END IN SIGHT
Missed connections! Decoy clues! Zodiac-based star maps! A surreal 20-hour video stream! And we haven’t even gotten to the part where Dee is about to confront F8, mano a mano. Before we get to all that, have you gotten you player-made gnomeboy merch yet?
In her 8th briefing, Dee announces a YouTube Q&A session on Thursday for players. Shortly after her briefing video goes live, @f8speaks tweets “well, since i got a visit, i think i should return the favor.” Looks like this is F8 code for breaking into Dee’s office and uploading a briefing video of his own.
The video is a jumble of scrambled clips that players edited back together – props to Nicole for her video chops. The edited video reads:
“Dee, I have to say, I really like your setup here. It’s, uh, so austere, such a great place to think…I was hoping to bump into you, but I guess that’s my fault for coming in announced. It really is, a, uh, unfortunate missed connection. I guess today just isn’t my lucky day. We’ll reconnect sooner or later and I just hope you don’t get cold feet. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Oh yeah, one more thing: go hunt.”
Based on the phrase “missed connection,” players discover a series of Craigslist postings. In every city that F8 has killed there is an ad titled “Unfortunate Missed Connection”, with 3 in Miami and one each in Philadelphia, Richmond, San Diego, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Each of the ads has words placed between blank spaces. When players like elros put all the words together, the ad reads:
It’s been years since I’ve seen you in person. It’s been even longer since you’ve seen me. I went by your place today hoping that you might be there but apparently I just missed you. Such a shame. I was hoping to have the opportunity to catch up. If it’s fated for you to find this then I hope you take the time to respond. I’m sure I’d recognize you in a crowd of thousands. Hopefully I can hear your voice again. I have so much to share.
Dee updates her blog saying that she is fine, despite F8’s break-in, and that she has also responded to the Craigslist postings. A few hours later, she posts an update sharing the response she had received. Guess what – more writing on pastry!
Snooties and Guac realize that the cipher on the cupcakes is the same as the one used on the cake that F8 sent to Dee, with the translation “GO HUNT.” Then, xmandax666 figures out that “GO HUNT” is the email password to the email account that Dee got her reply from – f8thegr8@yahoo.com. The ‘Drafts’ folder of the account contains ASCII images of the various crime scenes of the case:
On Thursday, 9/16/2010, Dee hosts her Q&A Video Session on her YouTube channel, responding to several of the questions players had posted. Vern and Wouter do a combo question. Elros even asks Dee on a date. All in all, players get creative with the Q&A.
And the Serial Huntress is completely transparent in her answers.
While the Q&A session is happening, @f8speaks tweets…
and now to deal with my friend’s most irritating, though entertaining, diversion…
…and then sends out a link to a video of him asking his own question to the Serial Huntress – “Can you feel that the end is nearing?”
His question leads to the site: www.theendisnearing.com, which is just a blank page with the text “THE END IS NEARING.” Dee responds to the video from F8 with her own video:
In the video, Dee calls out F8 for being an “unoriginal copycat version” of the Roulette Killer, and says that he only got his infinity signature from the symbol carved on the gun the Roulette Killer gave him. Apparently Dee’s words hit a nerve with F8, because during her next Q&A video, she receives a very angry phone call from him.
During the call, F8 rejects Dee’s accusation of being a “wannabe Roulette Killer” and claims that:
“…It’s my fate that made me, and my fate manifested itself for the first time as a gun that happened to have a symbol on it. A symbol that I GAVE NEW MEANING. How’s that for original? Oh, I, I hope it helps your little Q&A. We’ll see how you feel about fate when it finds you.”
Looks like Dee has managed to one-up F8! Later that day, she updates her blog and says that she fabricated all the Craigslist posts, the f8isgr8 email and the cupcakes to thwart F8’s delivering of a clue to players. In doing so, she knew she would infuriate him and got him so fired up as to call her during her Q&A session. As a result, she was able to trace the phone call to a hotel room but barely missed F8. However, he left some of his belongings behind in a rush, including card with a list of players. Dee urges the players on the list to take extra precautions, since F8 had clearly acted unstable in his impulse phone call.
Meanwhile at about 8pm EST on Thursday, the site www.theendisnearing.com starts a live video boardcast. The video, locked in on a sidewalk view, shows a series of bizarre events take place over the next 20 hours. Players see seven garden gnomes, an infinity symbol drawn by a laser pointer, a shirtless guy with a six-pack of beers strapped to him, two girls with giant eyeballs on their heads, a dancing rainbow, someone jumping around with a foam finger, a ballerina with seven pink balloons, a woman walking a three-legged dog, a pentagram getting spraypainted, and someone dropping off a block of ice.
While this is all happening, a homeless man enters the scene with a cardboard sign saying “THE END IS NEAR.” From the different skits in the live stream, players form a phone number – 786-271-7350. When elros calls the number, (786) 271-7350, players see the homeless man in the video pick up a cellphone. He tells elros that “everything is written in the stars.”
This led to www.everythingiswritteninthestars.com, where players have to enter a birthdate to receive a star map. Connecting certain stars reveals different letters, and when players find the letters for each zodiac sign, they form the phrase ”we were meant to meet again.”
On www.weweremeanttomeetagain.com, players find a collage of all of the Twitter avatars of the followers of @f8speaks and a message below them saying: We Were Meant to Meet Again: Please send the completed image to weweremeanttomeetagain@gmail.com.
@f8speaks announces his interview with ARGNet, asking them to send 8 questions on Twitter by 8 a.m. EST on Monday, 9/20/2010. He also encourages @argn to take suggestions from his friends.
On Saturday, 9/18/2010, @f8speaks direct messages all of his twitter followers. Each player receives a sentence fragment with upper-and lower-case letters mixed in, like in a ransom letter. Chantelmedeiros notices that the upper-case letters lead to a corresponding drop.io account with a piece of an image.
In a massive collaborative effort, players are able to piece the image together, which is a composite of F8’s and Dee’s faces. Elros is the first player to successfully piece together all the images from the drop.io accounts and email them to weweremeanttomeetagain@gmail.com. An email response confirms the image and challenges players to compile all the sentence fragments into one message. Several players email sentence combinations to F8 but the word puzzle proves to be more difficult to crack than the image.
Meanwhile, players solve the puzzle in the cupcakes that Dee had set out as a trap for F8. The ASCII images from the ‘Drafts’ folder of the f8isgr8 email account contained some bolded letters. When those letters were put together, they spelled out the phrase “F8NOMORE,” which was the code for the http://drop.io/f8nomore account. Dee uploaded a video to the drop.io mocking F8’s Hello ∞ video that he had sent to bloggers.
Dee congratulates players on the solve in a blog post and reassures players that she is still alive. She gives an update on the background research she had done on F8 and lets players know that she’s reached out to police departments after the list of names has raised her concerns for their safety.
After endless combinations, including hundred of thousands (literally!) of computer-generated permutations from elros, and some nudges from F8 himself, angelnorelation is able to correctly put together the sentence fragments into this message:
“When you build your life on an idea, that idea can become the source of all of your success. A truly powerful idea, when you devote your life to it, can actually make an impact beyond your own life to the lives of countless others.
However, the very idea that drives your success can, to the same extent, be the cause of your collapse. If someone is aware of the power that idea holds over you, they can exploit it to their advantage, and by attacking the idea attack the very foundation of your existence. If that happens, then you should be ready to die for your idea. This may come off as a romanticized notion to many modern individuals. But that’s only because, these days, although many claim to, very few people truly build their lives on an idea. And those that do become labeled as fanatic, militant, or simply insane. Still, assume that there are people in this day and age who truly build their life on an idea. Say you are one of these people. Now, say the idea that you’ve built your life upon is the notion of justice, determined not by gods, kings, or appointed wisemen, but by every person with a desire to participate. By definition, your idea relies on the people who help manifest it. The people and the idea become intertwined. Should anyone try to attack that idea, then to defend it would imply protecting the people who are part of it. So. Would you risk dying for an idea?”
F8 confirms the solve in an email and request her home address, promising a treat. Seven other players quickly follow angelnorelation’s footsteps and are also confirmed for a treat.
A few hours later, Dee posts a ninth briefing, announcing that she has received a mailing from Infinity and will be meeting him face to face. However, she cannot keep her hunters involved past this point and will be going dark until after the confrontation.
So, what will the treat be? Should players fear for their lives? And how will the confrontation go between Dee and F8? The end is nearing and the tension is high.
