Part 33: Escape: Security
VLR OST: [Monitor]
Fortunately, a facility's "Security Room" is not necessarily itself a particularly secure room, but merely the central location from which the security of other rooms is handled. So that'll make our escape a bit easier.
Technically, our team is Sigma (7BP, Magenta Pair), Phi (7BP, Magenta Pair) and Luna (7BP, Green Solo), but unfortunately Luna can't join us today because somebody murdered her.
This room also happens to be the first we've been to with a "complex" layout, which is to say, there is more than one spot on which we can stand while panning our viewpoint around.
As you might be able to tell, this really needn't have been the case, but apparently they just had to have those funky hexagonal shelves in their own little alcoves.
In fact, this room is actually quite sparse. There isn't even all that much good dialogue, either. All it has going for it is one kinda nifty (though arbitrary) puzzle and that kinda-not-as-grating-as-you-think-from-the-first-few-seconds BGM.
Well, let's have a poke around.
Donno. Looks like a machine of some kind.
Some binders...
Damn, I can't understand a word of this. It looks like some kind of code...
...All of these binders are like that.
Moving on...
Yeah, nothing at all.
It's a chair.
Yup. And it's red.
The chairs are one of the sole sources of humour in this room.
Let me chair a--
--No!
Yeah.
I don't think the rest is going to be that easy, though.
Look at the screen...
Hm... Looks like a login screen.
I think we need to put in a password.
OK, I'll give it a shot.
Damnit. Some day.
Damnit. I don't get it...
This console has a red chair that goes with it, right?
Yeah. So?
Nothing, it just caught my eye.
...Kay.
Uh, I donno... Food drives?
Bzzzt! Wrong! The correct answer is: Chair table donations.
No! Bad!
I barely touched it and it's ready to go.
Yeah, it's showing the same thing too.
Alright... maybe we need to get creative here.
Damnit! Worth a shot.
Argh! What's the password?
Let's look around a little more. Maybe we'll find some sort of clue...
All nine of the screens are dark, though.
Probably aren't powered up.
Looks like it.
So how do we turn them on?
What kind of a question is that? There's probably some switches or something around here somewhere.
Hm. Speakers.
Yeah. They look pretty... normal.
Lady I don't know what kinda AV setup you're used to but damn.
Yes, and a green one at that.
Stop sitting around!
Looks like it.
Another password? All right, fine...
You better get this right, Sigma.
Okay, it's not a misspelling of "password" then.
Damnit! What the hell is the password?!
A green chair, huh...
...Huh?
Oh, nothing. Forget about it.
Only one more thing of interest down here...
...And what an interesting thing it is.
There's a little thunderbolt icon up here. My guess is these are a bunch of power switches.
Hm... They're all red. Does that mean they're all off?
How about you try and flip some of them?
Let's.
Yeah, I did... Kind of a... starting-up sound.
...
It's a good thing Sigma is so well versed in sounds!
Let's just take this straight to its conclusion.
Lovely.
I thought so...
Hey, what about Tenmyouji, Clover and Quark?!
Can you see them anywhere?
You can see just as well as I can. There's nobody there.
No Dio or K either...
(Damn... Nothing.)
Alright. Time to head up the... stairs...
...Wait...
Apparently these are some very interesting stairs.
Yes. Yes there is. I'm going to go ahead and not examine these.
Okay, for real, let's check out the little lounge-alcove.
A sofa.
Seems perfectly normal.
Zero dialogue of interest. Not even a lame pun.
We'll get to the thing on the wall in just a second...
Right after we get to the other thing on the other wall.
It looks weird, but I'm pretty sure they're just shelves.
A set of shelves made up of eight hexagons.
There are triangles wedged in between the hexagons.
Intriguing, I'm sure.
And it has a twin!
Hey. Stuff.
Something's engraved on the top...
Looks like a number 4.
Four? What the heck does that mean?
In other words, it'll take four seconds for all the sand to run through it after you flip it.
How interesting.
At least Sigma catches on quickly with the next one.
Anyway, these are the only two items in this room. You don't even really need to pick them up. They serve no purpose other than information.
When you think about it, this room is basically the polar opposite of the Lounge.
Anyway. Back to the first thing on the first wall.
It's some kind of button, right? It looks like you can push it.
I can barely make it out, but I think there's something carved on the surface...
...A sun?
Yeah...
...
...
Whatever. Right now we need to focus on getting out of here.
I'm gonna push that button. That okay?
Y-Yeah, sure.
Um...
The lights turned off.
I guess it's a light switch.
So our first big break is being able to turn off the lights. Right.
Well, let's take a look a--
--Wait.
It's all lit up.
Yeah... Pretty colorful.
Do you think it's a hint?
Maybe.
The other set is lit up too and has the same dialogue attached.
So... is that it?
Hrm.
Examining anything not chair or console related results in another one of those very long generic loops of dialogue, except most of it isn't nearly as amusing as the equivalent lines in the GAULEM Bay. Also there are only really four points in the room you can examine to even see this dialogue, so, yeah. Here are some highlights.
Fascinating.
Well, this has been a gigantic waste of time. Let's just head back up--
--stairs.
Well then.
What does it mean?
Maybe...
Aksys, we have got to have a frank discussion about your bold font.
I'm gonna smack you so hard...
You see? It's right!
...
Only half of the stairs have any amusing dialogue.
What the hell does that mean...?
Maybe it's an abbreviation for "this is so good".
But it's just a step...
Don't try and force it to say something!
Wait, maybe these are actually coordinates in 7-dimensional spacetime!
Maybe you're coordinates in 7-dimensional spacetime...
Well, I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that the red, green and yellow steps have the passwords for the terminals with the red, green and yellow chairs. There is puzzle-failure dialogue where Phi suggests this but it's really boring.
Fortunately, we don't need no lights to use a computer.
This is the red chair, so...
We're in!
Yeah, I guess so.
Ha. Cakewalk.
Sure. Did you see this icon? The one in the upper left corner.
I wonder what it means...
Well, there's only one way to find out, right?
Very true.
If there's one thing I know about computers, it's the importance of opening every random file you find.
Surprise puzzle!
Tapping any shape swaps the colour of the shape you tapped and any adjacent shapes. We've got four moves to get the colours to match the funky shelves on the same side of the room as this console, as Phi will tell us in an extremely nonchalant manner if we fail enough times.
Seriously, this room is quite disappointing dialogue-wise.
It's too early to celebrate. Check your screen. You've got a new icon.
Opening everything hasn't failed us yet!
Nothing happened on the screen...
Look up. The one over your head.
Huh...?
"Will be me"...
Hm...
Let's... go sort out the other consoles, I guess.
Guess we should move to the one opposite the last one, with the green chair.
Now comes pretty much the same dialogue sequence so let's just not do that.
A slightly different starting layout means a slightly different solution.
And my reward?
Ha. Nice try.
Looks like Zero's got something for you, though...
You mean this new icon?
Blah blah blah.
It just says "I was you".
Hm...
Well this is all clear as mud. One more console...
The last one is the yellow chair.
Good. That's all of them, then.
Oh, well done.
Would it really kill you to take that disdain down, like, ten percent?
Yes.
...
Anyway. This one isn't a hexagon icon!
Oh boy!
This is actually a pretty OK puzzle, I thought. It's a spin on a classic math puzzle, "how do you measure X quantity when your only containers are Y and Z quantity?". Our task is to figure out the time associated with each hourglass.
We can flip hourglasses over at our discretion, and then press the Play button, at which point they all drain.
How does that help us?
Well, it helps us because whenever an hourglass empties, time is paused again, and any non-empty hourglasses remain at their current level of drainage.
Now, you can solve this puzzle by just counting the number of horizontal coloured lines in each hourglass but that would be boring.
Incidentally, once again, Phi fails at being entertainingly snarky if we can't solve the puzzle, and instead just walks you through it one step at a time. The first thing she says is to check the two hourglasses we found in the room (remember those)? That puts the red one at 4 and the yellow one at 11. Enough to be starting out with.
I have a suspicion about that blue one.
I thought so. Taking 4 seconds out of the yellow leaves 7 seconds, and that just so happens to match the blue hourglass. Three down!
The pink is easier. It just so happens to be equal to the red plus the yellow, so, 15 seconds.
The green is a bit tricker, and requires you to play around a bit. Eventually, you'll find something along the lines of...
That puts the green at (4 + 4 + (4 - (7 - 4)) ), or (4 + 4 + 1), or 9 seconds.
I like this puzzle, mostly because it encourages you to just poke at things while paying attention. Or, as we call it in the business, science.
Plug in those numbers and we're done!
Hm...
There's another icon on the screen now...
Yes there is.
We know what to do.
The screens changed!
There's a different word on each one.
I'd guess we're supposed to shuffle them around until they make a sentence.
How?
Well, look at the screen underneath them.
It's got the same words in nine squares.
So I'm supposed to use that console to move the words around?
That would be my guess.
Okay. Let's give this a shot, then.
Sure enough, we can swap stuff around, but not into any sensible configuration.
Evidently this has to do with the words on the two screens from the other consoles, but...
Get a hold of yourself.
I'm discounting on you.
Hey!
In even lazier form than the rest of this room, the next hint doesn't even come from Phi, but from the game itself.
I guess that box of nine seperate switches was like that for a reason, huh? Let's go back there.
Oh. Right. Well, I guess we're going to have to turn the lights back on.
Much better. These six switches correspond to the screens containing the words we need.
And accordingly, we can solve the puzzle!
Yeah, looks like you got it. Good work.
Nothing's changed, though.
Well, at least, not here.
Yeah. Take a look at the screens up on the wall.
You'll never guess what it is.
Good work, Sigma. I've been waiting for this.
And all the screens power down.
Like most other things in this room, the hidden puzzle is boring and arbitrary and not really very difficult.
We just power up all the screens we didn't use...
...And make the only possible sentence that makes any kind of syntactic sense.
Which is...
...Huh.
Look! The screens changed!
You'd think after the fourth time they'd be used to this.
Just to see if it changes anything, I turned off the lights again.
It doesn't.
Yeah.
In keeping with the room generally, there's nothing apart from the key and the star cards in the safe. Also, I like their enthusiasm.
Not even going to bother with the dialogue for picking the stuff up.
And of course, the hidden password goes in too.
It opened.
So it did.
Let's get the hell out of this boring-ass room.
Oh, for fuck's--
They're doing this deliberately, aren't they?
I'm gonna open it, okay? You ready?
Yes, of course I am! Get on with it!
Right, here we go then.
Three... two... one!
Thank fuck.
Only one thing can relieve my boredom: Some more hidden files.
Floor B Graffiti:
Hourglass:
Gentlepoints:
In reference to this dialogue line, from shortly before the second AB Game:
Give me a little credit!
No one has more gentlepoints than me. You think someone of my stature would resort to violence?! The nerve!
Floor B Hallway Locks:
Principle of Causality:
Knox's Ten Commandments:
Funfact: While I've generally been selectively not showing certain files due to them restating boring details or covering things that are about to be shown in the next cutscene (eg, there's a file restating Zero's Supplementary AB Game Rules), this room's file collection marks the first time I'm hiding a file from you because it spoils a far-off plot element.