Perplex City Updates

Here is the latest Perplex City news, as reported by Oliver:

Scarlett entered the Viendenbourg compound, where she found that Allain had had his memory erased. When she tried to return to him later, she was seized by guards, and taken to an office, where she was held. She managed to pull all the files with Claire Castille of the computer. The head of the compound visited her, and explained that it was a malfunction of Allain’s key that caused the problem. It transpires that Sente knows about Viendenbourg, and has helped with the security there. They got a train to Regansbourg. They examined a few of the files, but we aren’t told the contents. They decide to find Claire. Repeated throughout the documents is the phrase . They decide to follow her. They’ve rented a car (earth style) and Allain is learning to drive. Scarlett’s crush on Allain becomes more evident.

Violet has been feeding us Granier’s diary; but had to stop when Cymbalisty died.

Kurt went to Gillit road alone, was surprised at how clean it was, and got surrounded by people who weren’t the standard Perplex City police. While they were taking him into their van, there was an explosion in the subway. He was then taken to be interrogated, where he told Helena Frye why he was at Gillit Road. He was then released. The police deny all action in the area in the sentinel

Live events are planned in London on the 25th February, and New York on the 15th. London is full, having recieved 600 applicants, 3x the maximum number, a 1000% increase from Clapham. Expect news on it soon. New York still open to applications.

Card 180 (ARG) was solved by Donstobbart

Also, Kurt pointed us to the Hesh Intranet. (More detailed information can be found on the puzzle thread.)

…oh, and Mind Candy got $3M in venture funding.

Holy cow, a lot of stuff has happened since our last update!

• The biggest recent news is that wave 2 cards are officially released! Of course, they are available from Firebox. Also available is a Starter Pack containing cards, a binder with pockets for all 256 cards, issue 0 of Perplex City Magazine, a limited-edition Leitmark, and the Viard CD (see below for more information about the music.)
• The Clapham Common event went well and ended with us discovering a mole in our midst (who hopped on a helicopter and departed at the end of the day)
• Viard’s controversial unreleased album is banned for sale in Perplex City for its use of “embedded cognition enhancing technology.” The producer, Hesh Records decides to market it toward Earth.
• Scarlett talks to “the old man”, Henry Castille, grandfather of Allain. We learn of Allain’s mother (Henry’s daughter), Claire, a computer expert who used her underground and legitimate contacts to get transferred to the mysterious Viendenbourg. She was able to send out coded messages to her family, but they eventually stopped. Viendenbourg is protected by some fancy technology that is basically a confusion field. Allain went in after his mom, using a modified key to counteract the field. It protected him (until it got overloaded and exploded), and he was able to herd the rest of the group, who were quite befuddled by the field. Henry then sets Scarlett up with a cover job of working at an animal shelter near Viendenbourg. Scarlett prepares to depart on her journey. She has all the necessary equipment, including a device to monitor her health and send out a broadcast if there are any problems…welded around her ankle. She finally makes it to Viendenbourg. Waiting outside the building, watching when people enter and exit, she hears that they are drilling.
• Violet and Kurt decipher text from the damage book and discover that our favorite triple-square symbol really does belong to The Third Power.

Elsewhere in the book is a list of names of supposed 3P members. All of the names are very important people, so it is hard to tell if the author is a crackpot in this case (he is in 99% of the rest of the book).

• Violet learns, through Aiko, that her uncle Sanjean Adamek has the 3P symbol carved into the paneling of his house. Sanjean, it should be noted, is a descendent of Vianne Adamek, one of the seven original founders of The Academy. It turns out that the house–including symbol–was originally built by Anthony Granier, one of the names on the list, given to Adamek, then passed down through the generations.
• As part of the war exhibit, the Perplex City Museum has on display a newly unearthed volume of Anthony Granier’s journal. Violet uses her librarian connections to try to look inside the book, but keeps getting denied. It is such a valuable resource that access is limited to published and credentialed researchers.
• In an effort to get recognized as a published author, we are collecting together essays and stories to be published by Seaside Press.
• Perplex City Academy Games is discovered, wherein we learn of a puzzle card game named Clash. “The puzzle card game Clash is the cornerstone of the Games; it is the one event which every participant knows that they will certainly play – not once but many times. While the other games test one skill intensely, Clash demands a broad range of skills and abilities in puzzle-solving. The puzzles for the annual Games final of Clash are set by the brightest minds of the Academy; the one-on-one Clash final is one of the most watched sporting events of the year.” Sound familiar?
• The CD in the starter pack has a secret message, possibly intended for the 3P:
  

  I can’t tell you who I am, they’d kill me if they find out how much I know. You know who they are. Follows something that u need to know. A detective here in pc has an agent of the third power. The third power stole the cube they killed people who knows what their capable of if your sensible stay just away, if u want to help us if you want to find the cube wait for the [inaudible] , exactly 7 days after that send someone to the abandoned subway station on Gilin road at 10pm you’ll find out enough to prove that there [inaudible] spy.

  You remember The Brotherhood of the Six, right?

• The interface to Perplex City has been updated, giving you more statistics about individual cards and people.
• ELUCIDATE HAS FINALLY BEEN SOLVED!!!!

Just in case you have been living under a rock for the last few days, this is a friendly reminder that it looks like something is going to happen in Clapham Common in London tomorrow (22nd October).

First, we had indication that some kind of rendezvous was going to happen. A few days ago, we got further information on the hidden Access Mainframe page that points to the webpage of “a member of the unidentified Earth network” (UEN1). Later, a newspaper ad included much the same information, encrypted, with the title “Secret Agents Required.”

It looks like we may have a sort of Spy vs. Spy vigilante on our side to help against The Third Power.

Clapham Common - North East Corner
Saturday 22nd October
Time: 2pm - 5pm
Make sure to wear something purple, so we can identify each other

We will be meeting at 1:30pm at the Starbucks near the Clapham Common tube, then moving to the Commons en masse.

• Official Site: I Need Your Help
• Planning Site: The Last Keyword

Let us recap everything that has happened since our last modblog post, shall we? Before we do, maybe you should prepare a cup of tea and get comfortable in your chair. There is a lot to go over.

Starting in our world…

• A number of people saw the theater trailer. It is now online. Part of the way through, there is a grid of individual images that flash on and off. Of particular interest is the lower-left corner, which sometimes contains a dash. It is worth noting that all of the images related to power of some kind. (discussion)
• The trailer led to The Receda Sign, which has the appearance of a movie website (”In 2006 two worlds will change forever.”) (discussion)
• The Receda Sign website was updated to include a pair of phone numbers (USA: 1 800 959 2138 | UK: 0207 526 4577). Calling this would give you one of two different voicemail “trees” for the Receda Institute for Somnotherapy, depending on the time of day. (discussion)
• Following the correct phone tree at the correct time yields GPS coordinates for Jones Beach. Unfiction member Rose visited the location, but was unable to come up with any clues or information. This particular avenue still appears to be unsolved. (discussion)
• Some DNS trickery (a questionable ARG practice, but what’s done is done) pointed us to The Receda School of Music.
• A note about online tutoring there led us to Receda’s Revenge. This ended up being an online event at a specific date and time and was quite fun. It was basically an improv version of an old school text adventure game, played out collaboratively. Each person got to take a turn controlling the main character and things got a little silly. If you have some time on your hands, I would highly suggest reading the transcript. Throughout the adventure, scrolls with letters upon them were collected.
• At the end of the adventure, a little minor puzzling brought us to this page, giving the date and time of a live event, but not a location. Fortunately, the lettered scrolls could be combined to give a couple possible locations, but only one highly likely one.
• WE GET SKYWRITING!!! It points us to Receda Resorts, a seemingly innocuous website devoted to vacation spots. One of the images on the site has some strange properties–it is an image map with a high number of clickable hotspots with some JavaScript logic behind it. Entering the correct password gets you past the vacation fascade of the site and into a mysterious access page.
• The access page mentions seven keywords (six of which should be available) and a live event on Saturday, October 22. What those keywords actually are is still up for debate since different people have different thoughts on the matter. (discussion)
• Unfiction member Guy P set up a website to help disperse information and coordinate the October 22 live event.

In the world of Perplex City

• Following Scarlett’s “secret” journal, we learn that she has met a mysterious young man on the train, Allain. He has some kind of connection with “the old man” that gave Scarlett the coordinates for Viendenbourg and is, in fact, going to the very same place. They got near their destination, but then something happened. Scarlett cannot quite recall, but it left everyone injured–Brede’s leg was crushed and Allain simply disappeared. All that now remains of Allain is a broken fragment of his key. Scarlett and friends are now recovering at an unknown hospital.
• According to Violet’s blog, she finally got her hands on the book The Third Power, the Archers and the Shadowy Masters Behind the Scenes, but it was badly water-damaged. How this happened is unknown, because the book has never left the archives and there have not been problems with water, leaks, or flooding. Additionally, the damage seems selective. Her and Kurt are slowly trying to reconstruct what they can from the damaged pages, using Kurt’s souped-up key as a fancy scanner.

With regard to the cards

• You can now enter solves.
• The leaderboard is also available.
• Is this not enough information or detail for you? Do you want to pull your friends into the action, but are not sure how to explain what has happened so far? There is an official guide that explains everything.

The date of whatever was supposed to happen at Imperial College arrived and we were rewarded with mysterious posters being plaster up around the quad!

It looks like a band, but are they Earth-based or Perplex-City-based? Something is going to happen in Toronto on Friday, according to their website.

If you are in the Toronto area, check out the thread for locations and meetups.

Since our last update, the following events have taken place:

• Our access to the heat sensors and air conditioning simulation was cut off.
• Cubefest came and went, with many attendees and much fun. (link)
• Used the data leak to narrow down The Advisor to Monica Grand, which would match with her codename: grand = a thousand = kilo = “K”. (link)
• Kurt discovered strange/excess communications between Perplex City and Earth. (link)
• Scarlett explains her trip, and draws a map–complete with shiny, happy sun. Her gang meet up with a guy named Allain who is also searching for Viendenbourg. (link)
• Talked to Sylvia about Monica and Monica about Sylvia. Monica wants immunity from prosecution in exchange for her information. Sylvia talks to Pietro’s detective friend, Helena Frye, and arranges for it. They plan a meeting. (link)
• Sylvia walks into Monica’s bloody murder scene, cannot handle it, and gulps down too many pills. (link)

• Thanks to the quick thinking of Unfiction user Cassandra, Violet saves Sylvia. (link)
• Monica’s files include a picture with an embedded secret message when highlight in Internet Explorer. This tells of some kind of event or action at Imperial College. (link) (image) (highlighted image)
• Pietro’s final file is unlocked, giving us a mysterious diagram/symbol. (link)
• Posters are found at Imperial College that tell of a “new hit band, inspired by Perplex City and landing on Earth soon” named The Receda Approach. (link) The band’s logo matches the logo/diagram/symbol that Pietro drew. Is he a fan of the band, or is something more sinister going on? Their website talks of upcoming events at cinemas in the greater Toronto area.
• The next wave of cards will be released in October. (link)

• Discussion: at Unfiction

The window of opportunity for producing a data leak is quickly approaching. For those that have not caught up, a quick review of the Ascendancy Point Air Conditioning thread might be in order. Basically, an air conditioning simulation is available to the account we are using (The Advisor’s hacked account.) Every time the simulation crashes–by making the living conditions too hot and/or too cold, it contacts the Ascendancy Point server. Every once in a while–when maintenance is going on–that server leaks a little bit of data. The heat sensor logs show us that Server Room 4 is worked on three times a week, and that time is quickly approaching. Check your local listings for times, but it would appear to be 9:30pm 10:30pm for those in the UK or 1:30pm 2:30pm for those of us on the left coast of the US. The window closes after a half hour.

At any rate, the “data leak” provides random names of people living in Ascendancy Point, including level and room number. Please help us collect names and post your findings to the thread when you are done.

For help or more information, visit the thread or stop by the channel “#syzygy” in IRC chat.

CORRECTION: The leak starts at 9:30pm GMT, but 10:30pm BST

• Discussion: at Unfiction

Cubefest 1.0: London
Saturday, 10th September, 2pm
The Ha Ha Bar, Villiers Street, near Charing Cross

The first ever CubeFest has been announced! Taking place in London this Saturday, the event will feature a talk and Q&A session from members of Mind Candy - the team behind the cards - with lots of time for card swapping, heavy-duty speculating and heated debate over JebJoya’s new hairstyle. PlayLounge is a hop, skip and a jump away for those wanting to stock up on new cards, and there’ll even be some MC-sponsored buffet action. With your humble author also in attendance, what’s not to like? Check out the Unforums thread for further details - and see you there!

(There’s also a smaller event in Portland, OR, if that’s more your side of the Atlantic…)

The tech support lines went live this morning. We spent a very long time floundering about, very nearly getting our hacked account (”theadvisor”) shut down because of all of the attention. Finally, Perplexed Pineapple, an Unfiction user, was able to convince the tech support operator that she owned the account. After being warned that a lot of people may have gotten access to it, she was able to convince the operator that she needed access to more than just the heat sensor logs. After a couple of attempts, including key sensors and auditory sensors, she was finally able to get access to the air conditioning subsystem. The Eclipse Security Building Maintenance page has now been updated with the following text:

Changes to your account regarding Air Conditioning subsystem access will be made within the next 48 hours (7:13pm BST 31st August)

On top of this, we know from previous notices:

Repairs to the air conditioning system are currently underway and most problems have been resolved. However, if you are operating any of the AC subsystems manually, you may experience interruptions or business data leaks during periods when regular maintenance is being carried out by technicians in the server rooms.

It looks like our next step may be causing and/or looking for these data leaks.

• Discussion - During: at Unfiction
• Discussion - Results: at Unfiction