THE MIRONOV DEVICE

Those touching the cube reported odd sensations of floating and day-dreaming, and access to it was rapidly restricted. Tests were made. Artists. Musicians. Mathematicians. It was Mironov who discovered the "directed calculation" of the device. His report on the box remained the most incisive to date.

The box, it seemed, allowed a person touching it to "imagine" math, which could then live on in the device even after contact was lost, spinning, calculating and changing. Furthermore, it allowed this simulationto be "seen" by the operator, and somehow, understood, even when the figures became staggering. Eyes closed, touching the metal, worlds of math that lived on their own, tumbling into existence as colors, shapes, sounds would form, inside the box.

-Contingencies (1984), Dennis Detwiller

This odd, 196.6 kilogram,  .2 meter by .2 meter cube of a seamless, unknown grey metal was recovered by the Soviet Union sometime in 1948. The limited files which still exist on its origin place it with a COMINTERN agent called Kipling who ferried it to Soviet submarine from an unknown recovery point "somewhere in the middle of the continent". 

The jumbled report from Kipling claimed the device had been in the possession of three American agents (dead), that it had come from an undisclosed "library in the desert", and oddly, that it pre-dated the dinosaurs. 

In 1951, it was given to Dr. Igor Mironov, for whom it was named, and who deduced its alien purpose. Touching the metal with bare skin and closing one's eyes was enough to activate it. The device boosted the mathematical abilities of the user, and projected those maths and simulations out in an internal illusion which filled the "daydream" perception of the subject. One might imagine the math behind the flow of liquids in a pressurized tube for instance, and instantly "see" the tube fail when the math indicated the pressure was too great. It created a perfect, physical simulation of the world within the mind of the lone operator, dependent on the mathematical ability of the user. 

These simulations can be set to "run" even when someone is not present (as long as another individual does not touch the device). Subjects have reported the illusion of vast amounts of time passing within the "box" when touching it. When the device is active, it emits a very slight humming noise in an unknown manner. 

Mironov used it to make startling breakthroughs in rocket technology, overcoming several severe problems in the first Soviet ballistic missiles. Eight months later, after multiple breakthroughs, Mironov poisoned his wife and three children with rat poison, murdered four seemingly random people, and then jumped in front of a train. 

The device was moved to GRU-SV8's "Black Museum" facility, and there, sat for years, unattended. In 1984, the device was cleared for use, and given to Dr. Arkady Egorov, a computer scientist and mathematician tasked with using it to accelerate Soviet research into space and computer technology. Egorov worked with the device for a short time, and then, after some modest successes, seemed to suffer a psychotic break, locking himself in the "Black Museum" and using the device for unknown purposes. Egorov was gunned down by SV8 troops when they finally gained access to the lab. 

GAME ASPECTS OF THE MIRONOV DEVICE

• Anyone with an Accounting (60%+) or Computer Science (40%+) or Science (Physics) (50%+) must make a SAN roll upon touching the Mironov Device. Failure indicates a 1D4 SAN loss and the ability to "visualize" within the machine. Those beginning a visualization may leave it "running". Those who succeed in their SAN roll see only a slight spray of ill-ordered colors behind their eyes, and then darkness. It may be touched again and again until it works. 

•  Every time the device is "doubled on"—that is, the same person returns to a running simulation, they must make another SAN roll as above. On a failure, they lose SAN, and their ability with the machine "expands"—the scope of their simulation seems to grow to encompass more and more. 
  

• If anyone else touches the device while it is "running" it resets, losing all data in it, and causing any previous users to have to make a 0/1D6 SAN roll upon discovery of this face. If this takes them to their Breaking Point, the previous user is overcome with murderous rage and attempts to kill the new user. 

• Those users who exceed 8 SAN points loss on the device can run complete simulations of "reality" within their own mind. They can delve into the future or past of the world and see all events with a godlike omnipotence. Each "journey" costs 1/1D4 SAN, and takes mere seconds (to delve hundreds of years), hours to complete (eons) or days (billions of years). In these visions, the user can see unnatural creatures (and they suffer the normal SAN for it). For instance, a user might transport their POV back in time to the age of the Great Race of Yith, and suffer the appropriate SAN loss upon "seeing" them.

• Every time the subject transcends their Breaking Point, they must make a Luck roll. Failure indicates they suffer 1D10/1D100 SAN loss and act out a bizarre series of events—murders, arson, explosions—always culminating in the death of the user.