O Borges, where art thou?

On May 7, 2001, my friend Andreas told me that heíd spent the previous night talking to a group of people in a bar in new York who were trying to solve a puzzle. How, I asked, did that work? Andy, after all, is a sophomore at the University of Idaho.

It turns out that Andy is also a Cloudchaser: an investigator into the death under mysterious circumstances of Evan Chan, husband, father, and sailor. He died on his boat, the Cloudchaser ( www.familychan.org/cloudmaker.html ) Hence the name of the investigatory group. Evan Chan drowned off the side of his boat on March 8, 2142. His death is the center of a conspiracy that includes Anti Robot Fanatics, Pro-Sentient Being Hackers, a Robot Underground Railroad, pimps and procurers of artificial ëcompanions,í and one large and (presumably) corrupt corporation. They all have web sites.

Welcome to the game.

Andy had told me about the game before, and had directed me to www.for-evan.com, a memorial site, as a good starting point. But in the following week we hadnít spoken and so I wasnít told that, if I was willing to infiltrate a rally of the Anti-Robot Militia, it would mean free beer at a restaurant called Mekka in New York. But, under the assumption that a group that springs for free beer once will do so again, I picked up the trail.

www.for-evan.com is, indeed, a good starting point, but only because it points to The Guide. The Guide is a chronicle of the Cloudchasersí discoveries, the road movie of their collective trek in search of Evanís killer. The puzzles theyíve encountered so far are listed, along with solutions to those that have them. I joined the Cloudchasers mailing list on Yahoo! Groups. I read, in The Guide, how the search started. The trail begins with the trailers for the upcoming Spielberg movie, A.I. Yes, this is all hype. Possibly the coolest advertising campaign ever, in this writerís humbly offered opinion. The trailerís credits list one 'Sentient Machine Therapist: Jeanine Salla'. A Google search on her name will offer entry into the web of pages, via the Artificial Intelligence Department of the fictional Bangalore World University. Alternately, the final still of the trailer (preserved at http://countingdown.com/features/?feature_id=16381) has a phone number encoded by notches in letters. The phone number, ((503) 321 5122), if called, has a voice mail message that instructs characters to visit www.thevisionary.net. There, an email window spawns to send an email to mother@thevisionary.net. The email, once sent, is replied to, and the trail may also start there. Andy has been complaining about the 4:00 AM phone calls from Rogue AIís threatening his life. I think thatís a small price to pay for free beer.

Reading through The Guide, I was struck by two things. The designers of The Game, who the ëchasers refer to as ëThe Puppetmasters,í are inventive, gifted, and generous people. Two, the ëchasers are twice as inventive, sometimes brilliant, and seriously dedicated sleuths. I also found out that www.for-evan.com is not a ërealí site. It was created by a fan as a way of showing people what the game was about. My starting point was really just the ëFor Dummiesí version. However, in a recent update to her diary, one of the ëIn Gameí characters has made reference to the fan site. It has been canonized, as it were.

The tragedy of our time, media-wise, is easily argued to be that the World Wide Web arrived too late. Jorge Luis Borges died in 1986, just before the Web exploded into the countryís living rooms. The web, above all other media, is custom-engineered for the kind of tale he wove. Bibliography, footnotes, and cross-reference: the web is made for intrigues of the most bibliophilic sorts.

Just as Bill Gibson found eBay to be the first use of the internet to which he would lend his enthusiasm (and endorsement), so I imagine would Jorge Luis see ëThe Game,í this nameless conspiracy winding between separate sires, this accumulation of details and attention to errata, as exactly what heíd been talking about all along.