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Choice and Consequence Geography Puzzle

Flood sent out clues to Neurophyte's location, if you can call them that. Geography was never my strong suit, so I defer to those with more knowledge on the subject:

Kroyd writes "This is the solution that we worked out to Flood's geography puzzle, as I will be unable to attend the meeting with La Concile.

First, the geographic center of the old world is the Great Pyramid. For centuries it has been speculated that this had some sort of arcane meaning; whether that is true or not is irrelevant. The lat/long of 31N 30E evenly divides the dry surface of the world, north to south and east to west.

We know that the missing girl's realspace position is 1000km from a listening post in 01, and that 01 is located in what was once Saudi Arabia. This is consistent with the inference that she is located at the Great Pyramid.

Flood also gave us a series of co-ordinates derived from Neurophyte's location(s). For the Real, these are lat/longs, and for the Matrix, they are X/Z's. We're told that the formula for the latitudes and the X's use ONLY multiplication and division, and the formula for the longitudes and the Z's use ONLY addition and subtraction. We know that the formulas also involve the mathematical constants pi and phi.

So the supposition is that there is some function that will turn Neurophyte's coordinates into the ones we were given, and that we should be able to work backwards from that. We are also told, incidentally, that Neurophyte's location is the geographic center of the Matrix, analagous to the Pyramids being the geographic center of the Real. This is not necessary to solve the problem but it is an interesting coincidence.

We know that Neurophyte's location in the Real is 31/30, so for the latitudes:
31 * pi * phi = 152.416
31 / (pi * phi) = 5.898
31 * pi / phi = 15.438

For the Matrix, we do not know her X value, but we can see:
959 * pi / phi = about 493.845
959 / (pi * phi) = about 188.668
959 * pi * phi = about 4874.546

I have not bothered to figure the derivations for the longitudes, or the Z's, because addition and subtraction of single values of pi and phi can only produce a small deviation from the true value.

Further, if we assume that the changes to the longs or Z's involve MULTIPLES of pi and phi, then we can get any set of numbers we want just by adding or subtracting more constants. That wouldn't let us localize anything, so I do not think that is the proper solution.

Therefore, taking a close average or the given longitudes and Z values (about -980 for the Z) should put us close enough to the target to see it (less than ten meters away in the Matrix; less than 60 nautical miles in the Real).

We will leave it to Flood to find a way to check the Pyramids. As to the Matrix...

Our supposed destination is X = 959, Z = -980 in the Mega City. Visiting this location puts us precisely at the giant marble Kalt Chemical sign in the northeast Kalt Towers courtyard, to within a meter. I believe that this is the geographic center of the Matrix that Flood referred to.

Unfortunately, our searches of the Kalt towers have produced no evidence of the missing girl. Many of us have been over every floor several times; so have other factions. I know that Heike even went so far as to search the towers using data node locator goggles and certain Operative skills for seeing concealed redpills; she didn't find anything either. We have been told that Neurophyte's connection is erratic and irregular and she may not be connected or visible in any predictable way.

I can see several possibilities:
1) Neurophyte is in the Kalt towers, or nearby, and hidden from normal senses, in which case we need better tools to find her

2) Neurophyte is in the area we searched, but only at irregular times, in which case we need more information to determine when her RSI might appear to the unaided eye

3) Neurophyte has already been recovered by another agency

4) Neurophyte is not there at all, because we botched the math.

I have confidence in our calculations. However, it is possible that we have the X and Z co-ordinates confused, in which case, Neurophyte may be at X = -980, Z = 959. This is the most likely error because latitutdes in the Real are north/south, and in the Matrix, North/South is measured by Z. We were told to multiply/divide latitudes and add/subtract to Z. So it's possible that the puzzle, as it was given to us, was confused.

I will add one tidbit: 293 Degrees Kelvin is room temperature, which seems to indicate that Neurophyte was inside.

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