Episode 105: Priesthood One

MARIGOLD: It's Marigold; you're on the air. [A pause] Hello?
PERSEPHONE: Hello, Marigold.
MARIGOLD: Persephone?!
PERSEPHONE: Yes.
MARIGOLD: I'm glad you called back.
PERSEPHONE: I can't sleep.
MARIGOLD: Well, you're not alone out there. That's why I'm here.
PERSEPHONE: You believe you know why you're here?
MARIGOLD: Well, sure. As much as any of us can really know anything.
PERSEPHONE: You can't trust anything or anyone.
MARIGOLD: Well, that's not a great starting position for a conversation, Persephone.
PERSEPHONE: I'm sorry. I'm having a hard time.
MARIGOLD: What's going on?
PERSEPHONE: My brother wasn't in the picture.
MARIGOLD: I'm afraid that doesn't make much sense to me. Could you elaborate?
PERSEPHONE: We took a photo, at Sears, as a family when we were kids. My brother and I, and my parents. That picture sat next to our sofa for my entire life. This morning I visited my mother; she still lives in the house I grew up in.
MARIGOLD: That's nice.
PERSEPHONE: Yeah. It's great.
MARIGOLD: Please, let's try and stay positive, Persephone. I'd really like to help.
PERSEPHONE: If you really wanna help, it would really help if you could explain why my brother is no longer in that picture.
MARIGOLD: What do you mean? Did somebody cut him out?
PERSEPHONE: No. He's just not there. It's a picture of three people.
MARIGOLD: ...What are you saying?
PERSEPHONE: I'm saying that they erased my brother.
MARIGOLD: Who erased your brother?
PERSEPHONE: The people in grey.
MARIGOLD: Those... are the people you said who follow you around?
PERSEPHONE: Yes.
MARIGOLD: Persephone, you sound a little... troubled. Is there somebody you can call?
PERSEPHONE: I called you.
MARIGOLD: Is there anyone else, maybe a friend, or a family member?
PERSEPHONE: They erased my brother. And they're coming for me next.
MARIGOLD: That doesn't make any...

CARLY: (voiceover) That was a clip from the Marigold Recordings, from tape number twenty-three, time code eleven minutes, nine seconds.

For the past three days, I've been going through those recordings with Jones, trying to pick out anything that could be Rabbits-related. This clip stuck out. Not only because it's the same person who called in about some kind of game earlier, but also because of the discrepancy with her family photo, or, I suppose I should say, alleged discrepancy. It reminded me of the version of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World" Nic uncovered hidden in that JPEG, and the apparent discrepancy in my parents' death certificates. These things that seem to be just slightly... off? appear to be multiplying.

Jones was interested, but he didn't appear convinced, or even all that concerned.

JONES: It's easy to lose focus following things like this.
CARLY: Well, forgive me, but before I met you, things like this didn't happen.
JONES: I believe they did. You just weren't looking for them.
CARLY: That's not helping.
JONES: Okay. All I'm saying is that, alongside the genuine clues or events tied to the game are a lot of blind alleys and nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of those things are either fake or unimportant.
CARLY: That's very specific.
JONES: It's easy to become... you can become obsessed with this stuff, with certain, uh, discrepancies and lose sight of what you're really trying to do.
CARLY: I don't know what I'm trying to do.
JONES: You're trying to find out what happened to your friend, Yumiko.
CARLY: [sighing] Yes, I am, but if you don't mind, I have a couple more questions about my family. [A pause] Jones?
JONES: Go 'head.
CARLY: I need the name of the reporter who jumped in front of that train in Prague.
JONES: That didn't sound like a question.
CARLY: The name?
JONES: Did you not hear anything I just said? [A pause] What was that?
CARLY: I dunno, a cat?
JONES: Do you hear a lot of cats around here?
CARLY: No.
JONES: It sounded like a gate opening. Do you have a gate in the back yard?
CARLY: Yeah.

CARLY: (voiceover) It was a cat, a cute one. Black and white, mostly white with a little black patch over her eye. She's taken to spending most of her time in my back yard. And some of her time in my condo. I'm calling her Scout.

Jones was gone. He was relieved to see a cat, rather than a group of imposing grey figures. He said he'd be in touch, but that, for the time being, the further he was away from me physically, the safer I would be. I told him I wasn't worried. He told me that I should be.

Before he left, he also told me the name of the reporter who'd thrown herself in front of that train in Prague. Her name was Monica Morelli.

Outside of a brief note on a Czech website, I was unable to find much of anything about Monica Morelli, or her death. Not surprising, I suppose, given the nature of everything surrounding Rabbits so far. But still, I was convinced that there had to be something, somewhere.

I wasn't going to the Czech Republic any time soon, but I did have a friend from Slovakia who had been living in Prague. In the interest of full disclosure, he's kind of more of an ex-boyfriend friend.

CARLY: Hello? Andre?
ANDRE: Carly, how are you?
CARLY: I'm good, thanks. You got my emails?
ANDRE: Yeah, I did some digging. I even went to the library this morning.
CARLY: Good for you. Any luck?
ANDRE: You owe me dinner.
CARLY: Of course.
ANDRE: With wine.
CARLY: Yes...
ANDRE: Lots of wine. Good French wine.
CARLY: Okay, what did you find?
ANDRE: Monica Morelli was a freelancer who wrote under the name Thomas Miller. Apparently, she was strikingly beautiful, and had been having a hard time getting editors to take her seriously. She stopped interviewing in person and began posting assignments immediately. She was a great writer, actually.
CARLY: What did she write about?
ANDRE: Investigative stuff, social injustice, politics, more recently cults and medical experiments gone wrong. But she wrote in a very balanced way, never on a soapbox. She, uh, warned against the very real possibility of losing net neutrality before most of us had even heard the term. She was smart.
CARLY: What about the game?
ANDRE: Well, I wasn't able to find much that might be related to a game. But I sent you everything I could find.
CARLY: That's so much for doing this.
ANDRE: Dinner and wine, Carly Parker.
CARLY: Of course.
ANDRE: I'll be in Seattle in a few months.
CARLY: I'm looking forward to it.
ANDRE: Okay. Good luck with everything.
CARLY: Thanks.
ANDRE: Goodbye.
CARLY: Bye.

CARLY: (voiceover) Andre sent me everything he was able to dig up on Monica Morelli. It amounted to five documents. The first three appeared to be unrelated. There was an article on political unrest in Turkey, a travel piece about her time spent in India as a teenager, and a first-person account of a trip she made to the Indianapolis 500 speedway with her father. If those articles were related to Rabbits somehow, I was unable to find the connection.

The final two documents were more interesting. The first was a photograph of a large, brick building with one word, followed by a question mark scrawled beneath it in thick black felt pen: "Gatewick?" The other document was a four-page printout from an online gaming forum discussion of a game called Might & Magic 7: For Blood and Honor. It was a Windows-based game that had been released in January of 1999. Monica Morelli had joined the gaming forum using her regular email address.

I wasn't able to find anything on the Gatewick building, but the online gaming forum print-out was very interesting. It looks like Morelli had become obsessed with the game. Her description of that obsession on the forum sounded eerily similar to what had happened to Yumiko while watching that creepy video. Monica didn't move from her computer for two days.

She said in her forum post that her boyfriend broke down her door because he thought something terrible had happened. But she was just sitting there. Playing the game. Later, she wrote that she was pregnant and was no longer willing to risk the game, so she was asking other players on the forum to try and track something she'd discovered. She wanted them to win the game in her honor. But it looks like she wasn't honest about quitting. At least, not then. She kept playing, for a little while longer.

In the game, she'd equipped her character with a longsword called "Mournblade," and with this sword, she had become invincible. She powered her way through the rest of the game, and after she'd finished, she was shown a graphic: two doors. The doors were imposed atop a dark image. The dark image was a computer-generated graphic of a painting. That painting was "Doglover in Hell." The message was simple: make your choice. She chose the door on the right. Just as she clicked her mouse on the image of the door on her monitor, her boyfriend entered, and, once again, caught her playing the game. She had once again lost time. Almost 24 hours. She was pregnant, and almost lost the baby. From that point, she really did stop playing. She told the people in the forum that she believed she should have chosen the door on the left. She wrote that, had she chosen the door on the left, she would have entered the gauntlet, the final stage of the game. She asked the others in the forum to find the sword she'd used and get to that door. But try as they might, nobody could find any mention of a sword called "Mournblade" in the game. The games designers confirmed this. That sword didn't exist.

That's where the print-out Andre sent me of the forum discussion ends. But that's not the end of the Monica Morelli story.

HARRISON: By the time she'd started playing that game I barely recognized her anymore.

CARLY: (voiceover) That's Professor Harlan Harrison, chair of the English department at the University of British Columbia. I Skyped with him while he was on a break between classes. He's exactly what you'd expect in a professor of English Lit: full beard, tan corduroy suit jacket with leather elbow pads. He was the real thing.

CARLY: Could you describe how her behavior had changed?
HARRISON: Well, she'd become obsessed with alternate histories. She thought that the world might be ending, that something was happening, a conspiracy. I mean, she went to Prague because she believed there was a discrepancy in an image in one section of stained glass on St. Vitus Cathedral.
CARLY: What kind of discrepancy?
HARRISON: She'd uncovered three separate descriptions of a certain section of that glass that suggested a different layout from what she could see in the historical photographs. The amount of photographic evidence that she was on a fool's errand didn't seem to dissuade her at all.
CARLY: So she wanted to see it for herself.
HARRISON: She was deeply disturbed at that point. I thought she might end up standing on a street corner yelling about how the Apollo moon landing never actually happened.
CARLY: Right.
HARRISON: She started seeing... mysterious men in grey following her around. I called her family and suggested they get her help, but I was too late. She was already on a plane.
CARLY: Thanks so much for your help, for taking the time.
HARRISON: You're welcome, but... please stay away from that game.
CARLY: What game?
HARRISON: You know what game.

[Advertising break]

CARLY: (voiceover) So, Monica Morelli had been playing Rabbits, and believed that she was being followed by mysterious men in grey. She had conflicting copies of my parents' death certificates in her purse, a photo with the word "Gatewick" written beneath it, and she was investigating a discrepancy in the stained glass of a famous church. What was she looking for? What was the connection with my parents? I'm going to continue to try and dig up more on Monica Morelli, but in the meantime, there were two new developments. First, I did manage to find some information on The Gatewick Institute via that photograph. And second, another mystery application made an appearance. Unlike CatChat which suddenly appeared out of nowhere on my laptop, this one popped up on my phone. It was called "BreadCrumbs."

First, the photograph: I found the building in that photo by scrolling through endless pages of research facilities and eventually landing on a match. It took hours. The structure in the photograph was called the Carlsbury Building. I wasn't able to track down the name of any company that might be leasing the space, or information on the current owner. But it was definitely the building in that picture. The Carlsbury Building was located in the Bay Area, just outside of San Francisco. There was mention of Gatewick on another page, but it was a dead-end. Nothing but a passing reference from 1986. Another few hours of research resulted in some additional information. The Gatewick Institute appeared to be located in a few buildings over the years, all of them based in or around San Francisco. It looks like they were active in the 70s and 80s, but I couldn't find any evidence of The Gatewick Institute operating out of that time period. It appeared to be some kind of medical research facility - slash - self-help spa retreat, promising peace of mind and body. I managed to dig up a few ads looking for research subjects, but other than those ads and a seemingly defunct website at gatewickinstitute.com, I haven't been able to uncover much at all. But I'm going to keep looking.

I've had even less luck researching this strange application that had appeared on my phone. The icon was an old house in the woods, Hansel and Gretel-style. I did a reverse image search but nothing came up. I searched the term "breadcrumbs app" as well; nothing related there. So, I went on the App Store to get the designer's contact info. Nothing. Google Play? Nothing. In fact, there was nothing anywhere. There was an app on my phone that didn't exist. So, of course, I opened it.

It was a fairly simple interface. It looked like Tumblr, actually: text, pictures, video; three tabs. There was nothing in the text or video sections, but when I tapped on the picture icon, an image came up. It was a graphic, a circle above a pyramid. It had a kind of Illuminati vibe, but that wasn't what I first thought when I saw it. The first thing that popped into my mind was Berserk. To be more specific, the Atari 2600 home version of the popular video game Berserk by Stern Electronics of Chicago.

My brother had become interested in easter eggs in video games - obsessed with easter eggs in video games would actually be more accurate. The first place he found this symbol, the circle floating above the pyramid, was in Berserk. He subsequently discovered that symbol in at least five other games: the arcade console versions of Zaxxon, Wonder Boy, and Ms. PacMan, and the home versions of Myst, The Legend of Zelda, and Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. He had a theory that the symbol was related to something like The Secret, by Byron Price, the puzzle book treasure hunt from 1982 that I mentioned in our first episode. My brother thought that maybe the appearance of the symbols was related to a real-world treasure hunt, and that the context of each symbol may have been significant, so he collected all of the information he could about what else was on the screen along with the pyramid and sphere. To my knowledge, he was unable to figure out what the appearance of that symbol meant.

The appearance of that symbol on my phone brought me right back into my brother's bedroom, staring at his cork bulletin board filled with clues and possible connections between those games. I didn't feel like there was any possible way I was going to solve a mystery that my brother spent years trying to figure out, but then I remembered that I had access to something my brother didn't: I had access to The Magician.

MAGICIAN: Of course I've seen it before, it's the Moonrise.
CARLY: What's that?
MAGICIAN: It's what those participating in the game refer to as a marker.
CARLY: Okay, so, what does it mark?
MAGICIAN: Well, I like to think of them as signposts, letting you know you're on the right path, that you should be vigilant for the next clue or gateway.
CARLY: Okay, so you like to think of them as signposts.
MAGICIAN: That's right.
CARLY: Is there maybe another interpretation?
MAGICIAN: ...Yes.
CARLY: What is it?
MAGICIAN: Some players believe these symbols are... warnings.
CARLY: Warnings?
MAGICIAN: Yeah, indicators that you might be close to... stepping off the playing field.
CARLY: What playing field?
MAGICIAN: The world. The Moonrise was specific to VI and VII. There was no mentions of any appearance in VIII. You say you didn't install this application yourself?
CARLY: No.
MAGICIAN: It's very interesting.
CARLY: What do you think it means?
MAGICIAN. I'm not sure. Do you mind if I dig around in your phone a bit?
CARLY: ...Dig around?
MAGICIAN: Jailbreak it.
CARLY: Will I still be able to use my phone?
MAGICIAN: Of course.
CARLY: Um...

CARLY: (voiceover) So, I let The Magician jailbreak my new phone. He told me that he couldn't find anything directly related to that application or the symbol. He offered to remove or block the application, but I told him no way. Whoever put it there was probably going to send something else. I told him to leave it as it was. He smiled. I could tell that he was hoping I would say that.

Just as I was about to leave, he asked me a question.

MAGICIAN: Did you follow the link to the website I gave you the last time you were here?
CARLY: I did.
MAGICIAN: What did you think?
CARLY: About what?
MAGICIAN: About Hazel.
CARLY: Well, it looks like he or she was about to win VIII, and then mysteriously dropped out and forfeited the game.
MAGICIAN: And?
CARLY: And Hazel was apparently some kind of armchair revolutionary, responsible for a few cliches like, "Where's our future." Nothing but a bunch of philosophical blue-sky platitudes.
MAGICIAN: You're a bit too cynical for someone so young.
CARLY: Just a bit?
MAGICIAN: Rumor has it that the love of Hazel's life was helping him - or her - play the game. The were a perfect team, allegedly. They were apparently right near the end of the game approaching the convergence when...
CARLY: What?
MAGICIAN: She was killed.
CARLY: Playing the game?
MAGICIAN: Yes.
CARLY: How did she die?
MAGICIAN: A freak accident.
CARLY: Tell me.
MAGICIAN: The emergency break and transmission failed on a car. It skidded on some ice and ran into her while she and Hazel were out walking. She was pinned against a stone wall, and she... bled out in Hazel's arms.
CARLY: That's terrible.
MAGICIAN: That's when Hazel quit playing.
CARLY: ...I found a broken link to a picture. I think it might have been a photograph of Hazel.
MAGICIAN: There have been a few alleged photos of Hazel over the years, all of them fake. There was a woman in Stoke-on-Trent who was very close to the girl who died, we all believed she was Hazel for a few years. And then a young man in Boston.
CARLY: What can you tell me about her, the girl who died?
MAGICIAN: Quite a bit, although none of it will be of any use.

CARLY: (voiceover) He was right. There was a lot of information on the girl who died, and none of it shed any light on Hazel. Her name was Emily Masterson. She was an American living in England at the time of her death. She had a girlfriend in college, the woman The Magician referenced earlier. She had a couple of live-in boyfriends after that; a stockbroker, a drummer. Then she dropped off the map. Completely disappeared from public life for a few years before she died. It was during this time that she'd, allegedly, been playing Rabbits, with Hazel.

While I was in The Magician's arcade, Jones sent me a message. He said that he'd found something else in those old Marigold radio recordings.

[Advertising break]

NARRATOR: (voiceover) The Keeper, by an unknown author. For Doc Hornet.

The garden world of Arcadia exploded in blood and pain every eighty-nine days. Aside from that one day, the day of the sacrifice, Arcadia was a paradise, a community of joyful beauty, friends helping friends. Family was an unknown and unnecessary term in Arcadia. Everyone was family.

Ivan the Ninth had been working to stop the eighty-nine day cycle, the temporary madness. It came over the garden sometime between sunrise and noon, and always ended after the first person was killed. At various times over the years, Ivan felt he had the answer: locking people up, drugging them, preaching the word of the holy kings, but nothing worked.

Ivan was growing old, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he was unable to protect himself or call upon some of the younger ones for help during the temporary madness. It was Ivan, The Keeper, who had been charged with looking into what the people of Arcadia referred to as, "that which must always be served," and it was Ivan who had failed them, like The Keeper before him, and the one before that.

It was on the evening before the eighty-ninth day that Ivan made up his mind: he was going to sacrifice himself, for the good of the garden. He was going to make certain that he would be the first to die during the temporary madness, that his death would give his beautiful Arcadia eighty-eight new days of peace and another chance to find out how to end the temporary madness without losing one of the younger ones.

The young man called The Third Paul would be the new Keeper. He was smart, and kind, and Ivan knew the garden would be in good hands. In all the years of Ivan's lifetime, nobody had ever sacrificed their own life. It was forbidden. This was another reason Ivan was dedicated to taking this path. You see, it wasn't only because he was old and weak and not long for this world, it was also because he felt like his sacrifice might make a difference. Perhaps Ivan's unselfish act might finally break the eighty-nine day cycle and bring peace to his beloved Arcadia.

So, just before the sun rose on the morning of the sacrifice, Ivan got up, dressed in his finest wool suit, and made his way to the center of the town square. He stood there, holding a knife, waiting for the madness to take him, waiting to make his personal sacrifice.

And he did it.

As the first ray of the morning sun hit his face, he slit his own wrists. His fellow denizens of the garden ran out of their homes to witness in horror what Ivan had done. And, as he lay dying, he saw that none of them had gone mad. He was happy. His sacrifice had worked. He could die in peace, knowing that there was a chance for them to live without fear for a while.

But... no.

The world had other plans. Terrible plans. This time, the madness was different. This time, it didn't end with the first death. This time, the madness was everything - endless. The streets were red and then black with blood. By the time the last members of the garden of Arcadia had been torn apart, the sun had still only barely risen above the horizon.

Ivan was alive long enough to see every single person in Arcadia, old and young, ripped to ribbons of blood, flesh and bone, in a world of rage and madness, the likes of which the world had never seen. As the light within him died, Ivan knew that it was him. He did this. And with that understanding, the final Keeper died, and Arcadia right along with him.

CARLY: (voiceover) It was a crazy story. But I had no idea what it had to do with Rabbits. Jones had his theories.

JONES: Doc Hornet.
CARLY: Okay, I'll bite: what about Doc Hornet?
JONES: It's an anagram.
CARLY: For what?
JONES: For The Condor.
CARLY: The Condor?
JONES: You don't recognize the name?
CARLY: From the Circle. The Condor won the second iteration of Rabbits, the game known as II.
JONES: That's very good. You're a quick study.
CARLY: Am I? I gotta say, it doesn't feel like things are happening all that quickly.
JONES: There's a lot of information to parse and wade through. You're doing very well. Honestly.
CARLY: Thanks. Okay, why did I have to read that story if the writer's name is the big clue?
JONES: I need to see if something in the text... illicited a response.
CARLY: It did. I was grossed out and scared, was that the response you were looking for?
JONES: I'm - I'm not sure.
CARLY: Thanks a lot.
JONES: You're welcome. [A pause] Back to Doc Hornet, The Condor.
CARLY: What about him?
JONES: The story is more than just background on Rabbits. It's a clue to a station.
CARLY: A station?
JONES: A kind of repository or storehouse for clues.
CARLY: How do you figure?
JONES: There's a station known as Arcadia. It's located deep in the forest, some place in Alaska.
CARLY: That sounds far.
JONES: It's pretty far.
CARLY: Are you suggesting I should fly to Alaska?
JONES: I'm definitely not suggesting anything of the kind.
CARLY: What would you do?
JONES: ...I'll send you what I have on Arcadia, as it relates to Rabbits.
CARLY: Jones?
JONES: Yes?
CARLY: Are you playing the game?
JONES: ...Check your email.

CARLY: (voiceover) Jones sent me some information about Arcadia. It was a whole lot of nothing, as far as I could tell. Just some speculation about where the place was located; most believed it was in Alaska, but there was disagreement about whether it was situated on an ancient native burial site or a UFO landing area.

I was seriously considering flying up north, but I needed to get a better sense of where exactly this garden of Arcadia was located. It didn't matter if it was an ancient native burial site or a UFO landing area. I needed something a bit more specific, like map coordinates.

I was just about to dive into some deep web research on Arcadia when Jones called again.

JONES: Priesthood One.
CARLY: Wow. Where'd you hear that name?
JONES: Is it yours?
CARLY: Yes. I - where did you find it?
JONES: I searched your name.
CARLY: That's it?
JONES: That's it.
CARLY: Just now.
JONES: A while ago. I just received some... advanced results.
CARLY: I didn't write it under my name. I called myself "Parker Carlson."
JONES: Sorry. I searched all your names.
CARLY: Of course.
JONES: You're a comic artist?
CARLY: I used to draw. A little.
JONES: This is pretty advanced stuff.
CARLY: If by "advanced" you mean "infantile punk rock teenage angst V for Vendetta Watchmen rip-off bullshit?"
JONES: That's not what I meant.
CARLY: No?
JONES: No. The artwork is fantastic.
CARLY: Isn't that what people normally say about a shitty movie? "The cinematography was fantastic."
JONES: You're incredibly talented. With both words and pictures.
CARLY: Thanks, Jones. You're making me blush.
JONES: It kind of reminds me of Rush's 2112. You know, with the beauty of art versus the high-tech church, although I don't remember Rush having evil sentient AI at the center of things.
CARLY: No. I don't suppose they did.
JONES: It's really good. I was only able to track down twenty-nine pages. Is there more?
CARLY: That's... pretty much it. I have a couple of roughly sketched-out panels, but I stopped working on it when I started college.
JONES: That's too bad. I'd love to see how it ends. The imagery... it really is great. I'm impressed.
CARLY: Thanks. Again.
JONES: Of course.
CARLY: Did you find anything else?
JONES: I'm sorry - was I intrusive? I - I was intrusive.
CARLY: It's okay.

CARLY: (voiceover) So, Jones found a comic I'd created during my senior year of high school. I was obsessed with comics. Still am, actually. Priesthood One was a story about a rebellion against a technocracy, an evil empire. Our hero, an intrepid young woman named "Gio," discovered the power of art, and used it to overthrow the bad guys. Come to think of it, it did sound a lot like that Rush album. Rush was my brother's favorite band.

I can't imagine where Jones managed to find Priesthood One. I took a few copies to my local comic store in the summer between high school and college. And I did scan it at some point, for inclusion in an anthology in Germany, there was a Myspace page somewhere, I think, featuring a few local comic artists. I looked for that page a few years ago but I couldn't find it.

Talking about Priesthood One reminded me just how important comics had been in my life. The worlds of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and Neil Gaiman pulled me through some really rough times. I was half-way through re-reading a swamp-thing collection, trying to get my mind off things, when I got a call from Yumiko's brother, Adam. He was in Japan, trying to convince his mother to come home, and asked if I could go to Yumiko's gym and pick something up. Apparently the gym had been sold. It was too bad. It was a really cool old boxing gym. I had been there once before. Yumiko had a trainer named Maury Albert, who was merciless. I was sore for a week. Once was enough for me. Miko went every second day.

CARLY: Hi! Are you Maury?
MAURY: That's right.
CARLY: I'm Carly, I'm here to pick up Yumiko's things.
MAURY: And pay the balance?
CARLY: I'm sorry?
MAURY: The balance owing. Thirty-one dollars for the locker.
CARLY: Oh, okay.
MAURY: I don't have any change.
CARLY: That's fine.
MAURY: This is it.
CARLY: Thanks.
MAURY: Any word from Yumiko?
CARLY: No. She's still missing.
MAURY: Do they know what happened?
CARLY: As far as we know, she just disappeared.
MAURY: Police?
CARLY: Nothing yet.
MAURY: That's too bad, she was a great kid.
CARLY: You mean she is a great kid.
MAURY: Right. Yes. Yeah, she is.
CARLY: Right. Okay, well, um... Thanks for this.
MAURY: Sure, no problem.

CARLY: (voiceover) I opened the box of Yumiko's stuff as soon as I got back into my car. There was a skipping rope, some gloves, tape, and a pair of some kind of soft shoes. There was also a shower kit, with shampoo, deodorant, razors; and a worn-out brown accordion file that contained an old logic board. Yeah. One of these things was not like the others.

It was a logic board from a video game. It was labeled Stargate by Williams. Stargate was a sequel to their wildly popular game called Defender. In fact, Stargate's full title is Defender: Stargate. We always just called it Stargate. It was one of my brother's favorite games.

What was Yumiko doing with a logic board from and old arcade game in her locker? Well, it turns out she never actually received it. The logic board had been delivered to Yumiko care of the gym after she disappeared.

I took the logic board to somebody I knew would be able to help me look into it.

The Magician popped the logic board into his Defender game cabinet and hooked it up. The first thing I noticed was that this version was actually titled "Defender II," and not Stargate. The second thing I noticed were the high scores. It was the Circle, here called "Immortals" - which is the way Stargate refers to the holders of the high scores. Actually, Stargate refers to the all-time leading high scores as "Immortals," and the daily high scores as "Mortals." Here, the Immortals section was the Circle, and the Mortals section was just a list of what appeared to be random scores and names.

The Magician thought that this was very interesting. He pointed out that this version of the Circle only included the names from I through VI. VII, which reportedly began around 1989, wasn't included. The last name on the list was Californiac, the reputed winner of VI.

The first thing I did when The Magician booted up the game was perform the easter egg trick my brother taught me. You start the game, move the joystick down, and press the one-player start, reverse, and thrust. Then, press reverse, two-player start, and fire, then move the joystick down, and press one-player start, thrust, and fire. This coded sequence normally unlocks the game's secret credits screen. But in this case, it unlocked something else.

Next time, we'll look into what I found when I performed my brother's easter egg trick on that "Defender II" machine. Plus, we'll dig into what Jones sent me on Arcadia. But, before I sign off, Jones was calling. He had a question about something we'd discussed earlier.

CARLY: What is it?
JONES: Priesthood One.
CARLY: What about it?
JONES: When did you create it?
CARLY: Right around the end of my senior year of high school, why?
JONES: Are you sitting down?
CARLY: What does that have to do with anything?
JONES: [sighing] It's an expression.
CARLY: Like your news is gonna be so shocking that I'll have t - ...Jones, it's not Yumiko...? They didn't -
JONES: No, they didn't find an - no. It isn't anything like that.
CARLY: Okay. Then what is it.
JONES. Priesthood. One.
CARLY: You already said that.
JONES: It's an anagram.
CARLY: An anagram? For what?
JONES: For, "The door is open."

CARLY: (voiceover) It's Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, stay safe.