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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
[Trailhead?] Mars Bluff
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jelloarm
Unfettered


Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 415
Location: Far Far Away And Way Way Afar

 		[Trailhead?] Mars Bluff
Just got an IM from one Jonkulka, transcript as follows.

Quote:
jonkulka
can you help me?
http://marsbluff.tumblr.com
Jelloarm
who is this?
jonkulka
figure it out. i can't say anymore.
Jelloarm
why can't you say anymore?
anything you can tell me to help you
jonkulka
i've figured it out and so have they. they're on to me. it's real and i wish he were here to help me everything gone to shit. i never even got to call him father
bWFycyBibHVmZnM=
nobody loves you
Jelloarm
I'll figure it out, Jon
you're Bruce's son, aren't you?
jonkulka
i need your help
Jelloarm
what can I do?
Who's after you?
jonkulka
two heads are better than one, they say. more brains on the case. someone's got to do it. you seem like a good guy, you could enlist them. you could make them listen.
i need as much help as i can get because 51 years is all it takes.
Jelloarm
I think I know some people who can help me help you
we'll get to the bottom of this
jonkulka
enlistment, more like conscription. an army is needed for this thing. it's big, very big. war is not out of the question.
Jelloarm
yeah, sounds like exactly the people that I'm thinking of
Jon, can you tell us who's after you?
jonkulka
who knows. the government? little green men? maybe i'm imagining it all. maybe i imagined the crater and everything about it
Jelloarm
the internet says the crater's still there, so I'm willing to trust you about the people following you
what makes you say that there are people after you?
have you seen them?
jonkulka
you don't...see them. you hear them, sometimes. you feel them. electricity in the air, they smell like sweat
filth filth filth
Jelloarm
what does the new update on the tumblr mean, Jon?
pad you, wrap you, take you home?
jonkulka
hate break. fake it fake it. time to go home. lie like time. mars bluffs
Jelloarm
I know about Mars Bluffs
your father was the pilot, wasn't he?
jonkulka
no more questions. figure it out. leave me out of it. don't investigate the players. investigate the game.
Jelloarm
Are you going to be ok?
jonkulka
worry about yourself. because if you choose to give this even a cursory glance, you'll regret it. i should never have done this. i'll take the hit. go on with your life. forget i ever messaged you and
horror of horrors


And then he disconnects.

The tumblr is all about Mars Bluff, a place where an atomic bomb got dropped in the late 50's. Thankfully, it didn't go off.

[Spec] Based on last names, I think Jon here is the son of Bruce Kulka (pilot of the ill-fated plane). And now there's some shady government stuff and they're after him because I guess he's been investigating it? And he wants us to help him, as the government is after him, and everyone knows that the best way to hide from the government is enlist strangers on the series of tubes. [/spec]

Things to note - the cryptic garble of letters he IMed me is the same as the garble of letters in the middle of the one tublr message, and there's a garbling on the Columbia Star site that might not mean anything other than a garbled transcription. Also, there might have been an accidental outing of the curtain, that I'm investigating now, but for the sake of TINAG I won't reveal anything unless it becomes an IG development.

The video in the tumblr was posted by Jonkulka on youtube a few days ago, and just describes the incident.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:05 pm
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amandel
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 4096
Location: Nederland

 		THX jelloarm....looking pretty interesting and agree with your spec.

The garbled letters in his IM and on "one tublr message" (bWFycyBibHVmZnM= ) is base64 for mars bluffs.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:34 pm
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KLind
Entrenched


Joined: 22 Apr 2007
Posts: 928
Location: Columbus, Ohio

 		Interesting. New post as I was reading "here it goes again". Wonder what he saw...

amandel wrote:
THX jelloarm....looking pretty interesting and agree with your spec.

The garbled letters in his IM and on "one tublr message" (bWFycyBibHVmZnM= ) is base64 for mars bluffs.

Good work. Smile

PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:35 pm
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Scaurus
Boot


Joined: 12 Jan 2009
Posts: 32
Location: San Diego, CA

 		I have him on AIM, but he's no more helpful than earlier. Good work on the solve, though I wonder what the point of that is...

PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:37 pm
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jelloarm
Unfettered


Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 415
Location: Far Far Away And Way Way Afar

 		Yeah, it looks like wherever this is going, we're stuck until we're given more room to run with it...
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:49 pm
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amandel
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 4096
Location: Nederland

 		A couple of new Mars Bluff blog entries of which one is called let's play hangman with a Morse msg.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
n—t/——tre/—e——trie

For me this only spells out in French and not in English so Good Luck Y'all (Bon Chance) Dunno
_________________
"I could write a hell of a paper on a grown man who dresses like a flying rodent."
"Can you hook up with a Snow Person? Can't tell you or I'd have to marry you."

PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:43 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		Actually, whatever was used to type the message combined '--' into '—' and '...' into an ellipsis, so the real morse is

-. --- / -- --- .-. . / -- . -- --- .-. .. . ...

which translates to
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
NO MORE MEMORIES


PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:55 pm
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amandel
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 4096
Location: Nederland

 		You are sooooooooooo cluey....did find that sorta wierd @ Cool MrToasty
_________________
"I could write a hell of a paper on a grown man who dresses like a flying rodent."
"Can you hook up with a Snow Person? Can't tell you or I'd have to marry you."

PostPosted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:59 pm
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majora2
Guest


 		I got him on AIM, but again he just posted a lot of random stuff. I hope there's some sort of plot to all of this, lol. About the potential curtain-lifting, I think I know what you're talking about. I saw it before he deleted it, but unfortuantely I think it's a red herring Raspberry . That was included in some releases of Digsby (because he's a digsby programmer) and I'm guessing he just forgot to delete it

I definitely agree with your spec though. He's got some new stuff up, I'm no good at codes though Confused lol

PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:31 pm
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Scaurus
Boot


Joined: 12 Jan 2009
Posts: 32
Location: San Diego, CA

 		Took a crack at it with ROT, but no luck there. As a matter of fact, the letter frequencies in the coded text match regular english almost exactly, so maybe it's just anagramed around.

He's also added what sounds like a DTMF code, but I haven't got anything to decode it with. Why someone would go through all this trouble...who knows Razz

PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:31 pm
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jelloarm
Unfettered


Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 415
Location: Far Far Away And Way Way Afar
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The 1:28 pm post is a quote from Ch. 5 of HG Wells' the Time Machine, which really makes me wonder what the garble is under the post 'the time machine.'


Any ideas on what to do with the sound clip? I want to say they're phone beeps, but all I have is a cell phone, which - fun fact - doesn't make those tones when I dial it. Someone confirm/deny spec here?
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:42 pm
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KLind
Entrenched


Joined: 22 Apr 2007
Posts: 928
Location: Columbus, Ohio
jelloarm wrote:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The 1:28 pm post is a quote from Ch. 5 of HG Wells' the Time Machine, which really makes me wonder what the garble is under the post 'the time machine.'


Any ideas on what to do with the sound clip? I want to say they're phone beeps, but all I have is a cell phone, which - fun fact - doesn't make those tones when I dial it. Someone confirm/deny spec here?


Sounds like if we took the letter associated with those numbers being dialed we could get a message. Sounds like there's 9 of them so maybe it's just 'Mars Bluff'. Just a guess.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:31 pm
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lergnag
Decorated


Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 227

 		OK I'm gonna get into this. Gimme some time to gather some info (more than what was already discussed) and I'll try to crack the case.

OK those blog entries are definitely strange. They seem to not have any direction... Kinda like me when I tried to start up the Jundak game.

KLind wrote:

Sounds like if we took the letter associated with those numbers being dialed we could get a message. Sounds like there's 9 of them so maybe it's just 'Mars Bluff'. Just a guess.


I'm counting 6 or 7 beeps. Just that one has a different tone shift in the middle.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:48 am
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		OK, the jumbled text is Ubchi encoded.
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Password is 'morlock' and decodes to:
"you'll see it on the anniversary. fifty one is a long time to gestate"


PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:35 am
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jelloarm
Unfettered


Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 415
Location: Far Far Away And Way Way Afar
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
"you'll see it on the anniversary. fifty one is a long time to gestate"
So we have a countdown til March 11th. I wonder if that's the game's climax or if it's the actual start of the game and this is some sort of teaser.

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-Douglas Adams


PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:00 am
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