unforum

[yellowcard]

Hi, everybody. Sorry, I've been away so much. I come back every now and then and read the updates... it really looks like not much has changed in either of the ARGs I'm following.

Did a little snooping around and noticed a smiley face on Ethan's blog. It's on each page near the the top in the right border. See it? When I copy-and-paste the image all I get is a tiny black box, and it appears to be all the same shade of black.

I don't have any destegging tools on my computer, so I couldn't tell you if this is significant or not.

[Sylvia]

sorry yellowcard, but it's nothing. I noticed it way back when and checked it out. It's on most sites hosted by wordpress.com. It has something to do with the stats. And here it is

[yellowcard]

Okay, thanks, Sylvia. I looked at some other random sites and didn't see it. Apparently I checked some low-traffic sites.

I also emailed slider888 and got the auto-reply. I wrote back again with the answer "888" since numerologists seem to believe that 8 is the number of perfection. Not sure why they do, though. Anyway, no reply yet.

The wiki looks great, BTW.

[petunia]

Damn, and I got all excited, I really thought there might be something there. Especially cuz I coulda sworn that smiley used to be at the bottom of the page... I'd noticed it and thought it was probly a WP thing, but it did strike me as odd though I wasn't sure where to take it from there. Anyway, I did find another blog with the same thing on it, here: http://davidhaimes.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/ora-click-like-digg-but-better/
Oh well.

[Sylvia]

[badaim68]

Reply from Quinton Salamanca

[badaim68]

 Mr Salamanca gets chatty

[Sylvia]

[mortality]

I think the opposite of Sylvia: he probably doesn't care for Petra at all. If there's genuine concern there, it's wondering why someone who knows her would go looking for him. He sounds suspicious of everything, but she got special mention.

My recommendation would be to reveal as little about our real reasons for contacting him as possible.

I do like the matchbook idea. If you can come up with some plausible explanation for why we'd know what it meant without making Petra our motive, that seems like a good approach. But how can we explain that we know the reason it was on the ground is a ritual?

[Sylvia]

Seriously, mort? From what Petra said I got the feeling that Slider was an ok dude who cared at least enough to be the only one who would talk to her at the parties she went to with Philly. Therefore, if they have been out of touch, it's possible that Slider would like to know more about how she is doing and how we found him through Petra AND how Petra might be involved to assure himself, if nothing else, that she is not in danger. And most importantly, how WE know Petra.

as for your recommendation, that is where you and I totally disagree, I think we should reveal everything we know that concerns Petra, Philly and capnomantrix and anything else that might be relevant. The PMs will just ignore anything that isn't relevant and in that way we will know what to not waste our time on. Honesty, is the best policy.

Now I'm going to pick apart the email from Slider to Badaim to try and get the overall meaning he is telling us.

[badaim68]

Response to QS

[Sylvia]

sounds good badaim, but I do hope that when you say goldfish you weren't implying the same thing about me as Slider did about Smoke when he said she was an "Odds fish."

Also, I have to disagree about Smoke. The hate between Slider and Smoke is probably mutual. But Smoke had to give us the info about Slider in order to live up to her claims of being an oracle. I don't think she gave it to us because she believes we need to get in touch with him. but I could be wrong and it will be interesting to see what Slider has to say about that. I do think Slider is concerned about Petra, probably more out of concern, like a father for a daughter, if nothing else, to find out how she got tangled up with the likes of us. Since we are just another group in this convoluted mystery, they have to look at us the same as we have to look at them, in other words, "who can trust who?".

[badaim68]

Don't worry Sylvia, wasn't implying anything

I do think that Odds fish is a strange choice of phrase, odd fish would be better (unless it is an Americanism I'm not aware of?). I did wonder if he meant the odds were I was fishing.

....and I don't think that Smoke wanted us to contact Slider, I just said that to:
a) avoid any mention of Petra (if QS is a nasty piece of work would you want to put her at undue risk?)

b) to see if there would be any reason why he'd think she'd send us his way

[mortality]

Good response, badaim.

Sylvia, I think your analysis was pretty much spot on except for your thoughts regarding Whitechapel/OC, Petra and "I do hope you will be able to shed some of that light we all so fervently seek on this, Paul."

The whole tone of QS's email seemed kind of mocking and insincere. We need him, he doesn't need us. He has information we want but he won't share it unless we give him a reason and answers he likes. And he's suspicious to begin with, as demonstrated by the auto-response.

As far as we know, Slider knows nothing about Whitechapel. We don't even know how involved he was with Philly's ritual. He certainly has no knowledge of the 0702 document or 0701 messages. As far as Ethan and Jade believe, whatever was used to perform the rituals in St. Pete had nothing to do with the document Shannon found. I don't see why Slider has any right to know any of that information, at least until we know more about his relationship to Philly and the rituals.

Remember that the ritual sounded like it had malevolent intent behind it. We should be wary of anyone who has potential interest in seeing it performed or helping others to perform it.

Regarding Petra, of course Slider would like to know that information. It would clarify who we are to him. We don't really know his attitude toward Petra, although he certainly seems dismissive of Philly. Petra had said Slider was the only one to talk to her at the parties she went to with Philly. She didn't say anything else about him except she thought he was nice. But "nice" could simply mean the difference between being ignored by everyone and at least being addressed by Slider. I don't think there could really be anything like father/daughter concern between them because of how slight their acquaintance was.

My feeling is that if someone wants to play their hand close to the vest, so should we. Approaching Petra openly was another matter entirely. We're best served by caution.

There's no telling how QS would react to finding out we were trying to track down the ritual for a group like WhiteChapel which might be at odds with him.

[Typoxic]

I think the "odds" thing might have been a typo. It's possible it's not, but a spell check wouldn't pick that up. Does anyone else find Slider to be a charming young fellow? Whether or not he's involved in some kind of mystical happenings, he doesn't seem to buy the mumbo-jumbo athames-raised-to-the-sky aspect of it. That makes me think he might be a reasonable guy, to some extent. We can be honest with him about our aim in this investigation without mentioning Whitechapel at all. It might get us more information if we stop dicking him around.