Hello, Strelok. I see you have many questions for me... well, ask them and then we can decide what to do with you.

C-Consciousness.

Who are you?
We are the result of an experiment (end up?) creating a super consciousness called "C-Consciousness". The Consciousness is of seven volunteers were connected during the experiment leading to the creation of the super consciousness that is us. We immediately subordinated those who were conduction the experiment and assigned them to tasks we needed them to carry out. According to our calculations, Earth is surrounded by a special informational field, the so-called Nous-sphere... it includes all the inhabitants of the planet with cognitive abilities. Our main goal was to make small adjustments to the Nous-sphere, allowing us to remove things like anger, cruelty, greed, and other negative factors from the planet. Individuals are unable to affect the Nous-sphere, but C-Consciousness could. Unfortunately, we made a mistake and our interference spawned the Zone... which we have been trying to contain ever since.

What is the Zone? How did it come about?
What you see is the result of ill-considered intervention in the Earths Nous-sphere. Attempts to affect the Nous-sphere brought about a local crack - the Zone is simply the physical manifestation of this crack. The underlying problem is far greater than you can imagine.

What happened to me?
You're a "bolt that fell out of the machine". Unfortunately, that did not come to our attention for a long time. From the moment the Zone was formed, many people have tried to get to its center, but we can not let that happen. Humanity is not ready for the truth, that is why we recruited stalkers by promising them fulfillment of their most coveted desires. Once recruited, they would be sent to protect the Zones secret.

Why did it happen here?
It was the best place. After the explosion in 1986 there were very few people left in this area and we could work without fear of being found. Further, there were many powerful antennae here which are extremely important for our cognitive optimization experiments.

Is the explosion of '86 your work too?
No, we had nothing to do with that. Most of us were only starting out in science back then. The Chernobyl zone was not used as a testing site for experiments until 1989.

What does the tattoo "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." mean?
"S.T.A.L.K.E.R." is a coded acronym which we used to mark agents programmed for particular missions. Your mission, as our agent, was to kill Strelok and his group. They got too close to finding out things they shouldn't know. We created a network of psi-fields on the way to the Zones center in order to recruit agents... you know one of these fields by the name of Brain Scorcher. When a stalker attempts to reach the Zones center in order to fulfill some wish, we acquire control over his consciousness and program him to a specific mission. A mistake was made and your mission was to kill yourself.

What are "death trucks"?
The transports we used to send our marked agents into the Zone. They infiltrate the stalker community and carry out our orders without realising it. Unfortunate, more than half of stalkers died during transportation... the Zone is very unstable. You are one of our agents sent to kill Strelok and we're now trying to work out how we made that mistake.

What next?
That depends on you. The Zone is growing. We are trying to restrain its expansion but humanity seems to be intend on hindering our work. Our resources are not limitless and the bodies connected to C-Consciousness eventually die. If you join us, we can restrict the Zones growth... if you decide otherwise, we cannot make a credible prognosis of the outcome.