A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a strange post on 4chan’s x/ board.

The OP of the thread said that he found some strange comments under random articles online. No one had reacted to the thread yet, so I decided to check it out.

For as long as I can think back I’ve been scouring the internet for weird and strange things. To be honest, I didn’t believe there was much to it, but I was kind of bored.

The comment itself was nothing but gibberish. It 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 was hoping it might be some strange cryptic message, but it looked more like someone had been toying around with Google translate. I played around with it a bit, but I soon lost interest.

I made a quick reply telling the poster that it was most likely nonsense.

Later on, I saw that the guy had posted once again. He wrote that he’d thought the same thing at first. After browsing through the blog though he found a variety of other similarly weird comments. All by the same poster. The posters name wasn’t normal either. It was merely a string of numbers.

All the comments were similar, utterly cryptic and made no sense at all.

We soon started to talk on discord, since 4chan can be a bitch about link sharing.

He sent me some of the articles with comments but told me there were dozens more on that specific blog. He’d even found others all over the internet. At first, he thought it completely random, but there seemed to be a pattern. All of the comments were below articles about travel, nature, and animals.

Our conversation continued on for a while, and we started to make wild guesses what was going on. Our theories were as outlandish as they were dumb, but at least we had a bit of fun and could let our imagination run wild. By then it was pretty late though, so I went to bed.

It was the next day that I found a couple more messages from my new friend on discord. The first few were about other blogs and websites he’d found comments under.

The last message was where things got interesting. He said he’d discovered a link or at least part of a URL under some of the comments. After toying around with them for hours, he somehow figured out the full URL. I’ve no clue how he did it.

The page took forever to load. Once it was done, it was nothing but a list of URLs. When I clicked one of them, it sent me to yet another article with a similar comment below. That’s when I was hooked.

There had to be something going on here. As I started to scroll down the page, I realized that there were hundreds if not thousands of articles. Every single one I clicked had one of those weird comments.

It was by sheer accident and wild clicking that I found something else.

I was sent to a blank page with nothing but a simple entry field on it. There was no description on the page, no text, nothing. Only this one simple entry field.

When I clicked it, I saw that I could type something into it.

I typed a simple ‘hello’ and pressed Enter to see what would happen.

A second after I’d sent my message a ‘hello’ popped up on the screen below the field.

‘Who are you?’ I typed into the box.

Another short little pause before I got a simple ‘I don’t know.’

It was evident that I was dealing with some sort of chat bot similar to Cleverbot. I toyed around with the thing for a bit. While most messages prompted normal or silly answers, some were a bit weirder.

Here are a few of the answers I got:

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 it was merely programmed so that specific keywords would trigger these weird cryptic messages. Then I decided to ask some of the questions again to see what answers I’d get now. This time, they were different.

How old are you? – 9

Where were you last night? – In the dark

So far it was nothing too weird. I reasoned that it was a less sophisticated version of Cleverbot. I asked a few more questions, but the answers were mostly silly and nonsensical. Then I got yet another cryptic one:

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

I really checked it off as a shitty AI, and that was it for me. There was one last reply though that sent a shiver down my spine:

Are you alone – I’m never alone the men in the walls are always watching

Reading something like this out of nowhere can be a bit creepy, unsettling even. Especially when it’s the middle of the night, and you are all by yourself. I decided to ask another question:

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

Well, guess it’s back to nonsense. It was at this point that I stopped toying with it.

I sent a quick message to my new friend about my findings, and after that I watched a couple of YouTube videos and went to bed.

When I got up, I had a few new messages. The guy wrote that he thought the same thing as me. Nothing but a shitty chatbot that someone must have put together. It might even incorporate Cleverbot and added in random cryptic messages every once in a while. Most likely to fuck with people who looked a bit too deep into things.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. I’d really hoped this was something more interesting.

It was sheer boredom that sent me back to the chatbot once again later that evening. Here are a few of the interactions I had with it:

Hello chatbot. – I’m different now

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’m watching you

Why? – So you don’t steal my stuff xD

The rest continued on similarly. Most of the replies I got were just like the ones you’d get from Cleverbot.

That men in the walls comment stuck with me though. I found myself going back to the bot again and again.

I don’t know why, but I decided to put down all the strange or cryptic replies I got from the bot and put them into a document. They didn’t appear often, but after a while, they all seemed to be… similar. Here are the ones I got later that evening:

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 went on for a while. Great, I thought, I broke the damned thing. I must’ve asked more than a dozen questions, and all I got for an answer was the same Do not want to be here. Finally, though I got a different reply:

Why are you there? – The men 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 don’t like math

What calculations do you do? – Math is stupid xD

After that, the bot’s replies had once more deteriorated. Whatever I tried I only got nonsense.

I decided to try some of the messages I’d sent the bot before that had gotten me weird or cryptic messages. If only to see how it would react.

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’ve officially crossed the border into bizarro land.

Why did they trap you? – No you are trapped

Why did the men in the walls trap you? – To calculate

I sat there reading through all the messages I’d sent so far, and I couldn’t help but be crept out. There were so many that 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. It had to be. Someone was probably sitting at home, sliding me these weird messages and laughing their ass off. Yet, I tried 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 entered now, all I got was HELP ME. It was at this point that I closed off the page. I shook my head, yet I couldn’t help but shiver. Someone was definitely doing a great job at scaring random people on the internet with this thing.

That day I sent my new friend a message about the weird things I’d encountered on the chatbot. I didn’t wait for an answer and went to bed.

When I checked my messages the next day, I got one by him.

“Interesting, but the bot seems to be gone now. There’s only a message on the page that’s saying the bot is discontinued,” I read.

After I read his message I quickly opened the chatbot again, but he was right, the entry field was gone. Instead, the only thing on the page now was simple text.

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 happy to be back with a newer version in the future.

Well, I thought, that’s that. I closed the page, but something didn’t feel right. Why the HELP ME? Why all those weird messages. Had the bot learned it from someone else? I’d never triggered a reply like HELP ME or I AM TRAPPED from Cleverbot though.

I went back to the page that contained the URL list. I scrolled around, but as I’d expected there was nothing new. Only the same old links: nationalgeographic.co.uk‎, wanderlust.co, nomadicmatt.com, attackofthecute.com, and other similar pages.

I slowly scrolled through them all. It was after almost half an hour that I found a different URL that was buried between the rest of them.

The domain name was weird, consisting only of random numbers and letters. I clicked the link and a new page opened up. At first, it was just a blank page again, but it was still loading.

After minutes of waiting the page finally loaded. I had no clue what it was though. It seemed to be a scientific document.

As I scrolled through it, I had no idea what I was reading. There was so much scientific mumbo-jumbo.

The little I understood made it clear that it was a document about AI programming. There were many chapters about topics like neural networks, game theory, and deep learning. As much as I tried to wrap my brain around it, I just couldn’t.

There was one part though that caught my interest. In the later chapters, the topic of man-machine combinations was mentioned. It talked at length about the process of combining the 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 started to hurt.

When I reached the end of the document I found hundreds of comments. The first one was from the beginning of 2014. All of them were written in a similar scientific fashion. Some mentioned different stages and iterations of some weird project. It took me minutes before I got to the current year. When I finally reached 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 made sense.

I scrolled up and down in the document again to read more of it. It wasn’t long before the page refreshed itself and I got a 404 – Page not found error.

When I tried to reaccess the link list, none of the links seemed to be working anymore. When I refreshed the page, I got the same result 404 – Page not found. The same is true for the page of the chatbot now.

I don’t know what I stumbled upon there. I don’t know if I stumbled upon anything there at all.

That’s why I’m writing this down. Maybe some of you can help me to make a bit more sense of it.

---

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.