July 16 >>

A Strange Package
Down the Rabbithole
Dana's Blog
Weird Happenings
The Corrupted Pictures
The Widow's Story
The MAYDAY Texts
The "Computer" Texts
ILB Technical Information

Thoughts on August 24th
#beekeepers and #ilovebees
Strange Email from ladybee777
The Halo Connection
odd behavior cry for help
Invasion!
July 27 >>

July 27th
Phase 1 Complete
Hidden Links
Killer.JPG
The Links Puzzle
The Operator's Monologue
Dana Freaks Out
Dana Is Gone

The History of Dana
Persuaded to Come Back

Phase 2 Complete
The New Wavs
Operator's Monologue Part 2
The Spider and the Flea
The Cylinder Artifact & Virus
GPS Coordinates
The Princess' Secret

New GPS Coordinates
The Princess 404
Go Hot
Dana's Request
  August 24 >>  

Sleepy and Intangible
Wide Awake and Physical
The Flea Is Chatty
The Princess' Riddle
The Extraordinary
Successful Transmission Threshold Reached
Axon Cancelled
Media Coverage
Spying on the Queen
The Princess' Axons
Troy Goes Hot!
Hello Goes Hot!

Early, Early Update
The Looking Glass
Eavesdropping
The Hivekuts Wavs
Wandering_Angela is the winner!
Day 50

Fable Axons
Gretel
Key Lime and Candidate
Six Degrees of
The Clockwork Rat
Recipe 3 - Take 3
Is a phone ringing near you?

The Comatas Axons
SP's Hidden Message
No New Riddles?
The Fable Wavs
Found and Lost
Whew! THAT was exciting.
The London Axon
The Comatas Wavs
September 21 >>

Recipe 1 Axons
The Riddle Wavs - Take 2
777 Axons!
Axon Spike Rendezvous
Axons Cancelled & Recipe 1 Wavs
Cranky_Old_Man Changed
Sometimes a mistake is the last thing you make
Cranky Old Man Has a Name
Email from the Flea

Recipe 2 Axons
Freeing the Princess
Rogue Process Wild
Perdita's Story - Proper Ending
Recipe 2 wavs
Success
Recipe4 Axons
I'm feeling betrayed
!transmit durga
Astald - Creepy

Jan's Going to Have a Bad Day?
The Truth
Pending Relay Code Completion
Recipe4 Wavs
hide and
Recipe5 Axons
What Is Your Version Number!
13 out of 14 wavs (No Prepositions)


October 12 >>

October 31 >>


Week 6 - Phase 4
August 24th and Onwards

Sleepy and Intangible

Tuesday, August 24, 2004. The day we have all been waiting for. The day when Melissa will awake. The day the axons go hot. The day we finally will get to know what happens at the GPS coordinates.

I woke up at 6:00am EDT to make my point: 42.970906 -077.228967 located in Manchester, NY just off I-90. Left the house at 6:30am feeling sleepy, but excited. Arrived at about 9am, plenty of time before the 06:15 PDT time listed. Met Alaranth and (I'm sorry, I don't remember your name) at McDonalds and then drove over to the coordinate. Saw nothing except a bunch of guys hanging out at one end of the street. Drove up to them and Alaranth asked if they knew Dana or if they liked bees. They answered "Yes" so we parked next to them and started wondering what to do. Because, you see, there was nothing at this point - it was at someone's house. One guy walked down to the gas station on the corner to look for a payphone. The rest of us spread out along the street looking for something, anything and still nada. We even began to hope that the Hershey Kissmobile we saw getting gas earlier would come by and give us free candy. Nope. 9:15 came and went and we stood in the street looking like idiots. I called the ARGN Hotline with my lack of news. Dejected, everyone left to their relatively close homes, while I had a 2.5 hour drive back to work.

As I'm cruising down I-90, my phone starts ringing. Crap! Reach into my purse and can't seem to find it. Double crap! Dump the contents of the purse out and start feeling around for the phone. Finally! I answer it and it's Alaranth. She's already home (*grumble*) and tells me that other people have been getting phone calls at their sites (*grr*). It seems that payphones were the key. Oh, and she gives me one other important piece of information. Our site has been changed to Manchester, New HAMPSHIRE. That's right, the one coordinate that was added to upstate NY turns out to be the only coordinate changed on the 24th. Not that I'm bitter or anything but: ARRRRGGHHH!!

Wide Awake and Physical

So what did really happen on the 24th?

The first thing was that at 6:07AM PDT, the site updated to say that it was "Transmitting" § Clicking on the link brought you to the links page with the GPS coordinates, but the page has changed. The coordinates are now grouped together, and each group has a codeword. From the About page, we learn that Melissa needs 2 recipients to consider a transmission successful. The first code word is "blip" and the poor guinea pigs at those locations were not able to get a successful transmission - but they did give vital information to the rest of the people trying to get to their axons.

What happens is this: At the specific time, a payphone will ring at the designated location. It's Melissa calling to verify that she knows you. She will ask two questions, both of which must be answered correctly, otherwise she will hang up. The first question asks for either "Her Name" or "Her Nickname". The answer would be either "Melissa" or "The Operator". The next question will be for "Your Name". The answer to this is the codeword listed for that specific time and location. So for the 06:07 PDT Coordinate, the answer would be "Blip".

If you answer both of the questions correctly, Melissa will reward you by playing an audio file of the voices in her head. When the file has finished, she asks if you would like to "Continue or Repeat". Because her systems are damaged, she is unable to continue and the call ends. Telling her "Repeat" will cause the audio file to play again - great if everyone in a group wants to hear the voices in Melissa's head. You can keep telling her "Repeat" as many times as necessary so that everyone gets a chance to hear. If two axons from each group goes hot (successfully answered), Melissa then considers it a success and posts a link to the audio file on links.html so that we all can hear it.

Melissa is sending out these files because they are in some way related to her accident. She is broadcasting them to her crew members in the hopes they can analyze them and let Melissa know the results so she can repair the damage. § She will continue to broadcast the messages daily until she receives further instructions. §

Because several of the first points did not have access to the codewords, we were not able to get all of the wavs the first day. Even some of the later points had troubles with locating the correct phones or giving the correct answers. In the end we had 23 of the 30 wavs. Even with the missing ones, we were able to get a rough idea of what they were about.

There seems to be three different story lines. The first is a boy talking to an AI that has taken over his computer. The second involves a super-human girl who gets caught on a military base. The third follows a man having bad luck on dates. Very odd files, especially since they are supposed to be related to Melissa's crash. We can only hope that if/when the last few wavs are found, it'll make more sense.

There is one more thing to the links page that we don't understand right now. At the top of the page is a progress bar marking the progress of the hot axons. Only problem is, at this time, we only have 74 axons hot out of a possible 777, and only 210 total axons that we are aware of. Does this mean we are going to get more wavs in the future? Or are there 567 axons hidden somewhere? There is also something interesting hidden in the .css for the page. The .css lists three possible states for the axons: Active, Complete and Archive. We have seen Active and Complete and speculation is now ongoing for the third type, Archive, which we haven't seen yet.

The Flea Is Chatty

The Pious Flea has added his own update to the site this week. It seems he has taken over honey.html, repeating his mantra over and over and over again, filling up the entire page. But why? Is he just pleased with himself because the axons are being activated? Or is he upset at something? §

The Princess' Riddle

Once again, the pictures have new corruptions in them. This time they are more difficult to find since each picture only has one word in it. § If you combine all these words into one sentence you get: I spy with my little eye something that is the color of cowardice, as hard as a pig's house, and goes ever on and on. It's a riddle!

The color of cowardice: yellow
As hard as a pig's house: brick
Goes ever on and on: road

This leads us straight to www.ilovebees.com/yellowbrickroad.html, which is a new message from the Princess! This time she shows us a conversation she had with the Flea where we learn his true name: Seeker. §

The Extraordinary

Dana has been watching our progress with the axons all day. While watching us, she realizes that we are her extraordinary - coming together and working as one to solve an extraordinary problem. She also posts a summary of the game so far in the sidebar so we all know where we are at. §

Successful Transmission Threshold Reached

Melissa wasn't lying when she said she would keep calling the axons. Like clockworks, phones began ringing this morning at payphones across the country. And this time around, we manage to snag the last few axons we needed to get all of the wavs unlocked (and giving us 103 out of 777 axons that have gone hot). Now we can place the wavs in order and listen to them. §

As stated above, there seems to be three different story lines.

In the first story, we are introduced to Jersey and the AI who has taken over his computer, Durga (who says some things suspiciously close to what Melissa says). Neither Jersey or Durga knows who or what she is, but Jersey is more than ready to find out what she is capable of.

The second story follows a character talked about by Jersey and Durga: Jan James. Jan seems to have broken into a military base and is caught and interrogated. Jan is not your normal 17 year old. She can sneak onto military bases, jump off roofs three stories high, and beat lie detector tests. And the fact that she has shown to others that she can do these things does not sit well with her dad. In fact, it's quite probable that James James burnt down the police station just to cover his daughter's transgressions. Yikes!

The last story is about Kamal, a medical student who seems to have rotten luck at dating. His first date runs out on him and sticks him with the check at an expensive restaurant. His second date is a blind date that was set up by his mother. Too bad for Kamal that the girl, Sophia, already has a boyfriend. He takes it pretty well though, and they have a friendly conversation where Kamal shows off that he's pretty good at hacking the chatternets. Sophia enlists his help to check up on her boyfriend, Aiden, whom she feels may be cheating on her. When Sophia's fears are confirmed, Kamal helps her humiliate Aiden in front of his date.

While the stories seem disconnected from each other, there is at least one common thread between all three. At the beginning of each main story, the power has just gone out and the systems are just coming back on-line. But, we still don't understand what these wavs have to do with Melissa's crash, or how she came by them in the first place. Maybe we'll get some more wavs in the future that will help us make sense of all of this.

Axon Cancelled

Thursday marks the third day that the axons have gone live and the phone calls have started. People have been continuing to go out to the sites hoping to activate the ones left cold. About an hour or so before the 17:11 PDT hi_aiden axon was supposed to go off, something strange happened. It was Cancelled due to Axon Error. We have no idea what this means or why it occurred. But we got 13 more axons today, bringing our grand total up to 116 out of 777 (unfortunately, the cancelled axon did not add one to the counter).

Media Coverage

The ilovebees phenomenon has been slowly gaining media exposure - mostly from print sources. However, the people at G4TV/TechTV has had a few segments about the game on Pulse - and on Tuesday, August 24th, they actually sent a video crew out to one of the axons (34.01257, -118.49441 11:11PDT Santa Monica, California). Though the axon did not go hot that day, they still filmed those people who waited at the site with a promise to air the footage later. And today, Friday the 27th, is the day! Not only do we get to see the ilovebees fans hanging out in front of a payphone, our very own vpisteve (who was the first one alerted to ilb with his package of honey) was invited down to the studios to give an interview. Woohoo! And now the entire world, or at least those watching TechTV, know about Ilovebees and ARGs.

Spying on the Queen

The Princess has left us a message on the Flea's page today telling us it is much more fun to play with her than the flea. § Her making mistakes comments is a hint that we should visit the 404 page. And guess what? It's updated! She has answered the question from last week, and gives us new choices for the next round of her game. §

Her story about climbing the spiral staircases to the tower suggest that she might be spying on the Queen through the phone (since phone cords are made of twisted wire). And her mention of a hidden passageway behind the kitchen...where could that lead to? Hmmm, a kitchen has food in it. Where is there a mention of food on the site? The recipes of course! And since only one is hidden, she must be talking about recipe3.html.

The Princess' Axons

The page for Honey-glazed Lemon Chicken, otherwise known as Recipe 3, is where the Princess has hidden new information for us. More axons! This time, there are only four axons, and we must get all four if we want to unlock all the wavs. § Since the update occurred at around 9:00 PDT, we had approximately 3 hours before the first new axon would activate. Several intrepid Beekeepers staked out the site, and when the time came, the phone didn't ring. What? This isn't supposed to happen. We all stood around scratching our heads wondering what could have gone wrong. Is it possible the phone was broken, or were they standing at the wrong phone? No matter, there are three more axons today, and we can always find the Hello axon tomorrow.

An hour goes by and it's time for the Troy axon to be activated. And wouldn't you know it. The phone doesn't ring. Or did it? It seems there were two groups looking for the Troy axon. One group said they did get a phone call, but that their answer wasn't recognized. Doh! Two axons down and not one has been activated. This isn't going well.

One more hour and it's time for Receipt. There is no way we will be able to get this since we've heard of no one who is in that area to go check it out. 14:28 PDT comes and goes, and the axon goes hot! Figures. This wav seems to be part of a new story about a grumpy old man who is trying to get some papers that were taken from him when he was evacuated from Troy. And he has the receipt to prove it! So far, this wav has gotten us no closer to understanding why Melissa crashed. Hopefully when we get all the wavs we'll understand more.

The last new wav today is Goodbye, and we manage to get that one too. Yea! This wav is a continuation of the Receipt wav, but it still doesn't leave us with any epiphanies.

Troy Goes Hot!

Well, it only took three days, but Troy is finally hot! Only one more to go and we will have all of the wavs for this storyline. I only hope that this first wav is something good, because right now, no one is seeing the point of this storyline yet.

Hello Goes Hot!

Four days. Four days of waiting to see if the D.C. people could actually find the right phone and then give the correct answer. We sat around waiting and wondering if today was going to be the day, or if someone was going to have to be hurt. Aliendial, axon hunter extraordinaire, took up the challenge of the Hello axon. And luckily, for her safety and our sanity, she came through. Now we can complete the set of wavs and listen to the old man complain about the Marines from Troy. §

The leading theory on this set of wavs is that the Officer is looking for Marine Lance Corporal Janet Adams under the pretext that she has some papers that were taken from him when he was evac'ed off of Troy. While it sounds like there are two new voices in goodbye.wav after the knock on the door, if you listen carefully in the background, you can hear the same music playing throughout all of the wavs. That means that the man with the receipt and the man receiving information about the Apocalypso must be in the same room. And, if you go back to the very beginning of hello.wav, you can actually hear him speak in his lower, normal voice for a split second. Now why he is looking for Janet Adams, or what the Apocalypso has to do with this, is still unknown. And we still don't know what this has to do with Melissa or why should would want to keep this secret.

And on other news, as of today we have managed to get 140 of 777 axons hot. Great job Beekeepers!


Week 7
August 31st and Onwards

Early, Early Update

Tuesday updates have been fairly predictable. Noon EDT comes around and *bam* site update. Not today though. Today they decided to update around Midnight PDT, with more new axons. *sigh* Are we never going to get a new website? I mean, yeah, axons and wavs are cool and all, but I'm really getting sick of looking at all the bee pictures. Plus, how often are we expected to take off of work to go get these things? Even though there are now 4 points around me, after getting totally BURNED on the 24th, I'm not rushing out to answer the phones. If they are still cold, I'll get to them on Saturday.

This time around, the axons on links.html have been archived, and the new set is on hivekuts.html. There are 36 groups, with 9 axons for each, giving 324 more axons for us to go play with. Several people were nice enough to put up websites with the coordinates mapped out, so that we wouldn't have to do it ourselves. Thanks guys! §

Oh, and before I forget, Melissa has also updated about.html telling us that the threshold is now 3 recipients per axon. She is also getting new voices each week, but still is trying to analyze and influence the source. §

The Looking Glass

And would update Tuesday be complete without new picture corruptions? Of course not! §

Put all the lines together and it's another riddle.

I am the enemy of an aging beauty,
the servant of a certain evil queen,
and a doorway for the little girl.

Living in a old castle
Playing hide and seek.
What am I?

The first two lines obviously refer to a mirror. An aging beauty will never look in a mirror and the evil queen from Snow White had her "Mirror, Mirror on the wall". But mirror.html doesn't work. The third line hints at the exact wording we need to use. The little girl is Alice, and she went Through the Looking Glass giving us lookingglass.html. The Princess is giving us another conversation that she had with the Flea. §

Eavesdropping

Dana updates her blog telling us about a game she used to play when she was small called "the eavesdropping game." They would listen in on strangers' conversations, and if certain keywords came up, it meant that something would happen. I guess she's telling us that we need be listening carefully to the wavs, or maybe the post is just to keep our spirits up. Of course, if we got a new website, our spirits would be sky-high, but I digress. Anyways, like Dana says, "Keep going hot, guys." §

The Hivekuts Wavs

It only took six days, but we were finally able to get all of the Hivekuts Wavs up and running. Once again, they are divided into three main stories. The Jersey wavs show us that Durga is giving Jersey the same Jan and Kamal wavs that we are listening to. Meanwhile, Durga's personality is developing, although she still has moments of "reflection" that Jersey cannot understand. The Kamal wavs pick up with Kamal meeting Aiden. Aiden needs Kamal to use his hacker abilities and sets up a test, which bring some unexpected results for everyone involved. The Jan wavs follow Jan as she has another run in with the Interrogator. It seems he has a need for one of Jan's special talents. §

Wandering_Angela is the winner!

Friday, September 3rd. The Princess updates her 404 page once more. And oh joy, oh rapture, the killer.jpgs have what only can be more axons for us. The general consensus is that these are a sneak-peak of the axons for next week. We were able to find 12 of the 13 original pictures so we have a good idea where the majority of the axons will be next week.

Besides the annoyance of yet more axons, SP answers Wandering_Angela's question and gives us a story as suggested by Paul last week. We find out a little more about the Princess' past, and the story gives us some more ideas to mull over. §

Last, but not least, the Princess has added 2 new secret roads (i.e. new wavs) to Recipe3: key_lime and candidate. Now we just have to wait until they get activated to listen to them.

Day 50

Dana has also updated her blog sidebar to give us the current state of things by giving a brief summary of the new characters found in the wavs. §


Week 8
September 7th and On

Fable Axons

We were right. The axons in the killer.jpgs were a preview of this weeks axons, now found on fable.html. This time around we have 30 new codegroups, with 5 axons needed to unlock. Melissa is even asking a new question at the payphones: "What ship are you assigned to?" Since we've only had one ship named for us, the answer must be "Apocalypso".

Gretel

And where there are new wavs, there must be new picture corruptions. § Rearrange them and one of the combinations you can get is:
I have a sweet tooth, my brother is deceptively thin, and I'm not so fond of the eaten path. Can you guess who I am?
I have a sweet tooth,: I got attracted to the gingerbread house.
my brother is deceptively thin,: While he was really fat he used a stick to deceive the witch into thinking he was thin.
and I'm not so fond of the eaten path.: The birds ate the breadcrumb trail we left so we can't get home.
Can you guess who I am?: Gretel

Actually, Firefox discovered gretel.html even before all of the text was pulled out of the pictures so coming up with the riddle was fairly easy. Once again, we get another look at a conversation between the Princess and the Flea. §

The mention of a better spy spot in the pantry is a clue for us to double check the recipe3 page. It seems the Princess has moved the unfound Vegas coordinate - to Lafayette, Louisiana. Now hopefully we can get Candidate to go hot after 5 days of wondering where the phone could be in Vegas.

Key Lime and Candidate

After several days of the poor Vegas Axon hunters scouring the city and coming up empty, the Princess took pity on them and moved the point to Louisiana. The good people of Lafayette came through, and now we can listen to another set of wavs, this time dealing with the Apocalypso and some sort of recruit. For some reason, when you first download these wavs, they are reversed (reflected?) so you have to use a program like Windows Recorder if you want to be able to understand them. §

Six Degrees of

Dana has gotten into the spirit of axon hunting too - kinda. As there are still no axons in China, she has taken to calling friends and family across the country wondering if they know of anyone who is close to the cold axons. Big surprise (ha!) that she's striking out in finding anybody to answer the phones at those locations. But hey - we might know someone near there - so we should start asking friends and family. Somehow, I don't see myself doing this. My friends and family already think I'm nuts for driving out to answer payphones. They aren't going to get themselves sucked in. §

The Clockwork Rat

Friday, Naptikon won the Princess' Question Contest. So, not only does the Princess tell us how we can help her spy on the Queen (if we email her when we are going to answer an axon, she will try to sneak in while the Queen is busy), she gives us the second chapter of Perdita's Story: The Clockwork Rat. §

If you take a close look at the Killer.jpgs that show up on the page, you'll notice that they look different. Yep, it means yet more wavs. Although with the amount that appears to be in the pictures, we have a real chance of getting all 777 axons next week. So I guess it's not as bad as it seems...

Recipe 3 - Take 3

The Princess has also updated the Recipe3 page with five new wavs today: harmony, standish, cranky_old_man, alt_burgundy, and artifact. These follow the previous Recipe3 wavs and we get to hear more about the crash of the Apocalypso. We also get a rough idea of when these wavs are taking place: the Officer mentions Sigmus Octanus Four - which was attacked by the Covenant in 2552 but did not fall into their hands.

As of September 21st, we still do not have cranky_old_man unlocked, so the transcript below is not complete. As soon as someone manages to get this wav, the final transcript will be posted. §

Is a phone ringing near you?

Rose emailed Dana this week asking her if there is anyway Dana could post the axon information on her blog, so that we can have help getting those few axons that seem to evade our efforts to answer them. Dana agrees and posts a link to Lou's Axons page in the header. §



Week 9
September 14th and On

The Comatas Axons

Melissa's update this weeks appears on comatas.html. Instead of having a fixed number of axons needed per codegroup, it ranges from 2-7 axons. We also have more than enough axons to push us over the 777 mark if we can just get them. Hopefully, with the end in sight, we will be more motivated than last week. She has also changed the Question and Answer again:
Question: What is our Captain's last name?
Answer: Greene

SP's Hidden Message

The Princess has gotten bolder this week. Instead of hiding a message in the pictures, she has hidden it on the index page right under Melissa's nose. § If you read the green letters, it spells out "I found something for you" with a link to a new page: humptydumpty.html. On this page, we find out what she was doing last week to spy on the Queen. She has been able to get complete wavs of the links and hivekuts axons. We did pretty good in getting the order right, except that it seems emergency.wav goes with the Jersey storyline rather than Jan's. The one thing she hasn't done is given us the fable wavs - which is probably a good thing because otherwise we might never go answer another axon if the wavs are just handed to us. §

No New Riddles?

There seems to be one thing missing from this update and that is there are no picture corruptions, which means SP doesn't have a riddle for us this week. Her hint on the index page must be all she is updating today. Or is it? Around noon Eastern, it is noticed that the background gif has turned purple - a sure indication that there is something new in there. Sure enough, there is - but it looks quite different from the previous corruptions. Likewise with the rest of the pictures, there is new text hidden in most (but not all), but the text is very strange. Could these new corruptions actually be a real puzzle? Yes! It seems that the humptydumpty wavs weren't the only thing that the Princess was able to abscond with.
The queen was worried about one of her messages not getting through. She is Suspicious of You. She went along one of the secret roads to see what was wrong. As soon as I saw her go, I ran up to the tower, where I found some new stuff that she was holding back in case her security was compromised. I've left you clues about where to find it, if you're clever...
dana.jpg
The clues appear in the rest of the pictures. Each clue is split up amongst two pictures and leads us to a new wav - not starring Jersey, Jan, Kamal or the Officer, but a new character: Rani. With 25 pictures, we end up with 1 instruction picture (dana.jpg) and 12 pairs of clues leading to 12 new wavs.

commissary_shoes.wav §

formal_wear.wav §
my_landlady.wav §
domestic_bliss.wav §
a_secret_life.wav §
flower_delivery.wav §
desktop_model.wav §
so_mean.wav §
guess_not.wav §
relocate.wav §
cow_even.wav §
knockout_gas.wav §

With all the wavs uncovered, we are now able to listen to Rani as she gets recruited by Intelligence to be a spy, brushes them off to start up a business with a friend, and reluctantly accepts the Intelligence job when the business doesn't live up to her expectations. It should also be noted that Rani seems to be the girl discussed in Candidate: She is very perceptive, presumably from some hicktown in Kentucky, and is first approached by her Professor. §

The Fable Wavs

Since the Fable wavs marked our third week of axon hunting, with no end in sight, we had gotten very lazy and unmotivated, and the axons have not gone hot as fast as previous weeks. In fact, 3 of the wavs still had not gone hot by the time the Comatas axons were listed. (answering the question "What would Melissa do?" with a big fat "Nothing". Okay, not entirely true. She did switch the coordinates for the 6:49 point on Fable. I'm sure that will help a lot.) - and one (thin_kinkle) is still stuck at 4/5 as of this writing. But, seeing as how we have a lot more wavs to put up, we'll just have to live with an incomplete translations of the Fable wavs until someone answers that last phone. Update: Thin_kinkle finally went hot on Thursday. Congrats to johnny_Nitro who finally found a working phone and braved a possible parking ticket to finish fable off!

The biggest piece of information to come out of the Fable wavs is that Kamal had a sister, Yasmine, who "died" when she was 6. Up until that time, she was unstoppable - the best at everything. Then, she had a "metabolic cascade failure" and died within a year. The current theory is that she was taken (by the bad men she thought were creeping around their house?) and replaced by a flash clone, which quickly broke down. The reason she was taken isn't quite as obvious. Was she taken for the Spartan project? Was she turned into an AI? Is there another project going on that we have heard nothing about? Is her death/kidnapping the reason Durga is so interested in Kamal? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, Jersey is trying to keep Durga from doing more harm than good when it comes to an IRS audit he is facing and Jan gets a dose of reality when she takes Aunt Gladys' advice and visits a local moons parlor. §

Found and Lost

Dana has tired of China, and has gone to lose herself in Tokyo, Japan. While flying there, she had an eerie experience of sitting next to a guy drawing a girl holding a bunch of red balloons. After grabbing his arm in fright, she had to explain to him why she was so freaked out by the picture (and I thought I had it bad explaining why I was driving to random payphones). §

Whew! THAT was exciting.

The Princess makes her Friday 404 update by giving a shout out to a few lucky folk, finishing the Perdita story, and embedding more axon coordinates in the killer.jpgs. *Sigh* yet more axons. What happens if we reach 777 before Tuesday? The Perdita story is just as depressing as the thought of more axons. What started out as a nice little story has quickly developed into something sad and a tad disturbing (but then, not all fairy tales have happy endings either). Even with all this depressing stuff in her 404, this is still my favorite update. Why? Cuz I've been the Princess' friend from the veriest beginning. §

The London Axon

Melissa is branching out. The Princess has found an axon in London, England and has put it on her recipe3 page along with two other wavs. So now we have the_labyrinth, english_longbow, and calculus to obtain, as well as cranky_old_man which just seems to be lingering. At least we are in the home stretch - less than 77 axons to go!

We seem to have the WORST time getting the recipe3 axons. As of October 6th, we still did not have the_labyrinth completed. So, until we manage to answer this axon, here are the incomplete transcripts for this set of wavs. §

The Comatas Wavs

Okay, so technically we didn't get all of these wavs until the 22nd (which is on the next page), but I didn't feel like having the Comatas axons and the wavs on two different pages. To recap last weeks soap opera:

Jersey goes to his IRS audit and Durga behaves less than, well, nice. She technically didn't break any of Jersey's rules, but Jersey is still upset with her. Note to self: never get an AI pissed off at you. If it is anything like Durga, you might as just crawl into a hole and live out the rest of your life there.

Jan is continuing her education into doing something useful for people in need. And once again, she ends up tangling with Thin Kinkle - by proxy that is. But Jan has the guts and moves to get herself out of a tricky situation. If only the same could be said for poor Gene.

Kamal ends up working with Aiden after all after Aiden spies him in a bar and buys him a drink. Kamal helps out Aiden to find out how two guys are cheating a casino owner out of a lot of money - and ends up saving their lives since otherwise they would have ended up wearing concrete shoes. §

September 21st and Onwards >>