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Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Quick Reference

META : The Shortest, Simplest Summary (actually a list)

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rose
...and then Magic happens

Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

META : The Shortest, Simplest Summary (actually a list)

GAME SUMMARY

(editing this-finally-as we speak)

NOTE: This is for a quick overview of the story and help players/ lurkers identify key characters and story elements. Only "in-game" information is included (if you aren't sure what this means, see the end note.)

September 10th
More axons. Dana's blog updates to link to the locations of the current axons.
September 7th
More axons. Dana's blog updates to tell us to keep working at it and to get out friends and famliy on board to activate axons. We get a story from the Sleeping Princess that, like the riddles, leads us to another page.

1. Dana tells us we need to reach the benchmark of 777 and to enlist aid.

2. To activate the axons we must answer that we are crew on the Apocalypso. More wavs continue to tell these stories:

a.
b.
c.

3. The Sleeping Princess continues answering question and also tells us the first chapter in "Perdita's Story" another fable. The similarity to another fairy tale leads us to gretel.html.

September 3rd
More axons

August 31st
More axons. Dana's blog updates.Sleeping Princess gives us another riddle.

1. Dana tell us that the Operator thinks we are her crew and tells a story of Dana's childhood in which she would "eavesdrop on the future." She seems to be telling us that is what we are hearing in the Durga wav files.

2. More axons for us to activate. We are not as thrilled. The waves we get continue to tell the stories of Durga and Jersey, of Jan James and Kamal.

a.

b.

c.

3. The Sleeping Princess riddle leads us to lookingglass.html.

August 27th
The Sleeping Princess slips us more information. We get 4 axons from her which are "secret paths" that the Pious Flea directed the Operator to construct. These also lead to wave files. The waves from the Sleeping Princess are conversations about Troy, which we assume has been glassed after an emergency evacuation of the inhabitants. A second important fact, that an earth ship called the "Apocalpyso" has dropped into a sublunar orbit is revealed.

August 24th- the axons go live, the Sleeping Princess leaves us a riddle and Dana updates her blog.

1. Dana's blog tells us how extraordinary we are and adds a summary of the story so far. She watches and waits for information about the axons.

2.The Operator's Axons go live (we have to answer pay phones at given coordinates and give the right name and password), giving us access to certain .wav files on the ilovebees site. She is trying to identify her crew and tells us the wav files will help us assess damage. We aren't told, but assume that it is likely these files are from her memory.

When put in order the wavs tell us two story lines:

a. Jersey Morelli finds a program called "Durga" in his system -- Durga is similar with or identical to, the Operator as controlled by the Pious Flea-- Durga can't remember its' name but proves its ability to easily access information by telling Jersey:

i. About Jersey and his parents. His father works for Naval Intelligence in the radio beacon deployment program and left Jersey some music. (these characteristics remind us of the Castaway - a pregame character who was married, liked Jazz and the Blues and knew the Operator well.)

ii. About Janissary James, daughter of James James - a man whose past is deeply hidden. When Jersey asks for a picture of her, Durga gives him audio of what she is doing-- which is hiding from security, being caught and interrogated.
Her father appears and takes her home, warns her that people she doesn't even know will be hurt if she gets caught, and seems to burn down the building where she was held, thereby erasing all physical evidence about her.

b. the second, where Kamal, a lonely techie guy uses his knowledge to help a girl he is interested in spy on her cheating boyfriend.

3. The Sleeping Princess gives us a riddle which leads us to a page showing a conversation she had with the Pious Flea. She tells the Pious Flea she has seen it on the Operator and sends it away. ilovebees/yellowbrickroad.html

PREGAME BACKGROUND SUMMARY

1. Dana's blog (www.ilovebees.blogspot.com) describes issues with the website she helps her Aunt Margaret run. The website discusses Aunt Margaret's beekeeping hobby and related topics. (www.ilovebees.com).

2. Issues with the website include the following:

a. Countdown timer that Dana had posted for her upcoming trip to China has been hijacked.

b. Warnings-
"This medium is classified, and has a STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION"

contained in a big black box have been added with various countdowns to the following target points:

i. Network throttling eroded
ii. Medium metatasizing
iii. Wide awake and physical

c. Various fragments of text appear (in the html) which contains MAYDAY messages, console commands, and quotes from literary sources about shipwrecks. At this point, we are not certain which entities placed this text. We surmise that:

something with a military character has been shipwrecked, is assessing its' situation and is being repaired by a second entity. Some parts of the text may be from a third and, possibly, a fourth entity.

d. Hidden text snippets are found in corrupted images on the website. These are assembled into the story we called "The Widow's Journey." This story is a fable about a kingdom destroyed and a Queen killed. On the death of the Queen, the Widow awakes, journeys to find the Queen and restores the Queen to life. Two other characters, the Pious Flea and the Sleeping Princess, of whom we know very little, survived the destruction of the kingdom as well.

These characters give structure to the other texts we uncovered. The military A.I. is the Queen (later also identified as the Operator); the program making the repairs is the Widow or the Spider (SPDR.) We attribute the console commands to the Widow and most of the other text to the Queen. Of note, a text mentions the footprint of the flea in the sand.

e. The console commands also tell the Widow's Journey story. We can follow the Widow (SPDR) through her finding the Queen, repairing the Queen and posting the warning. Of note, the Widow locates two external processes: the "Sleeping Princess" which it cannot reach due to encryption and the "Flea," which it "bites", but cannot use.

3. A strange email is received from ladybee777SPLAThotmail.com (Aunt Margaret's email address). Dana's blog mentions that this account has been hacked. After translating this email, we understand that either the Sleeping Princess or the Pious Flea is trying to communicate with us.
We reply.

4. After various posts on her blog to us, Dana decides to try to repair the website problems. We see the pages being altered.
At some point in this process, her webcam is "taken over" by, we think, the Widow or maybe the Queen, and photos of her are taken. Dana freaks as she has been seen by it and runs away to China. (she leaves a voicemail and a post on her blog saying good-bye.)

Text we find later (as part of the "Operator's Monologue") shows that the Queen/ Operator thinks of Dana as an Assassin for her attempts to repair the site despite the posted warning-- her repair attempts have caused the Queen further damage--and that the Queen intends to harm Dana.

5. On July 27, before Dana leaves for China, the countdown to phase 1 ( network throttling eroded) is completed. We then find more changes on the ilovebees.com website.
These include:

a. A puzzle based on a series of links. The solve of this leads us to the bittersweet Melissa conversation. She appears as a hologram, drinking and listening to jazz with someone she calls "the Castaway." The Castaway calls the Operator by the name "Melissa" and seems to care about her. Unlike any other texts, this has a romantic feeling and shows the Operator as a more complex, sympathetic character.

b. Various texts appear which are assembled into what people call the "Operator Monologue." The Operator has lost memory and many capabilities from the impact, the Widow's efforts at repair and Dana. The Operator describes what she feels and thinks as the Widow/Spider repairs her, including these memories which are triggered during the repair:

i. The Melissa convo mentioned above.

ii. Two officers discuss decoded intelligence about the "glassing" of Troy.

iii. Two iterations of a conversation between two crew members which the Operator has overheard and saved as a locked-down memory--one crew member lies to the other about the Operator's favorite game (it's Hide and Seek.)

iv. Reach burning (discussed below under Halo references)

c. Hidden text snippets in photos of Dana, which the Widow has labeled as "killer.jpg", are assembled. These turn out to be responses to our emails. (see #3.) The Sleeping Princess used snippets from emails we sent to write back to us. ( Yeah! We can talk to it. How cool is that?)
We unleash a torrent of emails containing a huge range of information and questions. We guess that the text is hidden in the jpg because the Queen and the Widow cannot access it in that format.

d. Text in a green font referring to an "innocent" on the ilovebees website. The author of this remains under debate.

6. On August 3, many people receive an email from the ladybee777 hotmail account. It tells the "History of Dana" by the Sleeping Princess. Given this and the distain for the Pious Flea evidenced in the text, we lean toward the author being the Sleeping Princess. The Sleeping Princess confirms that it likes Dana and fears the Queen and the Widow.

While the Sleeping Princess was hiding from the Queen and the Widow (because they would damage it), it found a secret which it took and hid somewhere. We try to find the hidden secret.

7. Dana updates her blog - even in China she thinks about the ilovebees website problems. She is back in, even though she is scared. She counsels patience. Something about the 1000 emails we sent reassured her that she wasn't alone.

8.On August 10th, the second countdown completes and the website updates :

a.A list of 220 locations designated by longitude and latitude. One of these, located off the coast of California, is an errror which is later corrected. We determine these are the Operator's axons.

b. Text from the Operator shows that it has terminated the SPDR's control and is now being controlled by the Pious Flea. Console commands showing the Flea's activity are found. The Operator still hunts Dana for the damage she caused.

c.Haiku written by the Sleeping Princess tell the story of the SPDR searching for the Pious Flea, the Pious Flea escaping and eventually convincing the Operator to destory the SPDR.

d.Two other memories from the Operator conversations with Captain Greene: a strange device with a code that cannot be decoded is found and stored in the hull; and, the Operator advises the Captain it may have a "virus" from the decoded transmission about Troy being glassed.

9. August 13th updates:
a. Dana updating her blog, is still in China, has emailed the Sleeping Princess and feels safe from the Operator's axons.

b. The Sleeping Princess emails us: she can use her own words, she tells us that the Queen, furious with the SPDR for the sloppy creation of the roads, has taken over that task; and, for bringing Dana back, gives us the secret she (the Sleeping Princess ) found. From the Queen's diary: the Operator has blocked a crew member named McKaskill from sending a message without clearance about the object they have in the hold of the ship. McKaskill has talked with a person we think is the Castaway from the Melissa conversation. This person has influenced McKaskill to send the message.

10.August 17th update: the page with the coordinates changes, deleting some from the list, specifiying a time for each location and increasing the accuracy of the coordinates for each.

11.August 20th update: Dana tells us that "the coordinates are beckoning some of us" to enter "a mysterious backroom." Dana will be online on her laptop on the 24th to see what happens. The Sleeping Princess adds a game in which we are to vote for a question from a list she has posted. She will answer the one with the most votes.
-------
Halo references:

a. to Reach burning -- from a memory of the Queen found in the beginning of the 2nd phase and incorporated in the Operator's Monologue. For the uninitiated, Reach is the United Nations Space Commands ("UNSC") Fleet's primary military installation, including the naval headquarters. Reach falls in the book titled, yes, The Fall of Reach, a prequel to the game. Note that the Covenant (the enemy of the humans) do not know the location of Earth, so wiping the ai or navigation of all ships that have that information is an essential task before Reach falls.

"drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope"

b. to the Seraph class --from the same source as the above. The Seraph class are Covenant ships used as fighters.
[thanks to tarrsk for pointing this out]

"the quick hard twinkle pulse lasers blinking from a Seraph class as we settle, invisible as a leaf sinking into the Slipstream and carried away "

c. Reference to Office of Naval Intelligence ("ONI")

i. from the crew conversations in the Operator's Monologue:
"ONI tech Kowalski: Couriers, too."

ii. from the McKaskill convo:
The way she's talking, they're not gonna let people look at, it's goin' to a basement in ONI.

d.to the Covenant:

i. from the memory about the strange device and putting it in the hold:
"Is it Covenant?" 1st Lt Sorenson said.

ii. from the convo Melissa has with Captain Greene about possibly being infected with a virus:"The Covenant transmission?"

NOTE: This is an "in-game" only summary. For those who haven't learned this as a mantra yet, "in-game" means only those things that are part of the universe of the game: the web-sites and the characters. Things that are "out-of-game" (or OOG) include this forum, the chat rooms, the wiki guide, and similar things that the players use to play the game. In this context, I am including only those references to the Halo universe that are unequivocally part of the "ilovebees" universe.
If you spot errors, please PM me here at the board on unfiction.

Thanks, Rose

_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 9:22 am
Last edited by rose on Sat Sep 11, 2004 12:35 pm; edited 12 times in total

rose
...and then Magic happens

Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

Very brief narrative-

A current snapshot of the story as we know it. I will update this as well.

Pregame summary:
Somehow the ilovebees website, run by Dana for her Aunt Margaret has been taken over by several computer programs ( known as: the Operator, the SPDR, the Sleeping Princess and the Pious Flea.) The website has a bold warning that on August 24th the medium will become wide awake and physical. Dana is in China, having fled in fear of at least one of the programs, but is back in touch with us through her blog and emails. Her last blog entry says she will be online with us on the 24th.

The Operator program is recovering from almost complete distruction caused by its' being "shipwrecked" here. Dana's attempts to repair the website exacerbated the damage. Having identified Dana as an Assasin, the Operator hunts her, but Dana seems safe in China.

After the shipwreck, the SPDR took control of the Operator to make repairs. The clumsy repairs necessitated by the extent of the damage and the lack of materials, caused the Operator to lose much of it's memory and personality. During the repair, the SPDR identified the Pious Flea as an external process and repeatedly tried to bite it. The Pious Flea escaped and seemingly convinced the Operator to destroy the SPDR. The Pious Flea is now influencing the Operator's decision making.

The Operator is trying to create a new "body" and to that end it is building "roads" or axons. The exact process it is using is not clear, all we know is that certain locations are being identified with great precision. We are going to go to the specified locations at the specified time and see what happens.

Meanwhile, the Sleeping Princess, the last of the programs affecting the ilovebees website, has learned how to communicate with us, sends us emails and even writes (bad) poetry. It has identified Dana as a friend and wants to keep her safe. She finds secrets from the Operator's memory which she shares with us on occasion. Somehow the Sleeping Princess is seperated into a sealed chamber. She is now playing a game with us.

What we know of the Operator's existence before the shipwreck is limited to memories that we have found. Most relevant, is that the Operator was also known as "Melissa" and was an essential part of running an ONI(Office of Naval Intelligence) ship under Captain Greene. We know of two conversations between Melissa and the Captain. One concerns taking into the cargo hold a strange device covered with symbols Melissa can not immediately decode. The other considers the possibility Melissa became infected by a "virus" or some other program as part of a decrypted Covenant transmission. This infection may be the origin of the Pious Flea.

The Operator's duties included monitering and evaluating crew communications. Several of these communications are known to us: two officers discussing a decoded message regarding the glassing of a planet called Troy; an intercepted communication about the strange device in the ship's cargo hold sent by McKaskill, a crew member; and two crew members flirting, one telling a lie about Melissa's favorite game (hide and seek) to the other. Melissa was called "the Operator" as a nickname because she always took care of her crew.

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 12:48 am

rose
...and then Magic happens

Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

a new snapshot (as requested)

Even though this story has generated many posts and the subplots have small details to follow, it is less complex than it appears.
We are seeing the events unfold through the point of view of several characters:

1.Dana - the human who exists in our time, writes a blog on ilovebees.blogspot.com and acts almost like another player. She is currently in Japan, still cheering us on and is, for the moment, an outsider to the ongoing plot.

2. Melissa- the protagonist ai who appears to have crashed onto dana's server in our time frame. Badly damaged, confused and under the control of another program called the"Pious Flea," Melissa is currently identifying crew members she can call directly to share sensitive information in secure channels. Melissa posts text directly on the ilovebees site for us to follow.

3. the Sleeping Princess- the narrator ai which we still don't completely understand. She posts stories that tells us what is happening at ilovebees, including an allegory about a lost girl, and she likes to play games with us. Her text is either hidden in corrupted images on the site, posted on a new page or posted on the 404 page.

4. Durga: the wave stories - after Melissa reached a certain point in her repair process, she set up "axons" which, as you probably know, led us to pay phones and to wave files. The wave stories are from Earth in the distant future and seem to all be provided to us from "Durga"another ai that is recording them and transmitting them to Melissa. Some of the waves have been secretly given to us by the Sleeping Princess and not Melissa.

The stories are as follows:
a. Jersey's life -his interactions with Durga, including most recently his request that she get his father, an ONI intelligence officer, reassigned to Earth and her refusal to do so. His father, Jason, after all is a soldier.

b. Jan James' life - a beautiful 17year old extra- talented strong girl with a gun, her father is on Earth under a deep cover, a Spartan who was trained on Reach. Jersey requested Durga find out about her.

c. Kamal's life - a medical resident from Coral who gets deeper and deeper into a relationship with Aiden, who is a gangster and Sophia, Aiden's girlfriend who is also from Coral. Most recently, Kamal made a fortune helping Aiden solve the problem of how some college students were cheating at a casino.

d. Ronnie's life - a scholarship student who is also a spy in Boston. All of the waves about her are very secret. Most recently: as a bridesmaid at the wedding of her cousin (back home in Kentucky) and after the wedding, making out (although more is implied) with a guy she has just met at the wedding.

5. Key events: we have been trying to place this story in the timeframe set by the Haloverse. We have three major events in the wave stories:

a. The destruction of the colony Troy by the Covenant. Melissa seems to have decoded a transmission from the Covenant about "glassing" (pretty much what it sounds like only done with plasma weapons) Troy. It is unclear whether a warning was given about Troy and whether Troy was evacuated before it was glassed.

b. The taking of Reach - a major outpost of Earth and the last protection between Earth and the Covenant. The most recent waves contain announcements that Reach had just been taken.

c. The crash of the ship the Apocalypso - Melissa's ship which contained an alien artifact. It seems the ship was blasted somehow - but that is from a wave. We link the crash to the appearance of the ai on dana's site and Durga on jersey's site. Just how that happened we haven't decided. Smile

Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 9:28 pm

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