Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2005/10/It's times like this when I wished I lived in London. I missed out on the event that started with a guy on a motorcycle dropping off locked briefcases and ended in a helicopter exodus.
The Backstory
In the Perplex City ARG, things pretty much have been taking place in an alternate world. With the exception of The Receda Cube somehow mysteriously crossing worlds and arriving at Earth, just about all of the action has taken place over in Perplex City. Recently, The Third Power (one of those Illuminati-style secret societies that go back hundreds of years) seems to have recruited people on Earth, or maybe even found a way to get here. Their private communications had expressed a little bit of worry about our cube-hunting efforts on Earth, and specifically the website of an individual. Nobody–us or them–knew who the individual is.
The Event
Everyone that attended was supposed to wear purple. There were about 40 people in total. A full summary was posted by Brat. Because weekends are sometimes tough for me to do ARGing and because it was at 6am left-coast-time, I was not even able to be part of the online support team.
Anyway, the practical upshot of it all was that it seemed like there was no real individual that The Third Power was worried about. They made it up, made up the codeword puzzles that kept everyone occupied for the day, and planted a guy as a mole on our group as a way to gauge how strong and resourceful our group is.
Seriously, there was a guy who arrived, wearing purple, who took part in everything that day, then at the end of it all when the trail led to a helipad and everyone was distracted, hopped on a helicopter with two mysterious people, then took off!!!1eleven1!!!~!!! As I understand it, the whole group on the ground were making all sorts of rude gestures when they realized what was happening.
I guess it all worked out okay because the mole left his backpack, which was filled with some leitmarks, some prerelease cards, and a thank you note from Mind Candy, inviting everyone to a nearby pub for a drink.