Marathon Infinity (Macintosh)

Marathon Infinity is the third and final Marathon game. For now, anyway.

This one is where things start getting weird...

Hats off to Eight Nineteen
There's a very special secret level with an... esoteric means of access.

First, find the hidden terminal in the first level (Ne Cede Malis) and the last level (Aye Mak Sicur). You'll know when you found it because instead of actual text, it will just spew pages of hexadecimal at you.

Copy-paste both chunks of hex (the Ne Cede Malis one first) into a text file, then copy-paste the combined pile into the hexadecimal side of some random resource in ResEdit. Copy the results from the ASCII side (it should start with "SIT") into a new document, then dump that into StuffIt Expander. (Whew!) Doing this will get you...another StuffIt file. Expand it to get a user map called "Hats off to Eight Nineteen".

Or, if you're lazy, you can grab the map in both ZIP and StuffIt formats from Hamish Sinclair's page.

The map consists of the area screengrabbed for the "Hangar 96" terminal images, with a single terminal bearing the Double Aught logo and a mood-setting short story set in the world of Duality, another game Double Aught was developing at the time...

the autocrat's tale

Nicodeem, lord apparent of Onlai and junior autocrat, shivered in the easterly wind. he tugged at his cloak absently and scanned the street a second time, turning his back into the wind and wrapping all four arms around his narrow chest. Nicodeem hunched his shoulders and tried to hide his nearly three meters of height in the lengthening shadows. he stared back down the ancient thoroughfare, thick with lush green moss and clutchweed blowing in the wind. the wispy, rootless plants wavered this way and that, pulled by the constant breeze: sometimes southerly, sometimes northerly, but always to the east.

there was a skittering of dust in the oblong opening of what might have been a door for whatever creatures had built the ruins, and Nicodeem flicked a pair of silvered specs down over his eyes, blinking as the light polarized and the street sharpened suddenly. it was the poly.

it never ceased to amaze the junior officer how the poly managed, despite his squat, clumsy legs and huge, bulbous skull, to leap unerringly from stone to stone. Nicodeem reached with a lower hand to the inside pocket where he kept the pistola and slipped long, delicate fingers into the grip. never could be too careful with the thetes, especially the polys_they were unsound, and usually addled in the skull, too. but so far Murgo had been very reliable.

in the crisp filter of the specs, he could pick out the object for which the effort and money of the last few weeks had been daringly spent, a thin, reinforced, tranparent tube containing no more than two fingers of a pale, yellowish syrup. but if the syrup, when analyzed, proved to be the serum that was proof against the lues plague, and poison against the luetic infestation that had been crawling up from the ruins every night, Nicodeem's promising career in the assembly was secure for all time.

he raised one thin arm and stepped out of the shadows, waving the poly on, while tracking him with the specs and the snub nose of the pistola from beneath his cloak. a few minutes later, he'd closed the 50 meters between them with a bounding stride and was examining the tube nervously in the light of the poly's lamp. he handed over the agreed sum and ruffed the misshapen head, not seeing Murgo's sullen, embarassed glare at the familiarity. he tucked the tube safely away and asked about the factor who'd been carrying it: he'd bribed several layers of secretaries in the office of a prominent autocrat to get the information.

he'd discovered a lone factor, the black robed priests of Aglaia and all the known cities, hand carrying a small container of medicine: nothing out of the ordinary about the ministrations of a country factor, seeing to the thetes and polys working the fields. but this factor was from off city, lately of Plataea. the information that Nicodeem had paid so dearly for was this_the factor had arrived from Plataea, but not before the Vaan attack that burned the city to ash and sent its people scattering. this factor had arrived secretly, after the Vaan had taken the city and sent it spinning upwind, into the starved altitudes where they flitted their twisted lives; never touching solid ground except to raid and burn.

but what Nicodeem had ferretted out, was a plot, scarcely believable, that the factors themselves let the plague run rampant on Aglaia, the better to weaken it and put the city of Ithaca on the rise. if his informers were right, the serum was destined for a secret clave of factors hidden in the wilds outside the city, and was proof from the spore infection which followed every encroachment by the luetic creatures.

the greened, weathered tiles dimpled twice, sending dust and cracked mortar into the air before Nicodeem jumped and realized he was being shot at. the poly had already rolled away and was running for the door_Nicodeem yelped and yanked the trigger of the pistola, shredding his cloak and felling Murgo with a staccatto burst. Murgo squirted blood and struggled to one knee, whipping a monoblade around and facing the shadow standing in the door.

Nicodeem blinked, staring at the slug-gun poised in the figure's hand, realizing the sub-sonic bullets had come not from the poly, but from the figure in the door, who had been watching the whole transaction. a wisp of smoke trailed up from the maw of the gun and Nicodeem collapsed in a heap, clutching his head. a pool of blood began collecting on the cold, basalt tiled floor by the side of the poly, as the figure lept through the door way and rifled the pockets of the dead youth, pulling the tube out and sighing with satisfaction.

Murgo grunted in pain, feeling the flechettes twist deep in his thigh as he looked for an escape.

the assailant brushed the dust off the black fabric of his factor's robe and let his hood slide down off his head. an auburn mane of thick hair twirled lazily in the eddies kicked up by the brief battle. he threw back his robe and rested a pair of hands on his hips, keeping the slug gun trained on the wounded poly with another. his fourth hand, his high left, crept gracefully into a pocket and patted the tube of serum thoughtfully.

"okay, poly," the voice was a reedy tenor, "you're going to tell me who this was," he prodded the autocrat's body with a long, sandaled foot.

"then you're going to tell me whatever made you think you could get away with crimes against the faith. and then," he opened a small aluminum valise and gazed lovingly at the clamps and tubes arranged inside, "I'll find out if any of it was true."