Hello everybody!  I’ve been a very bad host and havent’ written anything in… a long time.  I could sit here and give you 500 words on the why… but that’d be boring.  Instead, let me tell you the interesting story of what I did today.  Set up: I’m home from work because I had another eye appointment (suckage) to see how my eyescar is doing (more suckage).  On the plus side, the eye has more or less fully healed, the retina looks solid, and I don’t have to keep taking steroid drops.  Also, the doc is confident enough that I’m past the critical stage of “You’re going to lose an eye” that I don’t have to see him again for another year.  (At which point, we’ll determine the fate of the eye… to laze or not to laze, that is the question.)

BUT, that’s not the fun bit.  That’s only to explain why I’m spending time on this, and not actually keeping people out of jail.  What I have been doing is working on something called an Alternate Reality Game.  Basically, it’s a scavenger hunt with clues strewn throughout the internet to solve a mystery.  This particular game I’ve been keeping an eye on has been going on for a few weeks now, surrounding Joss Whedon’s latest TV series Dollhouse (sadly, though predictably, recently cancelled).  In that show, the Rossum Corporation runs illegal operations in a number of major cities called “Dollhouses”, where people pay a lot of money to rent “Actives”, people whose minds have been erased and replaced with the personalities of… well, whatever the customer requires (lover, wife, mother, assassin, bodyguard, spy, what have you.)  This season has seen an attack upon the Rossum Corporation by Senator Perrin, who claims they are hiding medical advances from the world illegally.  Oh, and the last (unaired) episode of the first season, called “Epitaph One”, was a vision of a future dystopia where Rossum has somehow managed to cause the end of the world in the year 2019.  I think you’re all caught up now.  (I should note at this point that hte links provided are all part of the game, though they would look real to anyone who didn’t know it was a game – that’s why it’s called an Alternative Reality Game.)

Anyhow, someone discovered not long ago that if you call the number on the Rossum Corporation’s web page, you would eventually receive a phone call asking you to ditch the tech.  And that led people to ditchthetech.com, which contained a distressing message from… The Future!  (The video that currently plays as of today [11-17] is different, though not by much.  You can find the old message on Youtube.) that message then led users to www.wipethefuture.com, which had nothing but a cryptic message for people at the time.  Sunday, however, that site changed, and had an urgent message that said “Find her!  Hurry!” and a login/pass code block.  However, the source code for the page led people to the Twitter account @AlexfromPR (no relation… although I’ll admit I got really freaked out when I looked at the source code of the page, but at the time didn’t realize it was a twitter page, thought it was a cookie.  Which, in retrospect, I should know better!)  And a link on that led people to her blog, which had a series of clues which led smarter (or less busy) minds than mine to figure out the password for the wipethefuture site.  And that led everyone to Spectrin LLC.  Spectrin appears to be some kind of weird temporal investigative agency.  But the clues so far have been pointing towards a place in Iceland, and lo and behold one of the Spectrin investigators (Sara) had just returned from an investigation in Iceland (emails to her refer to Icelandic magical staves and tatoos).  Eventually, someone figured out the login to the Spectrin page, and we discovered more of Sara’s investigative notes on the weird happenings in Iceland (speaking of people being “possessed” and not remembering what they do – a lot like what Actives go through when they’re imprinted.)

Needless to say, I’m really into it at this point, and its kinda creepy.  People are trying threads everywhere to see whats up – meanwhile @AlexfromPR continues to update her blog and twitter accounts about her blossoming lovelife with a guy named Matteo, Matt for short.  And today, two things happen of interest: 1) Wipethefuture changes again, to another login/username password login, and 2) Matt sends AlexfromPR flowers.  Except I notice that there’s something really odd about his signature… he signs with a hash mark in front of his name.  Why do that?  I get a dash, a bullet, maybe, “love”, “yours”, etc… but why a hash?

And then on twitter, those trying to solve the puzzle notice that the value of the shoes Matt bought Alex ($478) was the same as the password for the wipethefuture site.  And that dendrobium are identified as AlexfromPR’s favorite flower!  On a whim, I try #matt as the username for wipethefuture.com, and dendrobium as the password… et voila!  I can’t believe I’m the first to crack it!  (At least, as far as I know.)  I’m freaking, so I send out a hash tag message to the list  telling folks I’ve solved the login puzzle, and it makes me ridiculously happy for a few moments.

But the puzzle only thickens!  For the latest message appears to be a recipe for tattoo ink, or skin care lotion (I’m not sure.)  And a note that refers to Sara, we assume again, from Spectrin – “sara.  cuts on.”  And unfortunately, my eyes are still too dilated to make out the details of the message (it’s handwritten, and there’s some words rubbed out that need deciphering), so I now rely once more upon the eyes of others… but it was fun participating in this puzzle.  And I’m still way into it.

I just hope I get my very own Amy Acker if I win.