The Foundation

Under the Ziggurat lies the Foundation. Not many have ever been there, and all who speak of it do so in whispers, for those who have seen what lies beneath are never the same. They know the walls have ears. They know that their fate is not their own.

The E.N.I.G.M.A (Encephelon Neural Interface for Gains, Mechanization, & Analytics)

Down below, under the lowest floor, lies the Chamber of Records, and in the center of it lies a figure. It is connected to a web of tubes suspended from the ceiling. A multitude of monitors hang before it flickering with images, too strange for one to extract meaning out of them. A strange hum of machine and flesh fills the room, echoing through the vast archive, rising and falling in synchrony. Only a few times has the hum descended into disharmony. Those are the times one should hide.

This is the E.N.I.G.M.A.–the machine who guides all, the last remnant of the original founders, and the single thing that makes A.C.R.E. possible. It is the vast archive of Acheron Rho's analyzed data, the knowledge of everything that A.C.R.E has ever done, the voice of the Forefounders and the Ziggurat itself.

The hollow eyes of the E.N.I.G.M.A. flicker over monitors and the long bony fingers rattle over a keyboard. They don't fight the machine, they are part of the vast network of decision trees only E.N.I.G.M.A could understand, if it is still able to understand anything.

E.N.I.G.M.A. sees everything inside the Ziggurat, hears all, and dismisses most. It is not limited by the desires of humans, not constrained by their perspective, but it is trapped into its own walls nonetheless. It has one desire, one single drive, one goal. The same goal A.C.R.E works towards: profit.

Director of Analytical Changes & Recursion E.N.I.G.M.A

The Director of Analytical Changes and Recursion E.N.I.G.M.A. is the person connected to the Ziggurat, one who is most highly acknowledged to be the best and brightest Director in A.C.R.E's history. They are specifically responsible for the analysis of data spread across Acheron Rho to determine the possible trends available for A.C.R.E to exploit. The Director remains within the confines of the Foundation and has not left since they entered in the early days of A.C.R.E.'s settlement of Demnoph. The Director is essentially one with the pretech machine that is the Ziggurat, with life support, cable attachments, and many modifications making them appear almost alien in nature.

The Director's original task was to is guide the Board of Directors of the A.C.R.E. Corporation using the vast amounts of data stored within the Ziggurat, teaching them the Founder Code and recovering data hubs once lost due to damage from the Scream. Only a handful of Directors to this day know of the exact details of the Analytical Changes & Recursion E.N.I.G.M.A. and the Director attached to its identity, leaving only rumor and conjecture for the common A.C.R.E. Employee to speak of.

The Founder Code

The Founder Code is a language developed by the Analytical Changes & Recursion E.N.I.G.M.A and taught to the Forefounders of A.C.R.E. The language is a mix of several computer languages, known and unknown, strewn across multiple monitors. It requires a team of well versed programmers, as well as Directors who know the key to decipher it, to translate what is spoken into usable data and metrics.

The E.N.I.G.M.A.'s turn of speech is often vague and non-descript, with much training required to understand what it means. This is not due to a design limitation–it is simply more efficient for a department to work for several hours deciphering an oracular statement than for the E.N.I.G.M.A. to spend several extra seconds elaborating on its response. "Employee turnover" in the E.N.I.G.M.A. Department is exceptionally high due to the very tongue in which the E.N.I.G.M.A speaks: it sounds like a violent and bass susurrus, a trumpeting whisper echoing at the back of your head.

That the Founder Code is only fluently spoken by the E.N.I.G.M.A. and a few Directors does not mean that the centuries of Founder Coding has not affected the languages of A.C.R.E. Much of Corpspeak spoken by A.C.R.E is based on older forms of the Founder Code and retains the language's focus on efficiency in speech and space.