On Tuesday 30th January at 7pm GMT we all gathered in our respective IRC rooms, and waited for the update to the police site ( http://www.perplexcitypolice.com/case_notes.php?cid=PXC978C675&section=OB ) to arrive with the details of the event with trepidation.

At around 7:10pm someone said “it’s been updated!” and we all rushed to get the link necessary to be able to communicate with the people in Perplex City. The link was in a flash applet, and we could communicate with them but not each other. Our messages didn’t appear to us, just to them. We could only see what they were writing and transmitting to us. There was pictures/audio/text/video. Pictures of the applet can be seen on my flickr.

Each puzzle came up as a little flashing box on the picture of Ascendancy Point to the right of the applet. We had to click each one, where a new window popped up with the puzzle.

The first messages started coming through immediately. We were informed that they were all grouped at the subway, and needed to get the platform cleared quickly. The best way to do this was to overload the ticket barrier, by making them think too many people were on the platform. This was our first challenge. In a Mastermind style puzzle, we had to get as many combinations right as possible to overload the ticket barrier. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829931/ ). We used the numbers 1 -4 (inclusive), and it told us with a green light if the number was in the correct place, and an orange light if we had a correct number but in the wrong place. When we solved a combination, we had to tell Kurt in the applet to get a new combination to solve it. For instance, one of my combinations was 1322. We solved this fairly rapidly, and they moved on towards Ascendancy Point where Violet and Helena split (to go and lay charges on the power system) from Kurt, Caine (who joined at the last minute, much to everyone’s disgust!) and Fitch (one of Helena’s men).

Kurt and co immediately concentrated on getting the lift hijacked and working to take them to the floor they needed. For this we needed to crack a code on the door. We had to watch a video and watch a guard inputting an 8 digit code in to open the door, and then relay this to Kurt. We managed to crack the code as: 74293816. From here we then had to figure out the amount of time we had to get Kurt and co through the door without the guard seeing. We cracked this at every 30 seconds, so not much time!!

They then came across a door which needed “iris recognition” to open it. Kurt linked us to the employee database ( http://perplexcitypolice.com/PXC300D968/employeeinformation.php ), while Fitch gave us a description of the guard via audio: blue eyes, 5ft7, 170 pounds, 50 years old. We managed to come up with the guy fairly rapidly: Damon Booth. This worked and they got through the doors.

The next thing that Kurt asked us to do was to get the operator to reboot the elevator system. We had to do this by ringing a number and coming up with weird and wonderful problems with the lift in order for the operator to deem it necessary to reboot! The numbers were US: (201) 399 2294 AND UK: 0207 870 1174.

While we were doing this, Kurt gave us another puzzle, to find the longest loop, in order for Kurt to cut the correct cable and prevent the alarms from being set off. The answer to this is shown on my flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829661/ ) .

We were told to continue calling to get the operator to reboot the lift (apparently he was being an arse!), and to tell Kurt when the lift is being rebooted.

There were a few puzzle doors we had to solve before they could get into the lift. The first door had a large circle on it. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829984/ ) Apparently the grey parts of the circle needed to be lined up, and this created letters. The solve to this was found to be “Point Zenith”.

The second door had a bunch of letters on it, some were overlapping. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830013/ ). The object was to find the missing letters. These were found to be “H” and “R”.

The third and final door was a maze. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830071/ ). We had to find the word that came out of the maze. The word, ironically enough, was “LOCKED”. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829732/ ).

After this, they came across another iris scanner, which wasn’t in the original plans, and they reckoned it must have been put in, in the last few days. Again we had to turn to the employee database ( http://perplexcitypolice.com/PXC300D968/employeeinformation.php ), and get a good look at the guard using video. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830173/ ). We gathered that the guard was 20-30, brown hair, moustache with a tiny beard, glasses and caucasian. We managed to come up with the answer that he was “Jasper Cohen”.

Here we managed to get the operator to reboot the lift, thanks to the lovely jojojojo! Unfortunately there were two guards waiting by the lift, and the (stupid/brave? you choose) Caine, went up and picked a fight with both, pretending to be drunk! They beat him pretty badly and dragged him off (ouch), leaving the lift free for them! Violet and co. met up with Kurt and Fitch by the lift after they had set all the charges, and they travelled in the lift for what seemed like about half an hour (with a lot of bickering), but then it was 110 odd floors!

They arrived in a storage (?) bay. They reckoned there was movement in Bay 17, so they tried to gain access through Bay 16. In order to access the service ducts we needed to raise the temperature to about body temperature and keep it constant for around 30 seconds. We had a flash applet of several thermometers with an average temperature thermometer ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830088/ ). We needed to click and hold on the bulbs at the bottom of each thermometer to raise the temperature to the right amount, however the temperature fell pretty rapidly if you left it, and you couldn’t leave it too long or you failed!

In the end we managed it and the gas canisters were successfully planted by one of Helena’s men (Harrison). We then had 10 minutes, as when they detonated the power went out. There was a one minute window in which they had to enter, where the power was completely dead. Unfortunately all the vents closed and we had to override the locks. There were 11 locks needed to be overridden and we had 7 minutes to do it in. We had to click on a grey square, which then turned red (to show it was active), and fill the entire grid with green. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830112/ ). We managed to unlock 10 of the 11, which was pretty damn good going!

From here it all turned to audio, and we could hear shouting and shooting going on. At the end of the mayhem we found that Scarlett was in a bad way and looked like she had been tortured, all we could hear (and read at this point) was Violet saying “Lettie, your hands! What have they done”, and other similar sentences. Caine was handcuffed and pretty badly beaten up. They managed to get the 3P people, some got away however. We think Harrison was killed.. and two others, although we are not sure who. Helena was seriously injured. The last we heard from the group was that Scarlett and Helena were being taken to hospital. Scarlett on a stretcher as she was too “woozy” to walk. Kurt kept reassuring Violet that Scarlett would be fine.

Then a message popped up on our screen, we do not know who it was from but it said:

?* Form the layer. Find the era. Follow the Way. Find the Cube.
( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829808/ )

All in all it was a very exciting night, and I would say we had the biggest turn out for an online event yet. It was left on a bit of a cliffhanger and we are anxiously awaiting news and hoping that all injured will be ok.

We are hoping that we have all we need to find the Cube. Let’s get cracking folks!

All audio can be found here. Credit to Skenmy, Arkasha and Sledge for working on this!
All pictures can be found on my flickr.

Please let me know if I have made any errors, or missed anything out! Thankies