CARLY: (voiceover) I first heard about the game just about a month ago. It was shortly after my best friend, Yumiko Takata, disappeared. They don't have Amber Alerts for grown-ups. The police told us Yumiko was probably just having fun, sewing her wild oats. They actually said this. Or, as one detective proclaimed, as if he thought he'd actually just cracked the case, she took off as a kind of rebellion, a way of asserting her individuality in the face of her parents' and her culture's high expectations. Yumiko is second-generation Japanese. She was born here, in Seattle. Her parents came over from Tokyo shortly after they were married. They never pushed her to get straight As, or attend law or medical school. They just wanted their daughter to be happy.
Yumiko did actually end up in law school for about six weeks. This was after a year spent abroad, and a few months in Silicon Valley, where she created an app in an incubator. She hated it. She came back home to Seattle and ended up studying journalism with me. We grew up together, best friends from the age of five. She's smart, talented, and beautiful. And I miss her. Every day.
I started this podcast because I want to find out what happened to my friend.
From the Public Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, you're listening to Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. Stay with us.
[Theme music.]
Okay. So before I go and get seriously Veronica Mars on this thing, I need to give you a bit of background on the world of this story. Or, perhaps more accurately, I need to give you a bit of background on the story of one very idiosyncratic world.
An ARG, or alternate reality game, is defined by Wikipedia as, "an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform, and uses trans-media storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. Some common examples of this type of game include viral marketing stunts, expanding the story worlds of existing IPs, or intellectual properties; movies or video games for example, in order to provide additional narrative value for users." The popular ARGs ilovebees and The Beast were used to promote the video game Halo and the film A.I. respectively.
There are historical touchstones, precursors, and inspirations for this type of storytelling, such as John Fowles' novel The Magus, Delaney's novel Tritan, The Beatles' "Paul is dead" thing, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and of course, popular role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and their modern video game equivalents, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and many more.
There's a long, proud history of ARGs, from Orson Welles' infamous War of the Worlds, to The Last Broadcast, The Blair Witch Project, and Oceanic 815. We're excited and occasionally terrified with the added possibility that these kinds of horrors or conspiracies might be real, or at the very least, we're excited when we experience fleeting moments while playing along, moments that blur the line between the real world and the game.
Both The Lost Experience and Find Oceanic 815 promoted the very popular television show Lost, and gave the viewers of that television show a momentary buzz, a feeling of the fictional world and characters of that show crossing over into real life, or at least, the real life internet.
That's one thing that an alternate reality game can do. But what if there are other things? Less positive things? More dangerous results? What if there was a different kind of game, something darker? More mysterious? Something that wasn't tied to a film or television property, video game or movie? What if there was something that had been around for centuries in various forms? An alternate reality game that preceded the term, "alternate reality," by a very long time?
But, if there was an ancient, global game that had existed for centuries, perhaps even millennia, why hadn't more people heard of it? The answer to that question is potentially the scariest part of this entire thing. How could somebody, or something, keep the existence of the game like that a secret?
But I'm getting ahead of myself, bouncing around. I apologize. These things can get... complicated, and timelines can occasionally get blurry. I'm gonna bring things back to the reason I stopped trusting the police to figure things out and started looking into this stuff myself.
I was starting to believe that my friend Yumiko had become what they call a "player," or a "participant," in a very unique alternate reality game. But the game Yumiko had been playing was... different. Special. There was evidence that she may have been involved in something called... Well, this is where things get kind of interesting. You see, the game Yumiko may have been playing doesn't have a name, officially. It's kind of a... well, it's a rare, secret society, conspiracy nut, deep web stew of strangeness. To put it as simply as possible, she was playing something that she, and the other participants, refer to simply as, "IX." Just IX. They used roman numerals to indicate the number. IX. It's called IX because it's the ninth iteration of the modern version of an ancient game, a game that has been happening in one form or another for a very long time. A game where the stakes aren't early-release video game access, special in-game cheat codes, or bonus footage of your favorite television show. In this game, the stakes are much higher. If you believe some of the more salacious rumors, the outcome of this particular game can be as serious and as dangerous as anything in real life. Real life, and real death.
Some believe there are indications that this game has been going on for centuries, with certain evidence pointing as far back as antiquity. Although the genesis of the ancient game remains up for debate, everyone I've spoken with agrees that the modern version began with what the players called "I." I launched some time around 1959. Similar to the ancient incarnations of this thing, referred to only as, "the game," the modern version is officially nameless. It wasn't long before players of what retroactively became known as I began referring to this new, modern version of the game by an unofficial name, a name that's since become tied irrevocably to the world of the game, a name that's been used since I was discovered running in 1959, and for each and every numbered variations since, a name you might find written in the back of an old library book in Leeds, or whispered between two players meeting in an abandoned subway station beneath the city of New York:
Rabbits.
From the first truly modern iteration of the game in 1959, the name "Rabbits" has been whispered between players, passed around, hidden beneath the surface. Rabbits.
The most recent version, IX, was likely launched sometime between the end of VIII in 2007 and June of 2016. Players had been waiting, searching for clues on the internet, in the deep web or the dark neet, and of course, in the real world as well, ever since VIII wrapped up in 2007. Nobody has, as of yet, been able to figure out where IX started exactly; what the players refer to as the "inception point," but pretty much everyone agrees: the game is on.
The evening Yumiko disappeared was a night like any other. It was overcast, rainy; definitely not a nice night for a walk. Yumiko left her apartment door wide open, her computer and other items of value in plain view. I spoke with the police every day until they stopped taking my calls, and after that, I sat in their lobby day after day until somebody saw me and either gave me an update on Yumiko or forved me to go home. I drove them crazy, but it didn't do any good. It's not their fault; there just wasn't much of anything for them to go on. Yumko's family and friends weren't able to provide any clue to her whereabouts, and although she had numerous boyfriends over the years, she was single at the time of her disappearance. She referred to herself as "aggressively single," and was planning on remaining so until she had finished a book she had due. I'm going to provide more details on Yumiko and her family soon, but first, I'm going to give you a bit more information about Rabbits.
The number of players or candidates that participate in the game is thought to be relatively small, but they do come from all over the world. There are rumored to be a handful of spectators who do their best to track the game as it unfolds, trying to locate the entry points, betting on, or simply cheering for, their favorite players on members only pop-up deep web forums.
With players and spectators from all over the world, you'd think there'd be more information available on Rabbits online, or in books, or in popular culture, right? Well, there isn't, not really. There's almost nothing. And that's because, after the game ends, all evidence of that version of the game is allegedly wiped clean by the people or entity in charge. There is little or no evidence of VIII, the version of Rabbits that reportedly ended in 2007. In fact, the amount of material available on Rabbits in general is almost nonexistent. Perhaps things will change with IX taking place so much later in the global information age. It's hard to imagine any organization, no matter how powerful or well-connected, keeping something as sensational as Rabbits off the internet today.
To help explain a bit more about Rabbits, I'm going to play you a recording. It's famous among players. It's something known as the Prescott Competition Manifesto, or PCM.
Dr. Abigail Prescott supposedly worked under both Stanford's Robert Wilson, a professor whose main area of interest is game theory as it pertains to economics, and quantum physicist Ronald E. Meyers. Nobody has been able to dig up anything of any real value on Prescott. It's generally conceded among Rabbits players that Abigail Prescott is a pseudonym.
It took me forever to dig up a copy of the infamous recording. In the rare instance that the Prescott Competition Manifesto is posted to a torrent site, it's removed faster than the big movie and music studios pull down their copyrighted works. I'm not what you'd call a hacker by any means, but I do know my way around a Tor browser. I found this segment of the PCM on the dark net. It's not much, but this common clip is allegedly the best source of information available on the game. I'm going to play that clip for you now.
PRESCOTT: ...is aligned with the fluid nature of the participation. The level of secrecy is concerning, as are the number of candidates. It's chaos. From the trail heads, to the first marker, no algorithm can track the logic. There's a place inside all of us that longs to find out what's running behind the scenes. What's working, what's holding all of the elements together.
I've heard the underlying condition of the game described metaphorically as a kind of fluid, like the cytoplasm or protoplasm of the cells, and alternatively as a meniscus of thought, a layer of waves. But most believe those descriptions are trying to describe something that's not...
It had been dormant for a very long time when the first clues showed up in 1959. It was something in the Washington Post: a letter to the editor, and the lyrics of a song by the Everly Brothers, when combined, provided the first indication that the game had returned. It was a student at Oxford who put everything together and brought her professor into the thought matrix at Cambridge.
This is where the name "Rabbits" was first used, in reference to a stamp containing rabbits on a clue pinned to a laundromat in Seattle in 1959. Rabbits wasn't the name of that specific iteration of the game, just like it's not the name of this one, the game we're calling "VIII." As far as any of us can tell, the games themselves, at least the games in this modern variation, don't actually have names. They're numbered by the community of players. This is number eight.
The modern game has been played seven other times. The winners of the first seven games are listed in order in "the Circle." These numbers appear to be... The number of iterations in the modern game does not appear to be in question. There does seem to be some question about possible remuneration and when and where each iteration of the game began. It's a lively debate. Did Californiac have money before he won the version of the game known as VI? Is the game a recruiting device for the CIA or MI6? This is the most popular rumor concerning the end of Rabbits. But no one knows for sure. Nobody has been able to dig up the real identities of any of the winners.
There are three things we know for sure: The game has been going on... We have no idea how many centuries or what the pre-1959 versions of the game may have looked... This is the eighth cycle of the modern version... And, since that time, people have referred to the game as, "Rabbits." There are rumors connected to Rabbits as we'll... rumors involving players dying, and going insane. The intricate web of conspiracy and secrecy surrounding the game over the years has lead to an almost complete inability to track evidence or locate players after the fact. The dearth of information available about the game and its participants does nothing but add to the intrigue and interest in Rabbits. ...should be warned. We have reason to believe that the reports of both physical and mental jeopardy have been, in fact, under-reported, and
...here are the guidelines, or rules, as they were allegedly posted in that laundromat in Seattle in 1959 under the title, "Manifesto," above a hand-stamped graphic of a rabbit. The rules weren't numbered, only listed. They read as follows:
You play, you never tell
Find the doors, portals, points, and well
You play, you never tell
Step through the gates of life and hell
You play, you never tell
The wardens watch, and guard us well
You play, and pray you never tell
CARLY: (voiceover) So, it's hard to get more sinister than that, but I might be able to do it. You see, there is another force at work behind the scenes of the game: a kind of deadly security force, allegedly.
One rhyme written on a wall in Istanbul in red spray paint sometime around 1995 expresses the tone of the matter fairly succinctly:
"Pray you never meet a Warden's eyes
"Or with such takers fraternize
"For once they see you, recognize
"Your game is up; your world, it dies"
Dramatic, I know. There's another paragraph on the Wardens that was discovered written on the back of a Dewey decimal card taken from an old set of library card catalog drawers found in a thrift store in Scotland. This description was brief, part of a clue in the game, apparently from version VII.
"You'll see the Warden's only once. You'll see them if you tell anyone about the game. You'll see them if you betray the spirit of the game. You'll see the Wardens only once."
[Advertising break]
So, that's the game. Rabbits. A strange, rare, alternate reality game that may or may not exist with scary keepers of its secrets, and who knows what else, known as Wardens, with unclear prizes for participation and unclear but sinister-sounding punishments for betraying the spirit of the game. This might explain why my best friend never mentioned she was playing it, or looking into it, or whatever it was she was doing at the time of her disappearance.
Although this type of story is exactly the kind of thing I've been dying to sink my teeth into since we'd decided to relaunch the Public Radio Alliance, there was no time for me to methodically dig into and appreciate the mystery of Rabbits. My needs were more immediate. I needed to find my friend.
Just about a month after Yumiko disappeared, I began to suspect that she'd been playing Rabbits. I believe she'd stumbled on to the potentially dangerous alternate reality game while working on part of her book, a section about an increase in people dying while playing games. I told all of this to the police. They told me that they'd look into it, but it became clear, very quickly, that they didn't believe anything I was saying. So, I started my own investigation.
I'd been preoccupied with some dramatic changes in my life at the time of Yumiko's disappearance, and I hadn't been spending much time with Yumiko, or any of my friends. The relaunch of the Public Radio Alliance and a brand new romantic relationship had been taking up all of my time. I had been working ridiculous hours and when I wasn't working, I was spending time with my boyfriend, who has since become my ex-boyfriend, in no small part because of my focus on, or, what my ex referred to as, my obsession with, uncovering what had happened to Yumiko.
CARLY: (voiceover) That's Harper Billings. Harper and Miko actually dated each other's brothers for a long time, which was weird, but that's a whole other podcast. Oh, and sometimes you'll hear me, or other people who know her refer to Yumiko as "Miko" for short.
CARLY: (voiceover) Adam is Yumiko's younger brother. He's married to a really nice guy named Marco. I had a Jane Austin moment and knew that I just had to introduce them. They have great parties to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and Summer Solstice. Yumiko and I had the time of our lives at her brother's Midsummer's Eve party last year. It was, as Harper would say, epic. Understandably, Adam hasn't taken his sister's disappearance and prolonged absence very well.
It turns out he did have Yumiko's computer. He gave it to the police the night she disappeared, and when they gave it back, her hard drive had been erased, or was broken, or something. They said that it had been working fine when it left their evidence locker, but that they were unable to find any leads or emails that appeared related to her disappearance. Adam filed an inquiry, but there was no way to prove that the computer had been damaged by the police. I asked Adam if the police had given him anything at all. He told me that the detectives checked the cloud, and it looks like Yumiko, or somebody, deleted most of her accounts.
Adam gave me Yumiko's password and login information that he got from the police. I logged into Yumiko's account, using my computer, and was able to find something on a legacy Dropbox alternative: an application Yumiko asked me to sign up for because the developer was a friend of hers. It was similar to Dropbox, but nowhere near as popular. I logged in, and I found something right away.
It was a PDF, what appeared to be a scanned page from a notebook of some kind. I'll upload it to the notes section of our website. Adam told me later that the police had found the PDF as well, but ignored it because it was extremely cryptic, and easy to dismiss as nonsense. The file was titled, "Notes on Hazel." At the top of the page, in capital letters, the word, "HAZEL." Underneath it, in point form, a few other short bits. I'll read them in order.
First, "Is the game responsible for E's death?" Two, "Hazel is most likely female," then in brackets, "per 4chan and the Oxford kid." Three, "Hazel almost won VIII, then just dropped off the map." Four, "H" - I'm assuming H for Hazel - "was the expert on VII, and pretty much anything R related." I'm assuming R means Rabbits, and the numbers VII and VIII, written in roman numerals, refer to the previous two iterations of the game.
That's it, other than a strange sentence at the bottom of the page. A question: "Did Hazel know Byron Price?"
I have no idea who E might be, but Hazel was, or is, allegedly, some kind of legendary Rabbits player, who inexplicably stopped playing just before he or she was about to win the previous version of Rabbits, the version known as VIII. I've been unable to dig up much of anything else on Hazel, but I'm still looking.
Who was Byron Price? Well, I had a lot more luck there.
Byron Price was a publisher. In 1982, he published a book called The Secret, a puzzle book, that, when the puzzles were solved, yielded real-world treasure. Price traveled to twelve unique locations in North America and buried twelve ceramic casks, each of which contained a small key that treasure hunters would trade for one of twelve jewels. So, how were you supposed to find these hidden ceramic casks? Well, you had to match one of twelve paintings to one of twelve verses, solve the resulting riddle, and then dig up the treasure. Simple enough, right? Well, apparently Price was convinced that his puzzles weren't nearly difficult enough. He indicated that he believed he'd be giving away all ten [sic] jewels within a week or two. He was a little off with his prediction. In reality, only two of the twelve casks were ever discovered. The first, which had been buried in Grant Park, Chicago, was unearthed in 1983 by a group of students. The second wasn't pulled out of the ground until 2004 by two members of an online search forum dedicated to real world treasure hunting.
I called to speak with Byron Price to ask why his name might be on a list with Hazel, but it turns out Byron Price had been killed in a car accident in 2005. He died leaving no word or clues as to where the remaining ten casks might be hidden. Today, the search for Price's mysterious treasure continues. However, in numerous interviews, Price's widow has mentioned that the jewels, which were collectively valued at over $10,000, had been liquidated a long time ago. The only treasure anybody is going to find, if they manage to solve any of the remaining riddles, is a key in a ceramic cask, and, of course, the bragging rights.
The twelve images Price had commissioned for the book each represent a group of immigrants who came to North America from somewhere else. Each image is also linked to that particular month's birthstone, and birth flower. Each poem or verse describes where a cask is hidden, but, without knowing which poem goes with which image, it's very difficult.
I've been looking at this stuff for a while now, and it's both incredibly addicting and frustrating. I feel like there are so many different ways to connect each verse, stone, immigrant country of origin, and flower. I mean, this stuff is nuts.
So what does it mean that Byron Price's name was mentioned in the same sentence as Hazel? Well, a series of basic internet searches revealed nothing. But a dark net search paid off a little better.
I discovered some text in a comment thread beneath a an image link that was, sadly, long dead. So, there was no image. But the comments were pretty interesting. The first of two comments was simply a one-word question. Somebody had posted the word "Hazel" with a question mark. This lead me to believe that the image may have been a picture of Hazel, a theory that was further supported, I think, by the second comment, which read: "Hazel working with B. Price on CD ROM."
[Advertising break.]
Byron Price was a visionary when it came to embracing new technology and books. He was one of the first to publish both CD ROM and ebooks. He actually won a Grammy in 1985 for his audiobook, The Words of Ghandi. I've been unable to contact his widow to confirm any interaction with someone named Hazel, or anything else for that matter, but I did manage to connect with somebody who had been working on a project with Price, just before his death. His name is Conrad Evans.
There's a picture of Evans standing with Price at a conference somewhere, wearing some kind of architectural blueprint-style jacket, and holding some large, space-age headphones. They look like a good team, the type of scientists you believe actually capable of discovering or inventing something really cool.
CARLY: (voiceover) So, that was Conrad Evans. The stuff with Byron Price was interesting, but I wasn't any closer to finding the mysterious Hazel, or Yumiko. I went back to the studio to regroup.
I was researching Rabbits, version IX, when some kind of instant messenger chat bubble popped up. It was called "CatChat," and featured an 8-bit graphic of a smiling cat. The thing is, I didn't install this particular instant messenger app, and yet, somehow, here it was, running on my laptop.
It was from somebody calling themselves, "Concernicus Jones." They typed a message, and then sent a photo. The text read, "Is she who you think?" The image was a half-naked young woman. Her face was cut off. She's wearing a man's dress shirt and suggestively lifting it to reveal the bottom of her bum. She was facing a large window with sheer curtains, probably a hotel room. It could have been Yumiko. The complexion looked like a match, but I couldn't tell for sure. So, I did what any modern investigative journalist would do with a photo: I reverse image searched it on Google, and got a hit. It appeared on an escorts website, and there were more photos. There were four photos in total, the one near the curtains with the bum, one suggestive cleavage shot - the woman was pushing her breasts together, wearing the same shirt, another photo - the woman facing away from the camera on a chair, turned back toward the camera, her face cut off again; she's topless with a kind of hand bra, her right hand wrapped around her left breast. But it was the last photo that was the most revealing.
The young woman was lying on a bed, a beautiful bed, probably in the same high-end hotel suite as the picture by the window. She was framed so her feet, legs, and thighs were the focus of attention. My eyes were immediately drawn to her right thigh. You could see the bottom half of a tattoo there. Only half of it was visible, so you most likely wouldn't have known what it said, unless you'd seen it before. It was a phrase, in cursive lettering, that read, "Love is the every only god." It was a quote from an e.e. cummings poem. The woman on the bed was Yumiko.
Next time, we're going to look into how Yumiko, and so many others, were pulled into the game. It's Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until next time, stay safe.
Yumiko did actually end up in law school for about six weeks. This was after a year spent abroad, and a few months in Silicon Valley, where she created an app in an incubator. She hated it. She came back home to Seattle and ended up studying journalism with me. We grew up together, best friends from the age of five. She's smart, talented, and beautiful. And I miss her. Every day.
I started this podcast because I want to find out what happened to my friend.
From the Public Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, you're listening to Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. Stay with us.
[Theme music.]
Okay. So before I go and get seriously Veronica Mars on this thing, I need to give you a bit of background on the world of this story. Or, perhaps more accurately, I need to give you a bit of background on the story of one very idiosyncratic world.
An ARG, or alternate reality game, is defined by Wikipedia as, "an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform, and uses trans-media storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. Some common examples of this type of game include viral marketing stunts, expanding the story worlds of existing IPs, or intellectual properties; movies or video games for example, in order to provide additional narrative value for users." The popular ARGs ilovebees and The Beast were used to promote the video game Halo and the film A.I. respectively.
There are historical touchstones, precursors, and inspirations for this type of storytelling, such as John Fowles' novel The Magus, Delaney's novel Tritan, The Beatles' "Paul is dead" thing, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and of course, popular role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and their modern video game equivalents, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and many more.
There's a long, proud history of ARGs, from Orson Welles' infamous War of the Worlds, to The Last Broadcast, The Blair Witch Project, and Oceanic 815. We're excited and occasionally terrified with the added possibility that these kinds of horrors or conspiracies might be real, or at the very least, we're excited when we experience fleeting moments while playing along, moments that blur the line between the real world and the game.
Both The Lost Experience and Find Oceanic 815 promoted the very popular television show Lost, and gave the viewers of that television show a momentary buzz, a feeling of the fictional world and characters of that show crossing over into real life, or at least, the real life internet.
That's one thing that an alternate reality game can do. But what if there are other things? Less positive things? More dangerous results? What if there was a different kind of game, something darker? More mysterious? Something that wasn't tied to a film or television property, video game or movie? What if there was something that had been around for centuries in various forms? An alternate reality game that preceded the term, "alternate reality," by a very long time?
But, if there was an ancient, global game that had existed for centuries, perhaps even millennia, why hadn't more people heard of it? The answer to that question is potentially the scariest part of this entire thing. How could somebody, or something, keep the existence of the game like that a secret?
But I'm getting ahead of myself, bouncing around. I apologize. These things can get... complicated, and timelines can occasionally get blurry. I'm gonna bring things back to the reason I stopped trusting the police to figure things out and started looking into this stuff myself.
I was starting to believe that my friend Yumiko had become what they call a "player," or a "participant," in a very unique alternate reality game. But the game Yumiko had been playing was... different. Special. There was evidence that she may have been involved in something called... Well, this is where things get kind of interesting. You see, the game Yumiko may have been playing doesn't have a name, officially. It's kind of a... well, it's a rare, secret society, conspiracy nut, deep web stew of strangeness. To put it as simply as possible, she was playing something that she, and the other participants, refer to simply as, "IX." Just IX. They used roman numerals to indicate the number. IX. It's called IX because it's the ninth iteration of the modern version of an ancient game, a game that has been happening in one form or another for a very long time. A game where the stakes aren't early-release video game access, special in-game cheat codes, or bonus footage of your favorite television show. In this game, the stakes are much higher. If you believe some of the more salacious rumors, the outcome of this particular game can be as serious and as dangerous as anything in real life. Real life, and real death.
Some believe there are indications that this game has been going on for centuries, with certain evidence pointing as far back as antiquity. Although the genesis of the ancient game remains up for debate, everyone I've spoken with agrees that the modern version began with what the players called "I." I launched some time around 1959. Similar to the ancient incarnations of this thing, referred to only as, "the game," the modern version is officially nameless. It wasn't long before players of what retroactively became known as I began referring to this new, modern version of the game by an unofficial name, a name that's since become tied irrevocably to the world of the game, a name that's been used since I was discovered running in 1959, and for each and every numbered variations since, a name you might find written in the back of an old library book in Leeds, or whispered between two players meeting in an abandoned subway station beneath the city of New York:
Rabbits.
From the first truly modern iteration of the game in 1959, the name "Rabbits" has been whispered between players, passed around, hidden beneath the surface. Rabbits.
The most recent version, IX, was likely launched sometime between the end of VIII in 2007 and June of 2016. Players had been waiting, searching for clues on the internet, in the deep web or the dark neet, and of course, in the real world as well, ever since VIII wrapped up in 2007. Nobody has, as of yet, been able to figure out where IX started exactly; what the players refer to as the "inception point," but pretty much everyone agrees: the game is on.
The evening Yumiko disappeared was a night like any other. It was overcast, rainy; definitely not a nice night for a walk. Yumiko left her apartment door wide open, her computer and other items of value in plain view. I spoke with the police every day until they stopped taking my calls, and after that, I sat in their lobby day after day until somebody saw me and either gave me an update on Yumiko or forved me to go home. I drove them crazy, but it didn't do any good. It's not their fault; there just wasn't much of anything for them to go on. Yumko's family and friends weren't able to provide any clue to her whereabouts, and although she had numerous boyfriends over the years, she was single at the time of her disappearance. She referred to herself as "aggressively single," and was planning on remaining so until she had finished a book she had due. I'm going to provide more details on Yumiko and her family soon, but first, I'm going to give you a bit more information about Rabbits.
The number of players or candidates that participate in the game is thought to be relatively small, but they do come from all over the world. There are rumored to be a handful of spectators who do their best to track the game as it unfolds, trying to locate the entry points, betting on, or simply cheering for, their favorite players on members only pop-up deep web forums.
With players and spectators from all over the world, you'd think there'd be more information available on Rabbits online, or in books, or in popular culture, right? Well, there isn't, not really. There's almost nothing. And that's because, after the game ends, all evidence of that version of the game is allegedly wiped clean by the people or entity in charge. There is little or no evidence of VIII, the version of Rabbits that reportedly ended in 2007. In fact, the amount of material available on Rabbits in general is almost nonexistent. Perhaps things will change with IX taking place so much later in the global information age. It's hard to imagine any organization, no matter how powerful or well-connected, keeping something as sensational as Rabbits off the internet today.
To help explain a bit more about Rabbits, I'm going to play you a recording. It's famous among players. It's something known as the Prescott Competition Manifesto, or PCM.
Dr. Abigail Prescott supposedly worked under both Stanford's Robert Wilson, a professor whose main area of interest is game theory as it pertains to economics, and quantum physicist Ronald E. Meyers. Nobody has been able to dig up anything of any real value on Prescott. It's generally conceded among Rabbits players that Abigail Prescott is a pseudonym.
It took me forever to dig up a copy of the infamous recording. In the rare instance that the Prescott Competition Manifesto is posted to a torrent site, it's removed faster than the big movie and music studios pull down their copyrighted works. I'm not what you'd call a hacker by any means, but I do know my way around a Tor browser. I found this segment of the PCM on the dark net. It's not much, but this common clip is allegedly the best source of information available on the game. I'm going to play that clip for you now.
PRESCOTT: ...is aligned with the fluid nature of the participation. The level of secrecy is concerning, as are the number of candidates. It's chaos. From the trail heads, to the first marker, no algorithm can track the logic. There's a place inside all of us that longs to find out what's running behind the scenes. What's working, what's holding all of the elements together.
I've heard the underlying condition of the game described metaphorically as a kind of fluid, like the cytoplasm or protoplasm of the cells, and alternatively as a meniscus of thought, a layer of waves. But most believe those descriptions are trying to describe something that's not...
It had been dormant for a very long time when the first clues showed up in 1959. It was something in the Washington Post: a letter to the editor, and the lyrics of a song by the Everly Brothers, when combined, provided the first indication that the game had returned. It was a student at Oxford who put everything together and brought her professor into the thought matrix at Cambridge.
This is where the name "Rabbits" was first used, in reference to a stamp containing rabbits on a clue pinned to a laundromat in Seattle in 1959. Rabbits wasn't the name of that specific iteration of the game, just like it's not the name of this one, the game we're calling "VIII." As far as any of us can tell, the games themselves, at least the games in this modern variation, don't actually have names. They're numbered by the community of players. This is number eight.
The modern game has been played seven other times. The winners of the first seven games are listed in order in "the Circle." These numbers appear to be... The number of iterations in the modern game does not appear to be in question. There does seem to be some question about possible remuneration and when and where each iteration of the game began. It's a lively debate. Did Californiac have money before he won the version of the game known as VI? Is the game a recruiting device for the CIA or MI6? This is the most popular rumor concerning the end of Rabbits. But no one knows for sure. Nobody has been able to dig up the real identities of any of the winners.
There are three things we know for sure: The game has been going on... We have no idea how many centuries or what the pre-1959 versions of the game may have looked... This is the eighth cycle of the modern version... And, since that time, people have referred to the game as, "Rabbits." There are rumors connected to Rabbits as we'll... rumors involving players dying, and going insane. The intricate web of conspiracy and secrecy surrounding the game over the years has lead to an almost complete inability to track evidence or locate players after the fact. The dearth of information available about the game and its participants does nothing but add to the intrigue and interest in Rabbits. ...should be warned. We have reason to believe that the reports of both physical and mental jeopardy have been, in fact, under-reported, and
...here are the guidelines, or rules, as they were allegedly posted in that laundromat in Seattle in 1959 under the title, "Manifesto," above a hand-stamped graphic of a rabbit. The rules weren't numbered, only listed. They read as follows:
You play, you never tell
Find the doors, portals, points, and well
You play, you never tell
Step through the gates of life and hell
You play, you never tell
The wardens watch, and guard us well
You play, and pray you never tell
CARLY: (voiceover) So, it's hard to get more sinister than that, but I might be able to do it. You see, there is another force at work behind the scenes of the game: a kind of deadly security force, allegedly.
One rhyme written on a wall in Istanbul in red spray paint sometime around 1995 expresses the tone of the matter fairly succinctly:
"Pray you never meet a Warden's eyes
"Or with such takers fraternize
"For once they see you, recognize
"Your game is up; your world, it dies"
Dramatic, I know. There's another paragraph on the Wardens that was discovered written on the back of a Dewey decimal card taken from an old set of library card catalog drawers found in a thrift store in Scotland. This description was brief, part of a clue in the game, apparently from version VII.
"You'll see the Warden's only once. You'll see them if you tell anyone about the game. You'll see them if you betray the spirit of the game. You'll see the Wardens only once."
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So, that's the game. Rabbits. A strange, rare, alternate reality game that may or may not exist with scary keepers of its secrets, and who knows what else, known as Wardens, with unclear prizes for participation and unclear but sinister-sounding punishments for betraying the spirit of the game. This might explain why my best friend never mentioned she was playing it, or looking into it, or whatever it was she was doing at the time of her disappearance.
Although this type of story is exactly the kind of thing I've been dying to sink my teeth into since we'd decided to relaunch the Public Radio Alliance, there was no time for me to methodically dig into and appreciate the mystery of Rabbits. My needs were more immediate. I needed to find my friend.
Just about a month after Yumiko disappeared, I began to suspect that she'd been playing Rabbits. I believe she'd stumbled on to the potentially dangerous alternate reality game while working on part of her book, a section about an increase in people dying while playing games. I told all of this to the police. They told me that they'd look into it, but it became clear, very quickly, that they didn't believe anything I was saying. So, I started my own investigation.
I'd been preoccupied with some dramatic changes in my life at the time of Yumiko's disappearance, and I hadn't been spending much time with Yumiko, or any of my friends. The relaunch of the Public Radio Alliance and a brand new romantic relationship had been taking up all of my time. I had been working ridiculous hours and when I wasn't working, I was spending time with my boyfriend, who has since become my ex-boyfriend, in no small part because of my focus on, or, what my ex referred to as, my obsession with, uncovering what had happened to Yumiko.
HARPER: This is for one of your radio stories?
CARLY: A podcast, yeah.
HARPER: Do you know Ira Glass?
CARLY: You know I don't.
HARPER: You know Nic Silver and Roman Mars.
CARLY: I don't know Roman Mars.
HARPER: ...Roman Coppola?
CARLY: (voiceover) That's Harper Billings. Harper and Miko actually dated each other's brothers for a long time, which was weird, but that's a whole other podcast. Oh, and sometimes you'll hear me, or other people who know her refer to Yumiko as "Miko" for short.
CARLY: When was the last time you saw Yumiko?
HARPER: I'm glad you're doing another radio story. You were a lot happier when you were doing radio.
CARLY: So... Yumiko?
HARPER: I think it was... a Saturday? 'Cause there was that - oh. No, wait, we were gonna watch Game of Thrones.
CARLY: So, Sunday then.
HARPER: Yeah... it was - I think it was a Sunday. Yes. Yeah.
CARLY: Well, how did she seem when you spoke with her?
HARPER: She seemed kinda out of it.
CARLY: What do you mean?
HARPER: Well, she kept looking around, checking her phone. We sat down on the bed and her knee was jumping up and down like crazy, like she drank a dozen Red Bulls or something.
CARLY: Why do you think she was nervous? Did she say anything?
HARPER: Not that I can remember. She did borrow my Natural History Museum membership, which was weird.
CARLY: Did she tell you why she wanted to go to the museum?
HARPER: Maybe she wanted to see a specific display or something? Sorry, I can't remember. I'd just broken up with Carter that morning, so...
CARLY: Right. Of course.
HARPER: Yeah.
CARLY: And you told the police? About the museum?
HARPER: Yeah, of course.
CARLY: They check it out?
HARPER: I assume so, but they didn't really keep me in the loop.
CARLY: Right. Thanks, Harper.
HARPER: You take care of yourself, Carly Parker.
CARLY: Wait.
HARPER: Yeah?
CARLY: Um, do you know if Adam and Marco are staying in their place in Birch Bay?
HARPER: I think they have tenants right now. What's up? You and Adam, like, talk all the time. Don't you?
CARLY: Well it - well, it's harder for him to talk about her as more time passes.
HARPER: Right.
CARLY: He's starting to lose it a bit, I think.
HARPER: Poor Adam.
CARLY: Yeah.
HARPER: So, you gonna go up there to see him?
CARLY: I think so... Well, I'd like to take a look at Miko's computer.
HARPER: You think Adam has it?
CARLY: He's her brother.
HARPER: You don't think her parents took her stuff?
CARLY: I doubt it. They were a mess. Still are a mess. Adam really took the lead on everything.
HARPER: [A pause] Tell him I say hi.
CARLY: Sure. Will do.
HARPER: Good luck.
CARLY: Thanks.
CARLY: (voiceover) Adam is Yumiko's younger brother. He's married to a really nice guy named Marco. I had a Jane Austin moment and knew that I just had to introduce them. They have great parties to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and Summer Solstice. Yumiko and I had the time of our lives at her brother's Midsummer's Eve party last year. It was, as Harper would say, epic. Understandably, Adam hasn't taken his sister's disappearance and prolonged absence very well.
It turns out he did have Yumiko's computer. He gave it to the police the night she disappeared, and when they gave it back, her hard drive had been erased, or was broken, or something. They said that it had been working fine when it left their evidence locker, but that they were unable to find any leads or emails that appeared related to her disappearance. Adam filed an inquiry, but there was no way to prove that the computer had been damaged by the police. I asked Adam if the police had given him anything at all. He told me that the detectives checked the cloud, and it looks like Yumiko, or somebody, deleted most of her accounts.
Adam gave me Yumiko's password and login information that he got from the police. I logged into Yumiko's account, using my computer, and was able to find something on a legacy Dropbox alternative: an application Yumiko asked me to sign up for because the developer was a friend of hers. It was similar to Dropbox, but nowhere near as popular. I logged in, and I found something right away.
It was a PDF, what appeared to be a scanned page from a notebook of some kind. I'll upload it to the notes section of our website. Adam told me later that the police had found the PDF as well, but ignored it because it was extremely cryptic, and easy to dismiss as nonsense. The file was titled, "Notes on Hazel." At the top of the page, in capital letters, the word, "HAZEL." Underneath it, in point form, a few other short bits. I'll read them in order.
First, "Is the game responsible for E's death?" Two, "Hazel is most likely female," then in brackets, "per 4chan and the Oxford kid." Three, "Hazel almost won VIII, then just dropped off the map." Four, "H" - I'm assuming H for Hazel - "was the expert on VII, and pretty much anything R related." I'm assuming R means Rabbits, and the numbers VII and VIII, written in roman numerals, refer to the previous two iterations of the game.
That's it, other than a strange sentence at the bottom of the page. A question: "Did Hazel know Byron Price?"
I have no idea who E might be, but Hazel was, or is, allegedly, some kind of legendary Rabbits player, who inexplicably stopped playing just before he or she was about to win the previous version of Rabbits, the version known as VIII. I've been unable to dig up much of anything else on Hazel, but I'm still looking.
Who was Byron Price? Well, I had a lot more luck there.
Byron Price was a publisher. In 1982, he published a book called The Secret, a puzzle book, that, when the puzzles were solved, yielded real-world treasure. Price traveled to twelve unique locations in North America and buried twelve ceramic casks, each of which contained a small key that treasure hunters would trade for one of twelve jewels. So, how were you supposed to find these hidden ceramic casks? Well, you had to match one of twelve paintings to one of twelve verses, solve the resulting riddle, and then dig up the treasure. Simple enough, right? Well, apparently Price was convinced that his puzzles weren't nearly difficult enough. He indicated that he believed he'd be giving away all ten [sic] jewels within a week or two. He was a little off with his prediction. In reality, only two of the twelve casks were ever discovered. The first, which had been buried in Grant Park, Chicago, was unearthed in 1983 by a group of students. The second wasn't pulled out of the ground until 2004 by two members of an online search forum dedicated to real world treasure hunting.
I called to speak with Byron Price to ask why his name might be on a list with Hazel, but it turns out Byron Price had been killed in a car accident in 2005. He died leaving no word or clues as to where the remaining ten casks might be hidden. Today, the search for Price's mysterious treasure continues. However, in numerous interviews, Price's widow has mentioned that the jewels, which were collectively valued at over $10,000, had been liquidated a long time ago. The only treasure anybody is going to find, if they manage to solve any of the remaining riddles, is a key in a ceramic cask, and, of course, the bragging rights.
The twelve images Price had commissioned for the book each represent a group of immigrants who came to North America from somewhere else. Each image is also linked to that particular month's birthstone, and birth flower. Each poem or verse describes where a cask is hidden, but, without knowing which poem goes with which image, it's very difficult.
I've been looking at this stuff for a while now, and it's both incredibly addicting and frustrating. I feel like there are so many different ways to connect each verse, stone, immigrant country of origin, and flower. I mean, this stuff is nuts.
So what does it mean that Byron Price's name was mentioned in the same sentence as Hazel? Well, a series of basic internet searches revealed nothing. But a dark net search paid off a little better.
I discovered some text in a comment thread beneath a an image link that was, sadly, long dead. So, there was no image. But the comments were pretty interesting. The first of two comments was simply a one-word question. Somebody had posted the word "Hazel" with a question mark. This lead me to believe that the image may have been a picture of Hazel, a theory that was further supported, I think, by the second comment, which read: "Hazel working with B. Price on CD ROM."
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Byron Price was a visionary when it came to embracing new technology and books. He was one of the first to publish both CD ROM and ebooks. He actually won a Grammy in 1985 for his audiobook, The Words of Ghandi. I've been unable to contact his widow to confirm any interaction with someone named Hazel, or anything else for that matter, but I did manage to connect with somebody who had been working on a project with Price, just before his death. His name is Conrad Evans.
There's a picture of Evans standing with Price at a conference somewhere, wearing some kind of architectural blueprint-style jacket, and holding some large, space-age headphones. They look like a good team, the type of scientists you believe actually capable of discovering or inventing something really cool.
EVANS: Hi, is that Mrs. Parker?
CARLY: Uh, Miss Parker, but Carly works best. Thank you so much for returning my call.
EVANS: Oh, yeah, my pleasure.
CARLY: So, um, like I told you in my message, I'm looking into my friend's disappearance.
EVANS: Mm. Yeah, I'm sorry to- sorry to hear about that.
CARLY: Thanks. Thank you. Well, I don't have much to go on, so I'm digging pretty deep into everything.
EVANS: I understand.
CARLY: To that end, I found something about Byron Price and somebody named Hazel...?
EVANS: Hazel?
CARLY: Yes.
EVANS: Mm. Well, I don't remember any Hazel.
CARLY: I understand you were working together, with Byron, before his death?
EVANS: Yes. Yes. We were working on a series of spoken-word audiobooks and...
CARLY: And you don't remember him ever mentioning the name "Hazel."
EVANS: Oh, maybe, I don't know. I... yeah. I mean, it was a long time ago.
CARLY: Of course. Do you remember if he mentioned the word, "Rabbits?"
EVANS: Again, he could have... mentioned... something like that - Rabbits, or, or, Hazel... L- look, I don't wanna get too much into any of this stuff, okay? It's...
CARLY: Sure -
EVANS: ...they listen to us now, all the time.
CARLY: ...They?
EVANS: You know, satellites, NSA, CIA, the whole deal.
CARLY: Right. Sorry. Okay, so, just to confirm: no mention of "Hazel" or "Rabbits" that you can remember.
EVANS: No... no. Sorry.
CARLY: That's fine. If you think of anything else, anything at all about Byron or Hazel...
EVANS: Yeah, no, if I come up with anything I- I'll give you a call.
CARLY: Thank you.
EVANS: Oh, you're welcome.
CARLY: Kay, goodbye.
EVANS: Bye-bye.
CARLY: (voiceover) So, that was Conrad Evans. The stuff with Byron Price was interesting, but I wasn't any closer to finding the mysterious Hazel, or Yumiko. I went back to the studio to regroup.
I was researching Rabbits, version IX, when some kind of instant messenger chat bubble popped up. It was called "CatChat," and featured an 8-bit graphic of a smiling cat. The thing is, I didn't install this particular instant messenger app, and yet, somehow, here it was, running on my laptop.
It was from somebody calling themselves, "Concernicus Jones." They typed a message, and then sent a photo. The text read, "Is she who you think?" The image was a half-naked young woman. Her face was cut off. She's wearing a man's dress shirt and suggestively lifting it to reveal the bottom of her bum. She was facing a large window with sheer curtains, probably a hotel room. It could have been Yumiko. The complexion looked like a match, but I couldn't tell for sure. So, I did what any modern investigative journalist would do with a photo: I reverse image searched it on Google, and got a hit. It appeared on an escorts website, and there were more photos. There were four photos in total, the one near the curtains with the bum, one suggestive cleavage shot - the woman was pushing her breasts together, wearing the same shirt, another photo - the woman facing away from the camera on a chair, turned back toward the camera, her face cut off again; she's topless with a kind of hand bra, her right hand wrapped around her left breast. But it was the last photo that was the most revealing.
The young woman was lying on a bed, a beautiful bed, probably in the same high-end hotel suite as the picture by the window. She was framed so her feet, legs, and thighs were the focus of attention. My eyes were immediately drawn to her right thigh. You could see the bottom half of a tattoo there. Only half of it was visible, so you most likely wouldn't have known what it said, unless you'd seen it before. It was a phrase, in cursive lettering, that read, "Love is the every only god." It was a quote from an e.e. cummings poem. The woman on the bed was Yumiko.
Next time, we're going to look into how Yumiko, and so many others, were pulled into the game. It's Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until next time, stay safe.
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