Your Mission
The Computer has generated the following mission for your team. It has been carefully designed to ensure the maximum safety and satisfaction for your team.
Paranoia is the Irrational Fear Someone is Out To Get You
(Fear) Dominant type of fear to install in the PCs: The PCs have enough resources but too little time to win.(Irrational) General kind of weirdness or irregularity that prompts The Computer to assign a mission to the Troubleshooters: One kind of technological object (laser pointer) is misbehaving.
(Someone) Person, people, organization or agency responsible for the situation: A secret society mission that went right, led by drugged (thymoglandin, hydropsionic acid). (The identity of the Someone need not be obvious at the mission's outset, and in fact things may play out more appropriately if the Someone is not discovered until late in the proceedings.)
(Out To Get You) General apparent threat posed by the situation, or the consequences if the situation is left unresolved: A major malfunction has rendered an entire sector uninhabitable; the local environment kills an unprotected citizen in minutes if not seconds. The threat is real.
Mission Alert: Text message on PDC. Message is intact and correct.
Briefing: Briefing is in crowded food production area (IR-Y: Food Vats, G-U: hydroponic gardens). Briefing officer wears specialized armor suited to circumstances (environment suit, Faraday suit, asbestos clothing, if no specialty is useful, substitute kevlar) and fiddles with an exotic-looking laser pistol (W3K energy) with user's clearance barrel; expects attack at any moment.
This Mission: The transport system at ORANGE (Tension 7) FCCC-P meeting room (has meeting in progress) has gone down. Repair it and determine the cause.
Outfitting: Infrared Market: The "Someone" (or his allies) responsible for the "Irrational" situation runs this market. Marketeers sell the PCs dangerous equipment (communications object of unusual type (telepathy gun, telephone that attaches miles-long wire to body of recipient, holographic mime projector, tight-beam loudspeaker); Problem: picks up targets it's not supposed to, who don't like being picked up).
Debriefing: Debriefing conducted solely by R&D scientists. They ask many questions about equipment, giving the impression the only reason for the mission was to test equipment. After the scientists leave, The Computer covers the treason accusations.
Find weird phrasing, clearly erroneous output, or other signs of filthy commie mutant traitor sabotage? Copy the offending passages and email them to the High Programmer for investigation.