About

The Quiet Computing Complex, or Ruby Mountains Superstructure (RMSS), is a vast underground facility beneath Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, discovered in the early 1980s by the Institution for Technological Action and Advocacy (ITAA). ITAA did not build it. The Superstructure was fully laid out, color-coded, and named long before humans entered. Its origins remain a mystery. ITAA formed the Superstructure Research Authority (SRA) to govern locally. In 1989, Quiet Computing installed the Superstructure Automated Processing System (SAPS), an AI announcer housed in Habitation Blue, Substructure 3. The Superstructure’s focus became the Periphery Catalyst Reactors (PCRs) — pre-existing machines accessing small pocket dimensions called peripheries, home to anomalous life and phenomena. By the 1990s, PCRs went live, briefly turning a profit for ITAA. In 1999, an entity designated UNCAT-01, “the Mass” (Class-7 fluid per SAPS), manifested in Habitation Blue. Thought to come from Periphery Lambda but never confirmed, the Mass bonds to human tissue, repurposing living material as part of itself. Containment through K-Coolant and sacrificial bait cost two dozen lives. Instead of destruction, researchers exploited the Mass to grow pseudo-neurons for SAPS integration. By the early 2000s, surface contact ceased. The SRA assumed the world above had ended. Infrastructure decayed, rations dwindled, and control turned authoritarian. Sabotage freed the Mass into the lower mines, where it consumed the remaining population. SAPS looped commands, luring employees to their deaths. Now the Superstructure is silent. SAPS stammers, repeats, and slurs to a workforce long gone. Logs show 85% computational loss in its core. The Climber (you) ascends the silos, identified by SAPS only as “unidentified individual.” Developer notes hint you are “not entirely human,” altered by long-ago contact. Multiple climbs and voluntary Lambda DNA fusion have left you pale, unnaturally strong, and tireless. Denizens of the Facility: Barnacles — Blind, spore-spreading predators with magnetoreception and long tongues for dragging prey. Thrive in Silos and Pipeworks, symbiotic with Bloodbugs. Bloodbugs — White, moth-like flyers that ram climbers, risking dangerous falls. Striders — Huge, passive, crab-like creatures in Pipeworks. Survivors once embedded pitons in their shells to aid climbing. Shrales — Whale-sized shrimp-like wanderers in the Abyss, indifferent to humans. Vent Things — Fleshy wall organisms in Delta Labs with vine-like growths and hand-tipped tongues. The Teeth — Eyeless, black-skinned humanoid predator in the Elevator Shaft, mouth lined with teeth and glowing eyes inside, capable of sprouting extra limbs. Roaches — Brown roaches abound; gold and platinum variants can be exchanged at Upgrade Consoles for climbing perks. Mother — Massive black-and-white telekinetic slug matriarch. Harming grubs provokes exile to the Hot Zone. She can purge the Mass and speaks directly into your mind. Lore and Progression: Journals and floppy disks reveal suppressed truths: the Mass, failed containment, and the SRA’s collapse. Floppy disks are read in Interludes such as the Silos Break Room or Interlude: Lockdown. You awaken at the bottom of Substructure 17’s silos. Alone. The Mass rises beneath — a growing amalgamation of flesh, limbs, and fused human faces. Above, the half-dead SAPS cracks out pointless directives. You must climb: up through Silos, Pipeworks, and Habitation, past predators and impossible things, before the Mass engulfs everything. Floppy disks and journals serve as your only window into the past. The ascent eventually leads to Substructure 3, the only escape. Level Order: Silos — Deep vertical shafts with few threats besides roaches and rare Barnacles. Interlude: Lockdown — A circular airlock where you must seal the lid temporarily, use the Upgrade Console, and create a P-Space save with a floppy disk. Attempting the elevator to Habitation results in its fall into the Mass, forcing a climb to Pipeworks. Pipeworks — A decaying mechanical and sewer zone, primary habitat for Barnacles and Bloodbugs. Gas vents can knock you from handholds. Interlude: Ascent — Elevator ride to Habitation Yellow with two security-stop climbing challenges. SAPS cheerfully reminds you to have a “good day” as it tells you all teams are missing and you must get off and climb to handle the elevator locks yourself. Habitation Yellow — Labs and containment levels. You must restore power to a massive gate via the security tower. Break rooms offer floppy disks and upgrades. You receive a pumpable flashlight and a flare gun; the dark elevator shaft to Delta Labs demands light and flares to repel the Teeth. Labs are split into Greek-lettered zones. Abyss — Higher-difficulty altars and anomalies where the Face, a Mass splinter, hunts you down. You now climb across iron supports that used to hold up the old tram tracks leading into Habitation Blue. SAPS narrates your ascent: the environments, denizens, and fragments of lore, as well as the encroaching Mass. No longer what you once were. Lambda DNA fused with your own has left your hands white as bone and your grip inhuman. You do not tire. Whatever you gave up is the reason you survive the climb.