Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

A month after receiving the mysterious tape recorder of mystery from P.Martin in San Diego, the game still plays on. Here are my impressions, sprinkled with some search terms in case there are others receiving items in the mail or phone calls and trying to figure out why. If you want a real guide, check out Rowan’s site as she’s done an excellent job at it.

By the way, this game is based on Therapy by German author Sebastian Fitzek, a diabolical man. I ordered and read the book almost immediately after the whole tape recorder incident and enjoyed it very much. Extremely twisted tale. It’s a fast read of a dark psychological thriller. I’m looking forward to his next English release.

Quite honestly, we still don’t have very many answers at all as to why P.Martin sent out those tapes, or why he wanted to point us to Ivan Krotzler’s website. We had some contact with his somewhat ditzy and disturbed assistant, Penny Farmer, who was apparently hired due to the fact that she shared the name of Krotzler’s favorite author, Penelope Farmer (who penned a children’s book called Charlotte Sometimes, which The Cure used as inspiration for their single of the same name).

Penny, although she worked for Krotzler for some time, really had no idea about the man’s personal life or habits and was fairly unhelpful in that regard. One fateful evening she went over to check his garden for evidence of a dog at a player’s request and apparently found something awful and dog-related there that sent her straight into the loony bin for a few days.

At that point we started talking to Jimmy the IT Guy, who was even less helpful, but at least he was able to operate a scanner and sent us clearer pictures of some documents that dippy Penny had attempted to send earlier. Jimmy also helpfully doctored the documents. Weird.

A player in San Diego recognized some locations in Krotzler’s Facebook photos and spent a couple of days searching around there, eventually to be rewarded with a new tape player and recording describing the brutal murder of a dog. Only the dog was imaginary. Weird.

Those of us who had signed up as contacts on Krotzler’s site started receiving postcards from Germany from someone named Anna addressed to “My Dear Ear.” She was sorry to have left without continuing the conversation, but we knew where to find her.

Application of a little heat revealed the message that had been written in invisible ink:

Earlier we had found a hidden directory on Krotzler’s website and had tried seemingly everything to get in there. Turns out we needed to put a space in the Username.
Username: Ivan Krotzler
Password: Sindbad

Lots of neat stuff in there, right? Digging around found this threatening-looking note saying “I know who you are, Ivan!” There were also three screenshots of videos from The Cure. Plus a 0 and 1. After much deliberation, it turns out that if you take the exact times that the image appeared in the videos, put the 0 in front and the 1 in back, and switched it all around, you get a telephone number: 1-646-736-1140. That is an answering machine with an outgoing message from Isabell. (Eek! She’s the wife in the book!)

Several days pass. No contact from anyone. Penny posted a note on Facebook promising to get back to everyone within a two days, but four days later, there was nothing. The players were getting out their torches, pitchforks, flamethrowers, and angry mob etiquette books. The next day, there were even rumors that the whole cast of characters was eaten by wild dogs.

This afternoon I got a telephone call from a blocked number. Letting out a whoop, I fumbled the digital recorder I’ve been carrying around with me like a teddy bear since I left a message on Isabell’s machine days ago and tried to answer the phone, speak coherently, and record everything. Here it is, me running up the stairs as I spoke, trying to evade the curious family who was trying to figure out what in the hell I was doing. I think both my interrogator and I were equally nervous, but we both did well under the circumstances.

So that’s where we stand. Now, here’s the kicker – After listening to German podcasts of Sebastian Fitzek, many of the players are convinced that he’s the man on the tape as well as the man I spoke to today. Considering this is a man who showed up at a book reading in a straitjacket and showed up at a live event in an abandoned hospital bound and gagged, well…

I’ve got to get him to sign my book. 😉

As is sometimes the case with Alternate Reality Games, the break in the case came suddenly, just when the players were complaining that we would never get a break in the case.

On the IRC chat channel we had discussed and discarded seemingly everything, overthinking every aspect of the tapes, the emails, the author’s website, and anything else we could think of. “You are the one in charge” seemed like a clue, but I scoured my tape recorder’s battery compartment and plug receptacle and found nothing of interest save an old looking barcode.

Unfiction’s SpaceBass figured out a way to trick SpamGourmet into sending more than one email to the recipient. A couple of us tried his hack. I didn’t have high hopes.

The people on chat asked me to take more pictures of my package and recorder. I posted one to Twitpic on Sunday.

On Monday, those of us who used the SpamGourmet hack to send P.Martin mail got a response with an attachment:

Swell, he’s a parrot. Wait, what? Something has changed. The “OPEN” on the battery compartment has been changed to read “TURN.”

Cue major discussion and overthinking again. Luckily, I had already listened to both sides of my tape, so I didn’t have to spend time trying that. All that was left was to check out that old looking bar code that had seemingly nothing interesting at all about it.

Other people in chat reported that their “Device ID” and “Part No.” numbers were different from mine. Intriguing. I posted the closeup of the bar code, which others decoded – it was in Code 39 and read “6776616C686579.”

Hmmm, I thought – that looked an awful lot like it could translate from Hex to Ascii. Sure enough, it reads “gvalhey” when converted to Ascii. A quick decode from Rot-13, and “gvalhey” becomes “tinyurl.”

Hey! We got something, here!

We had collected a crowd by this point. Three of us were near our recorders and gathered the information from them. All the bar codes appeared to be the same, but the Device ID/Part No. were different. We had 1, 2, and 3 for the part numbers. On a whim, I tried putting the Device IDs at the end of the Tinyurl in order of the Part Numbers – http://tinyurl.com/995273018 (995/273/018). And whaddaya know? Dr. Ivan Krotzler in San Diego is a psychiatrist who has recently experienced a break-in and had patient data stolen from his office.

Perhaps patient data like tapes of therapy sessions?

Contacting Krotzler’s site netted a response from a Penny Farmer, who explained that Krotzler went missing last Friday and she’s very worried about him. And that’s where we stand now.

Believe it or not, the time elapsed between getting the photoshopped picture and finding the new website was 1.5 hours. And that was 11 days after getting the first recorder.

So that’s an example of how a puzzle in an ARG can work. We still don’t know who P.Martin is or why he sent us the mysterious tape recorders of mystery, but at least we know where he wanted us to go.

Publishing companies: it’s all very well and good that you’re targeting certain readerships for upcoming thrillers. But when you throw the title of a book (or novella, or short story) out there that’s got a major twist at the end, and say “If you’re a fan of X book, you’ll like this one!” and then tie it to reviews that talk about the major twist at the end… well, could you have possibly given away the major huge thrilling twist at the end of your soon-to-be-released thriller?

Just a thought.

In possibly-related news, many of us have turned into gibbering, twitching masses trying to figure out where the crazy tapes lead. If you’re coming to this blog because you’ve received a mysterious tape recorder that wants you to play it, won’t you please leave a comment here saying what your story was about, what number was on the tape, and what it was wrapped in?

And if you’re intrigued, please do join us for conversation on Unfiction and check out Rowan’s guide which is a great way to catch up with what’s happened so far.

After much dithering around, we decided to ask P.Martin how to get in touch with the people from the tapes. His response:

You are in charge: All you need to do is putting together the parts.

Say what?

Rowan helpfully wrote a guide, and Thebruce “putting together the parts” on YouTube, but we are totally flummoxed. Nobody even knows what we’re looking for – a website? Email address? Phone number? “Help, I’m being held captive in a tape recorder factory”?

So now we’re spinning our wheels, looking askance at the non-ARG person who received the tape (must be a clue!) and anagramming everything possible (You are in charge = U+R+Charge = Rare Chug = Let’s all get drunk on expensive hooch!). We’re dismantling our tape recorders and examining everything under UV lights.

By the time this is over, we’ll all need Therapy. 😉

In electronic form, this time, from a SpamGourmet address. The enigmatic P.Martin, who sent the tape recording a few days ago, has this to say:

Do not follow me! I knew you would. I knew you would come over and look around.

I have seen your friends; walking down the street and looking for the apartments.

And you know what? They have been so close. I have been so close…

But you shouldn’t look for me. Instead you should look for the truth.
To get started, you should consider the items that you are already holding in your hands.

As a sign of my ongoing support I will grant you one question at this time.

Be careful since this email address allows you to send only one single email to me.
All other emails will never reach me.

Discuss your question with the others now so that you all can pick your one question before contacting me.

P.Martin

I’m assuming he saw the Unfictionites cruising Mission Blvd. in San Diego and looking for clues. So now we’re to ask him one question, and one question only. The mind reels. I’m terrible in situations like this. I freeze up! What if I ask the wrong thing and lead everything to chaos and failure? Thank goodness for hive minds.

What to ask, what to ask?

Just spent a great 5 days at SXSW Interactive, and I’m WORN OUT! I got to catch up with some old friends, meet some folks I’d been looking forward to meeting, conspire with my panel to disrupt the conference, laugh at all the people desperately and repeatedly pimping themselves, watch Brian Clark and Mike Monello ask the tough questions, see Alan Tudyk get in an elevator, do guerilla filming in a parking lot, stroll through the streets of downtown Austin covered in fake blood, and have lots of long lunches with chitchat (I think I missed all the keynotes). It was lots of fun, and I am really looking forward to Portland this summer.

You can see my SXSW-tagged pics (few though they might be) on my photostream.

It had been a couple of days since we had checked the PO box, and there were a couple of nice surprises in there this afternoon.

First was a package from EnergiToGo, who emailed the other day and offered to send me and any of my compatriots going to SXSW a cell phone charger gratis for our use during the convention. Very kind of them, and I thank them for it! Unfortunately, they don’t have one compatible with my iPhone, but they sent some for my associates who don’t have that particular handicap.

Second was far more mysterious. A tape recorder, wrapped in the classified section of the San Diego Union Tribune, with a sticky note on it saying “Play Me.”

Who am I to turn down the siren song of the modern-day Alice in Wonderland? Eat me, drink me, play me. Pressing the button reveals a conversation between a man and a woman – the man sounding therapist-like, the woman sounding patient-like – and she’s talking about not writing fiction anymore because her stories were becoming too real. Her last story was about a child named Charlotte, who fell ill and ran away from home to find a cure for herself. The man seemed taken aback by this and anxious to hear how the story ends. The woman said she doesn’t know how it ended because she stopped writing fiction. Because that’s when the nightmare started.

Hear it for yourself here.

The tape has a notation on it in blue marker – perhaps “VIZ”?

More discussion to be had over on this Unfiction thread. Very intriguing!

Yes, I have seen both websites. No, I don’t want to comment on either at this time. Yes, I am honestly concerned about being banned for life from SXSWi. The panel’s been taken off the master listing of all talks, but the individual entry is still there if you search by panelist name.

ETA: Apparently Brian Cain has given an interview to the SXSW people about the panel.