[Sylvia]

Jade updated this blog

[Sylvia]

Using the link provided this looks like what he's talking about:
http://www.sfsnnj.com/NovemberEvents.html

Quote:

Suspense Central Monday November 12, 2007 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm Borders - Garden State Plaza 2200 Garden State Plaza Way Paramus, NJ 201-712-1166 This group meets on the second Monday of each month to discuss a specific mystery, horror, or intrigue novel. This month's selection is Unshapely Things by Mark Del Franco. In the alleys of the decrepit Boston neighborhood known as the Weird, fairy prostitutes are turning up dead. The crime scenes show signs of residual magic, but the Guild, which polices the fey, has more "important" crimes to investigate and dumps the case on human law enforcement. Boston police call in Connor Grey, a druid and former hotshot Guild investigator-whose magical abilities were crippled after a run-in with a radical environmentalist elf. As Connor battles red tape and his own shortcomings, he realizes that the murders are not random, but part of an ancient magical ritual. And if Connor can't figure out the killer's M.O., the culmination of the spell might just bring about a worldwide cataclysm. For additional information click http://www.bordersstores.com/stores/store_pg.jsp?storeID=34

Which seems to point us right back to Autumn Country.

[mortality]

Rogi Ocnorb wrote:

I'm feeling your pain, Sylvia. It's all just so frustrating. Feels like we've missed a lot.

Ditto for the first two. Doubtful for the last one. Only thing we haven't done is come up with the exact placement of names for the MSG3 triangle, and we haven't figured out MSG4.

Ethan hasn't replied with hits for the laundry list of things to cross-check against WF's database. Nor has he provided a new hint for MSG4, unless it has to do with all those foods he's mentioned. In fact, he hasn't asked us to even look any deeper into MSG4.

Jade hasn't gone to the sites to see if anything else is there.

BE hasn't asked us to do anything. BE does as BE pleases. So we aren't missing anything there.

We got just about every clue from Petra we needed to find how to contact Ramback and Capnomantrix. Ramback is probably out of the picture (either dead or in captivity). We just have to figure out how to get capnomantrix to talk.

Maybe since she wrote "?" we should've just asked her our question and then she'd give us the protocol to follow.

At this point, I've changed my mind about giving Ethan all the details on BE and the ritual. I agree with typoxic that it might shake things up. I kind of counted on BE actually continuing to be a source of information when calculating the risks of telling Ethan. The PMs can handle it however they want.

[petunia]

Maybe you need to type in a new color, one that hasn't been used before.

New email from Ethan, about New Jersey:

Quote:

I think we may have found a link to the reference you provided from RN. The funny thing is that the Foundation did not have any information on it in its archives - actually not surprising, considering the type of event that this appears to have been. Anyway, there was nothing in the archives so asked Frank if he wanted to take a crack at finding a match (because he's pretty good at that type of thing). I figured he'd noodle around with it for a while and maybe we'd get lucky. Well, it was exactly 42 seconds after I hung up with him that he called back saying that he thought he had found it. He E-mailed me the link and I am inclined to agree. I asked him what he had done and he said he just typed "November 12", "garden state plaza" and "8:00" into Google and this was the first link. http://www.sfsnnj.com/NovemberEvents.html Looks like it was a meeting of a sci-fi book club. The event was a discussion of a fantasy novel about magic and elves and such. All I can figure is that perhaps these RN people were interested in someone who they thought might be at the meeting. I can't see that it has anything to do with anything that we've been researching with OC, though. I'm getting the feeling that the less we have to do with RN the better; they're either too spooky or too goofy, and I'm not sure which is worse.

The site appears to be real... and once again, I am utterly bewildered. Why on earth would something like that be classified as "persrisk.high"??

Lots of links to check out, though, and real life people (they have a Yahoo group, and the guest author for that night has a blog) we can potentially pester and freak out with our bizarre questions.

[Typoxic]

That's frustrating. Maybe she's appointment only, or you have to be on some kind of list.

[Sylvia]

Well she's off line now, but here's the chat so you'll know what to expect.

Quote:

[5:28:42 PM] capnomantrix says: ? [5:29:47 PM] Sylvia says: wisteria [5:31:08 PM] Sylvia says: midnight blue [5:34:52 PM] Sylvia says: lampblack [5:36:53 PM] Sylvia says: salmon [5:43:24 PM] Sylvia says: purplehell

[Typoxic]

For my part, I'm inclined to tell Ethan about Brighton. If nothing else, it would shake things up.

I can't sign in to Skype for some reason.

Gamejacking is when people establish fake bits of ARGs, yeah. Presumably it's to try and get in on the fun in a backwards kind of way. I'm new to this stuff too, but I came across some Cloverfield gamejacks a few weeks ago.

[Sylvia]

HELP

[Rogi Ocnorb]

I'm feeling your pain, Sylvia.

It's all just so frustrating.

Feels like we've missed a lot.

[Sylvia]

ranting so I don't burst

[casablanca]

I'm such a n00b

[Typoxic]

He's not BE.

Quote:

Luke, I'm not exactly sure what kind of lines these are, but I'm pretty sure they are there and I'll try my best to read between them. If we assume for a moment that I wanted to do that (i.e. share information related to insubordination), then sure, I'd probably use this account. But at the risk of sounding really square and ruining my bad-boy, rock n' roll image I can almost guarantee you that the need would not arise. It's probably a throwback to my protestant work ethic upbringing, but I'm not really the insubordinate type. Would I keep something to myself if it had a bearing on a Foundation case? Probably not. Bottom line is that they are paying me to do this stuff (Believe it or not!) and at some level it would be a bit like stealing if I didn't give them information they were paying me to try to get for them. I'm sure there are situations that would make that equation very gray, but I guess a lot of things are like that. Do I think 0702 would be threatened with closure if it became potentially dangerous? I don't know if they would close the case (unless it was directly and specifically related to something dangerous), but I do know that the Foundation is not at all interested in being associated with anything that is illegal or violent in the "real world". (By "real world" I mean that we are often involved with events that are reported as violent, but the violence is attributed to an alien or a ghost - I'm sure you see the difference.) Aside from the legal problems (potentially civil and criminal), though, why would they open themselves up for such a PR nightmare. Mort mentioned that you all were following some leads. Should I be concerned about something? Regards, Ethan

I doubt BE is a gamejack. That would be one seriously elaborate gamejack - it spans at least four characters and involves video and pictures. Very unlikely.

[Sylvia]

I just got an email from YellowCard.

Quote:

Sylvia, I'm going through a change-of-service for internet at my home and curently don't have such access. The school server won't let me access UnFiction, so would you please pass this message along? Thanks. I emailed to Ethan, Quote: The unCollective has decided that the sun must shine on you bright and early in the morning. His reply was, Quote: I'm afraid I don't really follow that, but it sounds cheerful and optimistic so, um, same back at you all. It doesn't look like Ethan is BE after all. What if it's a gamejack? yellowcard

Oh, god I hope it wasn't a gamejack. that would mean all the emailing to petra was a waste of time and would make me look so foolish.

[Typoxic]

I already did. Waiting on a reply. I didn't tell him anything, just asked if he would be willing to withhold information from WF if he thought he had to for the good of the case and also what he thought their reaction might be if the case got dangerous. I figure his impression of what they would do in that eventuality is more relevant to our thinking right now than what they would actually do.

[mortality]

Smoke and Philly still haven't appeared on Skype or accepted addition to my contact list. Badaim, you made a good point that they chose HTML code colors, but what other lead for a password do we have other than those two clues? We can create an infinite number of Skype user accounts and keep trying until we get it right. Do we think there's some harm in one of us trying out "wisteria" and finding out it's the wrong password?

WF's reaction: I think they'd be pretty disturbed by the fact that someone may actually have been harmed or kidnapped. I think they'd reason that it might not be safe for their investigators to be involved with a case like that.

BE's identity: good cases can be made that it is Ethan, or that it's someone else like Calvin. The marks against might be more instructive.

Calvin's negatives: why did he finally decide to contact us? shouldn't he have been at WF, since they had reconvened from the holidays?

Ethan's negatives: "Brighton" is English, like Calvin. Brighton would seem to be outside Ethan's experience. As Typoxic mentioned, Ethan has a private email account he could use (he passed a remark noting that I had started using it when I sent an email there by mistake). Ethan doesn't need to lie to us, just to WF. Ethan considers this his dream job, why would he risk losing it?

Possible work-around: It doesn't really matter who BE is. The point is that Ethan can't know, and we can't send certain information to his WF account. So, why not ask Ethan via his gmail account if he'd be willing to withhold information from WF in order to keep working on the case?