Part 14: Submachine 6: The Edge

Part 14
Submachine 6: The Edge


Click here to play the game yourself.

Let's start with the next game. If you remember, we were sent on a mission by Murtaugh to investigate the far end of the Submachine net and return unharmed.

This game has a rather long intro sequence, which I put in a video for your convenience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTIH3bLnrcM



During that brief moment of control, we really couldn't do anything but step into that other Mover. These games keep reminding me of the Cube films, by the way.


We seem to have been brought somewhere. That large wall we went through was probably the inner wall of the Subnet's Edge.


Pressing the button in the next room, we are scanned, and the way back reopens.


Apparently we can't take anything with us into the Edge. I have to dump all my stuff in the receptacle in the last room. Now the scanner lets us continue to the right.


Here we are asked to enter an access code in the form of an array of zeroes and ones. We don't have one, and after changing a few bits at random, the system kicks us out.


Going down...


Crap, were did that thing bring us?


The 'elevator' immediately leaves as we step out. There doesn't seem to be much to the right, but we can climb on top of the pipe here.


This game isn't afraid to throw in an actually empty room with no puzzles every so often. By the way, the background 'music' in this game is mostly a very quiet low hum with a few 'disturbances'. It's better than no background sounds at all, but I don't think it's interesting enough to put music links in this update.


RTL
Let's explore the left side of this area. The image on the right is where the elevator was a minute ago


Somehow I don't think we can get that rusty portal operational again. But we can sidle along the edge in the back carefully.


RTL
It kinda feels like we're in some forgotten area under the machine, like the old Aperture Science down the shaft in Portal 2. Anyway, a note!


...Well, that's bad. Did someone end up getting lost here, somehow? Perhaps we'll learn more later.


RTL
And that's as far as we can go along the ridge.


Luckily we aren't completely stuck in this place. We can crawl into this drain pipe. Who went out here to build it, though?


It's nice to move right for a change, it makes it easier to order the images in the post. This lower pipe seems to be a dead end, though.


That junction looks strange. But up on top there's some stuff for us.


This place sounds rather dangerous. And that secret message in the last game said something about a defense system. Let's be careful. The person who left this note also left a Key Card. We might need that later.


This is the room left of the strange junction.
Strange... are they implying Murtaugh sent more people on this mission? It's dangerous, so perhaps he had no choice. But couldn't he go himself? With his karma arm, that should be easy, right?


As you might've guessed, turning this wheel changes the orientation of the strange junction. Now we can go further right.


Pushing this head thing into the wall opens up a passage in the room below, that was blocked before.


More pipes. This area has some metal clanks mixed in with the background hum.


We came out of the lower pipe. Let's go straight up first.


Turning this wheel switches which pipe we can access in the room just before it.


As you can see here.


The upper pipe is currently a dead end. When we enter the bottom one, we can see why.


We remove the lid and look at the note.
What has been going on in this place? It kinda feels like someone is trying to warn me about someone I know.


The upper pipe now takes us into this differently looking room. The name Thoth appears when you put your mouse cursor over the picture on the wall. Thoth was the Egyptian god who kept the universe in balance. He invented science, mathematics, language and magic.


To the right is this strange room. If we turn the circle with the hourglass, the room with the pillar suddenly becomes dilapidated.


As the god of mathematics and astronomy, Thoth was also responsible for the motion of heavenly bodies and for timekeeping. That explains his presence near this time room. According to the wiki, this room is called the 'Chronon', by the way.

We can't do anything else here right now. So we backtrack out of this Egyptian area, back to this junction.

RTL
To the top left this time. I hope this maze of tunnels isn't too confusing. It's not quite as confusing to play as the Sewers back in the Lighthouse, because it doesn't loop around. All rooms are either dead ends or directly on the way to progress.


Going up, we end up in this room. We can only climb into the middle pipe right now, the one with a ladder under it.


However, we are quickly stopped by some barrier.


Below the room with the ladder and to the left is this room, with a puzzle. Clicking one wheel turns it a quarter, but it also turns the other wheel a half turn. The goal is to make one of the three central lights light up. To do this, the wheels have to be aligned.

I found the easiest way to do this is by simply alternating clicking on one and the other until they line up.


This moves the ladder, so we can climb up to a side pipe and press the button to remove the barrier. There's light at the top of this pipe but there seems to be some kind of cover we can't remove.


Rinse and repeat for the right side.


And when we put the wheels back in the original position and climb into the middle pipe, we find that the way has now opened up.


RTL
We're out of these cramped tunnels. Now all we need to do is hook up the Gel pumps to the modern facility and... no wait, I'm getting games switched up again.


RTL
There doesn't seem to be much out here to the left.


We can try entering the pipe but are immediately stopped by another barrier. Let's try going right from where we exited the Tunnels instead.






Mostly more of the same. But in that first screen, there's a terminal which seems to accept a Key Card. Let's see if ours still works.


Yep! An elevator arrives from above.


Let's go to the middle level first. By the way, the only way to get down to the area with the tunnel exit is by taking this elevator, which means we're permanently locked out from accessing the right end of that area. Luckily there's nothing else to see there.


RTL
A closed door and an electrical barrier. This area looks quite high tech all of a sudden. Let's take the elevator further up.


RTL
The top level. The door is closed, but we can interact with the screen in the right room.


By toggling the green dots we can set the security level to 0, which removes the electrical barriers down below. I hope the automated defense system hasn't noticed us yet.


RTL
Door number 5 on the middle level is still locked, but we can continue left now.


And we find something here. A Steel Cube with something inside. Picking it up lowers the pillar and activates the screen.


We still don't have an ID number, but we can enter the pattern we've seen down below near the tunnel exit.


It doesn't unlock the cube, so we'll have to find another way to do that.


What entering the pattern does is quietly open the pipe on the screen with the pattern. Down there is a secret area. Instead of Secret objects to collect, this game has 5 hidden secret areas, and this is the first we found.


I'm not sure yet what's going on, but I'll keep that advice in mind.

This seems like a reasonable place to take a break. Next time, we'll find the remaining secrets, and discover what's up with this Subnet Defense System.