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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
My summary of the past 3 months...
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INCyr
Unfettered


Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 589
Location: Front Range of the Rockies!

 		My summary of the past 3 months...
Just a little something I wrote up about the last couple of months... thought I'd share it with everyone.

------------------------

Payphones.

WTF? you say? Ah yes, I'll take another step back.

Halo 2 is being released in 2 days, on nov. 9th. Alright, 24 hours. Still. It's brought an end to the payphones, which I'm not too happy about.

Halo 2 and payphones? I'm making even less sense? Perhaps, but they actually go together.

In june of 2004, honey was mailed to the administrators of a few websites. Which websites? They were websites devoted to a new type of game, called an ARG (alternate reality gaming). The first major ARG was The Beast, a propoganda machine for the movie A.I., in 2001. It consisted of a series of websites that were puzzles, starting off with the death of someone, and finishing up with the cause of the next ice age. (I never played it, but that's a one sentance summary from what I do know.)

Great. The payphones you say?

Well, in the jars of honey was pieces of letters that spelled out "I Love Bees". Thus people did the first thing that comes to mind, now a days... http://www.ilovebees.com

I Love Bees was born. A few weeks later, in the theatrical trailer for Halo2, quick eyes could catch "www.ilovebees.com" replacing the www.halo2.com link at the end of the trailer. This was another rabbit hole.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, communities pieced together a story from hidden text on the ILB website. A story about a crash landing, a castaway, a princess, a castle... But where was it going?

There was also a timer on the website. It was counting down to August 24th. What would happen? No one knew. Then, a couple of weeks before hand, a list of what appeared to be GPS coordinates appeared on the site. The players puzzled over these coordinates, trying to figure out what they could be. There were about 300 of these coordinates. A few days later, times were added to the coordinates.

August 24th hit... and payphones, at those coordinates, started ringing. There was a voice on the other end, asking for a name. "The Operator", we called her. We then got a piece of a sound file... a girl in a military base... a guy with his computer... a medical student.

Over the course of the week, we managed to get all the .wav files that were listed on the site. Then friday hit. Another list of GPS coordinates. We went back to the payphones... and got more .wav files.

No one could believe that this would continue. Not for longer than a few weeks. definitely not till november 9th.

But the calls kept coming. And we kept answering. Frustratingly, the calls were only in the US, so those of us outside the country couldn't play. And those of us with jobs that weren't near phones couldn't play either. So we just got to listen.

And we got tired.

Then the counter on the site (yes, there was a counter) reached 777... the prerequisite number. And then things really changed. Now the calls weren't always recordings... sometimes there was another person on the other end.

And people got excited again.

And then the tasks came. Pass messages... relay codes... answering pay phones wasn't enough. We had to work for our .wav files. But we did. We became a crew.

A crew you say? Yes... a crew. We were the new crew of the Apocalypso. A ship that had crashed into lunar orbit in 2552, with an alien artifact.

And the phone calls? They were from the AI operating the Apocalypso. She had been sent back through time. To us. And she needed us to help her get back to her time. We were her crew. She was the voice on the phone. We had to help her.

But wait, there was more. For not only was there the operator... Melissa, as we came to know her. There was also the Sleeping Princess, who had awakened, and who needed our help even more than Melissa. We had to teach her to talk... to tell us who she was, and where she came from. She had been there from the beginning, but no one knew how, or why.

Over the course of the weeks, we discovered she was part of Melissa. She was Melissa's memories... from before she was Melissa. We fought for her, and betrayed her. We saved her, and then killed her. And then we brought her back, and reunited her with Melissa, saving both, and completing our task as her crew... to send her back to 2552.

So the connection to Halo2? This is the back story. This is how the Covenant got to earth. This is how some few people tried to stop it. And failed... and we helped them as well... and we failed too. (We had to, otherwise Halo2 couldn't exist.)

But we only failed at what we were supposed to fail at. What we did succeed at was becoming a true crew. I have friends from around the country (world?) now, who will always curse the word "prepositions". Who will understand the signifigance of Red Balloons. Friends who, like me, will never stop seeing payphones, and wondering if they're gonna ring. Friends who will yell Corps! when I yell Signal!... or even better, yell Ice Cream! when I yell Princess!

So yeah, that's what I've been up to.
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Gamertag: INCyr

PostPosted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:04 am
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thunderclap8
Entrenched


Joined: 24 Sep 2004
Posts: 1139
Location: Chapel Hill, NC

 		thanks so much for that, very well done. Sniff sniff... brings a tear to the eye to have this event come to a close.

edit: while not as coherent or well written, here is my salute to the end of ILB: http://www.livejournal.com/~thunderclap8/33047.html
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:13 am
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		everyone should come up with some kind of tribute to ILB Razz

(well, I'll plug my tribute, the fan-fiction Creepy in my sig Wink)
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 3:57 pm
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