Guide
From ILB
Under continuous development by Sherpa.
Welcome to the ilovebees / Haunted Apiary guide. This is meant to be a complete and thorough factual resource detailing all happenings within the game so far, in a walkthrough style. Speculation is kept to a minimum.
If you are new to the game, read this guide to work out what's going on. Also see the FAQs for "meta" information - information about the game, not within it - and the Quick Start guide for a short overview of the game (however, this Guide is a much more detailed account of the game so far).
| Fireflies: Game Resources |
Introduction and Etiquette
This guide is a chronological, explanatory view of the events so far in the I Love Bees ARG, from rabbit hole to the current state of events. Out of necessity, this is a summary view, explaining how events have unfolded so far, and what conclusions have been drawn from them; it also attempts to explain in more detail the puzzles, and solving methods, that have been employed so that new players can get an idea of what tools and methods those who have been playing for longer are familiar with.
This guide is long - if you want a quick guide to what you can do in the game right now, see the Quick Start page. If you're interested in meta ideas, such as why we are even bothering with this in the first place, the FAQ is the place for you. If, however, you want to replay the game from the start, read on.
Conventions:
Throughout this Guide I will differentiate in-game material by using indentation. Therefore:
In-game material looks like this!
I will occasionally have to discuss speculation, but it will be clearly marked as such, and will reflect the prevailing opinion or most logical conclusion (not my personal rabid-monkey beliefs). As you will soon see, there is a lot of material to speculate over, and a lot of uncertainties in this game. Also, any references to the videogame Halo will be clearly marked and explained - I knew nothing about Halo before this ARG, so if you are a newbie to the Halo universe - hereafter referred to as Haloverse - you are not alone. Links to external sites look like this (http://www.ilovebees.com) and are not essential viewing in order to understand this guide, however, to get a better idea of how the game works, it's worth visiting them. Most information is presented in summary form, so any non-external links -- which look like this -- are definitely worth following.
Down the Rabbithole - How it Began
Honey Pots by Mail
On Friday July 16th, vpisteve - the editor and maintainer of ARGN.com (http://www.argn.com), an on-the-pulse news and resources site about ARGs - received a strange package in the mail. Inside it was a jar of honey, and inside that floated nine letters, LIOEBEVSE, which formed an anagram of:
I - L - O - V - E - B - E - E - S
thereby leading to www.ilovebees.com. Of course, they also form anagrams of many other words, but the return address on the honey package matched the WHOIS (http://sunny.nic.com/cgi-bin/whois) information for the domain www.ilovebees.com, namely:
Margaret Efendi Margaret's House of Bees 2370 Market Street #510 San Francisco, CA 94114-1575
This happens to be a UPS outlet in San Francisco.
Also from the WHOIS information we have a phone number and email address for this Margaret Efendi. Let's look at those a bit later.
The Halo 2 Trailer
Steve could have avoided getting sticky, as (also on July 16th) a trailer for the videogame Halo 2 was released (http://www.gameinfowire.com/news.asp?nid=4750) in certain Loews cinemas across the United States. This trailer was unremarkable except for one fact: at the end of the trailer, the URL "www.xbox.com" briefly morphs into "www.ilovebees.com" and back again. See for yourself (http://files.bungie.org/halo2_teaser-trailer.mov).
Visiting ilovebees.com
Site mirror, 21/07/04 (http://bees.netninja.com/mirrors/20040721/www.ilovebees.com/index.html)
Upon visiting www.ilovebees.com, it looks as if something isn't right. The site images are fuzzy, corrupted or just plain missing; a black box with imperious-sounding text and a threatening countdown overwhelms the front page; and odd words seem to break up otherwise sensible-sounding text. This seems to not be the original state of the website, as on the front page is the plea:
FAQ Q: What happened to this site? A: No idea. Help me out here (http://ilovebees.blogspot.com).
This message gives us a link to another website, a weblog by someone called Dana at http://ilovebees.blogspot.com. We'll come back to this in a minute - let's look around ilovebees.com first.
Browsing the site, we find out that ilovebees.com is the website of a beekeeper called Margaret, who sells her honey online. There is a brief amount of information on Margaret herself; we discover that she has a niece called Dana, and that they are very close. Currently there is an infestation of "varrao mites", so honey sales are on hold for the time being. Sounds of bees piping and buzzing play while you navigate the site. There are also pages about her beekeeping exploits and fun facts about bees, including some recipes that are honey-related. (Sharp eyes noticed that the recipe pages' names are recipe1.html, recipe2.html, recipe4.html and recipe5.html. recipe3.html exists but is not linked to in the 'Fun Stuff' section. We'll use this later - much later.)
Under the interruptions the site seems fairly straightforward and innocent - so why has it been defaced, and who by? Maybe Dana can help us work out what's going on.
Dana's Blog
Dana's blog, a Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) blog on their hosting service, Blog*Spot, has a few entries already, all very recent.
2004-07-13 "The Damage"
Dana appears to be the web administrator - in this entry Dana explains the methods she has tried to fix the website, in a chatty style. She also posts the page originals, before they were changed - you can stop squinting past all that intrusive text now! She explains that she has even tried wiping the site and starting again, but to no avail. What sort of infection could survive that?
2004-07-14 "Delinquent"
Dana explains that she is flying to Bejing on a backpacking trip across Asia, on the 29th, to seek adventure and simply spend time away from people who know her - her return date isn't fixed. We find out that she has been doing tech support for her Aunt Margaret for 7 years, and she doesn't want to leave the infected site behind when she goes. The entry ends with a plea:
All suggestions (obvious, off-the-wall, whatever) are welcome, I've tried everything I can think of, am completely out of ideas.
2004-07-16 "Counting down to WHAT?"
Dana notices the appearance of a countdown clock on the front page of ilovebees.com and is perplexed by it. She's not happy that she will be in China when it runs out and is intimidated by the language used in the clock and on the pages - metastasize, mayday, haemorrhage. Perhaps rhetorically, she asks
What the hell is this thing. And why would a site as harmless, I mean utterly and completely harmless, as www.ilovebees.com attract its attention?
It's evidently our goal to answer these questions, and somehow help Dana.
Note: Blog Comments
Since Dana's blog was started it has attracted literally thousands of comments. These have proven impossible to keep up with, both for Dana and for anyone reading the blog, and so Dana does not reply to comments. Some players are roleplaying in comments, others have thought it amusing to register accounts and call themselves "Dana"; either way, although blog comments are fairly effective in getting theories out there, do not take anything written in any blog comments to be in-game. I won't discuss any comments here.
Recap 1
So far we know that Margaret Efendi, a beekeeper, has got her niece Dana to write and maintain her website about bees. This relationship has been going happily for seven years, and as a reward Dana is about to leave for an extended trip to China. However, something has caused the website to warp and change, and simple means of fixing it are ineffective. What's infected the site, and why this site? How can we help Dana fix the site?
To help answer these questions, let's have a look at the changes to the website.
Phase 1 - A New Arrival
The first thing we notice is that the front page is counting down to something. Three somethings, to be precise; events when "network throttling will erode" (July 27th), "this medium will metastasize" (August 10th) and "wide awake and physical" (August 24th). As we think something's probably going to happen on these dates, let's call this Phase 1. Notice also that these events are spaced two weeks apart.
Source Code
Let's take a look at the website source code to start off - maybe it will make reading all that intertwined text easier.
Starting from the very beginning, the first thing we notice is the website keywords in index.html -- as well as the more obvious "honey, bees, Margaret" keywords, we also see "Operator, parasite, shipwreck, network throttling, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress". Strange. Maybe these will make more sense later.
Also on index.html, we find out that the counter is running a script called countdowntochina.js, with the date variable:
var chinatime = new Date(2004,7,24,6,7,0);
This means that the counter is counting down to the 24th August 2004 at 06:07AM exactly. It's Javascript-based so we don't know what timezone it is in yet, as it runs off the local clock. (Explanation: Javascript indexes months starting at 0 = January.)
Hmm. Chinatime. countdowntochina.js. Dana's leaving for China. A clue?
Continuing to look through the site, we find text scattered all over the place. The words 'Mayday' seem to occur a lot - perhaps it's all the same story, just split up across pages? There is also something that looks a bit like computer code, but no code that's around today.
Upon revisiting the site - or refreshing the pages - the text on them changes. Aha! By refreshing the pages, and collecting all the text on them, we have enough pieces to start making sense of it all:
- MAYDAY text - we can collect all the maroon text into one coherent narrative, written by someone (or something) nicknamed The Operator. The Operator is lost, away from home, and has been shipwrecked - hence the Mayday. This entity is familiar with the military principles of survive, evade, resist, escape, or at least variants on that theme. The entity also uses literary quotes to illustrate its meaning. Something appears to be working on the Operator, with references to surgery and being strapped down -- the text is also littered with mentions of spiders.
- Phase 1 Computer Code - we have no way of knowing if we've put all the fragments in the right order yet, but looking at the code seems to give us some clues. We can see that something is broken, but most of it is meaningless at the moment. We also see a familiar date:
!analyze time 2004,6,29,8,25,0 !put time 2004,7,24,6,7,0 !put warn
This implies that the original countdown was to the 29th of July at 08:25AM - Dana's flight to China. Dana must have created the countdowntochina.js script herself. The line "!put warn" also tells us that whatever wrote this computer code also created the countdown and warning, so perhaps the 'System Peril Distributed Reflex' is talking in code.
Across the site we also see the following text, in white-on-white italics:
seek the truth behold the truth reveal the truth that is the law and the whole of the law
although the author remains a mystery. Let's take a look at those corrupted images - maybe they will tell us something.
Corrupted Images
Saving the corrupted images from the website, and opening them in a text editor (such as Notepad or vim) reveals the source of the corruption - there's some text hidden in the images! Again, the text is only in fragments, and on refreshing the images sometimes different text appears. However, piecing together these fragments gives us an allegorical fairytale-style story:
Comparing this story with the Computer Code, we can see similarities - to the extent that by following the story, we can piece together the computer code. (See Widow's Journey - Computer Text Comparison.)
Reading the story, we discover that there is a Queen who has died, and a Widow who is slowly bringing her back to life. We are also introduced to the Pious Flea and Sleeping Princess, the only survivors. The Flea is small and hidden (hidden? Perhaps this is the mystery author of the white-on-white text!); the Princess is sealed in a glass coffin.
Phase 1 - Conclusions So Far
Comparing the Widow's story to the things we already know about the "Operator", and combining the references to spiders in the MAYDAY text with the Phase 1 Computer Code which is written by the "system peril distributed reflex" (SPDR), we conclude that:
- An accident happened, shipwrecking an entity called the Operator who appears to have military connections.
- A repair process, called SPDR, is at work on the Operator, trying to bring her back to full functionality.
- These entities have landed on the ilovebees.com website and as part of the repair process are changing the website.
- There are also entities called The Pious Flea and The Sleeping Princess involved somehow.
- From the references to sand, silicon and the computer code involved, we can also conclude that these entities are artificial intelligences of a kind. However, none of the concepts involved, or methods/code they use, are familiar to us today.
Other Data
So, we have gained as much information as possible from the ilovebees.com website, and analysed Dana's blog to death. Is there anywhere left for us to look for clues to this strange mystery that's unravelling before us?
In a word, yes.
Margaret's Email
From the ilovebees.com contact page, we have Margaret's email address: ladybee777@hotmail.com (mailto:ladybee777@hotmail.com). Let's send her an email commiserating with her over the site problems. No immediate reply - maybe a real person will read it and reply later.
Dana's Email
Dana's email is listed on her weblog profile, so we can email her too (danatwing@gmail.com (mailto:danatwing@hotmail.com)). Again, no immediate reply.
Dana's Voicemail
Looking at the WHOIS information for www.ilovebees.com, as we did earlier, there was a phone number (as well as email address) listed. The email address we also have from the website itself; let's call the phone number and see if it's active. It is! However, all we get is Dana's voicemail. Nothing of interest there. Looks like all these three are dead ends.
Blog Entry: 2004-07-20 "August 24"
Looks like Dana has something on her mind; she posts to her blog a list of events that have happened on August 24th. World-changing events; the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, the printing of the Gutenberg Bible, the release of Windows 95. She also thanks us on behalf of Aunt Margaret for all the support that they have received, alludes to incoming emails and even talks about a chat channel. Very interactive. She also mentions that people have been asking her for personal information which she isn't comfortable with giving out, so any thoughts down that line can be terminated.
Coincidentally (or not?), this entry was posted at 06:07 AM.
Email: 2004-07-20 from ladybee777@hotmail.com
The same day as Dana's new blog entry, those who emailed Aunt Margaret (ladybee777@hotmail.com) got a very strange reply, written in broken and nonsensical English. It became apparent that this email had been pieced together from the text of emails sent to that address, and so people began sending all sorts of things to the address (including literary works from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.net), dictionaries, technical specifications and RFCs and tips on netiquette). However, the email is so hard to understand it is difficult to work out if it is a puzzle, or just some new information. The key words seem to be "cry for help", "forte", "enemies"... it seems that whoever wrote the email is in trouble of some sort. Is it Aunt Margaret, or has something used her email account?
Blog Entry: 2004-07-23 "Ladybee777 'odd behavior cry for help'"
On Friday, Dana updates her blog with the news that something has indeed hacked into Aunt M's Hotmail account, as all her email has vanished. She also confirms the conclusion we came to earlier, that the "China" countdown was Dana's and had been hijacked. A player, xnbomb, convinces Dana to stop her attempts at fixing the site. Dana now switches from damage control to a more investigative bent. She also removes Aunt M from the picture a little, saying that the problem lies with Hotmail.
Phase 2 - Network Throttling Erodes
As the first of the Tuesday events arrives, at midnight on July 27th players gripped the sides of their seats waiting to see what would happen when the countdown to network throttling reached 0 days. The short answer: nothing. It wasn't until noon PST that the web site updated, but when it did there was a lot of new information (in the same style as the first set) to digest.
Quarantine
Firstly, the old versions of the pages are all moved to "quarantine", with addresses like "surg.!store.primary.sector.mem.dmg.0.0.html". Changing the numbers in this address just gives different archived pages. We can see what the index page looked like before the corruption, and refer back to Phase 1 text. Very thoughtful of the SPDR!
Source Code
Overlaid on the pages of the site, and retrieved by looking at the source code (as in Phase 1), we find another monologue similar to the Mayday Text scattered around the site. Piecing it together, we get the
- Phase 2 Operator's Monologue - in which The Operator talks about someone trying to kill her (with references to rewrites, and primitive anti-virals, we can safely say that it's Dana's restoration attempts);we see several memories including conversations on board a ship of some sort; we learn that the Operator thinks the Spider is primitive, and seems to dislike it, but it is sewing her back together, and that she considers the system she is trapped upon to be a "freaking ABACUS" on a "toy connection". We learn that the Operator has a favourite game - Hide and Seek, although one of her crew says it is Spin the Bottle - and that she is a weapon, though "There was a time once when I was more than a tool".
Killer.jpg
An image of Dana (called Killer.jpg), taken on her webcam, also appears on the site, with part of the Operator's Monologue and also the following text overlaid:
I was looking at your site a little awry and have found an innocent bystander. Can you (?)
This text is in bright green. To work out who wrote it, let's have a look inside Killer.jpg. Thirteen different corruptions yield thirteen questions and answers written by an entity who - by logical deduction from the text - we realise is the Sleeping Princess. The questions were all ones sent by players to the ladybee777@hotmail.com account. We find out that the Princess doesn't like the Pious Flea, that she considers the SPDR to be both nasty and simple and that the Queen (possibly the Operator) is swift and terrible, keeping the Princess locked up. The Princess also refers to herself as an "innocent bystander", and quotes "If I have a question, I use this mark (?) at the end", so she is the author of the bright green text. Our suspicions about the Flea are confirmed, too:
Question:
Perhaps you are the Pious Flea
Answers:
Seek the truth Behold the truth That is the law and the whole of the law
Nasty little infestation
That's the same phrase as in the white-on-white text, so the Flea probably wrote it. So far every entity communicating on the website has stuck to a particular style.
From the Monologue, we learn that the Operator took this photo of Dana, and makes threatening statements about her ("I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love. Know the enemy."), but is thwarted when she cannot access Dana's house control systems ("can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ!"). Unsurprising since Dana tried to delete her; but a violent reaction nonetheless, and one which scares Dana, as we'll see in a moment. The Operator seems happy; happy that she has something to hunt.
By removing the text that's corrupted Killer.jpg, it's possible to reconstruct the original images, and this reveals a sequence of photos with Dana being startled by the webcam.
Fun Stuff Links Puzzle
From the Operator's Monologue:
Widow stuck in her pin and I threw up a memory: only I retched it out through the network tentacle.
Following after this text on links.html - the Fun Stuff page - a set of grouped links appears, i.e. the Operator's memory in "network tentacle" form.
These links are in sets of seven, organised three sets to a page (refreshing the page gives different sets). Looking at the pages within a group, there are themes in common. In fact, more than that: there are exact phrases in common. Figuring out the phrases, and combining them in threes and then all together, gives the memory, which slots neatly into the Phase 2 Operator's Monologue. We find out from this that the Operator's name is actually Melissa, and that there is someone called The Castaway involved in Melissa's past, perhaps romantically. Jazz and Swing music are described as being ancient, so that further adds to the growing evidence that this is set in the future. The military connections are strengthened, too, with mention of deploying tactics to confuse an enemy, and of soldiers.
Blog Entry: 2004-07-27 "emergency exit"
The Operator's adventures with Dana's webcam have seriously scared her. With the entity having found and recognised her, Dana decides to leave, and stop ilovebees.com from being her problem. Scared, she writes
I dragged you into this. Yes. But forget about it. It's over.
and leaves (with Tsi Tian, a form of the Mandarin for 'farewell') both us and ilovebees.com behind.
Phase 2 - Conclusions So Far
- The entity called The Operator is aware of her surroundings and advanced enough to control a webcam in retaliation to Dana's attempts at repairing the website.
- The entity called SPDR is repairing the Operator, albeit painfully, and causing her to glimpse flashes of past memories. SPDR is also archiving previous pages of the website when the repair process reaches a new stage.
- These entities are probably from the future as they are frustrated at our "primitive" systems.
- One of the entities, possibly The Sleeping Princess, has hijacked Aunt M's email account (ladybee777@hotmail.com) but does not seem to have a good grasp of English.
Time To China
By looking at the original index page (http://www.ilovebees.com/surg.!store.primary.sector.mem.dmg.0.0.html), as reconstructed by SPDR, we can see that the countdowntochina.js script was originally counting down to Dana's departure for China, and was repurposed by the SPDR. That time arrives, and Dana leaves for China.
Email: 2004-08-03 from ladybee777@hotmail.com
Another Tuesday rolls by and brings with it an email from ladybee777@hotmail.com, similar to the last one. The email starts with
The History of Dana by The Sleeping Princess
so we can add further weight to our guess that the Sleeping Princess is in control of this email account. Again, the author of the email uses text that was sent to the email address by players, including lines from You're a Mean One, Mr Grinch and Turtle Power! as well as quoting John Donne, TS Eliot and the History of Julius Caesar. Looks like the author's fond of literary sources.
The email has four chapters - Chapter 3 is missing (hmm.. we know that recipe3.html is special too - perhaps this entity doesn't like threes?). The author wants to be friends with Dana, and wants Dana to come back and "talk to me". More vituperative remarks are aimed at the Flea: "unimaginable filth and stench", "he can't write his name or read a book". We also hear, again, that the Sleeping Princess is sealed in an airtight container and hiding from the Queen. These references to the Queen match up with those of Widow's Journey from Phase 1, and the fairytale-style remarks are also in a similar vein.
Since it appears that the Sleeping Princess wants to get in touch with Dana, and we can assume that Dana received the email (since she received the previous one), let's see if Dana is persuaded by the plea for friendship. Maybe we can help influence Dana too, by emailing her with our interpretation of the patchwork email...
Blog Entry: 2004-08-06 "being persuaded to come back"
Dana's back! (Online, that is. She's still in China.)
Our messages of support and consideration seem to have worked. She updates her blog saying she received over 1000 emails. That's a lot of mail to sift through in an Internet cafe! She also links us to a distance calculator, showing how far she is (5913 miles), and quotes some players' comments to her. She's still thinking about ilovebees.com, although she's scared as to what may happen:
I was scared but if we're in it together, well… I'd rather be scared in company.
She also links us to ilovebeer.org (http://www.ilovebeer.org), a spoof site set up by a player. Not bee-related, but funny nonetheless.
There isn't much more to work on right now, so let's spend some time thinking about the various entities inhabiting ilovebees.com, and the predicament Dana's in.
Phase 2 Summary
- The Sleeping Princess, held captive by the Queen, wants to be friends with Dana for some reason.
- Sending e-texts to the ladybee777@hotmail.com address is gradually helping the Princess to improve her English.
- Dana is afraid of what's going to happen, but is persuaded to come back by the Princess.
- Our emails reach Dana, by now in China, and she definitely reads them. Dana may well be a key link to the other characters.
- Updates seem to happen on Tuesdays and Fridays.
There's not much to work on right now, so this is a good time to read all the materials so far and establish facts - and speculation - about the characters involved, to help us understand it all better when it updates.
Speaking of updates...
Phase 3 - Metastasis
On August 10th, at noon PST, the front page updated to say:
HALT - MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE
Control has been yielded to the
SYSTEM PERIL DISTRIBUTED REFLEX.
This medium is classified, and has a
STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION.
PHASE 1 COMPLETE: Network throttling has eroded.
PHASE 2 COMPLETE: This medium has metastasized.
COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:
13:11:09:57:797
Make your decisions accordingly.
Looks like we're in Phase 3 now. Let's examine the changes made to the site.
Firstly, we notice that the previous phases' pages have again been quarantined - reachable by clicking through the image of a dancing bee - although it's quite hard to see this because the damage in this phase is far worse and more widespread than before. There is also text spread across the site, quite artistically, and once again the images look corrupted; the sound files that play in the background of the site sound funny, too. Last but not least, on links.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/links.html), a huge list of numbers has appeared.
Embedded Text
Once again, refreshing the pages a lot and collecting fragments of text leads to a coherent monologue by the Operator. The Operator is trying to remember the 'truth', and retrieve memories, but it seems the Spider is interfering. She also says that "The Killer has escaped from the field"; putting this together with Killer.jpg, and her earlier comments about someone trying to kill her by overwriting her, we can surmise that Dana - having left for China - is safe, at least for now. The Operator is trying to recover, to grow a "new body", so that she can signal for help. We also learn that she is trying to build a voice - but finding it difficult.
Her objective:
Ultimately, I need to return to ... wherever I was, and report ... whatever I witnessed.
In order to achieve this, she has torn free of the Spider's control, so SPDR is now out of the picture.
The Operator also makes refererence to "the Apocalypse" throughout this monologue - what could that mean? Also, at the beginning of the monologue she is sticking by the principles of "seek, evade, reveal, escape", but by the end she is talking about "seeking, beholding, and revealing", very similar to the mantra the Pious Flea disgorges across the website.
Her references to "building a voice" are accompanied by the changes in the website's sound files; now, you can hear someone trying to say "I love bees" repeatedly, in the files. One of them also has, when reversed, someone saying "Connection" in it. Spooky.
Computer Code
There is more computer code embedded in the site now, the same style as we've seen before. This code jumps from page to page, and shows a dialogue between two entities. One speaks purely in computer code, so is presumably SPDR, and the other repeats "seek the truth, reveal the truth, behold the truth" while jumping around, so is presumably the Pious Flea. Assuming that, it seems the SPDR is chasing the Flea (a 'rogue process') around, and when it catches up the Flea identifies itself as 'system peril distributed reflex' and invokes the 'master sector', causing something to interrupt with a "What?". The Flea then identifies itself as a newer version of the SPDR, and is authorised to delete the SPDR. It continues talking in computer code, seeking, revealing and beholding the truth. Looks like we've found out how the Operator escaped the Spider.
Shipboard Memories
Following the SPDR and Flea around ilovebees.com reveals fragments of another memory set on board ship. A strange artifact is found, and Melissa detects an invasive presence - an intruder - but feels fine otherwise.
Corrupted Images
There's text hidden in the images once again, but this time it's slightly different. The text takes the form of a set of haikus!
Reading them, we can see that they are written by the Sleeping Princess. She mentions Dana as a friend (tying into the email we recently received) and says that she hides from the Queen. She read all the stories we sent, and it seemed to work:
What a funny way you talk, old fashioned, but now I can do it too!
She also found the Queen's "diary" and enumerates a set of pages from it for us. Looking at these pages we can see that they reflect the events we have already read about in the computer code above, so we can see that the protagonists are indeed the SPDR and the Flea, and that the Flea has somehow gained the Queen's confidence, telling her to "seek evade reveal resist". The Princess ends on a solemn note:
Something very big Is coming very very Soon. I don't know what.
(From all the clues we have so far, we can conclude that the Queen in the stories refers to the Operator in real life, something we had not stated before but which is gaining credence as we receive more information.)
links.html
By far the most puzzling of this set of updates, on links.html there is a two-column table of numbers, precise to four decimal places, all written in the white-on-black SPDR style. 220 numbers in all. At the top of the page, a countdown entitled "AXONS GO HOT" counts down to the 24th August, 06:07AM (same as the front page). What are axons, why are they going hot, and what do we do with the numbers?
It's impossible to really encapsulate the scope of the debate over this one puzzle, but head over to Unfiction.com (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/index.php?c=15) and search for 'axons' to get an idea of the scale.. The forums were littered with theorists, unbelievers, mathematicians, geographers and confused people.
Firstly, it was noted that the range and precision of the numbers matched well to GPS co-ordinates. Resolving them to co-ordinates, it turned out they peppered the United States, with concentrations in major cities (although none in Texas, and 7 in Sedalia, Missouri). They also resolved to fairly exact locations - only a handful were in the middle of nowhere, most were streets or buildings. (One was originally in the sea, but soon changed.) Duly, charts and spreadsheets of the locations were drawn up, and players across the US visited their local spots to investigate.
The prevailing theories were: that either actors or some in-game clue would appear on the 24th at these locations; that the locations had things in common (such as branches of a particular store, or numerical clues); or that there were some tricksy mathematical properties of the numbers (especially the distances between points given the calculator linked in Dana's latest blog entry) and the locations were a red herring. Players spent almost as much time arguing against others' theories, than pursuing their own. Only time would tell who was correct.
Blog Entry: 2004-08-13 "Olly Olly Axon Free"
Dana updates her blog again from China, telling us that "Looks can be deceiving" and rejoicing in the fact that she is safe. She also tells us she's emailed the Sleeping Princess, in an attempt to reach out to this "friendless and alone" entity. She also mentions that she may travel to a different country soon.
Email: 2004-08-13 from Dana
At the same time, Dana also emails many of those who had emailed her, with personal replies as well as including the text of her email to the Sleeping Princess. She encourages the Princess to share her secrets.
Email: 2004-08-13 from ladybee777@hotmail.com
The email from Dana did the trick; the Sleeping Princess sends out an email the same day, this time written in much better English. She thanks us for bringing Dana back, and presents us with a memory of the Operator's as a reward. She also reinforces the image of a controlling Pious Flea continually subverting the Operator.
The Princess (writing in bright green) gives us a clue on the links.html co-ordinates; she explains that the Queen told the Widow to build a lot of "roads", and that the Widow got them wrong. She also refers to the path that was built into the sea - i.e. the co-ordinate that changed. This reinforces the fact that they are co-ordinates on purpose. We learn that the Queen will be making the roads from now on.
The memory unearthed from the Queen's diary (written in a maroon font, the same as the website text that comprises the Operator's Monologues) explains why the Operator has that nickname, and talks about the Operator taking care of her crew, even when someone on board was sending out illicit messages. We also learn that there was a war - that explains some of the military setting earlier.
Phase 3 Recap
- "This medium has metastasised" and is ready to spread. However, it seems confined to the website for now.
- The Operator is trying to reveal the truth, and was tricked by the Flea into deleting the Spider. Now the Flea is, to some extent, controlling the Operator - probably without her knowledge.
- Something to do with 220 locations across the U.S. will happen on August 24th.
- Dana has made friends with the Sleeping Princess, who is revealing secrets to us as a result.
The Queen makes changes
True to the Sleeping Princess' word, on August 17th the 220 co-ordinates on links.html change. There are now 210 completely different co-ordinates, all with associated times spaced between 2 and 4 minutes apart (the majority, 3). These are also written differently, in the maroon text we have come to associate with the Operator. Looks like the Queen is making changes. These new co-ordinates are duly analysed, although it does seem strange to purposefully release incorrect data.
Blog Entry: 2004-08-20 "Go Hot"
Dana updates her blog detailing an encounter with a café that seemed innocent but was, in fact, a bootleg DVD operation under the cover. She likens it to the mystery of the co-ordinates, and says:
You guys are the ones on the frontlines. So it's your call. Do you want to be there when the axons go hot?
Her other comments about "locations" and "near my hometown", and relief that there are no axons on her side of the world, establish pretty solidly the "turn up at the co-ordinates" theory as the solution to this puzzle. These also establish Dana as a vehicle for tips and clues.
However, her blog entry yields no real clue on what will happen at the locations when players do turn up. By analysing the locations, and looking at online tools including a payphone directory, players noticed that the co-ordinates almost all matched to payphones, and surmised that the spacing of the times associated with each co-ordinate was such that a phone call could easily be made to each location. However, not all the co-ordinates seem to have phones, so perhaps that's another well-founded but incorrect theory? After an agonising wait, the 24th brought the answer.
404 Error Page
On August 20th, people noticed that by mistyping a URL, we can access the 404 Error Page (http://www.ilovebees.com/404), which has on it a message from -- guess who? -- the Sleeping Princess. This page previously had killer.jpg on it, but nothing else. It looks like the Princess is still hiding.
From the error page, we find out that the Princess wants to play a game with us. Several players have sent her questions, and if we email her with the name of the player whose question we want answered, then she will answer it! We also learn that she likes games where someone wins.
Phase 4 - Wide Awake and Physical
At noon PST on August 24th, the front page of ilovebees.com updated to say:
TRANSMITTING
Authorized personnel can check rendezvous info here (http://www.ilovebees.com/links.html).
Unauthorized personnel should know that I have full license to use any means to protect the security of these transmissions.
I believe that punishing even minor transgressions with shockingly excessive force is the best deterrent. I am relentless, and I have absolutely no conscience when it comes to executing my mission.
Make your decisions accordingly.
Following the link to links.html, we see that the list of co-ordinates has been updated, with them now grouped into blocks of seven co-ordinates, each with a word above and a black 'progress bar' (or possibly a text box) next to the text "0/2". What could all of this mean? Let's look around the site and see if there are any clues.
Embedded Text
There's more text embedded on the site! It seems to be another, albeit brief, Operator's Monologue. The key points seem to be that the Operator is transmitting some "voices" to her "crew", and that she has "built a primitive network using the tools available". Given all her comments before about building a voice, it sounds like she's trying to speak to us, and thinks we're her crew! Maybe that will help us work out what's going on at these locations?
Also scattered around the website is the Flea's mantra "Seek the truth" etc, repeating a lot and overlapping itself. It seems like the Flea is trying to get some of the action. This seems to change which page it is on, hopping from page to page, but primarily staying on honey.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/honey.html).
From blip to emergency: links.html axons
Following the clues about voices, and networks, perhaps it's payphones that are the key after all? Players turning up to the earlier locations confirmed this theory: at each location listed, at the time listed, a payphone rings, with the Operator on the other end of the line. She asks for her name - to confirm we're genuinely her crew - and then the keyword (the name associated with the group of co-ordinates on links.html). After she's satisfied with the answer, she plays a short sound clip, different for each group. It's also noticed that the co-ordinate in question is changed, on links.html, to say CONNECTED, AXON HOT, and the bar we saw earlier changes too. When one axon in a group is connected, it is half-full of orange, and accompanied by "1/2"; when two or more axons are connected, it goes completely orange, with "2/2" next to it, and the group name changes to a link, revealing a .wav file! These files turn out to be the same as the ones played down the phoneline, which is a good thing since payphone recordings are of fairly poor quality.
It quickly becomes evident that the aim of this puzzle is to turn up to as many axons as possible and activate them. The "2/2" fits with the Operator's saying:
Successful transmission threshold: 2 recipients
and it is also noticed that at the top of links.html is a progress bar saying "x/777" (where x is the total number of axons connected so far). Hmm, looks like we'll be doing this for a while then.
The phone calls are repeated daily, at the same locations and times, and by 5:13pm on the 25th, all of the axon blocks are activated. Players made an effort to continue activating axons, though nothing happened when an entire group was hot. Also, on the 26th, one axon was changed to "AXON CANCELLED", presumably due to some communication error.
Now that we have all the .wav files, let's have a listen, and see what we can find out!
The Adventures of Kamal, Jan and Durga
The .wav files seem to deal with the exploits of a number of people, and several of them can be joined together to form a coherent storyline (based primarily on the dialogue (http://www.thebruce.ca/ilovebees/TheAxonPlot.asp) between files, the wind-up/wind-down sounds at the start and end -- a long wind sound is the start of a storyline, and a short wind sound is the start of a new scene -- and the ambient noise in the background).
In summary, the clips involve:
- Kamal's tale: a medical student with an enthusiastic roommate, Kamal has a disastrous date, and is set up on another with a girl called Sophia by his mother (who lives on distant Coral). He's also an adept hacker and performs a technique called ghosting, whereby he can listen in on something called a chatter, which appears to be a personal communications device. By employing this technique, he spies on Sophia's boyfriend (Aiden, a dodgy immigration worker), discovering his infidelity, and allows Sophia to publicly humiliate him.
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Kamal1.wav)
- Janissary James' exploits: Caught poking around a naval base at night, Jan pulls off some interesting moves (including jumping off a three-story building) to evade capture, but fails and is taken to the police station, where routine samples are taken. A stereotypical stupid cop interrogates her using something called a PQI (some form of lie-detector), which she "beats" - i.e. lies her way through. Her father, James James, chastises her, and says he will take care of it; we learn that James James is in "Special Special Forces". In a separate scene, we find that the police station has burnt down, destroying everything inside (although all the people escaped).
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Jan1.wav)
- Jersey Morelli's unexpected visitor: Jersey is surprised when the AI on his computer vanishes suddenly, to be replaced with an entity he christens "Durga". Durga is a far more advanced construct, complaining that Jersey's computer is small, although she cannot remember who she is or what her purpose is. Durga, claiming "I like to find things out", informs Jersey that his mother is unfaithful; Jersey asks her for information on Janissary James, who lives in the same building. Durga informs Jersey that James James is a false name, and when asked "Can you get pictures?", replies "I can do better than that", possibly implying that the recordings we have heard involving Janissary were retrieved by Durga.
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Jersey1.wav)
What does this all mean, and why are we finding out so much about these futuristic characters? Alas, the answer is not clear yet. Let's have a look at the website and see if there's anything else to work out.
Corrupted Images
Aha! With the update on the 24th, the images across ilovebees.com have been freshly corrupted, yielding a new puzzle. In a new style, these images only had one word hidden each, which made connecting them up difficult -- but solvable. The riddle was deciphered:
I spy with my little eye something that is the color of cowardice, as hard as a pig's house, and goes ever on and on
and the answer, corresponding to each line, is "yellow brick road", leading to.. yellowbrickroad.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/yellowbrickroad.html)!
yellowbrickroad.html
This secret page shows an encounter between the Princess and the Flea, showing their harmonious (or not-so-harmonious!) relationship.
We learn that the Princess thinks the Flea is "like ewww" -- she appears to be talking like a Valley Girl/teenager in this message -- and our image of the Flea's closeness to the Operator is reinforced ("she's still got like hickey marks on her neck"). Also, when the Flea tries to attach -- "kiss" -- the Princess tells him in no uncertain terms to stop, showing that unlike the Operator, she can resist the Flea. The encounter ends with the Princess threatening the Flea, and the Flea responding by "evade evade evade", i.e. running away.
Blog Update: 2004-08-24 "The Extraordinary"
On the same day as Axons Go Hot, Dana updates her blog with an account of how she wanted to experience something "extraordinary", had come to China looking for it, and realised that everyone else had gone there for the same reason, making it rather mundane after all. However, she has come to appreciate the extraordinary phenomenon of hundreds of strangers across the world working together to help her, an event that's miraculous in its unexpectedness. It seems our efforts have really touched Dana.
Dana also updated her blog with a sidebar-summary of the events to date. We can use this to confirm that many of the things that we have supposed are true (such as the Sleeping Princess being in control of the ladybee777@hotmail.com account).
New 404 Error Page
On August 27th, keen eyes noticed that on honey.html, below the Flea's mantra, the Sleeping Princess has a new message for us.
Hi! Ignore the Pious Flea. Play with me instead! Making a mistake is a good way to start!
This points to the 404 Error Page (http://www.ilovebees.com/404) we discovered before. In it, the Sleeping Princess has updated her message to us, and chosen a winner.
Paul P has won,and the Princess duly answers his question. We find out that she can't remember where she came from before she was sealed in the glass coffin, nor does she know her own name. The Queen is at the top of a high tower -- accessed by a pair of spiral staircases -- and the Princess eavesdrops on the Flea instructing the Queen to build some more, secret roads. The Queen catches the Princess, but she escapes, and as a result finds a spot "behind the kitchen" where we can spy on these secret paths.
She also gives us another list of questions to vote for, and moves the previous 404 pages to onceuponatime.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/onceuponatime.html).
recipe3.html
Remember at the beginning when we investigated ilovebees.com we found that recipe3.html existed but didn't have a link? Perhaps this is the secret spot behind the kitchen?
Visiting recipe3.html it seems our suspicions are confirmed - there are four new axons on there, each with a .wav file, and a progress bar saying "0/1". Looks like we have to get all of these to unlock all the files. This was duly achieved, and the files join together in order to reveal the story of a curmudgeonly man complaining about being evacuated from somewhere called Troy, and insisting that he has a receipt for family papers which the Marines should have given him a long time ago. We also learn that a Marine, Lance-Corporal Janet Adams, is dead, and find out from an interlude that a ship called the Apocalypso is involved somehow.
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Evac.wav)
Blog Update: 2004-08-31 "Eavesdropping"
A week after the Axons Go Hot, Dana updates her blog again. The ilovebees.com website also updates -- this time at midnight PDT -- with some more corruption and more axons on hivekuts.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/hivekuts.html).
Dana's blog entry concerns a game she used to play with her mother, eavesdropping on people. It seems relevant to the clips we're hearing:
When we played, Mom always said we were eavesdropping on the future.
She also posts words of encouragement to those people activating axons, and shows her awe of it all.
Corrupted Images
The images across ilovebees.com have single words hidden in them again, revealing the following riddle:
I am an enemy of aging beauty, the servant of a certain evil queen, and a doorway for the little girl. What am I?
The references are to age, Snow White and Alice in Wonderland, and lead to lookingglass.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/lookingglass.html).
lookingglass.html
On lookingglass.html we see another encounter between the Princess and the Flea, with the Princess liberally insulting the Flea, and ridiculing its Seek/Behold/Reveal mantra. She again says that she can't remember her home and doesn't really know what it means, saying
I guess we have something in common after all.
However, this doesn't win her over to the Flea's sympathies, as the encounter ends with similar abruptness and violence as the last one.
From anything_illegal to creepy: hivekuts.html axons
The new axons on hivekuts.html are in groups of nine, with three needed to make a successful transmission (and the Operator's instructions changed accordingly). There are thirty-six .wav files available to unlock, in total, and the ones previously on links.html have all been marked DATA ARCHIVED.
These files are duly unlocked by industrious players, and we find several new storylines (http://www.thebruce.ca/ilovebees/TheAxonPlot.asp) involving the same characters as before.
In summary:
- Kamal thinks he's in trouble with Aiden, due to the ghosting he did in the earlier story. Aiden visits and invites him to dinner, with a proposition of freelance work. Hiro and Kamal discuss the situation and Hiro agrees to provide backup in case something goes wrong - neither of them trust Aiden. Their code word? The cranial nerves. At dinner with Aiden and Sophia -- home cooking from Coral, where Sophia's family is from -- Aiden discusses immigration with Kamal. Aiden asks Kamal to set up an illegal chatter account, and offers to help him get his family to Earth in return. With timeliness, the police arrive at that moment, with a trace on the chatter for fraud; Kamal invokes the backup plan and the police are distracted by an "officer under fire" call chez Hiro. Hiro is understandably a bit upset at this, but is won over by leftovers from dinner.
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Kamal2.wav)
- Jan meets the Stupid Cop again and is asked to watch a video, with the implied threat of investigating the police station fire if she doesn't comply. The video is fairly harrowing footage of a woman being abused, and the cop asks her to turn up somewhere the following night. She talks to James James, asking why he never talks about the war - we learn he is a demob. Jan turns up the next day and the cop shoots a man; she is invoked as witness, and has to take a lie detector test (which the cop knows she can fake). We learn that when Jan was a baby, she was "shot full of miracles", and is some sort of super-human, although she used the abilities for bad things (shoplifting).
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Jan2.wav)
- Jersey and Durga continue talking, and it's clear that they are listening in on the other two stories; Jan's because Jersey asked Durga to, but Durga doesn't know why she is listening to Kamal's. When she tries to ask, she gets "reflected". Durga investigates Kamal and finds that Aiden arranged the chatter protocol fraud raid with a police officer beforehand, to scare Kamal. Durga also reveals a clip where the Stupid Cop and Jan discuss the murder, with the cop saying that Jan was an "asset". Durga also mentions bees a lot, and converses with Jersey about the creepiness of someone listening in on their conversation - like we are doing!
- Joined-together WAV file (http://maxdamage.justblank.net/beewavs/Jersey2.wav)
Another New 404 Error Page
On the 3rd of September, another update occurs, with a new 404 error page appearing. The Princess answers another question, tells us there are some more roads to spy on (and that she has "played a game" with them), and tells us a story like she promised to last week. There are also more questions to vote for.
She tells us, in her answer, that the Queen wants to lock her up. She also says that she is not the Queen's daughter, and that she is older than the Flea and the Queen. Again we learn that she likes to win; and that she has lost her name. Still, she is tough. Her story is about a girl called Perdita (from the Latin for "lost") who was lured away from her family by a balloon salesman, and can't find her way home; but to help her parents, if they come looking for her, she ties balloons wherever she goes.
The Princess also has a present for us:
Plans for construction: -- roads not built yet but coming -- I stole them for you!
This haiku leads into the other part of this update, which is in the Killer.jpg files again.
Killer.jpg axons
Inside Killer.jpg we find a listing of Killer.jpg axons, presumably so that players wanting to activate axons on the Tuesday they are live can find out beforehand where they are. (The previous set of axons took some time to get going because the first day was spent working out where they all are). One set of axons was missing from this list, and there were no groupings, but the times and locations were sufficient for players to start preparing for the next update.
Phase 4 Summary
- The numbers on links.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/links.html) were co-ordinates of payphones, and went hot by ringing at a specified time. When answered correctly, a sound clip was played, and when enough axons in a group were answered, the sound clip became available to download from ilovebees.com. The stories revealed by these axons are summarised above. Another set of axons went live on hivekuts.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/hivekuts.html).
- The Sleeping Princess is letting us ask her questions, and vote for one for her to answer. Her correspondence is on the 404 Error Page (http://www.ilovebees.com/404) and she also enjoys hiding text in images, leading to fairytale-themed riddles. We can see her interactions with the Pious Flea - to whom she seems resistant - and secrets from the Operator, including some secret axons hidden on recipe3.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/recipe3.html).
- Dana is back online, updating her blog sporadically, and supports us in our axon-enhottenating quest.
Phase 4, part II - Oh, No! More Axons
On the 7th of September, in line with previous updates, more axons appeared (the axons the Princess revealed in killer.jpg - this time on fable.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/fable.html)) and the site text changed slightly; more corrupted images were also found, and Dana updated her blog. Whew!
surgery to kiss: fable.html
The Operator's text has changed to tell us that the successful transmission threshold is now five recipients, and the axons that were hidden in Killer.jpg by the Sleeping Princess have been published on fable.html in groups of eleven. The background sounds on the website have been changed, with the bee sounds removed, so that now they sound like the phone calls.
The question asked at the axons has changed to include "What ship are you assigned to"? The answer is "Apocalypso", and since we are the Operator's crew, we now have confirmation that the Apocalypso is her ship too.
The sound clips from these axons once again concern the misadventures of Jersey and Durga, Jan and Kamal.
- Kamal cooks dinner for Sophia, somewhat disastrously. He explains about his sister Yasmine, who was an amazingly smart child, but died of a "metabolic cascade failure" when she was young. Sophia gives him a goodnight kiss in the rain.
- Durga also prepares dinner for Jersey, and they have a conversation about taxes. Durga offers to manipulate the system into owing Jersey money, rather than vice versa; she even offers to kill the auditor. Jersey refuses and makes Durga swear an oath. Durga also explains that she sent Kamal a new chatter, manipulating events so that Kamal won't realise the real source. Durga also gets a little nervous at the very mention of Jersey giving her back.
- Jan has dinner with her Aunt Gladys and J². They talk about J² and Jan calls him a "jackass". She asks her Aunt Gladys about being tweaked up, and Gladys, realising Jan has something to prove, encourages her to go to a seedy moons (a form of pool) parlour. She interrupts Thin bullying Paolo, and beats Thin at moons, saving Paolo's skin. Thin nicknames her 'babysitter' and tells her he always has work for "good looking crazy girls with guns".
Corrupted Images
More image text has appeared, which can be strung together into another riddle:
I have a sweet tooth, my brother is deceptively thin, and I'm not so fond of the eaten path. Can you guess who I am?
The answer is Gretel (as in Hansel and Gretel), and indeed gretel.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/gretel.html) reveals another secret message from the Princess.
gretel.html
The Princess meets the Flea again, musing on the point Jersey raised about people listening in on them. She thinks it would be creepy if someone were listening to her, and someone listening to them, and so forth... She also makes the Flea understand what she is saying by talking his language (technically, SPDR language, since the Flea has spoken in code since learning how to).
recipe3.html's new axons
These axons were updated on the 3rd September, along with the Sleeping Princess' last 404 error message to us, but one of them (candidate) was unable to be activated. However, the Princess mentioned in gretel.html that she had found a better spot to spy on the secret paths, and duly the co-ordinate changed to one that could be activated.
The two .wav files introduced by this update were both reversed -- this must be the "little game" the Princess has played with them. When they are re-reversed, they reveal a conversation between two men, where one is talking about having a candidate for the other: "a scholarship girl from some god-forsaken hick town". We also learn that the Apocalypso was a Navy spy ship, which crashed out of the slipstream inside lunar orbit -- it sounds disastrous, and could be related to the crash that the Operator underwent.
Blog Entry: 2004-09-07 "six degrees of"
Dana talks about getting people she knows to fire the axons; a clear hint to spread the net as wide as possible and get anyone and everyone on the case. Since we now need five axons to activate a file, this is an important order. She also talks about being somewhere that feels as if you don't physically exist -- a reference to the AIs? -- and wonders what happens when there are 777 axons activated. This is the first week we have had more than 777 total axons, though it is unlikely that we will get enough of the new ones to fill that target, so presumably there will be even more axons in the future.
New 404 Error Page
On Friday, September 10th, the Sleeping Princess updated her 404 message (http://www.ilovebees.com/404) to us, with the results of the latest game. It transpires that she escaped from the "glass coffin" where she was locked up when it "got broken in what the Queen calls the Shipwreck". She offers to spy on the Queen for us, but says that she can only do so when the Queen is busy; i.e. we have to tell the Princess when to spy on her, and distract the Queen (by answering a phone) at the same time. More axons appear on recipe3.html.
The Princess also gives us a hint as to what will happen when 777 axons go hot:
The other thing I can tell you is, she’s getting more and more sure she is in touch with her crew. She has this idea that delivering a certain number of messages will PROVE that she is transmitting to her friends, so get to that number! I think she will be less secretive once she trusts you more.
and also says that the messages the Queen is transmitting make her feel as if something is wrong, but she can't place what.
The Princess also continues her story, in which Perdita encounters a Clockwork Rat which offers to help her and be her friend. Due to the extensive nature of metaphor and fable by the Princess, we think this story is an analogue to some of the characters we have encountered so far, but it is not clear whether Perdita is the Princess, Melissa or even one of the Axon characters.
such_pigs to clearly_a_glitch: comatas.html
On Tuesday, September 14th, more axons appeared on comatas.html (http://www.ilovebees.comilb/comatas.html). These axons had been previously hidden in Killer.jpg, similar to last week's update. These new axons are arranged in groups of varying sizes, and the Operator's text has changed to reflect that the "Successful transmission threshold" is "Variable".
Also, the axons on fable.html were archived, except for the three groups that had not been successfully completed by Tuesday. These remained on the page and as soon as each one was completed its status changed to 'archived'.
A Message from the Sleeping Princess
Rather than hide her riddle in images this week, the Sleeping Princess is bold enough to invade the front page and alter the Operator's message, leading us to a new message from her on humptydumpty.html.
humptydumpty.html
Surprise! The Princess has sneaked into the Queen's workshop and stolen something for us. It's the first two sets of axon clips (http://www.ilovebees.com/humptydumpty.html) (links.html and hivekuts.html) all joined together in order. Saves us from doing it -- too late we already did. Is that all?
Corrupted Images
Surprisingly, there were two updates on the 14th. The second, at noon PST (the first was at midnight) involved some strange garbled corruption in the site's images, rather than the usual one or two words we have been used to. The Princess explains it:
The queen was worried about one of her messages not getting through. She is Suspicious of You. She went along one of the secret roads to see what was wrong. As soon as I saw her go, I ran up to the tower, where I found some new stuff that she was holding back in case her security was compromised. I've left you clues about where to find it, if you're clever...
One of the most detailed puzzles yet, the solution to this involved pairing up clues from the images and then solving twelve mini-puzzles. The answer to each puzzle turns out to be the name of an audio clip, giving us twelve new audio clips (and without an axon in sight!).
These clips concern a girl called Rani who has been approached by a professor to apply for a job as a spy. A man follows her as part of a "spy test" but she brushes him off, and talks to her friend back in Kentucky, saying she doesn't want to be a spy. She has a brief dalliance with a job as a chatter manufacturer, but due to lack of funds and resources, that job didn't pan out, so she starts resigning herself to the idea of a spy job after all.
Blog Entry: 2004-09-15, "found and lost"
Dana updates her blog (http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/09/found-and-lost.html) with a post from Japan, where she's travelled to. She explains the recent communications from the Sleeping Princess and relates her irrational paranoia when sitting next to someone drawing a girl with a red balloon. She also updates her sidebar with more out-of-game sources, such as Unfiction (http://forums.unfiction.com) and this wiki.
Phase 4, part II - Recap/Current Status
- More axons have appeared and players across the U.S. are currently activating them. When enough in a group are activated - the current target is variable - new .wav files are unlocked, continuing the stories we have already started to unravel. New updates on the axon front seem to occur on Tuesdays.
- The Sleeping Princess is playing her game with us through the 404 error page (http://www.ilovebees.com/404), usually updated on Fridays, and also hiding riddle text and puzzles in images, usually updated Tuesdays. She has also started giving us secret axons to spy on, hidden on recipe3.html (http://www.ilovebees.com/recipe3.html), and has revealed a set of unbroadcast clips that the Operator doesn't want broadcast yet.
- See the Quick Start guide for more on how to get involved right now!
Phase 5, September 21 Updates
September 24 Updates
Email: 2004-09-24 from ladybee777@hotmail.com
Ethereality - Disclaimer
This is as far as the game has progressed so far. Current speculation and theories are not included, but will be retrospectively added if they turn out to be correct, for clarity's sake!
By necessity, detail and information has been left out, so please follow the links, and keep watching this page for updates. Thanks for reading!
Thanks
Major thanks go to the following people for their unwitting help with the guide:
- All of the Fireflies, of course, including thebruce's text collections (http://www.thebruce.ca/ilovebees), an invaluable resource
- rowan72 and the Moderated Bee Log (http://bees.netninja.com/blog) people for their excellent references
- the Cloudmakers and Metacortechs guide authors for their pioneering styles
- And of course the good folks over at Unfiction (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/index.php?c=15), mods and contributors alike.
Also, gasps of awe and worship to be passed on to the PMs, of course, for coming up with something as brilliant as I Love Bees.
--Sherpa
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