Guide to 'Haunted Apiary - Let Op!' August 24th and Onwards

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Week 6 - Phase 4
August 24th and Onwards

Sleepy and Intangible

Tuesday, August 24, 2004. The day we have all been waiting for. The day when Melissa will awake. The day the axons go hot. The day we finally will get to know what happens at the GPS coordinates.

I woke up at 6:00am EDT to make my point: 42.970906 -077.228967 located in Manchester, NY just off I-90. Left the house at 6:30am feeling sleepy, but excited. Arrived at about 9am, plenty of time before the 06:15 PDT time listed. Met Alaranth and (I'm sorry, I don't remember your name) at McDonalds and then drove over to the coordinate. Saw nothing except a bunch of guys hanging out at one end of the street. Drove up to them and Alaranth asked if they knew Dana or if they liked bees. They answered "Yes" so we parked next to them and started wondering what to do. Because, you see, there was nothing at this point - it was at someone's house. One guy walked down to the gas station on the corner to look for a payphone. The rest of us spread out along the street looking for something, anything and still nada. We even began to hope that the Hershey Kissmobile we saw getting gas earlier would come by and give us free candy. Nope. 9:15 came and went and we stood in the street looking like idiots. I called the ARGN Hotline with my lack of news. Dejected, everyone left to their relatively close homes, while I had a 2.5 hour drive back to work.

As I'm cruising down I-90, my phone starts ringing. Crap! Reach into my purse and can't seem to find it. Double crap! Dump the contents of the purse out and start feeling around for the phone. Finally! I answer it and it's Alaranth. She's already home (*grumble*) and tells me that other people have been getting phone calls at their sites (*grr*). It seems that payphones were the key. Oh, and she gives me one other important piece of information. Our site has been changed to Manchester, New HAMPSHIRE. That's right, the one coordinate that was added to upstate NY turns out to be the only coordinate changed on the 24th. Not that I'm bitter or anything but: ARRRRGGHHH!!

Wide Awake and Physical

So what did really happen on the 24th?

The first thing was that at 6:07AM PDT, the site updated to say that it was "Transmitting" § Clicking on the link brought you to the links page with the GPS coordinates, but the page has changed. The coordinates are now grouped together, and each group has a codeword. From the About page, we learn that Melissa needs 2 recipients to consider a transmission successful. The first code word is "blip" and the poor guinea pigs at those locations were not able to get a successful transmission - but they did give vital information to the rest of the people trying to get to their axons.

What happens is this: At the specific time, a payphone will ring at the designated location. It's Melissa calling to verify that she knows you. She will ask two questions, both of which must be answered correctly, otherwise she will hang up. The first question asks for either "Her Name" or "Her Nickname". The answer would be either "Melissa" or "The Operator". The next question will be for "Your Name". The answer to this is the codeword listed for that specific time and location. So for the 06:07 PDT Coordinate, the answer would be "Blip".

If you answer both of the questions correctly, Melissa will reward you by playing an audio file of the voices in her head. When the file has finished, she asks if you would like to "Continue or Repeat". Because her systems are damaged, she is unable to continue and the call ends. Telling her "Repeat" will cause the audio file to play again - great if everyone in a group wants to hear the voices in Melissa's head. You can keep telling her "Repeat" as many times as necessary so that everyone gets a chance to hear. If two axons from each group goes hot (successfully answered), Melissa then considers it a success and posts a link to the audio file on links.html so that we all can hear it.

Melissa is sending out these files because they are in some way related to her accident. She is broadcasting them to her crew members in the hopes they can analyze them and let Melissa know the results so she can repair the damage. § She will continue to broadcast the messages daily until she receives further instructions. §

Because several of the first points did not have access to the codewords, we were not able to get all of the wavs the first day. Even some of the later points had troubles with locating the correct phones or giving the correct answers. In the end we had 23 of the 30 wavs. Even with the missing ones, we were able to get a rough idea of what they were about.

There seems to be three different story lines. The first is a boy talking to an AI that has taken over his computer. The second involves a super-human girl who gets caught on a military base. The third follows a man having bad luck on dates. Very odd files, especially since they are supposed to be related to Melissa's crash. We can only hope that if/when the last few wavs are found, it'll make more sense.

There is one more thing to the links page that we don't understand right now. At the top of the page is a progress bar marking the progress of the hot axons. Only problem is, at this time, we only have 74 axons hot out of a possible 777, and only 210 total axons that we are aware of. Does this mean we are going to get more wavs in the future? Or are there 567 axons hidden somewhere? There is also something interesting hidden in the .css for the page. The .css lists three possible states for the axons: Active, Complete and Archive. We have seen Active and Complete and speculation is now ongoing for the third type, Archive, which we haven't seen yet.

The Flea Is Chatty

The Pious Flea has added his own update to the site this week. It seems he has taken over honey.html, repeating his mantra over and over and over again, filling up the entire page. But why? Is he just pleased with himself because the axons are being activated? Or is he upset at something? §

The Princess' Riddle

Once again, the pictures have new corruptions in them. This time they are more difficult to find since each picture only has one word in it. § If you combine all these words into one sentence you get: 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. It's a riddle!

The color of cowardice: yellow
As hard as a pig's house: brick
Goes ever on and on: road

This leads us straight to www.ilovebees.com/yellowbrickroad.html, which is a new message from the Princess! This time she shows us a conversation she had with the Flea where we learn his true name: Seeker. §

The Extraordinary

Dana has been watching our progress with the axons all day. While watching us, she realizes that we are her extraordinary - coming together and working as one to solve an extraordinary problem. She also posts a summary of the game so far in the sidebar so we all know where we are at. §

Successful Transmission Threshold Reached

Melissa wasn't lying when she said she would keep calling the axons. Like clockworks, phones began ringing this morning at payphones across the country. And this time around, we manage to snag the last few axons we needed to get all of the wavs unlocked (and giving us 103 out of 777 axons that have gone hot). Now we can place the wavs in order and listen to them. §

As stated above, there seems to be three different story lines.

In the first story, we are introduced to Jersey and the AI who has taken over his computer, Durga (who says some things suspiciously close to what Melissa says). Neither Jersey or Durga knows who or what she is, but Jersey is more than ready to find out what she is capable of.

The second story follows a character talked about by Jersey and Durga: Jan James. Jan seems to have broken into a military base and is caught and interrogated. Jan is not your normal 17 year old. She can sneak onto military bases, jump off roofs three stories high, and beat lie detector tests. And the fact that she has shown to others that she can do these things does not sit well with her dad. In fact, it's quite probable that James James burnt down the police station just to cover his daughter's transgressions. Yikes!

The last story is about Kamal, a medical student who seems to have rotten luck at dating. His first date runs out on him and sticks him with the check at an expensive restaurant. His second date is a blind date that was set up by his mother. Too bad for Kamal that the girl, Sophia, already has a boyfriend. He takes it pretty well though, and they have a friendly conversation where Kamal shows off that he's pretty good at hacking the chatternets. Sophia enlists his help to check up on her boyfriend, Aiden, whom she feels may be cheating on her. When Sophia's fears are confirmed, Kamal helps her humiliate Aiden in front of his date.

While the stories seem disconnected from each other, there is at least one common thread between all three. At the beginning of each main story, the power has just gone out and the systems are just coming back on-line. But, we still don't understand what these wavs have to do with Melissa's crash, or how she came by them in the first place. Maybe we'll get some more wavs in the future that will help us make sense of all of this.

Axon Cancelled

Thursday marks the third day that the axons have gone live and the phone calls have started. People have been continuing to go out to the sites hoping to activate the ones left cold. About an hour or so before the 17:11 PDT hi_aiden axon was supposed to go off, something strange happened. It was Cancelled due to Axon Error. We have no idea what this means or why it occurred. But we got 13 more axons today, bringing our grand total up to 116 out of 777 (unfortunately, the cancelled axon did not add one to the counter).

Media Coverage

The ilovebees phenomenon has been slowly gaining media exposure - mostly from print sources. However, the people at G4TV/TechTV has had a few segments about the game on Pulse - and on Tuesday, August 24th, they actually sent a video crew out to one of the axons (34.01257, -118.49441 11:11PDT Santa Monica, California). Though the axon did not go hot that day, they still filmed those people who waited at the site with a promise to air the footage later. And today, Friday the 27th, is the day! Not only do we get to see the ilovebees fans hanging out in front of a payphone, our very own vpisteve (who was the first one alerted to ilb with his package of honey) was invited down to the studios to give an interview. Woohoo! And now the entire world, or at least those watching TechTV, know about Ilovebees and ARGs.

Spying on the Queen

The Princess has left us a message on the Flea's page today telling us it is much more fun to play with her than the flea. § Her making mistakes comments is a hint that we should visit the 404 page. And guess what? It's updated! She has answered the question from last week, and gives us new choices for the next round of her game. §

Her story about climbing the spiral staircases to the tower suggest that she might be spying on the Queen through the phone (since phone cords are made of twisted wire). And her mention of a hidden passageway behind the kitchen...where could that lead to? Hmmm, a kitchen has food in it. Where is there a mention of food on the site? The recipes of course! And since only one is hidden, she must be talking about recipe3.html.

The Princess' Axons

The page for Honey-glazed Lemon Chicken, otherwise known as Recipe 3, is where the Princess has hidden new information for us. More axons! This time, there are only four axons, and we must get all four if we want to unlock all the wavs. § Since the update occurred at around 9:00 PDT, we had approximately 3 hours before the first new axon would activate. Several intrepid Beekeepers staked out the site, and when the time came, the phone didn't ring. What? This isn't supposed to happen. We all stood around scratching our heads wondering what could have gone wrong. Is it possible the phone was broken, or were they standing at the wrong phone? No matter, there are three more axons today, and we can always find the Hello axon tomorrow.

An hour goes by and it's time for the Troy axon to be activated. And wouldn't you know it. The phone doesn't ring. Or did it? It seems there were two groups looking for the Troy axon. One group said they did get a phone call, but that their answer wasn't recognized. Doh! Two axons down and not one has been activated. This isn't going well.

One more hour and it's time for Receipt. There is no way we will be able to get this since we've heard of no one who is in that area to go check it out. 14:28 PDT comes and goes, and the axon goes hot! Figures. This wav seems to be part of a new story about a grumpy old man who is trying to get some papers that were taken from him when he was evacuated from Troy. And he has the receipt to prove it! So far, this wav has gotten us no closer to understanding why Melissa crashed. Hopefully when we get all the wavs we'll understand more.

The last new wav today is Goodbye, and we manage to get that one too. Yea! This wav is a continuation of the Receipt wav, but it still doesn't leave us with any epiphanies.

Troy Goes Hot!

Well, it only took three days, but Troy is finally hot! Only one more to go and we will have all of the wavs for this storyline. I only hope that this first wav is something good, because right now, no one is seeing the point of this storyline yet.

Hello Goes Hot!

Four days. Four days of waiting to see if the D.C. people could actually find the right phone and then give the correct answer. We sat around waiting and wondering if today was going to be the day, or if someone was going to have to be hurt. Aliendial, axon hunter extraordinaire, took up the challenge of the Hello axon. And luckily, for her safety and our sanity, she came through. Now we can complete the set of wavs and listen to the old man complain about the Marines from Troy. §

The leading theory on this set of wavs is that the Officer is looking for Marine Lance Corporal Janet Adams under the pretext that she has some papers that were taken from him when he was evac'ed off of Troy. While it sounds like there are two new voices in goodbye.wav after the knock on the door, if you listen carefully in the background, you can hear the same music playing throughout all of the wavs. That means that the man with the receipt and the man receiving information about the Apocalypso must be in the same room. And, if you go back to the very beginning of hello.wav, you can actually hear him speak in his lower, normal voice for a split second. Now why he is looking for Janet Adams, or what the Apocalypso has to do with this, is still unknown. And we still don't know what this has to do with Melissa or why should would want to keep this secret.

And on other news, as of today we have managed to get 140 of 777 axons hot. Great job Beekeepers!

Week 7
August 31st and Onwards

Early, Early Update

Tuesday updates have been fairly predictable. Noon EDT comes around and *bam* site update. Not today though. Today they decided to update around Midnight PDT, with more new axons. *sigh* Are we never going to get a new website? I mean, yeah, axons and wavs are cool and all, but I'm really getting sick of looking at all the bee pictures. Plus, how often are we expected to take off of work to go get these things? Even though there are now 4 points around me, after getting totally BURNED on the 24th, I'm not rushing out to answer the phones. If they are still cold, I'll get to them on Saturday.

This time around, the axons on links.html have been archived, and the new set is on hivekuts.html. There are 36 groups, with 9 axons for each, giving 324 more axons for us to go play with. Several people were nice enough to put up websites with the coordinates mapped out, so that we wouldn't have to do it ourselves. Thanks guys! §

Oh, and before I forget, Melissa has also updated about.html telling us that the threshold is now 3 recipients per axon. She is also getting new voices each week, but still is trying to analyze and influence the source. §

The Looking Glass

And would update Tuesday be complete without new picture corruptions? Of course not! §

Put all the lines together and it's another riddle.

I am the enemy of an aging beauty,
the servant of a certain evil queen,
and a doorway for the little girl.
Living in a old castle
Playing hide and seek.
What am I?

The first two lines obviously refer to a mirror. An aging beauty will never look in a mirror and the evil queen from Snow White had her "Mirror, Mirror on the wall". But mirror.html doesn't work. The third line hints at the exact wording we need to use. The little girl is Alice, and she went Through the Looking Glass giving us lookingglass.html. The Princess is giving us another conversation that she had with the Flea. §

Eavesdropping

Dana updates her blog telling us about a game she used to play when she was small called "the eavesdropping game." They would listen in on strangers' conversations, and if certain keywords came up, it meant that something would happen. I guess she's telling us that we need be listening carefully to the wavs, or maybe the post is just to keep our spirits up. Of course, if we got a new website, our spirits would be sky-high, but I digress. Anyways, like Dana says, "Keep going hot, guys." §

The Hivekuts Wavs

It only took six days, but we were finally able to get all of the Hivekuts Wavs up and running. Once again, they are divided into three main stories. The Jersey wavs show us that Durga is giving Jersey the same Jan and Kamal wavs that we are listening to. Meanwhile, Durga's personality is developing, although she still has moments of "reflection" that Jersey cannot understand. The Kamal wavs pick up with Kamal meeting Aiden. Aiden needs Kamal to use his hacker abilities and sets up a test, which bring some unexpected results for everyone involved. The Jan wavs follow Jan as she has another run in with the Interrogator. It seems he has a need for one of Jan's special talents. §

Wandering_Angela is the winner!

Friday, September 3rd. The Princess updates her 404 page once more. And oh joy, oh rapture, the killer.jpgs have what only can be more axons for us. The general consensus is that these are a sneak-peak of the axons for next week. We were able to find 12 of the 13 original pictures so we have a good idea where the majority of the axons will be next week.

Besides the annoyance of yet more axons, SP answers Wandering_Angela's question and gives us a story as suggested by Paul last week. We find out a little more about the Princess' past, and the story gives us some more ideas to mull over. §