Thank the Maker!

Posting from Descent'...

vid! You're okay! Get some rest, alright?

Jeez, I dunno what else to say...

Once you're feeling better, come tell me what happened, okay?

Right now, I'm gonna sit here and play my harmonica happily, and enjoy the resonance of the Great Shaft...

Oh, and if you need any help, please ask me! You know I'm always here for ya!

Mold and Plants...Waeh?

Posting from the surface...

So on Wednesday night, an explorer, SBernath, got into vid's house and found his letter, and took a picture of it for us to see. It reads as follows:

"Matt, lockbox: 9879

I wanted to talk to you in person, but can't wait anymore. Going to go hide out for a while, I don't know where yet. I nearly put a few explorers in the cavern at risk, so I had to get them to panic and leave the neighborhood. Make sure they know that I'm alright and not to worry. Use the boards. [Right here there's an arrow pointing to a part in the margin that says "DON'T USE THE BOOK!"] As soon as I can get a better grasp on the situation, I'll put some information in the usual place.
-vid"

After reading the note, it occured to me to check vid's website, and sure enough http://www.vidkid7.org/lockbox/ was a valid link. I found there a "placeholder" message for this Matt character (who I can only assume is vid's roomate, whom some of us in the cavern know as Spock), as well as a report encoded in *.rar format. After downloading the file and decompressing it, I found an MP3 file named "report.mp3". This is what vid had to say:

"Uh...hi, this is... this is vid. I...I think it's been either four of five days real time now. I... I'm having trouble keeping it straight in my head. I'm sorry it took so long to get some news to you, but I went down to the cavern a couple days ago to get some of the mold from the Shaft, but a lot of panicked explorers kept stopping me, so, based... based on this, I'm going to assume that you either forgot or just didn't care enough to pass along my message. I feel pretty sick. I think that some of my stuff on the surface was tampered with, but the effects aren't what I'd expect, either, and, uh, I'm almost positive it's related to my continuous contact with the experiments I was conducting on the plants. {Coughing} I took my samples with me, but I lost a lot of my notes when I was... when I was leaving, so I can't remember a lot of the data regarding locations, soil, and stuff like that. I'm gonna rest for a little while, and hope that a fresh mind can kinda jog my memory. Uh...as soon as I know more, you'll probably be the first to know about it. Just be sure to keep your eyes, um, here. Um, alright, uh, according to the newspaper it's Wednesday...so, it's...it's dark. I don't know what time it is. I don't know... I guess, I hope this'll upload. It should work, if I can still establish the link to my PC at home."

From listening to that report, I can tell he's really sick. I hope he comes back down to the cavern, soon. Hopefully we can figure out where these plants he was experimenting on are at...

For now, I'm going to go down to the Great Shaft and collect some of that mold vid was trying to get. I don't have any knowledge of how to deal with it, but hopefully someone else does, or at the very least vid will come back down so that I can give the samples to him.

vid, get better soon. Please.

Agh, vid!

Posting from Descent'...

Hey, Dalken again. Something's gone wrong with vid, granted I'm not sure what exactly. I figured I'd write everything down here, maybe to get my thoughts straight. Last time I saw him before he had a "problem" was on Sunday about 12 AM in the Great Shaft. Later, he and Janine both jumped into the Shaft together, and a few minutes after that he appeared the Uru Obsession 'hood, where Montgomery and K'Tania where talking, and started freaking out. After eventually going to the 'hood balcony and jumping off of it, we didn't see him for a day. On his website, his In Real Time cam had been knocked over, showing Atrus' map of the journey to the Cavern, what might or might not be a linking book, and a partially torn note. On the map, the Great Shaft was circled, but unfortunately the note was illegible. Then Monday, vid showed up again, and after going to and then leaving the Great Shaft, he kept linking from Age to Age. Later, Thend and I caught him in his Negilahn, where he mentioned that people (explorers) were following him, and that might be bad. After I apparently got too close to him, he jumped over the railing and dissapeared. Luckily, however, I was able to catch him again in Eder Delin and talk to him. After offering my help, he told me "this is [his] problem" and also that he was gathering things. He told me to stay away from him as well, because getting too close is dangerous, and that that would force him to jump, which only slows him down. After a few minutes, other explorers started showing up in Delin, and [ Shadow ] got too close and scared vid off. Me and a few other explorers were later able to catch him once again back in the Great Shaft, where he seemed to be gathering more things. He coughed once and spit into a napkin (which has started a huge fear of a disease spreading) and asked to get past, and he went into the main part of the Shaft. Once again people got too close to him, despite my warnings I might add, and he jumped into the Shaft. We haven't seen him since. During this whole fiasco on Monday, vid's IRT cam also went black, and then went to a fizzled-out screen, and hasn't changed from that so far.

Now, no one seems to be able to figure out anything else. No one has been able to do anything to read the note that was on vid's IRT cam, and this whole situation is still as "nebulous", as Thend put it, as ever.

vid, if you can read this...please, come back safe from wherever you've gone and whatever you're doing. I think I'm speaking for the majority of the explorer population when I say, I'm really worried about you.