games - while no superplayer, I have completed Deadly Towers, Battletoads, La-Mulana, God Hand, any number of titles generally regarded as not for the faint of heart - and I can rarely make it past the first goddamned crossbeam. Making it to the second one is even rarer; making it PAST the second one is right out. Oh, and if you should happen to hit one of the beams...

Shit.

So yeah. Schonbrun's corpse contains another of those Latin phrases, not that I've ever seen it. Thankfully, while that's an important clue, seeing it doesn't set any mandatory quest flags, meaning it's still possible to complete the game without successfully doing this part. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, Hell would be unwinnable by mere mortals.

Just FYI, were this sequence not completely broken, we'd find the note "Vocabulum est acquirer, ominus venire ab genitor" on Schonbrun's body.

Pretending that we're done with Resurrections Ultd., we now move on to the headquarters of the Gneo-Gnostics.

Examine
Gnostics' Office: The attempt to study spiritual truths has not yet transcended matter; the Gnostics of 2095 need a lot of stuff to pursue their studies. The former church that serves as their headquarters is crammed with scanning equipment, computers, and various other instruments of intellectual pursuit.

Donna Alandro: A bookish woman nervously sneaks glances at you.

Professor Coronary: You see an intense, exotic man whom you recognize as Professor Zaxton Coronary.

You read that right: Professor Zaxton Fucking Coronary. God, this game and its names.

Talk to Professor Coronary

VIOLATION! Your glasses are not huge!

And there they are, Gideon Eshanti and Rachel Braque, fugitives from a system they served with faith and ardor. One pure and righteous, now expelled and hunted.

What the hell? How'd this guy make us? His writeup doesn't have him as a looker.

Mystery to me, hon. Give it, Professor; how do you know who we are?

I could ask the same question, you know. If the Transgressors' Office knows of this location...

Feel free to panic. They know about it. They're just waiting 'til it's your turn to be the scrub of the month. Don't kid yourself. You're like everybody else, living at the whim of the Hand.

We track what happens in places like Reality Containment. When the Hand orders two ARC investigators scrubbed, that's news in the underground.

So you know us. That just makes things easier. You know we're not working for ARC.

Quite so. Very well. I'm listening, then.

(We're here to ask you about Deirdre O'Connor.)

Ms. O'Connor was killed the same night the scrub team came for us.

I know that, Ms. Braque. She was murdered while she slept, killed by the people you used to work for.

Believe it or not, we're trying to find out why Deirdre O'Connor and five other people were scrubbed on the night we were attacked. If we can establish some connection between the victims, it might help us to clear ourselves.

There's no mystery here. Deirdre, along with another scholar, Wickersham Dodge, worked European and Asian black markets for virtual realities. She was good, too. She'd just picked up a dozen dreamscape realities in Istanbul, but at the same time, the Istanbul foray was reckless. SHE was reckless. We knew the Hand was watching...that virtual media dealing, in part, with a legitimate religion, would risk bringing the authorities down on us. She didn't care. It was as though she thought she couldn't die. She was an unusually physical woman; I suppose she thought she could fight her way out of any problem.

She was combat trained?

Not that I know of, but if she was, she would have been quite fearsome. She was, as I said, quite physical...over six feet tall, quite athletic...but I know little about her past. You should speak with David. He's a novice here who worked as her assistant.

(You speak Latin, don't you?)

Yes, I speak Latin and several other languages fluently.

We could have a use for that. The Hand indulges in Latinate phrasing for much of its encryption.

I know. Yes, I know, and you need a translator...but my services are not without fee. I have a job that requires someone with your skills.

What skills, Professor?

Skills that allowed you to evade a scrub team.

Don't ask us for a replay, Professor. Adrenaline kicked in, reflexes took over, and we got really lucky. We're not mercs, if that's your angle.

What I have in mind is much safer: a simple breaking and entering. There's an antiquities collector named Bleistok who lives in a penthouse near L'Enfant Plaza. He has an eighteenth-century manuscript, the Blaze Parchment, that we must examine. I see what you're thinking. I see what you're thinking. The Gnostics don't usually resort to thievery, but Bleistok obtained the parchment illegally. It was supposed to have been included in a secret auction in an exurban slum outside of Jakarta. I was there to bid on it, but it never came up for sale. I learned later that Bleistok had stolen the parchment en route to Jakarta.

Blaze Parchment? This is familiar. We've come across this before.

Blaze was a scientist and philosopher much at odds with the Enlightenment world in which he lived. Blaze's visionary work is said to have presupposed the essential structures of cyberspace. Unfortunately, his work was never published. Only this original copy remains. We must examine it. If you want my services as a translator, I'll have your services as a thief. Bring me the Blaze Parchment, and I'll help you.

Talk to Donna Alandro

Well, OK...those are kind of huge...I guess. :/

Excuse me. Not to intrude, but did I hear Professor Coronary say you were going to retrieve the Blaze Parchment from Bleistok's clutches? I hope that's true. It would be a start to your redeeming yourselves for your ARC service.

You can shove redemption, bookworm. We'll settle for survival. We spoke to Coronary. I wouldn't say we're welcomed guests, but he knows we aren't here to trash the place.

We're trying to discover why O'Connor was scrubbed. Any ideas?

Dee was a, uh, what you'd...she was a 'trode-head. She could jack into cyberspace. She had a deck, um, that she claimed to have jury-rigged. She was good, too; knew her way around. She, ahem, used to work for the Sustenance Authority until she, as she put it, "edge-surfed" out of transglobe culture.

That computes, Gid.

I suppose so. In a limited sense, it does. O'Connor was a natural target; so was an eschatologist like Schonbrun, and O'Leary owned a speak with Sinn Fein affiliations, but I still don't see the link between us and these subverts.

Talk to Donna Alandro again

I hope you're learning the truth about your former masters.

There's another room in Gnostics HQ, accessible by walking off to the east.

Examine
Gnostics' Computer Room: It seems fitting that where the altar used to stand in this former church, the Gnostics have mounted their main computer bank. Amidst the hush, heads bowed to their computers, this is where the core of their efforts are focused.

Wickersham Dodge (at computer): A square-jawed, decidedly unscholarly-looking man, who nevertheless has the demeanor of one committed to work and study.

Daniel: A solemn boy in threadbare clothes stands near Deirdre O'Connor's desk.

That scrap of paper on top of one of the cubicles is an item, but if we try to examine or take it, Daniel obstructs us.

Talk to Wickersham Dodge

If you're with Transgressions or ARC, you've come to the wrong place. I won't sing to the people who killed my friend. You can kill me before I do that.

Strong claim to be making to strangers, pal. If we were from Transgressions we'd take you up on that...but we're not the heat.

(What kind of work do you do with the Gnostics?)

Right now I'm not doing a whole hell of a lot, because my partner was killed. I'm just going through some of the data she was working with. Dee and I maintained and monitored covert hookups with international networks and bulletin boards, not an easy job with ARC programmers raiding the boards looking for unauthorized hooks they can trace to their source.

Yeah, we're familar with their ops. They trace the origin of the link, and then they send the stormtroopers in. What were you searching for?

We were pushing the edge. Dee insisted we not play it safe. We were trying to score cyberspace decks from the European black market, not easy since Europe's well within the Hand's grasp.

No wonder O'Connor got whacked. ARC's got knuckles all over the continent. Only hope of scoring a deck is to launder it through a third party in the Middle East or Russia.

(What can you tell us about O'Connor?)

Why not ask her for that information?

What are you talking about? She's dead!

Yes, but she lives on, courtesy of her own handiwork. She spent months on this. Wouldn't tell me how she did it, and I haven't been able to crack the source code yet. How she did this with current technology is a mystery to me!

So what is it?

She programmed in source code that simulates her own personality, which is impressive enough, but then she also digitized her own voice enunciating English-language phonemes and wrote programming routines that compose the phonemes into words on the fly! Amazing stuff; I don't know where she learned how to do this!

You're saying...we can talk to her?

There's no visual output yet, but listen here.

Hey, Wicks. What's bootin' your system?

Some people here asking about you and about our work.

I assume they're legits? You gotta watch who you 'face with, Wicks. You're too trusting.

This is strange. We're talking to a dead person.

Yeah, freakin' scrub teams wasted my proto, but the essential Deirdre is powered up and online. This has the potential to blow away an Acti-Deck interface.

So now what? We just ask this computer why O'Connor was killed?

Why not? Deirdre, can you shed any light on why the Hand chose now to kill you?

Hand needed a reason to whack a techno-anarchist, post-humanist, entrepreneurial free spirit obsessed with actuating the transhuman?

An Amazonian transhumanist who managed to immanentize her own mini-Singularity? I have to say Deirdre sounds kind of awesome.

Talk to Daniel

Is this where O'Connor worked? You can tell us, boy. We're on the same side, sort of.

There's nothing to search for now, nothing to learn here. She was going to teach me so many things...how to fly in cyberspace and explore the virtual in search of the real. Now she's dead, and it's too late.

Maybe not, son. There might be something. Her decking unit, for instance.

Your goons got that when they killed her. It's probably tagged and collecting dust in some Pentagon sub-basement. Forget about it! You can't search her desk until Professor Coronary tells me I have to let you.

Let's just knock this runt over.

I'm inclined to agree, Rach, but we're already wanted. Any violence and Coronary could turn us in. Hell, he may do that anyway. Giving us to the Hand would certainly buy him a lot of goodwill with Transgressions.

Talk to Daniel again

Get lost, before I get so pissed off I bring the Hand down on all of us!

We can now travel to Bleistok's apartment, so let's do that!

Examine
Collector's Room: For burglars, the entire room's contents seems desirable, but even inferior burglars would recognize that the room's most desirous articles are clearly booby-trapped.

Blaze Parchment: This crackling old parchment is unrolled just enough to make visible a glimpse of an ancient text.

Right, let's just saunter up and grab the parchment. Surely those conspicuous red lasers don't mean us any harm.

SHIT

Let's try that again, this time without the imprisonment. The electromagnet we ganked from New Corporeals should do nicely.

I'm a fairly laid-back guy when it comes to suspending disbelief, but I really have to question this. I can accept the electromagnet attracting the parchment, because it looks like it might have metal rollers in it, but why does it just float across the room to Gideon in a straight line? Gravity much? Not sure why it doesn't set off the beams, either. Well, regardless, we've got it now, which means we're ready to go pry some Babelfishing out of Professor Fucking Coronary.

Talk to Professor Coronary

Ahh, the Blaze Parchment! Well done, well done! I assure you that when we have finished with it, we will see it placed somewhere where it will be appreciated.

Hey, live it up, Prof! Don't forget your side of the bargain.

I stand by my word. You see before you, a translator!

We're hoping you can translate this Latin phrase for us. We've written it down for you.

Of course. Let me see it. "Vocabulum est tabula, ominus venire ab genitor". The Latin is poor, but it reads, "The word is 'slate' and all comes from the father. The key word here seems to be "tabula" which translates as "slate".

The word "slate". Not much of a clue.

Still, it's a clue, my brainy beau. It's something to go on.

I didn't say it was nothing. Just that it wasn't much.

We're hoping you can translate this Latin phrase for us. We've written it down for you.

Of course. Let me see it. "Vocabulum est grallae, ominus venire ab genitor". The Latin is poor, but it reads, "The word is 'stilts' and all comes from the father. The key word here seems to be "grallae" which translates as "stilts". A rather unlikely message!

The word "stilts". Not much of a clue.

Really? Gee, it seems obvious to me!

Mm-hmm. The answer will be obvious when we're done with it.

The two of us have been have been repeatedly sharing the same nightmares, and after every one of them, we wake up screaming and with the same Latin sentence on our lips: "Vocabulum est serus, ominus venire ab genitor". Can you translate that for us?

Of course. Quite easy. The Latin is poor, but it translates to "The word is 'late' and all comes from the father." The key word here seems to be "late". Does this mean anything to you?

No, it doesn't. Not yet, at least...but it could be the start of something.

Well, that was enlightening. In the other room...

Talk to Daniel

The only reason I'm letting you search the desk is because Professor Coronary allows it. Don't think I'm forgiving you for what happened to Dee. Someday your kind will pay for what they did.

Whatever there, duder. The important thing is that we can check that bit of paper now.

Talk to Daniel again

How long are you gonna sort through her effects? You're enjoying this, aren't you? You get some kind of sick thrill running through one of your victims' stuff. I swear you'll all pay for this.

That's one more Latin phrase to show Zax, viz:

We're hoping you can translate this Latin phrase for us. We've written it down for you.

Of course. Let me see it. The Latin is poor, but it reads "Vocabulum est grallae, ominus venire ab genitor". "The word is 'gate' and all comes from the father. The key word here is "janua" which is Latin for "gate".

The word "gate". Not much of a clue.

But enough? You've done more with less.

Oh, I'll figure it out. Give me time, and I'll figure it out. I just hope we have enough time.

If we'd been able to get the "Vocabulum est acquirer" phrase from Resurrections Unlimited, Coronary would translate it as "The word is 'get' and all comes from the father". So, that's late, stilts, slate, get, and gate. Perhaps this information will prove useful to us at some point in the future!

Aaaand that's all I've got for now. Next time on IPAT: Hell, we hook up with the Citizens' Freedom Front and meet Senator Erin Fucking Burr!