The Guide v.X: LockJaw

by Steve Peters

Feb. 7th - Mar. 18th - After Mar. 18th - After April 5th - After April 28th

Don't know what's going on here? Click here.


Introduction - Recap 1 - Recap 2 - Recap 3 - Recap 4 - Recap 5 - Recap 6 - Recap 7 - Recap 8 - Epilogue


Feb. 7th-March 18th

Grrl-E-Grrl
The Pythia
Net:Sight Solutions
Ganmed Biotechnical
DCMetrocrawlers (abandoned)
ATA - Nocars
URF-Underground Recovery Front
Platform Login
Barbara
Vad
Platform 2
URF Update
Ganmed memos
Moreland

Horoscopes Week 5
TerraShape
Horoscope Connection
Nocars update
Serpent and Hermes

After March 18th

Horoscopes Week 6
URF Forums Update
Barbie/Vad Emails
Iduna Update
Euchre
Barbie/Creeper Emails
Pieces.jpg
Jo Burgess's Password/Email
Where.gif Solution
Admin Inbox
Gen-Tel
Email to Moot

Horoscopes Week 7
Creeper's Password
2nd Recon and Lab Photo
Nocars Map 4 and Emails
Iduna 2nd Edition
Euchre Chat 2
URF Site Hacked
Moreland Hidden Text
Memo.jpg
Net:Sight April 1st Update
Grrl-E-Grrl April 1st Update
Pythia Update-ECCLESIASTIC
Ganmed Employee Login

Grrl-E-Grrl Week 8
WiredSouls
Ganmed Email Accounts
Serpent Messages re:48
ODES Activated
DCMC Easter Emails
Euchre Chat 3/Cards Puzzle
Woe Update
Whispers Messages
URF Cafepress Store Update
Cave Bear's Password
TRUTH

After April 5th

Thomas' and Wolfe's Passwords
More re:48 Messages
Emails from Hermes/Spiral.jpg
Last re:48 Messages/I-Ching
Another Automobile Accident
ODES/Emails from Lauren Woods
Kevin Asgort Amino Acids Puzzle

Horoscopes Week 9
Devi
Ganmed Breadcrumbs
EASTERN/PATH
DCMC Emails Update
Euchre Chat 4/Puzzle
More Breadcrumbs
Jo Burgess Emails April 10th
Kathy Jarrett's Password
Word From Rev. Lee
Calimacus
Nocars DCMC Update April 13
New Platform and Files
Hermes' Email to Ane
Pythia Hacked!
Whispers Webmaster
3rd Set of Breadcrumbs
IRC Contact!

Horoscopes Week 10

Rev. Lee in Paris
Brainstorm
It Sucks to Be Me
Underground Emails April 17th
The Beaten Track
Euchre Chat 5
Iduna 3rd Edition
Breadcrumbs 13 & 14
Moreland Stats Update
Rev. Lee Responds to Grief
Calimacus Hint Emails
Calimacus Solution
PATTS Puzzle
Underground Update April 20/21
PATTS Solution
EUCHARIST
Rouen/Paris Solution

Horoscopes Week 11

G-E-G: Sheri Tepper
Nocars Revoked
ODES Update
Net:Sight Party Invitation
Euchre Chat 6
Notadoll Profile Puzzle
URF Resurrected
Beaten Track 3
Ninjababe
Pythia Scolding
The Beaten Track Solution
Net:Sight Products Update
Message from Paul
Grasshopper/Octopus
HISTORIC
Gossip Queen

After April 28th

Horoscopes Week 12
Gen-Tel Lite Side
Missoli ODES
Alvaro ODES
Breadcrumbs 15 & 16
Gen-Tel Dark Side
Rev. Lee and Genes
Underground Emails 4/29
Arney Meeting Request
Cesyeuxmehantent Puzzle
URF Registration Change
Underground Emails 5/1
Euchre Chat 7
Hoyle Puzzle
Rev. Lee Redecorates
Iduna 4th Edition
Despercebido Puzzle
Light/Dark Side Updates
More ODES Updates
PATTS2 Puzzle/Solution
3rd Hermes Email
EPITAPH
Doan's Death
ODES Updates May 6
Rev. Lee's Email Problems

Grrl-E-Grrl Week 13
uRf Update May6
Rev. Lee's Response
Peccatomortem Puzzle
Iudicium Puzzle
Rev. Lee's Contemplation
uRf Manifesto May 7
Nocars Emails/Puzzle May 8
Euchre Chat 8
Moreland Hacked
Pythia Hacked Again
Caecus
Pythia Memo
Email from Barbie
GenTel Updates May 10
TerraShape Hacked
Caecus v.2/Postcard Puzzle
uRf Manifesto May 11
Ganmed Hacked
Linda's Odes

Horoscopes Week 14
Chatting with Barbie
Kaboom Puzzle
Devenish Files
Caecus v.3
Guilty! Hacks
uRf Manifesto May 15
Nocars Emails May 15
Rev. Lee's Departure
It Is Finished
Asgort ODES May 15
Barbie Chat
Euchre Chat 9/JB Puzzle
Last Nocars Update
Email from Creeper
Net:Sight Browser Update
Endgame! May 17, 2002


Horoscopes Week 12

We've now begun our 12th week. Guess it's time for some new horoscopes:

Aries (Ganmed)
You haven't noticed all the small changes going on around you recently. That's too bad, since those small shifts add up to a big landslide.
Probably a reference to the breadcrumbs being dropped for us around the site.

Taurus (Net:Sight)
Events of the last week have left you with more questions than answers. But are you asking the right questions, and are the answers that difficult to come by?
Hmm, is there something more at Net:Sight that we're missing??

Gemini (Moreland)
The weather on the horizon is ever-changing and ephemeral. Try not to lull yourself into thinking that a storm will pass over you, leaving you unharmed. Life is what you make it, after all, and time can be a wicked mistress. Plan ahead for cloudy skies!
Perhaps the problems over at Ganmed will start to manifest themselves at Moreland soon.

Cancer (uRf)
You're a magnetic personality, and your sphere of influence should spread easily this week. You have the means, the motive, and the manipulative tendencies. Be sure to take care of yourself, take care of what you have left over.
Hmm, seems Hermes might surface soon in his true identity, appearing in a position of influence.

Leo (Gen-Tel)
Now is the time to examine the people in your life that are holding you back from becoming a business success. Take stock of your resources, making extra sure that even if your co-worker's agendas don't match yours that you all still come out in the end smelling like a rose.
Probably a reference to Linda Alvaro having a hidden agenda of some kind.

Virgo (Barbie)
You have been spending too much time trying to focus on the bigger picture. The problem is that you haven't learned to relax and absorb the image. Like a stereogram, it's important to sit back, relax, and let the information come together as it will.
Hmm, a reference to a stereogram. There's been a lot of speculation that there may be stereograms hidden in the pictures at Moreland. We shall see.

Libra (TerraShape)
Things have been relatively quiet of late on the surface, but secretly you've been pretty active. It looks like you've been meeting new people too, so try to make a good impression.
Is Jo up to something?

Scorpio (Serpent/Pythia)
Think through your actions and try to look at things from the perspective of the end result rather than looking at the larger picture. God is in the details.
As opposed to "the devil is in the details?" Hmm.

Sagittarius (DCMC/Nocars)
Your life is a puzzle. Unfortunately someone took a few of the pieces without your knowledge. How are you going to find them?
Could this be hinting that there are more things left by Vad at Moreland? Perhaps the clues leading to them were missed or lost somehow?

Capricorn (Grrl-E-Grrl)
Have you been feeling sluggish or just really busy? It seems that it's taking you longer and longer to get your work done. Perhaps you should take a little break and gather your thoughts.
Seems the May update may be a little late?

Aquarius (WiredSouls)
You're the newest pawn in a dangerous game of chess, Aquarius. You're closer to the eye of the hurricane than you suspect. Sudden changes of allegiance may surprise you.
Poor Rev. Dan looks like he's being used by someone.

Pisces (Vad)
Emotionally you are feeling very disconnected. It could be that you are experiencing betrayal from people that you thought you knew. You will reach out to new friends. While this is comforting, is it a good idea? Have you gotten things a bit backwards?
Obvious reference to Vad distancing himself from Barbie and getting closer to Oscar, his new friend.

Gen-Tel Lite Side

Based on the new clues left by Ninjababe at Whispers, we renewed our effort to find the secret Lite Side page at Gen-Tel. On the Ninjababe card found on Kevin Asgort's ODES page, the gt/ls hint has seemed to be pointing at a couple directories. But taking a second look at that card, we notice that the slash is more of a horizontal underline. That, combined with the superfluous undeline on Ninjababe's post at whispers (Gossip_Queen) leads us to try various things at Gen-Tel using an underline. The gives us much success! Backing up, and trying the obvious, we get www.general-telometrics.com/gt_ls. I tell ya, sometimes we make these puzzles too hard for ourselves! The Greek letters on the card are gt and ls, separated by a _ .

So, now we've found the GT Underground. Taking a look, we do indeed discover some things:

First, notice the hidden text at the top of the page.
Oscar Gray has taken off for parts unknown. Could this be the Oscar that Vad's been referring to? Seems very likely.
Hmm, seems Vern Stevenson's birthday was March 7th. What??! March 7th is my birthday! Hey! I'm in the game! w00t!
A new food service has been contracted. I wonder if they'll be serving Iduna applesauce.
Dr. John seems to be John Missoli, and he seems to be a Beatles fan.

That seems to be all there is of consequence at first glance. Hmm, Dr. John is a Beatles fan, and doesn't know what color the White Album is? Well, lets use that info and try some ODES passwords for him, shall we?

Missoli ODES

A little trial of Beatles-related words quickly yields a password: "white." Entering jmissoli/white takes us to ODES:jmissoli, Dr. Missoli's private page.

We're rewarded with some good information.

Well, almost. Seems someone doesn't want to share their "shared" files. The links to all the weekly research updates all link to the same message: "Research: see me." The note attached talks about a resistance to make files available, but it's not exactly clear who is making this statement.

In the Private Files section, there are two files:
FILES LA Memo-Dated 1/28/2002, it's the memo that was sent out announcing Linda Alvaro's arrival at Gen-Tel, along with an apparent annotation showing how excited Dr. Missoli is about it.
FILES LA Orient-Dated 2/4 to 2/6/2002, this is an outline of Linda's orientation period at Gen-Tel.

Then there are some notes:
NOTES 04/05/2002-Gives us a bunch of links:

  • The Roslin Institute Edinburgh-Famous for cloning the first animal, Dolly the sheep.
  • The Myeloma Institute-Multiple myeloma is a type of cancer that affects plasma cells. Missoli references the fourth abstract down on the page, which is entitled "Studies of telomere length and telomerase activity in myeloma and normal hematopoiesis." Uh-huh.
  • Yeast Ku protein yada yada yada. More telomere references here. Missoli's a little smug about how far behind these guys are. Yeah, I would be, too. Still using old technology. The nerve.
  • BJ Klein-Seems to be down as of press time.
  • New Heaven New Earth: Physical Immortality-Interesting site about how we're on the cusp of attaining immortality.

NOTES 04/08/2002-A Note To Self, quoting Linda Alvaro: "It is not enough to conquer, one must know how to seduce." This in turn is a quote attributed to Voltaire, the famous French historian/writer. Hmm, that's got CLUE written all over it, doesn't it?

NOTES 04/12/2002-Talks about Gen-Tel's project named Ambrosia. Looks like Ambrosia is Gen-Tel's attempt at the Fountain of Youth. Unfortunately, it's caused one death already.

Okay, let's go back to our Voltaire clue. Something makes us want to try 'voltaire' as Linda's ODES password......

Alvaro ODES

Sure enough! Entering lalvaro/voltaire at her ODES login give us ODES:lalvaro. Again, the links to all the weekly research updates all link to the same message: "Research: see me," but with a slightly different note attached. Same result, though. Looks like we will have no access to Linda's research, at least not here.

On to the private files:

FILES Intro Memo-A response to Misolli's memo of introduction. Seems kind of smarmy, doesn't it??

FILES Feb Thoughts
-A journal of Linda's. The 2/12 entry is interesting, as it seems that Gen-Tel has a particular lab tech who doesn't really seem to know what he/she is doing. Imposter? Spy?? Also, it seems that she has met Lauren (L) and is getting to know her a little.

FILES April Thoughts-(Where was she in March??) This journal mainly concerns itself with Linda's progress in the lab. She talks of cloning and things going mysteriously wrong due to contamination, which she seems to blame on an inept staff. Also, note her frequent reference to headaches, which seems rather odd. Not sure who the E.H. is that Linda refers to in her 4/29 entry.

Breadcrumbs 15 & 16

The little gray squares updated again at Ganmed on April 29th, linking to:

www.ganmed.com/15.html
www.ganmed.com/16.html

Again, looking through the hidden text we find the following fragments:

15) Villanueva girl "filed." When she came in to see me
16) ds stumbled across the rooms and saw what they did. Hell,the inc

This, when added to everything that's been found so far, seemingly completes the series:

re: the screw up down there, things are fine. One more week and we
could have had them out of the tunnels and burned. Too bad those kids
stumbled across the rooms and saw what they did. Hell, the
incinerators can handle five or six at a time. They're fast, too.
You can't imagine how hot they get. CD said there would be 'treatment
failures,' especially early on. I guess 'treatment failure' sounds
better than 'dead' or 'we fucked up big.' We're covered as far as the
test patients, nobody missed them. That's the great thing about the
homeless--you can drop them off anywhere. Even in tunnels. How many
there are, I'm not sure. The report listed ten of them, but there are
names for some and aliases for others. I still have a copy of the
report that that Villanueva girl "filed." When she came in to see me
she was upset, but I took care of her. She's not upset anymore.

So we know this is from Arney, but don't know who the recipient of this 'memo' is, yet.

Gen-Tel Dark Side

So the URL for the Gen-Tel Lite side is www.general-telometrics.com/gt_ls. We know from ninjababe's postings on Whispers that she's been trying to figure out whether or not to post the really juicy stuff she's being told. In those posts, there are some hints to these things being 'dark,' so it makes sense to try www.general-telometrics.com/gt_ds. It works!

The Gen-Tel Dark Side gives us the more serious gossip, the latest item dated April 15th. Interesting items of note concerning folks we know include:

  • Oscar is apparently an infamous practical-joker.
  • Oscar has left Gen-Tel for good.
  • Dr. Missoli's wife has apparently left him.
There's also an interesting little tidbit that was heard outside Dr. Missoli's office: "I came to a few conclusions that I don't think should be put down on paper. We need to talk, but not here. I'll contact you."

Rev. Lee and Genes

On April 29th, Rev. Lee responded to a gene therapy question:
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: regenboogkapje
Subject: MedicalGene therapy, what`s against it?

Dear Rev. Lee and all the peoples here at the Wired Souls-forum!
I`m a 24-year-old medical student from Holland and right now I`m
deciding in which direction to take my career next.
I`m thinking of maybe going to work in the gene-modulating field.
I was wondering how you feel about MedicalGene-therapy. On your Wired
Soulspage you stated that you don`t approve of this. But I was
wondering: "if it is being used to do good e.g. help cure diseases,
what`s against it?"

And when in Europe rev. Lee, feel free to visit Holland *welcome*!!!
I would be delighted to show you around! Dusseldorf sure is great
this time a year, isn`t it? ! :-)
Take Care! Regenboogkapje
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Dan_Lee
Reply to: regenboogkapje [ Message 1 ]
Subject: RE: MedicalGene therapy, what`s against it?

Greetings, Friend!

I'd say I'm not so much against cloning, gene therapy, and the like
as I am...unsure about it.

We seem to be rushing headlong into playing Supreme Being without
considering the moral implications fully.

Concerning gene therapy, on the one hand it would be WONDERFUL to
stop things like cancer and other diseases, but then again we have to
consider the fact that for thousands of years we've been dying of
disease.

It's always been taken as part of the Natural Order that we are born,
we grow, and we die. There are good reasons for that cycle. What I'm
morally unsure of is whether by removing disease and illness we begin
to interfere with the Supreme Being's master plan.

It's a slippery slope. I hope we're all wearing our spiritual cleats
so we don't lose our footing.

The Supreme Being's gene genie,

Reverend Lee

Underground Emails 4/29

April 29th brings some new emails showing up in our fearless foursome's email boxes, dated from the 26th to the 29th:

Up for a visitor? tells us that Barbie wants to visit Vad this weekend. Vad's response seems to indicate he must not be all that unhappy with Barbie.

In B's distraction, Vad queries Eric about what's up with Barbie. In Eric's reply, re:B's distraction, we confirm that Paul (RebaR) was not on the body bags crawl, so maybe there was a little case of mistaken identity with Arney confusing Paul for Eric. Also, looks like re: re:B's distraction from Vad to CaveBear shows us how Vad is becoming closer to Oscar.

Also, though not email, Barbie updated her thoughts and retitled them "Quaere" (Latin for 'inquire') instead of "Confusion" on her in-email-box links. This version of Barbie's thoughts can be found here.

Arney Meeting Request

April 30th brings us our first new email showing up at Ganmed in quite a while. In Chet Doan's box is a reply from Arney, re:Meeting request. Looks like Chet wants to have some sort of meeting with Arney this Friday. This could be good! cesyeuxmehantent.jpg

Cesyeuxmehantent Puzzle

April 30th brings a mysterious email from Hermes to various JawBreakers:

subject: o.o

message body: x.x

with this picture (cesyeuxmehantent.jpg) attached: ----------------->

Looks to be some sort of round head with the eyes x'd out, as if unconcious. The text reads, "eyes in the dark shiny little dead eyes."

There is speculation that there is a hidden www address in the 'scratches.' Also, the circle might be a cross-section of a human skull, as seen on a CAT scan.

Also, the picture title, cesyeuxmehantent, translates to "These eyes haunt me" (French).

No progress was immediately made on this.

URF Registration Change

It was noticed at some point that the registration info for uRf had changed at some point along the way.

The webmaster is listed as leomedia@10101-10010-110.org.

Emailing leomedia returns the following autoresponse:
-------------------------------------------
Subject: I am occupied

I am occupied.
Replies will follow when civil rights are restored.


-jc
--------------------------------------------

The 'jc' seems to be Jules Carmentis, the ex-uRf webmaster. He'll obviously get back to us when civil rights are restored, or when he gets out of jail, whichever comes first.

Underground Emails 5/1

In What's Up?, and the subsequent replies, Creeper wants to get together with Barbie to see how she's doing. She's a little concerned that Barbie's not herself lately, even though she only saw her yesterday.

And of course, Euchre tonight!

Euchre Chat 7

Our friends Vad and Barbie met again for their weekly Wednesday night Euchre game. Vad was a little upset at the lack of attention he was getting from Barbie, but he didn't know about the numerous conversations she was having at the same time. A transcript of the night's game can be found in message 3316.

Vad got tired of being ignored by Barbie, so he left in a huff (oh sure, real mature!). But as he left, he threw out a hint:

"Tell Bear that according to Hoyle 272."

Hoyle Puzzle

Okay, so we go in search of a Book of Hoyle, the standard of rules for all sorts of games, in case you didn't know.

Amazon.com has a book listed with some sample pages. One page in particular in the table of contents looks like it holds our key. In the upper-right corner we see what's on page 272, a game called Four-Five-Six. So we try www.moreland-wv.org/four-five-six/, and find what looks to be a blank page.

In the source code, we find our answer:

<!-- badge.jpg -->
<!-- disciplinary.jpg -->

Okay, so we have two now images:

Looking at www.moreland-wv.org/four-five-six/badge.jpg, we see that Oscar is indeed Oscar Gray, a former or current Ganmed employee, specifically a Lab Tech.

Next, www.moreland-wv.org/four-five-six/disciplinary.jpg shows us a disciplinary report on Oscar. Seems Oscar's been spiriting full copies of research notes out of the lab, for some reason. Plus, he's apparently gotten numerous verbal warnings about this before.

Looking at the dates on this form and at the Gen-Tel Lite Side, Oscar's timeline looks like this:

March 15th-Oscar leaves Gen-tel
March 18th-Hired at Ganmed
April 30th-Date of written warning

We also notice that Oscar's middle name starts with a D, if that matters at all. Also, it's signed by Lawrence Donaldson (Supervisor) and Enid Fitzsimmons (HR), whom we haven't seen before.

So, we have confirmation that Oscar quit Gen-Tel to work for Ganmed, and Ganmed apparently has a lab at Moreland, where he's working now.

Rev. Lee Redecorates

Our friend Rev. Lee wants to share more details of his life for some reason. Here's his post from Whispers on May 1st:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
May-1-2002 1:16 PM Message 1 of 1
Group: General, miscellaneous and sundry
From: Dan_Lee
Subject: General, miscellaneous and sundry

Boys and girls,

What a busy week this has been! The house is a shambles, a complete and utter wreck. I can only stand it because when it's over and done with the Reverend will have a completely redecorated place. The dining room is being done in red and black...tres chic. The living room is going to be a stark white with multicolored accents throughout. I've picked out the most wonderful Oriental carpet to go there. Black with cream colored Chinese characters (at least I think they're Chinese).

The kitchen and nook are being done in warm wood tones and I'm finally going to have that parquet floor I've always lusted after.

Each of the three bathrooms will have a different theme: First floor is a sort of nature theme, second floor is a bit industrial, lots of chrome and glass. The third floor bath is my favorite, at least in the designer's sketches. Hollywood. Old black and white photos of movie stars from the 40's. Studio-style lighting. I've even found a shower curtain that looks like a giant piece of movie film. Fabulous.

A friend and I went out last night, and you won't BELIEVE where I got talked into going.

Square dancing.

Yes, I said square dancing.

Pick your jaws up off the floor.

Imagine the Reverend, in Armani, walking in to a room full of denim, bad dresses, and mile-high hair (side note: "The higher the hair, the closer to God" seems to be the mentality). To say I stood out is quite the understatement.

The most surprising thing is I had fun, once I blinded my eyes to the outfits. I'm going shopping this evening for a pair of boots. My dancing partner tells me she knows of a divine little place that sells boots I'd love. She suggested I'd look good in white African python. We shall see.

Cowboy boots. Me. Whod've thought?

Well anyway, I need to dash off. I have correspondance to attend to before my friend and I hit the shoe store place.

I'm so excited!

May you find peace and Tommy Hilfiger,

Reverend Lee
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Very odd post, this. Why so many details?? It's just screaming "CLUES!" but there's nothing here that we can find.

Iduna 4th Edition

The new Iduna Newsletter was posted on May 1st.

First is another gardening article by Nadine. Curiously, there's no list of flowers this time around. That's not like her at all, is it?

Next is an article on the construction of the new Interfaith Hall. One curious feature is the fact that it's got its own independent power supply. Now why would that be necessary?

Last is an article on the Neighborhood Stroll. Interesting that Gina Genet's name crops up again here.

Despercebido Puzzledespercebido.jpg

On May 3rd, another email from Hermes was sent to select players:

Subject: x.x

Message Body: _._

Attached was a picture called despercebido.jpg. Despercebido = Portugese for unnoticed/unregarded. In the picture is the text, "the dead are blind" and "the living is blinded by the dead."

There definitely seems to be a 'blindness' or 'eyes' theme going on here. Also, a furry round head again, with the eyes x'd out. Is this a reference to a mouse??

The larger text seems to contain the words: crash, smash, crunch, bash, bang, bang, die, die.
All the words are up for debate, especially the second "bang."

Still no progress on the meaning of these emails.

Lite/Dark Side Updates

That same day, some new dirt showed up on both the Lite Side and Dark Side pages at GenTel:

New Material on the Lite Side:

"To have a heart attack would imply that he has a heart"- Celia (this wasn't about the ex, was it?)

"Stop swearing at me, what are you, some kind of jerk" -Kristen

"He sounds like digital ewok" -Kristen

"Huge spiders are bad. Small spiders are also bad." -Jennifer

"I lack ambition. I think I'd rather go fishin'" -Celia

"I'm a bit 'self medicated' in the fruit of the vine department" -Jennifer

"I love the absurd" -Marie

"Your mind is just so brilliant that you don't have to think of stuff...it just does it for you" -Celia to Kristen (???)

Celia- "My vibes usually get lost around the Carolinas...something about the beach and the mountains."
Jennifer- "Yeah, I hear there's a pretty strong karmic riptide around there. Have you tried to send vibes at tidal shifts?"
Celia- "hmmm, that just might be my problem"
Jennifer- "You might be able to ride a wave through two or three states and catch the North south karmic winds"
Celia- "I'll work on that"
Jennifer- "I know for myself, the Rockies really get in the way of vibratory flight paths...very tricky, those little mountains"
(note: FREAKS)


New material on the Dark Side:

April 29: The loser janitor put a deck of nude playing cards in Kev's desk. What a freak! I have half a mind to show him what a real ninja is made of.

Well, ladies, let's mourn the fact that janitor boy is taken. Word is that it's with someone around the office (the same someone that left body paints in a supply closet....hmmm)

Well, it looks as if James has a crush on Marie...for the simple reason that she is always so nice to him. Hmmm...I seem to recall that she loves the absurd. What does this say about him?

So, I hear that Celia may be missing a few. Apparently she was seen looking out the window talking to herself. She claims someone was in the room just before Simi spotted her...likely story.

Apparently Dr. W. fell in love in a port-a-potty line in the parking lot of some show! Yes, you heard that right. He was overheard talking about her long blonde dreads and over use of patchouli oil. The only thing more disgusting is the image of the beautiful janitor boy's flesh interrupted by the hideous nipple ring.

Well, the really funny thing about these is that most of them are quotes from folks in the #jawbreakers chatroom. Folks' actual names are even being used! Even the 'loser janitor' is a reference to SpaceBass's new alter-ego, GenTelJanitor, who has his very own weblog. The reference to the nude playing cards was in direct response to something posted on the fictional janitor's blog, so it's really cool to discover that we can apparently create or assume character identities that may be used as part of the game!

More ODES Updates

Along with the Light Side/Dark Side updates, some new stuff appeared on the three known ODES directories:

On ODES:jmissoli (jmissoli/white) we see a few new links:

NOTES 04/22/2002 in the private files section shows us a scratch pad (on GANMED letterhead!) where apparently Missoli is noodling around on a problem he eventually finds the solution to. Unfortunately, I know nothing about genetics, so we'll have to wait for me to get an explanation of all this from someone who knows what he's talking about. Next update.
NOTES 05/02/2002 is apparently a memo going out from Missoli to his team. In it, he mentions having heard from GM. If this is referring to Ganmed, then it looks like we have some sort of cooperation or pass-off happening between the two companies. The way it sounds, Ganmed is finished with their part of things, now Gen-Tel is ready to step up to the plate. What steps are they about to take??
At the bottom is a quote by Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason.

ODES:kasgort give us more:

ODES 04/26/2002 p1a is a diagram of some more amino acids.
Assuming this is another puzzle like the first Amino Acids Puzzle, putting all the amino acids in order is
Asp07 Glu08 Ala09
Asp11 Glu12 Asn13
Asp14 Ser15 Thr35
Ile36 Leu37 Leu38
Trp39 Ala40 Thr41
Cys42 His43 Ile44
Asn45 Gly?

Assign the amino acid abbreviations(using www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/chemistry/bio/amino-acids_en.html):

And you get: DEAD END STILL WATCHING?

This is probably a follow up to the decoded message in the first decoded amino acid message:
"Gentel Secret Someone: I know you're watching. More to follow"

ODES 04/26/2002 p1b is a note, presumably to Missoli.
ODES 04/26/2002 p2 is a graph of some sort of analysis.

Finally, there's a new file on ODES:lavaro for us to look at:
FILES May Thoughts dated 5/2/2002 tells about a problem in the 'mouse room.' Apparently Linda's been trying to complete a run of experiments and has had problems with contamination of some sort.

Could Oscar be snooping around the lab, looking for files, etc. and in the process be contaminating the experiments???

PATTS2 Puzzle/Solution

Meanwhile, looks like REVELATION over at Pythia has been updated, too. The image now clicks through to PATTS2, another signs puzzle. This time we see a Stop sign, a backwards number 2 and a Kangaroo sign.

In the source code, we find the message <same thing, only diffeerent>, so we try the same thing we did before. First two letters? No, the 2 is backwards, so maybe the last two letters of each word: stOP + kangarOO=opoo. Hmm, that doesn't sound promising, but it works!

Trying www.thepythia.net/opoo.html takes us to JUDGEMENTDAY, which is a transcript of a conversation between Doan and Arney. Well, I guess we know what the appointment mentioned in the Ganmed email was referring to.

Looks like Arney is being 'let go' because of the guilt Chet is feeling. I have a feeling he won't be going easily, though.

3rd Hermes Email

A select few players received another email from Hermes at 2:33 am on May 5th:

Subject: <>.<>
Message Body: \./

With the attached picture, vuoto.jpg. Vuoto means 'empty' in Italian.

This picture looks to be an extreme closeup of an eye, with some braille and blurry symbols superimposed over top of it. The braille translates to:

IS ITS
AND IN
N MAKE
F HELL,
HEAVEN.

A little searching reveals that this is a piece of the quote found in Leland.html, one of the hidden .html pages discovered buried in the code of the Net:Sight Browser way bay at the beginning of the game:

The mind is its own place, and in itself
can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition though in hell:
better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.

-John Milton, Paradise Lost. Book 1, Paragraph 8.


Are we being pointed back to Sebastien Leland, the Chief Financial Officer at Net:Sight Solutions somehow?

In summary, the three emails give us the following information:

Email 1 Email 2 Email 3
Subject o.o x.x <>.<>
Message Body x.x _._ \./
.jpg name
(translated)
These eyes
haunt me
unnoticed or
unregarded
empty

The subject and message body may be depicting eyes. If so, one possible interpretion could be:

o.o=open eyes
x.x=dead eyes
<>.<>=blind eyes
_._=sleeping eyes
\./=angry eyes

Then, there are the blurred images on the left side of the picture. Looks like roman numerals for 15 (XV), with something that looks like the word game hangman above it. Hmm.

These puzzles have not yielded an immediate solution yet.

Epitaph

On May 5th, the constellation image on Pythia updated to link to EULOGY. Here we have the familiar picture of the snake, this time with the text, "My soul is removed far off from peace," from the book of Lamentations. The letters m,l,o,r,a are highlighted, so following the methodology from previous puzzles here, we discover that this is an anagram for 'moral' which we then enter into the input box at the Wired Souls Sound Archive.

This takes us to another Chet Doan confession: EPITAPH.

Once again, we see quotes from Frankenstein interspersed throughout the page.

Th content of Doan's confession here leads us to the inescapable conclusion that this is a suicide note! Looks like Doan can't live with the guilt any longer.


Recap 8: What do we know?

Oscar Gray is a former employee of Gen-Tel who now works at Moreland for Ganmed, and has been sneaking documents out of the lab. There is major speculation now that Oscar is our friend Hermes.

John Missoli is apparently in communication with Ganmed about the Moreland Project.

Kevin Asgort is leaving messages in his work to a 'secret someone' at Ganmed.

Chet Doan had a little chat with James Arney about his techniques, resulting in Arney being 'let go.' We'll see how easily he goes.

Chet feels such remorse at his actions having resulted in so many deaths, that he is planning on killing himself.

Barbie continues to get a bigger picture on what's going on, thanks to info we're giving her.

It's looking like Ganmed and Gen-Tel are working on their own versions of the same thing: Ganmed's work at Moreland is apparently called The Eden Project, while Gen-Tel's is known as Ambrosia. Some corporate spying or something similar seems to be going on, as some of the scientists are still in communication with their 'competition' somehow. Are these folks colleagues who are trying to combine resources to come up with a solution, or are they trying to beat each other to a successful result? Plus, is Ambrosia being secretly introduced to the population at Moreland to counterract the life-threatening effects of the Iduna apples? Hmmm.

Things that are unsolved:

  • Hermes Email images/clues
  • Who is Hermes??
  • uRf Flash Animation?
  • Diagrams on Missoli's and Asgort's ODES?
  • Who is threatening Jo Burgess and her daughter, and what is her little project?
  • Will there really be a Net:Sight party?
  • Various Ganmed Passwords (especially Arney's and DeLaPuma's
  • Various ODES Passwords
  • Various Moreland's Residential logins
  • Various TerraShape passwords
  • Terrashape Department Icons?
  • Who is The Toff?

Doan's Death

On the morning of May 6th, an email message from Armando DeLaPuma appeared in all of the Ganmed email accounts, announcing Chet Doan's death. Seems the company line is that he died (at home) of an undiagnosed cranial aneurysm, not suicide.

A few hours later this message showed up in Tony Wolfe's email account, wondering about police tape being put up around Doan's office. Seems there's some sort of coverup going on here, which shouldn't be surprising.

All of which begs some questions. How (and where) did Doan really die? Who's in charge at Ganmed, now? I really wouldn't put it past DeLaPuma to be covering up his suicide as PR damage control.

Later in the day, the Ganmed News Update Page was updated to announce Doan's death.

ODES Updates May 6

ODES gave us some new files. There's a lot of stuff to trudge through here, so I'll try to highlight the significant stuff:

On Kevin Asgort's Page:
ODES 05/03/2002 p1
ODES 05/03/2002 p2-These seem to be some diagrams about gene sequencing. Looks like there may be something hidden, but can't seem to find anything.

NOTES 05/04/2002-Looks like there's something hidden here. A little digging shows a substitution of numbers for letters, based on info found here. Each number represents the Residue Mass of an amino acid:

186.21=Tryptophan [Trp, W]
137.14=Histidine [His, H]
etc.

Putting the last letters together forms a message:

WHERE HAVE WE
LEFT THE PATH
PLEASE HELP ME

Looks like Keving is asking for more help from his 'secret someone.'

NOTES 05/06/2002-Just some notes about 'what if?' scenarios. Can't seem to find anything significant here.

JMISSOLI NOTES 05/04/2002a
JMISSOLI NOTES 05/05/2002-These notes confirm that Missoli is aware of the stuff going on at Ganmed and Moreland.

On Missoli's Page:
ODES 05/03/2002
NOTES 05/04/2002a
NOTES 05/04/2002b
NOTES 05/05/2002-Interesting little tidbit here. What's with all the talk about columns?? "First, Corinthian columns up and down the facade...GT's current building should have, oh, 15 columns for the most harmonious look. Then build a 26..."

Looks like a clue to a biblical reference to me. Sure enough:
1 Corithians 15:26 - The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

NOTES 05/06/2002a
NOTES 05/06/2002b

On Linda's Page:
ODES 05/03/2002

FILES May Thoughts (updated)-Linda is apparently very close to figuring out what's going wrong with the experiments. She's also concerned about the friction between here and her co-workers. Her 5/3 entry indicates that she looked a little deeper into the research of one of Kevin's secret messages to his "secret someone", and wasn't able to confirm the results using "real" science.
FILES zoo
JMISSOLI NOTES 05/06/2002-Hmm. Looks like Linda might have gotten access to Missoli's password. How might she have discovered what it was? Well, if she were serpent.....

Rev. Lee's Email Problems

Well, it seems somebody has been messing with Rev. Lee's email server. He posted a message on WireSouls on May 6th:
-------------------------------------------------
Group: Question for the web-savvy
From: Dan_Lee
Subject: Question for the web-savvy

Greetings, Friends!

I have an odd question for you.

I was doing my daily mail check and found something strange.

I had five new messages from a Club member. The date/time would seem
to indicate they were all sent this morning at 10 am Eastern time,
but upon opening the messages they had different dates on them, from
a few weeks ago to yesterday.

Is this possible?

I do wish I were more "up" on my internet skills so I wouldn't have
to trouble you all with this little issue, but the content of these
letters is distressing. I've tried phoning the sender but have been
unable to reach him at the number he gave on his membership form.

Anxiously awaiting divine guidance (and isn't that a switch?),

Reverend Lee

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

One of us responded. Here's that email, plus Rev. Lee's response:

-------------------------------------------------
Good (and well-dressed) Reverend:

It is certainly possible that a number of dire scenarios may have
afflicted your friend. Assuming that all of his messages were, in
fact authored on different dates, he may have been the victim of a
mutinous ISP (that's "Internet Service Provider," for you
technophobes like the Reverend), who decided that they were going to
hold up all of his email until he paid his bills, or because they
were legally suspicious that the content might be libelous or
otherwise, or simply because they felt like it. (ISPs can be
mercurial creatures...perhaps they simply didn't like the cut of
your friend's jib).

Or, alternatively, you may have actually received all of these
messages some time ago but just been looking for them in the wrong
directory. You're a man of the (fine) cloth, not an operating
systems wizard, so you might be forgiven if you pressed the wrong
button somewhere and blasted your friend's messages off to Digital
Eternity.

A final possibility is that some unknown third party may have gotten
between you and your friend's messages. Hackers know no shame, nor
are they duly cowed by the sanctity of the confessional. I might
suggest that you get that strapping webmaster of yours to do a
little poking around in what they call the "activity log" to see if
someone's been stealing sips of the communion wine on the side, so
to speak.

If the content of these messages is as dire as you suggest, waste no
time! Contact your friend by whatever means necessary! If you can't
find him via the "usual" route, may I suggest imploring the fine
members of this community for help, as one or more of them might be
personally familiar with the member in question.

A humble messenger of greater forces,

Ozy_y2k
---------------------------------------------

Rev. Lee's reply:

---------------------------------------------
Greetings, Friend!

Thank you so much for the explanations. I'm a little more relaxed
now, knowing that it may have been user error or a problem somewhere
else. It seemed strange that those five mails were the only ones to
do that. I've gone back and checked to see if the sent date and time
matches up on all my other correspondance. It does.

I'll continue to try and reach him. The letters seemed increasingly
desperate and disturbing, so I don't think I have time to waste.

Thank you again!

The Supreme Being's lifeguard on the beach of life,

Reverend Lee
---------------------------------------------

More evidence that Rev. Lee's webmaster, WM1 and Serpent are the same person. Looks like Serpent held all of Chet's email 'confessions' to Rev. Lee, only letting them through now, the day after Doan kills himself. Nice.

Grrl-E-Grrl Week 13

Monday brings new horoscopes again:

Aries (Ganmed)
A major setback this week leaves you reeling, but with hard work and a change in direction you can recover and forge ahead. An obvious reference to Chet Doan's death.

Taurus (Net:Sight)
You've never been one to draw too much attention to yourself, Taurus, and this week should be no different. Your innate practicality might make you hesitant to take too much on, but are you being a touch too cautious? Live a little. Hmm. Will Net:Sight ever unveil their new creation??

Gemini (Moreland)
Your stars are bright this week, Gemini. But too often the iridescent shimmer of bright youth flares quickly and is gone before it is truly appreciated. Conserve your energy, make time for yourself. Spending your potential may be the metaphorical equivalent of wiping your slate clean. Libra figures prominently. Perhaps a reference to the value of youth, and appreciating what we have??

Cancer (uRf)
Sometimes a good stiff drink is the answer to so many questions! This week you need to be careful, since Pluto stands on the threshold of your astral house, and you know the sort of havoc and mayhem the lord of the dead can bring with him! Don't let your friends drive you crazy, and remember, comments you make this week could spread like a virus, infecting all your relationships with doubt and mistrust. Unless you like being alone, be careful what you say and do! Hmm, looks like uRf may be planning some mischief this week.

Leo (Gen-Tel)
Oh the troubles you face, Leo! You just can’t seem to get your act together. You know that you need something, you just don’t know what that something is. The more you focus, the less you see. To top it off, it seems that everyone around you has their own agenda. Perhaps that’s the problem, perhaps not. Maybe what you’re looking for will fall from the sky. That doesn’t really happen though…does it? Obviously referring to the missing piece to the Ambrosia puzzle. Gen-Tel is so close to a breakthrough, but can't seem to find the solution.

Virgo (Barbie)
I hope you have tough skin grrl, as the week looks like it might be a tough one. Decisions that you’ve made may come back to haunt you…especially if you don’t have a chance to explain yourself. Take care to let your friends and family know just how much you care. You may not get the chance to do so later. After all, you never know what the next day will bring. Reference to the trust Barbie's put in some of us JawBreakers?

Libra (TerraShape)
Looks like you're in for a bit of a tough week, Libra. With any luck it'll just be a temporary blip in an otherwise productive period. Keep your wits about you towards the second half of the week especially. Well, we'll keep our eyes peeled over at TerraShape this week.

Scorpio (Serpent/Pythia)
Good fortune or bad luck? It depends on your perspective. Remember, Scorpio, the mighty have a long way to fall. Watch your step. Yeah!

Sagittarius (DCMC/Nocars)
You, my dear, are smart, strong and confident. You’ve heard that you’re entire life, and you are just now beginning to realize that they were correct. You haven’t been yourself lately, but now you feel powerful. You just need to get yourself together and go after what you want. Keep the energy you feel today throughout the week…you’d hate for it to end with a fizzle, wouldn’t you? Our crawler friends are putting the pieces together. Now, what are they going to be able to do with the information they have?

Capricorn (Grrl-E-Grrl)
Better late than never… or so they always say. Make sure that when you show up, you look spectacular. Just don’t forget that looks aren’t everything, you may say or do something that causes great strife if you aren’t careful. I know that it’s hard for you, but it’s best to just sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Hmm. Still not sure if we can trust 'clues' found at G-E-G.

Aquarius (WiredSouls)
Life seems to be getting more complicated from one day to the next. Simplicity is the key. Take stock of your surroundings and get rid of that which encumbers you. Perhaps Rev. Lee needs to cut off a relationship with someone who may be more nefarious than he realizes.


Pisces (Vad)
You’ve never felt more alone then you do now. Is it your pride or something deeper that is separating you from those you hold dear? Prepare yourself for the unexpected as danger is just around the corner, ready to strike when you least expect it. Poor Bruce. All alone in that hellish town. What will he do? What will he do??

Also, since it's the beginning of May, some new features have shown up:

May Editorial talks about how difficult it can be to get friends to agree on something. Seems the theme here is choices. Is somebody going to be faced with a difficult choice, soon?
Gina Genet is an interview with our favorite mysterious Moreland citizen. When are we going to find out who she really is??
Dating on the Job gives a little advice about relationships with folks you work with. I hope Lauren Woods reads this.
A Pie in the Face is a review of Jamesi's fansite, Guysguise.com! Woohoo!

uRf Update May 6

May 6th also brought a new Manifesto and Link at uRf.

"Links" on the new uRf front page now gives you The Death Clock, a site where you can see how much time you have left on earth. Charming.

There's also a new Manifesto image ("o.jpg" at right) of an eye and with the text:

"cut off the world from the feet so standing alone is easier. the
living keep calling but no reply will follow flow fall to them. they
don't know the dead eyes that see.

it is starting soon, starting where it ended where the dead eyes can
see it and their dead tongues can laugh like torn lung-ta flags
in the moving sky
"

There definitely seems to be an eye theme going on here. We'll see where this leads.

Rev. Lee's Response

It looks like Rev. Lee has found out about Doan's death. Posted on Whispers:

May-6-2002 6:27 PM Message 5 of 5
Group: Question for the web-savvy
From: Dan_Lee
Reply to: Dan_Lee [ Message 1 ]
Subject: exceptionally shaken up right now

i finally got through to the number i've been trying all day. he's
dead.

my mind is spinning. could i have helped if i'd known sooner? why
did this happen? i spoke with someone from the police that was there
in his office. can't think straight right now.

i asked if i should send them the messages. don't remember what they
said. i need to go sit outside and think.

reverend lee

could i have intervened?


I think Rev. Lee has indeed been being used. He seems genuinely shocked and saddened by Chet Doan's death.

Peccatomortem Puzzle

A busy day! The morning of May 6th also gives us a new link at The Pythia. The Patts image on the front page now links to Peccatomortem (translation: death of sin), which is a page with runic text and a circular image link. The name of the page, vates, apparently means 'prophet.'

The runes on the page translate to the following:

The walls have eyes.

The ceilings have ears.

My reach is not to be underestimated.

I'll spare you the audio and the visual. This isn't rotten.com.

The good doctor's last moments on this mortal coil were routine, pedestrian even. I so expected something else. Perhaps some tears, perhaps some gnashing of teeth. A little melodramatic wall-pounding.

The tape clearly shows what happened.

6:30 am Monday, May 6.

He sits behind his obscene mahogany desk. He shuffles papers for a good five minutes, making sure everything is in its proper position. A true control freak to the end.

He carefully picks up two framed photos, first one, and then the other.

His parents.

His lost love.

How sentimental.

+++

He was an arrogant, self-interested bastard. He built a house of cards on questionable ethics and moral quicksand. And when the very foundation on which the structure stood cracked and began to splinter, he knew what he needed to do, take the easy route. Avoid arrest and prosecution. Stay away from what would likely be a lifetime behind bars. I wonder what it feels like to be empty like that. To be a vase awaiting the floral arrangement that defines your purpose.

Consciousless.

I know what you're thinking. 'He wasn't so bad.'

You know what? Opinions are like assholes.

+++

So anyway, after fiddling with the photographs, he simply sighs, picks it up and pulls the trigger. Nobody heard it.

His secretary came in to work at 8. At 8:11 she entered his office and saw him in his chair as usual.

A moment later, the red splash across the left side of the chair back registered.

And then the screaming started.


Well, Serpent certainly doesn't seem too saddened, does she? Well, at least we have a cool new LockJaw slogan!

So, let's click through the circular image on the page....

Iudicium Puzzle

...and we're at a new directory over on WiredSouls, Iudicium (translation: Judgement), at a page entitled Pater, Peccavi (translation: Father, I have sinned).

We see a circular image on a colored background, with a Submit Box at the bottom. Seeing as we have no idea what to do, let's trying entering something to see what happens.

Ah! A kickout page, about animals. Let's try again. Hmm, another kickout page. Seems that each time we enter a wrong answer, we get kicked out to a page that's somehow a hint pointing at the right answer. So, it's time for a little group effort here.

After much cooperative work by the folks in #jb, it was discovered that reloading the page changed both the center image and the color of the background, which in turn changed the set of kickout pages you received.

In all, there are 4 images and 7 background colors, resulting in 28 different possible logins. In addition, the images around the central image were found to represent the 7 deadly sins with the latin translation of each. Going from the bottom clockwise:

Ira (Anger)
Invidia (Envy)
Avaritia (Avarice)
Gula (Gluttony)
Accidia (Sloth)
Luxuria (Lust)
Superbia (Pride)

After a Herculean effort that took all morning and into the afternoon, all of the logins were eventually solved. The logins are in four groups, which correspond to the image shown in the centre of www.wiredsouls.org/iudicium/.

For each image, there are seven logins, each corresponding with the background color of the login page. The answers corresponded to the sins themselves, punishment, virtue and animal symbol for each. Each correct answer takes us to a page with some thought or insight from one of the characters in the story. A summary of the solutions and pages they lead to (along with who we speculate the page is from/about) is as follows:

Name

Color

Sin (image: sds1)

Punishment (sds2)

Virtue (sds3)

Symbol (sds4)

Kickouts: Sin, ethics Kickouts: punishments, torture, ethics Kickouts: Bioethics, virtues Kickouts: Animals,
Endangered Species

Ira (anger)

Red

anger
Linda/Serpent

dismembered alive
Metrocrawlers or Eric/CaveBear

patience
Bruce/Vad

bear
Hermes

Averitia (greed)

Orange

greed
Chet Doan

forced to eat rats toads and snakes
Jo Burgess

liberality
Eric Wyngarde

pig
Chet Doan or
Tony Wolfe

Gula (gluttony)

yellow

gluttony
Rev. Lee

put in cauldrons of boiling oil
John Missoli or Chet Doan

abstinence
Barbie

frog
Morelanders

Invidia (envy)

Green

envy
Chet Doan

put in freezing water
John Missoli

kindness
Aleks

dog
Linda/Serpent

Accidia (sloth)

cyan

sloth
Rev. Lee

thrown in snake pits
Eric/CaveBear

diligence
Linda/Serpent

goat
Mayor Devenish, Morelanders
or Rev. Lee

Luxuria (lust)

Blue

lust
Linda/Serpent

smothered in fire and brimstone
Barbie

chastity
Chet Doan

cow
Chet Doan

Superbia (pride)

Violet

pride
Mayor Devenish

broken on the wheel
Linda/Serpent or Creeper

humility
Dan Thomas

horse
Linda/Serpent

The individual filenames of the solution pages seemed to be screaming that there was something hidden there, too. It was determined that each set of filenames is a columnar transposition. For example,
Group 1 (anger) is:
1gttuif3.htm
1heaesnu1.htm
1hhheoo4.htm
1irnqtor2.htm

ihhg
rhet
nhat
qeeu
tosi
oonf
r u

Rearranging all se7en columns, we get
1. higher than the question of our
2. duration is the question of our
3. deserving immortality will come
4. to such as are fit for it and he
5. would be a great soul in future
6. must be a great soul now ralph waldo
7. emerson worship the coduct [sic] of life

Overall, this was a great puzzle that gave us a wealth of background details on the characters. It also cemented the notion that Linda is Serpent in many people's minds. Consider the following quotes attributed to her (or Chet, in one case):

I remember the day so clearly... she was in such horrible pain. We tried to find a way to help, but the Corporate Powers That Be wouldn't help. They sit on their secrets, their cures. All I could do was watch as the cancer ate away at mom's body. When the end came it should have been a relief, but it wasn't. That was the day my mission became clear: Big Business must die.

They have it, I can feel it. It's hidden away in their files, somewhere in their hierarchy. The solution. The answer. They know what it is, and soon I will too.

I don't abide laziness well at all. I didn't get where I am by sitting on my ass and letting things come to me. I worked hard. I still do. I've toppled entire corporations. Amazing stuff, and very intoxicating. Especially for a silly girl from Walla Walla.

It's all about power. When you have none, it's all you think about. How to get it, how to keep it, and what to do once it's yours. I never had it growing up. Now I do. I'm not afraid to use it either.

When she clung to you in the night and whispered that she loved you, she was lying. She was using those thighs and those lips and those loins to vent some anger, some energy, exact a bit of revenge. But it wasn't love. It was the basest of that desire, the lowest common denominator she knew to employ. That was not love. (Chet)


Clearly, Linda is Serpent. Recapping, we now know that GanMed and GenTel are indeed in a race for an immortality treatment; that Linda was simply using Doan rather than being in love with him; that Moreland is indeed a GanMed experiment. New information that implicates Linda include her possession of a memo that was private between Asgort and Missoli, indicating that she has access to others' ODES (whether she's a password hacker like us or has another way in); and Asgort and Missoli's perception of her amoral ruthlessness.

Suggestive information includes the fact that Rev. Lee's webmistress is female -- Linda is known to have webmastering skills, since she advised Lauren on the setup of gt_ls/gt_ds. Linda would thereby have both means and motive for intercepting and delaying Doan's messages to Rev. Lee. We now know she has personal animus toward him, as does Serpent, which would explain why she dumped his private thoughts out to us through the Wired Souls login box.

We now have the why, the motivation: Linda's mother died of cancer, when Linda was aware of the existence of a treatment or even cure that was sitting there, available. Ganmed wouldn't help.

Linda holds Chet Doan responsible for her mother's death. She therefore set out to destroy him and his company.

We have motive, we have means, we have evidence placing Linda at the various places she needs to be with the skills she needs to have to be serpent.

Linda=Serpent=WM1

Rev. Lee's Contemplation

May 7th brought us a message from Rev. Lee posted on Whispers:
---------------------------------------------------
RE: Better today Greetings, Friends!

I sat on my balcony for hours last night trying to make sense of it
all. I've come to a conclusion:

It doesn't make sense.

Why would someone reach out to the fabulosity of this site with cries
for help? I just don't know. Is this someone who cried out to those
around him but was never heard, for some reason? Was the Reverend the
only ear he felt he could turn to to unburden his soul?

Why did the messages all appear at once? The webmaster assures me she
saw nothing unusual in the system.

Could I have helped? I doubt it, I think. I've seen in real life
situations (as opposed to electronic ones) that those who have fallen
into such deep despair are often beyond help. All they want is
forgiveness.

I slept fitfully last night, haunted by dreams of sin and redemption.
I hope my late friend has found redemption in the light of a wildly
inclusive Supreme Being. I take some small comfort in the fact that
his passing was apparently peaceful and that he never had the
opportunity to carry out the dark deed I believe he was contemplating.

More thoughtful than usual,

Reverend Lee

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

Seems Reverend Lee nows nothing specific about Chet, Ganmed or Moreland. He seems to be largely in the dark about everything going on.

uRf Manifesto May 7

May 7th also brought a new manifesto, with another reference to the Mechanical King, whatever that is. Combined with the last Manifesto, the filenames spell "oculus" (o.jpg and culus.jpg). Oculus means "eye" in Latin.

The text reads:
"found the way in, where it was his. the big secret of hers. the her behind her. the dead mechanical king is ready and rides with no eyes laughing and drinking on my head and i laugh like a cheval (French for 'horse'). laughing in the tongues of the dead. dead tongue."

It seems Hermes has found his way to some sort of secret, presumably of Serpent's, pertaining to the 'her behind her.' We can also cross Chet of the list of possible Hermes', as these updates have continued after his death.

Nocars Email/Puzzle May 8

New emails show up in our heroes' accounts:

Looking at the various accounts, we get some more details about Vad knowing Barbie's been dishonest with him, confirm that Barbie and the rest know about Chet Doan's death, and various other indications that our intrepid trio is putting most of the puzzle pieces together concerning everything going on.

Of note, Cave Bear has sent Vad a coded message. It turns out to be a simple substitution that decrypts to:

Sorry about doing this. I hope that you can break it. It's just
that the eyes and ears around you shouldn't know this. Heck, I'm not
even sure how to tell you this stuff. While you were thinking that
Barbie was talking to creeps, she was doing some investigation.
Apparently several of the people that have been playing euchre with
you have been worried about you. I'm not quite sure how any of them
know any of this or why they felt the need to tell Barbie, but that
is almost irrelevant. She had some crazy idea that by telling us,
especially you, before she had a better handle on it that we'd get
into another panic, although after the way I reacted earlier I can't
blame her. Shame on me. I'll try to make this as short as possible
without confusing you. That town that you are working in is not the
typical retirement community. It was built by a company called
GanMed. They have figured out a way to stop the aging process and
the people there are their test subjects. Unfortunately it looks
like they are all going to die a nasty death. Arney, the cop that
has been everywhere, works for GanMed. We believe that he is aware
that you are there. Not sure about that though, just a hunch.
Barbie was scared that if you knew any of this your behavior would be
suspicious. That is why she hasn't told you anything. She just
takes what you send her and absorbs it. She's kept us all in the
dark but she was doing so because she really does care. A bit more
on Arney: we have found out that he went after Popper and Rebar,
probably mistaking the two of us, so yes it is my fault that my
brother is gone. This happened right after we found the bodies. We
don't have any evidence of it, but we believe that the lab and bodies
that we found belong to GanMed. We know their secret and they don't
like that, so we are in danger. You probably the most because you
are in the middle of it, so watch your back. We need you to be
safe .


Bear

Scryer explained how the encryptions worked:

Simply this: the
cipher and plaintext alphabets are:

cipher: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
plain: ATEGRFULbcdhijkmnopqsvwxyz

That means ATEGRFUL (anagram of grateful) is the key, and the rest of the letters follow in
alphabetical order.

Oh, and most importantly, Vad sullenly promised Barbie he'd play Euchre tonight.....

Euchre Chat 8

Following is the transcript from May 8th's euchre game (courtesy of Aveena). The plan was to feed Barbie what we know, by acting as co-workers at GenTel. In the
middle of the chat Ozy and Gupfee worked it in that we are all "co-workers", but things didn't go exactly as planned:

The game starts with miscellaneous chit-chat. Barbie is paying attention to Vad and he seems happy. Vad apologizes for all the "drama" at last week's euchre; says he was stressed.

Vad mentions that his Yahoo is lagging. We ask if he is at work and he says he's at home.

More techinical issues with Vad. He says "crap", then "crud" and is gone from euchre.

doll: tried calling vad, get a quick busy signal
doll: he has voice mail; this is sort of weird, he'd be back on by now; i think
ozy: maybe it's weather related
doll: maybe, there's been weather stuff in the area
doll: but i thought it had cleared
doll: his email is bouncing back now too
doll: this is really quite strange

In the middle of all this, we notice strange things over at www.moreland-vw.org

Moreland Hacked

The Moreland site suddenly went nuts. You can see an archive of what happened here. Very creepy stuff. It was noticed that in addition to the pictures being negative, that everyone's eyes have been digitally gouged out, as if blinding the person. In addition, there are some weird popups on the resident login page.

Okay, back to the chat:

UZ: perhaps you should visit his website, ms mills
doll: his website?
ozy; this is not good barbara
gup: if you had to get there, how long would it take you to drive?
ozy: go NOW, trust us, just GO
doll: it will take a couple of hours; what is this? what's wrong w/ the site?
ozy: listen to us. you have to get to him
kat: you need to get there asap, i think. something freaky is goin on
adoyle: is it safe to go there?
doll: i don't know
gup: can you get your friends to go w/ you?
ozy: ok, i realize this is a bit much all of a sudden, but now is NOT the time to waste w/ indecision
doll: i'm calling them now
ozy: some of us can help you. we want to. let us
doll: help how?
doll: what's happening?
gup: doll, we know about ganmed and arney
ozy: you have been talking w/ some of us offline
ozy: we work together, we don't trust ganmed any more than you do
and we want to see vad safe
ozy: but you need to get him OUT of MORELAND
ozy: back me up on this ppl
doll: ok, talking to him now
ozy: what's he saying?
doll: i don't know. i don't know why he would be in trouble.
doll: i understand what's happening at the town, but this is not it.
ozy: look at the website
doll: he wants me to come over, to figure this out.
ozy: do it
doll: ok, i'll se you all later

Barbie then left euchre and soon thereafter signed off of messenger.

The big question: Is Vad okay?? What happened to him?

It was then discovered that Moreland wasn't the only site under attack.....

Pythia Hacked Again

Apparently, Serpent has once again been hacked (there is no version of this archived). At the bottom of the page is the text:
"why can't you see what you did what you did
ULTIO CAECUS NON EST
can't you see have you no eyes are you blind"

It is thought that "ultio ceacus non est" can be translated to "revenge isn't blind."

"ceacus" is in bold. Looking for a directory with this name at urf gives us:
http://www.10101-10010-110.org/caecus/
a strange page with the title "counting downwards"....

Caecus

This is a very cool looking page, with some sort of clock ticking. If you look at the page now, you'll see some skulls appear, but when Caecus first went up, it was simply a ticking clock with no appearing skulls.

The purpose of this page, or it's meaning is unclear at this point, but it looks very cool! Upon further examination, it was discovered that when the clock struck 2:24 (am or pm) that a weird sound of a door opening could be heard. Could something be going to happen at 2:24??

The next day, the Moreland site returned to normal. Then, around 2:30 pm, 3 little skulls appeared on the Caecus page! These three skulls linked to:

A letter from Chet Doan. Woah, according to this letter, the special GanMed treatment costs $10 MILLION dollars (cue Dr. Evil laugh). The residents are apparently going in with full knowledge about what they're getting into. But do they know about the risks? The other conclusion we can draw from this, is that apparently the Iduna apples have nothing to do with this treatment! They're just apples!
A 'live feed' from a webcam, presumably at Moreland
A memo from Doan to Jo Burgess. Geez, they've apparently made a fortress out of the control center at Moreland. Why the high security measures?

Pythia Memo

On May 9th, the Pythia page returned to normal, except for the following in the source code:

<!--memo, Hermes, memo -->

Trying www.thepythia.net/memo.html gives us the following message in the sourc code:

Hermes:

Your behavior of late is of concern. You've ignored your e-mail
(which I've thoughtfully retrieved for you inboxx and inboxxx) and taken
to sending your little monsters to me in lieu of useful communication.

I do not need a liability and you're skating dangerously close to the
edge.

Your 'kids' need someone who can guide them, help them keep focus on
the important issues. I understand that you're upset at recent
events but you mustn't let that cloud your thinking. Neither of us
need that right now, not in critical times.

I will not be saddled with an albatross. Please understand that and
act accordingly.


Hmm, inboxx and inboxx? Trying http://www.thepythia.net/inboxx.html takes us to a page entitled SUBORDINATECOSTS, which has this in the source code:

Here's your mail.

You're welcome.


______________________________________________

jsT Bkauz uR rnniNg th3 sh0w hear dznt mEaN eyeL dew NyThng u want. bUTt n thiz case eyeL dew it. aFter All, h0w h4rd Cn it B? like H3z VR b33n oUt nd Ab0uT?

dUde wH4t th3 helL wilL w3 t4lk abouT anEway? pUnKtuas1n? eye cN C it n0\/\/....

'th3 kneed iz 4 rEV0lushin aMung th3 v0\/\/eLz'
'!'
'eye no U mSt h4v sum ID 0f th3 sitUashin. u Kant iGn0r th3 CONsonentZ'
'?'
'siLAnz meanz ASSent'
',!,'

tHiZ iz g0nna r0ck, bUTt eye st1L think itz a waste 0f tImE. wHo w4ntz th1z sh1t NEway?

_______________________________________

Friend, you and I are going to have words when I return. I know you meant nothing but the best, I can almost see you sitting there, plotting ways to help...well, this was not a moment of genius.

You mentioned sending me out "to joust with the windmills", but if you had mentioned Sancho Panza had green hair (you did know he has green hair?) and was incapable of social interaction that did not somehow involve highly caffeinated beverages and loud music...well, perhaps some windmills should be left in peace?

True, he has the most intense passions, a whirlwind of emotion and sensation caught up behind his angry facade, but he has no control, no quiet at the center of the storm. Perhaps some day he will stop and see, pause in his spinning to contemplate the center with its heights and depths? But till then I am trapped like Oliver, arguing with this steel encased storm of self-righteous determination. I can only hope he'll find his truth before an overdose of Jolt carries him away from us!

I believe we'll have "the goods" in hand tomorrow night, as we'll be staying at a hotel this evening and driving into the town tomorrow. You're right, you know. I'm enjoying this immensely. "The goods" indeed! How shall I ever return to the life of an armchair crusader after this foray into the very trenches? You laugh, but I, and my noisy, green haired, rabidly determined sidekick shall hold the ford and yield not before the forces of the night.

(It isn't possible that my companion's attitude is contagious, is it? Yet another thing to bring up in that "little talk" we'll be having)

-moot


__________________________________________

http://www.thepythia.net/inboxxx.html returns a page entitle COSTSUBORDINATES with the following in the source code:

Here's your mail.

You're welcome.


hAy dood! whatz th3 what hEAr? u aWake?!?!?!

.coma

______________________________________________


hello? my computer no longer speaks to me...my rice crispies have fallen silent and the fight to free the world from corporate idjits has come to a halt. freedom fighters no longer descend on walmart, and yesterday i saw a street sign untouched by thoughtful commentary.

anyone? a penni for your thoughts? a nickle for your website? let looty know if you read this, k?

-looty
_______________________________________

is there anybody out there? is there anyone at all? the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead. fix the site dude...it wasn't down this long when jules got tagged, so either you're in jail, or eating martian burgers with elvis, but appoint some rep and lets move!

-looty
__________________________________________

u watching the boardz? somethingz going down out there and we don't have our home base. th@ biopharm you had us crack? theyR revvin up 4 something. better watch yoR back.

r!
____________________________________________

my folkz pulld my plug and when I get to the lab, what do eye find? not u, not us, nada, zip, zilch. whatz up? u need help, let me no.

e c h e l o n
______________________________________________

u herd frm depro lately dood? h3 sw0Re he had my stUff! wish the b0rd waz up 2. th1s em4il sux!

.coma
_______________________________________


This fills in many blanks for us. From the sounds of it, Deproductor was the "other URFer" in the car with moot. RIP d00d.

Email from Barbie

Jamesi was very excited to get an email from Barbie on May 10:

Jamesi!!!

or should that be...

Jonathan!!!

Great job on the May issue of the zine. I checked it
out earlier. I also checked out the review at
grrl-e-grrl. It didn't sound as biting as you made me
think it would be. So she went on about the 'pie',
what do you expect from a zine called 'grrl-e-grrl'
(especially since it's not about girly girls ;))? A
couple great quotes stand out:

"we found this zine to have a wonderful foundation
filled with great contributing writers" and "While we
are diametrically opposed in our focus, we find the
humor and insight to be a delight."

I must say, I have to agree! I also wish you the best
of luck on this venture.

Oh, I wanted to let you know that everything seems to
be ok. After the way Vad and I left euchre last
night, I thought that you might be a bit worried. I
got to bear's in record time only to have him suggest
calling Vad on his cell. Why I hadn't thought of that
is beyond me. I suppose the excitement of the
situation.

He answered right away and said he was fine and that I
was silly for being worried. If you had any clue how
crazy things have been, you'd know that was anything
but silly! He was busy with work last night and said
to stay put. I haven't heard from him today, but as
they say, 'no news is good news' :)

Have a great weekend. If I see you online before Wed,
I promise to say hi! -barbie


So, Bruce is okay, as is Barbie. So she didn't drive out to Moreland. Well, that's good to know. Whew!

GenTel Updates May 10

The following pages appeared on the various GenTel ODES pages on May 10:

kasgort/lauren:
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/kasgort/05-10-02p1.jpg
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/kasgort/05-10-02p2.jpg
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/kasgort/N05-09-2002.txt

These look like they're more puzzles of some kind, but nothing was immediately solved regarding them. After a day, Scryer and crfets came up with the following solution for N05-09-2992.txt:

The file was descibed by Asgort as "anti-sense". crfets provided the translation for this which means swapping a<->t and c<->g. I did this and started from the end translating each 3-letter group (i.e. trigraph) using the table at http://prowl.rockefeller.edu/aainfo/gencode.htm . That is, the end of the original file starts out aat gag gtc, which after the crfets translation becomes tta ctc cag, which is "llq" with the 1-letter codes for these groups. Proceeding this way through the whole block of anti-sense DNA we find:

llqiwhlfiitvl*iiicsiyfw*iyilitthvihhl
retvkirhvfi*vilpvfpiievhtepiklcpflvnp
shdwpdspfrkqhtksmmicantfindthewayilqd
esarewatchingwdneedhelpyrynekdqfhlna*
nyrflqdn*k*vwifqslh*hlyclqhkiq*ihspfd
rttlqkqaa

The mostly legible part is icantfindthewayilqdesarewatchingwdneedhelp

The first garble is "ilqdes". It arises from:
ata -> i
ttg -> l
I conjecture that the "ttg" was not converted from sense to anti-sense. If we do that now it becomes aac, which translates to 'n', making the first sentence "I can't find the way in."

However, this doesn't work with the remainder of this garble:

cag -> q [gtc -> v]
gac -> d [ctg -> l]
gag -> e [ctc -> l]
agt -> s [tca -> s]

I'm guessing that this word should be "eyes". If the first two groups of this word (cag and gac) each had an error in the first letter, they could instead be "gag->e and tac->y.

The final garble (wd need help) looks like it should be "we need help". The 'd' comes from trigraph "gac"; this would be an 'e' if it were "gag" instead.

My final answer is:

I can't find the way in. Eyes are watching. We need help.

I wonder who Asgort is trying to talk to, and from whom he's trying to keep this communication a secret.

jmissoli/white:
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/jmissoli/05-10-2002.txt

lalvaro/voltaire:
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/lalvaro/05-03-2002.txt

The LiteSide/DarkSide also updated:
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/gt_ls
http://www.argn.com/archives/lockjaw/www.general-telometrics.com/gt_ds

Heh, Seth Bairly. Oh, and it looks like Linda has left GenTel.

A little piece of info we can glean from the Light Side, is that GenTel is apparently located in the Orlando area. The Copper Rocket mentioned as being the location for Linda's going-away party is the giveaway. A Google search reveals that there is only one Copper Rocket, at least with a website, and it's located in Orlando. This fits with Linda's tan and her remark in www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/lalvaro/D05-2002.txt (the second 5/6 entry) that talks about taking the day off, and getting wasted on sun and margaritas.

TerraShape Hacked

TerraShape proved to be next on the hacker's list. The entire site was gone, with the front page replaced with this flash file.

Ozy_y2k was the first to make a connection:

"Ok, so since the heading reads "bsv2 infection", my thought is that this may very well be, not just ANY old Hermes-invented revenge virus, but the very same "black" virus that The Mighty Moot made it his life's quest to find.

<moment of silence for Moot>

H3z is taking his revenge on any site he can get his grubby little mechanical king paws on."

At first, it was thought there was a pattern puzzle in the central icon, but after much, much evaluation, it was determined that these patterns were entirely random.

The following day, Terrashape returned to normal. Subsequently, three more links appeared on Caecus....

Caecus v.2/Postcard PUzzle

Three more skulls, three more links:

http://www.10101-10010-110.org/caecus/sniffed.html
This is a chatlog between Robert Marshall-Hardcastle and Ciaran O'Kerrigan. Pretty self-explanatory.
http://www.10101-10010-110.org/caecus/buffer1.jpg
http://www.10101-10010-110.org/caecus/buffer2.jpg
These images combine to form this image with this message:

Dear Dan,
Totally love Prague. Been spending most
of the day walking around the streets
off the old town square. Found a
fabulous Italian restaurant right on the square, really lovely, in
the base-ment of this old church. Had some
great prosciutto. Met up with a good friend Banosky (sp?)
for an evening. He was especially
pleased to see that I'd brought a gift
for him, but he didn't open it. It's not
much, but I am quite sure once he uses (?)
it he'll have a blast. We spent the evening
talking about a recently deceased
friend. Such a tragedy, and so un-expected.
I think I might ask to transfer here
when the office is properly open.
Such a beautiful city. Every street is
cobbled, every ceiling is vaulted.
And you could not believe the price of beer!
(signed)

Addressed to
TerraShape
Water Department
1292 25th Ave.
San Francisco CA 94122
U.S.A.



To round it out, also included with the skulls is Terrashape's digital URL, 203.56.241.213

Well, it does seem that the sites are somehow having their secrets 'sucked' out of them by some sort of super-hacker software. This is probably the Mechanical King that's been referred to.

uRf Manifesto May 11

New manifesto image showed up on May 11th:

The text reads:

"Outgrew her. Shed her off like skin.

now we dance at the gates.
the crossroads. the cemetary. (sic)

the loa in my skull says the work is almost done."

In this context "loa" must mean the voodoo term -- a loa is a supernatural being that "rides" a person and controls them, typically during voodoo ceremonies.

Seems Hermes is washing his hands of Serpent. He's outgrown her, heheh.

Ganmed Hacked

Well, now it looks like it's Ganmed's turn to be turned under the cyber-probe that is the Mechanical King.

May 13th gives us a page at Ganmed that looks like this. Very cool, very creepy. All of the site is gone, except for this front page. Guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what juicy tidbits the Mechanical King finds.

Linda's Odes

Also on the 13th, it was realized that Linda had been updating the file at www.general-telometrics.com/ODES/lalvaro/D05-2002.txt all along. In summary, Linda saw what GanMed was doing wrong and engineered her departure there (with documents) without telling them what was going awry with their experiments. She used that to effect a mid-course correction on GenTel's research, and she has now finally figured out the last piece of GenTel's problem, and isn't telling *them*, either.

So now it appears that Linda is the sole possessor of the secret of immortality... or perhaps the information that tells why these approaches to immortality won't work. Her estimation is that the GenTel researchers aren't smart enough to see what's going on.

Nice of her.

Horoscopes Week 14

Why do we have the feeling this might be the last horoscope update?

Aries (Ganmed)
The enemy at the gate has found a way to pick the locks. Be sure your secrets are safe from prying eyes. An obvious reference to Ganmed being hacked.

Taurus (Net:Sight)
You're proud of what you've achieved recently, Taurus; this week your efforts should be rewarded. Make sure everything is as it should be, and then show the expectant world what you've been up to. Alright already! Show me the money!

Gemini (Moreland)
Last week you were given quite a scare, Gemini, and a malicious one at that. If you feel exposed because of it, it's nothing to how you'll be feeling by the end of the week. Well, looks like things will come to a head by the end of this week over at Moreland.

Cancer (uRf)
You can lead them to the cemetery, but you can’t make them walk through the gate. Or is that lead a horse to water and can’t make them drink. It’s easy to get confused when you feel the way that you do. Perhaps it’s best to not make any decisions right now…leave that for others. Hmm, leave the decision to others. Others who?

Leo (Gen-Tel)
You might find that someone is purposefully trying to make things difficult for you, or is it that you are making things difficult for them? You might find that someone has found what you want to find. Will they help you find it? A reference to Linda discovering what they've been looking for.

Virgo (Barbie)
Your mind is stretched and your limits are reached. Every little thing feels like a huge struggle. Just remember, it may not be that little and you may not have the ability to go at it alone. Remember, one head cannot hold all the wisdom. If you need help, ask for it. Looks like Barbie may need more of our help than we realized, as long as she knows to ask for it.

Libra (TerraShape)
You've made some poor decisions in the past when it came to choosing your business partners, and it looks like your errors in judgement may be coming back to haunt you. Oh dear, TerraShape may be regretting getting involved with GanMed.

Scorpio (Serpent/Pythia)
Someone you once considered a friend is turning a deaf ear to your pleas now. It couldn't be your fault, could it? Um, in case you haven't been following along, that would be Serpent and Hermes.

Sagittarius (DCMC/Nocars)
In the past week, you’ve been bombarded with information. A flood like that can be confusing. Now that you’ve had time to let it sink in, the concepts become clear. It’s time to except what has happened and move on. Maybe go out and celebrate with friends, take your mind off of things for a while. Okay, it's time for Barbie, Eric and Creeper to put the pieces together.

Capricorn (Grrl-E-Grrl)
Surprise, surprise. Just when you thought you could take a much needed rest, work called. Get up off the couch, splash some cold water on your face and get to it. The sooner you get to it, the sooner you’ll finish and can take that nap that you want so badly.

Aquarius (WiredSouls)
Take moral inventory this week and clean house. Get rid of what serves only to bog you down. You'll be surprised at how freeing it can be. Time for Rev. Lee to get rid of his webmistress.

Pisces (Vad)
A simple discovery forces you to open your eyes. Will you be prepared for what you see? Keep your wits about you, it could be disastrous if others knew what you found. Will Bruce survive until the end of the week? Stay tuned, same bat-time, same bat-channel....

I'll refrain from commenting on these horoscopes, as they should all be pretty self-explanatory, plus, this is turning out to be the world's longest webpage.

Chatting with Barbie

Jamesi caught Barbie online and was able to strike up quite a nice conversation with her. The full transcript can be read in JB Message 3861.

At the same time, Ozy_y2k was chatting with her, too. That transcript can be found in JB Message 3866.

Meanwhile, Aveena was also chatting with Barbie! The transcript of their convo is in JB Message 3867. In her chat with Aveena, Barbie led us to some more files Vad had hidden at the Moreland site. These became known as the.....

Kaboom Puzzle

Barbie led us to find the following text files:

http://www.moreland-wv.org/kaboom/1.txt
http://www.moreland-wv.org/kaboom/2.txt
http://www.moreland-wv.org/kaboom/3.txt
http://www.moreland-wv.org/kaboom/4.txt
http://www.moreland-wv.org/kaboom/5.txt
http://www.moreland-wv.org/kaboom/6.txt

It was determined that each line is an 8-bit binary number representing one character of a C++ program. which when complied and run, spits out the following string of numbers: 77101898297505832953

Trying the string as a directory at Moreland gives us access to something we've been seeking since near the beginning of the game! We finally have access to a Moreland Resident Page. Not just any page.....

Devenish Files

Trying http://www.moreland-wv.org/77101898297505832953/index.htm gives us access to Mayor Devenish's Personal Page at Moreland. By the way, 77101898297505832953 works as the password on the login page, too.

We have been rewarded with a motherload of information:

First, and most importantly, Nadine has apparently died! Clicking the Messages link on the menu takes us to a message from Armando De La Puma, Ganmed's PR guy, titled In Light of Recent Events. In the message, Armando, ever the company man, reminds Vernon to keep things quiet. Nice.

The Documents link gives us three files:
letter.doc-This is a letter from Vernon to Chet Doan, in which he expresses concerns and disappointment at the lack of progress in the treatment, yet seems to remain ever-faithful to the company line.
stats.xls-This spreadsheet shows the trends of the fatalities at Moreland, noteably that they've all been white Americans over 70, with the women overtaking the men in frequency.
nadine.doc-Saddest of all is a letter from Nadine to Vernon, where she expresses sorrow at not being able to live out more time with him. Additionally, she reveals that others are becoming ill too, and some more details about their daughter, Lucy.

Clicking the Pictures link gives us eight images: a familiar picture of Nadine, scans of a poem and the envelope it came in, and alarming pictures of Nadine during the period of her deteriorating health.

In light of the poem, it's apparent that Nadine was communicating with her daughter using code based on the Language of the Flowers, since every form of communication into and out of Moreland was screened. In this letter, the flowers and their meanings are:

Canterbury Bell-Gratitude
Volkamenia-May you be happy
Graphalium-Always remember
Oleander-Beware
White catchfly-Betrayed/ I fall victim
Mistletoe-Obstacles to be overcome
Raspberry-Remorse
Xeranthemum-Cheerfulness under adversity
White Clover-I promise/ Think of me
Purple Verbena-I weep for you/ Regret
Blue Violet-Love/ Faithfulness
Cinque Foil-Maternal Affection

A general translation of the poem from Lucy:

I will always be grateful for what you have given me.
I had a dream about you you and I wanted to speak to you. I want
you to be happy and you will always be in my heart, but I am afraid
of being hurt again.
I have long searched for the words to tell you how I feel, but I
think you have not been truthful with me.
You say that you want to work around the obstacles in our path. You
say that you feel remorse, but I am not sure if I can believe you.
Whatever happens, I want you to know that I am happy.
After all of this time, I have finally gone and done it. Now it is
up to you.
I regret what has come between us, I love you, and I hope that you
love me too.


Looking back over the Iduna Newsletters, we can now see what Nadine was trying to tell her daughter. Mottjr posted a great interpretation of these messages in JB Message 3875.

Caecus v.3

May 14th brought us a new Caecus page. This time, the clock has stopped, there's music playing, and we have 5 skull/links:

recovered file-A memo from Arney to Jo Burgess authorizing payments to relatives of any "treatment failures."

recovered file-Appears to be the memo that our breadcrumbs formed, along with annotations by Doan and Arney:
"Jim-Please edit this for readability and professionalism and forward to Armando. He's understandably nervous.-cd"
"Lick me. Er, yes sir, right away."

pathology report-A cover page from a fax from Ganmed to a lab. This page references a pathology document in the source code. A little digging reveals www.10101-10010-110.org/caecus/pathology.doc.
Our best guess is that these are results from an independant lab, not familiar with GanMed's/GenTel's "treatment", and is therefor expecting older subjects to have shorter telomers. In short, just more data to confirm that the people that died were "test subjects", and the process obviously still has some bugs. Though, why they would have an outside lab look at these things seems baffling.

NOTE: the title of this document (in File/Properties) is:"Tests run as requested: By the way, what the hell happened to these guys"
And the author is: "Prefered Customer"

insurance-Chet paying off a Moreland resident.

fax buffer residue-A fax presumably from James Missoli about more research setbacks and whether they should inform CD, presumably Chet Doan. This is another document of Missoli's on GanMed letterhead, and it seems to really be tying him with GanMed.

Guilty! Hacks

Suddenly, the Ganmed, Moreland and TerraShape sites are all replaced with this image, saying "J'accuse!" Looks like someone is declaring Ganmed, Moreland and TerraShape guilty!

But we knew that!

It was also noted that the images on livefeed.gif have changed. If you look carefully, the computer screens now show this same "Guilty!" image.

uRf Manifesto May 15

Looks like Hermes is signing off. May 15th brings us our latest, and it looks like last, Manifesto. It reads:
It's run its course now. The inevitable is inevitable, and out of my hands. Give my work to whoever you want. I don't care. It does nothing for me. Meeting Jules in Boston. She's out, last week. Moot's grave is there.

Certain letters are hilighted, and put together, they spell, "I burnt Eden."

So, it looks like Hermes' work is done, even if he did go a little bit crazy in the process. He used the Mechanical King software to hack into and extract hidden information from Ganmed, Moreland and TerrShape.

He's provided the evidence, but what do we do with it?

Nocars emails May 15

New emails showed up in the Crawlers' email boxes, dated May 9th through 15th.

We can first look back to May 9th, when Barbie tried to email Vad at Moreland, only to have her messages bounced back. Also, Cave Bear emailed Vad inquiring about the Moreland site. On the 14th, Vad lets Barbie know that he's okay, and CaveBear responds to the Moreland hack. The 14th's emails also show the various shocked responses to their finally figuring out definitively what's been going on, thanks to Barbie's 'So Sad' message.

Creeper seemed to summarize the fundamental issues in her response:

I can’t get over this. Really. As bear said… all in the name of greed. Just horrible.

In the same vein, these people signed up for this. They paid to have this happen. Not that it makes the suffering that they have to endure any less, but I suppose that it removes some of my sympathy.

Yes, the company violated many rights, about all of them. Yes, that’s horrible. However, these people signed up for this. Not only did they sign up, they paid for it. The desire to violate so many natural laws overrode any common sense.

I’m angry. Yes. But when it comes down to it, I’m as angry at the people as I am at the company. You just don’t mess with certain things. -creeper

Rev. Lee's Departure

Looks like Rev. Dan is taking a break. The following message was posted on Whispers:

Group: Big old jet airliner
From: Dan_Lee
Subject: Big old jet airliner

Greetings, Friends!

The Reverend is pleased to announce yet another trip! I leave in an
hour for the airport. Purely a pleasure trip...I'll be in San Bruno
visiting friends from my school days.

I'll be returning in a few days. I'll talk to you all on the other
side. As always, WM1 is keeping an eye on things for me. Be kind to
her.


Be kind to her, indeed! Interesting that the good Reverend put his trust in the Serpent, isn't it? So it seems Dan Lee was totally ignorant of everything going on, and that the Serpent was merely using him to get access to Chet Doan's inner torment.

It Is Finished

May 15th also brought this somewhat smug farewell from Serpent. Looks like she's done with us as well.

This farewell seems to reinforce our conclusion that Serpent is Linda. Scryer summed it up well:

Serpent says:

> Science is a god, and he demands to be satiated with
> the blood of mortals before he allows his secrets to
> be told. Advance requires loss. It's an eternal
> tradeoff, one step forward and all that.

That is, Serpent isn't *just* out to bring down big business or medical science in general and Chet Doan and GanMed in particular (although she's still bitter about her mother's perhaps preventable death from cancer): she also wants to advance Science and is happy to sacrifice anything and anyone necessary to achieve it. The advancement of Science (and, in particular, the search for immortality) is clearly on Linda's mind throughout -- she personally works very hard at her research, as well as skipping blithely around the industry with her worthless NDAs. Like Serpent, Linda is utterly callous about the cost of this search in human life or suffering. Linda's now on the road with the brass ring, and isn't tied down by big business.

She tells us what has become of some of the major loose ends in the story, but not where Linda has gone and what she will do. Why not? Looks like there's confirmatory evidence for Linda==Serpent, and nothing exculpatory...


Scryer also summarized nicely what Serpent got from us:

One thing we learned that she hadn't known was the Phoenix connection (about which she may know no more than we do), which she was able to use to engineer the Arney/Burgess confrontation.

She may not have known about the ciphers in Asgort's test data before we told her about them. In fact, we may be the reason Linda was able to read Asgort's files and thus keep ahead of anything he might be trying -- we noticed that she had private annotated copies of one of his non-public files in her own directory. Perhaps the other passwords we cracked were also new to her.

We probably gave her more information on the Crawlers than she'd known. Good thing she didn't have any particular interest in having them tracked down after she'd gotten our attention.

The "language of flowers" information was probably new, though how useful it was to her is problematical.

The Vernon Devenish data and perhaps the Oscar Gray information Vad provided us may have been new to her (although I suspect Oscar was selling her the data he was collecting), and may have been helpful in her research.


Okay, we found out all that information, but how did *she* get it? By checking the Trail???

Serpent is in charge of www.thepythia.net, and is funnelling new people to us all the time with the comment in the HTML source of this subway picture: www.thepythia.net/713oe.html. The comment says: "The mediation by the serpent was necessary: Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man. The battle is already under way. Join me at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jawbreak/".

She knows *exactly* who we are, and you may assume she was reading every word here until she finally got what she was looking for. (Which
happened, perhaps coincidentally, when Linda finally got what she was looking for.) If those of us who think she's Linda are correct, we'd better go scuttling off to Maui or some other safe place until she settles down a little!

Or, as was speculated elsewhere, perhaps Serpent set this whole thing up to make us believe it was a game, but it was all "real!"

So Serpent is done with us, but the big question remains: Are we through with her??

Asgort ODES May 15

A note from Asgort to Missoli appreared on May 15th. In it, Kevin is lamenting about the fact that the answer to their problem is in reach, but they're just missing it, somehow. Seems there's some vital piece they're still missing, and they're trying to remember what Linda had said about it before she left.

Too bad we can't help, somehow. Maybe we should try to contact Kevin with some of the info we've discovered from Linda's ODES account. Hmm.

Barbie Chat

Well, before the weekly Euchre game, Barbie had some private chats with Mos and jamesi, who also had a chat with Vad. Mos informed Barbie about Arney's death, which was a big relief to her, while Jamesi discussed the hacker and network problems with Vad and Barbie. Mostly, these were just a precursor to what would be our last in-game Euchre game....

Euchre Chat 9/JB Puzzle

During the last week, it was apparent that we needed to find a way to pass info along to Vad in Moreland. Specifically, all that we'd discovered from the Mechanical King. The coded communication between Nadine Devenish and her daughter made it obvious that every form of communication into and out of Moreland was screened. so it was decided to do things the same way Vad had done, but in reverse: Create our own puzzle!

A secret chatroom was set up, so as to avoid any of those pesky PM spies (it was even called #nospies), and we got our first taste at being puzzle authors. The trail for this puzzle can be found in JB messages 4073 and 4074.
The solution to our puzzle led to www.donteattheapples.com/and/then/the/screaming/started/shaZAM.pdf. Our creative solution to all of this was in the form of a lawsuit, thanks to our favorite realworld lawyer, Ozy_y2k.

During the Euchre chat itself (a transcript can be found here), CaveBear and Creeper showed up! Bear actually played, but
Creeper just hung out and chatted. She left early though.

Vad said he was in an empty building sitting on the floor because it was the only place in Moreland with a landline. (Everything else is still hosed by Hermes' mechanical king hack.) While Vad was trying to solve our puzzle, he heard people come in, who he described as "suits" and said they were rummaging for documents. He was concerned about being discovered. Then he disappeared. Barbie and Bear took off soon after to see if they could get in touch with him and find out what happened.

So, talk about leaving us hangin'. We have no idea if they solved the puzzle and found the document, nor do we have any idea what happened to Vad out there in Moreland. So we waited...

In the meantime we realized there is (was) one piece to all this we didn't really try:

We've discovered info regarding Moreland, Ganmed, etc. that we've passed on to Barbie (and Vad) in an effort to keep him safe in Moreland, perhaps get him out of there.

One thing we haven't done is to try to pass the info we've learned from Linda to someone at Gen-Tel to help them find a successful treatment for the poor folks at Moreland. It seems that there is enough info in Linda's ODES files to help them do just that.

We have email addys for Missoli, Asgort, Andrew Talloway and Lauren Woods. We've had personal contact with Lauren. Perhaps we need to try to conact one of them with this info.

Kevin Asgort, for one, would be very interested to see some of the stuff in Linda's ODES area. Plus, there's the whole Ganmed Secret Someone mystery. Maybe we are that secret someone after all.

Last Nocars Update

After 2 days, Barbie finally got a new email from Creeper in her account. The message has been sent?? Checking the icon platform gives us a new file!! It's a story about our little lawsuit! Looks like we did it!

Shortly thereafter, Ozy got an email message from Creeper....

Email from Creeper

Tying up some loose ends, Creeper's message reads:

Subject: 411

Hi Ozy,

Just a quick note to let you know that everyone is, indeed, ok. I
heard from Barbie earlier and she wanted me to express her thanks for
all of your effort. Unfortunately, she is unable to access the
internet and a cell phone signal is hard to come by.

Shortly after the final shaZAM, Vad was distracted by 'the suits'. He
was able to get out safely, unfortunately he had to leave behind his
laptop. It was quickly apparent that 'the suits' would come to the
realization that not only had Vad been in the building but that he
was more aware than he should have been. As you can imagine, that
fact had us all more than a little rattled.

Bear and Barbie were able to make it to Moreland and find Vad. Too
scared that the eyes that are everywhere would find him, they spent
the rest of the night looking for a safe harbor. They plan to stay
there until things calm down. The eyes are watching, we know that, we
feel that.

Thank you for all of your effort on behalf of the citizens of
Moreland. As you may know, I do not have as much sympathy for them
and find that they are as guilty as the companies mentioned in your
firm's suit. Unfortunately, ethics and morals are not ours to judge,
well at least not legally. Fortunately, it is the right to one's
opinions that allow us to live the way we do. Without differing
opinions, discussions would become quite tedious.

Perhaps we will meet someday in the future. If so, I look forward to
a fine discussion.

­Maddie (creeper, creeps)

Net:Sight Browser Update

An hour later, Net:Sight finally updated with a link to the beta 3 version of their browser, which we all immediately downloaded and started playing with.

Donkey Oatey found some hidden data strings in the source code of the browser:

<netsight data="%:g`mn#; }r}!z|jj}hbqy`xljp{ay+dj`6}xwgo*">

<netsight data="%;Duk{mu`)&)g`mn#; }r}!z|jj}hbqy`xljp
{ay+dj`6uxfj~de ">

To make a long story short (he explains himself in JB message 4091), these data strings led to.....

Endgame! May 17, 2002

www.netsightsolutions.net/cache/
A blank page entitled plucked gives us a scrolling stream of info captured by Mephista during our browser sessions. A transcript that's easier to read can be found here.

http://www.netsightsolutions.net/karetao/
A page of credits, revealing the identities of the LockJaw PMs, along with some very informative answers to our questions. Also, there are some fun 'outtakes.'

At this point in the #jawbreakers IRC channel, the six (only six?!) PMs each 'pulled back the curtain' as it were, changing their nicks to reveal their true identities (channel transcript here). Some had been with us constantly since the beginning.




...and then the party started.


Epilogue

Well, it's been quite a ride! Thank you to all the PMs for working so hard for our benefit! Since the game has concluded, we've gotten to know most of the PMs well, as they've finally been able to speak! A post-game PM chat was held on May 23rd (transcript here), where we were able to ask questions, and the PMs have continued to stick around both in #JB and on the Yahoo board. They grew quite fond of us (well, most of us!) during the game, and had many great anecdotes to tell.

I'd say the most enjoyable part of this experience for most of us was the community that grew up around the game. Lockjaw drew people from around the world, and many have become good friends. The overall feel of the fun and community that was present in Cloudmakers was recaptured here as well, albeit on a much smaller scale. I've compared Cloudmakers to a giant cruise ship, while JawBreakers was a smaller, more intimate Windjammer Barefoot cruise.

Lockjaw inspired and spawned fansites (guysguise.com, gentel janitor), fan fiction (Moot Point, Outside Phoenix, One Life Down), post-game ponderings (cui-bono), genre-based websites and discussion boards (unfiction.com, argn.com), and even a very, er, um, stirring artistic performance (vunnnn!).

I'm unabashed in my opinion that LockJaw was only the second successful game of this type, following the A.I. game. The LockJaw authors did a great job of storytelling combined with compelling puzzles and characters you truly cared about (or even truly hated). They really excelled at creating an appropriate atmosphere, especially when it came to the creepiness of Moreland, in my opinion. The level of interactivity was great, even introducing live chat into the picture. My only wish would have been for some real-world clues of some sort, but I totally understand the logistical/financial limitations this time around.

The question of brute-forcing came to the forefront in this game, and I think a good precedent was set. A lot has been bandied about regarding what's fair, what's ethical in the playing of these games. Is it fair to brute-force, is it fair to deconstruct a flash file, etc. My personal opinion is that anything goes unless you discover otherwise. I think it's all fair, for the most part. To me, looking at the inner workings of a flash file is no different than checking the source code of a web page, or checking the whois registry. Future PMs need to take this into account.

Anyway, even if you could set up these 'rules' what's to keep someone from breaking them? The LockJaw PMs had to face the situation of massive pounding on their sites, which could have resulted in huge costs to them, out of pocket. Rather than pull the curtain back and yell "Hey! Stop that, you're costing us money!" they simply pulled the sites as part of the storyline (okay, thinly veiled, to be sure), leaving the in-game reality intact. This was very effective, in that it set up a definitive cause and effect, along with a huge player dynamic that strongly discouraged the use of such techniques. In this case, brute-forcing was collectively determined by the players themselves to be 'out of bounds.' Other games with deeper pockets, (such as The Beast) didn't have such a problem, so it wasn't an issue. The bottom line in LockJaw was that the PMs faced a serious dilemma that actually put the game itself in jeopardy, but chose to solve it in a creative way that didn't ruin the illusion.

Overall, I'm very excited to see just what the future holds for this genre. It really is in its infancy, and it's been a privilege to be a part of something like this. LockJaw was great fun, and I'm sorry for those of you who missed it.

If, after reading this, you still have questions about a particular aspect of the game, feel free to email me, post to the JB Yahoo Group or stop by #jawbreakers. Someone will be glad to help, and you may even catch one of the PuppetMasters.

Sincere thanks to:

The Lockjaw PMs: Andy Aiken, Bruce Cain, Clay Chiment, Derek Jensen, Brooke Thompson and Krystyn Wells for all the work you volunteered for our enjoyment and benefit.

Harold Willison, the true guide ;).

The JB moderators and channel ops: SpaceBass, JJYoung, Lou, CG, Gupfee, Grimace, and TheWhiteKnight. You all were a great team!

My family who endured me staying up until all hours and being so grumpy in the morning.

I'm outta here...

So, this is the last update. Nothing more will be added to this guide, at this point. As for me, I'm gonna go spend some time by the pool, and hopefully find someone to serve me nachos.

Hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did!

Steve Peters
7/12/2002