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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
[Trailhead] Message from Z
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tybeck
Boot

Joined: 16 May 2011
Posts: 15
Location: San Francisco, CA

 		Some of us might be.

PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2011 2:22 pm
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mr.judkins
Unfettered


Joined: 26 Feb 2008
Posts: 393
Location: Wellington, NZ

 		Hoping for some assistance with our disk...
Hi all!

_june & I have been trying to find a floppy drive ever since receiving our disk, and the one we thought was lined up for last night fell through.

Those who have also got disks will know why now it's rather urgent we find one.

Does anyone have recommendations as to where we might find one - OR does anyone live in the Mission / Bernal / Noe Valley area and have access to one that we might be able to utilize?

UPDATE!

Happy to say we got the disk sorted, thanks to Omnie. =)

Look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow!

PostPosted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 5:40 pm
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StoryOfMyLife
Boot

Joined: 03 Jun 2011
Posts: 57

 		Aaaaaaaaaand now we wait again.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:28 pm
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_june
Boot


Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 47
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

 		The Saturday 23 July meetup
OK, here is a summary of Sautrday's events as I experienced it. Please add to this if you were there!

I'll pop this all in spoiler tags, please let me know if this is not necessary and I'll take them out Smile
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
We arrived just after noon to see a few likely looking people with bits of paper, scissors, and tape (as instructed by Z).

Just after we all started saying "hi, I guess we're all here for the same reason", a young man walked up and (quite curtly) asked for some water. I gave him my water bottle, thinking he must have been one of us.

We all grabbed our paper, tape, and scissors and moved below the bridge (under the statue) to start cutting and taping.

We then noticed a random bit of paper still up on the ledge where we had met. It was also about this time that I realized the young man who had asked for water was not amoungst us!

We're pretty sure he managed to drop off the extra page and steal my water bottle and slip away, all undetected! Ninja!

Anyhow, we peiced together the message, thanks to tybeck's awesome pre-planning (he brought a large piece of cardboard).


The complete message, including original typos in bold, transcribed the awesome meelar:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
April 10th:
The big internship day was today. I shook hands with a lot of people, handed out dozens of resumes, and got some free pens and candy. Not a lot of opportunities for my major at this event.

April 12th
This afternoon a brown envelope showed up at my door from the Federal Information Agency. The FIA was one of the places I'd applied, some bureaucratic sounding government agency. I had no idea what they did when I applied, I just needed a job.

Inside the envelope there was just a floppy. It contained instructions for the FIA's "INformant Training Extracurricular Reserves Network." The entire INTERN program consists of warning people to avoid criminals wanted by the FIA. I'm not sure I want to go through with this, I'm not <ILLEGIBLE> ing this. So far it's boring. But at least the pay is good. Oh, and according to the instructions, they told us that due to budget cuts, the people who do FIA's INTERN program in the future won't get paid! Damn, you'd have to be a real sucker to do it for free.

April 13th
Strange news today...but I'll get to that momentarily.

I got up early not feeling well and decided to stay home and do some research. As much as I need the money the whole FIA INTERN program makes me uncomfortable.

Spent a few hours looking up the people that the FIA is warning us to avoid. But I couldn't find anything. Not a phone number, newspaper entry, birth record, or even Facebook page for these people.

It was as if they had never existed.

Maybe 10 minutes after I gave up looking my phone rang from a number I didn't recognize. I answered and on the other end was a guy who claimed to be a rogue FIA agent. Yes, really! How he got my number, I still don't know.

He said very little. His name was "T. Steele," he was a bigwig from the early days of the FIA who was still working with them, but had secretly defected. Working from within enemy walls, he wanted me to help bring down the agency.

Steele told me about an abandoned Muni stop where he liked to hang out, just under the bridge at Dolores Park. He told me to be there in half an hour.

Somehow I feel intuitively I can trust Steele. There's something sinister inside the FIA he needed to expose to the world, and this was his way of clearing his conscience.

I rode my bike over to the park, and found the stairs he was talking about. I carefully walked down the stairs to the platform, not sure who took look for. By the J-Church tracks I spotted a paper bag from Safeway. As I got closer I saw a hand drawn letter T. in red ink next to the Safeway "S" logo. "T.S." This was it.

After biking home, I opened the bag and examined the contents; it contained a big sheet of directions and a strange plastic box with wires sticking out.

I read the directions, and knew what I had to do. Time to get to work.

April 14th
This morning I went to the San Francisco satellite office of Agent Tom--one of the FIA's "investigators"--and met the accomplice. It all went as planned in Steel's directions. The accomplice was disguised as a sidewalk contractor. He already had the area around Tom's office dug up to be repaved.

I handed him Steele's device. The contractor knew what it was. He showed me where it would be buried, and explained that he'd put his company's seal right on top of the device.

Now I'm at home, eagerly waiting for tomorrow's adventure!

April 15th
Woke up feeling ready for the day's mission. Following Steele's directions, I went to Agent Tom's office. All I had to do was hold my phone over the device for three seconds, and the data would transfer. I stooped down like I was tying my shoes until the phone vibrated to indicate the transfer completed.

When I got home I uploaded the stolen encrypted data to the arranged online drop. Then the phone rang. "I'll have it decrypted in 45 minutes. You'll have all night to read through this."

Sure enough, 45 minutes later, the file appeared in my inbox. It was massive. Tens of thousands of pages of documents; legal filings, faxes, forms, reports, and some of which were just sections of essay collections and trade journals. And this was just one day's worth?

As I was getting overwhelmed the phone rang once more. "Grep those files for code word 'Seawater'. It's the largest project within the FIA. Take notes on what you find. We will do this every weekday. Until you have enough information. You'll know when." He hung up.

The word "Seawater" occurred over and over again in the day's documents. I didn't understand most of it, but I took notes anyway, hoping it would make sense in the future.

April 17th
I'm starting to understand; "Seawater" is a government project to research conspiracy theories. Everything seems to be related towards investigating crackpot claims. The theories ranged from the Freemasons influence on society all the way up to Birther movement.

So far, nothing particularly exciting about any of this. I don't get why Mr. Steele is having me do this yet. There must be something here I'm not seeing.

April 19th
Maybe there's a sinister nature to "Seawater" after all. The research they're doing all checks out, at least from what little I had time to verify. But if they're on a fact-finding mission, why are they forging their own budget?

An official pamphlet and a bunch of memos for an upcoming audit explain how different FIA operations are to be explained. Seawater was said to be for rent and utilities and listed an address in SOMA.

So of course I went to check out the address. It was a big windowless building, with a chain link fence around it. The place looked deserted.

I hoped the fence and went around back. The door was open, but it wasn't an office inside; it was a couple bums squatting. I asked them who owned it, but they had no idea. The one guy was drunk, but the other one told me they'd lived there for 10 years, but it smelled like a lot more.

April 23rd
I've spotted a disturbing pattern in the decrypted FIA emails. They're taking money from the government to fund Seawater, but the FIA only takes orders for this object from some outside think tank that's never named. The think tank's meeting minutes are always forwarded to agents and referenced as tasks assigned to individuals.

It all seems unethical, borderline illegal. But it gets worse! I'm starting to realize the "research" the FIA does is not research at all! If you look at the timestamps on the files, the notes and memos are coming in *before* the articles they reference!

The FIA is definitely writing these documents, combining existing stories with weird trivia that can't be verified. They prepare that information into magazine articles, books, and research papers that are ghostwritten and printed under a number of pseudonyms.

It's like the FIA is the one creating these conspiracy theories. But what purpose does that serve?

I've been trying to contact Steele again to ask some questions but he's not answering his phone. This is all very troubling. It's getting to the point where nothing would surprise me anymore.

April 24th
Figured it all out! This is going to sound crazy, but it's the only explanation that makes sense and fits all the facts. The FIA isn't what it seems to be. The "criminals" they're after are not criminals at all. If anyone here is a criminal, it may be the FIA itself.

I wish I had time to explain the whole thing, but I've got to connect with T. Steele again tonight.

No time to write now, will explain tomorrow.


So after decyphering this message:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
We searched for the bag that was mentioned in the message, and found nothing. So, after remembering Z asked us to go to a nearby café to decypher the message, we went and got ice cream, then checked again. The long and short of it was that there was nothing there.


So, that's the main points I remember. Anyone else that was there care to fill in what I've missed?

**EDIT: The fantastic transcription was by meelar Smile

PostPosted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 9:52 pm
Last edited by _june on Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
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meelar
Kilroy

Joined: 26 Jul 2011
Posts: 1

 		Transcription
The transcription was mine. Good to meet everyone! We are currently
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
waiting for a reply from "Agent Steele" after emailing him our progress
.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:17 pm
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_june
Boot


Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 47
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

 		Of course, I forgot one of the most important bits! Doh!

The stranger
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
was young-ish, definitely under 30. Wore black, reflective sunglasses. Short, black hair. Thin and average height. Wore a black jacket, blue tee, and brown (?) pants. He was wearing a messenger bag.

He never gave back my water bottle.

Anyone else remember anything else about him?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:28 pm
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southeastTCR
Boot

Joined: 26 Mar 2011
Posts: 19
Location: Santa Cruz

 		Hey gang, Chris here.

Anybody heard anything from Z or Agent Tom? It's been kinda quiet lately, and I haven't had any replies from my emails to them.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 4:16 pm
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tybeck
Boot

Joined: 16 May 2011
Posts: 15
Location: San Francisco, CA

 		No word yet on my end either.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 11:00 am
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southeastTCR
Boot

Joined: 26 Mar 2011
Posts: 19
Location: Santa Cruz

 		Still nothing? I'm in New York for college now, so I can't really participate at least for the time being but I was expecting to have heard a whisper by now.

PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:59 pm
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Sylvaness
Boot


Joined: 16 Oct 2006
Posts: 43

 		Does anyone know if this is still playable? I'm heading up to San Francisco this weekend with friends and was wondering if the original puzzle trails are still active. Smile

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:10 pm
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catherwood
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee

Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 4109
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
Sylvaness wrote:
Does anyone know if this is still playable? I'm heading up to San Francisco this weekend with friends and was wondering if the original puzzle trails are still active. :)


I don't know about Z, but you might also look into the "2-Tone Game" in SF which is probably still playable, although some of the landmarks might be in flux.
http://www.2tonegame.org/

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 9:29 pm
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StoryOfMyLife
Boot

Joined: 03 Jun 2011
Posts: 57

 		WOO! Just got the next decryption sequence in my email, looks like this game isn't dead!

Of course, I can't get into the city til late this week. Sad

PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:06 am
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southeastTCR
Boot

Joined: 26 Mar 2011
Posts: 19
Location: Santa Cruz

 		What a great surprise! I won't be back until May but this is really exciting.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:04 am
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tybeck
Boot

Joined: 16 May 2011
Posts: 15
Location: San Francisco, CA

 		One of our team had gotten word (after some persuasion on his part) that "something" would be happening in "a few months." Good to see that the organizers followed through.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:59 pm
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Tharol
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee

Joined: 02 Oct 2011
Posts: 4805
Location: Muncie, Indiana

 		So basic delay months check.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:44 pm
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