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Hi everyone, it's Lowri, voice of Celia in The Magnus Protocol. I'm here to tell you about Broken-Hearted Monsters, a brand new series on Rusty Quill's Neon Inkwell podcast feed. After Dr. Frankenstein is killed by an errant bolt of lightning...
his estranged creature, Frank, must travel to his former home for the funeral. Frank, not wanting to face the bitter reality of an unresolved relationship, chooses instead to use it as an excuse to plan the ultimate road trip across America and invites his ex-boyfriend Dracula along for the ride. Before they reach their destination and a monstrous family reunion, Frank and Dracula have 2,000 miles, nine states...
and a whole lot to unpack. Brokenhearted Monsters is releasing weekly, now on the Neon Inkwell podcast feed. To listen, search for Neon Inkwell wherever you listen to podcasts, or visit RustyQuill.com. This episode is dedicated to Evan Botus, from his dad.
From story time as a child, through musical theatre, movies, TV shows, laughing together while listening to comedy in the car, and, of course, the Magnus Archives. We've always shared a special bond when it comes to the arts. Rusty Quill presents The Magnus Protocol, episode 36, Outside the Box. Okay, so that would be flaying.
Subsection voluntary, cross-referenced with betrayal and... You're okay. You're okay, Jack. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Hey, so I was looking through one of Colin's notebooks and... You alright? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. You sure? Because you don't look fine. In fact, you look enniff fine.
Enif. Opposite of fine. Maybe even kitsat naf. What? Good. Now tell me five things you can see. Just do it. You. Your desk. Your computer. Your mouse. Sans. Sans. Never mind that. Four things you can feel. My jeans. The chair. The desk. Your hand. Three you can hear.
What other than your voice right in my ear? That's one. Cars outside, the computers again. And smell? Dust and that perfume you always wear, the one that smells like a magic shop. That'll be the patchouli. I'm a woody scent gal. And what can you taste? Also perfume, it's a lot closer. Good enough. Better? Yeah, actually...
How did you- I know a panic attack when I see one. I've helped enough people through them, and been helped for that matter. Thanks. All part of the service. In fact, for an extra fiver a month, you can upgrade to the premium Alice subscription, which includes a weighted blanket and binging bad TV. Good to know. I'm assuming you don't want to talk about it? Actually, I think maybe it's about time I did. Okay. I...
I think I know what that thing is in the hilltop centre. Go on. I... I know I said I didn't know what it was, but I'm certain it's a portal. And... I'm not sure how to say this. It's okay. I already worked it out for myself. Really? It felt like the obvious answer, but I guess I just couldn't face it. Not until I was sure. And now you are. Yeah. Yeah.
Best I can figure, it goes to, well, not like hell, hell, but definitely some kind of evil messed up hellish dimension and it's leaking. I don't know if it covers all the cases, but definitely most. In fact, it's probably not the only one. So you think it's been leaking out, what, just general evil? Yeah, that's why I haven't tried following Sam... yet.
He hasn't come back, which means it's either one way or there's something on the other side stopping him. And since I'm pretty sure we've already met things that spat out, that means something is keeping Sam there. Ergo, it's probably a really bad place. Or that he's already dead. No, no, no. Our train of thought is not currently stopping at that destination. Besides...
Alice. Alice.
What? You need to slow down a moment. You're making a lot of assumptions and- Look, I get it. There's still a lot we don't know. We don't know how many portals there are. We don't know if all the stuff we've read about comes from this place or only some of it. We don't know any of the rules on how any of this actually works. But we do know it's bad news. We know it's evil and anything it spits out is the same. That's not what I was going to say.
Hold that thought, and we can pick it back up when I'm done with Her Majesty. Shit. SladeTechReviews.com Blog post 235-1 Author Arlo Slade Admin Title Boothmark 2 Review Feeling isolated Date August 4th 2024 Page removed pending legal action Intro The disruption is coming from inside the house.
You probably haven't heard of Booth, the enigmatic video conference startup that launched early last year, but you have almost certainly used products made by their pioneering founders, Leela Bailey and Chris Chavez. Between them, the pair hold prestigious backgrounds in advanced OLED panel displays, generative AI, aerospace engineering, and 3D projection modelling, and so it was no surprise when their startup completed a record-breaking initial funding round back in 2022, with Elric Capital Limited taking a controlling interest.
Now, Booth stands poised to capture the video conference market. Its first consumer outing, the Booth Mark II, clearly takes inspiration from the founder's background as a first-of-its-kind, perfectly lifelike hybrid monitor webcam setup. According to the marketing materials, no more lonely work-from-home blues with blurry, low-res co-workers, Booth Mark II will bring everyone back in the room. Realistic conversations over video.
True to its name, the Booth Mark II is a booth, an array of high-res webcams situated around a proprietary 8K 3D display. Honestly, it looks like a carnival photo booth sans curtain, but this is supposedly to help the webcam array and integrated LiDAR sensor to record and track body, head, and eye movements, ensuring that you and your conversational partner are rendered in stunning 3D, the result being the uncanny sensation of the screen dissolving between the two of you. A purposefully oblique setup process?
The Mark II is beyond bleeding edge. In fact, it's practically still breathing. It exists past the plane of creature comforts that casual tech enthusiasts expect from their world of walled gardens and frictionless user interfaces. Instead, it harkens back to the golden age of bulky pillars in dedicated computer rooms. Users can expect an arduous setup process, starting with an intimidating safety warning in the lengthy install guide. To maximize realism, remove all items from the room. Do not plug the Mark II in until all items have been removed.
Position the device such that any windows and doors are not in view of the Mark II's camera array. Only once this is done should you turn on the Booth Mark II. The presence of windows or doors in frame may cause the Booth Mark II to have unpredictable results. This is a punishing ask for users who live in a post-desktop world, and I found myself working up quite a sweat clearing out the only room that I could afford to ransack for this review, my bedroom. But, looking back, I am glad I did, because let me tell you, describing the Mark II's behaviour as...
unpredictable is charitable at best. The Mark II defies possibility. Although marketed as a consumer product, the Mark II is far from that. For the Mark II, a safe software experience relies on industrial levels of precision operation, and without it you are left with a glitchy, surreal, and isolating experience.
The Mark II has no power button. Instead, it turns itself on immediately upon being plugged in, and users are greeted with the splash page displaying "THE BOOTH MARK II" in an all-caps, desperately modern-looking sans-serif font. It then dropped me into my first call as soon as the logo disappeared, and having had no opportunity to give it contact, I found myself suddenly sharing my now-empty bedroom with a complete stranger. An awkward experience at the best of times. But I forgot about my reservations when I realised how incredibly lifelike it felt.
It is impossible for a reviewer to adequately describe this experience, and the effect doesn't translate to video review because the viewer is staring at a flat projection. Instead, imagine what it is like to be in a room with another person.
That is what it feels like to use the Booth Mark II. It is lifelike beyond compare, it felt like we were sharing the same air. The man across from me told me his name, we'll call him Gregory, and that he was a member of the Booth Initiation Team, or BIT. Apparently the BIT was designed to welcome new users into the Mark II ecosystem, and provide a guide to a safe and engaging user experience. It was a nice idea, but...
Instead he was leaving me disconcerted because occasionally something would feel off about Gregory's movements. It wasn't like a video feed, it wasn't glitching, artifacting, blurring or dropping iframes. Instead, thanks to the hyper-realism, it appeared that Gregory's body was actually morphing, shifting, changing, moving too fast. He looked incredibly real so it was especially jarring to see him malformed in this manner. But such is the cost of reviewing bleeding edge tech.
After a few moments of settling in and exchanging pleasantries about cat ownership, Gregory held a peach up in front of him, his arm extended. Like Gregory, it genuinely appeared to be present in the room with me. I swear I could smell it. I was tempted to reach out and take it, then felt ridiculous having fully believed the Mark II's illusion of depth. Then, in an absolutely brain-breaking display, Gregory dropped the peach into my room. It landed in front of the Mark II with an unceremonious thud.
An actual peach on the actual ground. I was stunned. I picked it up. It felt real. I looked behind the screen, searching for an explanation, and Gregory gave a laugh at my confusion, though it gave way to an angry bark as I turned the Mark II from one side to the other, looking for a hidden chute that could have been holding the peach. He explained that I was ruining the setup, but the damage was done. My bedroom door and a small window were in frame, and he was furious. I apologized, but to no avail.
Gregory shared some creatively offensive words with me, apparently the BIT could use some training on acceptable customer interactions, and then the screen went dark. It didn't diminish all at once though, instead it disappeared into a pinpoint like an old CRT monitor. Then there was no way I could find to turn it back on. My first video conference call with the Mark II was over, ended by an impressively lifelike argument.
Despite this, the demo had been amazing, and I was still riding high on the hyperreality of it all. That is, until I took a closer look at my surroundings. It took a moment for me to even process what I was seeing. The window and the door of my bedroom had vanished. I was in a completely bare and sealed room, shrunk to only what the Mark II's cameras had been able to capture. My first inclination was that this must be an illusion from the booth, some bizarre, unintended result due to its moving position.
I reached out to where my bedroom door had been, expecting to feel a handle behind whatever projection was occluding it, but there was nothing there but bare wall. I knocked on it, feeling it solid beneath my knuckles, then banged on it, then screamed for help. Nothing. At that point, I started to panic. I wrapped my hand in my shirt, then pounded on the wall over and over, but they held solid. They weren't the drywall from my house. Instead, they were hard and slightly shiny like ceramic.
I began to bang on everything but the Mark II, which I was now terrified of damaging any further, but to no avail. Brute force wasn't going to help. I then started to realise just how bad this could get. It might be a long time before anyone other than my cat Randall noticed I was missing. I took some solace in knowing that his automatic bowl would feed him regularly for at least another week or two. In the meantime though, things were going to get very uncomfortable.
Now, any readers of early Slade Tech might remember that this used to be more of a survivalism blog. This was a harsh environment with few resources, even by my standards. I could maybe wring the sweat out of my clothes, meditate to avoid time loss, eventually I could attempt to eat the leather from my boots. Not much. Of course there was the peach. It wouldn't keep, but it was real food and I had an idea of how long it would last me. I decided to give myself three days to be found before I prepared for the worst.
For three days I sat as still as I could, preserving energy, meditating. I soon came to see the booth as my only hope of survival. I would swing from forced calm to feelings of existential dread and white-hot rage. I took the smallest possible bites out of the peach, but it was still half gone within twenty-four hours.
My gut started burning and I dreamed fitfully that her hand would come out of the Mark II and pull me down into darkness. Time felt infinite and uncaring in all directions. I lost track. I ate the last of the peach. Then I was out of time. I prayed to the Booth Mark II that night before I closed my eyes and fell asleep. I awoke, weakly, to light emanating from the device and looked up to see Gregory eyeing me curiously.
He then turned his head and spoke to someone off-screen. "Yeah, this one's done. Kill process." Hearing this, I staggered towards the screen as fast as my body would carry me. Then, before Gregory noticed me, I had reached my hands through the screen into his room and round his neck. Then the screen snapped black, my fingers caught inside. I felt the bones shear and the muscles sever as my fingers were neatly amputated. I could feel blood pulsing out of me, though all I could see was the perfect black of the screen.
but I swear I could still feel my fingers digging into Gregory's throat. I cried out in pain and used my ever-weakening arms to try and force myself through somehow. The screen bent, then began to yield to my effort. I pushed and screamed, trying to somehow use Gregory as a lever, until the hand holding him slipped and I felt something fleshy come free in my hand.
I didn't stop prying though and grasping until I was able to find the edge of the Mark II on Gregory's side and heave myself into the other room. That was when I opened my eyes and looked down to see Gregory's ear in my mangled palms and my own fingers resting gently on the carpeted floor. Gregory's room still had a door in it, thank God, and it was ajar. It looked like he had made a quick getaway.
Gingerly lifting my bloodied fingers and stumbling through, I found an empty suburban house. No pictures on the walls, no real furniture, just a trail of blood leading out to the front door. I followed it and flagged down help as soon as possible. I made it to the hospital and told the doctors my hands got slammed in a car door. I did not mention Gregory or the Mark II to anyone who would believe me. Besides, it's not like anyone had noticed my absence. Except for Randall, of course. Verdict.
The Booth Mark II: Disruptive in the worst way. Yes, the Booth Mark II technically over delivers. The tech is literally boundary pushing but it is also exceedingly dangerous, overseen by a company that seems apparently criminally apathetic to its users, and if there was any likelihood that it would see the actual market in this state, I would warn people off it as a five-figure death sentence.
I did contact Booth about my experience and they claim to have no employee named Gregory and there is no such thing as a Booth initiation team. Their legal team also reminded me that I had signed an NDA to join the Alpha test, but after what they have put me through, I don't care if they sue me. I intend to track Gregory down. After all, I still have his ear. In the meantime though, keep an eye out for a tech bro with one ear and seriously poor customer service. One star. For quick delivery and solid packaging.
So I think he used the... salt config manager and found an unmonitored orphan process which- What? Oh, right. So apparently an orphan process is one that should have a parent process to monitor it but like, it's gone. Deleted. Dead.
Presumably to make the process a more compelling protagonist or something. Right. So, then you've got this orphan process just running around spamming threads and eating up massive amounts of processing power via crontask. And I'm starting to think... Crontask? Basically Linux, but based on Annex. Doesn't matter. The important thing is that because of this, the LAN network should have already failed. I see. But it hasn't. No, it hasn't.
Right. And if I'm reading these notes correctly, this is just the tip of a very nerdy iceberg. It's no wonder it was driving Colin up the wall, because he couldn't... You haven't understood a word of that, have you? Look, I don't need to know every detail of the thing to be the manager. I just need to know how to balance it. So either tell me how I can increase W here, or get out. Fine. Alice, wait. What?
Please help me. Shove over. I will not! So, each of these cases is categorised on four metrics with a standard integer scale. That's your DPHW. Okay. Now I'm pretty sure I need to try and keep them as even as possible. Okay. So, it makes sense that if you're low on W, that means we should probably prioritise processing cases with a higher rank on that metric to bring the average up, right?
Makes sense. So, it's just a hunch, but I bet if we have a look at the old cases and then try and sort by W, we can find out which cases got the biggest scores in that metric and reverse engineer what you need. That's very insightful. Yeah, well, it helps knowing the whole thing is powered by demons and spite. You're starting to sound like Colin. Good.
Now, unless I'm wrong, which, let's be honest, is pretty damn likely, when we cross-reference the shortlist for common terms, we'll find out what Freddy thinks you need, and that is more... Bonzo. Bollocks. So much for that idea. Okay, so maybe if I... Thank you, Alex. You may go. Hang on. When you going on about Mr. Bonzo went... Ow! Now! Ugh, whatever. Knock, knock. In here...
Thanks, Georgie. I managed to swing by the corner shop, so I'm good on nappies now. I tried to get you coffee, but they hadn't restocked. And he didn't have baby toddler toothpaste, so he'll have to make do with mine until I manage to... What? No, I'm fine. If I hurry, I can get breakfast prepped and then... Sit down. But... I did an online shop. My treat.
Breakfast is prepped, you've got about six months of nappies ordered along with the mildest toddle of toothpaste they make, and a new sippy cup, because he's managed to chew through the dinosaur one. Georgie, you didn't have to. I know, but I did, and it's fine. I even brought my own coffee, see? Thanks, Georgie. You know you can't keep this up forever, right? I know. It's just been a bit of a rough time at work. We lost some staff recently, including the manager, and...
It's a lot. Need to talk about it? No. Maybe. I don't know. New manager. Wham. Yeah, that's her. She doesn't have a clue what to do. And Alice is getting tense. And Sam? The boy you were pretending you weren't seeing last time I asked? I... I don't... How do you... You had a profile on your Netflix. Oh. Right. Yeah. Well, um...
He was one of the ones that moved on. Oh, sweetie. Maybe he's moved on to somewhere better? I doubt it. And it was kind of my fault. I see. Does he know it was your fault? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he does. Damn. I was hoping we could play ignorant. Blame an ex or something. No, in fact, his ex is starting to suspect as well. Hmm.
Then maybe you could blame it on the old manager? Georgie, I don't think we're going to find... All right, I get it. The secret problems of your secret job are just too secret for me to help with. But you know I'm here. If you actually do want to talk, right? Probably won't even put it on the podcast. I appreciate the chat, but honestly, I just think I need sleep. That's fair. I'll take Jack to the playground once he wakes up. Give you a bit of peace and quiet. Thanks, Georgie. Don't mention it.
You'll feel better after the rest. After all, it's just a job, right? The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 international license. The series is created by Jonathan Sims and Alexander J. Newell and directed by Alexander J. Newell. This episode was written by Dylan Griggs and Alexander J. Newell and edited with additional materials by Jonathan Sims.
with vocal edits by Lorianne Davis, soundscaping by Tessa Vroom, and mastering by Catherine Rinella, with music by Sam Jones. It featured Billy Hindle as Alistair, Anusha Battersby as Gwen Bouchard, Lorianne Davis as Celia Ripley, Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker, with additional voices from Alexander J. Newell. ♪
The Magnus Protocol is produced by April Sumner, with executive producers Alexander Jane Yorke, Danny McDonagh, Lynn See, and Samantha F.G. Hamilton, and associate producers Jordan L. Hawke, Taylor Michaels, Nicole Perlman, Cetius the Raven, and Megan Nice.
To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com. Thanks for listening.
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Hi everyone, it's Lowri, voice of Celia in The Magnus Protocol. I'm here to tell you about Broken-Hearted Monsters, a brand new series on Rusty Quill's Neon Inkwell podcast feed. After Dr. Frankenstein is killed by an errant bolt of lightning...
his estranged creature, Frank, must travel to his former home for the funeral. Frank, not wanting to face the bitter reality of an unresolved relationship, chooses instead to use it as an excuse to plan the ultimate road trip across America and invites his ex-boyfriend Dracula along for the ride. Before they reach their destination and a monstrous family reunion, Frank and Dracula have 2,000 miles, nine states,
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