most recent
update:
Hello and welcome!
If you’re reading this
message, you are probably a new poster to the Unfiction:
Metacortechs forum. Perhaps you’ve been lurking for a while before posting,
or perhaps you’re diving right in. Either way, you probably know a few things
already – this is a site dedicated to the Matrix-related ARG which launched on
There are many forums
currently discussing this ARG, but Unfiction is by far the largest and most
comprehensive. The downside of this is the sheer size of the forum itself, and
the amount of information involved, a problem which has lead you,
inexorably…here.
A few notes about etiquette
and protocol before moving on: some of the threads on the forum are nearing 50
pages with over 600 separate posts, so it’s perfectly understandable that you
might have difficulty at first in simply finding pertinent information. So,
familiarize yourself with the search tool. Usually, it’s best to isolate a
specific question you might have, do a search on the keywords, and look up the earliest
references first. As information gets abstracted and analyzed and picked apart
to within an inch of its life, we can sometimes go off on tangents that might
be confusing if you haven’t been sitting up all hours of the night slogging
through recent posts day after day after day. If a search doesn’t answer your
questions, feel free to PM me, joebrent,
or any of the more experienced members you encounter with specific questions,
and I’m sure you’ll find that people are happy to point you in the right
direction. Posting with a “what’s going on over here?” or “what does this code
mean?” type question, especially as a new topic, should be a last resort.
For those of you with hacking
skills, it goes without saying that brute forcing, reverse engineering,
decompilation, and similar methods are considered a big time no-no. First of
all, where’s the fun in that anyway, and secondly, it tends to gunk up the
process for those of us who choose to play by the rules.
The members of this site
represent many different areas of expertise, all of which have been invaluable
in solving the puzzles hurled our way the mysterious puppet masters. Some
people are good at hacking and using steg
software, some are more familiar with the literary and philosophical
references, some people are equipped to decipher the musical clues, some people
are just completely insane and are thus able to see things in the clues that
more rational minds cannot. Figure out what you bring to the equation (everyone
has something to offer) and put a little elbow grease into it. You never know,
you may have the particular skill set needed to crack a puzzle.
UPDATE: On Nov. 22nd,
the ‘Project MU’ ARG was officially solved. Go here for the credits page, and
here
to read the final plot summary.
Still with
me? Good. Now on
to the fun stuff.
At first, it was assumed that
this was all affiliated with the Wachowski Brothers (heretofore known as the
WB), Burlyman, Village Roadshow,
or Warner Brothers because of the launch date (about a month before the release
of Revolutions), the blatant references to ‘Thomas
Anderson’ and Metacortex, the
resources involved in putting together an ARG of this size and scope, and its
many allusions to various literary and philosophical sources common to the
Matrix movies. Many people, however, are convinced that this is a fan ARG, with
no WB association whatsoever. It doesn’t really matter in the end; all that
matters is that you have fun playing, and perhaps get your noodle baked a few
times in the process.
The main protagonist, so far,
also known by her login names Beth and emc2. She’s a
programmer at Metacortex, but in her free time, she is an obsessive documenter
of what she believes to be paranormal phenomena, but are
actually glitches in the Matrix she is unaware of. She doesn’t have a
husband/boyfriend, or even much of a life as far as anyone can tell, her every
idle hour currently being used compiling data for her Paranormal
Research Archive, part of her own web page Little-Boxes. She does talk to her mother
every so often, but her only real friend is a guy named Philip
Gairden, who puts out a periodical called the Paranormal Research Journal. She
also has a dog named Laika, and digs Evanescence, Indigo Girls, and Dina
Nekoda.
October 31st –
yes, that’s right, Halloween – was a big day for
Beth. While following a hunch that she was able to predict the
next ‘paranormal’ event, she had set out, camp gear at the ready, for the
Here’s Yanka’s Oct. 31
easy-read Cliff’s Notes:
|
What happened on
Halloween: |
|
|
|
Update: as of November 6, the
mysterious man from the tent incident has begun showing up at Beth’s house,
with similar results as picked up by her PDA.
Another update: On November
13th, Beth had another
contact with the mystery man (now confirmed to be a form of A.I.). She
recorded the entire interaction,
and immediately sent the transcript to Phil, who posted it in his Metadex. Oh,
and by the way – we now know that she’s aware of the hacker Texel,
whose real name is also now known to be Miss Kinross, the same Kinross referred
to in Beth’s correspondence with the mystery man.
And in another expert crypto
solve, colin and Monki cracked
a code the mystery man developed to communicate with Beth. Thinking like a
computer, he used the colors black, varying shades of grey, and white for
“False” through “True”. Astounded and amazed, we on Unforum showered them with
cookies, candies, and other high-calorie largesse.
After a few days of back and
forth communications which more and more closely approximated speech, Beth and
Mystery Man (heretofore known as AI man) finally had a breakthrough on November
15th – and didn’t even need relationship counseling. Just for fun,
when you open this
link, pay special attention to the time that each message was posted; they’re
right on top of one another. Translocating - yes, that’s right, translocating -
about the globe like a couple of characters in an H.G. Wells novel, Beth made
good on her promise
to IM anyone who had questions about her recent adventures, and like wolves
after a mutton, over 40 of us chatted with her simultaneously (metaphor mania,
there…sorry). Here’s BriEnigma’s transcriptions of
everyone’s chats, and here’s
his archive of the rest of Beth’s IMs. She didn’t really go into too much
detail about things; for example, when people asked her questions like, “do you
know what happened to Thomas Anderson?” she would never reply. But she did
divulge her exact GPS coordinates
every time she and AI man globe-hopped, and she also confirmed many things
which we had recently been speculating, like the true identity of
s/heismissing. As yeahyeah commented, it was one heck
of a first date.
Perhaps emboldened and embiggened by her experiences with AI Man, Beth is now
gunning for MLO. On Nov. 16th, she sent this
message to his Metadex, demanding to know why he has those mysterious Avery documents in
his files. Looks like things might be coming to a head here. It’s clear that
MLO knows what happened to Avery, and may have had a hand in his disappearance
(quote from Beth’s message: I’ve
seen the websites and I saw bits of stuff in that file. I’m not stupid. I know
that he didn’t just retire from the company that meant so much to him. That
wasn’t like him.)
On Nov.
18th, Beth updated her log with more information
about AI Man. Seems his purpose originally was that of Garbage Collector,
responsible for “memory recycling”. A malfunction occurred two years ago,
causing him months of existential wandering, trying to regain his purpose,
which eventually led him to Beth. She also posted some more information
on what he looks like, what he likes to be called, etc, and followed that up
with this
letter to Phil the next day.
On Nov.
19th, AI Man posted this
in the to-night files on PaintOver. It confirms he has no ill will towards the
hackers, Beth, or the “Nekodas” (you’ll find out more about them by reading
below). But it does carry with it a tough ultimatum: for as long as they live,
they will be pursued by agents and monitors of the system they still are at
least functionally unaware of. So he proposes to create a subsystem within
their world in which they can exist without detection from the agents. The
trade off, of course, is that they will no longer be able to interact with
their own world as they previously have. Apparently, freedom from the system, a
la Thomas Anderson, hasn’t even occurred to the AI Man.
Here is Beth’s
final Little-Boxes entry.
Beth’s
friend who edits PRJ. He is a follower of Wongmo, although he doesn’t much
care for Leo Kane. He also frequently posts to Little-Boxes. He recently broke into Leo
Kane’s office and snapped pictures
of shady-looking torn-up documents in his trash can, which bore the name
“Arnold Quentin Niehoffer.”
On November 13th, these
messages turned up in Phil’s Metadex. Apparently, Beth has had another contact
with the mystery man from Oct. 31st, and he has by now figured out a
way to communicate with her without using XML.
One of
Beth’s co-workers at Metacortex, also known by her login name Katgirl. We’re not sure about Kat yet,
she seems to be playing both sides. On one hand, we know she was doing some
snooping into Beth’s affairs on behalf of Marcus Ormond, but on the other hand,
seems to have ingratiated herself with Beth to the extent that she house-sat
Laika while Beth was on vacation. She also really likes the phrase “A-OK”. Note: After an incident with the
Aquapolis security system, Katherine has been ‘transferred’ (according to her
Metacortex page) as of November 20th. We don’t at this moment know
if she’s alive or dead, but wherever she is, she’ll still have Brad Pitt. What
we do know, however, is that no matter what happened to her, she was able to
get some information to a certain ‘Agent
Jones’. Uh-oh. Looks like Beth might be in deep
doo-doo.
Retired as CEO of
Metacortechs on Jan 5 of this year, and promptly disappeared. Beth confirmed
during her Nov.15th chat-a-thon that he is the guy on this page, and his ex-wife Lynne is the one
pictured over here. His Metacortechs
directory listing has been replaced with binary code
which translated to:
|
Na e: Aver , J
es |
|
D pt x
c iv |
and his picture is mysteriously
scrambled.
And thanks to Max
Risc’s first post (an
example to us all) we found out that Jesse is Avery’s
son. This was figured out by analyzing the bar code on Jesse’s ID, and
confirmed thanks to Ethan Nekoda’s Nov. 19th
post.
The new CEO of Metacortechs.
At first, Beth had a high opinion of him, but now
she’s not so sure.
Also known as MLO, he is the
Director of R&D at Metacortex, and Beth’s direct superior. Seems to be a
sort of shady character, his Metadex calendar has a lot of cryptic entries
that have led many to believe he’s up to no good. He is hardly ever what he
seems; his voice mail message
makes him sound like a bumbling Luddite, but as Director of R&D for a major
software corporation, he certainly must be more tech-savvy than he lets on. He
is also prominently involved with Metacortechs’s super-secret Labyrinth
project, the Aquapolis, and the MetaVRX virtual reality
gaming system (which some believe is a cover for AI research).
Update: On Nov. 2nd,
a puzzle
and a series
of photos of James Avery were discovered in MLO’s
Metadex. In yet another example of the intelligence of people other than me,
the puzzle cipher was cracked
soon after by yeahyeah, xnbomb,
and chancesend. This one really blew me away, I was
reminded of the PGA golf slogan: “These
Guys Are Good.”
Update: Well, November 13th
appears to be a big day for everyone – this
message from Katherine regarding security issues showed up in MLO’s Metadex. It’s still pretty new as I post this, so
just read the thread to follow the sure to be endless speculation…
So…there’s this guy Wongmo.
He’s a Hawaiian new age guru with a Troy McClure-esque dolphin fetish and a
predilection for referring to himself in the third person. He organizes retreats where he tries to get his
followers to ‘release their inner dolphin’, holds bizarre talent searches, and
writes cheesy mood music. Nobody
really knows what his relevance to the ARG is yet, but he does make for some
comic relief on the forums. Wongmo loves you!
One thing which is currently
being speculated on is that Wongmo, Leiphe, Dr. Kane, and AQN are one, er, four and the same person. If another faith-healing
weirdo named “Sybil”
appears, it wouldn’t surprise this poster.
A site that
asks one and all to ‘release their inner wisdom’. Hey, dolphin, wisdom, tomato, tomahto.
More new age stuff, but with a twist: it is maintained by Fiona Leiphe, who instructs her
followers to seek out the answers of life through blogging. Whatever works, I
guess. Is she Wongmo? Or is Wongmo her? Or is she Dr. Kane in drag? Maybe she’s
just…ah, fudge.
Dina and
Ethan. Dina is a singer/blogger, and Ethan has a blog as well. They are based in
Chicago. Dina is into naval-gazing and Leiphe
lessons, and has posted a song
on Wongmo.org as well. Beth is a fan.
Update – Ethan left us some
clues pointing to a real world treasure hunt on his blog, which were found a
few days later. They consisted of a CD with some intriguing pictures on them,
some of which appeared to depict a person being taken over by an agent. Read
all about it here
(
|
Heismissing
= James Avery Sheismissing
has no credit history... Jesse
Avery is their son |
|
Caesar
hosted both s/heismissing (this may be debatable...?) which
involves his family history |
|
Dina
and Ethan Nekoda are the former Sylvia and Ryan Emerson Jesse
is at least in his teens, about
16 |
Also, on Nov. 6, Dina posted
a series of classical
music mp3s, which became a clue leading us to this page. Dina
clearly has better taste in music than Beth,
Saint-Saëns trumps the Indigo Girls any day.
Big news as
of Nov. 10. This
communiqué was posted on the Nekodas blog site, the first instance we have of
real-life influence on ARG characters. The gist is that Dina went to the Cyberia Café in Chicago to pick up the CD which Ethan had
left for her. But of course, Trip
had already been there…Based on the language of the message, we are now 100%
sure that Ethan is Ryan Emerson, and Dina is Sylvia. For a clear picture of
where we’re at as of 11-13, on the left is an excellent table of information
prepared with loving care, like a fresh batch of cookies, by Omnie:
Here’s
the Nov. 13th update on the Nekoda blog. Ethan’s starting to lose
it…Speaking of losing it, there now exists the distinct possibility that Ethan
and Dina have had their memories “rebooted”, and were Ryan and Sylvia, and
possibly even James and Lynne Avery in previous incarnations. Ethan mentions
being approached
by a man named Todd Rogan, who sure recognized him, even if Ethan couldn’t
reciprocate.
Good and bad news for the
Nekodas, as of Ethan’s Nov. 18th blog post. Good
news: he met with Scratch, and confirmed, “He
knows Jesse, told us where he is.” Bad news: ‘They’ appeared (agents?),
and although Ethan made it out, Dina is now in their custody. And even more
telling is this part of his post: “The wall. It wasn’t there before.” He
mentions nothing of a black cat, but we all know where that wall came from,
don’t we?
Worse news: Ethan escaped from the monitor/agents,
but Dina definitely did not. He met with Caesar/Jesse on Nov. 19th,
and confirmed
Jesse’s worst fears: that his parents, the Averys, are no more for this world,
in one way or another. But at least we know this much, or we think we do; Ethan
and Dina were Ryan and Sylvie Emerson. We had thought for a time that they were
also James and Lynne Avery, but we now know this not to be true.
A “licensed professional psychiatrist specializing in research
in mind-body psychiatry and the interplay of science, nature, technology and
medicine,” according to his website. So, in other words, a
witch doctor. He’s a big Wongmo fan, and is currently on sabbatical
doing research of the Wonginator’s methods. Phil snapped these pics in his office, which led us to endless speculation
about the true identity of AQN.
Click on the above link for Yanka’s
excellent overview of the hacker files. Nobody knows who they are, but we know
them by their aliases and signature extensions. They run PaintOver.net, and often post clues there for
us (some of which have still not been solved). They have also hacked Little-Boxes and The Aquapolis. Many things are still up
for interpretation, but I’m pretty much with Yanka all the way on this stuff.
The entire hacker files, along with just about everything else, can be easily
accessed via BriEnigma’s site.
And now, just so you have it
in front of you, here’s another table chock full ‘o stuff about the hackers:
|
alias |
name |
extension |
personal notes |
|
Caesar |
.jpg |
The main hacker, he maintains PaintOver
as an easy place for everyone to assemble and post information meant for each
other (and clues unintentionally meant for us). Ostensibly organized the
motley troupe of hackers for the purposes of whomphunting,
it is apparent now that Caesar’s true motivations were to look for his
parents, the former James and Lynne Avery. He’s had an ongoing feud
with Scratch, which came to a head when Scratch called him an “orphan
punk”, figured
out what Caesar had really been looking for this whole time, and hackers
started backing
out like roaches with the lights on. He is responsible for sending the tapestry
cipher to Dimitri (found
in MLO’s Metadex on Nov. 6). He also is prone to seizures
and is something of a cinema buff.
On Nov. 18th, Caesar and his crew set up camp down the
road from where Beth was camping and posting about her “Friend”. They approached
her, and this was when was told that his parents had been killed. Soon after,
he posted the incredibly moving brutus5.jpg,
in which he apologizes to…well, everyone, for bringing them into situations
they didn’t understand, putting them in danger they couldn’t have foreseen.
He furthermore
bared his soul on PaintOver the next day. And his worst fears were confirmed
in his meeting with Ethan on Nov. 19th – James and Lynne Avery are no
more for this world. Here
is the final PaintOver post. |
|
|
|
.txt |
Good friends with Caesar, although she backed
out when Scratch told everyone about Caesar’s real motivations. She was saved
by Beth’s AI Man during a rampaging whomp gone awry. When Scratch issued his
“Help
Me” post, she seemed genuinely concerned,
and in the past has tried to quell
the drama between Caesar and Scratch, even going so far as to google-ise Scratch’s name but adding the line “Scratch is
noble, and well given” (a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). |
|
|
Random |
|
.ypt |
Caesar is very tight right now with Random (quote: “Random’s
golden.”) because he stuck with Caesar when many of the hackers were
backing off the project. He uses a lot of poetry generators in his posts, as
in here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and…well, you get the point. He’s kind of the fun one, no one really knows
what the heck he’s talking about most of the time, but he is loyal to Caesar,
and fun to read. |
|
Scratch |
|
.mic |
The rogue of the group. A little salty
at times, his feud with Caesar has been the cause of a great deal of consternation
within the group, but it should be said he did
his part very well. He accused
Caesar of having something to do with the spikes in the logs, and tried to
organize a mutiny.
At first, nobody
believed him, but eventually people started leaving the project, perhaps
leaving Caesar and Random on their own. And now it seems that Scratch was a
bit too
successful, because he believes agents are now not only after him, but
after Caesar and perhaps everyone else as well. |
|
Statik |
|
.mp3 |
|
|
Double |
|
.m_u |
|
|
fire |
|
.goo |
|
|
Bounce |
|
.lhp |
Mostly interested in keeping
the peace,
left the group briefly as part of Scratch’s mutiny,
challenging
Caesar to provide more information. Was very concerned
after Scratch’s “Help Me” message. |
|
Mello |
|
.kbp |
|
|
Omnie |
|
.graffle |
Speaks mostly through cryptic
images, such as these
Tarot cards and this
image of people in a hallway. |
|
Malloc |
|
.wsg |
|
|
leak |
|
.bh |
|
On November 20th, Caesar (with Random by his side) opened http://paintover.net/grief/to-night (log: cinna, pass: gears), which opened the invite for the hackers to live in AI Man’s “loophole”. One by one, Texel, Omnie and Bounce, fire, double and Malloc responded in the affirmative, with only leak turning down the chance. At the present time, we’ve not heard from Scratch, nothing is known what happened to him after the incident with Ethan and the agents.
President and CEO of Murpha, the
architecture firm that brought you the Metacortex buildings in Chicago and NYC,
and the Aquapolis. Several
packages were left all over the country addressed to him by Ethan Nekoda,
here’s the first one
we found, in
As of Nov. 16th, we’re not entirely
positive about this guy, also known as AQN. The consensus speculation is that
Wongmo, Leiphe, and possibly even Leo Kane as well are his nom de guerres. Which
particular guerre he’s fighting is
unknown at this time, as is his reasoning for hiding behind such limpid circus
geeks as Wongmo and Kane – or perhaps, is he just hiding in lame sight? Devious
little bugger, I tells ya…These
passports and receipt (for a plane ticket to
In the movie, this is where ‘Thomas Anderson’ worked
before that nasty business with the naval squiddy. If
you look up their directory, there is still a listing for andersonthomas.
Anyway, Beth, MLO, Katgirl, and Walsh all work there, along with the Head of
Network Security Stone Jeffreys. They created Metadex,
a sort of online messaging and filing system. Some of their other products
include MetaOffice Suite and the MetaGamex
Console. They are supposed to be a reference to Microsoft, the archetype of the
huge evil corporation, and are even located in the fictitious Seattle-area city
of Redland, WA (Microsoft is located in Redmond).
(Note: Beast, the original ARG, was created by Microsoft to promote the
Steven Spielberg movie A.I., and there has been some speculation that this ARG
is the product of the same creative team. So lesson one is that Microsoft isn’t
all bad, and lesson two is that I should probably refrain from referring to
them as the archetypical evil corporation, lest they bombard my hard drive with
some of those infamous XP hotfixes.)
Web hosting company that is the only common link we
have to all facets of the ARG. Every site considered ‘in-game’ is hosted by
USH, and when in doubt, you can easily check for in-game status by looking for
the USH logo near the bottom of the page. Note:
you will not find a logo on the Metacortechs page, but you will on Metadex.
Mysterious cabin just south of
Recently a few pictures appeared on the site,
depicting a poorly-shot
incident on Oct. 31 apparently involving a few pranksters, a glow stick,
and a Blair Witch party. Just kidding. But there’s a
mysterious dude standing very still in the background, can you figure out what
he’s doing?
Periodical headed by Beth’s friend Phillip
Gairden (also known by his Atlantis-related passwords [Metadex=Critias,
Little-Boxes=Timaeus]. Like Beth, Phillip is an obsessive documenter of
‘paranormal’ events, and many descriptions of these events can be found in his
journal. A handy timeline of their research, along with various other
ARG-related events, can be found here.
An underwater resort hotel being
built near the
Architecture firm based in Redland, responsible for
designing the Metacortex
buildings in
On Nov. 20th, this
doodle was in Beth’s Metadex. If you look closely at the drawing, you can see
the following numbers: 7024070925.
Quickly deducing that it was a phone number, we called it and got a Mr. Schuffhausen, who told us he was a spiritual healer who
organized ‘seminars’, and that his website
had more information. Check it out, look like anyone you know? Furthermore, we
also figured out that it was registered by AQN. And further still, look closely
at the good doctor’s ensemble; the red silk shirt, the metallic tie that
screams upward mobility (or Regis Philbin in a Men’s Wearhouse, either one), the stiffly arched back…does it
remind you of anyone? How about if I put these
pictures next to each other…
HARD STUFF’S OVER!
So…
Had enough? I know, a lot of information to digest.
And remember – this is merely a primer, intended to submerse you into the
Metacortechs ARG in the most painless way possible. I cannot stress enough the
importance of the search tool; there’s simply no substitute for reading the
forum, digesting the information as you see fit, and posting with your own
crazy ideas whenever you like. Sometimes you might get shot down, ignored, or
even trouted, but don’t sweat it.
Every so often, check out BriEnigma’s
thoughtmap,
for several reasons. One, it’s an excellent way to see all the interpersonal
connections in one place. Second, it’s a great reminder of how creative some of
the people on this forum are. Or maybe we just have too much time on our hands.
I prefer to think of it the first way.
I find it very helpful to create a favorites folder
full of in-game sites for handy viewing. Organize your folder however you like,
but it should probably include the following sites:
For more site-specific linking, the following links
have been completely compiled on Unfiction:
File
creation/update times for most files
MetaCortechs
scroller text archive
And the granddaddy of them all (triumphant music
please…)
In addition to these sites, you may also wish to
include the following invaluable puzzle-cracking tools:
An explanation of
Boolean searching
And if you still have any questions, there are a
number of excellent guide sites that have been set up specifically for this
ARG:
Have fun, play nice, and I’ll see you in the Rabbit
Hole!
joebrent and Yanka
