May 10 >> 

Befriended by Point System
Explosion at 30,000 feet
Vaporlofts
Fleurs du Mal
Home Again
Barcodes for Everyone
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Hidden Generators and Gateways
X Marks the Spot
A Second Voice
hurry hook you oh
Uh Ohes - They're on to Us
Africa
Anne's Email
Mr. Paris
Pretty Logos
Addendum 1
Paris
  September 26 >>  

Franklin Parrish
Anne Is Scared
Don't Follow Me
Love Notes Gallery
The Second Voice
Floorplans Are Back
A One Night Stand
Family
A Binary Puzzle
No Global Sites - Yet
VaporLofts London, Tokyo & Johannesburg
Anne Spills the Beans
Gateway Errors
Conversations
Anne Adds an Image Backup
Mr. Paris Speaks Latin
The Invitation
2 More Conversations
Towards Death...err, Atlanta
Twofish Solution
  October 24 >>  

The Last Gateway Link
The Notice Memo Is Not Secure
Wonky Email
Tokyo & Johannesburg
A Package
1008 Solved
Meet me in the lobby
Sounds of...
Windows
The Music of London
Anne's Nightmare
Back on the Chain Gang
Sheet Music Galore!
Information Obtained
Floorplans Solved
Ashes to Ashes
   December 6 >>  

 Gibberish Key  ¤  Directory Listing 

vSecond Phase

Things must be hopping down in Atlanta, because VaporLofts just announced that their exciting second phase is coming soon! They have updated the index page reflecting this new update, with some slight changes to the previous wording. § I wonder if this means that Anne is going to be in even more danger if they are ramping up whatever it is that they have going on down there?

vMore Work, Please

Anne is still alive and updating her blog, bless her little doomed soul. Not much is going on with her, except she's been drinking beer and emailing VaporLofts about any more work she can do and if they've seen anymore ghost. Silly Anne. Don't you know you're not supposed to drink and email? She's also still having nightmares, although she claims they are merely stress related. I think Anne should lay off the Caffey's and start doing some yoga and/or meditation. That will help her alot more than she realizes. §

vLogin

Well, those crack network security people have earned their keep once again (or, you know, not). It seems that people who called the VaporLofts number got a text message back from them today which linked them to a new page: login.html This page gives us a login box (big surprise there). Unfortunately, we don't have any idea of the usernames and passwords to use. *sigh*

But all is not lost. Caspian decided to text back the VaporLofts number, and actually got a response! § Could this agent be our mysterious samurai guy who keeps posting all of the stories about Shinpu? And can he get us the passwords to get in?

While we were waiting for our Secret Agent Man to get back to us, Mapmaker decided to take a closer look at the scripts on the login page. He discovered that we were essentially given all the information to reverse engineer the logins, and set about trying to do just that. While he didn't get all of the user/pass combinations, he did find out where we were supposed to be taken to each page. § So now it's time to start going through each of these new pages.

vParis' Memos

Starting at the top and working our way down, our first new set of pages lies in the paris directory. We now get to see a series of memos to Mr. Paris by some VaporLofts mucky-mucks. Lots of interesting tidbits in here. First, we find out that not only has Paris been instructed to keep close tabs on her, he also was in NYC the same time she was and researched her sister while she was there. We also find out that Franklin was tasked with finding out if the London agent was the source of the leak. It seems that Franklin might have indeed found out that the London agent was behind the leaks, because Franklin was later promoted for disposing of his London associate. Ouch. §

Franklin's request for reassignment to the Schreber case links to a new page: aes0802.html This has three groups of ciphered text on it that we need to solve. § So the reason they want Anne so badly is that they believe she has some sort of gift that will allow them to use the Gateways in a more effective fashion. They are also hopeful that this gift is genetic, since her Grandmother may have also had the ability, which does not bode well for Anne's sister, Jenna.

The aes memo also references the Berlin Department, which appears to be VaporLofts Research and Development Office. § There isn't a whole lot in their little description that we can use. But I do have to say I love the part about how they are "concerned with the long term psychological effects of living environments on residents of potential loft renovation projects." Makes you wonder just how they terrorize the residents of the lofts that long term psychological effects need to be studied. There is however another evil mp3 referenced in the source code. I wonder if the Berlin Department is the one providing all of these mp3s.

This is actually one of the longer mp3s we had. Sounds sorta like bells ringing. The comment tag is what is really interesting however. § Not quite sure who they are talking about (Mr. Paris perhaps?) but we now find out that an agent, Nine, died while working on the Belton case. Was it because of something Sarah did? Or was it because he failed VaporLofts in some fashion since the Belton case ended up being a disaster. Or, could he be the mysterious London agent that was taken down by Paris? If you remember, Nine was mentioned in the letter from Claudia to our other mystery agent (Say hello to your friend... What was his name. Nine.)

vKeys and Allocations

The second link that comes out of the login page is to paris/key.html. This seems to be an encrypted page talking about Encryption Guidelines. § Not a whole lot of information, but at least now I know why they keep changing cipher systems on us.

The third link takes us to paris/allocations.html. This has a lot of new information, including a picture of Franklin Parrish! He doesn't look very happy. Maybe it's because he's juggling too many women. §

The radio frequency file looks like it should be a huge picture, but sadly, zooming in on it doesn't give us a lot of detail. Sadly, we also can't even get anything out of the low priority memo since it's password protected. The International Call Signs appears to be a real set of the International Call Signs. So nothing new there. I'm beginning to think this page is a bust.

At least the Population Density page has a barcode on it, even if you can't read much of anything else. It looks like the barcode may be Code128 but the patterns do not seem to fit any of the patterns a Code128 barcode is supposed to have.

And of course, what would this page be without an mp3 to listen to? This has one of the more bizzare comments that we've come across: They approached him for the first time after he intentionally sank his parent's yacht. When they asked him why he did it, he shrugged his shoulders. When they told him they knew about the small fortune that he'd sent down with the ship, he smiled. "Every man needs to hide a treasure," he said, and swam on.

The most promising lead we have comes from the Interesting Series of Numbers picture. Mapmaker was kind enough to transcribe the numbers in the picture so that we wouldn't have to. § Once again, the author of the passage is a little unclear, but with the last part talking about wanting to stop "them" from bringing a person back to life, it would be a decent guess to believe that this is one of the rogue agents talking. And if it is a rogue agent, it takes us into a bit of a gray area since this person has admittedly murdered someone else. Are they afraid that if the dead come back to life, that the dead will take their revenge upon the living?

vAgent 90426

So we have another possible new character to deal with, Agent 90426. This may or may not be the same person as Agent Nine, and this may or may not be the same person who has been leaving us little tidbits in some of the files. Regardless, this agent has a video section in his directory. Although the videos have been "removed", there are still transcripts up of what occured. § Wow. A conversation with what has to be one of the entities that has come through the Gateway. It doesn't where it came from, but it seems to remember its name, or at least what its name means. It also seems to understand what VaporLofts is trying to accomplish via the Gateway, and decides it needs help from VaporLofts. It also hints that angering it might not exactly be the best idea. I wonder what sorts of powers it can have in a non-coporeal form.

Sadly, or maybe not so sadly, the link to the mp3 file seems to be bad. Maybe one day we'll get to hear it. Agent 90426 also has a page of data. This is one of the more interesting page constructs we've seen (which I'm not reconstructing here because it's a pain in the ass to read). §

vC.A.T.S

Looking at the last link for Agent 90426, we find out that he is the Consulting Chief and Head of Research for the C.A.T.S. Project. It doesn't specifically state what C.A.T.S. stands for, but they have developed a little probe to explore the Gateway, kinda like a Mars Rover, except made by an evil company. §

Besides the message that we can't decrypt yet, there is one other piece of information we need to look at. In the Brief Detail text, there is one word that is in bold: LEAK. This is actually a hint to a new page: agent90426/leak.html.

Leak.html tells us, well, how to fix a leak. I suppose it's good information for those that live in older buildings where the plumbing might go wonky at any time. For those that read the text carefully, they will see some encoded messages towards the end. § So far, we don't have a translation on Kjzbs nf jv hye ut xgxz tcqukde. Obxr bcyv iyvzfcu sdfypljrzk obuv bu umgj! The omyx exrz appears to be a ROT-6 and ROT-11, respectively, for "used pick" (or it could just be an artifact from the real encoding system).

There is also a word written in white: MORETIME. Using this as another keyword takes us to agent90426/moretime.html §

So it appears that (on the actual page) that the link for the mp3 is once again invalid, it's only because they mistyped the link as 0022 instead of 0023. This is one of my least favorite mp3s we've come across. It has this annoying static sound in the beginning that continues for a bit. The comments are (to quote a line I heard in a TV show the other night) hauntingly beautiful. She inspects the glass of the plane window, sadly resigned to her fate. "Hello, cold sea," she whispers, and she closes her eyes. The plane rocks in a bit of turbulence. This must be talking about Sarah Belton just before the plane explosion. Does this mean that she knew what was going to happen?

The most exciting thing on this page is that there is an actual video!! It's not very long, nor does it seem to show us a lot, but it's still kinda cool. Part of it looks like there might be something hidden in it (notice that the bottom of the picture is actually at the top of the screen) and the colors remind me of a 3D movie. In the middle of the video, you can see some person sitting down in the middle of a forest, but as to who it is, or what they are doing there, no one knows.

v2005

Luckily, the links that lead to Anne's directory are nothing new, so we can skip right over her and move onto the last new section, the 2005 directory.

The first link we have takes us to a memo about the Fire Keepers. § Isn't this a nifty little memo. So, we now know that Anne is not only wanted by VaporLofts, she could be the key to their entire worldwide operation. There is also a rumor going around that the Fire Keepers ended up locking the Gateways. VaporLofts has been looking into this, but do not believe that any lasting harm has been done, and that the Gateways can be unlocked with no futher damage.