Maxis' test trials and the Jumping Jacks

[anonymous]

Throughout the Zombies season of Black Ops II, each of the Victis maps was released alongside an entry of Maxis diary. As for Tranzit and Buried, these excerpts made chronologically sense as they seemed to be written by Maxis around the time these maps took place, and it regarded the destruction of Earth and Maxis' wish to reunite with his daughter Samantha. The diary excerpt released alongside Die Rise, however, can be noted as totally out of place, as it regards test trials of the MTD conducted by Dr. Maxis and Richtofen at the Der Riese facility, in 1945. 

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"Entry 10, Study #0804

Though our matter transference tests at the new site have been largely unsuccessful, the teleporter's malfunction has nonetheless yielded some interesting data. 

 

The fact that the test subjects departed their original point of origin is undeniable. What is uncertain is what became of them. Doctor Richtofen is insistent in his belief that they have been transported not through space - but through time. In the absence of empirical evidence, I myself cannot entertain such... madness.

 

I fear that the good Doctor's increasing irrationality may soon prove a liability to our endeavours…"

 

 

From the Zombies Timeline we learned that the test trial described here took place on October the 13th 1945, the day Richtofen would betray his superior and set a whole chain of events in motion with consequences he could never have foreseen (or did he?). So where is the connection with Die Rise? I feel like the main context of this excerpt, although hidden under a pile of fancy vocabulary, is the fact that Maxis' test subjects have been teleported through time. How that would fit with Die Rise: The Jumping Jacks of course. 

 

Think about it. This teleportation trial happened just prior to the teleportation of Fluffy and the creation of the Hellhounds. Presumably, the MTD may have been calibrated at the same space-time coordinates for Fluffy as for the previous test trail concerning the "vanishing subjects". These subjects were teleported into the same timeless void as Fluffy later would, only to be pulled back into our space-time in the year 2035, now fully corrupted by the Aether's properties and being turned into the pale, eyeless creatures we know as the Jumping Jacks. Just as the Hellhounds, they spawn in when the map gets covered in fog, the Demonic Announcer screams "Fetch me their souls" and the creatures physically manifest themselves following a small thunderstorm event. The Jumping Jacks carry similar features as the Keepers, the Plaguehounds, the Margwas and the Mimics, which leads me to believe that an eyeless face with large teeth is a distinctive trait to something residing in the (Dark) Aether for a long time. This could explain how a human subject, trapped in the dark void for an endless time, returns as such an abomination as the Jacks.

 

But if we regard Maxis' test trial as the cause of the formation of the Jumping Jacks in the future, we must consider another mystery. What are the Jacks' link with the Nova-6 Crawlers, given their very similar appearance? Let your eyes glimpse on Maxis Diary once more, and notice the fact that he speaks about "matter transference tests at the new site". This quote is a bit tricky, because as far as I know Group 935 didn't acquire any new site in the year 1945, when he wrote this excerpt. He may refer to the Kino facility, a relatively new station where we know Maxis continued his unsuccessful teleportation tests. Let's recap a bit, shall we?

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July 2nd, 1939 - Maxis and Richtofen begin teleportation experiments with the Matter Transference Prototype, to mild success. The subjects are teleported but their chemical composition is altered, leaving them catatonic and changed.

Soon after, Maxis ceases to run tests with matter transference and decides to focus on building an undead army for the Nazi's. Richtofen and Schuster continue the experimentation and not too many weeks later they succeed in successfully teleporting a walnut. When Maxis starts to continue working on the MTD years later, he is ignorant of Richtofen and Schuster's successful variant. Hence, the teleporter we encounter in Kino der Toten is of Maxis' "failed" type. For how many years did his test trials produce "cataconic and changed" subjects, with an "altered chemical composition"?

 

This is where the Nova-6 Crawlers come into play. If Maxis' teleporter could produce Jumping Jacks, surely it was capable to produce Nova-6 Crawlers as well? Or perhaps were the subjects of the test trial of October the 13th 1945 Nova-6 Crawlers, now teleported through time, altered, and encountered by Victis as the Jumping Jacks. After all, we know Group 935 is capable of transporting the undead, and the pods seen in Kino could have been used to transport Crawlers from Kino to Der Riese.

 

In 1944, Steiner began Projekt Giftiger Sturm, the development of Nova-6. This year correlates with Maxis' time at the Kino facility, the place where we encounter canisters holding the gas. The Nova-6 program is confirmed to have close ties with Kurt Blome, a German scientist who existed in real life and was notorious for his research on nerve gas, among which Sarin, and his inhumane experiments on prisoners of concentration camps. Both Steiner and Blome started working for the Nazi's in the year 1943. What's more, Blome's name was on dozens of the GKNova6 documents, which as we know are related to Nova-6 research. But Blome's name also appears in the maps der Riese and Kino der Toten, where it can be seen underneath a poster featuring the anatomy of a zombie. 

Without a doubt, Blome was working on Nova-6 gas and very likely, he had ties to Group 935. Now Blome's name appears very specifically in a GKNova6 document related to the Zombies story:

 

"Ex Ungue Leonem. Mkultra. Blurbird. Artischocke. The past. The truth. Blome brought the evil. Someone hide it. God vs gov. Believe in the Welteis and the deads start walking. Power. German knowledge. Beware of the black sun. Search the truth. It is still there. Son of the Hud. Four letters. building 87. Tabular rasa ex Yggdrasil ad rem cui honorem."

Blome brought the evil… Surely he was a scientist using his knowledge for harming others, but this sentence sounds like he did something more. Him bringing the Evil to our world, could that have something to do with the Nova-6 Crawlers? I am of the opinion that these creatures are tied to the Keepers in some way, genetically mutated letting the Keeperese genes within humans come to expression. If Blome did research on Nova-6, a gas we see in Kino, and if his signature can be found on posters across Group 935 facilities, what does that say about his role in this mysterious backstory of the twisted crawlers? We know so little about Maxis' whereabouts between 1943 and 1945, until he returns to der Riese one final time. Could his failed teleporation tests, as well as Blome's Nova-6 research, have led to the creation of the Nova-6 Crawlers?

 

Spoiler

One final thing that popped in my mind, a bit of a far-stretched speculation perhaps, but consider Maxis' diary once more. He speaks about "a new site" and that Richtofen does not think the subjects were teleported through space but through time. According to Richtofen, the subjects may reappear later in time at the same location. If this regards the Jumping Jacks, could this "new site" actually be Die Rise? Thanks to Alpha Omega we know Die Rise takes place in a city where Unit 731 did experiments. Kurt Blome has heavy ties to Unit 731, as well as the entirety of Group 935 of course via Division 9. Could this "new site" have been a Japanese facility that was handed over to Group 935 in a similar way as the Rising Sun facility? Just some wild thoughts.

 

[RadZakpak]

47 minutes ago, anonymous said:

This is where the Nova-6 Crawlers come into play. If Maxis' teleporter could produce Jumping Jacks, surely it was capable to produce Nova-6 Crawlers as well? Or perhaps were the subjects of the test trial of October the 13th 1945 Nova-6 Crawlers, now teleported through time, altered, and encountered by Victis as the Jumping Jacks. After all, we know Group 935 is capable of transporting the undead, and the pods seen in Kino could have been used to transport Crawlers from Kino to Der Riese.

 

 

A brilliant thread as always, Anon! I'd go a step further and potentially explain the Teleporting Nova Crawlers of Moon as being tests conducted at Groom Lake on pigs, which sent them to the future with teleportation powers, just like the Moon Astronaut.

 

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(The teleporter is activated)

Schuster: Doctor Richards, did it work? Do we have a stable connection?

Richards: No sir, nothing. We've lost him.

Schuster: That's the fifth man we've lost! This base is rapidly running out of privates! I suppose they're all just dancing around on the moon somewhere in the far future having a grand old time!

 

In Classified, Schuster was pretty adamant that if configured incorrectly, the teleporter at Groom Lake could accidentally send subjects through time. I think before moving on to human subjects as in the above radio, they would be testing on pigs, and the teleportation process not only altered their DNA like Maxis' subjects, but it sent them to the far future of 2025, and thus we encounter them on Moon.

 

By extension, the gas crawlers and electric crawlers we fight in Alpha Omega could be variants created intentionally with these mutations to perhaps be used in combat. Think about it, you just plop down a Mobile Matter Transference Device in Moscow and start pumping out electrified pig mutants to wreak chaos. 

 

So I guess another question is, how are the pigs mutated with special abilities alongside their deformities? Perhaps through manipulating the teleporter in a certain way you not only send them to the target location, but re-write their DNA to suit your needs. Maybe this is a technological explanation for how Keepers/Apothicons like Monty and Shadowman can modify their appearance.

 

[anonymous]

Good one yeah I guess the Crawler variants we encounter in Camp Edward (and perhaps also Griffin Station) are intentionally bred as biological weapons. The Americans may have acquired the knowledge via Kino, but also the Soviets seem to be aware of them as an X-ray image of a Nova-6 Crawler can be found in the Black Ops mission WMD. I think this further confirms Steiner's involvement in the creatures origin. Features such as the electronic charging can be biologically explained by the mechanism of electric eels, but the production of Nova gas always seemed weird to me. Perhaps this "chemical alteration" of the subjects (good one on the pigs, I think that is highly likely) may have resulted in the creatures producing this toxicant. Perhaps, even, the crawlers are the source of the first Nova gas, harvested and further developed by the Nazi's. Maxis could've stumbled upon these creations after performing his failed experiments, and hence why Steiner and Blome got involved at Kino: They were looking for a nerve gas they could use in their wunderwaffe program. This would give the Nova gas an even more horrid backstory, and would also explain why we nowhere see a sophisticated gas chamber lab in Kino. The creatures were not experimentes upon with the gas; they were the source of the gas. 

[PINNAZ]

Fun Fact. 
 

The Die Rise Message of the Day - Entry 10, Study #0804, was later used as a Black Ops III “The Giant” Radio (Teleporter Z-C balcony) though so slightly different at the end. 

 

from 3:07