Campaign Timeline of The Year Zero Alternate Reality Game - April 2007

April 2007

April 4, 2007

• Year Zero album is made available for streaming play on the official Year Zero mini-site.
• A computerized voice on Track #13, "The Great Destroyer," when the left and right stereo channels are combined into a single mono signal, vocalizes the words "red horse vector," leading to http://www.redhorsevector.net/.
• Morse code in Track #14, "Another Version of the Truth," is discovered to spell out "grace the teacher," pointing towards http://www.gracetheteacher.net.

April 10, 2007

• Year Zero album is made available for streaming play on the official Nine Inch Nails MySpace page.

April 13, 2007

• Art is Resistance "meeting" scheduled in Los Angeles, California, posted on Open Source Resistance. Participants are asked to "Wear something that shows you’re one of us." Art is Resistance kits are handed out to those attending, consisting of Art is Resistance buttons, posters, stencils, bandannas, and in around 25 cases, pre-paid cell phones on which participants would receive in-game phone calls and become a part of the game.

April 13, 14, 16, 17, and 25, 2007

• The Year Zero album is released in Europe, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan respectively. The album is released in digipak packaging, which contains a sticker advertising 1-866-445-6580, a thermochrome CD face which, when heated, reveals a binary sequence which leads to http://exterminal.net/, as well as various other clues leading to http://www.freerebelart.net/, http://www.viabilityindex.com/, and this Wreckage/Shard combination for The Mailstrom.

April 18, 2007

• Resistance "meeting" scheduled in Los Angeles. Participants are invited via cell phones given to them in Art is Resistance kits on April 13. The meeting consists of a speech by a "resistance member" and a free concert by Nine Inch Nails. The concert is cut short as the meeting is "raided" by a SWAT team. Unedited video of the entire meeting is posted on Open Source Resistance the same night, and an edited version two nights later.

April 26, 2007

• "Capital G," "My Violent Heart," and "Me, I'm Not" are released on the official Nine Inch Nails website in GarageBand/Logic Pro and torrent format. Some files included, under spectrogram analysis, contain hints leading to the discovery of Exhibit Twenty Four.

April 27, 2007

• Art is Resistance "members" receive automated phone calls on cell phones given to them in Art is Resistance kits on April 13 in Los Angeles. The pre-recorded message contains a clue leading to Hour of Arrival. The message marks the end of the alternate reality game, stating "we’ve got to go dark for a while, but that is ok - you don’t need us anymore."