Device Findings
Device Findings is the twenty-seventh episode of TribeTwelve, and the 27th video of season 1. It was uploaded on August 7th, 2011.
Description
This video compiles what further information I've gathered about the device. I haven't found anything else like it yet hidden around my house, but I'm keeping very quiet as a precaution.
EDIT: Someone already sent me a transcript of the audio. Damn, you guys are fast: (insert transcript of the device audio, seen below)"
Transcript
[The camera is pointed at Noah's face.]
Noah: Noah here. I took Edward's advice and I opened up the USB cable.
[Noah turns the camera toward the cable.]
Noah: Like he said, there's some multi-colored wires inside. I clipped the green and white one. He said they were for data. And I left the black and red one, which he said were for power. There was another one in there. It's copper, I think. It's probably also for power. I looked it up. And there's some cotton insulation in there. I also took the 9-volt battery cap off, and I unplugged the solar panel thingy. Hopefully, whatever this is, it won't fuck up my computer when I plug it in.
[Noah turns the camera back to his face.]
Noah: I can't believe I'm gonna do this, but, it's a leap of faith for me. Under any other circumstance, I would probably just go to my local library and plug it in there, into, like, a local computer so I can't be traced, but I don't know if this thing makes noise or not, and if it does, or something, I don't want it to be in a public area when it goes off, let alone a library where I have to be quiet. So, I trust Edward's judgment enough to plug this into my computer. He's helped me out in the past before and I really trust him. So, here we go.
[Noah turns the camera back toward his computer and the device. He takes the USB cable and plugs it in.]
[There is visible lag in the video and there are several jump cuts.]
[The device makes a beeping noise.]
Noah: Okay, just making a little noise.
Device: Hello, my child. I see you’ve found my little toy. Took you long enough. About 4 months? [makes clicking sound with tongue] I was beginning to think you’d never find it. Good thing you’re not as deaf as you are stupid.
Noah: Shit.
Device: You shouldn’t have cut those wires, there is more to be found.
Noah: Shit.
Device: But I’m being unfair. Perhaps, you just need another little... ah... lesson, like the one you got at the Nature Trail.
Noah: Shit.
Device: Would you like that?
[Noah chuckles a bit.]
Device: Shh... shh... [chuckle] But we will teach you so much. Who all those eyes belong to.... We shall teach you their names. About that forest... yes... that forest you were in. Under its branches the rain runs red.
[Visual and audio distortion.]
Device: [laugh] Would you like to know where you went? Would you like to know why? Perhaps you’d like to know why Milo committed suicide? Or rather, how I helped him do so.
Noah: Fuck!
Device: [clicks his tongue] Language, Mr. Maxwell. The walls have such sensitive ears.
Noah: Fuck! Fuck you!
Device: [sigh] We want only to remove those festering sutures from your eyes... Are you so afraid of sight?
[Visual and audio distortion.]
Device: A brief lesson, from your own world. You, and everyone you’ve ever known, are prisoners... bound in a cave and facing a blank wall on which you can only perceive shadows. A brain connected to eyes and nothing more. We have seen what casts those shadows, Noah Maxwell. Why won’t you let us untie you? You are quite deserving, after all.
Noah: What?
[Visual and audio distortion.]
Device: [inhale] The Boardwalk. Bring the journal. That is your homework. However, if you come empty handed, we shall be forced to take... disciplinary actions. Perhaps another detention?
Noah: Fuck. Fuck.
Device: Until then, I will continue my... observations. Pleasant dreams, Noah. [laugh]
[As the device's audio ends, a buzzing noise is heard.]
Noah: What?
[Noah unplugs the device, breathing heavily.]
[Visual and audio distortion.]
Noah: No... There's no way that that just happened. No fucking way.
[Cut to black.]
[Cut to a video of a library. Noah is speaking through a voiceover. Noah walks into the library, goes to a computer and plugs in the device.]
Noah: The next day, I soldered the data wires back together and I went to my local library. I snuck the device inside so I could plug it into a library computer and maybe see if anything was stored on it. I also disconnected the wires connecting the speaker, too, just in case any sound would play, like what happened the night before. Turns out, the device actually contains some memory.
[Footage of the library computer, with Noah viewing the files.]
Noah: Several files on a 2-gigabyte flash drive labeled "AURIS". A-U-R-I-S, in caps. It contained 3 sound files, an image, a few dll's, and a few odd script files. Command prompts, and such. Just to check if anything was hidden, I enabled hidden folders and, lo and behold, a hidden folder revealed itself, called "CASSIUM", also in caps. Inside, I found these fucked-up files similar to the ones that I found in my system32, along with a dll and a text file. Keeping in mind that trying to access these files may trigger a killswitch protocol that might automatically delete all the files before I could access them.
[A video of the files in Noah's system32 folder is shown, dated February 19, 2011. Noah opens a hidden folder labeled "ghostroot" in his system32 folder and a window appears with a red X icon; It is titled "g8|jyRg([a$-;Zn" and reads "wearealwaysincontrolnoahandweknoweverythingyoudo SEEYOUVERYSOON".]
Noah: Like what happened to the files that I found hidden on my system32. I copied the media files into one flash drive and copied the script, command prompts and other files into another one, just in case. The 3 audio files freak me out pretty badly, because they confirm my suspicions that I was, in fact, being monitored. The file labeled "8-1-11" is a 24 hour sound file. Pretty much a recording of my room from midnight of the 31st of July to 11:59 PM on the 1st of August. The entire day was recorded. I skimmed through the file and even found that it picked up a phone call that I made to my parents that day. And the other file, dated the next day, "8-2-11", was 3 hours and 15 minutes of audio. A recording of 12:00 AM midnight to 3:15 AM, the recorded audio being of me waking up, finding the device, and ending when I unplug the 9-volt battery after I finished recording that one video. The "SPECIALMESSAGE" file...
[Noah opens the "SPECIALMESSAGE" file and the screen becomes discolored and distorted, with audio static in the background.]
Noah: ...is the voice that came out of the speaker when I plugged the device into my laptop, from the Observer, as he likes to fucking call himself. This is the picture that was inside the drive.
[Noah opens the image file called "Y2FlY2kgc3VyZGlzIG11dGlz".]
Noah: Really fucking strange, and creepy. Fucker says I'm blind, deaf and dumb. Whatever. And the text file...
[Noah opens "OCULUS.txt".]
Noah: ...that was hidden inside the "CASSIUM" folder is just a bunch of text making up a silhouette of someone. Looks like him again, with the fucking eye on the face. That bullshit. But the worst part of all of this is, judging by the dates on the files, most of all of them originate March 13th. And that was the day that I got fucked up at the nature trail and blacked out for a week. And not only that, but it says that the "SPECIALMESSAGE" file was also created then too. If so, how the hell did he know that I was gonna cut the wires like he said in the message?
[The screen becomes discolored and distorted again.]
Noah: How did the speaker even play the message if the wires were disconnected? How the shit did he get the thing into my house in the first place? And, to top all those fucking questions off, where the hell was this thing before my floor was redone? Because it had to have been somewhere, if it was... Aww, never fucking mind. In conclusion, I've been bugged since at least March. Apparently, this Observer fuck has been sending day-long sound clips of my everyday activity to himself via this fucking thing. I am destroying this godforsaken piece of shit right after I finish recording this video and I'm going to search my house for any other monitoring devices. As for the other script files, whatever the hell they are, I'll be sending them to one of my coding friends on the internet to see if he can make heads or tails of what their functions might be. And to you, Mr. Observer: If you're watching this right now, you're not gonna get away with this shit. I'm never gonna fucking stop until I find you and I kill you. And your tall friend too. Maxwell, out.
[The word "AGAIN" is seen, spelled using what appear to be long tree branches.]
Analysis
- "Who all those eyes belong to" refers to a drawing that Noah made and posted on Twitpic after having a nightmare.
- "AURIS" is Latin for "ear", which fits with the fact that the device was monitoring Noah. "CASSIUM" is Latin for "metal helmet", which may suggest that this folder was meant to protect the files from being seen by deleting them. "OCULUS" is Latin for "eye".
- The image file name, "Y2FlY2kgc3VyZGlzIG11dGlz", when decoded in Base64, reads as "caeci surdis mutis", which is Latin for "blind, deaf and dumb".
- The last frame of the video contains the word "AGAIN" with a picture of what looks like a tree with many long branches that branch out in a spiral formation around the picture.
- By taking the final-frame messages from the three videos having to do with the device, a full message can be made; "SOON WE WILL HAVE YOU AGAIN".
- "prisoners... bound in a cave and facing a blank wall on which you can only perceive shadows" is a direct reference to "The Allegory of the Cave" which was written by the Greek philosopher Plato. For people who don't know the story written by Plato, it is about reality. The prisoners only see the shadows of whats going on outside of the cave on the wall and only know that as their reality. Thinking that this is the truth and that the world must look like this, because they have never seen outside of their cave. It probably means that most of the things Noah sees around him are not the reality the Observer sees, because the Observer lives outside of the cave while Noah is inside, only seeing the shadows.
OCULUS.txt
Unfiction forum members Drer'Ahv, icy780 and Slendery helped decode the codes hidden in the text and posted them in the TribeTwelve thread. Due to formatting issues, lines 4-10 may not show up correctly, but it is still visible that the code's translation forms a heart.
SEVMTE9ZRVRBR0FJTkSPQUg = HELLOYETAGAINDNOAH
V0VMSVZFV0lUSElOR1RIRVdBTExT = WELIVEWITHINGTHEWALLS
SU5GSU5JVEVFWUVT = INFINITEEYES
IC46OjouIC AgLjo6Oi4N= .:::. .:::.
Cjo6Ojo6Oj ouOjo6Ojo6= :::::::.:::::::
Og0kOjo6Oj o6Ojo6Ojo6= $:::::::::::::::
Ojo6DQonOj o6Ojo6Ojo6= ':::::::::::::'
Ojo6OicNCi AgJzo6Ojo6= ':::::::::'
Ojo6OicNCi AgICAnOjo6= ':::::'
OjonDQogIC AgICAnOicNCg= ':'
TE9PSw = LOOK
QkVISU5EWU9V = BEHIND YOU
WU9VUkxJRkU = YOURLIFE
TUlMT0tORVc = MILOKNEW
SU5USEVFTkRZT1VXSUxMVU5ERVJTVEFORA = INTHEENDYOUWILLUNDERSTAND
V0VTRUVLVEhFSk9VUk5BTA = WESEEKTHEJOURNAL
SUFNQUxXQVlTUklHSFRCRUhJTkRZT1U = IAMALWAYSRIGHTBEHINDYOU
VEhFSk9VUk5BTEhPTERTVEhFU0VDUkVU = THEJOURNALHOLDSTHESECRET
RVZFTklOWU9VUkRSRUFNUw = EVENINYOURDREAMS
V0VMSVZFV0lUSElOR1RIRVdBTExT = WELIVEWITHINGTHEWALLS
V0VXQVRDSFlPVUFTWU9VREVDSVBIRVJUSElT = WEWATCHYOUASYOUDECIPHERTHIS
V0VPQlNFUlZFRk9SRVZFUg = WEOBSERVEFOREVER
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