Metamorphosism

Superspy: Evco Report Part III - The Search for the Czar's Testicles

This is how the day went, from my vantage point in my secret vast limestone cave hideout; I also wandered around a bit between some of the stations of the hunt (there were a total of ten). I encourage any other Evco participants to post their observations in the comments to this entry. I am minimizing mention of other participants because I of course want to hog credit for this
production, and also for reasons of privacy - maybe someone doesn't want to be mentioned by name in a public forum like this. Again, if you do, you're encouraged to comment.

Including myself, there were about ten Evco conspirators and associates involved in providing logistical support to the scavenger hunt on site in Vienna throughout the day. Beta and her friends, how many of them were there... seven, I think, on the day of the hunt.

1. The kids met at the first station, a certain university library, at 9.15 AM. There they went to the information desk and asked for a certain gentleman, Dr. Cosma, who was summoned and arrived in the form of Evco conspirator H. wearing a white lab coat, I believe dark glasses? and an odd accent. He took a couple of the kids into the library archives, which I had inspected beforehand and can testify were suitably dark and scary, with steel grate floors between the bookshelves enabling one to see three floors down. H.P. had selected a perfect starting place. The kids had found the reference number of a book in their online search, and looked for it on the shelves. H. had however made it more difficult for them by selecting a book at random that was too large to fit on the shelves and was stored in a secondary location elsewhere in the archives. So after the frustration of not finding the book where it should have been, they finally got it and found a postcard of St. Stephen's cathedral inside, and a key to a locker.

The locker contained several red herrings, I believe, including a tin can of herring in tomato sauce. Dr. Cosma also gave the kids a brightly colored rucksack; the kids argued the rest of the day over whether it was neon green or neon yellow - it was in any case visible at a distance, making it easier to see them before they saw us (I thought) and for strangers to recognize them. The pack also contained €100 for expenses like food and drink, and various objects that might be useful on their hunt (lighter, magnifying glass, map) and more red herrings (rubber bands, rubber gloves, large squirtgun).

The kids did not immediately deduce that the blank postcard had a message written in invisible ink (lemon juice) on it. The message said "go to the top of the tower, wave out the window and dial tel. #XXXXXXX". When they finally started roasting the postcard with matches a passerby gave them (they did not immediately find the lighter in the pack) the first thing they found was the telephone number, which they called.

Station 2 This was the first mistake of the hunt. A design flaw, my fault. The full message would've sent the kids up to the top of the tower, which has 444 steps, I think. Over 200 at any rate. Quite a climb. The instructions to "wave out the window" were intended to ensure that they actually went to the top.

Agents N., S. and I were loitering around outside St. Stephen's Cathedral, well-hidden, joking about how funny it would be if the kids came from an unexpected direction and unmasked us. N.'s phone rang - it was the kids calling. No way could they have made it to the cathedral that fast! We assumed they were cheating, not knowing about the postcard problem yet. H. showed up on his bicycle. Actually, I think he had been standing there for a long time observing me - some superspy - before I noticed him.

At any rate, when the kids dialed the number, they got the Evco Clue Helpline, a recorded imitation voicemail hell on N.'s mobile phone. The original script was too long, taking over 5 minutes to read, so N. had shortened it to roughly the following:

Welcome to the Evco Group Clue Hotline

1. If you have found your clue but are unable to break the code, press "one"
2. If you are lost outside the city limits, press "two"
3. If you are lost within the city limits, press "three"
4. If you are in a submerged vehicle and unable to find your clue, press "four"
5. If you are trapped in a burning building and are unable to find your clue, press "five"
6. If you are trapped in a pilotless aircraft plunging to earth and are unable to find your clue, press "six"
7. If you are about to be launched into outer space and/or trapped in a rocket about to self-destruct and are unable to find your clue, press "seven"
8. If you are at a secret underground location and are unable to find your clue, press "eight"
9. If you are at the top of a cathedral tower and are unable to find your clue, press "nine"

You have pressed "nine".
You are at the top of a cathedral tower and are unable to find your clue.
This is because your clue is not located in the tower. To find your clue, please return to the church and look under the fifth row of pews on the left side. Your clue is inside an envelope taped to the underside of the fifth row of pews on the left side.

Thank you for calling the Evco Group Helpline.
If you have another problem or would like to hear your options again, hold the line.
If you are in mortal danger and need an emergency extraction, type in your GPS coordinates.
If we have answered your question, please terminate the call.

So their next clue was under a pew in row five in the cathedral. I had placed it earlier that morning. Of course I ran into two snags: one, the first 17 rows were roped off requiring me to place it under the fifth row from the rope, and two taping an envelope underneath a cathedral pew turns out to be very suspicious-looking, and they had "security" people walking around.

This clue sent the kids to

Station 3 Zanoni's ice cream parlor, with instructions to buy ice cream. The clue was partially written backwards and partially in ROT-13, which the kids had grown good at decoding. So they went there for ice cream and waited and waited for something to happen and nothing did and Beta finally called me and I told her to wait.

They finished their ice cream, stood around impatiently and were accosted by an American tourist who was asking them directions to a particularly uninteresting sight in Vienna, the Basilisk House, home of Vienna's historical monster the Basilisk, a cross between a frog and a chicken, only with realllly bad breath. The tourist, brilliantly played by an Evco associate, somehow managed to convince the kids to go to the House and gave them another clue, a sheet of numbers they "would need for Octopussy".

Station 4 Basilisk House. Here, hidden by a large flower pot, the kids eventually found a menu from the Mocca Club with a cryptic message indicating there was a table reserved for them for noon. The idea was, they'd have lunch there. So they walked over towards the Mocca Club, which is near the Naschmarkt, Vienna's largest public market.

Station 5 Mocca Club. After talking to the waiter at the Mocca Club (N. had reserved the table earlier) and explaining the situation to him and giving him the clue (a package of sugar N. had tampered with sending the kids to their next station) I stood around the Naschmarkt, well-hidden, observing the door of the Mocca Club with my binoculars and ignoring the curious stares of passersby. I met my wife, Gamma, my cousin and her husband who were visiting from Seattle with their son, who was on Beta's team. I met N. and T. and we got something to eat. Then I stood around some more with N watching the coffeehouse facade again. The kids, it turned out, were ahead of schedule because they had saved time by not going up the tower. So they went to the Naschmarkt to get something to eat, in order not to arrive at the coffeehouse too early. I stood there watching the door of the club intently when N. elbowed me in the ribs and said, "ahem". I lowered the binoculars and there stood Beta and her team, about two feet away. "Hi, dad!" she grinned. "Hi, Mr. Living," the rest of the kids said. I do not remember ever seeing that happen to Jim Phelps on Mission Impossible on TV, and I saw every episode.

The kids and N. eventually stopped laughing at my spy expertise. The kids went to the coffeehouse. We checked the next station and proceeded to the station after that for preparations.

Station 6 Flea market. The sugar package at the coffeeshop told the kids to go to a certain stand at the flea market and buy a book, Octopussy. This they managed to do quickly. The problem arose when they had to decode the message, consisting of a series of groups of three numbers indicating page number, line number and number of a letter in the line. It had taken me hours to write, and it turned out to take the kids hours to decode, because it was a hell of a lot of counting. Also, they made mistakes and re-encoded their own message. This proves our theory that one should put any really hard or time-consuming codes in an online phase of such a hunt, and make the scavenger hunt part more kinetic and running around and task-oriented. Which we largely did. For example, at most stations they had to ask someone for the Czar's testicles.

Station 7 Schönbrunn palace, Gloriette. The emperor's summer palace. The Gloriette is up on a hill behind the palace with a nice view of Vienna. Here they found a crossword puzzle. Solving it required detailed knowledge of the entire conspiracy story Evco had woven through its various websites, blogs, MySpace pages, etc. Being Beta, Beta had printed all that out so they were able to solve the puzzle quickly.

By this time, I had a pretty decent sunburn. I had neglected to apply sunscreen that day, and it was hot hot hot. I stood around talking with N. and another Evco associate, a friend of T.'s, wondering where the kids were, joking about them coming from an unexpected direction and busting me again. In fact, they did come from another direction. They took a bus instead of climbing the fairly steep hill up to the Gloriette.

The crossword puzzle sent them to

Station 8 Schönbrunn Palace, Hedge Maze. There is a hedge maze there, and a labyrinth and we had been concerned that there might be some confusion so we tried to make our clues as explicit as possible. The kids claim there was a second hedge maze as well, or a second labyrinth we didn't know about, and it took them some time because some of them went to the wrong maze, and the others had to wait for them, and their mobile phone batteries were beginning to fade making organization harder for them. Meanwhile, my sunburn wasn't getting any better and I think at this point, all of us were looking forward to the hunt finally being over.

In the hedge maze, they found a clue (heavily guarded by Evco associate M.) directing them to their penultimate

Station 9 at the MuseumsQuartier. Here they found a message in a bottle, constructed by N. The message consisted of a wine bottle full of little paper boats, each with a letter on them. They retrieved the bottle (anchored by a second bottle full of water, attached by a ribbon), got it open, got the boats out, unfolded them and arranged the letters to spell their final hint: PICKWICKS. This is a pub and English used bookstore and video thing not far from where they started in the morning in Vienna's central first district.

I was told there had been a slight problem at the fountain before the kids arrived. N. had placed the bottles in the water, and a curious stranger had tried to swipe them, oblivious to all the disguised Evco agents surrounding him, watching his every move. Instead of using lethal force, N. just yelled at him (agents positioned a hundred or more meters away later told me they clearly heard her say "Finger weg!") and he put the bottles back.

I missed this, unfortunately, having proceeded to

Station 10 Pickwick's to place the Czar's testicles in the hands of the waiter there, and, frankly, to get some shade and have a beer and some food, man. It was about four in the afternoon at this point. The kids eventually showed up, asked the waiter for the Czar's testicles, he gave them to them (a pair of those esoteric metal balls that ring and kling and klang when you roll them around in your hands? for meditation I think? with yin/yang stuff painted on them?) and the kids squirted me with the squirtgun and the game was finished. We debriefed the kids, discussed the mission among ourselves and relaxed in the knowledge that our conspiracy had been successfully implemented, with a couple small snags, which are to be expected, that's why you have a Plan B and so on.

Overall, I'd give it a high fun rating. What did everyone else think? Evco people? Beta? Beta's friends?

PS: Sorry to Pickwick's for all the squirtgun squirting that went on in your bookstore! It won't happen again!