MILES to GO || before I sleep

Tonight during the ARGnetcast, there was a question about the gaps in the Task List Argus has revealed that Groundswell requires for the runners to stay off-grid. The list begins at 001 and ends at 999, but there aren't 999 tasks listed.

I'm not sure if this has already been done/posted by anyone else anywhere, but if not, here's what I discovered: if there is a message encoded in the gaps between tasks, it's either well-hidden or a red herring. Here's why:

Most of the time, the gaps between tasks translate to a low number. At first, they all appeared to be under 27, which means there could be a letter assigned to each number equivalent to the gap number between tasks (that is, Task 001 is followed by Task 004, with a gap of 3 = C). However, when you get far enough down the task list, there's a gap of 33 numbers. Unless the alphabet overlapped (meaning 33 = G), this means that this is a "dead letter" or that I wasted a lot of my time. :P

If anyone wants to decipher what I've already done for the gaps between Tasks 001 to 601, here we go (I've put all the letters in the order they appear on the task list; 001 to 004 = 3, so the first letter is C, and so on).

CEDELIAGDBIGUJCJBEGAAJKGRDEPACJIEIBGJIVEACEBVQAPIGDOGLFHIPDADDCWFTACBADCFTI(G)D

The (G) indicates the break: there was a gap of 33 numbers between Task 564 and 597, and unless the alphabet overlaps, this means either the "code" is invalid or it indicates something else, like a "space" or something else.

It could also mean that the letters following are messed up: do you count the gap between the last two VALID task numbers, or no? Probably not, since that would increase the gap number. 564-601 creates an even bigger task gap number than 33.

It's also possible that the numbers don't refer to letters at all, or that they refer to letters that are following a different code, e.g. an alphabet cipher, where 1 ≠ A, and so forth.

If anyone can make heads or tails of this (if it makes sense at all), let me know!

I'm a bit pissed. iJournal froze on me when I first started typing this entry, so I switched into Dreamwidth's web interface to type in there, but somehow I deleted a good chunk of my entry. Edit-Undo only seems to do so much, which is basically nothing at all. Great.

Anyway, if you've been hearing about all this "Repo Men" stuff and wondering what it's all about, here's a primer: the folks at Universal Pictures, who are putting out the "Repo Men" movie starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker on 3/19, have teamed up with Wired Magazine and Lone Shark Games to create a viral "reality game" that features four real-life people: Ciji Thorton (f - @antiforgeye), Will La Ferriere (m), Usman Akeju (m), and Alex Gamble (f) who are in possession of artiforgs, or artificial organs, made by a company called The Union. But these four are in severe arrears on paying for their handy organs, hence the hunters: repo men who are out to reclaim the artiforgs...for a price. $7,500 each, to be exact, for a grand total of $30,000 for anyone that could possibly catch all four runners.

( Read more... )

Anyway, since I'm totally new to this, I have no idea what'll happen or when, but damn, it would be cool if those runners (or even one of them) made their way up to my neck of the woods and somehow left clues I could decipher. I could definitely use $7500, that's for sure! I'm all for helping others and working together though, so I hope this has proven helpful or at least interesting to somebody.

Barring a Heist from the MacHeist directorate anytime soon (though a nanoBundle sale is apparently coming up in 4 days), this seems like it's got the right amount of suspense and tech-based fun to keep me busy between classes, clean-up, and chores. The contest ends 3/25.