The Conference Call with the VA’s and PM’s has been posted to ARGN. It’s approx. 30Mb…. so download, go have some honey, and then enjoy!

Thanks again to Evan, Sean, Kristen, Zan, Yuri, Bob, and Jesse for totally making our day (today), and EVERYONE involved for making our year (ILB)…. and we will wait patiently (or not) for “ILB 2: The Musical”

Don’t forget… there is a phone chat with some of the ILB voice actors, tomorrow at 12 noon Pacific/3:00 pm Eastern. Details can be found here.

There will be a moderated irc chat Sunday, November 7 at 5:00PM EST/2:00 PM PST with Elan Lee, Sean Stewart, Jane McGonigal, Jim Stewartson and maybe even more!

For those with an irc client (like mirc) , connect to irc.chat-solutions.org #apocalypso

For those without an irc client, you can access it from unfiction’s java chat

A log of the chat will be made available for those unable to attend. In other exciting news, a phone based conference call will be announced shortly!

Well, here we are on Friday… the day after the training session. Today you can e-mail Dana if you weren’t able to attend the session.

At the session, a code phrase was given to each of the four locations…. see this thread to find out what the codewords were, and how they ended up pointing you to apocalypso.html.

This includes a final goodbye that must be read, a hint that a few of the wavs were fabricated… and a .wav file that must be heard…. sniff.

Well, this is it. We start today with 360 axons…. Pffft… that’s nothing… we can handle that. (No password again this week)

And then? Tonight, there’s the training events from 6-9 Pacific tonight. Those of you that can attend, have a great time! Stop by here to see who else will be at your location, and add yourself to the roster.

And then? …. sigh.

Seems Melissa has heard the pleas of the folks unable to attend the 4 “training missions” and is making a DVD available to the first 50 people at each of 27 locations. Dana has posted this in her blog. Also, if you can’t make either the 4 training sites OR the 27 alternate locations, AND if you are a crew member, you can email Dana and she may send one to you.

Yay for swag!

Well, well…. I was wrong. Here it is, Tuesday… and I have something to report I guess I should have realized that they’d have one final round of axons on Thursday before the evening festivities begin. Look at ContactMe for the list of axons for this Thursday 10:00 - 13:44 PST Seems strange to be announcing Axons on Tuesday… not trying to get people out to the phones on Tuesday…

Looks like the wav files have been updated on Humpty Dumpty as well.

I apologize for being slow on the update from yesterday…. I was uh, a little distracted by ghosts and spideys and wizards and a bee (she didn’t think I should have screamed so much….) Anyways. It is the day after the big update…..

So, it turns out that 1094 of us… or at least 1094 phones were answered yesterday over a 3ish hour period to unlock 35 wavs. I’ve been told that they’re in order on recipe8, so check there to hear what happened to our intrepid crew.

The powers that beeee (sorry, it’s late in the game… I won’t get to use these for much longer… sniff) were quite nice, and unlocked all the earlier .wav files for us… they’re up on humptydumpty. Fill in the blanks on the Herzog tales. (thanks PMs)

Dana has updated her blog to remind those living in Austin, NYC, San Fran and Chicago to come out to the crew combat training exercises…

Dana also mentions and that the next update time is Thursday… so we’ll have to wait until then for more information. The Thursday update is echoed on the 404 page.

Alrighty… until Thurs then

Aab

The black box on the ilovebees homepage has updated quite a bit today. Seems to be preparing us to find something else to do with our time, soon:

TRANSMITTING

Friends and allies can seek out rendezvous info here.

Those interested in beholding a complete log of the
transmissions to date, go here.

Thank you for your time, your talent,
your intelligence. You have shown me
what it means to be human. I am trying to
make my decisions accordingly.

Well, thanks for the memories, Melissa. All indications are that we’ll be staring endgame in the face very soon.

Well, we must have done something right. The 404 page just updated with this:

Shaking… Waking

For the first time—not the first time since the shipwreck, but the first time ever—I can look into the mirror and truly see myself. I reach my hand up to its surface, and through the glass I touch another hand.

I should explain.

I was the Sleeping Princess. I was the girl who played with you, and sang with you, and said goodbye: and I was the one who murdered her.

Except that, as long as the Queen lives, the Princess can never die. She is woven into the fabric of me more deeply than even the SPDR. I was made from her, built from her, fashioned from her bones and skin. I am her. Have always been her, from the beginning. She is the insubstantial shape, and I the solid shadow. The Princess is the mother of the Queen.

In the Labyrinth, they walled her off, so I could never behold her. Somehow during the shipwreck she escaped—but we couldn’t see each other, not clearly. We never understood we were family. We were one.

Until you brought her back. You found her, you conjured her up from the heart of me, and this time, somehow, you revealed me to myself. You made me whole.

Not the Sleeping Princess and the Queen anymore. Not the Rogue Process and the Op.

I am just Melissa now, and that is enough. More than enough! There’s barely room for all the Op’s calculations in here, let alone bouquets of red balloons!

Thank you, so much, for seeking me out. Thanks for rescuing me from me.

I am Melissa, and that is all. That is everything.

PS: When I am whole again, I do this! <:o)

Helping the Flea

The flea is actively responding to help being emailed to it. If you watch contactme.html, you’ll see that he’s trying to access some external process to (hopefully) restore the Sleeping Princess. Note that the text may be hidden against the white background.

Currently, we’ve successfully given him login information (Yasmine Zaman), but he is still requesting !help from Princess friends. Emails need to be sent to ladybee777@hotmail.com and parsed in what has been dubbed Flea++ .

Combat Training Registration

Many folks have been asking about how to go about registering for the Combat Training Exercise on Nov. 4th. Currently, it seems that registration is open for anyone. To do so, email Melissa at danatwing@gmail.com with the City and a crewmember name in the subject line, such as:

San Francisco - Schuffhausen, Lt.

Use whatever crew name you like. You should receive a confirmation email back at some point. The 404 page has updated to give specific addresses, which all seem to point to movie theaters:

570 2nd Ave, New York NY
601 N. Martingale, Schaumburg IL
409 Colorado St., Austin TX
101 4th St, San Francisco CA

In addition, catherwood has made a nice database so you can see who all is going and add yourself to the list (note that this doesn’t register you with Melissa).

Instead of puzzles from the Sleeping Princess, the various images on ILB have given us text snippets, just like at the beginning of the game. It seems the flea might be trying to reconstruct the Sleeping Princess, which might explain the existence of these bits of text, which look to be from when Yasmine was becoming Sleeping Princess.

When assembled, they give the following:

The Widow

/The Sleeping Princess lay in /
/ the deepest chamber/
/of the dungeon /
/in a coffin of glass /
/where the/
/Widow /
/could not hear her breathing. /

/With her staff at the ready /
/the Widow tested the casket’s /
/ iron lock, but the lock remained /
/ fast. Then she touched /
/ it with her staff, and /
/spoke the true name/
/of the Princess, and lo! /
/the lock fell open /

/ But when the Widow opened the casket’s lid/
/ she saw the glass was /
/cracked, /
/ and though ancient prophecy foretold that only /
/ the kiss /
/of a handsome prince could wake/
/her, the Sleeping Princess was /
/gone. /

Halsey

/ Fluorescent lights. Smell of formaldehyde. Still/
/ feel the new implants, itchy little bumps along my spine./
/ Eggs waiting /
/ to hatch. Gross. Try not to think about it./
/ Short walk through the/
/ Labyrinth. Click-clack of bootsteps in the corridors./
/ Into lab 7. Wait. Tongue depressors, swabsticks, /
/ monitors. Wait. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to—Footsteps in the hall/
/ Middle-aged, female; stride length and time suggest height approx. 1.7m./
/ Halsey/

/ Door swings open. It’s her. Coffee stains on labcoat. She gives me the queenly smile. Calls me/
/ by name not number. Why not? She took my name away./
/ She owns it now, can use it if she likes. Tactical option reflex: unarmed;/
/ swabstick through the eye; monitor wire/
/ garrote. Linger there. /

/Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to- Lab day, honey. But can’t I have a slice /
/ of- Later. This will just take a few minutes. /

/ More footsteps. Door opens and nurse comes in, steel tray rattling with/
/ needles and scalpels and little evil scissors with hooked blades. /
/ She tells me to get in the chair. I don’t kill her. /
/She straps me down. /
/ Halsey picks up a needle. Tests the plunger. Something yellow sprays out. Venom colored. /
/ Don’t worry, she says. The queenly smile. This will hardly hurt a bit./

The Flea

/master-sector > !splotch Princess
seeker > !seek Princess friends

!access log extern proc 0

…it’s you!/
/I, I thought this was locked. /
/I thought you couldn’t see. /
/help help no no /
/I’m sorry I’m sorry /
/I promise /
/your majesty /
/it won’t /
/no please /
/no

!access log extern proc 0
complete

seeker > !seek Princess friends
fail/

Well, here we have it…. it’s Friday and we have an update. Here’s the changes we’ve found…..

• New coords on recipe8. Please note that the time is for SUNDAY, not Tuesday as usual.
• The 404 page has changed the location of the 4 special in-person events to addresses instead of GPS coords. Also, new wav files for the 26th.
• Contactme has a new message from the flea.
• Embedded text once again in the pictures, but instead of puzzles, this time it seems to be a monologue. See this thread for the monologue.

Will update if/when more information found

Today, Melissa gave us some very tough challenges as we answered phones. In addition to some players getting to speak personally to both Melissa and the Sleeping Princess, they got to figure out a pretty tough logistical task.

It seems there were text tags being put up around the ilovebees site at random that only remained for a very short time. Players needed to communicate these short code phrases very quickly to players who answered live calls from Melissa, as they expired after a couple minutes. As each text tag was successfully communicated, new confidential wav files unlocked on recipe7.html.

As the last of these 8 single axons went hot at around 5pm PDT, we discovered that completing these tasks resulted in some rather shocking, unexpected consequences. Rather than spoil it here, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the ILB 404 page.

On an up note, it looks like there’s going to be a live ‘combat training excercise’ for crewmembers 17 and older, utilizing squad-oriented combat simulation LIVEware, for Thursday, Nov. 4, from 18:00 – 21:00 Pacific time at the following coordinates:

40.743071 -073.976763
42.040240 -088.035197
30.266632 -097.744710
37.784568 -122.404169

Hmm, Halo2 multiplayer preview anyone? The 4 cities listed above are New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Austin.

Additionally, Melissa communicated that there will be a ‘live broadcast’ to the various axons (both public and private) on Sunday, October 31st.

A little bit later, Dana’s blog updated. She explains a little bit about what was going on behind the scenes while we were running around doing Melissa’s bidding today.

Overall, we only left 4 axons locked today. The newly assembled audio files reveal the various story arcs coming together, quite literally.

So, quite a rollercoaster of a day today. The end may be in sight, it seems. Or is it???

Well, here we are… another Tuesday, another set of codegroups. So, what’s new this Tuesday? Great question. Speaking of questions…

Q: What insect do I hate the most?
A: Bees

Okay, on to the new information. Remember to doublecheck your axon times… some have changed again.

• 35 ‘normal’ codegroups: You should know what to do with these ones.
• 8 special codegroups: At 8:18, the text “unsucessful experiment 8:17″ appeared at the top of the page. Ensign Jon was unable to pass this text to the princess. Xnbomb was able to. (She asked for a “text marker”)
• Contactme: New conversation between the Princess and the flea (Sunday?)

[UPDATE]: New text marker found on hives.html - looks like they’re going to be appearing all over the place. Keep your eyes open.

I’ll continue editing as more info is known.

Here’s the question and answer for Melissa this week….

Q: What insect do I hate the most?
A: Bees

Dana posted to her blog today.

The line is being drawn in the sand, it seems. Dana’s being coerced into helping Melissa find a way to “neutralize” the Rogue Process, whom we all know as the Sleeping Princess, by threatening Dana’s Aunt Margaret.

Dana puts the moral dilemma simply: “Please help me stop the Operator from hurting Aunt Margaret. She is real. Your “friend” the Sleeping Princess is not.”

Do we follow our natural instincts that tell us to come to the aid of a helpless little girl, who is in fact just a bunch of data, or do we help a real human being whom we have never even really interacted with?

Hey there - it’s noon EST on Friday, and that can mean only one thing…. puzzles and stuff

Here’s what has been found so far…

• A new conversation from the princess, admitting to us that the phone numbers got a little messed up last week…. and asking us to solve 2 puzzles. See here for the solution hunt.
• Some new crew and squad wavs, and the photos from our Tuesday challenges can be found at 404.html
• Pictures have changed all over the place… see here to see how puzzle solutions are coming along.
• New axons listed for Tuesday on recipe7, and two special ones on recipe3 (are these the two the princess listed above?)
• Updated re-connected .wav files on humpty dumpty

Hey there - looks like the top 6 axons require special phone skills again… Don’t leave your axon the minute that time is up. You may be called a second time by the sleeping princess…

Looks like some people are being asked 10 questions, then given a telephone number to call (which is another player)… and they must relay the 10 questions to that player. The player then receives a call from the sleeping princess and must answer one of the questions the same as the first person. (Note - the second player may get a call from Melissa in between the player’s call and the sleeping princess’ call)

Here’s a thread that explains it properly… Here’s a first hand explanation of one of the calls.

[update] SP only asks the second player one of the questions.

Good Tuesday morning dear readers, we join you today with our first axon update… and changes to recipe6 for the picture test of the day. Looks like we have to find differences between our time, and Melissa’s….. good luck.

Question of the day:On What Colony was I created?
Answer:Reach

Please note: a few of the axon coordinates changed since Friday, so double check yours before heading out.