POST 05 – GO FETCH

We all know that to retrieve means to recover or find and bring back, but our dictionary offers a second definition: “Performance: A hunting term. The act of Obedience.” Obey? Where have we heard that before? Look at all the people retrievers fetching pictoglyphs on the Internet and in the real world. Have we been enrolled in obedience training for big-brained bipeds? And just who slipped the virtual choke-collar around our necks?

Or are we on a mission to retrieve the truth like ROT? Hey, whatever happened to those guys, Dr. Vincent “Wally” Bole and his loquacious pal Mandrake Wig? Broadband Beatnik and his blogger buddies?

Bole announced a while back he was on his way to Australia and Korea. (Interestingly, mathematician Vigi Benoffski was on his way to Perth and should have been there for the mathematical symposium in early August…unless he was extinguished in the Vik Foundation fire. The common initials seem more than coincidence.)

Bole closed up shop at about the same time as BBB who also recently departed without leaving a forwarding address. And the excuse that he was at Comic-Con wears thin.

Maybe most of you weren’t surprised to see the end of their pop-culturated code words and oblique philosophizing since many commenters thought they were simply a distraction to the main play of the game.

We’re not so sure they’re just a pack of strays. In fact, we think ROT’s been in the hunt for a long time, dogging Persephone’s heels from her first hack, and barking orders for us to OBEY. Check out these images; ROT calling cards?

From the Cape Town Inquisitor microfilm reader.
It reads. “Persephone if you can read this we know who you are.”
Does this look like the ROT logo to you?

This image was part of the first Sublymonal clue, on May 9, when the Hanso site’s clock said OBEY, you clicked to new site, found Heir Apparent password and used it to enter a hidden screen behind Middelwerk’s executive Bios screen on the Hanso Foundation website. The screen changes to a dark screen with a hallway (which resembles a hospital). There is a wheelchair in the left hand corner of the screen and a woman (some say Persephone) facing away in a hospital gown. When you click on the woman she turns around and the camera zooms in on the woman (but it happened so fast that we could not get a good look).

This document is a tuition document from Caltech. There is a red XXX splash and a blue XXX splash on the page. The red splash covers the words, "Gary Troup knows too much" and the blue splash covers the words, "He must be silenced." There is also a red pencil mark under "Tuition and Fee Schedule" which is reminiscent of Persephone's markings on the GWC documents.

Clicking on this and the following message appears: "Caltech has no record of this guy in their alumni database. He's never made a tuition payment. Does he even have a college degree? Why does he call himself a doctor? Of what? Who is this clown?" Persephone's voice can be heard stating: "Why does he call himself a doctor? Of what? Who is this clown?" (See our theory - POST 01 above)

We wonder if the written message and the spoken message were talking about the same clown or two different faux physicians.

From the RECLUSE clue, the envelope has the ROT keypad symbol. BTW, if those objects spell a word, do the other objects have a double meaning as well?
Do you think it’s possible that ROT has its roots in Professor Manny Weissman (Mandrake Wig) and his black lab Argos from Bad Twin?

And, perhaps most importantly, could the world be a Skinner box?