We Make Money Not Art's recent discovery of the experimental games project/alternate reality game Troy reminded me of a day before I Love Bees and prior to The Beast. In Troy, you're trying to hunt down a copy of a game (the titular Troy, often prying your nose where you shouldn't be in order to get it. Way back in 1997 though, my friends and I were trying to do the same with a similarly elaborate scheme concocted by Information Society front-man Kurt Harland.

See, the final track of Information Society's latest album, Don't Be Afraid, contained nothing but the squelching of modem noise. Pipe that noise into a modem terminal and you received information on the first of many, similarly convoluted and esoteric, steps to receive the album's final song, White Roses.

The beginning of the hunt is documented a bit more thoroughly here and you can see the second (out of 16!) leg here, but unfortunately due to the fleeting nature of the internet, the trail of clues abruptly ends there. While you can download the full track, stitched together from the 16 separate archives, from the previously mentioned Space Mutiny site, it just isn't the same as actively searching for, and finding each piece.

Nowadays easter-egg hunts like this have been folded into the more complex genre of the Alternate Reality Game and are rolled out for whatever new trinket a company wants to hype. But back then, in the age of dial-up and fresh hypertext, it was a damn bold move for Harland to take, one that, if myself and my friends were any indication, was appreciated by his fans. Please keep this in mind as you dig through Evan Vincent's belongings in your attempt to hunt down Troy.