ARG part 4 - Who’s your daddy
Lift the pen.
Put it down.
Scribble some notes.
Concentrate.
Nothing complicated really, but I knew that if I’d let my mind drift back to my quest I would completely lose the flow of the conversation. Friday meetings are important. Like very important. It’s were we review the direction of the company, our leads, current developments and balance next week’s workload.
Unfortunately, that Friday, I struggled to care.
I hadn’t received new clues yet and felt like I had exhausted my previous one. I was satisfied yet agitated. I had two days left and it just dawned on me that the closer I was to the end, the less room to manoeuvre I would have. My game master apparently had a lot of faith in me. Misplaced or not, I would discover in the next 36h.
I know, I know. You guy realize you are reading a story, so chances are all went well, I’ll be hailed a hero and receive a kiss on the cheek from the princess. Cinema taught us well that fear and insecurity is always feigned by the protagonist. Well, maybe less if you’re a Japanese anime fan (and I’m not talking about that Naruto crap), but you understand what I mean.
Nonetheless, I was genuinely stressed. Not so much for myself. But someone had spent both a crazy amount of time and energy preparing all this for me. ONLY FOR ME. It wasn’t something that would be redone, rehashed or resold. It was a one time thing and I would be the only one to ever live this adventure. What if I fell short?
JP: So Emile, do we have your approval?
What the hell is he talking about? Damn, I really wasn’t following after all.
Emile: Um? Eeeee… yes?
Jasmine: Great, so I’ll talk to the bank and start filling in the form for the 400K loan. Boys, I’ll need your personal bank statement by Monday.
Emile: Wait, what? I’m confused…what are we talking about?
JP: Hahaha. We’re just screwing with you. You just looked completely out of it.
Emile: Yeah, sorry. I guess I am. I’ll go make some coffee.
Jasmine: I’ll have one too.
Emile : Sure…
It was going to be a long day.
At 03:41 PM I received an email from Navi.
From : Hey Listen <hey.listen@email.com>
Sent : February 19, 2016 03:41 PM
To : Émile
Subject : New Hint.Just found this for you :
“I stopped growing at 11, I was pushed over the Edge”
I’m quite sure you can find this one before leaving work.
Straight forward enough I guess. Specially considering there was not a warning like “your face will auto-destruct if you use Google to solve this riddle”. Maybe it was a well known riddle like the Sphinx with it’s 4–2–3 legs.
I guess not then. I must admit, I was curious to know if the article named “You pushed my baby over the edge” meant that someone had thrown a baby from the top of a ravine or that the baby got really mad and angry over too much tickling or something. Ended up being neither.
So I googled each part of the riddle separately. Maybe it was a joining of 2 well known things. But the “stopped growing at 11” only gave me articles and sites about the threshold at which women stop growing after puberty. And the “over the edge” part wasn’t more useful. It was a way too generic expression after all.
Emile: Well Regis, I’d like to use a lifeline.
Regis Philbin: Sure, which one would you like to use?
Emile: I’d like to ask the audience.
So I went to Zhen and Aurelien and explained the riddle to them. I figured one Canadien, one French and one Chinese brain was better than one.
Aurelien: Is that all you have to go on? Is it linked to something else.
Emile: I don’t think so. And I already googled the parts and came out empty handed.
Aurelien: So we are looking for something that was killed when it turned 11?
Emile: Maybe… but often riddles are not so literal.
Zhen: I think we should open the PC.
We both turned to Zhen. He was referring to our compatibility testing PC. We only had one since everyone worked on MACs.
Emile: Why should we?
Zhen: Um, you see… to look in Windows.
It was easy to want to disregard Zhen’s comments sometimes. Neither english nor french was his native tongue. He was clearly our amazing backend shifu, but communication wasn’t always the strong point of our relationship.
Emile: … Sure, you go ahead? Thank you.
Aurelien and I got back to debating the riddle at hand for a couple of minutes, exchanging silly ideas one after the other until Zhen came back…
Zhen: Emile, I found it.
Emile: What do you mean you found it… you found what?
Zhen: It’s a sound file.
Aurelien: Wait, wait. Go back a little. How…hum…eee… what do you mean you found IT?
Zhen: The default screen of Edge is replaced by an audio file.
I was dumbfounded.
Emile: But why would you open Edge?
Zhen: Um (thinking for a while). The riddle said after 11, Edge.
He was right. Like sooooo right, it was beautiful.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is probably the world’s most infamous browser. Throughout it’s long 21 years of life, it managed to be both the most used and the most hated browser of all time (based upon the global percentage of internet browsing usage per period). After the rise of Firefox and Chrome, its popularity started to decline, and more and more memes started to pop up about it’s horrendous performance. Even Explorer 11, truthfully it’s best version, came out as an update feature for Windows 8. And you know anything trying to make Windows 8 better will most definitely be pure ass.
At that point, Microsoft flipped the table and said fuck it. So what do you do when your previous product was so bad that you actually feel ashamed? You try to put it FAR behind you.
So Microsoft announced the launch of Windows 10. And no, there was no Windows 9. But 10 sounded more complete. A good, strong round number. And further away from 8. They decided to do the same with Internet Explorer, who would be replaced by Edge as the default browser.
Emile: Zhen, you are a genius.
He laughed, slightly bowing.
And now Robin, TO THE AUDIO FILE!
That was clearly a phone number. A local phone number, I had recognized the first 3 dial tones clearly. 514. As for the rest, I would just have to pick up a phone, listen to the recording in one ear, and with the receiver on the other, push down on numbers until I could be sure of the other 7 digits.
So. 514 … 5 … 5 … 5 … 0 … no … 8? … yes 8 … not sure … 7 I think.
Zhen: Um. Emile? I have the phone number.
He handed me a post-it with the 10 digits.
Emile: How the hell did you do this so fast?
Zhen: Well. I went on Google and looked for a decoder. I uploaded the sound file and got the number.
Emile: … Of course you did.
Shifu struck again.
Picked up the phone, dialed the number.
Four rings, no answer. But the answering machine would at least tell me who’s phone it was.
Weird sickly voice: I’m scared. Mom is acting crazy again. She found the knife. I’m hiding for now, but soon, I’ll have to go down to the basement. Down, down, down. If only I knew who my father was, I could ask him for help. Please, tell me. Who is my father?
BEEEEEEEEEEP
Now THAT was an easy one. So without any hesitation, I answered.
Emile: Your father is Mega Satan.
WHAT YOU SAY!! You’ll probably ask.
In the videogame The Binding of Isaac, you follow the story of Isaac, a young bald kid (similar to Caillou) terrorized by a schizophrenic mother who tries to murder him because God asked her to do so. Apparently, Isaac has become corrupted and needs to be cleansed, and thus sacrificed. Isaac will have to escape her mother first by hiding in the basement and slowly making his way down, all the way to hell or to heaven (which is also down for some reason).
The entire thing is a macabre retelling of it’s biblical counterpart. And even if we do not know who Isaac’s dad is, people have theorized that he is Mega Satan, an optional boss who’s lair you can open using an item called Dad’s Key. I do not agree with that theory at all, but that’s an entirely different discussion.
When The Binding of Issac’s DLC Afterbirth came out, the creators decided to do their own ARG, but that one involved ten of thousands of players. Even though my contribution ended up being “interesting” yet a complete dead end, I had a blast. And during that ARG, there had been a similar phone number with an answering machine where you had to leave a specific message. So if I had answered the question correctly and called back, the message on the answering machine should have changed.
Ring … Ring … Ring … Ring …
Strangely cold voice: I hope you are proud of yourself. You’ve simply made things worst. I’ll just go lock myself in a chest and wait until I turn into a demon myself. As for you, tomorrow, from your starting point, go up up right up right right, second door on your right.
Back to Zelda again :)
Tomorrow being Saturday, my starting point was clearly my home. And if you interpreted your surrounding with an isometric world view, roads could be viewed as a delimitation between scrolling screens, like in the original Zelda for the NES. All I needed was Google map to figure out where to go.
This thing would have been a lot more complicated 20 years ago.
So I had to go to the Frigo de Bacchus? But that’s a beer store specialized in micro breweries. I was seriously hoping that I understood that right or I was about to look like a complete lunatic.
But as for today, I ended up being on a roll, I had been on fire, el numero uno, the guy who would find his way to the liquor store! Now off to bed.
TUNE IN TOMORROW. SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL.