Mission Icefly: Traelek Institute Has a Website

Dan Koelsch,

The latest development in the Test Subjects Needed ARG has been a new viral website called Survival Code. As we stated earlier today, once you set up your profile on the new site, you get access to 5 pages of a comic book. These pages feature the fictional Traelek Institute, in which Terry O’Quinn talks to a classroom about the state of senses in humans. The video that we also discovered has some of the same imagery. Well, it turns out that the Traelek Institute exists, at least online.

Discovered by MovieViral reader Micah L., Traelekinstitute.com is legit or not. A Whois search shows it was created yesterday and doesn’t have the basic information hidden like TestSubjectsNeeded.com or MissionIcefly.com, so that puts a chink in the armor. The homepage is pretty bare, again saying a lot without really saying anything about the Institute and what they do there. While the site suggests you “peruse” it, there are no clickable links. Fortunately, there is a phone number listed at the bottom of the page. When you call it, you get a voicemail for the Institute which gives you a word association quiz for the words “decoy”, “ascent”, “blameless”, and “misguided”. It then cleverly gives you a hint to go back to the website and do something with words.

What we found out, with the help of Micah, is that if you place each word after the Traelek Institute URL, you get a subpage. Decoy has a picture of an interesting ring on top of a handwritten letter, along with sentence “Sometimes, it’s necessary to sacrifice riches for salvation.” Ascent has some of the drawings we see in the Survival Code video and the phrase “Rudimentary evidence of HSP: the ability to look at the common housefly and see more. The synthesis of biology and technology – all encapsulated in this simple doodle?” Blameless has a newspaper clipping of house fire in 1996, which might have been caused by the owners’ son. Finally, Misguided gives us a brochure for Hiltrecht Academy, a military school for 14-18 year olds.

I’ve tried Googling several of the keywords I found on the pages, but no other websites or clues seem to pop up. If you find anything let us know. What do you think these pages and images all mean? I can almost picture a story regarding the kid causing the fire and going to military school, but it seems to have nothing to do with anything else we’ve seen. This could be a fake site, but it’s pretty intricately done in such a short time (Unfiction found it last night). I’d love to read your thoughts below.

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Comments (28)

  2. Indications are fairly strong for it being legitimate: we found it within minutes of the logfiles mentioning the site going up, so there really wasn’t enough time for gamejacking.

  3. I was actually contacting a friend to tell her about the website being up and the telephone number I called it early yesterday @ 4:51AM EST (I have proof on my phone). It’s certianly getting interesting….

  4. I was actually contacting a friend to tell her about the website being up and the telephone number I called it early yesterday @ 4:51AM EST (I have proof on my phone). It’s certianly getting interesting….

  5. FOUND: The profiles have changed. They are now updated to show “key codes” that one has collected and other codes are available when redemption is found.  I got this after calling the phone number. 

  6. If you call the number and hang on the line after the words…it brings you to a weird voicemail thing.  Anyone get that?

  8. never mind, you meant our profiles on the Survival Code site…that we created on the original Human Preservation Project site. Does anyone know how to “see” these Keys that we have collected? My profile says I have collected 3, but I’m not sure how I did

  10. I’m working on it too, I can’t figure out the codes, I tried my oreservation code and different combinations of it with no luck.  Any suggestions tweet me at my name above.

  11. This has to be 5gum. I mean, I’ve entered in 3 codes from the 5gum packages and found that the constellation keys that are unlocked are the symbols for the different 5gum flavors. The first one that gets unlocked is a green bolt, like the rain flavor symbol. The 2nd one I unlocked was blue and pink and squiggly, like the solstice flavor. Third one was a symbol with a red line leading to a green fuzzy thing, like the vortex flavor symbol. It just makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why all this just for gum? It seems a little much, doesn’t it?

  14. OMG I am in tears right now that was so scary. So I called the number on the Traelek Institute page and felt unimpressed when it didn’t offer anything. Well, while you’re on the line, dial 7-8-6. I found someone tweeted about it and I tried it. Well, it unlocks some sort of government voice tap recording of a girl on the phone with her mom while being attacked at a night club. The whole thing sounds so real. I don’t think this is for gum or a video game at all, it has to be for a movie.

  15. OH my god, I did it too.  What the heck. Maybe it’s some sort of combined effort between two different sources. Make sure to dial it before the voicemail stops, though.  I was sceptical of you, but I wanted to try it. 

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