HauntedApiary Trail
Chronological list of game events.
(Note: The Trail includes only confirmed events and information. Please keep speculation to ARG forums, such as ![[WWW]](../wiki/classic/img/moin-www.png){kind=small}
Unfiction, or to the TheCommentary section.)
July 2004
Thursday 15th
Pots of honey originating from "Margaret" in San Francisco are sent to veterans of the ARG scene (notably Steve from ARGN and Bill from Deaddrop). The pots contain letters that, when rearranged, spell "ilovebees". This leads to the discovery of Margaret's website at ilovebees.com, which appears to be under attack from hackers.
Linked to this site is ilovebees.blogspot.com, a blog belonging to Dana, Margaret's niece, who is desperately trying to figure out what is causing the strange goings on at ilovebees.com. The first blog entry is from Tuesday July 13, talking about the initial damage discovery, and a second entry from Wednesday July 14 tells about her upcoming trip to China and has screenshots of the pre-hacked ilovebees page.
Friday 16th
Denizens of the unfiction forums begin to discover garbled EmbeddedText on the site, consisting of computer code snippets and narrative in the form of MaydayText messages. These messages appear to originate from an entity known only as The Operator, who has crash landed on an endless sandy beach, confused and seeking and escape or rescue. There are also hidden text snippets discovered embedded in the various corrupted images on the site, which are put together into a complete TheStory.
Using a whois query, Margaret is fully identified as Margaret Efendi <![[MAILTO]](http://localhost/wiki/classic/img/moin-email.png){kind=small}
ladybee777@hotmail.com> of:
Margaret's House of Bees
2370 Market Street #510
San Francisco, CA 94114-1575
US
415-248-2617
Calling this number leads you to Dana's voicemail; her answering machine message can be heard here. The address is shared by several businesses, one of which is a UPS store (previously Mailboxes, Etc.). Box 510 is empty.
In Dana's latest blog entry, she worries about the "countdown bug" and wonders why this would happen to an "utterly and completely harmless" site like ilovebees.
Tuesday 20th
A strange email (posted here at Unfiction) is recieved from the ladybee777 hotmail account, composed from bits of text sent to Dana and/or Margaret. Many key phrases were identified as being from emails that players sent to D&M, but the voodoo sections seemed to be originating solely from the ladybee777 account.
Dana's blog is updated with a list of famous things that have occurred on August 24 throughout history, and she says that Aunt Margaret is "touched by the flood of support" that's been sent.
Wednesday 21st
IRC discussion notes that the URL www.ilovebees.com appears in the Halo2 preview before I, Robot at Loews theatres. This is easily visible in the hi-res version of the trailer.
Friday 23rd
Dana's blog is updated with a post about the mysterious ladybee777 email and notes that the hotmail account is empty; apparently everything in both the inbox and outbox has disappeared. This may be attributed to the fact that people had been trying to hack her Hotmail account. DontHackHotmail!
Tuesday 27th
The network throttling counter went to 0 at midnight PDT, though nothing was seen changed on the site. However, by noon EDT, lots of crazy stuff was going down. Looks like Phase One of network throttling is now over... New Phase Two text all over the place on ilovebees.com.
Dana's also having some issues with whatever it was that took over the site. As she says in her blog update, "It saw me. It knows me now." She also says Tsi Tian, everyone', Mandarin for goodbye. It looks like a typo. At the very least it should be Tsi Tsian, but it's more commonly written as zai jian. Chinese characters are Œ???¤?.
Thursday 29th
Today is Dana Goes to China Day! Her voicemail has been updated with a new message, which can be found here.
August 2004
Tuesday 3rd
Today, many people received email from Margaret Efendi (ladybee777@hotmail.com). See the full email here: PhaseEmailsFromLadybeeAugustRd.
(EDIT/PLEASE NOTE: While this email came from the Margaret Efendi email account, it is believed to have come from the "Sleeping Princess"... sorry, should have mentioned that before...) --UserDorkmaster 10:33, 3 Aug 2004 (PDT)
Friday 6th
Dana is back in contact! She has posted a new message on her blog, entitled "being persuaded to come back."
Tuesday 10th
Phase 2 countdown is now over... This medium has metastasized. Uh oh! New embedded text, both in the html and inside the graphics, a whole slew of GPS coordinates, and someone talking to us in the wav files. Creepy! Click here for the latest updates.
Friday 13th
More email replies are sent by Dana to various recipients, but the one common factor is that she quotes the email that she apparently sent to The Sleeping Princess (ladybee777). See EmailExchangesWithDanaAwbreyFridayTh. Dana also updated her blog -- Shanghai, China is apparently "Olly Olly Axon Free"!
Tuesday 17th
Some changes are made to the GPS coordinates on the Fun Stuff page at ilovebees. They all have been made more accurate by extending the decimal point out to six places; they were previously out to 4. Each one now has a timestamp beneath it. A list of them, with their general location can be found here.
Friday 20th
Dana updates her blog: Go Hot.
A new ILB 404 page has an email poll from the Sleeping Princess (in green text). She is giving us a chance to chose which questions we want answered from a list of some emailed to her, and invites us to send more questions. See Phase_3-Message_from_Sleeping_Princess
Saturday 21st
Players receive variations of EmailExchangesWithDanaAwbreySaturdaySt email from Dana. In it, she asks for help in "..trying to draft a sort of "What we know, in 50 words or less" post for my blog."Tuesday 24th
Dana updates herblog: Extraordinary. Sidebar on the blog now contains 50 word summary requested in saturday's email. Tuesday 31st
TheNewAxons are unlocked, and more embedded words lead to a riddle about the LookingGlass.TheCommentary
