Item seed: Eschermacke

Eschermacke – Google Docs

Eschermacke

 

This rather bulky artifact consists of eight 2-inch quadruplex videotape reels holding sixteen twenty-five minute long cartoons, for a total of six and two-third hours of footage.  The cartoons are from a Serbian-language show called ‘Eschermacke’ (‘Escher Cats’) that apparently appeared on Radio Television Belgrade in 1967; it features a pack of vaguely anthropomorphic cats that can stretch themselves like taffy and have somewhat surreal adventures.  The animation is horrible, even by the standards of the time; and the writing is not much better — which probably explains why the videotape reels have been gathering dust in the University of Novi Sad library since at least 1978.

Four weeks ago, the videotape reels were transferred to digital storage as part of a test of the transferral procedures (nobody cared if the show got damaged in the process), and that’s when the alarm bells went off.  Some of the images in the background are direct matches to sigils and diagrams on the Forbidden Psionic Memetic List; at least one image has been banned by secret international treaty since 1983. A crash team was sent to secure the tapes and the project; the tapes were successfully sent back by special courier, but the second investigation team went silent three weeks later.  That was yesterday.

 

This is where the new team comes in.  The mission is to find the second team, find out why they’re no longer reporting, report that back, and do whatever rescue/retribution exercises need to be done.  If, once rescued, the second team is able to continue the mission, then support the second team.  If the cleanup team cannot continue the mission, continue the investigation until such time as a replacement investigation team can be assembled and sent. Either way: look for any evidence that a new psionic-memetic contagion is spreading.  This should be a low-probability scenario, but then: so is losing an entire investigation team.

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