Sorry for the long delay in posting; I’m in the middle of a very busy month, work and personal projects-wise.

It’s also been a very busy week for Find The Lost Ring, as all the characters traveled to Beijing to play out the last chapter.

It’s hard to describe how I’m feeling right now. Last week, I had kinda steeled myself for the end of it all, and tried to wrap up loose ends – the forums slowed down to a few threads a day, I sent emails to the two people I’d communicated with the most (Diego and Mei Hui) to wish them luck, and I started an outline for a summary video (as requested by Ariadne).

But once they arrived in Beijing, it became clear that it wouldn’t be that easy. They wore t-shirts that Weezel designed early in the game, they wrapped up a plot point using a ritual created by the Couberteam, and they did a dance choreographed by Canzonett and Dav. They had one final task where they asked for our help (encoding a video address in a website and emailing it to the bad guys).

But now, that’s all over. We’ve been rooting for these people to succeed for five months, so when they return to their home worlds (and the pms/actors stop talking to us, because the game is over) – it really will – in a non-This Is A Game sense – be as if they’ve left the planet. We’ll also be losing the community of friends and support that we’ve all had for the last five months, as we’ll all disperse, having accomplished our goal. And we’re all feeling a very real sense of loss at that.

The athletes have been posting farewell videos, and seem to be feeling quite emotional themselves. For example, check out Diego’s; you can hear it in his voice.

The final event happens during the closing ceremonies. They’ll harness the power of 91,000 people in synchronization by performing the official Olympic cheer:

…which on top of the massive synch power from the global omphalos net, will allow them to return to their home worlds and families.

I’m wishing them luck, but at the same time, I’m still sad that it has to end.

Ten hours to go.

…that I’ll be a Supporting Community Leader/Game Master for California-based non-profit Institute for the Future’s upcoming massively-multiplayer forecasting game, SuperStruct, a creation by futurist James Cascio and games creator Jane McGonigal.

By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential. Superstruct FAQ

I’m really looking forward to the solutions and structures that the players develop as a way to deal with these terrible events, and seeing what we’d need – not just as professionals who are paid to think about the future, but as normal people.

There’ll also be some great awards given out by a committee of celebs, including Heroes’ Tim Kring, Ze Frank, Chris DiBona and Warren Ellis.

The game launches in late September; visit http://www.superstructgame.org/ to sign up for more news and a reminder when the game begins.

When Alex and Eli call, I can’t help but answer.

Alex Tweeted a recent NYT article about the Antikythera Device, asking if anyone would be interested in making a guest podcast about it.

Heck yes, I would be!

I’m a big fan of Eli Hunt’s podcast series and I’m love a challenge…and an antique mechanical analog computer struck me as pretty challenging. But after a bit (okay, a lot) of reading and research, I thought I’d be able to form an interesting narrative of its history, discovery and purpose – as well as its connection to our agonothetai.

Give it a listen here. How did I do?

Alex did a nice writeup to let people know about it, including some of my supplemental links and Eli’s comments.

I’ve included the full text of the podcast under the cut, should you be interested in reading it.

In the year 1900, a team of sponge divers paused on the island of Antikythera to wait out a storm. Deciding to search for sponges off the island’s coastline, a diver named Elias Stadiatos slipped into the ocean and began to explore. Little did he know that he was about to unlock the path to an ancient secret that could forever change our understanding of the history of science and technology.

Imagine Mr. Stadiatos, for a moment. Wrapped in a canvas suit, drifting deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the ocean, the only audible sound his own breathing inside the copper diving helmet and the gentle whoosh of the compressed air supply. He sees dim figures on the sea bed nearby, and moves toward them. But suddenly, the abstract shapes take form, and a heap of rotting corpses and horses become visible through the haze.

Of course, this turned out to be, not horses and bodies, but the wreck of an ancient Roman merchant vessel containing many bronze figures and marble statues. Exploration and recovery continued on the site, bringing up many artifacts. But it was not until May of 1902 that the most extraordinary discovery was made.

The remains of the Greek corbita which had given the sponge diver so much fright were to yield one of the most important – and mysterious – technological artifacts of all time.

I’m Laura Hall, and this is the story of the Antikythera (anti kith err uh) mechanism.

Originally discovered in a calcified lump of corroded bronze recovered from the shipwreck site, the Antikythera Mechanism dates to around 150 to 100 BC, and is about the size of a wall clock. The device contains 82 fragments, including bronze gear wheels, dials and puzzling inscriptions.

It is the few surviving gear wheels of the mechanism are what make this discovery so remarkable. Researchers in the late 50s determined that the device was designed to display the date, positions of the Sun and Moon, the phase of the moon, a 19-year calendar, and to predict eclipses.

Derek J. de Solla Price wrote, in the June 1959 issue of Scientific American:

“Because of them we may have to revise many of our estimates of Greek science. By studying them we may find vital clues to the true origins of that high scientific technology which hitherto has seemed peculiar to our modern civilization, setting it apart from all cultures of the past.
. . .
Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known . . . On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist. “

In an article published in on July 30th, 2008 in the journal Nature, scientists reported that recent study of the device revealed more than just a way to calculate complex cycles of mathematical astronomy.

“The mechanism is full of surprises,” said Prof Alexander Jones of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University. “And the latest revelations for the first time establish its cultural origin.”

It was known that the device bore inscriptions, though they were hidden beneath corrosion and surface accretions. But using a method known as microfocus X-ray computed tomography, which produces cross section images, researchers were able to read the month names on a 19-year calendar inscribed on the back of its device.

These names match calendars from Corinthian colonies in northwestern Greece, which originated from Babylonians from at least the early fifth century BC.

Yet even more intriguing were the details of another dial on the back of the device – a piece which follows the four-year cycles of the Olympiad and the associated Panhellenic Games.

“The ancient Greeks could easily work out when to stage the Olympic Games without the Antikythera Mechanism – they simply happened every four years as they do now,” said mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, in Cardiff, Wales.

“So, it was a surprise to find this very simple dial represented on this highly sophisticated mechanism. The inclusion of the Olympiad Dial says more about the central cultural importance of the Games than about their advanced technology.”

In 500 BC, the worlds ended, and the oracles and scientists watched with their omphaloi. After the ban of the Labyrinth sport in 480 BC, the agonothetai were forced to work in secret to preserve the great tradition. Though we can only speculate, it is easy to assume that the scientists and the oracles would have collaborated to ensure the preservation of this essential knowledge.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a device of previously unthinkable complexity. Its most precious secret was inscribed in letters marked in letters only 1.7 millimeters tall. Could this apparatus from nearly five hundred years later, have been adapted by these great game-keepers to continue their careful monitoring of the alignment of parallel worlds?

The Mechanism, the only remaining one of its kind, lay undisturbed on the bottom of the ocean for nearly 2,000 years. Nearly one hundred years since its initial discovery, we are only beginning to fully understand its purpose. But as the Agonothetai had been lost in our world, and are beginning to rise again and flourish, so too is our understanding of the deep significance of the Olympic games, and the vital importance of the lost sport.

These days, if a show gives off even the slightest whiff of fantastic leanings, there’s bound to be a supporting ARG floating around the net as a way to generate buzz. IO9 recently published an article titled “The Argument Against ARGs” that goes over a few of the more popular offerings.

While the author has some good points about the games she describes, she also writes, “I feel like the ARG is just a fancier term for guerrilla marketing.” Honestly, I wouldn’t really categorize these as ARGs – they’re really more like “multimedia viral campaigns.” But if that’s where the vernacular is heading, so be it. I think the genre’s been around long enough that it’s fair to start loosely categorizing these games.

There are two obvious, general categories, and the first paragraph of the io9 article says just about everything there is to say, about the first type:

If you’re making a new piece of pop culture and you expect it to reach a mass audience, or even just a subcultural audience, you’d better have an ARG. What’s that, you say? ARG stands for “alternate reality game,” and it describes a wide range of interactive puzzles that generally involve getting you to visit various websites, call phone numbers, and go places in major cities in order to get free shit related to a movie, TV show and even occasionally a book. Why are popular titles like Dark Knight and Lost using ARGs? It’s more than just advertising: It’s a way to build an instant fan base without working at it for years like Star Trek did. But so far, ARGs have few of the benefits of a fandom, such as a friendly community of like-minded people; and they have all of the bad parts of fannish behavior like pointless obsessiveness and fetishization of dumb swag.

This first type is deliberately short-lived and revolves around promoting, as the article says, a film, television show or a book. It adds a supplemental layer to the thing it’s promoting – you can report crime in Gotham to the police or help Harvey Dent’s campaign for The Dark Knight game, or learn more about the mysterious Dharma Foundation in-between long-awaited episodes of Lost.

But at the same time, these stories are meant to lightly penetrate a large audience. They offer a few websites to play with, some email and text message alerts, and perhaps a few puzzles, and seem to be largely intended for an individual to be able to complete without any community effort.

And, that’s fine! I loved being able to click through the mysterious, shifting newspaper articles and internal airline documents that were posted to the Donnie Darko website, and the Memento special edition disc had the pre-film medical records and letters of the patient. All of these enhanced my engagement with the films, making them a lot more “real” in my head – which I understand could make me more enthusiastic about sharing the experience with other people.

But it’s not really fair to compare this type of game to other “alternate reality games” as a whole. I think this is probably why unFiction owner Sean Stacey recently switched to the term “chaotic fiction” as a way to describe the genre.

The games I am drawn to are plotted, require lots of community coordination plus individual attention from the characters to get things moving, and often generate a lot of player content (videos, photos, and so on). I’ll stop short of say that they exist just for the sake of themselves (the money’s got to come from somewhere), but I do appreciate that the games I play don’t really shove any sponsorship in your face.

Find The Lost Ring is a perfect example of this, as the only time we’ve seen anything slightly related to McDonald’s has been 1) a tiny golden arches logo on the end title screen of a trailer, 2) a McD’s press release, and 3) a Japanese McD’s website advertising the game generally. The characters haven’t been taking photos of themselves eating Big Macs, nor has the Hamburglar turned up as an ancient Greek oracle for us to contact. There are no prizes or McD’s swag, and we’re playing to…well, save the world.

(That said, Perplex City was my first real ARG experience, and it was created to be self-sustaining, through revenue generated by puzzle card sales. It finished out a two-year-long first season and couldn’t get a second one going, so I don’t know if that represents a realistic model for non-corporate-sponsored games or not – but it was certainly an interesting and beneficial experience.)

Ultimately I think it comes down to my own investment in these games, and their payoff. I would be hard-pressed to get out of the house for a Harvey Dent political picket (though if I was in the area I’d stop to take photos) – that game is over as soon as the film hits theatres. But I have no problems driving to Austin and Marfa to retrieve a Ring sculpture. The game may be over with the closing ceremony of the Olympics, but it will resonate a lot longer than that.

Anyway…I haven’t been particularly interested in any of the recent viral campaigns but there are a few upcoming that I’m into because of the subject matter:

- District 9, related to a film due out a year from now, directed by Peter Jackson’s protege
- Imagine The Possibilities, a game for the leaked TV show Fringe which is totally the new X-Files (go watch it right now if you haven’t already)
- Seek the Six, a viral campaign for the upcoming AMC six-part miniseries remake of The Prisoner (complete with “I AM NOT A NUMBER!”, Jesus as No. 6 and Gandalf as No. 2)

I will be keeping an eye on them as their action starts to unfold, but I might have to come up with a new category to keep them distinct from the other alternate reality games that I play.

I just spotted this post by cubicgarden which talks about his side of the Third Ring recovery, including some videos I hadn’t seen before. Wish there was one of his victory dance outside the gallery!

There’s also a new video by Diego which shows footage from the Fourth Ring adventure. I love it so much that words fail me.

Larissa Tweeted hat message the other day, and just made a post to her blog…

Whoa. (That’s my head. And that’s us walking. For more info, read my post on the recovery of the fifth ring.)

First let me say to Renata, I love you and you are my sister sent from heaven. I hope you forgive me, but you have to leave the TheO a way or another!

And now we all know that you have helped us recover the rings, TheO will not want to have anything to do with you!

Find me, my friend! There is still time for you to return to their world and be with your TRUE family.

Renata wrote:
Dear Larissa,

These are pictures taken by a member of TheO in Marfa, Texas this weekend. They show two of the most courageous agonothetai recovering the last lost ring sculpture.

I have helped you as much as I could. I tried to distract them and I made it seem like the rings still were being moved as much as I could. I did this for you!

Now, I can not continue to help you more. You have been my first family in this world. But now TheO is my family.

I know that the other six are also important for you. They are also a family.

I’ll do everything we can to keep TheO away from the final mission in Beijing.

I do not believe we will see each other or speak again.

With love,

Renata”

[Marfa pictures here]

Agonothetai teams: as you can see, I am risking and risking my friendship with Renata putting these photos and note here. I received this message from an anonymous email (@mailexpire.com) But I believe the bottom of my heart that she will help the world, and that TheO is using her for its own needs.

Need to go over my videos to see if I can spot anything…they are very lo res, though.

So much has been going on that I haven’t had time to actually sit down and write about it, so here’s a handy post to keep everything straight.

July 2 – Dallas omphalabyrinth

Around this time, I also recruited a few of my friends to help run omphalabyrinths, to bring the total city count up to 27. They’re in Boulder, CO, Atlanta, GA and Washington, D.C.

July 18 – Monica, Jorge and the Codex

July 19 – Fourth ring translation and Diego’s plan

July 23 – Ring number five – an epic adventure, Part 2

Wow. So…the fifth ring is in Marfa, Texas.

…really? Marfa?

Yes, as it turns out. After volunteering to contact The Operative, I got a positive reply back:

Great. Let’s do this.

You obviously know where I am, from my theop number.

If you can get to this location in the next 10 days, then we can arrange for the dead drop. We’ll need an hour to complete it. Bring multiple agents if you think it will make for a safer transport. Send me a date and time you can make it.

Planning and Preparing

Phew. Marfa is about 527 miles from Dallas, which translates to about 8-10 hours driving. Bus and trains were cheaper, but would take way too long. So, jasper (another Texan player) and I arranged to drive to Marfa from Austin, where I would meet her and a friend. After a length airport debacle, I ended up just renting a car and driving down, arriving at around 4:30 for a 5 AM departure.

Somewhat disturbingly, our mission was as follows:

You’ll be stationed on Highland Avenue in front of the Marfa Book Company bookstore between 1:30 PM and 2PM.

You’ll be disguised as a street musicians. It doesn’t matter what you do, just make it convincing.

Put out a hat.

At some point, I’ll drop a tip in the hat. After 2PM, you’ll use that tip to figure out the location of the ring, which you’ll retrieve IMMEDIATELY nearby.

I will NOT stop to talk with you.

If you attempt to follow me, I will contact a teammate and have the ring removed before you can get to it.

Let me repeat that… “You’ll be disguised as a street musicians.”

Hoo boy.

Anyway, the dressing up part is easy – it’s the “make it look convincing” part that was a slightly bigger issue, as I don’t play any instrument particularly well. I just bought a guitar to learn to play, though, so I thought that enthusiasm might make up for a lack of talent and skill, and threw it in the car, with some tambourines and a recorder.

Traveling

The trip from Austin to Marfa went smoothly, although at about 6 AM we were the first ones to come across a bad car accident. The car had rolled a few times (obvious from the paint scrapes on the road) and left several frighteningly deep dents in the asphalt.

I woke up in the backseat as jasper got out to check the car; there was a woman trapped inside. We called an ambulance, and several other cars stopped to help make sure the woman was okay (her legs were hurt, she was being crushed slightly by the car and was in a very uncomfortable position, and her wrist was broken, as far as we could tell). She had been shopping just before the accident and there was a lot of debris strewn across the road, so we helped clear it off for other cars to pass – lots of cassette tapes and DVDs, toiletries, and a child’s backpack with the tags still on it.

We left after the two firetrucks began levering the car to raise it enough to pull her out of the back door. I think we were all a little shaken, but also very relieved that she was alive, conscious and able to speak. The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful.

Marfa

Well, although we all professed to be a little embarrassed, Kyle, Susan and I had no problems setting up our instruments – a washtub bass, a harmonica, and a slightly out-of-tune guitar – and jamming together.

We set up a laptop on the hood of the car, plugged into the hybrid’s three-prong outlet, and connected to the Marfa Book Company wifi (though we switched to the stronger signal from the nearby Pizza Foundation). We were able to broadcast our performance through Seero, and speak to the people in IRC, who were standing by in case the dropoff included some difficult puzzles.

As we played, lots of people drove by slowly to check us out, someone told us “we had balls”, and a man emerged from the bookstore with coins collected from the patrons inside. He turned out to be the editor of the local newspaper, so I owe him an email with some links and information about just exactly what we were up to. Three girls stopped by later and sang “Oh Susannah” with us, too.

Twenty minutes in, a woman walked by and dropped two single dollar bills into the hat. We subtly peeked at them (we were supposed to continue straight through til 2) and showed them to the people watching our live broadcast. One bill said, “PARKING 974″ and the other said, “LOT FLV” – aha! A license plate.

We wandered around looking for the right lot, and jasper found the car just around the corner, with a box hiding in the backseat. We absconded with it and drove away as quickly as possible…down the street, to the second wifi point, for more live broadcasting as we opened it up.

Ahh…it was a long day, but a successful mission. We drove back to Austin, stopping off at the Marfa Lights viewing area and at an Alpine McDonald’s for some photo-taking, and I drove back to Dallas that night, arriving at around 2:30 AM. The next night (Sunday) I was so tired I fell asleep with my glasses on, the lights on, and without setting any alarms – but it was all very, very worth it.

It was great to meet jasper and her friend, and I hope we’ll get to do more game stuff together in the future. Right now, the Fifth Ring is sitting in my office, waiting to be photographed in detail (which will be the contents of part 3 of this post series).

See all the action summarized in this video:

On July 23, James sent us the message for the last ring – which, as it turned out, was just the start of a long adventure for me!

This post is part 1.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.

Hi Everyone,

This is pretty surprising. Theo seems pretty oblivious — it can’t just be that they’re not paying attention. Either this is a trap or we have someone working on the inside for us. Do you think someone higher up is secretly distracting or confusing Theo while we complete our mission? I’d like to think so… the alternative is too scary…

Anyways, here’s a voicemail about the 5th ring. English this time, so hopefully we can move quickly on this one before they fully figure out what’s going on!

Sincerely,
James Mutters

PS: Best of Luck to Diego’s team this weekend!

The email contained a message in English, but with a password puzzle and a complicated code to connect us with the TheO agent:

Theo wrote:
This is a broadcast message regarding the status of La Sesa Ringo. While we investigate some discrepancies in the locations of several of the rings, the sculptures will no longer be on display–publicly or privately. We believe that recent mention of the rings in a popular online podcast series has brought out a rather large number of unscrupulous collectors. Therefore, all future exchanges will take place as dead drops. This practice is designed to prevent the rings from being stolen or tracked. Regarding Ring Number 5, Theo operatives Level 5 and higher currently located in the United States should contact the current guardian of Ring Number 5 via the standard anonymized transporter email format to arrange a time and location for the dead drop.
(??)She is: Theoc cordo sira dola lunglei dongying. Repeat: Theoc cordo sira dola lunglei dongying.(??)
Your message must contain the transfer password in the subject. You are worshipping Demeter. You turn clockwise twice as many degrees as Poseidon is from Demeter Then half as many degrees counterclockwise as Poseidon is from Aphrodite. Then three times as many degrees clockwise as Aphrodite is from Hera. Then twice as many degrees counterclockwise as Hera is from Artemis. Which god or goddess are you worshipping?

In short, the password was Hestia, meaning we needed to email xyz79843@gmail.com, but the xyz part was impossible to determine from the voicemail message. Finally, by sending fake spam messages to a range of email addresses, players figured out that the xyz bit was “TheOp”, which stands for “The Operative”…

…and the numbers are a zip code – for Marfa, Texas.

Continue to part 2.