Michiko radio 1.doc
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PERPLEX CITY, SEASON ONE |
Broadcast at 3:20am on 27th June 2005.
Mike Mendoza: Talksport 1089 and 1053, I'm Mike Mendoza. Well, last month we told you about Perplex City, the alternate reality game where players follow clues hidden in the internet, in newspapers, in their adverts, even on radio programmes in order to find the mysterious Cube and win a grand prize of £100,000. Now to follow up on events in Perplex City and tell us how the Cube is going, we're able to speak via an inter-dimensional link with Michiko Clark, the editor of the Perplex City Sentinel newspaper, which us Earthlings can find at perplexcitysentinel.com. And a very good morning to you.
Michiko Clark: Good morning, it's very very exciting to speak to you, of course, I've never spoken to a real Earth person before!
Mike Mendoza: Well, y'know, it's nice and I'm delighted that you are joining up with us today, but first of all Michiko, what is the Perplex City Sentinel?
Michiko Clark: It is a newspaper just like the newspapers you have on Earth, or so I have been led to believe. There is a little bit of a difference in it, we don't have a paper edition any more, we discontinued that about 15 years ago, it'd just become wasteful and it just wasn't necessary any more.
Mike Mendoza: Mmm hmm. Okay, now we're able to read the Sentinel here on Earth, aren't we?
Michiko Clark: Yes, there is an external edition, unfortunately due to the limitations of communicating between our two worlds, it's a very small fraction of what you can see in the complete real Sentinel, but you can find it - I believe you've already said it - at perplexcitysentinel.com.
Mike Mendoza: Mmm hmm, yup. Now what's your role at the Sentinel?
Michiko Clark: Well, I'm the editor-in-chief, which means that I keep track of the direction of coverage, the integrity of our reporting and your standards, budgeting and hiring and scheduling, all of the things you have to do to at a typical newspaper.
Mike Mendoza: Aha, well, on Earth we call them the big boss of course. Now tell us more about Perplex City, I mean, where actually is it?
Michiko Clark: You know, it's funny because I could ask you, 'Where is Earth?' just as well and you would probably be able to give me just the same kind of answer I can give you. We have dozens of really sharp minds who've been working on a lot of theories and equations about where Earth is and where Perplex City are in relation to each other for years and years now. And we haven't found any conclusive answers, it's a really interesting field of research as I understand it.
Mike Mendoza: Mmm hmm. Now is it possible to visit Perplex City?
Michiko Clark: At this time it is not, I'm very sorry. Well, we all assume the Academy is working on a way right now to transport people and things between Perplex City and the Earth right now. They say that they haven't, and you know, we choose to believe them.
Mike Mendoza: That's fair enough, okay. Now if I could visit, what sort of things could we do there?
Michiko Clark: It's a beautiful city, I really wish you could come. Well, the big thing now, of course, with summer coming on, is Alchemy Beach, there's a lot of volleyball there and practically always some sort of a carnival going on and it's just beautiful, the water is so clear and it's just so warm now. If you're not the outdoors-y type, then there's always the upscale shopping at Isabella Levenay of course, which is a high fashion brand, or if you think you can get in, then there's the new curiousity shop which is in the northeast part of town. It's a really funny shop I guess, by some standards, because they don't advertise their presence, it's actually a difficult thing even to see the door, and once you get into the entryway, they sort of look you over and decide whether you're well-dressed enough to be allowed in. You have to have to have a password even if you are well-dressed enough to come in, and they change the password every three hours.
Mike Mendoza: A bit like some of the lap-dancing clubs we have on Earth then, actually. Now, there's a column written by Earth contributors in the Sentinel, isn't there, I understand?
Michiko Clark: Yes, it's called the View from Earth and it's actually been very well received. It's primarily perspectives on Perplex City issues as seen by people from Earth, and it's really interesting to us, I guess, to see our world from somebody else's eyes. You can learn a lot about yourself that way.
Mike Mendoza: What do you actually think of Earth?
Michiko Clark: You know, it's actually interesting how similar our worlds are, and at the same time, how different they are. I guess people are very much the same no matter where you, and everybody wants to find, you know, somebody to love, and they care about their families and their homes. On the other hand, there are some big things that we find very different, for example, you have a focus on physical sports, and while we do have and enjoy physical sports, we're primarily concerned with intellectual sports, particularly with puzzle solving. For example, we're really impressed by your air travel, of all thing, because while we do have the power of flight, we don't have anything like your commercial airline networks and it's just really strange to us to see that somebody could hop aboard an airplane and end up halfway around the world in just a few hours pretty much any time they wanted to.
Mike Mendoza: Mmm, that's technology I guess. Now how is it you're able to speak to us today?
Michiko Clark: Well actually, I'm not entirely certain, I'm at the Academy, the Perplex City Academy right now, and it's a very cold room with all of this really cold and imposing equipment. I don't suppose you can hear the hum from where you are?
Mike Mendoza: Very slightly I can, yes.
Michiko Clark: They tell me it makes use of the Fairway-TN effect and there are all sorts of equations, but I did very poorly in Reality Studies at academy, sort of glossed over it, so I could not begin to explain it to you myself.
Mike Mendoza: Um, are you blonde, by any chance?
Michiko Clark: Haha, no, actually, why do you ask?
Mike Mendoza: Just wondering, that's all. Now, have you - I've just noticed, I'm not silly - you've got an American accent, but you're from another world, so why is it you have an American accent?
Michiko Clark: You know, we've actually notice the same thing, and different municipalities in Perplex City have somewhat different local dialects, it's been fascinating to us how well many of them map to Earth dialects as well. There was a fine scholar, Ruth Coralhouse, who wrote an interesting paper on it around thirty years ago. But I'm from the Gladstone municipality, in particular.
Mike Mendoza: Actually, tell us about Ruth Coralhouse, who is she?
Michiko Clark: Ruth Coralhouse is an interesting case, she actually passed away just a few weeks ago. She was a senior fellow at the Academy in the social sciences department and an early Earthologist. She's been in the news lately because she bequested, I believe, 45 million Perplex City lecks to the Academy on the condition that they use the money to research how to transport her ashes to Earth. I guess she wants to have her ashes spread over the Mediterranean in Greece, did I say that right?
Mike Mendoza: Yes, yes, that's spot on.
Michiko Clark: It's a bit of a scandal because the Academy doesn't usually accept bequests with conditions attached to them; they don't want to have the appearance of being influenced by money. But they haven't really ruled yet on how to deal with this particular case, because everybody assumes they're working on how to get things to Earth anyhow. It's very strange.
Mike Mendoza: Mmm, yes. Well, I'm confused. Now, the reason we're speaking today is because of the Receda Cube (pronounced 'ree-see-DAH'). What is that?
Michiko Clark: Well, actually that would be the Receda Cube (pronounced 'rey-KAY-DA').
Mike Mendoza: Oh, Receda, sorry.
Michiko Clark: That's quite alright, and that's why we're speaking today. It's sort of a priceless cultural artifact of our, and it was stolen from the museum in the Academy about a year and a half ago. There is a reward being offered, on Earth, for it's return, I believe it's £100,000. Somehow a team of researchers at the Academy have placed it - not placed it - but they've somehow figured out that it's located somewhere on Earth now. We don't know how possibly it could have gotten there, but there is where it seems to be, and we have a company on Earth who's helping us I guess, Mind Candy is what they're called. As I understand it, they're releasing a series of puzzle cards, actually, and well that's actually another whole story.
Mike Mendoza: Okay, now you mentioned before that you may have problems with pronunciation, well, mine's even worse, because I don't speak your language as well as you speak ours. But I've noticed in the Sentinel that you give a lot of bad press, and I hope I get this name right, and I was reading it yesterday, to Sente Kiteway, and why is that?
Michiko Clark: Sente Kiteway, yes, and the reason why he gets a lot of bad press, is quite frankly, in the eyes of the Sentinel we don't think he's doing a particularly great job. Take those puzzle cards for example. There's this series of puzzle cards that are supposed to attract interest in our plight with our missing Cube and get people on Earth to help us in trying to retrieve it, obviously it's a very important object to us, and we haven't seen any visible progress on this. We hear - at the Sentinel we have a number of sources, who have leaked to us a number of printing delays, I hear now, and the memos from Mind Candy that we have seen insist that this is a very complicated project and prone to this sort of logistical problem. But quite honestly I think that if they were really taking this job seriously, if they really grasped the significance of this object to our people, then they would be doing a better job.
Mike Mendoza: Mmm hmm. Okay, now we had a Perplexian girl, her name was Scarlett Kiteway, who sounded a little like you, by the way, a couple of weeks ago. Do you actually know her?
Michiko Clark: Actually I do know her, I met her a while back, she was actually an intern at the Sentinel for a few weeks, and can you believe she came to me with this crack-brained proposal to actually write a regular column at the Sentinel. She was I believe 19 years old at the most? And it was really all flash and no real substance. She's, I'm very sure, a very sweet girl but she doesn't have the life experience to have anything interesting to say, you know what I mean?
Mike Mendoza: I know exactly what you mean, yep. Lot of people say that about my show at times, it's terrible. Now I understand you just had a major holiday, is it June 21st, how did you actually celebrate that, Solstice Day?
Michiko Clark: Yes, Solstice Day is our summer holiday. It's actually traditionally a prank holiday, where children play little jokes on their parents and perhaps get little joke gifts. There's a traditional three day gambol around the city limits, where people walk - the city limits are actually 120 miles around right now, they keep asking if we should maybe switch the gambol to four days, since when it the gambol began, the city was considerably smaller, but so far they've kept it at three. It's really a very difficult walk though.
Mike Mendoza: I can imagine.
Michiko Clark: And of course, we have Cube hunts, the most notable on the Academy grounds, where the Academy staff hide small brightly-colored cubes all around the Great Lawn on the Academy, and then children can come and search for them, it's a lot of fun!
Mike Mendoza: Ah, it does sound like fun. I should come over there sometime and try it myself! Ah, now, let's get on with some of the news you're covering in Perplex City at the moment. Tell us about Pietro Salk.
Michiko Clark: Pietro Salk, actually is, well, he was, a very close colleague of mine, and our best investigative reporter, and I'm afraid I found out just before I came to the Academy this evening that he has passed. It's a strange case though, because, basically he seemed fine when I spoke to him last Monday, and then he fell into a coma later that evening. On Wednesday he came out of it briefly and create a maze, of all things, and then collapsed into the coma again and the doctors said that his condition had significantly deteriorated. Now, these mazes are really interesting because they've led us to a few old items from his files. I just don't think it means anything because he was very diligent about keeping me posted on his work, and especially for someone who clearly wasn't operating with all of his brain, the levels get much harder after the fifth one, and we have, I guess, one person at the Sentinel who's gotten as far as level seven or eight so far, but we don't know how much there is, and we don't really know the significance of all of it. It's really a mystery to us, what all of this was caused by and what it means?
Mike Mendoza: And who is Aiko Entrescore?
Michiko Clark: She actually is a member, it turns out, of a splinter religious group called the Reconstructionists, and she was actually arrested, I think it was last week, I'm afraid my sense of time is getting a little off-kilter, for suspicion of stealing the Cube herself. As it turns out the evidence didn't carry out that particular case, I guess. She's still under heavy suspicion that looks very bad, because she belongs to a religious group that is very happy that the Cube has gone missing. They thought that in the hands of the Academy it was always a kind of heretical state for the Cube to be in.
Mike Mendoza: Now, what's happening in the world of entertainment in Perplex City at the moment?
Michiko Clark: Well actually, the big news today is that there's a new album by Roll For Damage coming out. They started recording it some time ago, it's called Take Initiative, and we just had a release date for it, it's coming out on September 1st, and we're very excited.
Mike Mendoza: This is a rock band, isn't it?
Michiko Clark: Yes, it's a rock band, and actually they're the most famous and popular rock band in the city. I guess they might compare with, I guess, your U2, perhaps?
Mike Mendoza: Can you hum one of their songs? Uh, don't worry about that.
Michiko Clark: You don't want me to sing, trust me!
Mike Mendoza: Ah, no, I understand that. I mean, do you sing the same way as we do on Earth?
Michiko Clark: I would think so. No, we've actually listened to some of your recorded music and it's very similar in a lot of ways.
Mike Mendoza: Uh huh, so what else is happening in the world of entertainment?
Michiko Clark: Well, there's a new reality show - no, I'm sorry, a new season of the reality show The Lab that just began on Friday, and in this first episode there was the usual toss-up over how much lab space each player got, and there was a maze challenge in which Louise Haydock did remarkably well, I guess it's from seeing all of those rats in mazes - she is herself a neuroscientist. But the interesting thing in The Lab here is Ryman Gardner, he is actually a PCAG senior player. They've never actually had a senior Games player on the show before.
Mike Mendoza: What's the PCAG?
Michiko Clark: The PCAG is the Perplex City Academy Games, and that is our biggest sport in Perplex City. It's kind of a puzzle solving competition. There are a variety of puzzles, and there's a points scoring system. Lots and lots of people play, although not many people play in the elite, professional level. We actually do quite a lot of news about the PCAG. Currently there's a new player, well, not that recent, she's been playing this year, called Gabriella Petel, and she's just managed to put in a breakaway performance, we've been very impressed with her. She didn't show that potential the last few years, so it's been very interesting.
Mike Mendoza: Uh huh. I was reading in the Sentinel the other day, a story about a singer by the name of Joya.
Michiko Clark: Yes, Joya has confused all of us. She is a very popular singer, and actually she used to be romantically linked to the singer of Roll For Damage, that rock band, Alejo Jackson, and actually she's rumored to be pregnant with his child. They broke up under really really rocky circumstances a few months ago, and she right away became engaged to her produced Horace Shockley. Now on Solstice Day she was supposed to marry Horace Shockley, and simply did not show up at her own wedding. No-one's really sure what to make of this at this point and she's secluded herself, not talking to the press, ever since they. We just don't know where it's going.
Mike Mendoza: No... and do you make babies over there the same way as we do on Earth?
Michiko Clark: I have been led to believe it is precisely the same way.
Mike Mendoza: Threecisely? Does that mean you do it three ways? Okay, now, as you probably realise, we are actually a sports station, we talk about sport, do you have sports in Perplex City?
Michiko Clark: Well again, our primary sport is the PCAG. We do have some physical athletics, but they don't tend to get the press, if you know what I mean. We do have a controversy in the PCAG, I believe she is fourteen years old, named Myra Champaign. The PCAG recently ruled to let her start playing, even though, I guess there was an ethical question. The PCAG doesn't allow cognitive enhancing drugs in its players, because they want to ensure a fair and level playing field for people at their natural level of intellect. Now Myra is absolutely certified clean of cognitive enhancing drugs right now, but as a child she had a developmental delay of some variety and she took some cognitive enhancers for a few years to treat this symptom.
Mike Mendoza: Did you know what type of drugs they were?
Michiko Clark: No, I'm afraid I don't know exactly what drugs they were, we do have a wide array of cognitive enhancement drugs in Perplex City, with different, I guess different effects, there's some that make you more alert, that give you clearer thought, there are some that can improve your memory, some of them work very nicely and are widely available, some of them are a little more dangerous, it's, I guess it's a side-effect of intellect being so important to our society.
Mike Mendoza: Listen, it's been great talking to you Michiko, we must do it again some time and thank you for talking to Earth today, and so we will link up again soon I hope.
Michiko Clark: It's been a honour, thank you very much.
Mike Mendoza: It's been our honour, believe me, thank you for your time. All the best. That's Michiko Clark, who's editor of the Perplex City Sentinel.
