I wrote up Paranoia — old school Paranoia — for In Nomine once, and now I have the files again. I’ll be putting up the stuff that I did back then over the next few days. It needs… a little tightening up, honestly. Sometimes I can get away with proof-reading, sometimes I need to do a bit more. This is a ‘bit more’ kind of situation.
The Principality of Alpha Complex
The Principality manifests as a dome on the very edge of Hell. The area leading to it is a blasted plain, which would be faintly radioactive if it existed on the corporeal plane. Demon Princes (and tour buses from Shal-Mari) use a well-traveled road to one of the entrance ports dotting the edge of the dome.
Inside Alpha Complex proper is a warren of passageways, buildings, and barracks, literally color-coded (and garishly at that). The system is based on the visible (to humans) light system, with the addition of Infrared and Ultraviolet. The higher the color code, the better: for example: Infrared regions are about to fall apart (but never quite do), while the elite Ultraviolet sectors are marvels of high-tech beauty. Alpha Complex is otherwise messy, smelly, alarmingly creaky, and often very loud; the sound of various weapons discharging in particular is so ubiquitous that the inhabitants get fairly disturbed when it stops.
The inhabitants of Alpha Complex are also color-coded. All damned souls are Infrared, and do not rise above that state. Then again, life for an Infrared in Alpha Complex isn’t actually all that bad, for Hell. Infrareds wander to their jobs, ‘eat’ bland food, watch mindless entertainments courtesy of Nybbas, and generally spend their existence seemingly under the influence of massive amounts of mood regulators and tranquilizers. It’s not an exciting life, but it beats getting regularly eviscerated. They effectively exist as mere filler, as the Computer extracts Essence from them (via the drug treatments) almost as an afterthought.
Demons have a much more exciting life. They make up the entirety of security clearances from Red to Ultraviolet, and run Alpha Complex (as much as anything can be said to really run Alpha Complex). New demons are made Troubleshooters, of Red clearance.
It should be remembered that all of the inhabitants of Alpha Complex, both damned souls and demons, believe that they are living humans (except for the Lilim, who keep their heads down, keep each other out of trouble out of sheer enlightened self interest, and make a mint herding around outside tourists). Due to the nature of the Principality, celestial combat is unknown. This means that all the shooting, burning, stabbing, and nuking that happens doesn’t actually kill anyone: in self-defense, the inhabitants have deluded themselves that they are all members of identical clone families. When someone ‘dies’, everyone ignores the ‘corpse’ until it gets up again, then acts as if he or she was a replacement. When someone finally ‘dies’ a sixth time, that someone goes into a coma — and wakes up a whole new clone.
Somewhere, in all of this, is the Computer. Precisely where is not known to even those of Ultraviolet clearance (the most powerful Servitors of Paranoia, who have realized what’s going on. They each control an individual part of the Principality). By now, it might have merged itself with its Principality. Or it might be ensconced in the vessel of a cleaning robot. It’s not telling.
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Paranoia and its characters, situations, stories, and world are (c) Copyright 1983-2001 by Greg Costikyan and Eric Goldberg. Used with permission.