Lost ARG 2008 - Part 10

Hurrah! Another day, another e-mail from Mr. Van Eeghen telling me that Test 2 is ready to go. Here’s the mail:

ATTENTION ALL RECRUITS

RE: BROAD SPECTRUM KNOWLEDGE ANALYSIS IS NOW LIVE

Namaste.

I am pleased to announce the release of the second assessment in the Dharma Initiative's Volunteer Recruitment Program.This new test is a broad-spectrum knowledge analysis.It is a multiple-choice test covering a range of topics.

YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT AT THIS TEST WILL BE THE ONLY ONE THAT WILL BE RECORDED AGAINST YOUR OVERALL TEST RESULTS.THE TEST WILL BE TIMED - DURATION WILL BE FACTORED INTO THE FINAL RESULT.

Be prepared before embarking on this assessment - there will be NO SECOND CHANCES.

I would also like to encourage recruits to take the opportunity to earn extra "Dharma" points. These points WILL contribute to your overall test results and the eventual position you will be assigned within the Dharma Initiative.I trust you will find these new tasks sufficiently challenging and will embrace the opportunity to grow the Dharma Initiative.

I look forward to reviewing your results.

Hans Van Eeghen

Head of Recruiting

The Dharma Initiative

Standard procedure dictated that I go and check the online version of this e-mail and check the source code to see if Ruckus Guy, or anyone else, has embedded any hidden messages there. There was:

“The Dharma Initiatve – Guiding the World to a Bitter Tomorrow – BS”

Note the substitute of the letter ‘e’ for the letter ‘i’ in “Bitter”; that comes into play for the actual Test. As for the “BS” part, I can’t decide if it’s a comment from the author labelling the term as ‘bullshit’, or whether it’s the initials of the person that left the message.

If they are initials then I don’t know who they came from – unless BS are the real initials of the guy that calls himself Ruckus Guy?

Anyway, that being that I then went to http://www.dharmawantsyou.com/ to go and have a run at Test 2: Broad Spectrum Knowledge Analysis. Here was the opening message:

I am proud to state that, on the lookout now for potential ‘cheats’ within the game, I noticed that the ‘i’ in the word ‘Analysis’ had been underlined.

So I started the test (basically a series of random, multiple choice questions to do with science and history and art) and kept pressing the letter ‘i’ to see if it did anything. Mostly, it didn’t. Until I got to the last question (which is apparently always the same no matter what set of questions you got previously).

QUESTION 10

What is the answer to this question?

A: A

B: B

C: C

D: D

Pressing ‘i’ on this screen caused, for me, Option C to flicker a little. So that was the one I went for. I have since learned that Option C also flashes for everyone. Whether that means cheating was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do I don’t know! Anyway, as a result of all of that, I then checked my progress and found I had been assigned into a group called ‘Brontes’ for Test 2.

A bit of digging around on the Internet has told me that there are three potential groups I could have been allocated into. Brontes, Polyphemus and Steropes. All of these are names of a Cyclops, or Cyclopes for the plural. I doubt it’s coincidental that a Cyclops has one eye (eye/’i’, geddit!?).

Indeed, I now think back to the previous test and the group allocations being based around moons. Where are moons found? Space. And the cheat for Test 1 involved pressing the space bar! There's more rhyme and reason to this whole thing than perhaps first perceived. Though I still get the feeling the group allocation was probably random because, from the results I have seen from polls online, there seems to be an even three-way split between who has been put where. So whilst I’m not altogether bowled over, I am intrigued where this is all headed.