The Aura Interview

Look at that, I am killing it with these creative post titles.  Seriously though, this has been a good week for me, despite the thousands of miles transversed, I'm still in a good mood.  The only thing I can account this to is how much I enjoyed my visit to Eden Two, so at this point, if I haven't done so enough already I want to again thank both the Overseer and Aura for allowing me to see the facility, and interview you both.

I realize that until now I have neglected to describe Aura's appearance, let me rectify that now.  Aura was about my age, though she was a little shorter than me.  She had short brown hair and very green eyes.  She had a very casual feel about her, which was an interesting contrast to the Overseer's formality.  Anyways, after the Overseer let her in I started the interview right away.


Me:  Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed.

Aura:  Your welcome, it feels nice and interesting to be doing something like this.

Me:  So what's it like living in the Eden facilities?

Aura:  It's actually quite nice.  I still miss the way I used to get to live when I was a kid but not all bad to live here and keep safe.

Me:  So do you ever leave Eden Two, or are you just stuck here all the time?

Aura:  There's a rare occasion every so often where I'll be allowed out for a bit. But it's rare and has to be in a controlled environment. Try to have no risks I guess.

Me:  That makes sense.  You work with the Eden Facilities on some of their projects, correct?

Aura:  Every so often, I just like to see what I can do to help out while I'm here.

Me:  So do all of the people rescued by Eden participate to a degree, or was it just something you decided to do?

Aura:  I think I was the first to volunteer but a fair few end up helping out in some ways if they can.  Like how Jensen is volunteering to help, too.

Me:  How is Jensen coming along, by the way?

Aura:  I haven't seen him in a while but I hear he's doing fine. He hasn't regressed or anything. He must really feel safe now here.

Me:  That's good.  So, what is your job here at the facility?

Aura:  Oh, um, technically not a job per se.  I sort of just drift from work to work.  Like I help out sometimes with some of the paperwork or talking to new people like Jensen.  It helps to have a friendly welcome and proof of safety I guess.  Now that I'm on blogger I have been helping out with keeping watch though for more events going on.

Me:  So how much do you know about Eden's operations?

Arua:  I know we're trying to help people be safe from Him, I know that they keep trying to make new technology to help with stopping Him.  Umm, what else, what else?  Oh, right, and Overseer recently got that goo thing to experiment with too.  I don't really know much of the ins and outs I'm sorry.

Me:  That's o.k., I didn't expect a full list of operations.  I just wanted to see how well informed the average resident was.

Aura:  Oh, phew, that's a relief.

Me:  So you've been here 12 years now, correct?

Aura:  That's right.

Me:  Have you ever experienced the Product, as the Overseer calls him, since then?

Aura:  Thankfully no, I haven't had any encounters or effects in all this time.  The nightmares I guess but that's a given.

Me:  Not even on your rare trips outside the facilities?

Aura:  As far as I'm aware, no.  Unless one of the guards saw him and didn't let me know, or none of us saw him, or I saw him and forgot.  But as far as I know, I've been safe from him.

Me:  That's impressive.  Would you be willing to describe some of your nightmares?  If not I would understand, but I'm naturally curios.

Aura:  Oh, I'm (she pauses), I might at some point go into more details on my blog If I feel up to it.  The most I feel like saying right now is, it usually feels like I'm on The Path.  There's always black leaves.  He's always there but yet not.  Oddly the sky has usually been practically on fire during it too.  They've always been the constants in it.  There's differences as well though, sometimes everything is a wasteland, sometimes an abandoned city, sometimes no one, sometimes people I know (she pauses for a fair amount), sorry that's the best I feel like saying at the moment.  They can get pretty vivid, too vivid for my tastes.

Me:  I understand.  I remember some of the dreams I used to have, it's not a pleasant experience.  Have you ever had any contact with anyone you knew as a child?

Aura:  Sadly, no, I miss everyone so much but I can't risk any danger.

Me:  So what do you do here with your spare time? 

Aura:  Well I actually get supplied with some books, DVDs, Internet; although that one was obvious, even some games. So I tend to just relax with all that a lot.

Me:  I understand that until fairly recently you weren't permitted to search out information on the Product.  Why was that, and why did it change?

Aura: 

Me:  Well thank you for all that, and thanks for your time, is there anything else you want to say for the record?

(Aura surprised me here by actually having something to say.)

Aura:  More people need to start offering sympathy for the actual severe problems and not just the soap opera stuff going on to everyone.

Me:  (Slight chuckle) Yes the drama is a bit thick in this community, isn't it.  Anything else?

Aura:  Nope, that seems fine. Was nice to get to talk to you and take part in this.

Me:  Thank you, it was nice talking to you as well.

After that I talked a bit more with Aura and the Overseer, but I elected to return to Memphis as soon as possible so that I could get my car and return home.  Thus concludes my posts on the Eden facilities, for anyone who didn't get the link in the first post I'll plug the Overseer's and Aura's blogs again here.

See you around

FreedomCaged

Visiting Eden

As you should know if you've seen the comments in my previous post, I was recently invited to visit the esteemed Eden facilities, run by a man who calls himself the Overseer.  For those who don't know, the Eden facilities are a group of 12 facilities that are run as safe-houses and rehabilitation centers for both runners and proxies, in addition to researching the Slender Man, or the Product, as the Overseer calls him, and incidents relating to him.

Out of consideration for my recent trip to California, the Overseer offered to provide me with transportation to New York, where the facility I was going to be visiting was located.  Of course I agreed, however I am a bit paranoid over advertising my exact location, and so on Friday, January 6th, I found myself returning to Memphis to meet with some new.  I naturally arrived at the rendezvous point early, but not five minutes after I found myself a nice all-day parking spot the limo arrived.  I'll say this much, if you visit Eden Two, you visit in style.  But you aren't here to hear about the accommodations, so I'll skip forward 24 hours to the next morning. After a quick breakfast I left my hotel to meet the limo again and we headed straight to Eden Two.  Honestly I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I'll confess to being somewhat surprised when we stopped right outside what appeared to be a typical private law firm.  I got out and approached the well dressed man standing out front, who I knew from our correspondence to be the Overseer.

The Overseer looked to be in perhaps his late forties or fifties, I've always been bad at identifying age.  He had gray hair and gray eyes, and was already smiling kindly as I approached.  After we got formally reacquainted he welcomed to into the building.  The lobby was exactly what you'd expect from a legitimate law firm: a reception desk, a few chairs, and some plastic plants scattered about, and after a quick look around I joined my host at the elevators.  The Overseer informed me that from floor 19 down the building actually was simply a law firm, then he produced a small key and inserted it into a small lock in the elevator, lighting up the buttons for floors 20 through 48.  Floors 49 and 50 however remained inaccessible, their contents confidential.

We began by going up to the 20th floor, where several of the offices for workers in the Eden facilities were located.  It wasn't until the elevator doors opened that I truly appreciated just how big this operation was.  The 20 and 21st floors were connected through a sort of balcony in the middle of the entrance area.  There was another reception desk here as well, set up for when visitors from other facilities came through, as well as several hallways containing offices.


And people, lots of people.  Well that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there were several people moving around, and a few working behind desks.  Most of them seemed very focused, and even a bit on edge, they went about there tasks without even appearing to take much stick of their surroundings.  Evidently these floors were used  to keep track of field agents, investigate potential and confirmed "Product-related activities," and mange office paperwork that's inherent in any business, regardless of how public it's existence.  It was the sheer fact that there were several more floors like this, filled with people and offices, that made me realize just how large this operation was.   Even when you understand how big something is in theory, seeing it in person adds a new level of understanding.


But I digress.  Next the Overseer offered to show me to one of the offices, and naturally I accepted.  We walked down one of the halls and he opened one of the doors to an office.  It was a nice enough space, though it was shared by three different people.  It had a very professional feel to it, two of the men were typing away at computers, while the third had just stood up to get a file.  While the office was certainly big enough for the three men, it still felt a little small with all three of them in there.  This group of men was responsible for keeping tabs on one of the field agents in England, keeping him informed on important occurrences in his area, while at the same time staying aware of everything he was doing.  They seemed a tad uneasy, and one of them kept tapping his desk nervously.  I imagine they didn't report directly to the Overseer himself and weren't used to his presence in their workspace.  taptaptaptap


After that we went to visit an office built for one of the Operatives.  While the office itself was smaller it felt much more comfortable, and even had a picture vase with flowers in it sitting in one of the corners.  While the person to whom this space belonged clearly didn't spend all of her time there (she was "in the field" during the tour), she had still taken steps to make sure it was identified as her own space.  After we were through looking through her office we returned to the elevators and went up to the 27th floor, which was the first of the lab areas.

The Lab floors were naturally a bit more sterile.  The walls and floor seemed much more clean and several even appeared reinforced.  There were also more cameras on this floor, and keycards were required to enter most of the rooms.  The first lab we visited was the room where the Azoth experimentsAzoth, which I found quite surprising, of course I'll let the Overseer explain exactly what the results were if he wants it shared.

Then we looked at one of the rooms where the perception filter was tested, which I also found quite interesting.  The lab was set up roughly the same as the other one, with an experimentation area and an observation area, however in the experimentation area there were several mirrors set up, so that the subject of the perception filter could be viewed indirectly.  The filter itself seemed to be set up on two stands in the center of the room, though I'm not quite sure how to describe it.  It looked very technical and complicated, though most of the actual components were inside the device.  When one of the scientists in the lab actually stood between the stands I lost track of him for a moment, and it took a lot of concentration to focus on him again, which I was really only able to do because I knew what I was supposed to be looking for and where it was supposed to be.  Still, I haven't looked that hard to find something right in front of me since I gave up on trying to find Waldo.

Then we went to one of the security rooms, it also required a keycard to enter, and when we stepped inside we were again casually greeted by the security officers assigned to that room.  Most of the monitors showed hallways, and the rest showed several labs, both the experimentation and viewing areas.  A few of the monitors were turned off, I was assured that these were associated with rooms that no longer got use, and they were turned off for power reasons.  The room itself was fairly nice, it was large enough for both of the men working there to move around a bit, but other than the screens there really wasn't a whole lot to the place.

The last place we visited was the residential floors, which were dramatically different from the two floors we had previously visited.  The whole area was very "homey."  There was wood flooring, wide comfortable hallways, a more natural color scheme, and even some paintings here and there.  For a moment I almost forgot that I was 40 something stories high, the only reminder that we weren't in an actual house were the occasional signs directing people unfamiliar to the layout towards places like the indoor gardens, the cafeteria, and other notable areas.  The Overseer then took me into Arua's room.  Aura, if you're reading this I apologize for entering your room without your permission, in our defense it was the closest door at the time.  However, out of appreciation for your privacy I won't be to specific about the room, instead I'll just say this: it was very comfortable.  Aura had been able to customize the room in a way that gave me an insight into her personality and interest, and had arranged the layout in a way that was comfortable and casual.

After a few moments in the room Aura entered, and scolded us for looking inside without her permission.  After I had reacquainted myself with her, we went up to the Overseer's office, which was on a separate floor, and I had the pleasure of interviewing them both.  I'll have those interviews up sometime tomorrow, I still need to transcribe them from the audio recordings.  Anyways, that's the basic rundown of Eden Two, at least that's the tour I got, it was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed the chance to see it for myself.

See you around

FreedomCaged

What binds us together

So in hindsight that title is a tiny bit pretentious, but I couldn't think of anything better, and it ties in well with what I want to talk about first, the things that cause people to bind together into communities.  Communities don't just spontaneously arise, their has to be a unifying principle to bring people together, in fact there are three great commonalities that are associated with creating communities: Common Goal, Common Need, and Common Fear.  While many reasons exist to come together, most, if not all, fall under one or more of these three categories, in fact it can be rationally said that even communities built on common need and common fear fall under the ideal of achieving a set goal.  People come together for these reasons, they depend on each other for survival, protection, and mutual benefit, but there are many different ways that people come together.

Much of what determines the effectiveness of a community is the level of trust and cohesion in it, communities with members who cannot rely on each other to fulfill their responsibility to the whole of the group cannot achieve their mutual goal as easily.  This means that until enough of the individuals of a community have developed strong relationships with each other or shared several bonding experiences communities are quite chaotic, and finding members willing make sacrifices for the good of the group are very rare.  Eventually this can be overcome without conscious effort as the individuals start to see evidence of how much they need to rely on each other, and how much their comrades rely on them, and start to take bigger risks and contribute greater efforts with the idea of the groups benefit rather than their own.  Communities at this level have higher levels of survival and success for both the community and the individual, as many people are willing to step in and assist each other when they see fellow members suffering.  However, communities with this level of support often take longer to form, as it takes shared experiences to form an emotional bond; these communities also have a higher standard for true membership, they may accept new people in a superficial manner, but they will often not trust this new member without considerable reason or need.

Communities will often have a specific way of choosing their membership, usually centered on how they were formed.  Geographical communities will encompass everyone in the given area, however, these communities can often be very critical of new members, as geographical communities have a higher tendency to go long periods of time without experiencing any new members.  The smaller the community is the more likely this is to be the case, as all of the members will recognize someone new.  Cultural communities are different in the fact that they are much larger, and often have more specific requirements for membership.  However, these communities can sometimes be quite easy to join, assuming you fulfill some physical requirement (usually  based on race or ethnicity), and sometimes even these can be ignored if enough other requirements are fulfilled.  Finally there are communities that develop around highly specific goals, cultural and geographic communities are designed to limit their membership based on boundaries that aren't very static, whereas goal-oriented communities only require that new members contribute to the goal the community is focused on, and restrictions will only be made to reduce behaviors that inhibit the goal.  A goal-oriented community is the one most likely to follow the growth outlined in the previous paragraph, due to the fact that the creation of new goal-oriented communities are far more common than new cultural or geographic communities.  Goal-oriented communities are also have the shortest "life-span" by far, primarily because they no longer have a purpose after either completing their goal or finding that they are incapable of being more successful in a group than tackling the problem as individuals.

There, I sat down and cranked that out a day early, aren't you proud of me.  As usual feel free to leave any questions, corrections, or advice in the comments section, or e-mail me through my profile.  Next I should be posting my opinion on the Core Theory presented by Robert Sagel, I know I was going to talk about hive minds, but I do lie, and I need to do some more research first anyways.  Besides considering it is currently between the Halloween and the solstice I think this is the perfect time to examine the concept that defined almost an entire generation of bloggers.

See you around

Cage