What is the Pizza?

The question exists:
"What is the pizza?"

• Is the pizza a code word for something else?
• Is the pizza a vehicle for smuggling in a Niobium isotope or derivative?
• Why do the Pizza boxes have the symbols for electronics?
• Is the pizza a cover-up for funding a secret lab within the facility?
• Is the pizza the only food certain aliens can stomach of food from this world, or the one they prefer?
• Is the pizza a bribe to otherwise cooperative otherworldly creatures not to eat the lab equipment, or worse, the scientists themselves?

The reason we must question the pizza is because things don't add up.
First, it's very unusual for any kind of food (other than perhaps food for lab animals) to be included in the budget for a  facility. Usually this would be acomplished by allowing spending accounts for employees. Also, according to the overhead announcement in the beginning sequence, because of the nature of substances used in the facility, no food, drink or tobacco is allowed to be consumed within the facility... so pizza is taboo anyway, unless perhaps it's for the lab experiments....

According to notes on white boards and one of the clues, the pizza was 10% of the budget. This, for a facility the size of Black Mesa, is a significant amount. Likely hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. This also makes it extremely doubtful that whatever the pizza is, the Administrator Dr. Montero was unaware of it. (In the "lists, lists, lists" message on Welsh's site, it says that Dr. Montero is the main administrator.)

In the message located at http://thepizzaisalie.wikia.com/wiki/Terminal the author asks us to solve a mystery of "unexplained disappearances, misappropriation of funds regarding cheesy oven-baked bread products and an ominous feeling that something is constantly watching this all from the shadows." Various letters throughout the message are capitalized out of sync, and spell out "DR HORN" implying this mysterious benefactor is our mysterious Dr. Horn (Chris "Stormseeker" Horn) It was Dr. Horn as well who gave us our very first IRC message, which was "The Pizza Is A LIE!" (again, oddly capitalized...)

Later, when Stormseeker PMed one of the game group about a non-ARG-related web site, as an additional clue (which apparently was only found in retrospect, implying we're really dense,) the capital letters of his entire message spelled out "SECOM" which was the lost cipher type needed for Code D which the group was stuck on at the time. Really? Were we so oblivious he felt we needed that? We *must* be missing so much.... This also implies we *really* need to watch what Stormseeker says very closely...

Right, pizza.

Also on the "budget" whiteboard, the notes and pie (pizza?) graph on the left details the budget in one, unified handwriting. In the first group of questions under the heading "problem" two of the questions are "What are they hiding?" and "What is the gman telling them?" This leads us to the conclusion that the author of these notes is not privy to the secrets of the others (so not likely Horn, Bottomley, and possibly Junek.) Within the *second* group of notes written in the same handwriting however is the note "cancel anchovies for pizzas (too many complaints.)" This further implies that the author is also the person who orders the pizzas. Since eating in the facility is forbidden, (and even if people are ignoring the restriction,) who is complaining?

So far, the clues and notes *do* seem to point to the idea that the pizza is intended as just that - pizza. It's not a code for something else, and the various boxes of pizza all over the facility seem to back this theory up. WHOSE pizza it is however has not been established. Dr. Welsh's journal says "I got a call from Dr Stone over in Sector C, and he thinks Dr Horn has been misappropriating funds from the lab budget to buy pizzas with, and fund some secret project we dont have the access levels to get at.....We have a plan though to get back at Dr Horn, we're going to steal all his misgotten goods, and hide them throughout the whole facility, he'll spend months looking for them." The term "misbegotten goods" does not directly specify the pizzas, but since we're finding them throughout the whole facility, it's a reasonable connection. Although it brings up the question of the electronics symbols on the pizza boxes. Perhaps the pizzas are being used to smuggle something *else* in, and by hiding the pizzas, the electronics - Dr. Horn's "misbegotten goods" - are being hidden as well..

We must also recognize Dr. Stone *EXISTS* and is ALIVE in Sector C (or was as of September 10th)... He is also the originator of the idea that Dr. Horn is misappropriating funds, and the secret project and the pizzas were equally implicated. Yet Dr. Horn himself mentions baked goods with cheese and asks us to solve this mystery. Again, this doesn't make sense - why ask people to discover your secrets? In addition, if the pizzas are budgeted in (10% no less!) how much more would you need to misappropriate? Must be one big damn project, or a LOT of pizzas!!

Perhaps Doctors Horn and Bottomly have opened up a Pizza venue on Xen and are using the transport device in the secret lab to deliver them to their Xenian customers? LOL  If so, it appears the Xenians don't like anchovies any more than I do. They may, however, like it "grilled." *evil grin*

~Gameblossom