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.

ARGs & Campaigns Viral Marketing

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Comments (28)

  2. I just did all this last night. I found a code, followed the QR code link and did a long process of  log in and human verification things and it gave me a weird badge that they said they would mail or something??? im not sure. I went to a certain link and it has a countdown clock that says i have to wait 7 more days before i can enter the texting facility. I cant get over why it’s so enticing. i know its just for gum but this stuff is elaborate. Brilliant marketing plan!

  3. As i said earlier, i just found this all last night. in the intro movie for the survivalcode website, there are two girls sitting in a car, one has a briefcase and the other is drawing. later on, it shows two women, one drawing and one with a briefcase in a car. earlier on, the girl with the briefcase get out of the car and is left behind and the girl who draws, draws the opening gates to the testing facility. there’s a connection here somewhere. There’s also a man who drives to an icy area and digs up one of the blue wasp insects. Obviously im just engaging in some a brilliant advertising play. that being said, im sure there’s some sort of connection here but im not sure yet. perhaps the digging man set fire to his house? perhaps the girls created a testing facility? or maybe one was attacked at the club. it’s delightfully elaborate though.

  5. I tried dialing the 786 during the Institute call but it didn’t work. However when I opened the link to the wire tap it says recorded wire tap conversation available at this number. So I called the number and it mentions the website exhibit24.net on that website is some crazy stuff I haven’t fully checked it out but it has wire tap links and Barcelons usb stuff. Check it out guys and see if we can figure it out.

  6. Actually you might want to stay away from this, I don’t think it’s part of the game when I clicked on one of the links it said you’ve planned to conspire against america and all this stuff about beng watched and stuff from now on. When i google searched it some people had been talking about one of the sites since 4 years ago so yea IDK I’m pretty lost and freaked out actually

  7. This wiretap I just googled it all, anything with this whole government crap is all for the ARG Year Zero, it has nothing to do with MIssion Icefly from what I’ve gotten so far. Sorry to keep posting these comments.

  9. Hey did anyone else get the pentagonal thing that had A1through a buck of other a numbers that I think go in a pattern of color and number to come to the center where there is a five inside a pentagon… I didn’t want to do all the work to find out what is In the pentagon until I heard that someone else had found it

  10. Has anyone seen any progress on the website? It finally finished the countdown on the “visit the  testing facilities” link and I played this little game to  “Master my audio destiny” and that’s all that’s happened in the past 4 days. I have like 6 constellation keys and I don’t know what any of this does. I was holding out for the countdown to finish so i could like get into the testing facilities online but It hasn’t made any progress. 🙁

  11. Okay. I kept getting an error message when I used the 7-8-6 during the same call. You sure that’s it?
    I called the Lost Dog number and the kid says it’s name is something like “Kruff McGee.” But was bit hard to understand him. Also says he’s known the girl (Bobbie) for 3 1/2 years.

    I got a little way past the 15 marker on the audio section and left to do other stuff. Returned to continue and the flash is all funky and not letting me finish. 🙁

    Still not figured out the Pentigon thing nor the Table puzles yet. Has any of you?

  12. you get a pattern for the table puzzle, you just have to match it, i don’t remember where the pattern is but it’s nearby

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