This top bit does contain some spoilers, but I’ll warn you before we get to the really serious spoilers, promise.
The envelope is a different colour, but the fastening is the same. My breath quickens as I unwind the string and slide the slips of paper out of their sheath. There is weight in there, and I’m almost hesitant to find out what it is, what mystery has made its way into my post box this time.
I set most of the items aside and prise open the letter, and the familiar Capital Experience logo greets me. I devour the words eagerly, but then my pace slows.
“Dear Becky, we are sorry to inform you that you have not been selected on this occasion to take part in our Experience Programme.”
The words wash over me.
“…received a very high volume of applications…” “…no personal failing here on your part…” “…you scored 47/60, which was just shy of the 50 required…” “…unable to give personal feedback…”
And then right at the bottom,
“Humanity’s happiness is our primary concern.”
Humanity’s happiness, not my happiness. Capital Experience hadn’t just rejected me, they had rejected my hopes for happiness.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
What is the Lucky Ones?
In short, it’s an pervasive immersive experience with elements of theatre, gaming and mystery, run by the Leeds-based Riptide.
In 2018, I took part in the first two runs of the Lucky Ones. The Lucky Ones: Lucy took place over about a month in March, and was our first introduction to Capital Experience, then a vague “lifestyle” company that assigned a Relationship Manager, the aforementioned Lucy, who turned out to be a subversive agent working against them from the inside.
My experience included flowers through the post, mystery parcel drops, searching Lucy’s flat, being chased through the streets of Leeds, taking my best friend out for lunch and making a tough decision between turning Lucy’s hard-won data over to Capital Experience or returning it to her. I chose to side with Capital Experience, and was rewarded with an ice cold G&T on the top floor of the Pinnacle building. (You can read the whole saga here, or a spoiler-lite version here.)
In the Lucky Ones: Lailah, in October, I spent two weeks chatting to Capital Experience’s AI bot Lailah, who slowly tried to assess if I was a good or bad person, while the Neoluddites tried to convince me she was evil. At the finale, CE revealed they had the head Neoluddite tied up in their basement, and I freaked out and freed him. It turned out to be a test, and I had failed.
Ever since then, I’ve been desperate for the Lucky Ones to return, so when they announced a third run that would work with the confines of lockdown, I couldn’t really put my excitement into words.
The third run was down to be shorter than either of the previous ones, at just 7 days, and due to the Covid sitch, would be completely remote. I was interested to see how the experience would fare over a shorter time and without a lot of the same cool options it used to be truly immersive in the past.
What was it like? (spoiler-lite)
Before we plough into the adventure I went on, I wanted to speak to those of you who think this sounds cool to say -stop reading. Go do it. Riptide are running further runs of The Lucky Ones in March and May this year, so get off my website and onto theirs. Then come back and share your crazy adventure with me.
In case you need more convincing, let me just say that The Lucky Ones remains one of the best immersive experiences I’ve ever done, even over the shorter timeframe and wholly remote. They do a remarkable job of getting you to care about the characters (well, one in particular, for me), forcing you a little out of your comfort zone and putting you in the driver’s seat.
That’s not to say there aren’t flaws in it, but I can’t really discuss those without giving some stuff away. But for me, it was well worth the £30 (I got the early bird price, natch), so go give a try!
Warning – spoilers are below. If you’re currently taking part in Riptide’s The Lucky Ones, I’d suggest holding off on reading this until after the end of the month. You can read a spoiler-lite blog post about one of the previous runs of the Lucky Ones here.
Day One – Saturday
Day one of The Lucky Ones dawned, and I knew how these normally began, so down to my letterbox I went.
I got it back up to my flat and opened it – this is where we started the blog, so you know what happened. It was a form rejection letter. Immediately, I knew it was a trap or a test or something. There was no way that CE were going to let a willing participant out of their grip.
Also included in the main envelope, was a smaller black envelope, and when I shook it, something moved about in there. When I opened it, I found a silver shilling, and a business card. “Our destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing”, it proclaimed on one side, with a phone number and the WhatsApp logo on the back.
The shilling was the first of a great many pieces of this run that harked back to previous runs. In TLO1, I had found a shilling in Lucy’s flat that I later swapped at the Everyman Cinema for a USB stick containing Capital Experience’s data. Who knew what the shilling was going to buy me this time!
Grabbing my phone, I texted the “our destination…” quote to the number, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Good, now we can talk.”
The number explained that I hadn’t been rejected by Capital Experience – as I had thought! – and instead had been selected for future “reconditioning”. That I was now part of a fight that had been going on for over 200 years, and that I would be called upon to prove myself soon.
It was all very cloak-and-dagger, and oh so exciting.
Day Two – Sunday
My mystery person was back in touch, and it was time for me to prove myself. It seemed that someone was on the verge of being caught by Capital Experience – whoever it was that was slipping things into their mailouts! This definitely made me laugh, as I’d commented just the previous day that they had a serious issue in their post room, given the amount of random stuff I’d received in Capital Experience mailings over the years.
My task was to hack into the email of an Internal Affairs guy called Adam and work out which of the employees was the sleeper agent. This was pretty easy, since Adam has the worst password security in the world.
A few taps later, and I was reading over mundane office emails about porridge and post-it notes.
There were a few emails about the post-room – keycard assignments and access logs. I used some Excel trickery to narrow the list down, but there will still four names on the suspects list.
And then an email from Laura Newport caught my eye. Apparently her card had gone missing. And the person who had had it last – Lucy Hesketh.
I knew immediately that Lucy was behind it all.
But in terms of the case, it could actually have been any of the suspects. In fact, with a missing keycard, it could be anyone in the damn company! Luckily, my mystery friend was able to confirm that Lucy was our girl, and my next task was to distract the investigation from her. Well, that was easy enough – I sent a rant about irresponsible Laura was and how she’d jeopardised the security of the company, and EVERYONE was now a suspect!
Day 3 – Monday
Apparently I’d proved myself, and my mystery friend (who had introduced himself as Max) was ready to let me in on the secret. The big reveal was done via a video on a Neoluddite website. The Neoluddites did not hate technology, apparently – they just wanted to stem the charge towards technology that was harmful to the world. Makes sense, unless you’re as much of a technophile as me!
He told me to assume the name ASH, and that we all reported to NED. He also mentioned something called Cell X – a veritable El Dorado, a secret Neoluddite cell that would provide sanctuary to any NL who found themselves in trouble, but whose existence was a mere rumour. Max himself said he’d spent years trying to chase it down.
Naturally I immediately knew that at some point, I’d be tasked with finding it.
And finally, he revealed the reason I was involved: Operation Cordyceps. Named after a parasitic fungus, the Neoluddites planned to take down mega-tech company Capital Experience.
They were vague on how, but they promised that my time would come.
Day 4 – Tuesday
Trouble on Tuesday. Lucy had been forced to go on the run.
Max sent me half a dozen voicemails that she’d left that day, as well as a text exchange with “her Max”. Listening to the voicemails was a real insight into Lucy – there were messages to her mum, to a friend about someone she was seeing, and to a fellow operative teasing them that they didn’t know what a plus code was.
(For those not in the know, a plus code, or open location code, is a way of identifying a specific location without the need for a street address. Kind of like what3words.)
Then the voicemails turned darker, and Lucy was on the run, and leaving a sorrowful message apologising to her mum about not being able to visit.
And her messages to Max may have looked cryptic initially, but it only took me a few moments to figure out what I was looking for. I dug out the small black envelope from my CE rejection package, and lifted up the business card to find the key.
Or rather, the shilling.
It was the “shortened Latin type” that gave it away. While it’s a cracking description for some imaginary key, I immediately connected it to the text that I knew I’d find on the coin. I googled up a Vignere Square code cracking website, knowing that type of code to be fiddly to decrypt by hand. I typed in the coded message, and then examined the shilling.
The most obvious bit of “shortened Latin” seemed to be the FID DEF on the front of the coin, so I entered that as the key. Huh, no luck. Flipping to the back, I tried VI. Nope. Okay, Georgius VI. Nope.
Maybe they want the English? Six? Defender of the Faith? How about the long version of FID DEF, fidei defensor? Still no? Really? How about every damn word on the coin??
After thoroughly exhausting all options on the coin, I switched to a different Vignere cracking site, which worked with FID DEF on the first try.
Onefo urthr eetheheadro wle eds
It was an address. An address I recognised. My mind flashed back to rooting through Lucy’s belongings, seeing the mural on the wall, seeing the photo of me… But that was another life, another timeline, and surely it would not help me now.
I texted Max with Lucy’s address, and awaited my next instruction.
Day 5 – Wednesday
If I thought seeing the address had brought back memories, nothing could prepare me for seeing the photos of her flat. It was almost identical to the flat I had searched during the first Lucky Ones, down to the knocked over salt and same shampoo bottle.
I got so boresighted on this that, when Max asked if I could see any clues in the room, I immediately thought that it must me the out-of-focus, barely-in-frame corkboard that had held the solution during the previous run.
“The NL who went in didn’t think it was that important, otherwise we would have a close up, wouldn’t we?”
Alright Max, I’ll stop relishing in my memories of the past and actually look at the photos! One photo in particular caught my eye – that of a takeout menu. A takeout menu with a suspiciously unpixellated URL…
So I headed to the website. It was really starting to heat up, and not just cuz I was now craving Chinese food. The website was pretty barebones, except for a menu. And a phone number. I knew what I had to do.
“Hello?”
“Hi, can I place an order for delivery?”
“Sure, what can I get you?”
“Uhhhh…”
I glanced back at the photos. There was a stack of takeout containers, and the top one seemed to be marked with a number.
“A… a number fifteen?”
“Anything else?”
“… no?”
“It’s a three-item minimum…” click
Well, now I felt like an idiot! I went back, scanned over the menu on the website, and saw a tiny NL symbol next to the number 15, and two further menu items. I called up again.
“Hi, can I place an order for delivery?”
“Did you just call here a moment ago?”
“…Yes. Can I get a number 15, a 60 and a 113?”
“What name is that for?”
“…Ash.”
“Okay. I’m only going to say this once.”
Barely giving me time to grab a pen, he reeled of a list of a dozen items that were on the order for “Ash”, then hung up just as abruptly as before. Being a takeout owner that moonlighted as a secret rendezvous site must be a tough break.
I cross-referenced the food items with the menu, and got a thrill when I realised the first item was number 07. A mobile number, this time.
I hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to text. But I needed to know quickly. I dialed.
“If you’ve got this number then you know that I need help. All my networks have been compromised, but I think I know who can help me. Have you heard of the Neoluddite faction called Cell X?”
Well well well. It seems we were off on an El Dorado hunt!
Lucy’s message mentioned various clues to the location – she was flying, and would be landing in about 24 hours. There will be a Neoluddite logo visible from the street. Plus codes hold the key to the location. And there’s a train nearby.
I relayed all of this to Max. He was not impressed, dismissed Lucy’s desire to find Cell X as impossible, and wondered aloud whether she was mad or a traitor. But I knew we had to help her.
At first I was stuck for a long time, with no idea even where to start looking. But then the topic of Max’s search for Cell X came up, and he mentioned his video on the NL website. I went back and checked, and there were three screengrabs of maps in the video, all containing potential locations for Cell X.
And Max hadn’t checked all of them yet! What the hell was he doing??
I sat down and cross referenced them with Lucy’s info. The first was a remote village in Columbia – no trains nearby. The second, Tallinn, was a) too close for a 24 hour flight, and b) also no trains. The third was Buenos Aires. About the right distance away. And a train line.
I brought up Google Street View and started cross-referencing the plus code locations, starting with the one closest to the train line and working further out. Nothing. I looked at every single spot on the map, and no Neoluddite symbols, even when I zoomed in and peered into shop windows.
I realised that the Tallinn map did have a trainline just off the north edge of the map, so I started checking there. Also a bus. I brought up the Columbia map, but I knew there wasn’t a train on there!
In my second technological mess-up of the game, I went back to the very first location on the Buenos Aires map. The view that loaded literally left me speechless.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it was not that!
Ash……………………..
ASH
ASH
ASH
Where the FUCK is that?
Is this some kind of joke?
To say Max was excited… I mean, I got it all from his maps. He had literally about 20 locations on a few maps that could be Cell X, and he hadn’t checked them. He didn’t deserve El Dorado.
Day 6 – Thursday
Today’s first contact was from Capital Experience. Despite rejecting me, it seems they still needed me.
I ignored them, of course.
Lucy’s next communication is from deep within Buenos Aires, in a barrio called La Boca – an area where Italian immigrants set up their own republic in a revolution against the state. Lucy likened it to what the Neoluddites were trying to do… and then set me on my task, to direct her to the safehouse I’d discovered.
I did wonder whether she was leading Capital Experience to Cell X, but I decided not to care. I just wanted to get her to safety.
Doing so was easier said than done. I’m not exactly good with my left and right, so the instructions I sent her to start with were… not great!
Honestly, I wasn’t trying to sabotage her, but she may have thought I was! And it looks like she wasn’t being followed, because they would definitely have caught up with her.
But she made it to the railroad tracks, and I guided her along. As she walked, she talked about the things she was seeing. It was like walking with her through the streets of Buenos Aires.
And not gonna lie, when I realised they’d literally done onsite filming in Argentina, I was pretty shook.
Finally, she made it to the safehouse. The moment when she saw the safehouse for the first time mirrored my exclamations of excitement when I first opened it up on Google Maps.
She texted to say she had arrived safely, and I didn’t expect to hear from her again. But I did, several hours later. She sent a voice message.
It’s Lucy. They’re going to ask you to finish what I started. The virus. I’m just not sure that this is a good idea.
This will leak a lot of personal information. They keep telling me that this will prevent any further wrongdoing, but at what cost? If you change your mind at the last minite, you can delete it. Follow the steps and don’t take this decision lightly.
It’s all led up to this. It’s up to you now. You’re now on the journey with us. Your destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.
I knew my time to decide was approaching.
Day 7 – Friday
Firstly, and most importantly, I ordered Chinese takeout.
But secondly, I received a text message from Max, telling me it was time to run Operation Cordyceps.
I had to hack the Capital Experience backend, again using Adam Parker’s login details. However, his password had stopped working! Had he finally adopted a secure password that hadn’t been breached?
No, of course now. CE had changed his username, but he was still using the same old password from before. I got into the backend and went hunting.
There were tons of folders, and I spent my time perusing them. From Project folders on Project Lailah (from The Lucky Ones 2) and Project Happiness (from The Lucky Ones 1 and possibly 3?), to Internal Investigations, there was a lot to trawl through.
Inside the Lailah folder, among documents I recognised including the initial ethics questionnaire from that run, I found a series of numbers in folders labelled “Lailah Launch” and “Lauren’s Speech”. I copied and pasted them before moving on. (I later cracked the code, and match the wording up with my videos from that run of The Lucky Ones).
In the Project Happiness folder, I found lists of names. One caught my eye in particular – a folder named “Reconditioning”. I copied it out and searched it for my name, and drew a blank. Perhaps Max was wrong. Perhaps I had never been selected for reconditioning, and they just didn’t want me.
Finally, in the Internal Investigations folder I found Lucy’s name, and Operation Cordyceps. And the virus.
And I’d made my decision. I’d decided not to run the virus.
And then, because I am totally perceptive and remembered everything Lucy said… I did nothing. I didn’t go in and delete the virus. I didn’t run it. I just went away and played online board games.
I thought it was a bit weird. Capital Experience weren’t hammering it home, Lucy wasn’t checking in, even Max was leaving me to it. I did text/email a few people, but no one replied.
I went to bed feeling unsure – both about my decision, and about whether I’d made a decision at all.
Unexpected Day 8 – Saturday
On Saturday morning, I was uploading content about The Lucky Ones to Instagram and re-listened to Lucy’s voicemail. That’s when it hit me – it wasn’t enough to not run the virus, I needed to delete it!
Feeling foolish, I logged on, went immediately to the virus, and hit delete.
The credits rolled. I’d finished the Lucky Ones, just about 12 hours too late.
Operation Cordyceps was gone. Capital Experience was safe. Lucy was too, hopefully. The Neoluddites were screwed.
Why I deleted the virus
I decided to delete the virus, for one reason and one reason only – I thought it was what Lucy truly wanted. She is who my connection has been with, right from 2018. This latest run has really given me the opportunity to spend time with Lucy in a way that previous runs haven’t, and I feel like I’ve seen the real her more, not the her that Capital Experience or the Neoluddites want her to be.
That doesn’t mean it was the voicemail that convinced me. It was actually a moment from her wanderings around Buenos Aires. She caught sight of a mural on a wall, which I now know is part of the Mural to the Mothers of the Disappeared. And she said that it looked like a luddite. From my view on her video though, it looked somewhat like a neanderthal, with a small chin and sloped-back forehead. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that someone wholly on-board with the Neoluddite message might say about them.
I think Lucy is a spy for Capital Experience.
There was also the fact that my name was not on the reconditioning list. Had Max been playing me all along?
The final moral decision at the end of a run of the Lucky Ones, is always a close call, and this time was no different. But I feel satisfied that I made the right decision.
I’m still waiting to hear back from Capital Experience about that Premium Membership though.
Final thoughts
Overall, another fantastic experience from Riptide. The Lucky Ones remains one of the most engaging, immersive and fascinating experiences I’ve done in my life.
Despite the challenges of the format, they managed to retain a lot of the “cool factor”. Elements like the the call to the takeout place and the videos wandering around Buenos Aires really added a 3D element to the experience. The puzzles were pitched at a good level – tricky but far from impossible – and even though I got stuck at a few points, the in-game contacts I had were unobtrusive about getting me back on the right track.
Although the experience was shorter, for me that didn’t stop it from building up a world – though I realised I do benefit from the world-building they’ve done in previous runs, and I’m not sure how it would have fared from a brand-new perspective. The moral choice in this game was a good one, and, although I didn’t have a ton of information about the options, I actually felt more informed this time than I have in some previous runs.
I didn’t try particularly hard to “break the game”, although I have heard of people who managed to apprehend Lucy ahead of the finale, so who knows how that turned out for them with respect to the virus.
My only slight disappointment was the end of the game. It ended abruptly after the choice to delete the virus, which meant there was no impact based on the decision I made. Some sort of post-game scene or interaction would definitely have made a difference here.
But overall, it was a really interesting and engaging experience, and I’m definitely glad that I got a third chance to be one of the Lucky Ones.
There are future runs of The Lucky Ones in March and May this year, plus maybe more in the future – but if you’ve read this whole blog, that’s probably spoiled a lot of the fun for you.