Lost ARG 2008 - Part 14

If you log on to the dharmawantsyou website, and crank the sound up, you might just hear some curious noises (amongst the usual semi-ambient weird ‘music’ of the site). It sounds like a male speaking words, intermittently. Luckily, someone out there has worked out that they are a jumble of words that, put together and re-arranged, state the ‘popular’ phrase: Nothing resembles an honest man more than a cheat.

It’s a particularly relevant phrase, given the level of cheating the Dharma games have been encouraging. Presumably this message has been ‘hacked’ in by the Black Swan guy – perhaps as a response to Hans Van Eeghen’s previous video message calling for the cheating to stop.

Also on the site is a new message that states: ‘Recruit Assessment Closes October 7 2008’. Amen! Hallelujah! Etc.

Anyway, that’s that. Now, it’s another week and another test is in the works. Step forth, ladies and gents, into the joy of Test 6.

Test 6 - Specialized Departmental Evaluation

The instructions above basically tell you that it’s a ten question, multiple choice exam to test for the likelihood of suitable role allocation. There didn’t appear to be much in the way of clues as to how I was supposed to cheat at this test. . . but luckily I had read around before I got started and found out the cheat beforehand. But I’ll get to that.

The test questions themselves were such bizarre ones like: The IEEE is the professional society for what branch of engineering?

The answer is Electrical Engineering.

Now maybe you knew that already, but I sure as hell didn’t. Luckily I had learned that the way to cheat on this test was to hold down the ‘C’ button, and then right-click. This brought up a standard-looking menu, but at the top of it was an option labelled Black Swan. You press that, then the correct answer from the four possibilities flashes, and you can select it and continue on your merry way through all ten questions.

Not unsurprisingly, I got 100%.

Checking my progress informed me that I had been lumped into a group called Ares. (A little too close to the word ‘arse’ for my anagram-fuzzled mind to be happy with, but it’s actually the name of the ultra-hard-sounding God Of War so I can live with it.) A little checking around informed me I could have been in any one of the following groups:

Demeter – Goddess of Fertility
Apollo – God of Light
Ares – God of War
Hestia – Goddess of Hearth (Stone Oven)
Poseidon – God of the Sea
Athena – Goddess of Heroic Endeavour

So there you go. By the looks of it there’s only likely to be one more test, two at most, before this first phase closes. . . This sure is a long game! As a last bit of a business, it came to my attention that certain people received a ‘promotion letter’ through their mailbox informing them that, due to their good performance with their created tests, they had been awarded ‘instructor’ status. Here’s the letter. Click it to read it properly.

Not sure what that means, what special privileges Instructor-status that may get them. Not that I am jealous or anything but I think Instructors are geeky-swots and it’s the cool kids like me that are keeping it real by being hardcore, down ‘n’ dirty Dharma grunts. Yeah, I’m not jealous one bit.