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A Mysterious Package |
On March 12, 2009, Addlepated discovered a mysterious package in her PO Box. Inside, wrapped in the March 9th San Diego Union Tribune classifieds, was a microcassette recorder with a note that said "Play Me". On the tape was a recorded conversation between a man and a woman. The woman mentions that she is/was an author, but now only writes autobiographical stories, as it prevents fictional characters from coming to life. She then talks about the last character of hers that came to life, Charlotte - a sick little girl who ran away from home and who eventually found the woman author.
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Man: What are you working on at the moment?
Woman: I don’t write fiction anymore or at least not what most people would see as fiction.
M: How would you describe it?
W: Well these days I only write about myself. Call it autobiography; it kills three birds with one stone. It allows me to indulge my literary bent. It gives me a way of coming to terms with my past and it rules out the possibility of fictional characters coming alive and driving me crazy.
M: I see. Then tell me about your most recent breakdown.
W: OK, the last character who come to life was the heroine of a children’s book, a modern fairy tale.
M: Can you tell me about the plot?
W: It’s all about a little girl called Charlotte, a delicate slip of a thing, with angelic blonde hair, the sort you see on commercials for cookies and chocolate, you know the type.
M: As hallucinations go, I can think of worse.
W: True, Charlotte was a darling, people found her adorable. Her father was the king and they lived in palace on an island.
M: How did the story start?
W: With a quest. One day Charlotte fell ill. Seriously ill.
M: What were the symptoms?
W: She lost weight, became frail and sickly and was struck down by all kinds of mysterious infections. One by one, the king consulted every doctor in the kingdom, but no one knew what was wrong with his daughter. It wasn't long before the royal couple were frantic with worry. Meanwhile poor Charlotte was wasting away.
M: What happened to the girl?
W: One day she decided to take charge of her own destiny, she ran away from home.
M: Oh, my God.
W: I beg your pardon?
M: Nnnnothing, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Carry on.
W: So Charlotte set off on a quest to find the cause of her illness, I suppose you could call it a parable. A little girl refuses to give up on hope and sets off to the big wide world on her own. Are you sure you’re alright?
M: (Long pause) Forgive me, I should stop drinking so much tea. Tell me more about Charlotte. How does the story end? What happened to her?
W: I don’t know.
M: Surely you know how your own story ends.
W: I told you before, I never got past the first few chapters, and that’s why Charlotte came after me. That’s how the nightmare started.
The return address showed that it came from a P. Martin out of San Diego. A couple of San Diego Unfictioners checked out the address, but the only thing there were some apartments. Without knowing which apartment P. Martin lived in, or even if they lived their at all, the apartments were deemed a dead end.
The only other piece of information included in the package was some writing on the microcassette. There was a lot of debate as to what it actually said, but in the end (after we received a few more tapes) we concluded that it said "2/1".
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Therapy | |
Somehow, based on the very little information contained on the tape, drizjr discovered that the tape was seemingly based on a book called Therapy by Sebastian Fitzek. It is being released in the United States on March 17th. It had already been released in Germany three years previously - which may explain why the characters have slightly European accents and the number 1 on the tape was written differently. So it seems that this game is more than like a promotion for the book. However, it's too soon to tell if we're going to need the book to play along, or if it will stand on its own. Hopefully the latter, as I think it would be a little too weird to incorporate the book. It would be like if ILB was just using the Halo 2 game to provide the storyline instead of just using the universe. You don't want the ARG to spoil the book or the book to spoil the ARG.
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Tape #2 |
A few days after Addlepated got her tape, Varin received another one in the mail. Hers was marked with "1/2" and wrapped up in the sports section of the Los Angeles times dated March 12, 2009 - just a day before she received it. Her tape had the same voices on it as Addlepated, although they didn't necessarily follow each other in the storyline. However, we were introduced to another fictional character who came to life. Julia is the first character the Woman ever meets outside of her stories - and is the beginning of a twenty year nightmare.
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Woman: The first thing I ever wrote was a short story for a competition. I was 13 years old at that time. My story was about a group of young people who set up a scientific experiment. I submitted the manuscript and that's when the problem started.
Man: What kind of problems?
W: I was at a party at a hotel in my hometown and my best friend had just turned 14 and her parents had rented the ballroom. I slipped out to the toilet and saw in the lobby, she was waiting at the reception.
M: Your best friend?
W: No, Julia.
M: Julia who?
W: Julia, the character in my story. I introduced her in the opening paragraph.
M: Um, let's get this straight. The woman in the lobby resembled a character in your story?
W: No, no. She did not look like Julia. She was Julia.
M: What made you think that?
W: Because she repeated word for word the first line of the story.
Man: Pardon?
W: Julia leant over the counter and said to the man at the reception, "Listen Honey, I'm going to do something special. How about you fix me up with a room?"
M: Didn't it occur to you that it might be a coincidence?
W: Sure, I gave it an awful lot of thought, but it seemed too much of a coincidence given what happened next.
Man: Namely?
W: Julia did exactly as I described. She stuck a pistol in her mouth and blew her brains out.
M: Are you serious?
W: I'm afraid so. Julia was the beginning of a nightmare that has been haunting me for nearly 20 years. Some phases are more intense than others, but I'm a writer - it's my curse.
M: Your curse?
W: My characters come alive. I only have to imagine a person and I see them, hear them and sometimes even speak to them. Call it schizophrenia, if you will, by that's the nature of my condition, my own particular mental take.
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Tape #3 |
The third tape was received by SpaceBass on Monday, March 16th. His recorder was wrapped up in a page from a 1040EZ booklet and was labeled "1/1". As his tape seemed to be the start of the conversation, and seemed to come directly before Varin's, we decided that the numbers on the tapes were labeling Session and Part number. So Space's tape would be Session 1, Part 1, then Varin's Session 1, Part 2 and Addie's Session 2, Part 1. So now we should be able to put any additional tapes in order very easily.
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Man: May I offer you some tea?
Woman: Oh, thank you, no. My five minutes would be over before I got around to got around to drinking it.
M: As you wish. So... tell me about yourself.
W: I'm a novelist.
M: Famous?
W: Not unless you're interested in children's books. Most of my readers are age six to thirteen. I sell a lot of copies overseas. Japan was my best market but it's all in the past.
M: In the past?
W: I... haven't finished a book for years.
M: So when was your last book published?
W: That was five years ago. After that, I started another project, a children's book of course. I thought it was going to be my best yet. It almost seemed to write itself but I never got further than the first couple of chapters.
M: Why was that?
W: Health problems. It happened very suddenly. I was hospitalized.
M: What was wrong with you?
W: To be frank, I don't think anyone really knows.
M: How long were you in the hospital?
W: Forty-seven months in all. I was locked in a room and topped up with pills for nearly four years. I barely knew who I was, let alone what was going on.
M: And the... diagnosis?
W: Haven't you been able to make a guess by now?
M: What medication were you on?
W: Pretty much everything. Truxel and Phlustelmarine but mainly Phlupentexol.
M: And... none of them helped?
W: The symptoms got worse. Even after I stopped taking the medication, it took weeks to find my feet. In my opinion, that's proof enough that drugs aren't the solution to my particular condition.
M: What's different about your condition?
W: I'm a novelist.
M: So you said.
W: It's probably best if I give you an example.
It should be noted that the drugs the Woman says she was on are mainly used for the treatment of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The fact that she was on them in the hospital for so long shows that she was pretty wacky (at least in the opinion of her doctors). Makes you wonder how she ended up getting "better".
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Tape #4 |
Just one day after Space's package, October got one in the mail. Hers was wrapped in a tax instruction booklet and was labeled "3/1" - putting it after Addie's tape. It also seemed to refer to some information that we haven't been able to listen to yet. But we do learn more about her meeting Charlotte.
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Man: I'd like to pick up where we left off, if I may.
Woman: Of course.
M: You said that Charlotte was nearly run over by a car.
W: Yes, that was the first time I saw her.
M: Where did you take her after that?
W: It was... the other way around - she took me! I just followed.
M: How would you explain her... how would you explain her motivation?
W: She wanted to know why her story only had two chapters. She said, "I want to be well again! What happens next?" She told me to finish the book.
M: In other words, you were instructed to keep writing by a character created by you.
W: Precisely! In any case, I was perfectly honest with her. I told her I didn't know how the story ended so there was nothing I could do.
M: What did she say to that?
W: She took me by the hand and promised to show me where the story started. She said, "Maybe you'll think of an ending when you see where it all began."
M: Where did she take you?
W: I... don't know the name of the place but we drove for a while to get there.
M: And how long did it take you?
W: Over an hour. We went through a little village, I remember seeing some old buildings, Russian architecture, I think.
M: Can you describe what you saw?
W: There was a Russian Orthodox chapel on a hill in some woods. We crossed a bridge, continued for a couple of kilometers on the road, then turned onto a forest track and we drove another kilometer and stopped in a narrow lane. I parked the car there.
M: Where did you go after that?
W: We walked down a path; we had to go in single file but I could see she was taking me to a building. It was a little wooden house like a cabin, only nicer.
M: What did you feel?
W: At the time it seemed real, but everything was so luminously beautiful that I can't help wondering whether it was part of the delusion, like Charlotte.
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An Email from P. Martin |
Apparently, despite our feelings that we had no idea what to actually do with all these tapes, we did have enough information to proceed onto a next step. But since we weren't getting that, P. Martin emailed those people who had already received their tapes saying that we should look for the truth and consider the items we had in our hands. And to help us out, they would answer one question for us.
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From: iwillgiveyou.1.littlehint@redacted
Subject: PM
Date: March 18, 2009 3:14:48 PM CDT
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
After much discussion, the group decided that the one question would be "How do we get in contact with the people from the tape?" Addie fired off the email and we settled in to wait for P. Martin's response.
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Tape #2 - Redux | |
In the meantime, people started doing searches, trying to find either the Woman or the Man or if anyone else had gotten a tape. At least one other person outside of Unfiction had, a mystery writer named Dana King. His description of receiving the package seems a little over the top, but then again, he is a novelist. The tape appears to be the same as what Varin received - it's marked "1/2" and contains the story about Julia killing herself. So sadly, no new information. But now we have to wonder, are there other tapes out there that we haven't heard? And how would we go about finding them?
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P. Martin's Response |
After what seemed far too long to write a simple email back, P. Martin responded to Addie's question. It was far from helpful. In fact, it seemed to tell us just what the first message did: that we just need to use what we have. Well obviously if we knew how, we would have done that by now, don't you think?
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You are in charge: All you need to do is putting together the parts.
P.Martin
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Tape #5 |
So as we looked at our materials again, a fifth tape came in the mail, this time sent to thebruce. His was "2/2" and was wrapped in a couple of layers of newspaper. That's slightly different. Does this mean we need to go back and look more closely at the other wrapping materials? And what are we supposed to be looking for on them, if that is indeed the case? The tape contains part of the story that was hinted at in "3/1" - that is the story about Charlotte almost getting run over by a car.
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Man: What do you mean? What nightmare?
Woman: Charlotte was the last of my characters to come alive. What we experienced together was so distressing, that I broke down completely.
M: Umm, let's back up a little. Tell me exactly what happened. When did you first see Charlotte?
W: About four years ago in Berlin. It was winter. I was on my way to the shops, when I heard an awful noise- screeching tires, the crunch of metal on metal, splintering glass... it sounded like a car accident. I remember thinking 'oh my God I hope no one's hurt', then I turned around to see a girl in the middle of the road. She was rooted to the spot. The crash was obviously her fault. Suddenly as if she could sense I was there she turned around and she smiled at me, and I recognized her right away - it was Charlotte, the little girl from my book! She ran over and took me by the hand.
M: What happened next?
W: My mind seemed to shut down. On the one hand, I knew Charlotte was real, she had to be a delusion. On the other hand, she was standing right beside me. And in the end, I had to believe the evidence of my eyes so I followed her.
M: Followed her? Which way? Wh-where did she go?
W: Why? Does it make a difference?
M: Um, not in the slightest. I'm sorry, go on.
W: If you don't mind I'd like to take a break. I know I forced this conversation on you but I thought I was ready and I'm not. The hallucinations were extremely traumatic and it's really not easy for me to discuss them.
M: I understand.
W: You won't have to worry about me bothering you again, with any luck I can manage to leave this island tomorrow.
M: One last question. What was the book called?
W: I hadn't decided. I only had a working title. "Nine."
M: Nine?
W: Charlotte was nine years old when she ran away from home.
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It's Oh So Quiet |
The weekend came and went and no new tapes or messages from P. Martin. Maybe everyone was watching the Battlestar Galactica finale. Addlepated took apart the recorder to see if there was a hidden message inside. There wasn't. People started searching the internet for either more tapes or possible websites for us to visit. We did find a few sites that seemed connected to the story, but as they were all in German and didn't actually give us much info, we decided that they weren't what we were looking for. So we spent the rest of the time debating what we should do, and what the enigmatic messages from P. Martin meant. Needless to say, we didn't get anywhere and are still just as stuck as we were when we got the first tape.
And that just annoys me. Because why spend so much money to priority ship the packages if time wasn't a bit of a factor? Is this just some random ultra-mini campaign to get the word out about a book that people wouldn't know about otherwise because so few places physically have it? I'm not sure that a tease like this is going to generate a lot of positive feedback if all it is only just a tease. If you're sending packages out to prominent ARGers, it's sorta expected that we'll get an ARG or at least some kind of larger experience. Not a couple of cryptic emails that hint that we have everything we need if only we would look at it correctly. Sometimes you have to look at things correctly and see that the reason we aren't moving on isn't because we're lazy or stupid. It's because your hints are crap. And if you want us to figure things out, you need to fix it. Otherwise, people are going to get very bitter, very quickly.
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Turn |
When P. Martin wrote to us originally, he/she used a Spamgourmet email address, which meant that it would only allow 1 response through before sending all the rest to the garbage bin. However, there is a bit of a hack around this, as pointed out by Spacebass if watchwords are turned on. Enaxor decided to test this theory and sent off an email using a hacked address. Amazingly, it actually worked and she got a response from P. Martin.
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So you really tried to contact me again at this email address.
You seem to be very brave since you have no idea what might happen to you if you did that.
The message also contained a picture that at first glance looked to be the same as one that Addlepated had posted earlier. But there is one big difference: the words on the battery cover are different. In the original picture, it says "OPEN" while in enaxor's picture, it says "TURN". Put this together with the message that we "are in charge" and it seems that we need to do something with the batteries or battery compartment.
What exactly we need to do though is anyone's guess. It was suggested by sapagoo that the package recipients turn the batteries around and see if that plays the tape backwards, but somehow I don't think they took his suggestion seriously.
We do have reports of two of the battery covers having a barcode sticker on them, but it's entirely possible that this is a standard sticker. Addlepated's sticker said "Device ID 273, Part No 2" and the barcode decoded to read *6776616C686579*. Splitting into pairs and turning into ASCII you get "gvalhey". ROT-13'ing that and you get "tinyurl". Holy crap - why the hell does a url need to be so fraking hidden? I hope there is a reason other than "but it's a puzzle!" Like a pirate king sent these out to safeguard a hidden treasure full of gold and Cap'n Crunch.
Anyway, now that we know what to do, we just have to wait for someone else to decode their barcode so we can get the rest of the tinyurl address to get to where we need to go.
Varin took a picture of her barcode: Device ID 995, Part No 1. Her barcode was the same as Addlepated's though. Okay, now what?
While the barcodes are the same, the Device IDs aren't. Spacebass told us in chat that his was Device ID 018, Part No 3. Putting the device IDs together, Addlepated then discovered http://www.tinyurl.com/995273018 which leads to http://www.ivankrotzler.com/ which seems to be what we're looking for. Hooray!
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Ivan Krotzler |
Ivan Krotzler is a licensed clinical psychiatrist in San Diego. His name also happens to be an anagram of Viktor Larenz, but I'm sure that's just a coinky-dink. It seems that someone broke into their office in late February and took off with some patient data. At least now we know how we got the tapes. But then the question becomes why link us back to the place where they were stolen from? Unless maybe we're supposed to go back to the office and steal more stuff! Like an Oceans 11 type caper, with fake identities and elaborate planning and really good looking men. I so hope that's it.
If you have any information about the crime, or were a patient, they have a contact page set up where you can give them your contact information and send them a message. And if that doesn't interest you, you can always befriend Ivan on Facebook.
The only other bit on information that seems to be relevant to us is a link to MPU Berlin. When we first discovered it, the site was 403'd, but it has since become active. Not that I can view it at work right now because of stupid webfiltering, but that should be solved within 24 hours since I've submitted the site for review as a Government/Legal site. Because labeling it as a Game site would be bad and I'd never get to see it. Except maybe this week because someone seems to have unbanned Game sites because I'm guessing they are really interested in March Madness. Not that I'm complaining. Flickr (Web Storage) is even unlocked now. It's been a good week.
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MPU-Berlin | |
MPU Berlin seems to be a website for a Medical University in Berlin. Oops, I obviously submitted that in the wrong category, but I guess it doesn't matter since the review people don't seem to speak German. There's not much on the website as it seems they are still building it according to the translated message on the front page: Our new internet presence will soon be available here. Please check back again soon. Berlin, 2009. I guess we'll have to check back later.
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Penny Farmer |
A day after we found Ivan Krotzler's website, we started getting responses back from our initial queries. They were written by a Penny Farmer, who is Dr. Krotzler's assistant. The emails didn't contain a lot of information. Mostly just thank yous for letting her know about the tapes we had received and the fact that the practice is closed due to personal reasons.
With a line of communication established, several people started emailing Penny back asking more specific questions about the tapes and why the practice was closed. It was soon discovered that Dr. Krotzler had disappeared. That would explain why no one had been friended back on Facebook. We eventually learned that the last time he was seen was Friday, March 13th, when he left the office.
At least Penny isn't alone at the office. When questioned about why Dr. Krotzler is called a "Licensed Clinical Psychiatrist" despite the fact that it's not a real classification, she responded that it was probably a joke by Jimmy, the administrator and website programmer.
With each new volley of emails, we gathered a little more information from Penny: A note was found in Dr. Krotzler's trash reading "I have to stop this". The male voice in the tape did not appear to be Dr. Krotzler, although the woman seemed to be one of his patients. Despite working for the practice for three years, Penny does not know much about Dr. Krotzler, although she was able to notice a significant change in his behavior a few weeks before he went missing.
The real breakthrough came when Penny searched through his office more throughly looking for clues. She found a notebook with what appeared to be a password written in it. It didn't work on any of their computer systems, but it did open Dr. Krotzler's Facebook account. Once she was in, Penny accepted all the friend requests and we were able to check out his profile.
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Ivan on Facebook |
Ivan seems to be quite the joiner on Facebook. He's joined several groups (mostly for psychology or dogs) and friended some people from those groups. Some of his status updates are lyrics from songs. Could be a clue, or could just be he likes listening to music while browsing through Facebook.
Two of his comments though might relate directly to his disappearance. He first talks about having a strange encounter on the beach as he walked home on March 13th. Then on the 14th, he talks about how he heard "disturbing noises in the backyard" during the night and that he hopes that its not what he thinks it is. What would he think was making disturbing noises in his backyard?
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The Walk |
One of Ivan's photoalbums is titled "The Walk" and dated March 15th. So that rules out him being kidnapped as he left on the office on Friday. The album contains fourteen pictures with very odd names. So odd that it's easy to see that its a puzzle to be solved.
§
The numbers in the picture titles are straight alphabet code, although the words are backwards in each.
5.8.20 e.h.t the
20.14.1.23 t.n.a.w want
15.20 o.t to
4.14.9.6 d.n.i.f find
5.8.20 e.h.t the
15.20 o.t to
20.15.7 t.o.g got
21.15.25 u.o.y you
6.9 f.i if
4.14.15.25.5.2 d.n.o.y.e.b beyond
21.15.25 u.o.y you
5.3.1.6.18.21.19 e.c.a.f.r.u.s surface
8.20.21.18.20 h.t.u.r.t truth
8.3.20.1.18.3.19 h.c.t.a.r.c.s scratch
Our best guess for the message is "You got to scratch beyond the surface if you want to find the truth". Although I wonder if you took a walk from his office looking for those sites if you could get a more definite order for the words - or if you could find some other clue as to why he put this puzzle up to begin with.
So, if we are looking for the truth - what surface do we have to scratch in order to find it?
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Data Login | |
While we were still waiting for Penny to find the password to Ivan's Facebook, dante started playing around on IvanKrotzler.com and found a hidden directory: http://www.ivankrotzler.com/data/login.php. Could the information in his Facebook account give us access?
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Talking with Penny |
Penny must really think that a bunch of strangers from the internet can help her find Dr. Krotzler because she keeps emailing everyone who writes her with additional tidbits. She took photos of the notebook she found, plus one of the pages inside (but not the one with the FB password because I guess she doesn't trust us that much). A professional photographer Penny is not - you can barely tell what anything is on the page. Several people on the forums tried to clean up the photo, but there is only so much you can do with a crappy original source (no matter what Hollywood tells you).
At least the pictures Penny sent of the note from the garbage were a little better (although she could have at least smoothed the note out). The "I have to stop this" message was written on the back of a calendar page dated Sunday, April 12 2009. It talks about the history of NYC.
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History of New York City
The area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape. In 1524, Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to pass New York Harbor, although he did not enter the harbor past the Narrows. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the shores were mapped. Hudson camped across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in 1609, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River, [until he] arrived at the [area] of present day Albany.
We also found out that some of Dr. Krotzler's patients are authors, and that many of them suffer from a occupational disease called Labyrinth-Syndrome, which Penny describes as the authors end up putting "themselves in the shoes of one of their characters to a degree at which they are not able to find their way out it in the end". Is this what the woman on the tape has, except instead of becoming the characters she just sees them?
The last piece of real information Penny gave us was about MPU. Their research department apparently is way ahead of anything else and someone from MPU calls the office once a week to speak to Dr. Krotzler. Dr. Krotzler even had a meeting with one of the researchers who was in San Diego a week before Dr. Krotzler went missing.
After giving out all that information to everyone, Penny must think she deserves some time off as she's going off to visit her aunt to help with her cousin Neena's birthday. She even posts an update to the Facebook page from the birthday party. She must miss us.
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The Walk Walked |
PostLarval was kind enough to brave the San Diego sunshine and retraced the walk that Ivan originally took. The walk was a pretty direct path from Ivan's office to a secluded area, and rearrange the pictures to fit the walk, they spell out "If you want to find the truth you got to scratch beyond the surface". Sadly, the first time PostLarval went, he wasn't able to find much at the site beyond some stray kittens, but he decided to go back a second time with better photos of what he was looking at.
The second trip was a much more fruitful experience, as PostLarval was able to discover a buried cassette recorder in the bushes pictured at the end of the walk. This is Session 1/3 and it shows just how disturbed this woman really is or, at the very least, was. I'm really glad we didn't get this tape first because I'm not sure I would have wanted to find out anything more about the woman. But now I'm worried about Ivan's dog that was not seen by Penny at his house.
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Woman: That episode in the hotel wasn't the first time. It started much earlier than that but I never experienced anything so...so...surrealistic...so...convincing.
Man: When did it all start?
W: It's hard to know where to begin. I'd say the symptoms started when I was a child.
M: Tell me about your childhood.
W: Well, my father was a G.I. He fought for the Allies and stayed in Berlin. He was a DJ of the American Forces Network for a while. Women loved him and he was a bit of a local hero. Anyway, he had a string of blonde dalliances in the back room of a military casino and one of his many girlfriends got pregnant. Her name was Laura, she was from Berlin and the baby was me.
M: I see. I noticed you mentioned your father first.
W: He died when I was 8. My psychiatrist says the accident was the first traumatic event of my childhood.
M: What accident?
W: My father died in a military hospital. It was a straightforward appendicectomy but he developed a blood clot and no one thought of giving him compression stockings and the thrombosis was fatal.
M: How dreadful. How did you cope with your father's death?
W: Very, very badly. We lived in an end of terrace house near Andrew Barracks in the American Sector. We adopted a mongrel, a stray called Terry who lived in our backyard and my father couldn't stand him and banned him from the house and most of the time he was tied up on a leash by the door and I remember Mom telling me that the operation had gone wrong and as soon as she left the house I fetched one of dad's baseball bats...a heavy one made of metal...and I went into the yard. Terry's leash was so short that he could hardly move, let alone run away, and his legs buckled as soon as I hit him but I could see him whimpering and groveling on the ground but I didn't stop. I kept hitting him and hitting him. I was only 8 years old and out of my mind with fury and hurt. And after about 10 blows I must have snapped his spine and he lay there howling in agony and coughing up blood and I battered him to a pulp. He didn't even look like a dog when I was finished.
M: What made you do it?
W: I loved my father more than anyone in the world and Terry came next. For some reason, I got it into my head that I didn't want Terry if I couldn't have my dad. I was punishing him for being alive.
M: It must have been very distressing.
W: It was...but not for the reason you think.
M: I beg your pardon?
W: The story doesn't end here. I lost my father and beat an innocent dog to death. But that wasn't what really upset me.
M: No?
W: What upset me was that Terry didn't exist. I made him up. We adopted a cat, but never a dog. I still have nightmares about what I did to Terry, but I know for a fact that it was a product of my delusion...my illness.
M: When did you find out it wasn't real?
W: Much later. I started seeing a therapist when I was about 18 and after a while, the truth came out. It was the first time I summoned the courage to mention it to anyone. I didn't want people knowing that I murdered my dog--they would only think I was crazy.
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Poor Penny | |
Normally Penny would email people around 4pm ET, so when no word came from her on Monday, there was a bit of concern. It turns out there was good reason as we found out around 9pm when Jimmy, the tech guy, sent out some emails. It seems Penny went back to Ivan's house to look for the dog. She probably shouldn't have done that as "she found the remainings of a dog in an unfortunate condition." Then she had a nervous breakdown and was carted off to the hospital. Luckily she didn't completely lose her mind and was able to get someone to pass on a message to Jimmy, but it looks like she's going to be out of commission for a while. Happily though, Jimmy is willing to work with us and is going to try to get us a scan of the notebook page - just as soon as he finds out where Penny put it.
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