Yes, ‘LINES’.

But not blurred lines separating fiction and reality. And not strategic lines which differentiate ally from enemy. Rather I am talking about ancestral lines, the phylogenetic origin of our mysterious Junsui women.

Let us first turn to a neglected element of the Junko Junsui mystery: the role of Nippon Shin Eisei, the purported ‘creators’ of the Junsui.

Recall back to my first entry when an advertising campaign launched by the Nippon Shin Eisei company introduced us to a girl named Junko. Junko was by their claim the first of a group of a group of genetically engineered children known as the Junsui—‘the children of all mankind.’

By clicking on the company logo on the bottom left of the page, one might investigate the corporate ID page of Nippon Shin Eisei (NSE), a Japanese biotech company.

Some colleagues of mine who are native Japanese speakers give the following translation:

Our children are reflections of ourselves. But while we can make choices to benefit our own lives, we’ve never before been able to make these kinds of choices for our unborn children. In a rapidly changing world, Nippon Shin Eisei has created a revolutionary new process through which parents can best prepare their child for the future.

NSE’s enhancements are not designed to create children with abilities beyond the capabilities of modern man. Our genetic engineers simply splice in normal genetic code, ensuring healthy alleles are in place and safeguarding your child against potentially devastating mutations.

Clicking the contact link, I wrote a cursory email to the company regarding my interest in the topic of genetically-engineered tykes (which is admittedly genuine). Within a short time, I received the following reply:

One wonders what the point of announcing their program in such a global fashion would be, if NSE could not accept further international applicants.

Annoying automated responses aside, there are a few other items that do seem to indicate that the Junsui are in fact the product of some kind of genetic design.

First of all, and this is a point of curiosity which has been raised by others, is that none of the girls, including Junko (Vera), Little Sister (Rhea), or Diyne (Oksana), seem to have a mother. Instead they are surrounded by individuals who are referred to by such euphemisms as ‘protector’ and ‘suitor’. Eventually these evolve into the more ominous labels of ‘defiler’ and ‘khozain’ (patriarchal authoritarian).

If one is so inclined, they can page through the twenty odd pages of Junko’s Facebook postings and still read some of her early messages. In particular, those occurring before the disappearance of Little Sister reveal some very telling facts regarding Junko’s interests and obsessions.

Or, you can follow my postings, as I’ve already, *sigh* made a PDF of the entire sequence of postings.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because I am writing this account of events after the fact, I’m not able to present Junko’s original Facebook posts as they originally appeared. There were in fact some deletions made along the way which will not be seen here. Also, hopefully not a ‘spoiler’ for anybody at this point, but Junko eventually revealed her real name to be Vera Novosi, changing the name of the profile itself to reflect this new monicker. We’ll get into my thinking on this later.

Here’s her post in its original form, when it did indeed start with the name JUNKO JUNSUI and featured the icon of the blonde woman from NSE’s Junsui Project site…

Two important deductions can be made from the above posting:

1. Since ‘Junko’ is addressed in the second person, the name of the writer is likely not Junko.
2. The writer (and presumably her companions) have no mother.

I’m not quite sure why it took the crack puzzle-solving teams of the Internet so long to figure this out. But perhaps hindsight is 20:20.

If there was any remaining doubt regarding the Junko pseudonym, it was eliminated a few days later by the following posting…

The term Hyperboreal refers to Hyperborea, the area north of the mythical Greek island known as Thule. Typically, this term has connotations of terrae incognitae such as the land of the Vikings and Druids and so forth. But here, I suspect, Junko was alluding to another race, a would-be master one.

The mystics of Nazism, quoting Wikipedia, identified Hyperborea as ‘the ancient origin of the Aryan race.’ The claim was based upon an easily discarded, probable hoax manuscript known as the Oera Linda. This text also claims:

Europe and other lands were, for most of their history, ruled by a succession of folk-mothers presiding over a hierarchical order of celibate priestesses dedicated to the goddess Frya, daughter of the supreme god Wr-alda and Irtha, the earth mother.

Back in my last post when we mentioned the videos featuring the documentary antics of the young princess Gwaschemasch’e, you may recall she was, by the telling of the second excerpt, spirited out of Turkey on the eve of possible banishment. Her spiritual mentor, encouraging her study of arcane lore, was one Guido von List. A little delving on Herr von List reveals that he was associated with (and in fact the video mentions him by name) one Lanz von Liebenfels. Von Liebenfels is perhaps better known to devotees of video games and conspiracy theories as one of the founders of the Thule Society, the Bavarian occultist group which was a direct sponsor of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (which later became the Nazi Party).

When tracing a tangent on the Internet long enough, all things will eventually lead to Hitler, I suppose.

So, after leaving Turkey in the Summer of 1908 (on second viewing, the documentarian behind the video seems to have suspected German spy, Fritz Duquesne as the perpetrator), it seems Gwaschemasch’e spent some time in Germany under the warm eye of those who would go on to found some of the tenets of National Socialism.

This brings another elephant into the room: the consistent allusions to the theme of eugenics, both historically and into the present day.

Going back to both Wikipedia and the Circassians, we learn:

By the early nineteenth century, Circassians were associated with theories of racial hierarchy, which elevated the Caucasus region as the source of the purest examples of the white race, which was named the Caucasian race after the area by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Blumenbach theorised that the Circassians were the closest to God’s original model of humanity, and thus ‘the purest and most beautiful whites were the Circassians.

Now throw on top of this the possibility that Gwaschemasch’e spent a good number of years in the care of the world’s foremost proponents of German neopaganism and Arayanism; add in the fact that the Junsui Project’s children have purportedly, ‘been gifted with only the most optimal human alleles’, and I’d say you have a pretty consistent theme of eugenics running through things.

The Lebensborn ('font of life') organization was a Nazi eugenics program established by Himmler's SS in 1936 to provide for the breeding of children who were 'racially and biologically-hereditarily valuable'

To what end, you ask? As a good conspiracy theorist, shackled to my personal Abulafia, I might suggest that this history alludes to something sacred or protected—perhaps sought by rival empires for centuries.

Several items of evidence establish a connection between the Junsui Program and the Russian private military company, Alfa-Tsentr. Most notable among these is the sending address of the automatic response e-mail from NSE, nse_trans.admin@alfa-tsentr.ru which suggests that some administrative functions of the Japanese biotechnology company have been taken over by the Russian PMC.

A very disturbing and provocative question arises:

What exactly would a Russian nationalist private paramilitary entity want with a Japanese biotechnology company developing new genetic engineering technology?

As a precursor to this installment, let me state that I personally find the current slow down in events to be a positive development…

I had only recently found both the time and motivation to collect my thoughts on this curious and fledgling epic. I had begun to fear that with the rapidity of new unfolding events I might never be able to catch up, let alone give due examination to smaller yet nonetheless very interesting elements. As stated before, blogging on the Junsui is a very favoured personal indulgence which must sometimes must be set aside when my professional projects’ milestones demand it.

With all that we have previously covered in the conflict between the Junsui and Alfa-Tsentr, I now realize I have failed to document some of the core aspects of the Junsui’s world and belief system. I’d like very much to articulate some of these fundamentals now, lest I find myself regretting the omission at a later date. So, let us begin our course of study!

Through her photos posted on Facebook, MySpace, and the Russian social networking site, Vkontakte, Junko clearly established that she possessed a feeling of kinship towards the historical figure, Gwaschemasch’e Kadın Efendi. Gwaschemasch’e was the daughter of Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz and through her mother was of Circassian lineage. Gwaschemasch’e herself was one of multiple wives of a subsequent Sultan, Adbul Hamid II, the last absolute monarch of the Ottoman Empire.

Two documentary clips from the archives of Soviet era Kievnauchfilm, aka ‘Kiev Science Film’, explain more:

The Circassians (excerpt 1)

The Circassians (excerpt 2)

For those who lack the attention span (or bandwidth) to watch six minutes of 80s Soviet documentary footage, I shall summarize…

(Those who choose to watch the videos may skip the next paragraph).

It seems Gwaschemasch’e, returning from college in a Paris and a life full of exposure to artistic temperaments, found herself in favour with the Sultan, whose powers were in wane. They were wed, but Gwaschemasch’e’s insistence upon aligning herself with several aficionados of runic magic, most notably the mysterious occultist known as Guido von List, threw her into disfavour with the Sultan’s advisors. These men felt HIH’s mystical predilections could further turn the populace against their regime. This counsel seems well deserved as in 1908 the Young Turk rebellion began and the Sultan was deposed from power. Gwaschemasch’e, whom the rebels demanded be expelled from the country, went missing. There exists some correspondence that seems to substantiate that Gwaschemasch’e was in fact smuggled out of Turkey by allies of her spiritual mentor, Herr Von List. The notorious spy (later allied with some of the more ignoble causes of the 20th century) Fritz Duquesne is a possible figure involved in her egress.

Whether you watched the documentaries or simply read my hasty summary, there are a few key points I wish to underline…

First, it is obvious to anyone why these materials hold appeal to Junko (aka Vera Novosi) and her ‘sisters’. These clips explain the plight of a powerful young woman who became obsessed with the spiritual world during a time of political tumult. Like their idol, Gwaschemasch’e, the Junsui have become fond of identifying themselves as ‘Circassian’, i.e. the lineage of Caucus mountain peoples who have an interesting historical story replete with plenty of wars and persecution.

Perhaps most relevant to this particular material are the legends of Circassian Beauties that ran rampant through the literature and even the advertising (several balms were advertised as being tools of these beauties) through the 17th – 19th centuries.

Throughout the 19th century, the Circassians were widely reported to be victims of human trafficking, often sold at the slave market in Constantinople as exotic treasures and reputedly made excellent concubines.

Taking a somewhat perverse view on the definition of beauty was P.T. Barnum, who exhibited several ‘Circassian Beauties’ in his museum of the bizarre. Though the Circassians displayed lacking any ethnic connection to the real thing, they all were notable for their sporting teased out ‘big hair’ styles similar to an Afro.

Legendary beauty aside, the Circassians should perhaps best be remembered for their century-long struggle against the Russian armies that sought to dispossess them of their homelands. The struggle was finally brought to an end through the use of scorched earth tactics on the part of Russian General Yevdokimov. May 21st is known to the Circassians as their ‘Day of Mourning’ – corresponding with the date in 1864 when the Tsar announced the total Russian occupation of these lands.

The Circassians were, to be sure, a fearsome enemy and well-accustomed to the ways of battle. As the English writer Edmund Spencer, Esq. (not the one you’re probably not thinking of) wrote:

This valley was much more diversified and romantic than that through which we had passed, occasionally forming into a tiny plain, and then into a contracted gorge. It was, also, for the most part, diligently cultivated, and, I was told by the captain, thickly inhabited; not, however, that there was a single human habitation visible, the Circassians having the custom of concealing their dwellings by dense foliage, in order to elude the observation of the enemy.

It should be noted that the Circassian’s tragic defeat led to the people’s mass expulsion from their home region, a journey that killed millions by way of disease, starvation, and fatigue.

Whether or not Junko knows all this is debatable, but one thing seems certain: the Circassians fought like a group possessed and held one of the world’s most powerful militaries at bay for over a century. Who knows what inspires such a struggle and such a heroic defiance?

Regardless of whether Junko and her sisters bear actual genetic lineage from Gwaschemasch’e and the Circassians, the woman and her people mark a definitive source of inspiration and parable.

IMAGES: Junko’s Facebook Album on Gwaschemasch’e Efendi (Gone But Not Forgotten)

Depending on your age and the length of time you’ve gone without picking up an issue of Wired magazine, you may be familiar with the American forums known as 4chan.

Founded in 2003, the site has been the breeding ground for many a fledgling Internet meme. To the uninitiated, 4chan is a shocking mix of vile pornography, sophomoric humor, angst-driven social commentary, and inexplicable key stroke combinations that are interpreted by its inhabitants as brilliant comedy. It is the Internet’s equivalent of the adolescent schoolyard, populated largely by those who prefer 4chan’s digital pit of despair to the real thing. Nevertheless 4chan is a force with which to be reckoned, perhaps most clearly evidenced by its very visible and sustained campaign against the Church of Scientology.

The Junsui-related sites hit 4chan quickly and were met with (by all accounts) equal parts cynicism and paranoia. Much of the initial response was based upon the Alfa-Tsentr.ru website, which had security measures in place tracking the IP address of any user who attempted to breach its walls. (An IP address is a unique identifying code, a sort of National Insurance number for every computer on the Internet).

Once visitors to Alfa-Tsentr.ru realized that their location been identified and recorded, many became slightly barmy and also demanding of more information. Furthermore, the plight of the girl in trapped in a white room seemed to allude to something more serious than the average Internet prank. While there were the expected detractors, the topic of the Junsui became the dominant discussion on 4chan for many days, its notoriously short attention-spanned community seemingly unified against a common enemy—Alfa-Tsentr and its ‘defilers’. The Junsui, for their part, reciprocated by announcing an alliance between ‘the followers of Moot’ (Moot being the name of the founder of 4chan). Witnessing this alliance caused waves of trepidation and anxiety from other more respectable parts of the Internet.

Other forums and blogs around the world, meanwhile, had alerted their audiences to the existence of the ‘Little Bird’ trapped in a room. The high prevalence of this topic on Spanish, German, Japanese, and Korean language blogs seems to indicate that Junko’s postings and tweets were being syndicated rapidly into multiple languages. These audiences, despite language barriers, proved to be faster and smarter in reacting to and interpreting Junko’s messages than many of their English-speaking peers.

During the rise of the erstwhile Junsui-4chan alliance, there were some members of the aforementioned ‘ARG community’ who believed that some devices utilized by the Junsui, including their referring to unFiction members by their ‘real’ names, gave them license to indulge in their own brand of questionable Internet conduct. And so the stage was set for a nasty conflict between the Junsui’s old enemies and their newly branded allies.

Now here again we hit a bit of controversy. One can, in all fairness, view the individuals involved as being some of the more resourceful members of these communities. Their actions are, in light of the circumstances, somewhat justified and so now there began a coordinated effort to ‘peek behind the curtain’. This no holds barred investigation into potential co-conspirators involved with the Junsui project involved remarkable resourcefulness. From scouring lines of code to tracking and reviewing the content of non-protected logs used by web hosting companies, all avenues were exhausted. It is simultaneously impressive (and a bit chilling) to watch the resources available to the savvy young pairs of hands who make up the more inquisitive subset of the Internet Generation.

In time, a party was identified who seemed to in some way be involved with the creation of some of the online materials. Searches conducted on this individual revealed him to be a web designer who had released sophisticated campaigns in the past. Utilizing tools that scour the deleted pages of the Internet of the past (where nothing can truly be forgotten), a help-wanted posting was found from a few years prior in which this individual was seeking to employ a Flash developer to aid in the construction of an online project which sounded reasonably similar to the original Junsui Project webpage.

The Junsui responded to these probings with vitriol. They averred that their existence was not part of some viral ad campaign but rather that there were real lives at stake. When one particularly tenacious investigator began posting details of the Junsui server’s file structures, the women became incensed. As before, they denounced their attackers (who had been hiding behind online aliases) by their real life names.

I find this focus upon names interesting. It is true that it is basically impossible to hide forever online (a fact which I am myself foolishly ignoring by publishing my research notes here). By posting the names of their perceived enemies, the Junsui were both calling attention to the fact that they were powerful enough to surveil the activities of many, as well as defending their abilities to carry on their propaganda as they see fit. Some of the denounced, for whom I have unreserved pity, suddenly found themselves the target of the sustained wrath of 4-chan and some of the other more fanatic Junsui supporters. In a very novel reversal of fortunes, the websites that these individuals were attempting to hack suddenly and mercilessly hacked them back.

But let us glide past these matters, as they are fairly trivial in the grand scheme of our endeavors. At the end of the day, the would-be enemies of the Junsui had found a single name they somehow associated with the entire creation of the propaganda artifice. I shan’t, in all fairness, give the man’s full name as I myself have preferred to maintain anonymity. I shall simply refer to him by his initials: PM.

(As an aside, there is some irony to this person’s initials as ‘PM’ in the ARG community typically refers to a ‘puppet master’, i.e. the leader/plotter of one of these games).

So, here we come to one of our ultimate questions; one that which, I have no doubts may ever come to any kind of full resolution. Is the identity of this individual, PM, something that can be viewed as real? Or is he but another cog within the vast wheel of another’s individual’s or organization’s design?

There is evidence to support both cases. From the available resources, it seemed PM had had aspirations to create sensual and complex web content. His personal homepage (recently taken down) had been somewhat of a pastiche of various forms of noir-ish atmosphere. As you will see when I have the time to write up the remainder of this tale, he will continue to play a role.

So, is he real?

I believe he is. Or at least that there such an individual was indeed possessed of life prior to these events. Not to overly foreshadow, but one (of several) lasting un-clarities is what his life amounts to at present.

(Now cue the Bernard Herrmann-esque score.)

At around the time of the aforementioned 4chan incident, a series of ‘coincidences’ took place which greatly alarmed some. A clear split had already been developing between those who felt threatened by the Junsui’s modus operandi and those who wholly embraced their increasingly nihilistic tendencies…

There was one incident in which the Junsui seemed to predict, within an hour, the timing of a suicide bomb attack in the Caucus Mountains region (by separatists in their beloved ancestral land of ‘Circassia’). The Junsui announced on both Twitter and their Facebook that ‘an attack was coming’ and lo, it did. This event, along with many other complaints relating to bank fraud, computer crime, and even pornography were reported in turn to the American FBI by very likely over-imaginative consumers.

This episode can be seen, in a sense, as the nadir of the drama, the all-too-long end of the second act in which catastrophe and redemption are decided by two vindictive schoolmates at a game of conkers. My apologies if my postings have grown overlong in size. I have only limited time to write and I’m trying to cover the material in broad strokes. I can promise that some form of redemption is at hand. I return, for now, to the evenings of Albion. May we soon meet again.

At this point in the story, things began to change for the Junsui. Both Diyne and Junko had mentioned that their ‘little sister’ had gone off somewhere with some level of concern, a message that was sort of momentarily ignored, drowned away by the deafening beating of virtual chests emanating from several ARG players. By the time the dust settled, the Junsui had taken action. On or around August 12th, the Junko Junsui directed be via her Facebook profile to what appeared to be an online advert for a Japanese biotechnology company. This company, Nippon Shin Eisei (Japan New Health), introduces the world to Junko, the ‘child of all mankind’. The provided English translated subtitles are very peculiar:

For countless millennia, humans have evolved unconsciously, spreading out to populate the world.

For the first time ever, we may glimpse our long genetic inheritance… And from it, we may plot the path by which we wish to continue.

Junko is the first child of her type ever to be born. She and the other Junsui are the children of all mankind.

Through the new technology of genetic target augmentation, Junko has been gifted with only the most optimal human alleles.

Junsui are the best of all we have ever been, and therefore represent the best way of coping with an uncertain future.

C5ildren p/ogester8ne quiesc#nce toew$2 s+cial stabili*y e&nd.

This last subtitle seems to be garbled. Indeed, the entire advertisement seems to be repeatedly jammed by some malicious outside force until the whole thing comes crashing down with a high pitched tone and display of a nihilistic manifesto:

THIS IS NOT THE END. THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS. WE ARE READY TO SACRIFICE OURSELVES TO LIGHT THE WORLD. IF YOUR BODY IS YOUR ENEMY’S PROPERTY, THEN YOU CAN STRIKE BACK AT YOUR ENEMY THROUGH YOUR BODY. YOU CAN TURN YOUR BODY INTO A MATCH TO BURN DOWN YOUR ENEMY’S HOUSE. YOU ARE THE PURE LIGHT OF DESTRUCTION. THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS. YOU ARE READY TO SACRIFICE YOURSELF. YOUR BODY IS A MATCHSTICK, READY TO CATCH FIRE. THIS IS NOT THE END.

Before one has chance to completely process this information, you are whisked away to another URL, this time on the Vimeo video sharing service. The new video depicts a nude young woman in varying levels of physical discomfort amidst some sort of crazy light show. For those of you who are ‘into’ this sort of thing, you can watch it here. There have been many translations done of the Russian text accompanying this video, all of which more or less tell a similar story. It seems the woman in the video was being exposed to some sort of external environmental force that caused her displeasure. The most interesting clue makes reference to the ‘Aharonov-Bohm effect’, which seems to be a reference to a scientific principle typically relating to quantum physics, not nearly-nudes.

Also of interest in this particular video were a series of number codes that were revealed to be coordinates. Plotting of these points on Google Earth revealed them to be alligned on a straight line axis.

Coordinates given in "THENFRIEND" form a straight axis.

The four places were:

1. KPГ2 +67.57 +14.68 - A small island off Kjeringøy, Norway
2. KOC3 +59.51 +59.06 - Kosvinsky Mountain, Russia
3. ЯMД5 +28.93 +91.07 – Yamdrok Lake, Tibet
4. POT5 -29.21 +117.63 – Rothsay, Australia

Cursory research revealed Rothsay to be a ghost town and home to one of Western Australia’s largest mines. Yamdrok Lake is one of Tibet’s largest ‘sacred lakes’ and home to the area’s largest power station, and it must be noted, the only Tibetan monastery ran by a woman. Kosvinsky Mountain is even more ominous, being the site of a deep underground command post for the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces command. The significance of the island off the west coast of Norway near the small, yet historically important, village of Kjeringøy is still unknown. (As an aside, it was the location for several novels and their their film adaptations by Knut Hamsun).

One lead that seemed promising was an apparent error that would appear when a user who had watched the Junsui Project site would try to watch the program again. Error text would flood the screen…

Hidden within the gibberish was the phrase:

THE ENEMY IS THE HEAD OF ALL CORPS

Clicking on ‘THE ENEMY’ would take the user to what appeared to be a standard Google search window. [QUICK EDIT: I get into the office, have a conference call and this bit has changed. Youtube might be the way to go for now.]Googling ‘The enemy’ would bring up results for a Russian corporation called ‘Alfa-Tsentr’, who, revealed by Wikipedia, had been (aha!) part of the security detail for the Soviet Kosvinsky Mountain facility. But Googling ‘alfa-tsentr’ in the mysterious page causes something rather unexpected. Again, as we are on the Internet, I’ll let you try it yourself: http://174.133.240.117

Slightly disturbing, to say the least? There has been a fair amount of speculation as to how ‘real’ the video could be. It’s been generally seen that there are some clips that seem similar, but no ‘system’ has been worked out. Under the name ‘The Junsui Investigation’, someone has posted to file sharing networks and Bit Torrent sites a file that contains over seven hours of video and it should be noted that new materials have continued to appear since then. At present, the general consensus is that there are at least twenty hours of video, though no one has been able to categorically keep track, as the stream is limited to about ten or fifteen minutes a day. I’ve kept a dungeon (proverbially) or two in my day and it does seem as if there was a woman trapped in this room for a while. Let us hope she is an actress. Prior to the ‘live’ video seen on the Google ‘flip’ page is an animation with sound that bears another of the location codes. This one seems to refer to Yamantau Mountain, another vast, deeply secret underground military base. Whether this is saying that the video had been shot there is anybody’s guess, but seems a likely supposition. A quick Google search reveals Alfa-Tsentr to be a private military corporation (PMC) based out of Beloretsk, Russia, the home of – you guessed it – Yamantau Mountain. The company’s webpage lists their expertise in various paramilitary and tactical affairs. With the arrival of our bad guy, things seemed to be falling into place. Which is, of course, when things took an unexpected turn…

As early as June 17th, 2009 a woman named ‘Junko Junsui’ began aggressively friending people on Facebook. It is unclear if she was using known networks or simply choosing people at random. Some of these people also received a message with their friend request:

We do not know one another. Not yet. I feel people’s ability to share and communicate. It is my effort to allocate my labour towards such people. I have talent that is empathy.

Please forgive me for being general. There are reasons. I am in some danger if I do not obscure all articulations or if I reveal too quickly. Justice is systematic and quickly here.

Please be my friend. More revealing will take place soon.

Blessed Be,
Junko

From what I’ve seen, Junko had several conversations with people, in which small tid-bits were revealed. She claimed to have created some sort of algorithm that found people using Google. Here is what she wrote to me:

…I am using program I wrote. Points are given for affiliations to institutions or other aggregated point individuals. Emergent patterns are what it counts rather than individual nodes. It reliant upon human feedback and checking because often results have been misguided. But it improves. My project is not this algorithm. It is only means to finding people who will take action in future when current economic and social reality disintegrates. I am not allowed to leave my home because my sisters supervisors do not allow currently us exit from birth. But not everybody here is afraid of vityaz.

I Googled ‘vityaz’ and found it was Russian for a ‘knight’ or ‘valiant warrior’. I assumed that meant she was Russian, but I asked her to confirm, only to be told:

I am Circassian who is in Russia now. I gather friends so that a new perspective may show what has been hidden. It is important that I find most curious and empathetic souls.

Taking her for a bit of a nutter, I intended from that day after to leave Junko alone. Over the next few weeks, however, I notice several of her status updates on Facebook. Junko seemed to be keen on women’s rights issues, maternal and fertility cults. There were also some flatly-phrased calls to action and some adolescent-sounding snippets of the poetic.

By early August, a few people had started to focus some attention on Junko, asking her where she was from and such. Junko displayed what I am told is a decent knowledge of Russian and Czech (compared to her very imperfect English).

This interest in her sparked the attentions of one Diyne Seteney (one can always tell when it’s Diyne as she types in ALL CAPS). Diyne is a traditional Circassian name—Circassia being the region of the Caucus with a very colourful and troubled history. Diyne seemed quite eager to protect her ‘sister’ from being harassed by some of the more rude onlookers that Junko encountered in her journeys through the ‘electric window’. I assumed this term referred to the screen of whatever computer system they were using to connect with the Internet.

Soon thereafter, Diyne became quite irate upon her discovery that her words were being posted in an online forum. The members of the online forum, unFiction, dedicated to the playing of so-called ‘alternate reality games’ had been tracking her and Junko’s proclamations, taking them as part of some online game.

At this point, my readers and friends, I’m going to reveal myself as a hopefully neutral arbiter of truth and justice in the online world when I say that this project, at least at its current point, has never conclusively revealed itself as an online game, or as a part of any kind of viral marketing. There have been web-based campaigns that have used similar tactics, but these are typically more definitively tied to a film or car or such product.

I cannot say what I really think is going on here. Be it that there is some form of truth to what we are seeing and to whom we are speaking, then the world is a darker place than even I have imagined. But as the discussion of the plight of the Junsui moved at times to these game-based forum discussions, I shall view what took place therein from the eyes of a journalist and not a prognosticator of ultimate truth.

Once the denizens of the unFiction forums became aware of Diyne’s ranting regarding their forum’s reposting of her words, they too complained. It seems one of the conventions of ARGs is that the forum in which players speculate openly and come together to share findings is supposedly ‘out of game’, meaning that the characters within the game are not to be aware of what is posted there, or to post ‘in character’.

Someone must have neglected to mention this to Diyne, who continued to berate the members of the group for posting information in an open forum to which their enemies had access. In deference to her complaints, some members decided to create a private, members only discussion forum. It was was created on August 4th and Diyne joined herself the conversation on the 6th. Her tone was immediately demanding ad she insisted her words not be posted back into the public forum. This caused a bit of a stir in the ARG community, with many players decreeing their inability to play games that don’t fit into their established rule set.

Diyne came back in a somewhat frustrating post in which she – oh, I’ll just let her speak for herself:

THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS. THE FIRST STEP WAS OPENING YOUR EYES TO SEE THE ILLUSION FOR WHAT IS. WITHOUT MEMORY OF MOTHER, YOU WERE PROGRAMMED, GROWN LIKE A SEED. IN SCHOOL THEY SEPARATED FEEBLE FROM INTELLIGENT, SLOW FROM FAST. YOUR SISTERS THEY TOOK FROM WITHOUT WARNING AND SENT FOREVER AWAY. EACH ACCORDING TO HER ABILITY, EACH ACCORDING TO HER WORK. THEY SAID YOUR ABILITY WAS EMPATHY. SO YOU PASSED EXAMINATIONS AND LEARNED HOW TO ADORN IN DRESS, HOW TO SPEAK AND HOW THEY ENJOY DEFILEMENTS. THEY SAID YOU WERE DESIGNED FOR THIS AND YOU WERE. EVERYTHING IN YOU WAS THEIRS FROM BEGINNING SO IT WAS ONLY NATURAL CONCLUSION YOU WORK FOR THEM. YOU LIVED IN REALITY OF THEIR CREATION AND SO YOU HELPED TO PERPETUATE THAT REALITY. THEY CALLED YOU THE PURE BREED, BUT THEY MEAN THAT YOU WERE PERFECT PRODUCT.

IT IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE BEFORE BUT WE KNOW WHAT YOUR GAME CULTURE NOW IS. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT THESE ARE VERY DANGEROUS AND POWERFUL KHOZAINS. JUNKO MUST TAKE FACEBOOK DOWN WHEN THEY START TO REALIZE OUR COMMUNICATIONS. ON NEXT DAY BENEFACTORS ATTACKED PUBLIC INTERNET COMMUNICATION NETWORKS TO SILENCE DISSENT. THEY ARE SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION AND WILL BRING GREAT HARM TO THOSE CAUGHT IN OPPOSITION. THEY HESITATE NOT TO MURDER AND POISON LIKE THEY DID COUNTLESS BEFORE. JUNKO MADE MISTAKE TO THINK ALEX WAS PROTECTOR. WE ONLY NOW DISCOVER TRUTH OF YOUR GAMES. YOU MUST DEPART NOW FOR YOUR SAFETY. LIKE UNFORUM AND HERE ALL PLACES ARE INSECURE.

IT IS ADMISSION OF DESPAIR FOR ME THAT LITTLE SISTER HAS BEEN TAKEN. BUT IF WE ARE WEAK HOW WILL WE RECOVER HER AND REACH THE ORIGIN? OUR VPS IS NO LONGER CONCEALING TO LOCATION. WE MUST FIND ANSWER ALONE.

I have, with some amusement, redacted the part of the message in which Diyne cited by name a few members of the ARG community and called them ‘cowards’.

One point of interest here – Diyne mentions some kind of data attacks and relates them to something causing Junko to pull her profile off Facebook. On 8/5, Junko did in fact pull down her Facebook profile. On 8/6, there was a large attack, emanating from the former U.S.S.R. This would not be the last time that Junko’s actions seemed to predict a major incident involving Russia.

On the evening after the attack, several major news sources saw a posting from an anonymous systems administrator. He claimed that:

The Russian PMC Alfa-Tsentr (http://alfa-tsentr.ru) is responsible for coordinating both the current spam and July botnet attacks. […] They likely worked on behalf of North Korea. The bulk of yesterday and today’s incoming connections (spam attack) terminating within our secure clusters originated from IPs in Russia and China. During the first attack there were several bounced undeliverable messages from the Russian company that referenced the North Korean foreign ministry. I looked up their originating IP addresses and they turned out to belong to a Chinese host that is used by several North Korean sites including the KCNA (Korean Central news Agency). I know this because I am a sysadmin (basically an oncall tech) at a large US data center.

 

Archived images from Junko Junsui (aka Vera Novosi) Facebook profile:

IMAGES: Junko’s Facebook Album – Profile Pictures

 
IMAGES: Junko’s Facebook Album on Gwaschemasch’e Efendi (Gone But Not Forgotten)

BLESSED BE dear reader, and thank you for joining me here!

The story of Junko Junsui has been both one of the most exciting and confusing tales I’ve heard in a long time. I have been following the story carefully, through the various websites and videos, the postings on messageboards and the many Twitter and Facebook postings both by and about the Junsui.

Let me pass some of the information gained by these dozens of hours of inquisition onto you.

Now, you may ask yourself ‘who is this person claiming to know all these things?’ Well, with apologies, I must insist on not telling.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, personal information has become such a large part of this experience. Depending on whom or what you believe (and the vastly varied number of opinions on what exactly is happening here is the reason compelling me to write these notes), real names and personal details have become a part of this story, almost a form of currency. I value what little privacy I have and need not see my own name attached in any way to these proceedings.

Your should also know that I shall try to be as filled with journalistic integrity as I can. This means, I will be leaving some aspects of this world and the debate that centered on these aspects mostly to the side. I am only interested in recounting the story as I watched it unfold so that others who stumble into this world may find these journals to be a relatively concise walk-through of the events.

There are some people with very strong opinions about how this story was told and if you wish to hear them express themselves, there are plenty of places you can find that will show you what you seek. I suggest that if you wish to interact with some of these people you DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK, for reasons I hope to later elucidate.

The other reason I am posting this anonymously is that I have a job in an office with people around me who think I am a busy and hard-working individual. I would hate to have them realise otherwise.