[petunia]

email from Jade

[Typoxic]

Sweet job on the color table, guys. What should we say to Slider? Should we pretend to be PIs hired by Petra or something? I guess a PI wouldn't just come out and identify themselves or their employer directly, but it would be a story to fall back on.

[petunia]

I was just googling variations of "eternity" when I realized that "close to eternity in appearance" --> appears to go on forever --> the SKY --> Skype. So I don't think the second line refers to another website after all.

Yikes, Rogi... for a second there I thought I was trapped in that ATHF episode with all the popups...

[Rogi Ocnorb]

slider888 appears quite a bit in a google search, though mostly old stuff.
If it's not skype, here's a bunch of other sites to try:

[mortality]

Consultation with Petunia and Sylvia in Skype chat produced: Slider888. lider is the name preceding three eternities (infinity symbols) on their sides "8s." Hence, Slider888. Aether=euphemism for SKYpe. And there's a slider888 on Skype.

Trying to figure out how we should introduce ourselves. Friends of Philly's ex? Investigators?

We aren't sure if the last line refers to a separate website. Close to eternity in appearance, but far away [from it] in reality...

[petunia]

Smoke gets chatty

[mortality]

Instead of brainstorming the questions and prompts, brainstorm the information we want and work backwards to figure out the question.

Philly/Ramback: whether he performed the ritual, whether he is alive or hurt, whether he was a member of a group, who the group is, who picked him up, what was the ritual supposed to do

Slider: real name, contact information, relationship to the ritual

Ctrix: identity, affiliation to Philly/Slider and the ritual, veracity if oracleness (can she truthfully answer questions about stuff other than the rituals)

If Ctrix has knowledge beyond the St. Pete stuff:

BE: identity, interest in all of this

0702 Cipher: who provided it, reason for doing so

0701 MSGs: who provided them, reason for doing so, purpose, hints on MSG4

Replying to a name prompt should probably take the form of "Who is X?"

Yes/No would be "Do you know X?" or "Can you tell me about X?" or "Is X related to Y?

Even if she is a "real" oracle, she could still refuse to tell us what we want to know.

[petunia]

Let's brainstorm

[mortality]

Did not say thanks. She disconnected immediately after answering.

No camera stuff: I think it just means that there wasn't any other information the PMs wanted to convey to us through ritual left-overs.

Yeah, we're basically playing Jeopardy with Ctrix. We know what answer we want, we just have to figure out how to formulate the question so that it matches her prompt. For "name" we could've asked "Who is Slider?" or "Who took Ramback?" etc.

[petunia]

mortality wrote:

She disconnected after that, three undelivered messages from me to her.

Did you say thanks? ^^

Finally seems we're inching along the path, yay! I hadn't thought of the cat being a setup... still wish we could get Jade to go interview cat lady or something.

Just had an idea about the questions. "yes/no" - clearly the idea is to ask a question that has a yes or no answer. So maybe "a name" refers to the answer as well, meaning that we could have asked a question to which the answer is a name. Example: "Who will be initiated Feb. 6 in London?"

Rogi, I'm at a loss as to what Jade's talking about with the "jackass" comments. I think he's probably just being silly, but I'll continue to post what I get from him.

I do find it kind of odd that Mr. Videographer Dood found himself in St. Pete with no camera, still or video.

I won't be able to get on Skype til later tonight, but I'll try to make a showing.

[mortality]

Yeah. Big if. Jade seemed to think the cat was a setup. Ctrix might be Slider or one of Philly's other associates playing coy.

anyway...

Quote:

[3:52:12 PM] Smoke says: ? [3:52:56 PM] Mort Kuolevaisuus says: blue green [3:53:12 PM] Smoke says: yes/no [3:53:50 PM] Mort Kuolevaisuus says: do you know what happened to ramback? [3:54:21 PM] Smoke says: yes

She disconnected after that, three undelivered messages from me to her.

[Typoxic]

My thinking is, if she's an oracle, she should be able to answer any question we throw at her. If she can't, that tells us something about how she's being treated in game. She shouldn't have known about the cat, either; if she can't answer questions about the Amphitheatrum, the cat was a setup.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

I get the feeling that Jade's references to his email to petunia point at something very specific in it.

It seems he's pointing out the word "nothing" fairly distinctly. Possibly as some kind of offset to Smoke's "anything".

No clue how/where to use that, phrased in the form of a question or otherwise.

[mortality]

Good work. Glad we figured it out...after all those hints from Jade. We were on the right track, just hadn't figured out the proper logic, tho.

So...

We definitely have to ask a question. The ones we want answered:

What happened to Phillip Markovich/Ramback/Philly?
How can we contact/reach/communicate with P.M./Rb/Philly?
Who is Slider?
How can we contact/reach/communicate with Slider?

It may take a couple guesses to figure out what the right question and right name to use is to get info about Philly.

My hunch is that Ctrix knows that stuff, but probably won't know how we have a copy of the Amphitheatrum document. She probably doesn't know we have it at all.

Remember, she's one of Philly's contacts. Jade and Ethan both think they are working from a different source for the ritual than we are. Let's not let her know we know about the ritual, yet.

One more reason why I think Calvin is BE:
I asked Jade if he had met Calvin, he said now but "Nope, never met Calvin. Been at Djinn a couple times when he was on the speaker phone so I'm pretty sure he's a real person . Sounds like Paul Bettany."

Paul Bettany is in a movie filmed in Brighton.

Oh, Sylvia, I got the email where Jade called himself a jackass. I said the camera thing didn't make him a jackass, just a goof-up. He said there were lots of other reasons why he is a jackass and that I should ask petunia about them.

[petunia]

Sylvia, I don't think you have anything to feel bad about. She said "a name", we gave her a name! Actually, this may better than when we were just randomly guessing colors, because now maybe we can narrow down what kind of response she's looking for.

SPEC/thinking out loud: Earlier I thought maybe "ramback" might have worked if Philly's real name didn't, but now I dunno. Here's why: Smoke has given two responses (I'm calling them "prompts" on the wiki) so far to a correct passcode: "anything" or "a name". Both of those are nouns. Both are something you can ask a question about. Philly got "anything" both times, and he asked two questions.

So yeah, I'm thinking putting it in the form of a question may be something to try. (What is this, Jeopardy? ) But who knows if the form "Who is _____?" is the right one. And if we had asked "Who is Phillip Markovich," she might have said "ramback", which we already know. Or maybe the answer would've been more cryptic. Or maybe she would have hung up on that answer too.

I guess we just have to keep trying... which is a pain, because it seems Smoke only has 4 contacts: me, Mort, Sylvia, and dashcat. Not sure why she hasn't added the others....