Day 8: May 3rd's Story

I hope you enjoyed intermission between the two new posts. I'd be lying if I said I had a concept for this story, so I might just start free writing and see what pops out. I don't know if I'll like it or not, but I'm just going to go at break neck speeds.



"The first time I heard of the concept of an alternate reality game. It seemed like a really cool concept. A few hours later I was bouncing around wikipedia investigating all manner of interesting puzzles that people actually solved within the community." A man stood at a podium speaking out to a sizable audience. Most were silent and gazing, a few speaking to others in soft tones. "So, of course after a while I arrived at the inevitable question: That I could train a computer to solve these games. The craziest part was that I did it."

The crowd gave a polite applaud.

"Today I am here to show you the worlds greatest learning AI. Kentaro." A screen appears before the audience and a small graphical interface is displayed. Above it are the words "Kentaro", showing a wide variety of different inputs on the main screen. "Kentaro will take a source file or a web page or whatever other input you can think of and attempt to find an alternative reality game inside of it. It will do different visual and audio analysis. And it learns from every game that it defeats. On several occasions it beat the community of the ARGs to the punchline of the game. Today I am receiving this award for AI evolution. And everyone on our research team deserves to be up here with me."

A new round of applause, louder than the last. "And, as if that wasn't enough, I am making an announcement. Today I will turn Kentaro on a source that is not an ARG. I plan on pitting it against the media and have Kentaro watch our news broadcasts in order to find patterns for an alternative reality to our own." A slight murmur came across the crowd.

"Now, in all fairness, Kentaro is brilliant. But to pit him against something that isn't there seems a bit unfair. And mostly it'll be for the entertainment value of myself and the team. But for posterity's sake, I will be making recordings to show our adventure into the deep seeded seats of spin."

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A balding man is looking directly into a high resolution web cam as the Kentaro program runs in the background. "This is day three on Kentaro vs. The World of National News Broadcasts. Kentaro has found a few patterns that haven't panned out into anything. That's to be expected considering the whole of this project. But I believe that we still have over 80% of the data on these websites and the videos themselves. If there is a pattern to be found, Kentaro will find it."

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"Day five. Kentaro hasn't posted up any new theories about the nature of the game or puzzles. This sort of concerns me. I've never seen it think for this long. Nothing new to post since yesterday. "

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"Day nine. Kentaro put something up just a few minutes ago. He believes that within some of the video archives there might be hidden messages. These messages exist on the millisecond level. They would appear for not much longer than a very fast blink. He's begun analyzing all the videos for this phenomenon. It may take several days to get through them all.

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"Day seventeen. I think that Kentaro is trying to make shapes with the raw data from the blinks of images. This is really astounding. I'm not sure how these things are even possible. This is fairly complex stuff. I thought I was just seeing screen flickers or the like when I see it pass by, but Kentaro can find the patterns. I'm really starting to wonder why this is embedded in this national news broadcast. For legal reasons I won't revel which broadcast, but you've probably heard of them."

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The man seems to have grown weary. His eyes are surrounded by dark circles. His skin is pale and oily. "Day thirty three. It's been a few weeks since the last video. The amount of raw data is more than I've ever had to feed into Kentaro, but he's holding in there like a champ. The data is a picture. I'm not sure what it is, but it seems to have glyphs or runes of some sort. The kind that I haven't even seen. I might have to get a linguist friend in on this. Kentaro is almost done with the entire picture. I wonder what it's going to be. This is far too structured to be a random occurrence. I'm really starting to wonder about all this..."

For just a moment the screen flickers, making the man's face pale to dark to pale over and over. For just a brief window of a half a second his face looks like it has no flesh, like it is only a skull.

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"Day thirty five. After the picture finished I was having technical problems. For some reason the whole neighborhood had internet issues. Not sure what that was about. The picture almost looks like one of those old pagan circles. It has lines crisscrossing in different directions. One of the symbols isn't part of any language my friend knows. This is old stuff, older than I am. And it's being broadcast with stories about economic troubles and political bullshit." The man scratches his chin and yawns, he almost passes out in his chair, leaning forward about to touch floor. He recovers just as he was pitching too far.

"I haven't been sleeping well for the last month. I'm sure these sleeping pills will help me out." He pops two pills and shuts down the feed.

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 "Day thirty ... seven? Eight? Eight. Messages are being populated from Kentaro. Apparently that symbol also had some mathematical pattern to it. The algorithm could be applied to the text in the web page source code and viola. Messages are popping up. This first one is sort of weird, 'STOP WATCHING US' Heh. I wonder if this is all some practical joke someone thought up. Perhaps a message against these spin doctors. Oh, Hang on. More messages coming in now. 'Doctor Willson...' wait hold on. That's my name. Oh this just gets better and better. Someone is a very clever hacker, I must say. 'Doctor Willson you must stop. Your life is in danger.' Ha. What a resourceful person, or people, to do all this for me and my experiments."

The lights turn black. Nothing can be seen of the man or his surroundings. A low rumbling is heard over the mic.

"Who's there? What did you say?"

Another low rumble, almost like a murmur passes across the stream's audio.

"I... I can't stop the experiment once it's begun. Why would I want-"

The feed stops.

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"I.. I don't think that this was such a good idea anymore. I'm starting to see things. I can't turn off the computer. God knows I tried. I... I see the faces of people. They speak to me, but don't have bodies... or eyes... They look like someone took a bite out of the top of a severed head. They speak to me. They tell me it's the end. I opened the door and their masters are coming. Maybe I'm dreaming. Yeah, that's it... I'm dreaming. This is a dream." The man gets up from his terminal and begins to pace between the wall and the edge of the desk. 

"I haven't been sleeping that well. I haven't been sleeping at all really. They speak to me. And they don't stop." His hands being to clench. Only his body below the chest is visible to the camera. He hunches over and points the camera directly at his face. "See, the circle.. that weird circle thing. That was the key. When it's been applied to any website the messages show up. They speak... the messages... to me." He points the camera to empty space in his apartment. There is a dinner table off in the corner. He points at his bed. "What a useless piece of junk that is now. Hahaha. Ha. There. There! Did you see one, it just floated by." He says waving the camera around. "I know you saw that one, right? Tell me you saw it! Please God. Please let them have seen it."

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"He's coming. The master is coming. And he's going to eat me like he did them. First the body whole, so that I can have those vital seconds of life just inside my brain. Then, he'll eat my brain. Hehe. Hehehehe. He can have it. It's rotting away anyway. Might as well chow down before it all goes to shit." He's huddled in the corner of his bedroom. The lights are out, only the glow of the computer screen seems to be illuminating him.

"At least you all will see. You'll know. You'll see it all and then I'll have proof that I'm not insane. Yes that's right. I have proof. You can't stop me, I have all the evidence!"

Suddenly there is a black screen. Not long after, the screen closes. But not before showing the disfigured head of Doctor Scott Willson.

STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US

STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US 

STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US 

STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US STOP WATCHING US