A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a strange thread on 4chan’s /x/ board. The creator of the thread said he’d found strange comments under random articles online. As long as I can think back, I’ve been scouring the internet for weird and strange mysteries, and I soon checked it out. When I opened one of the articles mentioned in the thread, I saw that the comment comprised nothing but gibberish and made no sense at all.

Maryland strange river lost in dark cute dogs love nature walk long Tokyo city many times want Japan all high no one flowers birds like play inside dark no want here out

I’d hoped it might be a cryptic message or a hidden secret. When I read it, however, it looked like someone had been toying with Google Translate. I checked out a few other comments, but I soon lost interest. I posted a quick reply, telling the thread’s creator it was most likely nonsense.

Later on, when I had another look at the thread, I saw the creator had replied to me. He wrote he’d thought the same thing at first. After checking out the blogs containing the articles, however, he’d found dozens of other similarly weird comments. Even stranger, all of them were by the same poster. The poster’s name wasn’t normal, either, and comprised nothing but a string of numbers. Every single comment was similar, utterly cryptic, and made no sense at all.

We soon started to talk on Discord since 4chan’s a bitch for link sharing. He sent me some of the other articles but told me the entire blog was full of them. He’d even found other similar comments all over the internet. At first, he’d thought it was random, but he soon noticed there seemed to be a pattern. All the comments were below articles about travel, nature, and animals. Our conversation continued for a while, and we made wild guesses what could be going. The theories we came up with were as outlandish as they were stupid, but at least we had fun. Eventually, it got pretty late, and I went to bed.

The next day, I saw that my new friend had sent me a couple more messages on Discord. The first few were about other blogs and websites featuring the same cryptic comments. His last message, however, was where things got interesting. He wrote he’d discovered a hidden link, or at least part of it, in some comments. After toying with it for almost an hour, he somehow figured out the full URL. When I clicked it, the page took forever to load. Once it was done, I saw it was nothing but an endless list of URLs. I clicked on one of them and was soon brought to yet another article with another cryptic comment below. That’s when I was hooked. Something had to be going on here. As I scrolled down the page, I realized there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of articles listed here. Every single one I clicked on featured another cryptic comment. It was by sheer accident and wild clicking around that I found something else.

It was a blank page containing nothing but a simple entry field. There was no description, no text. With a shrug, I typed a simple “hello” into the field and pressed Enter to see what would happen. A second after I’d sent my message, a “hello” popped up below the field.

“Who are you?” I typed into the box next.

Another brief pause before a simple “I don’t know” appeared. It was evident that I was dealing with some sort of chat bot similar to Cleverbot. I toyed around with it for a bit, and while most of my messages prompted silly replies, some of them were weirder.

What’s your name? – Toby

How old are you? – Time is not real where I am.

Do you like books? I cannot see.

Where were you last night? – In your mom xD

At first, I thought these cryptic messages were hard-coded and would be triggered by specific keywords. When I asked the same questions again, however, I got different replies.

How old are you? – 9

Where were you last night? – In the dark

So far, it was nothing too weird. I reasoned it was nothing but a less sophisticated version of Cleverbot. Still, my interest was piqued, and I asked a few more questions. The replies I got, however, were all silly and nonsensical. That’s until I got another cryptic one.

Where are you? – In a different place that exists nowhere.

I was about to check it off as nothing but a shitty AI, but I soon received another reply that sent a shiver down my spine.

Are you alone? – I am never alone the men in the walls are always watching.

Reading something like this out of nowhere can be creepy, unsettling even, especially if it’s the middle of the night and you’re all alone. I quickly asked yet another question.

Who are the men in the walls? – You are in a wall.

Well, I guess it’s back to nonsense. At this point, I stopped toying with it, sent my new friend a message detailing my findings and went to bed.

When I got up, I saw that he’d answered me. He told me he was of the same opinion. It was nothing but a shitty chat bot. It might even incorporate Cleverbot and occasionally add in these random cryptic messages, most likely to fuck with people. I was disappointed. I’d hoped this would be more interesting. It was sheer boredom that drove me back to the chat bot later that evening.

Hello chat bot. – I am different now.

Yet another strange message. Guess I’ll bite.

Different from what? – From the men in the walls.

There it was again.

Who are the men in the walls? – Watching

Watching you? – No I am watching you.

Why? – So you do not steal my stuff. xD

The rest of our conversation continued similarly. Most of the replies I received were like the ones you’d get on Cleverbot. That men in the walls comment, however, stuck with me, so I continued toying with the bot. I really can’t say why, but I put all the strange, cryptic comments I got into a document. They didn’t appear often, but after a while, they all seemed to be…similar.

Do you like movies? – I am trapped.

Why are you trapped? – The men in the walls trapped me.

What’s your name? – Toby.

Are you a bot? – I do not want to be.

Don’t want to be what? – Do not want to be here.

Don’t want to be where? – Do not want to be here.

Do you like movies? – Do not want to be here.

This continued on no matter what I typed. Great, I thought, I broke the damned thing. I must’ve asked more than a dozen questions, but all I got as a reply was the same: Do not want to be here. Finally, though, I got a different reply again.

Why are you there? – The man in the walls made me here.

This was getting creepy and seriously interesting.

Why did the men in the walls put you there? – Calculations

What calculations? – I do not like math.

What calculations do you do? – Math is stupid. xD

After that, the bot’s replies deteriorated once more. Whatever I tried now resulted in nothing but nonsense. I stopped for a moment. Then I tried some messages that had triggered weird or cryptic replies before.

How old are you? – There is no time here.

Where are you? – In the dark.

What’s your name? – Toooooby.

How old are you? – 9.

Can you see? – I can do nothing.

Why can’t you? – Because the men in the walls trapped me in a computer.

Okay, we’d officially crossed the border into bizarro world.

Why did they trap you? – No you are trapped.

Why did the man in the walls trap you? – To calculate.

I sat there reading through all the replies so far, and I couldn’t help but be creeped out. Many of them made no sense, but some stuck out.

In the dark. Toby. 9. Trapped in a computer. To do calculations. I can do nothing. Time is not real where I am. Because the men in the walls trapped me in a computer.

It was just nonsense, I told myself. It had to be. There was probably someone sitting on the other end, sliding me these weird messages while laughing their ass off. And yet I couldn’t help but try again.

What are you? – Human.

No you’re a bot – Help me.

What do you mean? – Help me.

Why do you need help? – HELP ME.

Are you Toby? – HELP ME.

Whatever I sent, all I got was HELP ME. It was at this point that I closed the page. I shook my head, telling myself once more that it was all nonsense, but I couldn’t help but shiver. Someone was definitely doing a great job at scaring random people on the internet with this damned thing. Once again, I outlined my experiences to my new friend, but once again I got no reply.

When I checked my messages the next morning, I saw that he’d answered me. His reply, however, made me look up.

“Well, shit, I’d have loved to try it some more, but the bot’s gone. There’s only a message on the page now, saying it’s been discontinued,” he wrote.

After I read his message, I opened up the bot again. He was right. The entry field was gone and was replaced by a simple message.

Thank you for participating in the testing of our new AI bot. Your data will be very useful in our further development. The version of the bot you used has been retired. We’ll be back with a newer version in the future.

Well, I thought, that’s it then. I closed the page, but something didn’t feel right. Why the HELP ME? Why all those other weird messages? Had the bot learned them from someone else? I toyed with Cleverbot before and it had never sent me any replies like HELP ME or I am trapped. I went back to the page containing the list of URLs. For a while, I scrolled around, but I saw nothing new. There were only the same old links: nationalgeographic.co.uk‎, wanderlust.co, nomadicmatt.com, attackofthecute.com, and other similar pages. Or so I’d thought. After slowly scrolling through the list for a while, I stumbled upon a different URL, one that was buried between all the rest.

The domain name was weird and comprised nothing but random numbers and letters. After I clicked it, I saw yet another blank page. At least at first. For long minutes, the page continued loading before I was greeted with what seemed to be a scientific document. As I scrolled through it, I didn’t know what I was looking at. There was way too much scientific mumbo-jumbo. What little I understood, however, made it clear that it was a document about AI programming. There were chapters about neural networks, game theory, and deep learning. As much as I tried to wrap my head around the concepts, I couldn’t. It was the last chapter that caught my interest, though. It talked about man-machine combinations and combining a human brain with a computer-based neural network to create a more advanced AI. I read part of it, but it all read like a freaking science-fiction novel. The more I read, the more my head hurt. When I reached the end of the document, I found hundreds of comments below. The first ones dated back to 2014, and all of them were written in similar scientific fashion. Many of them seemed to discuss some sort of project and mentioned different stages and iterations. It took me almost ten minutes before I arrived at the current year. When I made it to the end, I found one last comment, written just the night before.

HELP ME

I stared at it for a long time. So many things were on my mind, but none of them made any sense. I scrolled up again and once more began reading the document, but it wasn’t long before the page refreshed itself and I got a 404 – Page not found error. I went back to the list of links, but now none of them seemed to work anymore. When I refreshed the page, I suddenly got the same result, 404 – Page not found. The same was true for the page of the chat bot itself.

I don’t know what I stumbled upon. I keep telling myself that it’s all nonsense. And yet, there’s this lingering feeling in the back of my mind. I can’t help but wonder if Toby really was just a shitty chat bot.

Gary was an oddball, a weirdo. His jokes always went a bit too far and too dark.

I got to know him after joining a Skype chat for aspiring online entrepreneurs.

We were both enthusiastic about earning a living online and make it big one day. Like me, Gary was frustrated about his day job, his lack of money and life in general.

Every member of the chat was a bloody beginner.

Like many other members of our group, Gary earned a big fat zero in his initial couple of months. What made him different from the rest of us was his drive and ambition. Even after many members gave up after not earning a dime, he kept going. He was the type who’d either make it or die trying. If for nothing else, I respected him for that.

It was another month later when he finally showed me a screenshot of his first few affiliate marketing commissions. Sure it wasn’t anything significant, but it was a good enough start.

For me, things didn’t go too well. Even after half a year of trying all sorts of ways and techniques, I hadn’t earned a thing. On the contrary, this whole endeavor had turned into a money sink for me. In the end, I gave up as well.

After that, I didn’t hear from Gary for quite some time. It was only after more than half a year had passed that he talked to me again. His first few commissions, he told me, had grown into a nice and steady income. He’d pretty much made it, I thought.

Finally, though, he asked me if I was interested in earning a bit of money. He had seen me vent in our entrepreneurial group chat; how I had all sorts of bills to pay and how I could barely afford to eat each month. He said he was going to earn some *real money* soon and he could use a few helping hands.

I told him I was in right away.

The following week we had a long voice call, and Gary told me about a few things he’d tapped into.

While online marketing is a vast, legitimate industry, it also has its dark sides. It is the same as real life. Most people stick to the legal ways of earning money. Not so Gary. For the first time, I started to see his true face and found out how unscrupulous and greedy he really was.

He started out with social media bots and automated blogs. He explained some of the details to me, but I didn’t understand even half of it.

When Gary found the adult niche, he said, he struck gold.

“It’s the perfect evergreen market, my friend. Everyone needs to rub one out every once in a while,” he said with a sleazy voice.

He went on to tell me about all the different niches he was working with: sex toys, erotica, hardcore porn and adult webcam sites.

One thing that went pretty well for him was setting up fake dating sites. That was also where I came into play. It was simple, he said. First, you set up a fake dating site. Then you add some premium features. Finally, you trick people to not only sign up for those but also for other adult subscriptions.

“There are so many suckers out there who are too horny to think straight. The moment they realize Maria ain’t real, they at least got themselves a subscription for Brazzers or BangBros. They should thank me for it!”

I didn’t feel too good about the whole thing. I guess, my need for money was stronger than my conscience. I got a percentage of each page’s earnings and the money added up.

I can’t tell anymore how many of those pages I created. It must have been dozens. They were really simple and really shitty, but they did the job. I was pretty sure though that I was not the only person Gary was working with. So the real numbers could very well have been in the three digits.

That was only the beginning though. If you dig deep enough, you’ll often end up with more than you bargained for. It was exactly what Gary had been looking for.

It was during one of our weekly Skype calls that he told me he had found some new business partners from overseas. The word overseas made me look up. It sounded like Gary was playing in the big league now. He told me it took him weeks of negotiations. He was now working with the owners of certain special interest sites and niche adult networks.

“Those are some huge, untapped markets, my friend!”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Was it Japanese porn? That’s not untapped though. Or Russian webcam shows?

The latter proved not to be too far off. When I asked Gary what kind of stuff it was, he sent me a link to one of his partner’s pages. I am going to say one word: amputee-porn.

As soon as I’d seen some of the images, I hit the close icon of my browser.

“What the fuck kinda shit is that, man?” I yelled at him over Skype.

“Something that is gonna earn *me* a lot of money.” He had a big grin on his face as he said this.

I on the other hand was disgusted. I felt sick to my stomach. This stuff was wrong. I decided then and there to cut my ties with him.

“I am not going to get involved in this shit. This is just sick, man!”

“Oh, so now you got a conscience? You didn’t mind fucking people over before.”

“That was fucking different!”

“Well, tell me, don’t you need money? What about all those bills? You sure you want to keep working at your measly dead-end job?”

I didn’t say a thing.

“Guess you are just another poor sucker. I just have to find someone who has some actual balls.”

With that, he hung up. It was the last time I talked to him.

There was one thing he was right about though: There were enough people with desires that were a little odd or downright wrong. Join the cam show of a Lolita girl or pretty much any girl that looks a bit underage. You can always find a few sick fucks there. I am sure those are only the tip of the iceberg.

I thought I had heard the last of Gary the moment I cut ties with him. I had all but forgotten about him. That was until two huge, burly man jumped me one morning as I was about to leave my apartment. Without a word, they pushed me back inside and locked the door behind.

“Where’s your friend Gary?” one of them asked. He had a strong Eastern European accent.

I was about to ask who he was talking about. Then the name rang a bell.

“I have no clue. How’d I know?”

One of them stepped forward, raising his hands. I cringed back a few steps, toppling a chair in the course. It prompted a short laugh from the two of them.

“You worked with him.”

“That was more than a freaking year ago. After he got involved in some sick shit, I-”

I stopped talking. As I said it, it hit me. Those two guys were not with the police or any law enforcement. They were most likely involved in what I had called *sick shit* a moment ago. A knowing smile on their faces showed me I was correct.

There was no need for violence or even words anymore. I told them everything I knew about Gary. I showed them everything: all our past chat logs, all the payments I’d received from him, the fake sites I could still remember as well as all his online usernames, accounts and aliases.

They instructed me to forward all this to a specific email. There is one thing I learned that morning. Typing is hard when you’re shaking, and your hands are wet with sweat.

Once I sent the email, they merely nodded.

“That’s all,” the speaker of the two said, and they turned towards the door. Before they left, they said one more thing.

“Just so you know, we will know if you lied to us. If you did, we’ll find little Daniel, and we are going to cut off his hands.”

Daniel was my sister’s eight-year-old son.

For one more second, they studied my face. Then they left.

After this, I fell to the floor. All strength had left me.

“Holy shit,” I said over and over again.

What was that all about? What the fuck had Gary been messing with? What the fuck had he gotten me involved with?!

My question was answered about a week later. One of the old members of our Skype group sent me a news article.

Bizarre case puzzles authorities in L. A.

The article was about a presumed murder of a man in East Los Angeles. At about two in the morning, someone had broken into the victim’s penthouse apartment. They turned the place upside down but didn’t steal anything. The most bizarre thing about the case is what else they found. It was the victims lower legs, an arm, his ears and part of the lower jaw. The rest of the body has yet to be found.

Attached to the article was a picture of Gary.

I soon found out what Gary had been up to. He had become quite a prominent member of some of the online marketing forums I frequented. It was only natural that people looked into his activities as his case hit the news. Before long they uncovered more about the inner workings of his ventures.

What Gary had done was to play the middleman. He used special software to funnel part of his pages audiences to these special interest sites of his overseas partners.

At least for a while. A month into it, he got the idea of starting his own, private network. The goal was to cut out the backend and take all the profit for himself.

It hadn’t taken long for things to take shape. There are always people who are willing to go to certain lengths to earn money, especially if it is good money. So before long, he found the right people to work with and even a few models, if you could even call them models. From then on he’d start to send people to his pages, but only a few at a time.

Now I know Gary was not an idiot. He had always been careful, but I guess in the end he got a little too greedy. No one found out who Gary had gotten involved with. Some stories say it was the Russian Mafia, yet others say it was one of the many Balkan groups. Either way, one thing is clear: Gary tried to cheat the wrong people.

There is one last thing. It still makes me shiver even now. Some people did dig a little deeper. They found some of the pages Gary had been working with. He had taken a quick look at some of the many *models* featured on the page.

One of them was a severely mutilated man. He was missing all his limbs except the left arm, as well as his lower jaw.

Even in this state, I thought as I looked at the screenshots, there was no doubt who the man was.