Hostile fragment

From Intimation

The hostile fragment was first seen in the March 25 to 26 active period, when it caused damage to Sys that required us to solve the Hostile tentacle attack 1 puzzle. There have been several puzzles involving damage done to Sys by the hostile tentacle, which usually lead to our discovering a fearful message scrawled on a wall by a frightened Essy.

The hostile tentacle kidnapped S4 at one point, but S5 was later able to retrieve it. The hostile tentacle later kidnapped Essy, and currently has Sys kidnapped as well.

Dressler first made obvious note of the hostile fragment in his mission log Day 37: [Noah Dressler // Really bad jokes], but it should be noted that the hostile fragment would have been the part of S that had been fighting him far before that point. Dr. Sheridan also echoes Dressler's report of the fragment in her log Day 38: [Pandora Sheridan // What must be done], noting he says "that part of [S] hates us like nothing else." S' logs themselves are of course fragmented, given her state, but in her log Day 38: [Sacagawea // Mission Log: 343597] [1] a saner fragment of her states that she is trying to comply with Dressler's commands, but that she has been hindered by this hostile fragment: "Something else is in the system scurrying around though, and it's fighting me, backing me into corners. It's almost all I can do to keep it from shutting down everything, from packing me away."

The hostile fragment is often referred to with scorpion imagery. Scorpion references have shown up many times in the game:

• The first sand painting, completed as part of the Hostile tentacle attack 1 puzzle, was of the constellation Scorpio.

• During the April 1 to 2 active period, a tweet from Essy via intimation says, "I wanted to tell a story but a bad little scorpion shattered it into lots of broken-pieces!"

• The garbled datastreams were found to form an image of a scorpion when decoded.

• When Essy wanted to show us "something weird" in the Stonewall, she sent us to a node that contained a picture of a scorpion.

• On solving the puzzle Hostile tentacle attack 7, we find a page with an image of a scorpion in the background, and "What have I become?" written across it.

• S' mission log quoted above refers to the hostile fragment as "scurrying around"--not a clear reference to a scorpion (perhaps more a reference to the rats that appear in T. S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men," which also features prominently in this game), but a possible one.

• In Essy's story, Dreaming Eyes is tattooed with the image of a scorpion. Later, a bracelet is placed on her that includes the word "Scorpio" in the writing on it.