Security Fail-safe or Freedom Suppressor?

We’ve had a pretty major development come up over the past few days that I thought I’d share with you all. This is one of those game changer decisions we’ve made as a team, something that could potentially open the floodgates to a whole new world of possibilities on the other side of the Rift.

What am I talking about? Well… a few months back (has it been that long?!) we discovered something like a failsafe planted within the iDGi-1 upgrade software given to us by the King. Embedded within the code was a mechanism capable of killing the connection with the other side should Bishop Six’s M.U.V.I. be deactivated for any reason.

In other words: No M.U.V.I. = No Rift = “Game Over.”

For those of you who do not know, the M.U.V.I. (Medical Utility Visual Implant) is what you might call the Bishop’s brain center for all things Consortium. It’s what feeds vital user information back to the rest of a Bishop’s team, powers their C.M.C. and allows it to process emotion, and even generates what we see as the Bishop’s heads up display. The flip side, or what Malcolm Thomas and the Guardian Church believe, is that the M.U.V.I. is also a highly advanced version of what they call a Motor Chip (an implant capable of remotely handing over full motor control to the King), but this theory is admittedly only speculation at this time. The Motor Chip may very well only be a myth.

We have come to realize that when Bishop Six’s M.U.V.I. is deactivated this can only mean one thing: he has been cut off from the Consortium. All equipment, including hardpoint devices, containment unit, weapons, armour and C.M.C. would cease to function, and he would be left to fend for himself.

Back when we first discovered this failsafe we understood that it was probably a good idea. We hated the idea of a stable Rift being disconnected simply because of a decision made by a user (the idea of a “Game Over scenario” without death has always been something we’ve tried to avoid), but in this case it sort of made sense. If a user (or “player”) was to push the Bishop into doing something terrible enough that the Consortium felt the need to kick them out… well then it was probably best that we stop that user from continuing. In other words we felt that by preventing our world from experiencing the Tower Prophecy stream as if playing Call of Duty was probably a good idea.

Things have changed.

Knowing what we now know, perhaps a user may very well have *other* reasons for being removed (or potentially quitting) the Consortium. What if a user discovered something terrible about the King, or about the Consortium while within the Tower Prophecy stream? Are you supposed to just play along and remain a Consortium puppet regardless of the information laid out before you?

If you read my last post to this blog you’ll remember my reservations with regard to wholeheartedly believing everything the King has been feeding us. We need to enter into the Tower Prophecy stream with an open mind, and individually discover our own answers. The answers one user may experience could be quite different from another, and so we should allow both sides to fully explore their options and to forge their own rabbit hole.

The King isn’t going to like this, but the above is why we have decided to remove this failsafe program entirely. If Bishop Six’s M.U.V.I. is disconnected for any reason, the stream will continue and the Rift will remain active. What this means, or what happens next is still unknown, but we are convinced that this is the right choice. Allies exist on both sides of the coin and we want only to allow for the exploration of all possibilities.

• Vidal Desertch
• Principal Inventor of the iDGi-1 Satellite
• Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vdesertch