You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. What is this, our fifth Delta Green episode that we're doing today? Yeah, this is five. Five of these. Five of these. And this is the one where someone dies, right? Oh, my God. Any good series five eps in is when you want to really lay down the hammer. And someone's probably going to die on Columbia campus. That's the thing. I don't even know. Right? Wouldn't be the first time.
Poor Ralph Macchio. He's going to get beat to death by Roger Cubstone. He'll be swimming with the dolphins in the Hudson River. I know. Just watch out for the crane kick. That's how he defends himself. Did you see you taking the body home and slowly disposing of it by feeding it to your bird? Piece by piece. Piece by piece.
Nibble by nibble. I did see a video the other day where someone was feeding, they had six birds on them and they were feeding it cheeseburgers. It really disturbed me. Grant, how did you... happened to stumble upon such a video you remember the Florida man part two video I told you guys about a while ago it's by this guy named all gas no brakes and he goes to like all the weirdest conventions in the world and he went to the free thought convention
met a guy who saw Jesus in real life. The first time was on acid, but most of the times afterwards never was. And one of the people at this convention was feeding their parrots hamburgers. So anyway, I'm glad to see you're using your time well, Grant. Can't you just masturbate, Grant? What do you think I'm doing while I'm watching that? It's the only thing that works these days. All these crazy people. Cheeseburger finish. I got very specific kinks, Troy. Don't shame me. Well...
We are, as you said, five parts. Delta Green is now well outpacing any other new game we've tried. Well, actually, not well outpacing. We did four parts of Star Wars. It is now in the lead. for New Game Who Dis, and I think rightfully so. It's a wonderful, wonderful game, and I'm just trying to figure out how to move forward with all the moving parts, because like...
There's something a little different that's happening here that is different from any Pathfinder game I've GMed, which is the presence of media and technology. and communication to the degree that it exists. And some of it is covered pretty well in the rulebook as I looked between our last episode and this one. There are some details where they'll get you. They'll sort of explain, like, if you fuck up in a certain way, you can feel effects.
many operations later. And it's really cool. There's like these timetables for little mistakes because... When it comes to other people investigating the things that you're doing or looking into it, it takes time. So it's neat because not all the effects are immediate. And in a good way, this often gives you time.
to try to tie off all the loose ends. You're only in day two of this operation. So there's time here to... to figure out how to accomplish every piece of your mission while also getting what you want out of it, which is, I guess, the... It's the safety of the world, as Grant said in the last episode. You're putting that ahead of your own life at this point. But I'm curious if you remember the mission objectives.
Okay, what are they? Well, a number, first off, triggered an alarm that indicated paranormal activity. We were briefed in by, what was her name, Marlene? No. Eileen Parker. I don't really need a synopsis. What I need is the objectives. Access to all of the comms and contacts of the killer. Michael. and clean the number off, eliminate it from all access for people. That's what I have. From everything. You have to eliminate the number anywhere.
Locate physical evidence of the number. Destroy numbers at the scene and any photographic evidence. And anyone in advanced mathematics got access to send that email. Or just do it because you feel like it. Just to drive a wedge between the PCs of your own accord. That was our only real mission, those four things. No, you missed a major one, which is close the case. Oh, well, that was understood. And closing quickly.
And it's something you talked about. This is why I bring it up, because I don't want you guys to be at the disadvantage of the way that we play, as opposed to the way other people play Delta Green, which is typically they might get four to five hours to play. We have to play in much shorter bursts. And so a lot more time passes. So you may forget that you had discussed the importance of solving this case with a simple motive rather than making it into something really large.
But now you've made it into something pretty large. And so you have to kind of bob and weave with that. At some point... The case has to get closed. They can't stay open forever. I guess I should say the longer it stays open, the more you expose Delta Green to risk. You expose yourselves to being found out as being undercover. And you risk exposing more people to this number, ultimately. So just something to think about.
Okay, so we left last time. Two different stories going on. One was Jordi Arsenault and Agent Riker Salas. are at... The local police station in Alliance, New Jersey, collecting information. They have been given a thumb drive with all of the crime scene photos. But as far as you know, that's not the only copy of those photos. They exist in a server. They just gave you copies of them because...
You are FBI. You're more than welcome to look at all the official crime scene photos as part of your investigation. They also say that, you know, procedurally, it's going to take a little while, but eventually it'll all be sent down to D.C. for archiving. You had a little bit of a debate, Riker saying, well, maybe we could just let it go and people just won't notice. And Jordy saying, we have to eliminate every trace of that number. It's like a nuclear bomb, to quote Jordy.
Then we go to Columbia University, and now we're at the Foo Foundation, or we're at John Jay Hall, really, just the entrance to John Jay Hall, where security is tight. Even flashing badges, they don't just let you walk into a student dorm without university. knowing that you're on campus or why you're on campus. They're trained to do this kind of stuff. And so he makes a call. You let him make a call. Then try to push in, but he holds off.
And during a debate, a woman walks in and a smile on her face. Happy to help you. Welcome to Columbia University. Introduces herself as Sandy Beeman. So let's pick up there, actually, in John J. Hall. And this woman comes in, big smile on her face. Hi, I'm Sandy Beeman. Welcome to Columbia University. I'd be happy to help you with whatever you need. She sticks her hand out. Just shake your hand, Roger Cumstone. And you are? Special Agent Klaus Von Cliff. Special Agent...
So, do I call you Cliff? Or, I'm sorry, Klaus? Agent. Agent Von Cliff. Agent Von Cliff, yes, of course. Of course, I'm so sorry. And you? I'm special agent Phillip McGregory. And what did you say your name is again? And Dr. Lesterver takes out a notebook and a pen. What did you say your name was again? My name is Sandy Beeman. I am public relations here at Columbia University.
And as soon as I got the call, I said, oh my goodness, we need to find out what is going on here, why the FBI is concerned with something at John J. Hall. And believe me, it is the university's... top priority to cooperate with law enforcement however we can. I just need to understand what's going on, what you need, and I am going to do everything in my power to get it for you. Let me understand. Let me just...
I just have a question. So security called public relations. She says this loudly enough for Ralph Machado here. Public relations to deal with an entrance matter? No, no, no. The head of security was called and then the head of security calls the head of the university and they call me. So it's really just a quick boop and my office is right in the building next door. And so I said, I'm going to.
give them access to anything that they need. That is our job here. So please tell me what it is you need and why and I'm happy to help you out. It's very simple. We're working a case It's scientific in nature. We need to gather some background. Our research pointed to the lab for applied sciences as the foremost place that we'd be able to...
ascertain exactly the information, what information we needed. Oh, that's interesting. Why is that? I'm not at liberty to say, unfortunately. You can understand, you know, this is... This is an open case. We can't comment on a matter that's going on. Nothing serious. No one here is in danger, as far as we know. But... You know, time is of the essence. It's all pretty standard stuff. I mean, if Columbia doesn't have... I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt. You just need to go to the lab?
Yeah, and Dota Labs speak to a few of the people there, ask a couple questions, and then we'll be on our way. I'm sorry, what are the questions regarding? I can't... I can tell you that it's with regards to certain matters of their research, but nothing proprietary, just background meaning to speak to. Okay. Okay. Do you have any names? Are you looking for certain teachers here?
Or students in the lab? Not as far as we know. We're hoping to speak to whoever's there. Oh, just anyone at the lab. Yeah, and then if they might be able to direct us to those who might have areas of specialization. with regard to what we need. Of course. Of course. Can I just see your badges, please? Of course. Of course.
And she sees that you are with the science division. That makes sense, you know. And then she sees that you're with the counter-terrorism division. Just like, doesn't say anything. Makes a mental note. Follow me right this way. And she leads you down a hall, makes a turn, goes down some steps, another long hall, and then you see a sign. It says the Foo Foundation School.
of engineering and applied science. She walks you through and then down another flight of stairs and you're walking past like... Classrooms, essentially meeting rooms, basically. And then she walks you down another level and into a lab. You walk into this lab, and it's large. It's underground, and there's all manner of... things in here. There's not a lot of people, but there's a lot of...
Activity in the sense of there's a lot of half built things in here. There's a lot of mechanisms, machines. You see computers that look like rather large and strange. You see just. a lot of like very hardcore sciency looking stuff. And Dr. Westover, you would be able to pick out that this is, this is advanced work that is.
Most likely being done in the direction of inventing things. You know, like people are trying to make things that have never been made before. And she'll turn to you, Sandy Beeman. We'll turn to you and say, well, welcome to the Foo Foundation School of... and Applied Sciences. This is our lab where we have an amazing, really, amount of minds here working on incredible ideas. And there are many...
Here, it's so early, it's not even 9 o'clock yet. I just got here. But there are a lot of people here that are in the middle of a lot of major projects, so please don't touch anything. If you're going to touch something, ask somebody before you do that's nearby. Ma'am, ma'am, please, please. We don't need all of this. Who oversees all the work that's done in this lab? That's who we need to talk to. We need to talk to a scientist. We'll start there.
Yes, you're very generous to provide a tour, but unfortunately, we don't have the time for that. Yes, we're not looking to apply. We have questions. We only want to apply the sciences. We were told this place was the best. Maybe we should go check out Princeton's.
lab for applied sciences. I heard Yale is also pretty good. Did you hear that? Yale has an excellent program. I've heard that as well. There's always Harvard, too, while we're in New England. Maybe we should just jump on 95 and head up to Boston. Yeah, that might be the most efficient way to go. Yes, maybe this is more of a Harvard question. Well, I mean, you are more than welcome to do so, of course.
If you had done your research, you would probably know that Columbia University School of Engineering holds more patents than Harvard's. But you're probably asking questions about something other than... patents, which make the university in excess of $100,000 pretty much every month. Sorry, I'm really... There's quality and there's quantity, isn't there? Well, I would be happy to put you in touch with the head of the lab here. It is Dr. Homsagan, and he is currently...
I'm not sure if he is in class at the moment. Let me check his schedule. But at the very least, you could talk with him in a few hours, I'm sure. I could arrange that. Where would you like to do that? Could I give you a room somewhere? Whatever's convenient. Maybe the professor's office. But a few hours. Oof, we might need to move that timetable up. Is there maybe...
A secondary supervisor, somebody that might be able to point us to where we need to go. Oh, okay. Yes, yes, of course. Let me... You know what? I am so sorry. I'm so sorry. And she goes into her pocket and she pulls out an iPhone 3GS, which everybody has. And she's like, I'm so sorry. I have to take this. Just one moment. And she turns away. Sandy Beeman.
Mm-hmm. Agent Rockcliffe. I'll stay here and deal with the scientists. You want to see if you can find Anthony Desjardins and Molly Frank, gather information, and we'll rendezvous after we both... Kept this woman busy long enough. You think you've got this under control? I think so. Maybe the bathroom? You know, I was just thinking, we had his student ID. We should have just snuck in the back.
We could have just snuck in the back. Instead of dealing with this pencil pusher. I'll deal with the PR. You see what you can find out. I'll go talk to the lovers. Yes, they're... The FBI's already here. Okay. Yes, yeah. Yes, I'll call you back. Okay. Bye-bye. She hangs up and turns around. And her expression has completely changed. It's completely dropped. Why is that? It's just... It's just been reported that Michael Way was the shooter in the Alliance killings?
As my partner said, we are not at liberty to discuss the details of an ongoing investigation. I will say that yes, this is a more serious matter. Now listen, we don't want this... become a big deal. No one needs to know what's going on here. We just need to talk to people and find out what's going on. We wouldn't want to drag Columbia's name into the investigation any more than it has to. No.
No, we're still trying to find out what happened. This couldn't be... I have someone looking into Michael Way right now. Yes, let me get you someone to speak with right away. I'll show you to a room, and she brings you to a small room in the lab. And do you guys wait there for a while? 25 minutes? You're waiting there. Do we have time to walk around the lab and see if there's any station with his name on it?
Yeah, you can walk around. You don't see any station with his name on it. And you just see a bunch of different work areas where people can do stuff. And then eventually... She ushers down a woman to you who introduces herself. I'm not going to name her. And you have an opportunity to speak with her. And just give me an idea of what questions you want to ask.
I mean, we want to know what kind of work Michael... Now that the Michael Way thing is out, we can ask what kind of work Michael Way was working on, with what professors he worked, what was his... What did, you know, his demeanor, his work ethic, that kind of stuff, you know, all that background. So she will... Tell you that Mike, first of all, she's completely shocked. Like she's in a state of shock that this happened. It doesn't make any sense at all. Michael Way is a great kid.
A really strong student. He's a graduate student. His focus, if you ask, is Mersane Primes. M-E-R-S-E-N-N-E, which is an entire area of advanced mathematics where you... All right. Get ready for this, Matthew, because you can look it up and read it. It still won't make any sense to you. Mercé. I don't know. It's French. Mercé. Mercé Prime is a number which if you... It's a number which, if you give an exponent...
And double it and then subtract one. That number is also prime. So it's a prime number. You double it and subtract one. That number is also prime. There are only a few of these. So as you talk to this woman, she will explain to you that he's one of very few students that focus solely on this. Really, it's kind of a combination of computer algorithm writing and mathematics. The human mind can't do it at this point where they are. And she will tell you that...
uh, that just this year, uh, somebody, uh, beat him to the punch on something, uh, on a, a prime, a mercy, discovering a mercy and prime that is for in June. That is. 14 million digits long. It's 14 million digits long, and it is a prime number, and they can guarantee that. Everyone knows that one. What was that student's name? What was that student's name? It wasn't a student. It was a... A competing researcher. It was a competing researcher. An accountant from Newark.
he was doing somebody's taxes and he just stumbled upon a 14 million digit long Prime number. She thinks about it for a minute and then is like, he goes by the name Stig Valstad, and he is a Norwegian... mathematician and GIMS contributor. You do know what GIMS is, right? GIMS is the Great Internet Mersim Prime Search. So it is... I knew it, but thank you for explaining it.
to my colleague isn't that like um that uses distributed computing like uh the yeah the cell processor that was finding a cure for cancer and currently looking for like covid cures and stuff like that Exactly. So this was Michael Way's area of focus. Anyway, there was no change in demeanor after the discovery of the more recent Prime. After he got beat by Stig. By Stig. Not that I saw. He seemed to work even harder and was very focused on achieving his goal.
Yeah, and so, yeah, she's sort of giving you everything that you need or would want about what he works on at the school. And any questions that you have about the lab or anything like that, she answers anything for you, but nothing. points to the number or Michael Way in any interesting way or the Ridgeway family in any interesting way. There's just seemingly no connection. Are you familiar with the students Anthony Desjardins and Maldi Frank?
Yes, and she explains to you that they're both students currently in the Foo Foundation School. We're going to need to speak with them as well. Speak with them. Are they local? Are they on campus? Yes, let me just clear that with the university, but I'm sure that I can just bring you right to their dorms. It's important that they don't know we're coming. Really? Yes. And then we black out.
We fade up in a small interrogation chamber in the local police station of Alliance, New Jersey, where, oh, man, where it's getting hot in there as Jordy is like, we've got to find every one of these numbers. And, uh, and Riker Salas is like, fuck it. I'm out. Uh, what are you guys, what are you guys talking about? Riker looks over at Geordi and immediately says, Hey, can I, uh, bum one of those off you?
Yeah, yeah, sure. I only got three left. Here you go. Pops my Marlboro. An intercom comes over in the room. You can't smoke in here. FBI, you bastard. I can do whatever the fuck I want. He looks over at Geordi and says, Special Agent Robinson. You sure this number is as dangerous as you think it is? I am 100% positive. Alright, I've got an idea. Follow my lead. Uh, throws out the butt.
Stomps on it with the back heel of his patent leather shoes. Right in the carpet. Right in the carpet. Right in the $3,000 oriental rug they have in there. No, no, no. Another one. Don't hear me budget. Officer McCarthy brought that back from Persia! Is our only contact here right now Gant, or is there a local New Jersey person that we can talk to directly? Yeah, you can talk to anybody there.
So we're going to head over to the basically head of IT or the investigations program, and I'm going to explain to them. We're going to need access to your local networks. We need to do a bit more. Background research into the Ridgeways, local school records, business affairs of Malcolm as well as Dinah. Things that won't be on the FBI servers. If you could give me access to a workstation, it'd be much appreciated.
Okay, what is your persuasion? Hold it up. And I'm happy to, if the persuasion goes wrong, give a little wink to Jordy. But my persuasion is 50. Yeah, that's good enough. So they give you access to a terminal. And you now have access to their local files. So at first, I'm going to be doing kind of...
up and up things that would garnish no suspicion whatsoever. In fact, I'm going to follow up on what the good doctor suggested we do and that's look into any information available on the Ridgeways. Okay. You do some research on the Ridgeways. They don't have a criminal record. Right. But the research that you're able to glean, you can get the accounting firm and everything that they work at. You can see that they've never been in trouble with the law.
or anything like that. Other than that, there's really not much information. Pretty boring. At this point, I would like to begin, and I can use my computer science if need be, looking for... any photographic evidence of these numbers I should be able to use like file date created metadata I can look through the
EXIF metadata within the pictures, do a search for that. There are all sorts of ways I could tackle looking for these images. Yeah, with your computer skill, once you're in there, in the system, you're able to find them. And you find what you believe are the root files, like the main files that were originally taken. Okay. So I'd like to use... How realistic would it be to say that with my computer science background of a 50,
I could either use local tools, but I also might have, I think it would be cool, an FBI thumb drive that has special tools I can use in order to alter networks and hard drives. Like a virus? Not a virus, it's a utility that would allow me to delete these files and then immediately overwrite them. With other information. Uh, sure. I mean, I don't see why you couldn't do that anyway.
I don't know why you have to need an FBI stick to delete files. I don't know. Magic. You know, FBI magic. This is cool. So actually, he's not going to delete them entirely. What he's going to do is... Like corrupt them? Well, corrupt them or crop them. Whatever seems like with his computer science skills would be the best way to remove the image data. He's going to replace them all with a photocopy of his hand.
Yes. I think that you're probably better off corrupting them because leave all the files there and then someone will think, right? That like, oh, something happened to the data. You know what I mean? Like it got corrupted. That's obviously less suspicious than cropping out the number in pictures. That raises more questions. Yep. So I'll... I'll go into the binary editor. I'll pop open a bunch of text screens, pull out enough code.
I'll open up a browser window with the source code for another website, for a website or something, and paste that in there. I'll just grab random gibberish things of code and take out substantial parts of it to where it could never be read again or deconstructed. Yeah. Okay. Make a luck roll. Okay. So that's just a D100? That's a D100, and you're looking for under 51. 26. Okay, so you have no problems going through these files and knocking them all out with your computer. Bing, bang, boom.
And you feel like you've corrupted the files that they have on their server that are supposed to be sent over to Garrett Mountain and over to the FBI. Okay. Nice. And is there any other information? He kind of looks at Jordy. Jordy, I think I got what I came here for and you should be happy with the results. And he like double clicks on an image and it pops up and you can see it's kind of distracted there. Is there anything else you want to look at?
I want to handle this reporter. Give me a second. And he goes over to one of the cops and he says, hey, I got to make a quick phone call. Is there a private line that I can use? Sure. And they show you to a private phone. Okay. And I get in and I want to call up this reporter that was on our tail. And as Dr. Westover and I planned, I want to get him off our tail. Huh. Okay, so I guess you just call this...
Yeah, it's going to be really hard because you've got to call the station and ask for a popular reporter. Can I look for the number of the reporter in there, in the police system? Do they have everyone's number? Or would they only have criminals? No, the FBI might, but not this local system. I mean, she's not going to pick up. She knows it's a hot tip on her story.
Yeah, I mean, if you could just leave a hot tip, if you want, you don't have to talk to the reporter to leave a hot tip for the reporter. All right, so I'm going to call the station. Okay. And whoever picks up and is like, this is Buzz Biskin. I have a very sensitive information regarding a recent story. What's the reporter's name? Enrico Save. Enrico Save. Is there any way I could get in touch with him? Hmm. Roll luck roll.
24. Yeah. He just walked in. Back from the 9 a.m. press conference. He had just caught him. He was out the door. He just walked in. Hold on a second. You're left on hold. Elevator music. Elevator music. Chip O'Connor. Your phone gets picked up. Some name you don't recognize. Chip O'Connor. Sorry, I'm looking for Mr. Save, a reporter.
Yes, you can speak to me. I'm his producer. What can I do for you? All right, well, I have some information that this is incredibly sensitive information, and I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to go ahead and trust you with this.
I just want you to let... You hear, like, scrub, scrub, scrub, as he's, like, shifting papers around. All right, so you're aware of the recent incident that took place in Alaska, New Jersey, correct? Yes, I am. Of course, yeah. All right, so I want you to let Mr. Savé know... That I can't tell you who I am. I am associated with the Justice Department, but for reasons that will become clear, I can't divulge my full identity. Okay.
He is, he's got the right idea, but he is on the right track. But he is on the wrong track, sorry. He's got the right idea, but he's on the wrong track. Fantastic. He's got the right idea and he's on the right track. No, no, no, no, no. We'll just continue business as usual. We did it. Thank you, Mr. Justice Department. And he hangs up. All right, so. All right, he's on.
Okay, I want you to tell him that there is a man in Arizona, just south of Colorado City, and his name is Garth Menzies, and you can look him up. All right? He's on a compound down there. He is a mathematical genius. Now, he is starting up a sort of a cult. and he has involved mathematicians from different universities around the world. Now, this fella, he is organizing events like this, and this is just the first of many. The problem is...
Mr. Menzies happens to also be a confidential informant for the FBI, so he is protected from on high. Now, I'm letting you know this because I think that your reporter can chase this down and make an actual difference. Now, he will not answer phone. You will have to see him in person. If he refuses to see you, I want you to give him the name Deborah Davis. She lives in La Junta. Tell him that you have a message from her.
It doesn't matter what it is, but he will see you if you drop that name. Okay. This is incredible. Are you sure you can't give me... Some way to contact you. I don't need your name, but I just... What if we have a question? What if he doesn't trust us? I can't. I'm putting my job and possibly my freedom on the line just speaking to you now. I have to go. Let me ask you one more question. All right. Why?
Why are you giving me this information? Let's just say that there are certain elements within the FBI that do not have America's safety first and foremost on their mind. And I hang up. And all this stuff is true. This is all stuff that he researched when he was researching the Candlewick papers. He actually went and stayed at this guy's compound.
in northern Arizona to research, like, these kind of, like, cults. And so this guy's there, and this Deborah Davis is, like, his ex-girlfriend who lives in La Junta, like, left him, like, 15 years ago, and he, like, refuses to see him. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Okay. The Candlewick Papers. The Candlewick Papers. That's amazing. It's an underrated book. You sell very well. It's a shame. All right. So what is next for you guys?
There's only those last two police officers whose phone we haven't checked. I don't know if it's within our best interest to wait here, but again, Jordy, a.k.a. Agent Robinson, has stressed to me how important.
making sure the number is gone. I feel like we've gotten a good hold on it. Otherwise, though, what do you think, Skip? That seems to me to be the last... thing that we need to do to wipe out evidence of it maybe it would be worth going to see the officers at home rather than waiting for them yeah we can uh maybe we'll approach uh
whomever is in charge of staffing that day, and ask if we could just make a visit. We need to be on our way out of town in order to meet up with our associates in Manhattan, and we really can't wait around New Jersey that much longer. Okay. They give you a couple addresses and you guys head out to the car. Get in the car, drives away, fade out, fade up. John J. Hall, long hallway.
We see Agent Klaus von Cliff and Special Agent Klaus von Cliff and Special Agent Philippa Gregory walking down the hall with Sandy Beeman. And she's like, it's this one. And you know that you are being taken to the dorm room of Anthony Desjardins. And... She walks up and just points the door to you. As far as you know, he has no idea that you're coming. Agent Gregory. Agent Barcliffe. Good cop, bad cop.
You remember the plan. I remember the plan. You remember the plan? I remember the plan. All right. Sandy Beeman's thinking, I can't believe they actually talk about that before they open a door. You knock really angry. And I'll do a fun knock. Doctor Westover pounds on the door with all physical force. And I do shave and a haircut. But you don't do the two bits? No. I wait to see if it comes back. We'll have to get started.
You hear shuffling within the room and then the door opens and you see a, you know, early 20s man, red hair, pajama bottoms. T-shirt sort of hastily thrown on, and he obviously was just woken up. Mr. Desjardins? His hair is in a mess. Yes? May I flash my badge? FBI, may we come in, please? Yes.
What's going on? Yes, of course. And he steps back. We step in and shut the door before Stanley Beeman can follow us. Yeah. I mean, excuse me. Slam. Lock. Does he have any posters on the wall? Yeah. Like bands or anything? Yeah, he's got a dark side of the moon poster. Of course he does. Except instead of a triangle in the middle, it's pie. Oh, clever. That's fun. With the spectrum going through it. And, yeah, you just see, like, you know, sort of a messy dorm room. He says, uh, huh.
I saw Pink Floyd in 92. Obviously, Roger Rogers. Obviously, Roger Rogers. I went to the West End before I came here. I had a couple of pints. Roger Waters wasn't with him, but Gilmore was leading the crew and kicked ass. It's a cool poster. You seem like a cool guy. Before asking a single question. Mr. J. Chardin, is Mr. Frank here? No, she's... I think she's in her room. What is going on? Can I see your phone, please? Yeah, of course. What's going on? And he hands you his phone.
And Dr. Gregory does a quick, just kind of flips through and searches for emails from Michael Way and texts from Michael Way to see if there's anything unusual. Just a quick kind of, as we're talking, see if anything catches her eye. I'll just make small talk with him. There's nothing unusual. You see emails from Michael Way. They're all very mundane. Banal. Mr. Desjardins, have you heard from Michael Way recently?
No, I saw him maybe two days ago, I guess. I didn't see him yesterday, but the day before? Were you guys close, pals? Yeah, he's a friend. He's a friend of mine. What's going on? Is he a friend of your girlfriend's as well, Molly? Yeah, we're all friends. Guys, uh... You work together? This is college, you know, you get... Let's get a little funky. Three. Light up some doobies. Turn on Dark Side of the Moon and see what happens. Remember, it's a felony to lie to the FBI.
You make me unable to play a real person or character in any way, shape, or form. He's horrified at the suggestion. He doesn't break into hysterical laughter. Agent John Cliff, make a note. Engaged in sexual proclivities outside the norm. I've got it. No, no, never. What are you talking about? Of course not. Are you familiar with the work of Michael Way? Yes, I am. I mean, I must say he...
is on another level in some ways, and so there's a lot I'm not familiar with, but I know what he works on. What can you tell us about his work and any recent discoveries, perhaps? Well, no recent discoveries. I think that's probably what frustrated him the most. Can I ask why you're asking about Michael Way? Where is he? Let us ask the questions for now. Yeah, like, do you play this guitar or is it just a decoration? Mind if I give it a strum? You are by far the coolest FBI agent I've ever seen.
He's a good cop. He's a good cop. That's right. He's the good cop. Mr. Desjardins, are you familiar with the name? Kids just like, oh my God. Mr. Desjardins, are you familiar at all with the name Faustius Cloudon? Faustius Cloudon. Yes. Yes. Yes, I do know that name. It was, um... Michael talked about him. An old... An old... What was it? Engineer, I think. From the time of Leonardo da Vinci and such. He... Yes, Michael was reading some of his works. He had... Well, it was probably July.
We had talked on the phone, and he said that he obviously had been frustrated that he had gotten beaten to yet another Mersane Prime discovery. And it's really not him. It's really the computer. I mean, his computer just... He can't really do it. I mean, he needs more help. But he felt that he could build this algorithm that could do it without all of the GIMS technology. And I don't know. I felt like he was kind of grasping at straws. But he told me that his...
His objective was to look into this particular guy. Yes, that was it. It was Fausch's Cloudon, and he said that he was a Renaissance thinker that had some ideas that seemed crazy at the time, but might actually help. with some... It might actually help with some... What's it he said? He said... Was it esoteric... encryption. That was it. Esoteric encryption and compression methods. And if he could take those and...
He knew that it was a long shot, but he thought he might luck into some sort of trick, like an old trick that might fit the bill for searching for Mersenne Primes. Or maybe point the way towards a solution to his algorithm for his computing. Did it work? Not as far as I know. He was still working on it. I mean, it's a long process. He said that he had trouble understanding what this guy was writing. But he...
You know, he thought that he might figure it out at some point. And look, it's like a lot of mathematics. You have to put a lot of time in. Proofs don't just happen overnight. You have to think about them in a lot of different ways before you can...
get an, uh, an honest results. And, and then you have to take whatever result you think is, is accurate. And you have to check it multiple times over and over and over again, a lot of different variations. And, uh, you know, and he continues to like kind of blabber on and you can see that this is a smart
and he's getting into some advanced mathematics and he talks about theories and how they're tested and how they're retested before they're ever published and all that kind of stuff. She interrupts him. Did you ever come and... Read the works of Faustius Cloud and yourself. Did Michael Way ever share this with you? Oh, no, not me, no. I never did. Interesting. What about Molly? No, not as far as I know.
He talked to Molly about it just like he talked to me about it. We would talk about it sometimes when we, you know, we'd go down to the West End and have a few and, you know, just talk math and, you know. Have fun. And he'd go on and on about it sometimes, and we'd listen, but no, it wasn't part of our pursuits. Why don't you give old Marl a call? Yeah. Invite her to come over here. Tell her to come over here.
Don't let her know why. Just... You guys are such awful agents. Just tell her... Tell her you need it. Okay. She'll know. He calls her up. Just an awkward side-eye to you. Hey, uh... We wink at him. I need it. I need it. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. How about a little morning delight? And Agent Westover is giving him a thumbs up. Slow nod. Oh, my God. Oh, God. He yags up. He says, she'll be right over. I didn't know that worked.
I didn't know one could do that. Oh my god. I didn't know one could do that. I didn't know I couldn't do that. Oh god, I was just sitting there nodding. Nodding. I need it. It was especially when he said morning delight that Wacker Westerver gave him a big thumbs up. Oh my god. This is just like X-Files. This is just like X-Files. It's like the same thing. Just like X-Files. Such competency on the part of the agents. Such diligence in every respect.
I'd like to remind everyone that neither of us is actually an FBI agent. You are going to be... By far, the most memorable FBI agents this guy will ever have contact with. Yeah, he came in, he kept quoting Floyd, he played... Like, what the fuck? I think they tried to talk me into a four-way. I don't know. You guys swing?
It precisely is the kind of agent that Holden has made out to be in Mindhunter, though, by the way. The people at the top are like, this goddamn hippie coming in here trying to interview killers. Anyway. There's new methods. It's a new school of thought at the FBI. We make small talk until Molly Frank gets there. Yeah. So Molly Frank gets there. And to be honest, I'll save you the time. Like she's got nothing else to add. Her and Anthony are in a couple.
Uh, they, Michael's their friend. Uh, you know what she will add in? She's like, Michael is like their project. Basically, like she tries to set him up with her friends. So far, nothing's really hit. He's a great guy, but he doesn't. He just doesn't seem to. He's so focused on his work that he doesn't really.
You know, he can't really keep a relationship going, but he doesn't seem to care that much. But he's such a great guy that I want him to be with one of my friends. Like, that's kind of what she adds to it. And... That's the only other additional information. Otherwise, she says the same stuff. She's also in that school, and she talks about his Mersane Primes. I'll tell you another thing she adds. She says... that she talked to him. She had like a heart to heart with him when, uh,
uh, Stieg von, whatever his name is, uh, hit that 14. Yeah. Stieg Valstad hit that 14 million digit prime, uh, and got, by the way, like $50,000 for doing it from like this, like worldwide. wide mathematics organization just got a check and he was just like bummed but um His algorithm, just a couple weeks before, had failed. It had detected a Mersane Prime that on additional research had failed. And so his computer gave him a false positive, which was very disheartening.
He didn't try to hide it at all. He told her all about it. He told his instructors about it. He... said he explained where he thought he fell short and that he was going to keep working at it like he couldn't have taken it more positively in her eyes like yeah he was bummed but like he saw the failure as an opportunity to say like okay well this didn't work now i'll move on to
something that might work. He was not depressed by it. He did not have a sense of what's the point anymore. He was invigorated in a way and very honest about his own You know, that it didn't work. He never was embarrassed by his failures as a mathematician or a computer designer.
And she's never looked at any of the Fausti's cloud and stuff either. She just knows about it in the same way that Anthony does. Yeah, she's never actually looked at it. She's like, but if you want to see it, there might be some in his room. He might have it in his room. Yeah, where is his room? Where is his room? Is he on this? That's right down the hall. Oh. All right, you two wait here. We'll go investigate ourselves. Does he have a roommate? No, no. He lives by himself.
All right, we're going to ask the both of you to wait here. We'll come check in with you. What is this about? What's going on with Michael? It's complicated, but we appreciate everything you've done. Seriously, you guys have been real cool. And, uh, just for the moment, uh, will you please hand, uh...
Agent Von Cliff, your phones? Yeah, I'm going to need your phones. It's a standard procedure, but don't worry. I won't look at any of your pictures, you crazy kids. They hand over their phones to the FBI. All right, wait right here. We'll be right back. And as we're walking out, I'm just like, we don't need no education. Am I right? We'll see you guys in a little bit.
Really taking that good cop and really pushing it to the end. It's almost like he's not even a cop. That's how good he is. He's so good. As he's saying that, he slowly shuts the door and we black out. We come back up and we see Geordi and Riker Salas just sort of, you know, we don't even have to play it out. You guys are just sort of...
We see images of you going up to these houses, knocking on doors. Guy comes to the door, confused, you know, in his civvies. Just kind of like what's going on. Hands over the phone. You guys look through the phones, and you don't find any pictures. None of the first responders took personal pictures, and you feel like you can cross that off your list. You're walking back to the car, and it's like, what's next?
We definitely want to head back and meet up with the other two special agents, check in on their investigation. Heavy on Riker's mind is whether or not he needs to actually plant some sort of evidence on Molly. uh, and her lover, uh, to implicate them in some sort of sleeper cell, or if that just needs to run its course on its own. Um, but yeah, uh, want to head up there and go to the 24th precinct about that shotgun.
Oh, okay, so you guys are going to head to New York. I think so, because at this point... Well, I'll meet there. I think because the mathematician whose name I've written down that's on her way, the FBI agent... is going to arrive and not be able to find anything because Jordy spray painted over the number. We've gone through all the cop stuff. There's no instances of it left.
The only thing that I can think of that we still need to do in this area would be anything to do with trying to, quote unquote, close the case. So it's like coming, planting evidence or whatever else.
like you were saying, to make this look like an open and shut case, like whatever reason this guy did it. If there's anything we need to do here to accomplish that. The only simple thing I could do is... maybe think of and you too with your criminology you might think of something is there any instance of drug induced
rampages like this ever happened could we ask for access to the morgue to look at way's body one last time and like lace him before a toxicology or autopsy is done on his body yeah lace him with what with drugs Yeah, with a drug that Geordi, through his research into really strange crime and my knowledge through being an FBI agent, that we've seen...
Like salvia, you know, when people were eating off people's faces. So we want to put that on them before the mortician and the toxicology ports. That's good. That's good. That is good, but that's super hard. You're going to have to pull off a roll on that. Let's do a bureaucracy roll to get the cops to give you access to the coroner, to the body, without the coroner standing there watching everything you're doing.
Couldn't we just close the case? You're not there. For what reason? Shut up. For what reason? All right, I have a bureaucracy of 40. You don't outrank me there, dude. I have a 10. I have the standard of 10. Okay, so I need to roll a 41 or lower. That's the end of that chapter. Here it comes. 39. Oh my god. None of you have ever failed a fucking role in Delta Green. It's insane! Yeah, so, I mean...
I don't see why not. You make a successful role, you manipulate the bureaucracy of the local police department to use your FBI clout to get access to the body enough so that you might be able to pull off planting evidence on the dead body. The most grand solution to this problem I've ever heard. Sprinkle some cocaine. It's like 17 extra illegal steps.
Okay. So go ahead and roll a luck roll. I'm like the Dexter of FBI agents. Like I love making crimes, federal crimes so much. I had to become an agent to be able to do them. Make a luck roll. Bureaucracy got you down there. Luck roll is to see it. If anybody notices anything funky. 13. 33. Critical success on Jordy's luck. Yes! Yes! Okay, so now you guys have planted evidence successfully. You have every reason to believe this is going to work. Now your story has to match it.
Exactly. So you got to figure out the rest of the story so that the evidence fits with your story. That's amazing. So you do the body and you see the coroner is just... You know, doing paperwork in the other room doesn't even notice you guys. And you think you've pulled it off. You start heading to New York now. That's your next plan. Or is there another step to the evidence tampering?
I think that'll cover for public stories. I don't know how much Agent Knorr has told to the press. The only other thing we might need to... convolute, or I might need to as the one who makes way too complicated plans for things, and this actually might be Geordi's specialty. Is to come up with some sort of correspondence that made it look like he was involved with some sort of splinter cell terrorist sect, like I was saying. Oh, you know what? Yeah?
Sorry, what might be interesting, I don't know if this is too horrible or not, but Alliance New Jersey has a really interesting history. It was established as... as a Jewish agricultural kind of refuge from Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia in the late 19th century. So... Like maybe this guy is like a super Nazi. Yeah. You know, like maybe this is like plant something like that, like in his history, where it's just like he got wrapped up in this and he's just the kind of.
caught up in crazy kind of conspiracy neo-nazi movement yeah yeah and like kind of like a drug addled haze like he went to this place after having researched and we can like alter his search history or something oh that's that's pretty good yeah maybe he found the drug dealer dead that sold him the drugs like this was a drug infused hate crime so we'll
We'll pick a hate group and it'll be credible in our report and somehow link it to them. Probably, I guess. I don't know. But do we even know? I don't know. It is kind of an awful way to go through it. Why don't you think about it? I mean, what's done is done. You cannot undo what you did. So it has to just be drug addled some way. It's lesser to evils. You know what I mean? Like we got to do what we got to do. And like just say it was a drug infused hate crime. And we found.
the dealer like this it looks like more than it was this guy was just fucked up on drugs you I'm sure that if when the toxicology report comes back you'll see that there was drugs in his system because now there are right And he was a math guy. Of course he wrote numbers all over the place. He was all fucked up. He's a math dude that just lost a huge competition for the Mersenne Prime. He was disgruntled from his work. He was in the first place.
Staying up late nights. And he blamed the fine people of Alliance Township, New Jersey. It's an open and shut case. Open and shut. It could be simpler. Oh my god. Well, you just have to... Yeah, but the problem is that you just secretly... Open and shut! You just secretly sent the fucking... hottest reporter in North Jersey on the biggest lead ever. This is a terrorist to sell. Yeah, but the lead is going to lead to absolutely nothing. Right. That was a bad producer. An anonymous lead.
Yeah, and the FBI gets bad information sometimes, too. As I mentioned to the Agent Kenora earlier, I don't exactly know how these two were involved. Maybe they just... shared a doobie one night with Michael, and that led to him going down the open pathway to harder drugs, which is what always happens. Never smoke marijuana, kids. For a minute there, I thought you said Harvard drugs, and I was like, oof. That Harvard set. Oh, that's so expensive. Okay, so...
Are you heading to Jersey? No, they're in Jersey. I'm sorry. Are you heading to New York? We're headed to the 24th Precinct, I think. Okay. So you're going to head to 24th Precinct. The idea is to... Sorry, go ahead, Skid. Well, just to close all the loophole, Geordi had the drugs to plant on him because as a drug enthusiast, he had some angel dust. Yeah, I wasn't worried about that part.
I'm sure this crew, especially a famous sci-fi author, can get whatever drugs they need on short notice. I think on the way out, Special Agent Solace will call up Roger Cumstone to let him know we're on our way. you're walking down the hallway to uh being led to michael way's uh dorm room and you get your phone rings i turned to uh uh Sandy Beeman. You have an alias. Westover slash Gregory. Salas. Hold on. Go for Von Cliff.
Excellent work. We should be there in about two hours. We're going to meet you at the 24th Prestink at 100th Street. How's the investigation going on the campus? Have you been drinking? I have. I got away from the kid for one weekend. No, no, no. It's better if I drive. I drive better when I've had a couple. Classic alcoholic. If I had to quantify it, I have a 70 driving skill. I'm fine. All right. Well, listen, we've uncovered a couple things. We're about to go check out...
Do me a favor. If you don't find any crazy gibberish... In there. Plant some. Click. Whoa. Whoa. And Roger is so crazy that I know that Roger will come up with something batshit insane. The number of times he's ended up on the edge of my bed has been just... All right, Agent Gregory. Shall we? Let's. There's no answer. Is the PR woman still with us? Could she let us in? Yes. Yeah, she will...
She has gone now, considering what happened with Michael Way, she has gone and gotten a skeleton key from security to give the FBI any access they need. She brings it back up and lets you guys into Michael Way's dorm room. You open up the door and you see a, you know, what looks like... Oh, you know, a standard college kid dorm room, except it's just very messy. You see no frills, no posters, open books everywhere. pay a a cheap shitty rickety ass like ikea desk
with papers all over it. A simple computer, cheap monitor, simple gray computer tower, a futon that is just... plopped into the side of the room that he probably sleeps on, not even like a proper bed. It just looks like a college kid's dorm room that has, you know, no social life, basically, is what you see. We close the door on Sandy Beeman's face. If I could just... Dr. Westover will go over to the computer, and if it's not booted up, she'll boot it up to see what's going on there.
You tap on a key and it pops right up. It was on. It was just asleep. It pops right up. I'm wearing latex gloves, by the way. I put on a set of latex. Okay, yes. Set of latex gloves. You hit the space bar. And what would we say, Grant? Would we say Windows Vista? Windows 7? Windows 7? Windows 7? Yeah. I don't know, man. Windows 7, initial release date July 22, 2009. He's a math enthusiast. He's absolutely using Windows 7. Good job. He wouldn't have a Linux machine?
If he was operating a workstation or a supercomputer, but he's not. Wasn't he building his own algorithm that needed to discover 14 million digits? Was he doing that here or in the lab? Decompression, esoteric, recompression. No. You open up the computer and you see there's multiple windows open already. So it's not password protected. It's all up and there for you to look at.
You take a brief look over the desk and there's just like what looks like mathematical scrawling all over papers that are just kind of like haphazardly tossed all over the place. I'm going to blow your mind with some shit right now because this is a lot to intake. So take it in one at a time as Dr. Westover is looking at what she's seeing here on the desk. If you could turn your attention to roll 20. Oh, no. Yeah. You look and you see that...
First of all, you go to spool up the computer, but you see right next to it is a bunch of these ramblings. Right on top of everything, you see one particular paper. That is filled with equations and stuff and seems to have a few numbers stand out that are pointed out. This seems to be like results of these like many, many equations.
Take a look at that sheet and see if you can pull out what numbers. Yeah, it's the fucking number. It's the number. It's an enormous equation. Like Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting. type giant equation. Russell Crowe, perfect mind, writing on walls, beautiful mind. But there are three circles in all of this nonsense here. And one underline. And one underlined, and I mean, I don't have the number in front of me, but I know this is the number. Some way, shape, or form. 10.12 is underlined.
921 is circled. 40.796901 circled. And negative 73.968158. And actually, those are the only, and I'm just looking really quickly, but they're really the only numbers on the entire equation. Everything else is like variables. Yeah, algorithms and... variables and greek letters uh so these are the solutions and the solutions was the number you wrote well there's some sixes missing from the number right is there
Joe, can Dr. Westover roll some sort of check to compare these numbers to the number that we saw last night? You don't need to roll a check. You don't see a direct relation. You see that there's 921. A 921 is in the number. 10.12, there's no .1, but there is a 1, a 0, a 1, and a 2 in the number.
There's no seven in the number. There's no four in the number, and you see those circled as part of digits. So it is not a direct correlation to the number. You don't see the connection just yet, but you do see these individual digits underlined. Maybe you just... set it aside for the moment but it's there for you to to look at whenever you want great um you look up at the computer you start going through and uh what is your priority here anything that
Last thing he looked at. Last thing he looked at. Also, any kind of search history, any kind of mention of the number or Faustius Cloud or anything like that. Yeah, and also looking, I mean, he's on the computer, but I imagine I'm looking around at the books, and what are they open to? Go ahead. Well, yeah, yeah. You look around at the books. What are they open to? Nothing really jumps out at you.
It's all kinds of random math stuff. To Roger, it's meaningless. It doesn't really connect in any way. It's all advanced applied engineering and mathematics and that kind of stuff. But go ahead and roll me an alertness check. While at the same time, Matthew, Dr. Westover, is looking at the computer. You look at his most recent... Search history and you don't find anything about fascist cloud and you don't.
see anything particularly of interest. But you do see down the bottom on the screen is a minimized window of what looks like his Columbia email. I maximize it. You bring up his Columbia email and you start scanning it and you see that there's two things that jump out at you. The first one, chronologically, is from last night. I'm sorry, from two nights ago. So October 11th, 1123 p.m. Michael Way received an email. Take a look at your roll 20. The sender, it says, is Francis Way. W-E-I.
Is that his dad? Francis with an E or Francis with an I? Francis with an I. So dad or brother or... Well, maybe when we get his phone hacked, we can get more info. It says, Mike, the key is in the final page of the final chapter. Dig deeper and you'll see it. F. I hit my alertness. Alertness is my best skill along with unarmed combat, and I hit it. Do I see, like, a book opened up towards the back of the book? You see... You see...
Orange. This fleck of orange. And it's under the futon. Like, what the hell is that? I mean... Fucking Roger Comstone with his intense alertness for like anything out of the ordinary or out of place. You're looking through these books out of the corner of your eye. You see a little bit of orange. You look down and you see a bright orange binder clip. And it is holding a stack of papers together. You reach under the futon and pull out this stack of papers. And it looks like a photocopy of a book.
And you look at it and immediately you see it's super dense, very old style text. And you can see up at the top in the margin, the title of the book is. Libri Plures Admiratio. And then in parentheses, The Book of Many Wonders by Faustus Cloudon. Just as you're looking at that. Dr. West oversees the second email of interest, which is in his sent folder. This is the last email that he sent at... 7, 12 a.m. It's to something called Math Geeks Listserv. Oh, no. Yahoo groups.
You open it up. Show you that. No. Take a peek of that. And what does it say at the bottom? Start here. 9920.229989212.333. And that is the number that was spray painted on the ground. Oh, no. You immediately click over to this. math geeks listserv uh yahoo group and you're very quickly because you're like what the fuck and you you bring it up you can bring up the link online uh and you can immediately see
Who is in that group? And you see it consists of many people from many places. Oh, no. That's awful. No. We're talking a dozen people of various ages from multiple places in the United States and around the world. And he has sent the solution to this number to all of them. And we will see you next time. Oh, no. Oh, no. You thought the pictures were the problem. Oh, my God. You thought the pictures were the problem. I don't have that much angel dust. Oh my god. Jesus Christ. Oh my god.
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