DAY 01

[thecomputer]

[Good morning! The doors unlock at 07:00, the enforced sleep effect wearing off just a few minutes prior. As you file out into the facility for the morning, it won’t take long to figure out what’s different. The first clue is probably the corpse in the Central Hub - the body that formerly belonged to Seryu Ubiquitous.

Once everyone’s up, there is an announcement from Friend Computer.]

Good morning, Citizens! Last night, participant Seryu-R-CIT-1 was terminated due to Communist action. In addition, one participant was successfully converted from a Citizen into a Communist. There are now 13 Citizens and 6 Communists.

Trial 01 will begin at 20:00.

[At 08:00, the usual fleet of cleaning droids will clear up the corpse and surrounding mess.

On the profiles list, Seryu’s full User ID is now visible, and her status has changed to DEAD.]

Comments

[ossifragant]

There's no need for you to stick around and look at something like this.

[It seems a few people have stepped forward to play detective already. Whatever all this is, he doesn't even know how to begin to process it.

Greed's never dealt with murder scenes like this before.

Though maybe he should say something else instead of standing around awkwardly.]

I don't know much about detective work, but it seems a little too staged to me.

[plentyfriendly]

[True, but it'll take more than just signs of violence to unnerve Phi.]

Well, you're not wrong. There's a lot of leads that go nowhere.

[ossifragant]

Maybe someone will find out something about this.

I think we can assume the arrow killed her, but she could have been strangled. Not with that arm I don't think, but we can't rule that out.

[He isn't going to be joining in on this round of detective, not really, because he doesn't see the point to it.]

...the best we can hope for is that she went out quickly.

[Greed is almost positive she didn't, but he won't be voicing that opinion.]

[plentyfriendly]

We should find out how much blood is around the arrow. I think there'd be less if she was stabbed with it after she died.

[ossifragant]

Yeah. I suppose so.

[So how's it look? Are her clothes covered in blood or fairly stain-free?]

[plentyfriendly]

[Mostly they seem to be covered in blood everywhere except the wound.]

...this doesn't make sense, either.

[ossifragant]

[Why is he doing this? This is the last thing he wanted to do, but here he is looking at the dead body of some person he doesn't even know and trying to figure out what killed her.]

Maybe the blood is from something else. Meant to throw us off.

I don't know where a person would get so much blood just to set up a fake crime scene.

[plentyfriendly]

Who said it had to be a person? Maybe our friend the computer had some spare blood.

[ossifragant]

...You're right. The computer probably had a hand in setting this up. Whoever is controlling it probably has access to anything he wants.

[plentyfriendly]

Not quite... there doesn't necessarily have to be someone controlling it.

[ossifragant]

I guess I don't know enough [or anything] about computers.

[plentyfriendly]

Basically, if whoever it was did it right, it's acting according to what he or she wants even while that person isn't around. And they could even be one of us.

[ossifragant]

...That's an alarming thought.

We really have no way of knowing at all.