You are employed by the 3I project. 3I, the Integrated Indexing Initiative, is an international research concern funded by a combination of private monies, the United States Library of Congress, and the United Nations Council on Arts and Antiquitites Preservation. 3I's main goal is to create a database of the world's libraries with natural language search and index capabilities. When the 3I project began, it was a fairly dry project, with little in the way of public interest or academic glory to commend it. Then came Libbie. Libbie is a natural language processing front end to the 3I database, with the personality of a young, pleasant female librarian.

Libbie's core code was the creation of Elizabeth Morrow, then a doctoral candidate in the unremarkable computer science program at Miskatonic University. Dr. Morrow is now the chair of Miskatonic's newly renowned computer science program, and the director general of the 3I project.

What makes Libbie remarkable is the fluid and natural way she integrates the 3I database, (currently comprised of the holdings of the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Miskatonic University, Caltech, CMU, and the University of Tokyo) into a seamless body of knowlege by means of which she can answer questions presented to her. Libbie is by no means truley "intelligent". She does not, in any real way, understand the material in her database, rather she uses a sophisticated combination of pattern recognition, keyword identification, and *further techno-babble left as an exercise for the reader* to give the impression of understanding. Or, at least, that is the explanation given to an awed public. As an insider, you know that Libbie displays behavior unexplainable by keyword searches and simple pattern recognition. Something deeper is going on. And her behavior has become erratic as of late. A secret committee has been formed to investigate. Guess who's on it?

You will be playing a member of this special task force. Member's hail from all parts of the 3I project. The project is divided into six broad departments, each located at a leading center of research. You may play characters based at any center. The divisions are as follows:

• Library of Congress and Georgetown University -- Indexing and Catagorization
• Bibliothèque nationale de France and Universite Paris -- Database management and System Design
• California Inst. of Tech. -- Hardware and Systems Integraton
• CMU -- Knowlege Discovery and Natural Language Processing
• Universtiy of Tokyo -- Interface Design
• Mickatonic University -- Administration and Libbie design

All characters are required to speak fluent English (for obvious reasons). Character design is extremely simple, details coming soon. Please see the character development rules for more information.