CARLY: (voiceover) When I left you last time, I was sitting on my bed, about to open one of the documents Jones had sent me, and Yumiko's computer suddenly turned on. I mentioned that I typed the word "Rabbits" into the password field, and that granted me access. This actually happened, my typing "Rabbits" and gaining access. But to be honest, "Rabbits" wasn't the first password I tried. I started with birthdays, and pets, and a few other things, but "Rabbits" eventually did it, which, well... it really freaked me out.
I took another look around my apartment to make sure I was alone before I examined what was in her computer. The fact that her password was "Rabbits" made everything feel... more mysterious, and sinister somehow - if that's possible.
So, what was on Yumiko's computer, and how did it turn on? Was it a timed activation? If so, shouldn't the police have figured that out? Had somebody been in my bedroom? Did someone switch computers in the evidence room, or hard drives? I had a lot of questions. But first thing's first. What was on Yumiko's computer?
It didn't take me long to find it. Her desktop was empty, aside from the little hard drive symbol. This was very unusual for Yumiko, a clean desktop. Her desktop had always been cluttered with dozens of icons, files, screen captures, and shortcuts. She was a digital mess. Yumiko, or somebody else, must have performed a clean operating install at some point. Her Downloads folder was empty, as were Documents, Movies, and Music folders. There were no applications that didn't come pre-installed with the OS, and there was nothing in the libraries or application support folders for those programs. There was nothing here. I was about to shut her computer down when I realized I'd forgotten to check her Photos folder, and that's where I found something. Just one photo. It was a photo of me.
The really surprising thing wasn't that there was a photo of me on Yumiko's computer. She was my best friend. No, the surprising thing was that this photo was impossible.
We were sitting in a Starbucks that had only existed at that location for a year. I was wearing a Redd Kross t-shirt. Redd Kross - Kross with a K; Google them. They're a band from the 90s and they're awesome. I was wearing a very specific Redd Kross t-shirt, a t-shirt that I hadn't seen in more than three years. I'd lost it in a laundromat while on vacation in Los Angeles, three years before the Starbucks Yumiko and I were sitting in had existed.
So what had happened to Yumiko's computer that the only thing on it was an impossible photograph? A photo that had been taken of me and her from somebody standing across the street? A photo of a scene I had no memory of? A photo of me wearing a t-shirt I'd lost years before that photo was taken?
I was getting into some deep water here, and, though I promised myself I wasn't going to rely on my producers, on the air at least, I didn't know where else to turn. Both Terry and Nic have a lot going on podcast-wise at the moment, but I needed to have some words with at least one like-minded individual.
[A phone ringing]
CARLY: (voiceover) That's Nic Silver. His cousin, Terry Miles, produces this show, and Nic helps out doing some mixing and editting when he can. If you don't know his work, check out Tanis and The Black Tapes. He knows his stuff. And some of the material he deals with on his podcasts can get... pretty... out there.
CARLY: (voiceover) I hung up with Nic and finally sat down and went over the second document Jones had sent me. The document he referred to as a speech of some kind. I'm going to read that document for you now. It's not very long.
"What does it mean to play a game? In fact, what is a game? The Germans describe a game as an activity for pleasure, without conscious purpose. Wikipedia's entry reads as follows: 'A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration; and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic, or ideological, elements.' All of that sounds accurate, but, to me, incomplete.
"The world changes quickly these days. So quickly, in fact, that it's unclear to some cultural anthropologists if human beings actually have the capacity to adapt at this pace. In the very recent past, if we saw a Great White Shark in real life, we were in danger. It was almost certainly an intense, life-altering encounter. Now, we have Shark Week. The images that dance across our screens would probably give any one of our ancestors a coronary. But, have we evolved enough to handle this kind of input? On the surface, we appear to be fine: television, internet, multitasking on multiple screens, but what's going on beneath the surface? Is there something happening there? Is our, for lack of a better term, operating system capable of parsing all of this input? Are these images and sounds moving toward and through us at such an alarming rate harming us in ways that have yet to be uncovered?
How is virtual reality going to change our lives? It might start with games and gamers, but that technology is going to end up on our faces, in our brains, and, eventually, in our blood. We won't be escaping or pausing our lives to play games; the games will be an integrated part of everyday life. I imagine a world, in the very near future, where the amount of income generated by playing these games will overtake every other industry. This opens a Pandora's box of global currency concerns, privacy issues, and the mental and physical well-being of the human race. It's certainly an interesting time to be alive."
Near the bottom of the document, in messy handwriting, somebody had added a short paragraph.
It reads: "R not virtual reality, more like concurrent reality. Not new? History examples? Knights Templar, Terracotta Army, Skulls. Also, Whitby Abbey, Sandy Island, Meechum Radiants, Super Sargasso Sea?" Then, at the end of the paragraph, a name: "H Marigold."
So, that was the speech. It sounded a bit like Dr. Prescott in her manifesto; at least, it sounds like whoever had written the speech, or whatever it was, existed or exists in the same philosophical world as Dr. Prescott, with perhaps a bit more of a darker William Gibson-esque undertone.
I wanted to know what all of this meant, so I typed a question mark into the CatChat application and waited. Forty-five minutes later, my phone rang.
[Advertising break]
CARLY: (voiceover) So, Jones was forcing me to Nancy Drew this thing all by myself. Again. I took that second document apart line by line. It definitely seemed like H Marigold was the most important clue, the name that should lead to additional information, but I couldn't find a thing. So I started looking up individual phrases containing the name Marigold. I pulled out all the words from that speech, but still, I was unable to dig up anything. Then I tried something completely different. What if it wasn't an H? What if it was the Roman numeral "II" followed by the name Marigold? The bridge in the middle of the H was faded, lighter. Looking closer, it may have even been a flaw in the paper, or something like a hair, or debris that was on the scanner bed. Suddenly all I could see was the Roman numeral II. What if it was a reference to the second iteration of Rabbits? I started searching for details on the second version of the game. After about two hours on the deep web, I got a hit. It wasn't much, but it was something.
It was an article from the Seattle Daily Times, about the municipal government shutting down a pirate radio station called Marigold, that had been illegally broadcasting popular music in the Seattle area for two years. The music was only half the story. Along with the records, Marigold broadcast a kind of... confessional-style talk radio. The article was dated February 29, 1965.
The first thing that's odd about the article is the date. February 29, 1965. February 29 happens once every four years. The problem is, 1965 is not a leap year. Could it have been from 1964 which was a leap year? Just some kind of misprint? It had to be. It was either that, or somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to create a fake newspaper article. Those are the only two explanations that make any sense.
So, pirate radio. Turns out there's a long and rich history of independent radio worldwide. I was gonna need some help parsing all of this information. There's a lot of it out there. Thankfully, I had a starting point: Marigold.
I got in touch with a short-wave radio forum moderator named Max who was willing to chat with me on Skype about all things pirate radio.
[Phone ringing]
CARLY: (voiceover) There were hours of recordings on that deep web site. A lot more than just Marigold's talk radio stuff. She may have been the eponymous DJ who's name became synonymous with the station, but there was all kinds of strange audio on there, from weird local commercials to community calendar event-type stuff. There was a great deal of noise and static on most of the recordings, and you can occasionally hear whoever is recording it get up and move around the room. But it's easy to get a sense of what listening to that station might have been like during the period when it was broadcasting live. It sounds like a precursor to some of the more... out-there college radio stations I've listened to over the years, particularly the stuff that would end up on the air really late at night, when I was supposed to be studying.
I'm going to play a clip for you now. The deep website has them numbered and time coded. This is Marigold speaking with a caller from tape #19, time code sixteen minutes, fifty-five seconds.
CARLY: (voiceover) You can hear why I chose that particular recording. I've been through about a third of that audio, but so far, Persephone's mention of a game is the only reference that feels relevant to my investigation. I'll keep you posted if I uncover anything else from the pirate radio station known as Marigold.
I contacted Jones and asked him if he'd uncovered anything on his end. He wasn't very forthcoming. I felt like he was being a bit dismissive, in fact, and I let him know it.
CARLY: (voiceover) Five minutes later, Jones sent me scanned copies of my parents' death certificates.
[Advertising break]
CARLY: (voiceover) My parents' died on Valentine's Day, 2007. I was eighteen. The ferry that capsized was relatively new, and by all reports, mechanically sound. It was human error, they said. I saw it on TV: divers pulling bodies from the ocean. It was horrible.
Now, the fact that Jones had sent me copies of my parents' death certificates was weird, really weird. And I immediately tried calling and sending messages through the CatChat application to tell him what I thought of his sick joke. But there was no response. I have my own copies of those certificates, along with a copy of my brother's death certificate in a pile of documents somewhere. I have a lot of grim paperwork.
My parents died while on vacation, celebrating their thirty-third wedding anniversary. My brother jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1999. I lived with my aunt for two years after my parents died. After that, I was on my own.
I didn't notice anything different about the copies of my parents' death certificates that Jones sent, but I dug up my copies anyway, to double check. They appeared to be identical, except for the date. The certificates Jones sent over listed my parents' deaths as having occurred on January 3 of that year: over a full month earlier.
Just before I was about to throw them away, I noticed another difference: the cause of death was drowning, on both documents. There was water in their lungs, of course. But the death certificates Jones sent over were different. They stated that not only did my parents die more than a month earlier, but that their lungs had been filled with fresh water, not salt. My parents had drowned in the Pacific Ocean.
I had no idea what to make of this. So I messaged Jones. This time, he responded.
CARLY: (voiceover) I was obviously shocked by the fact that a stranger had just sent me an alternate copy of my parents' death certificates, and I was definitely going to look into anything and everything surrounding those documents, which I still suspected had to be fake. But right now, I'm going to speak with my friend and former boss Nic Silver. It turns out he found something interesting something about the photograph I'd asked him to look into earlier.
CARLY: (voiceover) What you didn't hear in that interview clip was the first five minutes, when Nic tried to talk me out of investigating Yumiko's disappearance on my own. He'd spoken with his hacker friend and he was worried about a computer coming to life out of nowhere with nothing on it but a strange surveillance-type photograph of me and my friend.
Nic suggested that maybe somebody had broken into my apartment and messed with Yumiko's computer, but I wasn't sure. I'd tried to turn it on when I'd got it from her brother, but it wouldn't boot up. I suspect that whoever messed around with Yumiko's computer somehow did it remotely. I wasn't prepared to even consider the fact that somebody had broken into my apartment while I was sleeping. If I started thinking like that, I'd never be able to sleep again.
So, what weird pictures were hidden in that jpeg? It was a jigsaw puzzle; dozens of pieces that, when combined, resulted in a version of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," which, interestingly, or coincidentally, is my favorite painting. In the world. Ever. There didn't appear to be anything overtly strange about the image, upon first glance, but you'll notice that I used the phrase, "a version of Andrew Wyeth's 'Christina's World.'" Well, that's because there was something... off... with the painting.
Like I mentioned, "Christina's World" is my favorite painting. I've taken two trips to New York just to visit it in the Museum of Modern Art. I've had posters of it on my wall since middle school. I have a framed print in my bathroom and there's a huge fake canvas version in my storage locker. So the point I'm trying to make is that I'm intimately familiar with this painting. That's why something didn't feel right. It was a small thing - very small. I had to double check, but it was different. There were three windows on the top floor of the farm house, instead of two. Somebody who wasn't familiar with the painting probably wouldn't notice, but I saw it right away. The painting was a fake - an amazing fake, but fake. Which begs the question: why? Why would somebody send me jigsaw pieces of a photo of a fake painting hidden within an impossible photo of myself and Yumiko? Things were getting... weirder, and weirder.
I was just sitting there, staring at my computer screen, when I received two text messages, both from the first number Jones used to get in touch with me. The first message was an image: a photo of a young woman, a brunette, from behind. She was staring at a painting on the wall of a nice house. The painting was "Christina's World." But, it was the version of "Christina's World" that had been hidden in the photo I found on Yumiko's computer. There were three windows on the top floor of the house. The second text was a time and an address. The address was ten minutes away, the time was fifteen minutes from now. I grabbed my coat. I was off to meet Jones.
[The sound of footsteps, leading away]
CARLY: (voiceover) Okay, so I'm sure you're wondering what the hell happened. Well, it was pretty... crazy. I'm gonna lay it all out for you, in detail, next time.
It's Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, stay safe.
I took another look around my apartment to make sure I was alone before I examined what was in her computer. The fact that her password was "Rabbits" made everything feel... more mysterious, and sinister somehow - if that's possible.
So, what was on Yumiko's computer, and how did it turn on? Was it a timed activation? If so, shouldn't the police have figured that out? Had somebody been in my bedroom? Did someone switch computers in the evidence room, or hard drives? I had a lot of questions. But first thing's first. What was on Yumiko's computer?
It didn't take me long to find it. Her desktop was empty, aside from the little hard drive symbol. This was very unusual for Yumiko, a clean desktop. Her desktop had always been cluttered with dozens of icons, files, screen captures, and shortcuts. She was a digital mess. Yumiko, or somebody else, must have performed a clean operating install at some point. Her Downloads folder was empty, as were Documents, Movies, and Music folders. There were no applications that didn't come pre-installed with the OS, and there was nothing in the libraries or application support folders for those programs. There was nothing here. I was about to shut her computer down when I realized I'd forgotten to check her Photos folder, and that's where I found something. Just one photo. It was a photo of me.
The really surprising thing wasn't that there was a photo of me on Yumiko's computer. She was my best friend. No, the surprising thing was that this photo was impossible.
We were sitting in a Starbucks that had only existed at that location for a year. I was wearing a Redd Kross t-shirt. Redd Kross - Kross with a K; Google them. They're a band from the 90s and they're awesome. I was wearing a very specific Redd Kross t-shirt, a t-shirt that I hadn't seen in more than three years. I'd lost it in a laundromat while on vacation in Los Angeles, three years before the Starbucks Yumiko and I were sitting in had existed.
So what had happened to Yumiko's computer that the only thing on it was an impossible photograph? A photo that had been taken of me and her from somebody standing across the street? A photo of a scene I had no memory of? A photo of me wearing a t-shirt I'd lost years before that photo was taken?
I was getting into some deep water here, and, though I promised myself I wasn't going to rely on my producers, on the air at least, I didn't know where else to turn. Both Terry and Nic have a lot going on podcast-wise at the moment, but I needed to have some words with at least one like-minded individual.
[A phone ringing]
NIC: Hello?
CARLY: Hey, it's Carly. Is this a good time?
NIC: It's great, what's up?
CARLY: (voiceover) That's Nic Silver. His cousin, Terry Miles, produces this show, and Nic helps out doing some mixing and editting when he can. If you don't know his work, check out Tanis and The Black Tapes. He knows his stuff. And some of the material he deals with on his podcasts can get... pretty... out there.
CARLY: I was just wondering if you'd be willing to forward the contact information for your hacker friend on Tanis?
NIC: Um, she prefers the term "information specialist."
CARLY: Right. Of course. Sorry.
NIC: Yeah, I - I would, but she's made it pretty clear that she's a one-podcast operation.
CARLY: Right.
NIC: We tried to get her for other shows, but no luck. Sorry.
CARLY: Well, listen - no, it's okay, but, I found a photograph of me on Yumiko's computer.
NIC: Okay, that's not... that odd, I mean, she's your best friend, right?
CARLY: Right. Except that neither one of us took the photo. And I'm wearing a t-shirt that I lost three years before that photo even could have been taken.
NIC: Okay... Wow, so, how did this picture end up on Yumiko's computer?
CARLY: Exactly.
NIC: Uh - okay, if you send me the photograph I'll see what I can do.
CARLY: Thanks. I really appreciate it.
NIC: Okay. No promises.
CARLY: Yeah, I get it.
NIC: Hey, Carly?
CARLY: Yeah?
NIC: Be careful.
CARLY: I will.
NIC: Okay.
CARLY: Okay. Bye, Nic.
NIC: Okay, bye.
CARLY: Bye.
CARLY: (voiceover) I hung up with Nic and finally sat down and went over the second document Jones had sent me. The document he referred to as a speech of some kind. I'm going to read that document for you now. It's not very long.
"What does it mean to play a game? In fact, what is a game? The Germans describe a game as an activity for pleasure, without conscious purpose. Wikipedia's entry reads as follows: 'A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration; and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic, or ideological, elements.' All of that sounds accurate, but, to me, incomplete.
"The world changes quickly these days. So quickly, in fact, that it's unclear to some cultural anthropologists if human beings actually have the capacity to adapt at this pace. In the very recent past, if we saw a Great White Shark in real life, we were in danger. It was almost certainly an intense, life-altering encounter. Now, we have Shark Week. The images that dance across our screens would probably give any one of our ancestors a coronary. But, have we evolved enough to handle this kind of input? On the surface, we appear to be fine: television, internet, multitasking on multiple screens, but what's going on beneath the surface? Is there something happening there? Is our, for lack of a better term, operating system capable of parsing all of this input? Are these images and sounds moving toward and through us at such an alarming rate harming us in ways that have yet to be uncovered?
How is virtual reality going to change our lives? It might start with games and gamers, but that technology is going to end up on our faces, in our brains, and, eventually, in our blood. We won't be escaping or pausing our lives to play games; the games will be an integrated part of everyday life. I imagine a world, in the very near future, where the amount of income generated by playing these games will overtake every other industry. This opens a Pandora's box of global currency concerns, privacy issues, and the mental and physical well-being of the human race. It's certainly an interesting time to be alive."
Near the bottom of the document, in messy handwriting, somebody had added a short paragraph.
It reads: "R not virtual reality, more like concurrent reality. Not new? History examples? Knights Templar, Terracotta Army, Skulls. Also, Whitby Abbey, Sandy Island, Meechum Radiants, Super Sargasso Sea?" Then, at the end of the paragraph, a name: "H Marigold."
So, that was the speech. It sounded a bit like Dr. Prescott in her manifesto; at least, it sounds like whoever had written the speech, or whatever it was, existed or exists in the same philosophical world as Dr. Prescott, with perhaps a bit more of a darker William Gibson-esque undertone.
I wanted to know what all of this meant, so I typed a question mark into the CatChat application and waited. Forty-five minutes later, my phone rang.
[Advertising break]
CARLY: Hello?
JONES: I just got your message.
CARLY: Thanks for calling.
JONES: What is it?
CARLY: I looked over the research document, or speech, or whatever it is that you sent.
JONES: Yeah, what did you think?
CARLY: It was interesting. And more than a little ominous.
JONES: It's a warning.
CARLY: Yeah, I get that. It's got a real, "Electronics are the new opiates of the masses," thing going on.
JONES: That's very astute.
CARLY: Thanks.
JONES: Anything else?
CARLY: The Knights Templar? The skulls? All that's missing are the Bermuda Triangle and the Illuminati.
JONES: What about "H Marigold?"
CARLY: I couldn't find anything specific; a guy named Howard in Wyoming, no connection; a woman in Virginia, also no connection. There was also a photo of some kind of ugly vase, called "Marigold" something. [A pause] What do you know about H Marigold?
JONES: I'm still working on it. Did anything else in either document trigger... anything? Like, anything at all.
CARLY: Not really.
JONES: Did you do any further digging into friend Yumiko's... extracurricular activities? [A pause] If you're not interested in working together, I'm totally fine with that, but I'd like to know now, before I waste any more time, okay?
CARLY: I'm - no. I'm totally... I'd like to work together. For sure. It's just...
JONES: I'm hanging up.
CARLY: "How many steps to the lighthouse?"
JONES: [A long pause] What?
CARLY: I found a guy, a john, I guess you'd call him, through an escort. A client Miko - Yumiko had also... dated.
JONES: Well, okay. He saw your friend, this... john?
CARLY: They didn't have sex.
JONES: Okay.
CARLY: For real.
JONES: I believe you.
CARLY: Okay.
JONES: You said something about a lighthouse?
CARLY: He said Yumiko asked him if he knew, "How many steps to the lighthouse."
JONES: And when he couldn't answer her question, she left.
CARLY: That's what he told me.
JONES: That's interesting.
CARLY: What does it mean?
JONES: I'm not sure, but it's a start.
CARLY: You said earlier that Yumiko was playing a part in the game, not simply playing the game. What did you mean by that? [A pause] Yumiko would never meet some dude and ask him a weird question like that.
JONES: Are you sure?
CARLY: Yes.
JONES: You didn't know she'd taken those photos, posted them online.
CARLY: Yumiko's not a hooker.
JONES: Okay.
CARLY: She's not!
JONES: I told you, I believe you.
CARLY: "How many steps to the lighthouse," that whole exchange sounds like some kind of... game. Doesn't it?
JONES: Yes, it does.
CARLY: It's your turn.
JONES: My turn?
CARLY: I gave you something; information exchange. Quid pro quo.
JONES: What would you like to know?
CARLY: How did you know Yumiko was playing, or involved somehow, with Rabbits?
JONES: I didn't.
CARLY: So, why did you get in touch with me, send me that photo?
JONES: I was looking into something else, and your friend came up. I was worried something might happen.
CARLY: You knew she was in trouble.
JONES: No, I just... followed certain signs that ended up leading to her, but... by the time I figured out that she might be connected with everything, she disappeared.
CARLY: What kind of signs? [A pause] Hello?
JONES: Take another look for H Marigold.
CARLY: Okay, but can't you just tell me what I should be looking for?
JONES: It doesn't work like that.
CARLY: How does it work? [A pause] Hello?
CARLY: (voiceover) So, Jones was forcing me to Nancy Drew this thing all by myself. Again. I took that second document apart line by line. It definitely seemed like H Marigold was the most important clue, the name that should lead to additional information, but I couldn't find a thing. So I started looking up individual phrases containing the name Marigold. I pulled out all the words from that speech, but still, I was unable to dig up anything. Then I tried something completely different. What if it wasn't an H? What if it was the Roman numeral "II" followed by the name Marigold? The bridge in the middle of the H was faded, lighter. Looking closer, it may have even been a flaw in the paper, or something like a hair, or debris that was on the scanner bed. Suddenly all I could see was the Roman numeral II. What if it was a reference to the second iteration of Rabbits? I started searching for details on the second version of the game. After about two hours on the deep web, I got a hit. It wasn't much, but it was something.
It was an article from the Seattle Daily Times, about the municipal government shutting down a pirate radio station called Marigold, that had been illegally broadcasting popular music in the Seattle area for two years. The music was only half the story. Along with the records, Marigold broadcast a kind of... confessional-style talk radio. The article was dated February 29, 1965.
The first thing that's odd about the article is the date. February 29, 1965. February 29 happens once every four years. The problem is, 1965 is not a leap year. Could it have been from 1964 which was a leap year? Just some kind of misprint? It had to be. It was either that, or somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to create a fake newspaper article. Those are the only two explanations that make any sense.
So, pirate radio. Turns out there's a long and rich history of independent radio worldwide. I was gonna need some help parsing all of this information. There's a lot of it out there. Thankfully, I had a starting point: Marigold.
I got in touch with a short-wave radio forum moderator named Max who was willing to chat with me on Skype about all things pirate radio.
[Phone ringing]
MAX: Hello?
CARLY: Hi, Max! Can you see me?
MAX: Sure can! Hi!
CARLY: Hi!
MAX: I'm sorry, but I don't have a camera on my computer, it's pretty old.
CARLY: Oh, that's fine, we're audio only.
MAX: That's been my mantra pretty much my entire life.
CARLY: You've been into radio for a long time?
MAX: You could say that, definitely. I had my own station when I was in middle school. If I'm being honest, I have a station now, but I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about that.
CARLY: I understand. Do you know anything about a pirate radio station in the 60s called Marigold?
MAX: The station wasn't called Marigold.
CARLY: No?
MAX: No, she was just one of the jocks. Uh, disc jockey, sorry. She called herself Marigold.
CARLY: What can you tell me about her? Or the station?
MAX: Well, there's not much to tell. The station only last a couple years. You can listen to some recordings from that time, although they're quite rough; uh, it sounds like somebody put a portable cassette recorder up to the radio and pressed record, but you can make a lot of the stuff out. It's actually really neat. Do you know what a tor browser is?
CARLY: I do. Could you send me the link?
MAX: Sure. Some of that stuff is funny, gets a little crazy. My wife and I used to get high and listen way back in the day. Is it - is it okay if I say "get high" on your podcast?
CARLY: Sure.
MAX: Kay, well, I'll send you the URL. It's really great stuff.
CARLY: Well, thanks so much, Max.
MAX: You're welcome, take care.
CARLY: You too.
MAX: Bye!
CARLY: Bye-bye.
CARLY: (voiceover) There were hours of recordings on that deep web site. A lot more than just Marigold's talk radio stuff. She may have been the eponymous DJ who's name became synonymous with the station, but there was all kinds of strange audio on there, from weird local commercials to community calendar event-type stuff. There was a great deal of noise and static on most of the recordings, and you can occasionally hear whoever is recording it get up and move around the room. But it's easy to get a sense of what listening to that station might have been like during the period when it was broadcasting live. It sounds like a precursor to some of the more... out-there college radio stations I've listened to over the years, particularly the stuff that would end up on the air really late at night, when I was supposed to be studying.
I'm going to play a clip for you now. The deep website has them numbered and time coded. This is Marigold speaking with a caller from tape #19, time code sixteen minutes, fifty-five seconds.
MARIGOLD: It's Marigold; you're on the air. [A pause] Hello? Caller?
PERSEPHONE: Hi.
MARIGOLD: Hi! What should I call you?
PERSEPHONE: Persephone.
MARIGOLD: Mm, mysterious. I like it. What's on your mind, Persephone?
PERSEPHONE: The end of the world.
MARIGOLD: Well, I'm glad somebody's thinking about it so I don't have to. What is it about the end of the world?
PERSEPHONE: The sun is going to boil the earth.
MARIGOLD: Yes. But, I believe we still have a... couple of billion years before it happens.
PERSEPHONE: Time is an illusion.
MARIGOLD: Mm, that sounds poetic. Are you a romantic, Persephone?
PERSEPHONE: I dunno.
MARIGOLD: Persephone ruled the underworld with her husband, Hades, correct?
PERSEPHONE: She was abducted.
MARIGOLD: Right. I'm afraid I don't remember the myth exactly.
PERSEPHONE: I've been abducted. And I don't know how to get back.
MARIGOLD: Mm, Persephone, um, I'm afraid you're starting to scare me a little. Where are you now?
PERSEPHONE: They started following me, after I started playing the game.
MARIGOLD: What game? [A pause] Where are you now?
PERSEPHONE: I'm at home.
MARIGOLD: Then you're not lost.
PERSEPHONE: But... it's not home.
MARIGOLD: [A pause] Hello? Persephone? Hello?
CARLY: (voiceover) You can hear why I chose that particular recording. I've been through about a third of that audio, but so far, Persephone's mention of a game is the only reference that feels relevant to my investigation. I'll keep you posted if I uncover anything else from the pirate radio station known as Marigold.
I contacted Jones and asked him if he'd uncovered anything on his end. He wasn't very forthcoming. I felt like he was being a bit dismissive, in fact, and I let him know it.
CARLY: You can't just be willing to spill when it suits you and be all super-cryptic when it doesn't.
JONES: What do you mean?
CARLY: See? That right there. You know what I mean. I told you about the passenger pigeon and the hooker guy Yumiko asked about the steps and the lighthouse.
JONES: Only after I threatened to stop calling.
CARLY: You knew Marigold was connected to the second iteration of Rabbits, didn't you.
JONES: Yes.
CARLY: So why not tell me? Why force me to find the information on my own?
JONES: The type of world you're looking at entering is complex, dangerous, and very difficult to navigate.
CARLY: Okay, so, help me navigate it.
JONES: That's what I'm trying to do.
CARLY: By withholding information?
JONES: That's part of it, yes.
CARLY: That doesn't make any sense.
JONES: You're gonna need to be able to read between the lines, see things a certain way, follow certain... signs.
CARLY: I can follow signs.
JONES: Not if you don't know what you're looking for.
CARLY: So tell me.
JONES: And you'll share everything with me?
CARLY: Quid pro quo. [A pause] Jones?
JONES: Fine.
CARLY: (voiceover) Five minutes later, Jones sent me scanned copies of my parents' death certificates.
[Advertising break]
CARLY: (voiceover) My parents' died on Valentine's Day, 2007. I was eighteen. The ferry that capsized was relatively new, and by all reports, mechanically sound. It was human error, they said. I saw it on TV: divers pulling bodies from the ocean. It was horrible.
Now, the fact that Jones had sent me copies of my parents' death certificates was weird, really weird. And I immediately tried calling and sending messages through the CatChat application to tell him what I thought of his sick joke. But there was no response. I have my own copies of those certificates, along with a copy of my brother's death certificate in a pile of documents somewhere. I have a lot of grim paperwork.
My parents died while on vacation, celebrating their thirty-third wedding anniversary. My brother jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1999. I lived with my aunt for two years after my parents died. After that, I was on my own.
I didn't notice anything different about the copies of my parents' death certificates that Jones sent, but I dug up my copies anyway, to double check. They appeared to be identical, except for the date. The certificates Jones sent over listed my parents' deaths as having occurred on January 3 of that year: over a full month earlier.
Just before I was about to throw them away, I noticed another difference: the cause of death was drowning, on both documents. There was water in their lungs, of course. But the death certificates Jones sent over were different. They stated that not only did my parents die more than a month earlier, but that their lungs had been filled with fresh water, not salt. My parents had drowned in the Pacific Ocean.
I had no idea what to make of this. So I messaged Jones. This time, he responded.
CARLY: Why did you send me two fake versions of my parents' death certificates?
JONES: They're not fake.
CARLY: What are you talking about, of course they are.
JONES: You noticed the discrepancies.
CARLY: I did. They must be clerical errors.
JONES: They're not clerical errors.
CARLY: What makes you so sure?
JONES: I'm sure. Your parents were part of... something.
CARLY: What something?
JONES: I'm not sure. Yet. But it's been going on for a while.
CARLY: Do you know anything else about my parents that I should know about?
JONES: Not yet, but I wanted you to know. I wanted you to be... careful.
CARLY: If this... IX or Rabbits or whatever is so rare and secret, it seems a bit coincidental that both my parents and Yumiko were both involved. Doesn't it?
JONES: Maybe not.
CARLY: What do you mean?
JONES: The game attracts certain... types. Actually, requires certain types.
CARLY: What types?
JONES: The game attracts players. People who live to play games, people who, for one reason or another, feel more comfortable solving puzzles, playing video games, imagining complex, mysterious worlds than they do living in what most people consider the real world.
CARLY: "Most people consider the real world." Not you?
JONES: There's a world that exists below the surface. It's just that most of us are too busy or not engaged enough to see it.
CARLY: But the people playing Rabbits... they can see this... other world?
JONES: Some of them, yes.
CARLY: My parents didn't play games. I mean, I don't think they did. They weren't around very much.
JONES: It isn't just people interested in games who are... connected to Rabbits. There are other factors.
CARLY: Other factors like what?
JONES: Math. Biology, and theoretical physics, among other things.
CARLY: I don't know what to think about all this.
CARLY: (voiceover) I was obviously shocked by the fact that a stranger had just sent me an alternate copy of my parents' death certificates, and I was definitely going to look into anything and everything surrounding those documents, which I still suspected had to be fake. But right now, I'm going to speak with my friend and former boss Nic Silver. It turns out he found something interesting something about the photograph I'd asked him to look into earlier.
NIC: Hello?
CARLY: Nic; it's Carly.
NIC: Hey.
CARLY: Thanks so much for doing this.
NIC: It's kind of what I do.
CARLY: Yeah, I suppose it is. Um, uh, what did you find out about that photograph?
NIC: Well, first I found something else I thought you'd be interested in.
CARLY: What?
NIC: Alan Scarpio.
CARLY: The billionaire asshole recluse guy?
NIC: Yeah.
CARLY: What about him?
NIC: Well, there's a rumor out there that...
CARLY: Mmhmm...
NIC: There's a rumor that he won his fortune playing some kind of... weird underground game.
CARLY: I've never heard that rumor.
NIC: Yeah, it's kind of an underground thing.
CARLY: So how do you know about it?
NIC: I kinda have some underground friends.
CARLY: Right. Of course you do.
NIC: It was the 1980s so there's not that much out there in the way of information.
CARLY: Mmhmm...
NIC: My friend found something in a cached comment section on some subreddit.
CARLY: Right. Okay.
NIC: I mean, 1988 was a point in time when brash young millionaires could just suddenly appear on the radar.
CARLY: Well, anything else on Scarpio's relationship to the game?
NIC: That's all I got.
CARLY: And the picture?
NIC: Well, I found a few things, actually.
CARLY: What things?
NIC: There were some additional images hidden within the jpeg file itself. Which, on its own, isn't all that weird.
CARLY: Sounds kinda weird to me.
NIC: Wait until you've been doing this as long as I have.
CARLY: Right, Nic the Expert.
NIC: The weird thing about these images is the content.
CARLY: What do you mean? What are they?
NIC: It's going to be easy if I just email them to you.
CARLY: Okay. Thanks.
NIC: You're welcome. And... again... be careful, Carly? Please?
CARLY: I will, Nic. Don't worry.
NIC: Okay. Kay. Bye.
CARLY: Bye.
CARLY: (voiceover) What you didn't hear in that interview clip was the first five minutes, when Nic tried to talk me out of investigating Yumiko's disappearance on my own. He'd spoken with his hacker friend and he was worried about a computer coming to life out of nowhere with nothing on it but a strange surveillance-type photograph of me and my friend.
Nic suggested that maybe somebody had broken into my apartment and messed with Yumiko's computer, but I wasn't sure. I'd tried to turn it on when I'd got it from her brother, but it wouldn't boot up. I suspect that whoever messed around with Yumiko's computer somehow did it remotely. I wasn't prepared to even consider the fact that somebody had broken into my apartment while I was sleeping. If I started thinking like that, I'd never be able to sleep again.
So, what weird pictures were hidden in that jpeg? It was a jigsaw puzzle; dozens of pieces that, when combined, resulted in a version of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," which, interestingly, or coincidentally, is my favorite painting. In the world. Ever. There didn't appear to be anything overtly strange about the image, upon first glance, but you'll notice that I used the phrase, "a version of Andrew Wyeth's 'Christina's World.'" Well, that's because there was something... off... with the painting.
Like I mentioned, "Christina's World" is my favorite painting. I've taken two trips to New York just to visit it in the Museum of Modern Art. I've had posters of it on my wall since middle school. I have a framed print in my bathroom and there's a huge fake canvas version in my storage locker. So the point I'm trying to make is that I'm intimately familiar with this painting. That's why something didn't feel right. It was a small thing - very small. I had to double check, but it was different. There were three windows on the top floor of the farm house, instead of two. Somebody who wasn't familiar with the painting probably wouldn't notice, but I saw it right away. The painting was a fake - an amazing fake, but fake. Which begs the question: why? Why would somebody send me jigsaw pieces of a photo of a fake painting hidden within an impossible photo of myself and Yumiko? Things were getting... weirder, and weirder.
I was just sitting there, staring at my computer screen, when I received two text messages, both from the first number Jones used to get in touch with me. The first message was an image: a photo of a young woman, a brunette, from behind. She was staring at a painting on the wall of a nice house. The painting was "Christina's World." But, it was the version of "Christina's World" that had been hidden in the photo I found on Yumiko's computer. There were three windows on the top floor of the house. The second text was a time and an address. The address was ten minutes away, the time was fifteen minutes from now. I grabbed my coat. I was off to meet Jones.
CARLY: So, it's moderately busy. I can't see anyone in a black hoodie hiding behind a laptop covered in anarchy stickers, so... I guess he'll have to come to me. [Directed outward] What's going on? [Silence, followed by footsteps] What are you doing? Who are you?
JONES: You know who I am.
CARLY: Who are those people in grey? [A pause] Jones?
JONES: Yeah. Nice to meet you, now hurry up.
[The sound of footsteps, leading away]
CARLY: (voiceover) Okay, so I'm sure you're wondering what the hell happened. Well, it was pretty... crazy. I'm gonna lay it all out for you, in detail, next time.
It's Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, stay safe.
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