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.
