THEY ARE ALWAYS WATCHING: Story

"Who I am isn’t important, only what I know.  

In 1962, when The Cold War reached its fever pitch, the U.S. began developing a “weapon” to end the stalemate without resorting to mutually assured destruction. ‘PROJECT TENDRIL’ was developed in top secret out of Los Mirar, New Mexico. From what I could glean, U.S. scientists had discovered the ability to use any electrical current as a surveillance device. Every electrical device, every wire and lightbulb, could transmit information back to Los Mirar, which would then be decrypted into audio and sometimes even a basic visual. In short, where there was power, there were Los Mirar’s eyes and ears. As the world rapidly began to modernise, power grids spread, and with them, the tendrils of Los Mirar. 

Maybe it was the cooling tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., maybe it was the existence-altering potential of Project Tendril, or maybe it was just the rapidly ballooning budget, but the project was shut down and relegated to the dusty and long forgotten back rooms of the governmental labyrinth. Project Tendril lay dormant... Until now. 

I don’t know who it is, but someone has reactivated Project Tendril. In 1962 it had the potential to change the world as we knew it, today it might just well have the potential to end it. Christoph Vaught and Katherine Dallet, the head scientists who worked on Project Tendril, knew this too. They programmed in a dead man’s switch, a code that, once input, would be able to kill the beast and destroy all data so it couldn’t be built again. Before her death, Katherine sent me her half of the code, but without Christoph’s half, it’s just letters on a page. 

Now, years later, Project Tendril is almost operational. I was about to give up hope until an informant inside the reanimated Project Tendril made contact with me. They say they know how to find Christoph’s code. They have given me instructions on how to find it but have had to hide the answers in cryptic clues and puzzles to obscure it from sinister eyes. You must solve the mystery, complete the code and shut Project Tendril down before it strangles the entire world."