“Welcome back, guys! Hope that everyone in the HNN army is staying strong, in the fight against ignorance. This is Agent 459, and we have another great episode for you guys, especially taking place in the Arizona desert. If you guys haven’t heard, there is a giant psychological study being done that’ll span 5 to 10 years long. Not much is known about this study, aside from the fact that it’s looking for a massive number of participants and they’ve been getting it. Now, I’m sure all the participants are really looking forward to joining a historic event, but I’m thinking that the $50,000 a year is the deciding factor. You may be wondering how they have that kind of money, but looking at the massive structure they built they must be rolling in the cash. Looking from Google Earth, you’ll see that the complex is a giant square, the size of ten Chrysler Proving Grounds (four Michigan State University campuses). Talking about the Chrysler proving Grounds, this mega structure is south of it and west of Phoenix. For those of my listeners, who also agree with green energy, you’ll be happy to hear that Tesla solar panels are all over this structure along with a giant solar farm nearby. There is no official information for the reason there are so many solar panels since those numbers are enough to power a small city. Normally solar panels wouldn’t be enough to power a facility, considering the sun is only out for 12ish hours, but with Tesla’s commercial batteries the solar power can be stored to supply several days worth (for those cloudy days). Not much, aside from the Tesla connection, is known about this event and the mystery will hopefully be solved in a couple of days, when all the search for participants is supposedly ending. If you’re interested in finding more information, regarding this, feel free to go to the organization’s [Center for the Study of Mankind] website. Make sure that you’re subscribed to the HNN army, and click on that bell icon so that you’re notified of new videos posted. Now onto the latest news related to the info dump by WikiLeaks.”
After coming back to Sam’s place, both he and Sarah checked out YouTube to see if there was any info about this project. One of Sam’s favorite channels was HNN, due to how the entire channel was created using CGI. The main guy, Agent 459, looks like a robot and talks about the difficult news topics in a non-bias manner, compared to progressive and conservative YouTube channels. It may not be the best channel, but considering the amount of effort they put into staying anonymous Sam thought of them being a pretty reputable news source.
“Hey. Go onto that site they mentioned.” Sarah urged him.
Bringing up Google, he started to type in “The Center for the Study of Mankind” and brought up their homepage. It was a pretty simple and clean website, explaining about very little about what they do.
“What’s up with this website!”, shouted Sarah feeling frustrated. They were hoping to find out how they could take part in this study, but the website wasn’t providing anything of value.
Thinking out loud, Sam wondered, “Maybe they get the participants through various organizations, like universities?” It felt weird that there was so little information being shared, I mean such a large structure needed to have some kind of governmental approval, either federal or state. Some kind of information was being exchanged, and why would HNN recommend going to this site if it was a dead-end?
Sam stared at the website looking at it as if it was some kind of puzzle. The key is the fact that HNN had reported it, so he felt like something was missing and when he found it everything would click into place. He tried the usual moving his cursor all over the page, seeing if a hidden hyperlink or image was there. Remembering his experience with the websites, he went through the possible methods to try and get into this website. Pressing the Ctrl+U key, he brought up the source page of the website in Chrome. Looking through the code he saw some text.
Highlighting the text, Sam started to read outloud, so Sarah could follow along with what he was doing. “Please follow url to admin website for those part of the psychological study. Remember to maintain silence regarding what is going on, and do not talk to the press.”
“How did you do that?” Sarah asked him, as she watched him copy and paste the website to the address bar.
Chuckling at her amazement, he just answered with, “I’m just looking at the source code for the website, not a difficult task if you know about websites.” He grinned when she gave him a look saying how he better watch himself. Sam knew that Sarah wasn’t the type of girl that was big on computers, and was more into the stuff popular girls were into (if they were slightly emo and gothy). Glancing at her sideways, he could understand how guys seemed to be really interested in her. When they had come back, instead of changing in the bathroom, like a normal girl, she had just stripped down to her under garments and began to get into her usual clothes. Trying not to stare at her, he noticed that she was very well proportioned though understanding that they really didn’t have the romantic connection he didn’t get entirely turned on when he saw her.
Watching the new website come up, all it had was a username and password field with a white background. He didn’t expect to run into this scenario, but was able to stay calm. Going back to the source code, he tried to find any kind of hint of what the username and password could be. He figured that if they left a clue in the previous page, then it was likely this was for anyone that knew what they were doing. Running through the lines of code, he noticed an odd jpeg file being referenced. The page didn’t have any kind of image, so why would there be a jpeg file? Highlighting the file and copying it (after creating a new tab with the new address), he went up to the address bar and removed everything past the “.net/” and pasted the jpeg. Pressing enter brought up an image that was completely white. Looking all over the place, he didn’t notice any kind of text or clues as to why this was here. “I wonder if the image…”, his thought trailed as the idea that this image could be hiding something came to mind. Steganography is a practice of hiding things inside of images, allowing people to send messages without others knowing about it. It seemed a bit too easy, but thinking that there was nothing to lose he brought up 7-Zip. Saving the image the image to his computer, he then went to 7-Zip and found the image. Right clicking on the image he went through the steps to extract the image and revealed two hidden files. The first was an image file, and the second being a notepad file. Opening up the image he found a map with gps coordinates and what looked like the state of Arizona. When he opened up the notepad he just saw a string of text. Obviously the message was encrypted, so it would be a little difficult to deal with this. There were several message encryption methods, one of them being GPG and another one being GPP. Hoping that it was the latter, he opened up GPP-Decrypt and tried to see if anything came loose after he shook it.
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Looking back at Sarah, her face was glued to the screen looking extremely eager. This was the first time he had ever seen Sarah so interested in a computer. Sam was embarrassed to admit that he was enjoying her attention, but reminded himself that there was nothing good to come out of getting romantically involved with her. He remembered watching her other past boyfriends, and none of them lasted very long. Sarah wasn’t a bad person, just a little fickle and hard to keep in a long-term relationship. The benefit of being a friend of hers for so long is seeing all the mistakes others had made, so he didn’t need to make the same mistakes.
“YESSS!!!” He yelled out, after the software spat out something legible.
“Congratulations on being successful at finding the backway to taking part in our study, into the seeing what humanity is about. This method was designed for those who had the strong will and knowledge to get into our program, and will guarantee you and four others access into our facility as listed on the coordinates. Please take the username (alphaomega2843) and password (3ioijk6t09098kjkj3io&^%!!) and inputted into corresponding fields. Once you are in the database, please input all necessary information and press “submit”. By submitting the information, you will be able to approach the facility and gain entry. We congratulate you in taking part in this grand and fantastic experiment, which will hopefully push society into a better world.” Sam read out, trying to keep in all of his excitement about his success. Sarah kept pounding his shoulder, letting him know that she was also excited. He could understand why, considering how much they would both receive after this. With that amount of money he could pay his way through college, instead of relying on federal and private loans. Going to an Ivy League school was a big goal of his, and this opportunity would be able to pay for it. Medschool wouldn’t be an issue if he had any intentions of it, though that just sounds like a bore to him and not anything he was interested in.
After spending time, he typed in the necessary information into the fields and pressed submit and stretched. Even though the skill needed wasn’t, surprisingly, high he felt slightly exhausted. It was probably due to finishing up a eight hour shift, and then coming home to do some light penetration work.
“So what do we do now?” Sarah asked him.
Shrugging his shoulders, Sam just replied, “Well, I guess we should probably let work know that we’ll be taking a 10 year break, unless you want to quit?”
Nodding her head in agreement, she said, “we should probably also let the college know that we’ll be gone. Afterwords, I’m guessing we should also pack some clothes?”
Sam and Sarah decided to head back to their work and let them know about this sudden break. He knew that they were likely going to have to quit, considering they were leaving during the middle of the schedule. They still had several more days of scheduled work, and leaving wasn’t going to make people happy. The problem is that they don’t really have a choice in the matter, considering they were looking at over $200,000 at the end of this experience. Who in their right mind would pass up on this chance, and continue working for slightly above minimum wage at some dead end job?
Their experience at work was exactly what he expected it would be, and there was a lot of yelling and screaming involved. The manager on duty told them that they were irresponsible losers that wouldn’t amount to anything, and not to expect to return back to work. They didn’t bother mentioning the experiment, considering the manager didn’t really care for an explanation. Figuring that it was all for the best, the two of them just head to the college and let the college know.
Finishing up all of their responsibilities, they came back to Sam’s place and made plans for getting to Arizona. Getting onto Greyhound, Sam found out the trip would be little over $200 for a one way ticket. It was good that it only cost him that much cause Sam only had about $500 in his bank account. Knowing Sarah, she wouldn’t have difficulty in getting one of her friends to help her out, with getting some extra cash. She was pretty good at getting guys to pay for things, without needing to give them anything back.
“I’m going to take off now. I’ll need to gather up some clothes, and get ready to head to Arizona” Sarah informed him.
Looking back at her, Sam said, “Just make sure you buy a ticket to Arizona. I don’t think Greyhound is going to have a sudden increase in people going in that direction, but it’s a good idea to purchase some sooner, rather than later.”
Nodding her head in acknowledgement, she walked out of his place.
The rest of the day was filled with him packing all his stuff and getting ready to take off. His Greyhound was for later that night, so he was going to need to hurry up. Normally when he goes on vacation, Sam would spend a couple of days to set everything up to be ready for him to leave, but considering how he had a timeline and the busride would take quite some time he needed to hurry up.
With the sun starting to go down, he started to head his way over to the Greyhound station. It would take him close to an hour walking there, but he would get there with enough time to spare. It had been a while since he walked past the downtown Greyhound station, so he was looking forward to seeing the new changes they made. He heard that they build some self-serve stations, so he just needed to type in his code and the machine would print out his tickets. Considering that he was going to Arizona, he wondered how many tickets he would have for each of the stops. A friend of his that lived in Georgia said it took him 22 hours to get to Michigan, and there were several stops along the way. Sam’s friend gave him some tips if he was ever to travel on a Greyhound, and Sam was glad that he paid attention and remembered it.
Arriving at the Greyhound station, he was impressed with how modern it looked. The outer part of the station was surrounded in glass, so you could have a clear view of the inside. When you walked it, there was a clear area for getting the tickets and places to sit. Being a modern and tech person, Sam enjoyed the new look compared to the rest of the old looking city. Printing out his ticket, he walked over to the sitting area and spotted Sarah on her smartphone.
“How long have you been here?” Sam asked her when he was near.
Looking up at him, Sarah gave a big smile and replied, “I was here for, maybe, 15 minutes?” Indicating for him to take a seat, she asked him, “So are you excited on the start of our adventure?”
“Definitely!” He grinned at her. “The best part is not having to show up for work tomorrow!”
They both laughed at the thought of not having to work at that crappy job any longer, and hopefully having a better life after this. People don’t realize how draining working at a minimum wage job can be, and how difficult it is to stay motivated in accomplishing your own dreams. Both of them knew people who found working at McDonald’s to be comfortable, and decided to aim for higher position within the company instead of finishing school. It always gave him a depressing feeling whenever he saw that happening, but the thing he learned was that not everyone can reach where they want to be.
The two of them sat their, each absorbed in their own tasks, like the millennials that they were, while they waited for the bus to start boarding passengers. Time initially felt like it was going slowly, but before Sam knew it he heard the announcement for the bus leaving for Arizona taking off soon.
“Hurry! Let’s go!” Sarah called out to him, as she raced towards the bus. There was a small line for those waiting to board. Following after her, Sam watched the people walking up those stairs into the bus. For some reason, he viewed those stairs as not just for getting on the bus, but also about taking control of his life, for once. He could only imagine what will be waiting for him, once he arrived at the facility and hoped for the best.