ilovebees.com was created by a person known as Dana, for her Aunt Margaret, and is (or was) a bee-keeping site, made to advertise Margaret's honey sales and fascination with bees.
In earlier July, the AI known only as "Melissa" landed somehow on ilovebees.com, damaged and disoriented. When it tried to repair itself, it ended up making ilovebees.com look like a complete disaster, leaving pieces of itself and the data contained strewn throughout the website. From the data, Dana, with the help of the public, discovered some facts about the AI.

1. The AI "Melissa" ran the comms on a ship that spied on an alien race, "The Covenant."
2. Melissa is also known as "The Operator."
3. Melissa did not come alone.


The programs SPDR and the Pious Flea came with the Operator, SPDR being a program that was used to repair the Operator. The purpose of the Pious Flea is officially unknown, but it seems only to try to reveal the "Truth." He calls himself "The Seeker."

Seek the truth.
Behold the truth.
Reveal the truth.
This is the law and the whole of the law.

SPDR saved the Operator from destruction, only to be killed by Melissa for trying to remove the Pious Flea, who is apparently giving orders to the Operator.

Someone else has also joined in this little "game." She goes by the name "The Princess," and she... Well, she's just a mystery in herself. She doesn't know where she came from, before "the dungeon." She has, however, taken over Dana's e-mail account, ladybee777@hotmail.com. When she was found, she could only speak in what is presumed to be the text from e-mails she received. Now she has learned to "make her own words," however, and answers some e-mails she has received by herself. She has corrupted many of ilovebees.com's pictures, putting hidden messages inside of them, and when these hidden messages are combined, they create riddles. One example was "I spy with my little eye something that is the color of cowardice, as hard as a pig's house, and goes ever on and on." The answer, of course, is "yellow brick road," which corresponds to an html document on the site.

Now, to the real attraction of ilovebees. There is a list of "axons," which are latitude/longitude coordinates linked with times, on various pages on the website. When the times come, at the corresponding coordinates, a payphone will ring. If you answer the payphone, a recorded message will ask you some questions. Answer these questions correctly, and you hear a sound clip. Along with that, the axon will "go hot," which allows other people to hear the same sound clip. Every time a list of these axons goes hot, another puzzle opens up, along with another set of axons. The phones ring every day, until they either get answered, or the entire series of axons go hot. Only 2 or 3 are needed, out of 7, to unlock a sound clip.


This whole craze was started when a new Halo 2 trailer was released. There was not much new content in the trailer, but was probably aimed to advertise for ilovebees.com. At the end of the trailer, it flashed www.xbox.com. For a second, however, www.ilovebees.com was flashed. People started flooding in to the website, and rumors began flying. No one was sure who was running this game, but most people suspected Bungie, for some very convincing reasons.

1. The site was first advertised on a Halo 2 trailer, and Bungie is creating the game.
2. There are several references to Halo, including a Marine talking to a Spartan, and the Covenant, an alien race from the game.
3. Some of the characters in the sound clips may have links to the Halo characters, from the Halo books.
4. Bungie has a fascination with the number 7, and that number is popping up a lot on ilovebees.com.

Who knows what exactly is going on? Well, I guess we'll find out when 777 axons go hot. Until then, keep answering those payphones. The Operator is waiting.


BrooksMarlin says re ilovebees.com: I haven't been following this all that closely. Do the phones ring every day? Or only on one specific day?
vebelfetzer says re: ilovebees.com - "Melissa" is the Latin word for bee. Whoever's designed this has an incredible grasp of etymology.

haze says re ilovebees.com: actually, melissa is Latin for honey, and melis is Latin for bee