PARANOIA A1 The Computer is Your Friend
Page 14
Celeste waited for Jerome in the cafe, six sectors over from the Threat Obfuscation office. The chances of encountering a snooping co-worker or spy were remote, but they still took precautions. They sat at different tables, glanced at each other sidelong, and communicated through their own system of coded gestures and finger taps.
“Granville terminated,” Celeste tapped. “New clone is ORANGE. Lucky he didn’t get erased.”
Another obstacle removed from their path—two, counting Delevan. Without Circulex, Delevan-I couldn’t reverse his genetic degradation. Celeste was already the obvious candidate to take over the BLUE role heading of Threat Obfuscation. By the time Delevan succumbed to his mutations, she’d be in position to replace him.
Celeste had allowed herself a celebratory mug of CoffeeLyke. “The system worked.”
Not TraceRoute—her own system of analysis and cross-referencing. She’d built TraceRoute with deliberate flaws. Neither Celeste nor Jerome had any intention of handing over such a weapon to the true powers in Alpha Complex.
Jerome tapped, “Granville demotion means security camera not urgent.” The security camera in Granville’s office had caught Jerome meddling with the console, but that was the only remaining evidence of their scheme—and they could delete that at their leisure. Granville now lacked the security clearance to get into his own apartment, and his doorbell was merciless.
“Shouldn’t wait.” Celeste was right. TraceRoute proved even after the deletion, traces might remain. And with every clearance level they climbed, they drew closer to those who could use the traces against them—the Conspiracy.
But Jerome, as he chewed one of Granville’s licorice pastille, felt confident. They’d pledged to each other to bring down the sinister master manipulators of Alpha Complex. It had taken them months to devise an attack on the hermetic Granville, but Celeste’s fake TraceRoute brought him down. Celeste had figured it out. She always figured out everyone.
As he looked at his friend, Jerome felt a moment of unease.
She sipped her CoffeeLyke inscrutably.
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What is the Conspiracy, and how do Celeste and Jerome fight it? Follow their search, their struggles, and their final revelation in PARANOIA novel S1 Reality Optional by Gareth Hanrahan. Published by Ultraviolet Books, it’s available where you obtained this book. “Data Exhaust” was inspired by one line from a flashback in Chapter 5 of Reality Optional: “A week later, the manager of Threat Obfuscation joined Beatrice-Y in the Happy Daze Therapy Center.”
KEEP READING in this book for FREE previews of Reality Optional and the other Ultraviolet Books PARANOIA novels.
About PARANOIA and Ultraviolet Books
Allen Varney
In the early 1980s a New York City roleplaying gamer, Dan Gelber, conceived Alpha Complex as a setting for his tabletop RPG players. Game designers Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan encouraged Dan to detail the setting. From Dan’s pages of notes Eric and Greg created a game, and editor and developer Ken Rolston added a darkly humorous tone. West End Games published PARANOIA in (appropriately) 1984 to instant success.
PARANOIA inverted the traditional cooperative play of most games by casting the player characters as Troubleshooters in service to an insane Computer, charged with hunting traitors—mutants and members of secret societies. Each character was, unbeknownst to the other characters, both a mutant and a society member. It was a game of backstabbing and betrayal, where each player frantically tried to accumulate evidence and get the other traitors terminated before they did the same to him.
The game earned its greatest fame for its implementation of the color-coded security clearance system. Only the Gamemaster, Clearance ULTRAVIOLET, was permitted to know the rules. If a players, who was usually of lowly RED Clearance, ever displayed knowledge of the rules—as for instance by arguing with the GM—that was demonstrably treason, and the other players were therefore entitled to shoot his character on the spot.
PARANOIA revolutionized roleplaying. The first really successful comedic RPG (over 100,000 copies sold), it was among the earliest games to tailor its rules to achieve a specific emotional atmosphere—a tensely hilarious satire in the vein of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and the works of Philip K. Dick. Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil, which appeared later, conjures the same mood. As the support line’s inspired line editor, Ken Rolston guided to publication almost a dozen brilliant supplements and adventures, along with the line’s high-water mark, the much-loved second edition (1987). In these works, ornamented by the quintessential PARANOIA artist, Jim Holloway, the game’s tone moved to slapstick, the fast-moving frenetic play that remains the beloved Classic style.
When Ken left West End to work in computer games—he later became lead designer on Bethesda’s Morrowind and Oblivion—the PARANOIA support line slid rapidly in sales and quality. Managed by—how to put this tactfully?—people with different views of the game, it succumbed to a cancerous meta-plot, the “Secret Society Wars,” that culminated in The Computer crashing. For years, with each new, painfully unfunny adventure, fans said, “Well, it can’t get any worse than this.” And yet—
Finally, like a traitor after an Internal Security brainscrub, the later PARANOIA support line dwindled and vanished. Eric and Greg eventually recaptured rights to PARANOIA and arranged with another game publisher, Mongoose Publishing (Swindon, UK), to revive it.
Because I had co-written an early adventure (Send in the Clones, with Warren Spector), I got the happy assignment to update and expand Alpha Complex for the more paranoid era of 2004. From the first moment of my involvement—Day 1, Hour 1, Minute 1—and that of the many talented people who helped me, we intended to redeem PARANOIA and expunge the memory of its long, harrowing decline.
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As much a psychological exercise as a game, PARANOIA had become a legend in the hobby. Over a decade after the last edition (1992), the game retained a devoted fan following in various web communities, especially the remarkable Paranoia-Live.net. Hundreds of P-L.net forum members showed passionate love for, and strong opinions about, the game.
I organized dozens of these fans as collaborators. I used every Web tool I could find: Paranoia-Live.net; a Wiki; and a development blog started by Greg Costikyan. Fans vetted the playtest rules and contributed lots of material, like coders on an open-source software project. It wasn’t really open-source; everyone knowingly surrendered their material to PARANOIA’s owners, without hope of compensation. (The blog disclaimer read, “All your rights are belong to us. No bloody Creative Commons here! Bwahahaha!”) But they pitched in anyway, hoping they would benefit by getting an improved game. And it worked; the fans made the new edition incomparably better. It was a labor of love for all concerned, like a lot of open-source software. The experience itself was the reward.
Like an industrious scrubot, the 2004 Mongoose edition of PARANOIA cleansed the old game of excruciating pop-cult wackiness. PARANOIA is not wacky. In appropriately Orwellian fashion, we excised all the wacky West End meta-plot adventures from the historical record. They never happened. They are now un-products. References to them are treason.
The new PARANOIA re-introduced The Computer to a new generation of potential traitors. It offered much for longtime fans, and it had lots of new stuff too: a revised clone system, illegal black (INFRARED) markets, the Underplex, and a more capitalistic complex. Fans who thought they understood Alpha Complex felt off-balance once again, as is entirely appropriate.
PARANOIA remains the leading comedic RPG—and now there’s three times as much of it. The three Mongoose Publishing 25th Anniversary rulebooks are all written by former Mongoose staff designer Gareth Hanrahan and published in 2009-10. Each is a standalone independent game. Troubleshooters makes players the familiar RED-Clearance agents from previous editions. Internal Security uses much the same rules for investigations by GREEN and BLUE IntSec troopers, and High Programmers is an all-new game about
the mysterious ULTRAVIOLETs who run Alpha Complex.
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The owners and original designers of the RPG—Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Goldberg—have granted me an ebook fiction license. The books are inexpensive, free of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and have new covers by fan-favorite PARANOIA artist Jim Holloway. The authors are all longtime writers for the RPG; one of the first novels, Reality Optional, is by the designer of the current 25th Anniversary edition, Gareth Hanrahan.
Though the game’s original publisher, West End Games, published two novels based on the RPG, the UV Books license doesn’t include those books nor any other early material. Ultraviolet Books is publishing all-new novels that have never been published in any form. The line aims for a tone different from the older picaresque, parodic laugh-fests. Our authors aim to write not just good PARANOIA books but good, smart science-fictional satire, telling well-plotted, coherent, and compelling adventure stories about interesting characters and situations.
In these books we’re hoping to continue a tradition of smart science fiction satire in the mode of Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, John Sladek, and Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth. In my view that tradition has subsided in recent decades. The audience is relatively small, and for a publishing conglomerate the finances don’t make sense. But for a small, scrappy band of High Programmers—on our own! backs to the wall! fighting The Man!—the business case is more plausible.
But it’s not about the business case, and it never has been. It’s about doing right by PARANOIA—rescuing it from its past, but more important, letting the idea become what it wants to be. We’re all helping as best we can.
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The 2004 edition of the RPG introduced “play styles”—different ways to play the game to emphasize various kinds of atmosphere. The play styles included Classic (the original comedic style that made the game famous), Straight (a darker style emphasizing fear and ignorance), and Zap (freewheeling slapstick). The Ultraviolet Books PARANOIA ebooks take the same varied approach.
Gareth Hanrahan’s S1 Reality Optional is a Classic adventure with high-spirited firefights, Augmented Reality infoburn, and Transtube Pirates. Jerome-G, a bureaucrat in the Threat Obfuscation office, charged with inventing fake dangers to disguise real ones, gets in trouble when his imagined threats somehow turn real. (For more about Jerome, see “Data Exhaust” in this book.)
My own “Troubleshooter Rules” trilogy, starting with T1 Stay Alert, tells a Straight satiric story of intricate Troubleshooter intrigue. The first book’s backdrop is a struggle between Free Enterprise mafia gangs for control of the ultimate secret-society meeting space, the Clean Rooms. (This book’s “Rule Zero” is a prelude to Stay Alert.)
WJ MacGuffin’s Y1 Traitor Hangout is the most light-hearted of these three, a Wodehousean comedy with lots of laughs. The heroes are Clarence-Y, a “Yellowpants” efficiency auditor with encyclopedic knowledge of The Computer’s mandates, and his pet mouse, Ignatius. Too bad Clarence is oblivious to pretty much everything else, including the plot by two corrupt Internal Security officers to frame him as the notorious Death Leopard criminal, Superstar Pirate. (Clarence and the mouse debut in this book’s story “Hay Fever.”)
The roleplaying line has pushed PARANOIA in new directions and broadened the range of experiences players associate with the game. The Ultraviolet Books fiction line does the same. You’ll be amazed at all our different kinds of PARANOIA.
Still ahead: the second and third volumes of The Troubleshooter Rules trilogy (entitled Trust No One and Keep Your Laser Handy), new singleton books from other Famous Game Designers long associated with the RPG, and the further adventures of Clarence and his mouse. With any luck the PARANOIA line will continue for years before our eventual, inevitable termination.
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Curious about those letter codes?
S = Singleton (a book unrelated to any others)
T= The Troubleshooter Rules
Y = Yellowpants
This book, The Computer is Your Friend, is A for, of course, “Anthology.”
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KEEP READING in this book for FREE sample chapters from all the PARANOIA novels.
Backmatter
Published by Ultraviolet Books under Housing Preservation and Development & Mind Control Mandate HPPM 003.09/a, “Recruitment and Indoctrination of New Citizens Through Means Not Subject to Oversight or Review.”
Contact
Questions, comments? uvbooks@gmail.com
Sign up for our FREE (and spam-free) mailing list to get discount codes, new fiction, and update notifications for your PARANOIA books: www.ultravioletbooks.com
You should also follow us on Twitter: @UVBooks and @Friend_Computer (don’t omit the underscore, citizen).
Twitter hashtag #uvbooks
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Join the PARANOIA fan community at Paranoia-Live.net: www.paranoia-live.net
Acknowledgments
Cover by Michael Kerney: michaelkerney.com
Thanks to Lindsay Keay and Jim Hurley for text help.
About the authors
Gareth Hanrahan (“Data Exhaust”)
I’m a writer and game designer based in Ireland. I’ve written more roleplaying game supplements than I can recall, including the new edition of the classic science fiction RPG Traveller. Licensed works include RPG adaptations of the Laundry Files novels, the Primeval TV show, Babylon 5, and Conan. While working for Mongoose Publishing, I contributed many books to the award-winning PARANOIA line and oversaw the three 25th Anniversary edition rulebooks: Troubleshooters, Internal Security, and High Programmers. Twitter: @Mytholder. Current projects: milkyfish.com
Greg Ingber (“Action Request,” “Market Research”)
I contributed to several PARANOIA RPG supplements, starting with Extreme PARANOIA (2006). During my studies at Swarthmore College, I was once dragged into a shopping mall interrogation room and forced to evaluate mouthwash advertisements. This experience inspired the story “Market Research.” I write and perform comedy, record and edit audio, and generally try to keep myself out of trouble. Twitter: @joeyheadset.
WJ MacGuffin (“Hay Fever”)
I’m a writer, game designer, educator, and nerdcore fan based in Illinois, USA. I’ve written for the PARANOIA RPG, including the supplements WMD, STUFF, and Criminal Histories, under my real name, Bill O’Dea. It was quite a shock to discover another educator in the US named Bill O’Dea—hence the new name. I’ve also written for Cubicle 7’s Laundry RPG. I founded my own game company, Happy Bishop Games, and released my first RPG, Triune, to great reviews and poor sales. Twitter: @wjmacguffin. Happy Bishop Games: happybishop.com.
Allen Varney (“Rule Zero”)
I’m a writer and game designer based in Austin, Texas, USA. I’ve published seven books, including two previous gaming tie-in novels, as well as two dozen tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) supplements and nearly 300 articles, columns, and reviews. I’ve also written for many computer games, including the story and cutscenes for Disney’s Epic Mickey (2010). In 2004 I designed a new edition of PARANOIA for Mongoose Publishing, then packaged over a dozen books in its associated product line. Now the PARANOIA owners have licensed me to package the Ultraviolet Books fiction line. Twitter: @AllenVarney. Home page: www.allenvarney.com.
More PARANOIA fiction
Available from the same site where you found this book (assuming you aren’t a traitor who downloaded it illegally). KEEP READING in this book for free preview chapters from all these novels.
S1 Reality Optional by Gareth Hanrahan
Conspiracy theorist Jerome-G can’t figure out why the fake dangers he’s been devising for the Threat Obfuscation office are suddenly turning real. Then he finds a pair of experimental Augmented Reality glasses that show him the truth behind everything—and leaves him more confused than ever.
T1 Stay Alert by Allen Varney
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br /> Book 1 of The Troubleshooter Rules. Fletcher-R-JSV-1 was thrilled when The Computer recruited him to become a Troubleshooter. But Troubleshooter Team Rotisserie-459’s first mission—to return a stolen helpbot, or “clippy”—is already going wrong. Aided only by the experimental alertness drug called Leery, Fletcher must complete his mission before Fletcher’s treacherous teammates find out he’s a traitor.
Y1 Traitor Hangout by WJ MacGuffin
On assignment for Internal Security, hyper-oblivious Central Processing Unit “Yellowpants” efficiency expert Clarence-Y must impersonate notorious criminal “Superstar Pirate” and infiltrate four secret societies in one day. Can he survive? Never mind that—can he possibly avoid violating Mandate ISTM 440.95/a?
Changelog
Original version 2012.02.07-01
Version 2012.02.11: Minor corrections to “Rule Zero,” “Action Request,” and “Data Exhaust”; corrected Backmatter credits; font corrections.
This is version 2012.02.15: Corrected number of Emergency Bathroom Break Requisition form. (Hey, that’s important!)
Not sure if you have the latest version? Sign up for our FREE mailing list to get PARANOIA update notifications and discount codes: http://ultravioletbooks.com
FREE preview: Reality Optional
Chapters 1-4 from the full-length PARANOIA novel by Gareth Hanrahan
Jerome-G had a good job at the Threat Obfuscation Department in Alpha Complex. He invented false threats to cover up true dangers. It made perfect sense, once he understood The Computer’s idea of “true” is entirely false.
Suddenly Jerome’s fake menaces are turning real. Rogue robots are conspiring for independence. There’s a pirate ship in the transport tubes. And the real-est threat is the powerful executive Ellister-V, who means to dispose of Jerome permanently.