For those of you who missed the news... yes, we were Greenlit. God help those who aren't reading this blog.
In fact, God help us all.
I've thrown my life away for this project. I had friends. Real ones, not the back stabbing kind like Aaron. I haven't seen any of them for months.
And after so long, now that I'm uncovering some fraction of the truth of what's going on? Friendships, acquaintances, all falling apart and dying. The bodies keep piling up. Running out of room, already knee-deep in the dead.
I loved once. A few times, actually. Not for three years now.
I won't lie, life before this project wasn't perfect. I was in a slump of my own. I wanted to go to college. I wanted something more than holding a slightly-more-than-minimum-wage job and ghosting through every day. I wanted to draw blood, cut out the living heart of existence and put it out for display. I wanted to feel like a vulture clutching to the wings of an angel. I wanted to be art, not mediocrity. Aaron sold me with the promise I could be more, that I could build a new world with him. A real business, a true universe. Real people who would respect and love us just for doing what we did.
When we started on remastering BRKÖUT I felt like we were breaking new ground, like a vein of gold had split open at our feet. It wasn't long before I realized it was pyrite. Then the pyrite turned to magma. Then it boiled over.
Had any of you even heard of a Vic 30 before you started here? Not a Vic 20, an honest to god "Saving Grace" Vic 30 with the dumbo ears and all. I hadn't either until Aaron showed me his collection. It's his personal machine I'm using to develop the goddamn thing.
Well. I was, anyway. I'm not sure who's developing it now.
Stack that and the fucked up shit with these computers, I'm losing it. Really, really, losing it.
I look back at what I tweet, and I just find vague and cryptic shit I can hardly remember tapping out. I tracked down telephone lines leading from my house for a long time. I started putting them up just so everyone knew. I need help. I am so very, very fucked.
Enough moping. Here's the part where I try to rationalize a little bit.
So you saw the video. I started filming because I noticed that my icons just randomly rearranged. The cliche little "I'M WATCHING YOU" at the end. Then my webcam came on, and you all saw my shocked and embarrassed face for a second.
So as I said before, I thought that I had a virus or maybe someone had access to my computer. Anyway, what happened in the video fed my suspicions. I took a vocational course in high school for networking (almost got certified), so I looked around. Couldn't find any obvious holes, so I doubled down on a firewall and locking down my logins. 2FA wherever possible. Changed all my passwords. Rogue code kept showing up.
I took myself off the internet entirely. Unplugged the modem, unplugged the router, backed up locally, changed passwords again, removed wifi antennae from everything, even unplugged my phones. For a few days that put my mind to rest... but then it just started up again. Then more messages. These ones got weirder, a bit too personal for my taste.
I switched entire computers. I scraped together my savings and bought an entire new computer. I copied over the backups I had made and tried to get anything - anything - done. I almost succeeded too, but I couldn't recognize any of the work. It's just... so foreign. It's like a completely different thing now. There's 200+ commits that, again, I did not make. None of them are labelled, none of the code is commented.
And then the commits kept coming, and then there were more messages. Even more personal. Even more weird.
It gets worse, and this is important. Whatever it is, it spreads. I had a laptop on the same network for a while, I took it to a Starbucks the other day and I got another set of messages. I had to leave, I nearly spilled my frap over the keyboard. I've only confirmed this over LAN. I don't know if it can spread through the internet, but take any email you may have gotten from me with a grain of salt.
Listen. This game is going to come out. I can't stop Aaron, and he has me by the balls with a contract. I can get away with what I say here because Aaron never reads these, but everywhere else I need to keep up the ruse. I need to sell BRKÖUT, but my personal advice to you?
DO. NOT. BUY. BRKÖUT.