Adler: the Administrator Who Remembers the Loop

Adler is the Replika who runs the paperwork at S-23 Sierpinski, the ADLR administrator and adjutant to the commander, Falke. He greets Elster politely, then throws her down a lift shaft, and he is waiting for her at the red gate at the end. His diaries are the clearest evidence in Signalis that the facility is living the same days over and over. His name is German for eagle. (Signalis)

What is an ADLR unit?#

The ADLR overview describes the administrator as "an integral part of every Protektor Führungskommando". One unit handles all the administration for an entire facility so other command units can focus on directing the Protektors, and the Adler is "designed to work as a direct counterpart to the Falke Unit, serving as her adjutant". (Signalis, "Replika Overview: ADLR")

The Known Issues file is less flattering. Adlers work best left alone, don't get on with their own type, and "usually become very emotionally dependent on their Commander". They are very easy to control with bioresonance, but get bored quickly and need new fetish objects, the Nation's term for the comfort items that keep a Replika's personality stable. (Signalis, "Replika Known Issues, Part 3")

Adler's diaries#

Adler's diary, found in his study, opens with a curiosity: a box with a removable dial, confiscated from a worker, that clicks like a clock. He takes it for an astronomical calendar and eventually opens it to find only a blank notebook. Around this he logs the ordinary life of the facility, then growing sickness among the Gestalt workers, Replikas filling the hospital wing, and how much he misses "our beloved Commander" since she fell ill. (Signalis, "Adler's Diary")

Odd details creep in. He remembers inspecting the mine with an engineer Replika "with an orange chest-piece", but "no such Replika was ever stationed on Sierpinski". He dreams of testing a white-haired young woman with cards bearing astronomical symbols. Later entries, all dated 84-21-D, describe constant déjà vu and pages of entries he can't remember writing, all with today's date. He compares what is happening to "a story, misremembered, slowly morphing with each retelling", and decides "the answers lie below". (Signalis, "Adler's Diary")

A separate note goes further. Adler writes that the illness was not a disease, poison or radiation but "a slow corruption of reality itself", and that each time he relived the cycle, details changed. "How long until it all turns to nothing but noise?" (Signalis, "Adler's Note")

What Adler does in Signalis#

When Elster reaches him she says she is looking for a Gestalt. He studies her photograph, identifies Alina Seo as one of the facility's workers, and pushes Elster down a lift shaft with the words "You shouldn't have returned". She lands on a heap of dead LSTR units. (Signalis)

Later he approaches Isa Itou outside Falke's quarters, offering help she doesn't trust. In the mines he hunts her with a rifle, telling her "I've done this countless times before" and "you don't belong here". She stabs him in the eye and he falls into a hole. Elster finds him at the red gate with the knife still in place, saying he has been there many times but never returned, and that Falke came back from beyond it sick and changed. (Signalis)

When Elster comes back to the gate after defeating Falke, Adler is waiting. "This world cannot take much more," he tells her. "If you go back, it'll all fall apart." He calls her a selfish monster and stabs her in the eye; she shoots him, and he warns as she leaves that she'll destroy everything. What happens next is covered in Signalis endings explained. (Signalis)

Is Adler a villain?#

The game lets you read him two ways. He does horrible things to Elster and Isa. But his diaries and note show a frightened Replika who worked out, more clearly than anyone, that the world was being rewritten each cycle, and who believed that stopping Elster was the only way to stop it falling apart. The game never confirms whether he was right. (Signalis)

Players also debate who Adler's Gestalt was. His dream of testing a white-haired woman with astronomical cards is often linked to Ariane, whom many players believe was bioresonant, but the game names neither the tester nor the subject. (Signalis)