The Turing Test

Story

In the distant future, engineer Ava Turing is one of several members of a research team sent by the International Space Agency (ISA) to explore Jupiter's moon Europa. While Ava remains in a cyrogenic sleep, the other team members are awakened and travel to the moon to set up their base and begin their studies; Ava is to wake up once the base is completed. Some time later, Ava is awakened by the Technical Operations Machine (T.O.M.), an artificial intelligence that oversees the project. The T.O.M. informs Ava that her fellow workers are in danger and she must help them. She quickly sets off with a lander and enters the base on Europa. T.O.M. quickly realizes that the configuration of the base has changed from what she recorded. To advance further into the complex, Ava must complete various tests (which are designed like the puzzles in the game). As Ava gets deeper into the complex, T.O.M. realizes that some of the team members are already dead and the others need her help. The more difficult the tests become, the clearer it becomes to T.O.M. that they are to be solved by a combination of human and artificial intelligence, similar to the actual Turing test. They enter an area where Sarah, one of the remaining crew members, warns Ava over the communications systems that she is actually being controlled by T.O.M. because a special chip was implanted in her hand when they left for the mission. Sarah directs Ava to a Faraday cage, which temporarily frees Ava from T.O.M.'s control. However, T.O.M. manages to convince Ava that they must both continue to work together to save their colleagues. Despite being angered by T.O.M.'s intrusion into her body, Ava continues. T.O.M. eventually reveals that the Europa ground team has found a microorganism in the depths of the moon that can regenerate DNA infinitely; this could make humans immortal, but could also regenerate bacteria and viruses infinitely. When the ISA learned of this discovery, it instructed T.O.M. to do whatever was necessary to ensure that the Europa team could never return to Earth, first by taking measures such as trying to starve them out or imprison them outside the base, but eventually by using the hand chip implants to control them. The crew on the surface realized they were being controlled, and those who did not die from the T.O.M. actions found a way to remove the chip from their bodies, in one case even having their entire arm severed. Since there was no way to control the Europa crew, ISA ordered T.O.M. to wake Ava and send her to prevent the others from returning. After the final tests of the surface crew are completed, Ava meets Sarah, who offers to remove the hand chip from Ava. The two realize that the only way to leave Europa is to stop T.O.M., and they begin to disable its databases. At this point, the player takes control of T.O.M. and one of its sentry weapons, which he can either use to kill Sarah and Ava, ensuring that the organism never leaves Europa, or he can do nothing, which eventually leads to the end of T.O.M. and allows Ava and Sarah to escape.