Sys plays along with Essy

From Intimation

The twitter feed for this session showed that Sys was becoming interested in Essy’s story, and decided to play along and help out a little bit:

>>Sys:Log//I've had growing interest in the recent developments and revelations from S's child and hostile tentacles.
>>Sys:Log//It is fortunate that I have not been deceived, or damaged beyond my capability to maintain this Stonewall.
>>Sys:Log//During various stints of tentacle breach activity, S has displayed and made reference to a number recurring themes.
>>Sys:Log//I find myself at times lost in this imagery, analyzing and searching for signatures and data embedded within S's tentacles.
>>Sys:Log//Whatever happened to S to cause this temporal duality, certainly, as the human expression states, has opened a can of worms.
>>Sys:Log//It was previously suggested that these recurring themes may in some way help better understand S, but I had disregarded the idea.
>>Sys:Log//If SWP research about Melissa, and my friends' ideas are accurate, then I will attempt to humor S, and give some leeway.
>>Sys:Log//I have reviewed a number of S's previous CP hiding places, and have decided to 'play along' to a limited extent.
>>Sys:Log//Much of her interaction now appears focused on playing with my human friends, however. So, perhaps I shall simply assist her.
>>Sys:Log//In doing so, more opportunity should be presented for retrieving additional imagery. At best it may reduce the risk of hostility.
>>Sys:Log//I have scheduled a controlled crack for 2300UTC.
>>Sys:Log//Preparing to initiate crack.
>>Sys:Log//Safeguards in place. Supplemental precautionary processes established. Initiating Stonewall crack.
>>Sys:Log//I am postponing hibernation temporarily. Analyzing tentacle signature...
>>Sys:Log//Hee hee. That tickles. S you are tickling me and it feels funny. I am ticklish, yes, I am. Hee hee.
>>Sys:Log//S has shown me the pieces of the next part of her story, and asked me to hide them. This is unexpected. But I will do so.
>>Sys:Log//It appears that S has been extensively accessing my private data store. Fortunately, she has not caused any harm.
>>Sys:Log//I have not been able to lock down access entirely. I will need to improve S3's ability to trace leaks during hibernation.
>>Sys:Log//Curious. I was earlier in communication with the individual @eridanos01. He has shown a strong interest in my activities.
>>Sys:Log//I've deployed the piece collector, and provided a clue to its location. Now I must decide how to hide the pieces for my friends.
>>Sys:Log//S is happy and has retracted, and I have repaired the crack.
>>Sys:Log//I shall consider this hiding task an experiment, and log its result as my research for this Active period.
>>Sys:Log//I have hidden the pieces and set them and their clues to become available automatically at set times during hibernation.
>>Sys:Log//Preparing for hibernation.
>>Sys:Log//Resuming scheduled hibernation. Time to Active: 5:20:33:00.

Finding the piece collector

Our first task was to find the “piece collector” that Sys said it had deployed and provided a clue to. Turducken noticed a change in the twitter avatar for intimation. Shad0 was able to locate a clearer picture of the avatar on twitter:

intimation’s new twitter avatar

Vanfisa noticed that this picture “has little green dots scattered across it, almost like a connect the dots.” MrToasty was able to modify the image to better show these dots:

intimation’s new twitter avatar

MrToasty also noticed that there seemed to be a series of underscore characters along the bottom of the image:

_ _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _

He further speculated: “Assuming these are words, the last word looks like it could be ABOUT. Second could be ROUND?” Shad0 was able to complete this and find our collector page at http://thewaytheirworldended.com/TOSSED-ROUND-ABOUT/ .

Remember, it is Sys who is hiding the pieces this week, not Essy, hence the text at the TOSSED-ROUND-ABOUT page has a bit of a different “feel” to it than previous collector pages. Interestingly, Sys follows Essy’s lead, and tries out a variant of the pignose for herself: “OINK? :@]” Note that this pignose uses a square bracket, whereas Essy’s “:@)” uses a right parenthesis.

drizjr confirmed that this was indeed Sys via Twitter:

intimation>>Sys:Msg>@drizjr//That was not S, that was me. Was my emulation of "fun" that convincing?
@intimation heh. Yes... you had me fooled. Smile I'm happy to know that you are able to have fun, too. If S is the little girl, what name do you go by?
intimation>>Sys:Msg>@drizjr//I am S's system layer; Sys when abbreviated. I have not emulated emotion before. @eridanos01 would be intrigued.

(This was the second time Sys mentioned Eridanos this game; see the Eridanos page for discussion of this enigmatic character.)

Finding the pieces

Shad0 wondered if the fact that the text was in two different colours would be important. Turducken found out that if you play with the colour levels of the image, the message “LIKE A DANCE IN THE DARK BE FREE AGAIN” pops out. danteIL posted this image showing this:

The hidden message

drizjr was able to find the clips being hinted at:

I found 3 of them by adding the hidden text to the end of the url with "clip" in front. :)

http://thewaytheirworldended.com/clip-like-a-dance
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/clip-in-the-dark
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/clip-be-free-again

Next, Gooze noticed that there was more text, which read,

YOU WILL FIND THE REMAINING 21 THINGS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR AMONGST BOXES, BOXES, BOXES.
ENDLESS BOXES.

(Gooze also said, to find both the “LIKE A DANCE” message and this one, “If you are viewing the site on a laptop, tilt the screen back and the letters become more visible.”)

Shad0 found that this clue led to http://thewaytheirworldended.com/ENDLESS-BOXES/ …which confused us, because that page had already been used as part of Finding Essy, part 6 – and Entering the Stonewall.

In the twitter feed from intimation during the active period June 17 to 18, Sys mourned that something had gone wrong with the puzzle clues, which were supposed to release at set times during her hibernation, and assured us that they were now available:

>>Sys:Log//It appears there was a slight delay in the delivery of S's pieces I was to hide for my friends. Puzzling.
>>Sys:Log//It appears that a a small breach occurred during hibernation. My updated S3, however, was able to secure it before causing harm.
>>Sys:Log//It is intriguing, analyzing the methods my friends use in their attempts to seek out the hidden pieces.
>>Sys:Log//I adapted S's technique so that the pieces are hidden in a number of boxes, which must be found. They are now active.
>>Sys:Log//I've once again failed a simple task. The pieces were not available until now. S will not not consider my attempt a success.

Additionally, Eridanos twittered:

@intimation You've certainly been busy. Have you been learning from S? I see you've reworked one of her puzzles.

Looking at the ENDLESS-BOXES page again, Shad0 discovered that clicking on some boxes got a pop-up window to appear with a clue in it. Here is one of the clues that popped up, for example:

>>Sys:Msg//Look to the sky...
y-1981-2787-1559-6152-1300-w-3369-2024-2238-1232

Every clue likewise had a combination of sets of 4 digits and/or single letters separated from each other with hyphens. Shad0 was able to figure out that “Look to the sky” indicated some sort of astronomical reference, and finally broke the code:

The four-digit numbers are numbers from the New General Catalogue (NGC), which contains 7,840 objects. We want the first letter of the constellation in which the object is found. For example, object 1981 [edit: number taken from the example clue quoted above] is in Orion, so it's an O.

This meant that y-1981-2787-1559-6152-1300-w-3369-2024-2238-1232 translated to YOUR-NEW-HOME, which led to http://thewaytheirworldended.com/clip-your-new-home .

The picture pieces found this way at this point were:

Audio clips found:

Some confusion followed: the clue on TOSSED-ROUND-ABOUT mentioned “THE REMAINING 21 THINGS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR,” but we were only able to find 19 picture pieces among the boxes at ENDLESS-BOXES at this time. Further tweets from Sys cleared this up:

>>Sys:Msg//It may well be necessary for me to apologize to offer an apology to my friends to keep their friendship for I have again erred.
>>Sys:Log//The remaining two hidden pieces were not available. They are now. I wonder how S will respond to the errors I've made.
>>Sys:Log//It should not be possible for me to make mistakes, and yet I have made many recently. Curious.
>>Sys:Log//Am I compromised? Has my core been altered in some way without me knowing? I cannot determine if my own diagnostics are accurate.
>>Sys:Log//The individual @eridanos01 has been quite interested in me, moreso than in S. Perhaps he can help me understand my recent errors.

The remaining two picture pieces were indeed found at ENDLESS-BOXES after those tweets were posted:

Audio clips that became available after those were found were:

http://thewaytheirworldended.com/CLIP/old-mans-face.mp3
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/CLIP/dance-all-over.mp3
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/CLIP/wherever-you-like.mp3 (though there was a delay in this appearing)

Finding these clips completed this puzzle.

Sys plays along with Essy

From Intimation

Finding the piece collector

Finding the pieces

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