I received the following email from Movement Magazine (www.MySpace.com/MovementMagazine) in regards to an Alternate Reality Game created by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. ARG and NIN fans are in for a treat.

Nine Inch Nails
Year Zero
- by Alex Pagan

This morning I was digging around my usual industrial music blog sites looking for a typical "I know more than you about industrial music than you" conversation when I stumbled on a particular post. One of the members of our industrial blog community found a few leaks to the new NIN album a posted a few of the links. These seem to be official leaks as they are actually on the NIN myspace site and available for download. The audio quality of the songs is very poor, but it gives you a taste of what is coming. So, being the internet geek that I am I decided to dig a little further and found something, odd, very odd.

It appears this is new Nine Inch Nails album; titled Year Zero is going to be another concept album. Now I know what you are thinking. Isn't every NIN album some sort of concept album? Yes, but this time Trent is creating a very complex, disturbing, mind bending concept album. In fact, he has created an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). This is very similar to what the creators of the popular television show LOST are running.

It begins like this:

Nine Inch Nails is currently on tour in Europe. With this tour a new tour shirt was release. On the back of the shirt there are printed tour dates tour dates. In the tour date text these are highlighted letter. The highlighted letters spell out: I am trying to believe.
So naturally I went straight to google, which lead to this www.iamtryingtobelieve.com/default.htm
I didn't hit the links on the upper left hand corner because I was too intrigued by the picture.

As you can see there is an image of what appears to be a hand or arm breaking through the clouds and touching earth. This brought lyrics to mind the clouds will part and the sky cracks open and god himself will reach his fucking arm through just to push you down, just to hold you down from NIN's The Wretched. The Hand/Arm is being called the Presence.

Then hit the links. It is very hard to read, but the site is a web page about a new anti bio terrorism agent called "Parepin" being introduced into the water supply of several larger American cities. The site support links that explain the dangers of the chemical agent and it effects. From new paper clippings to an link to an email address¦

<script type="text/javascript">eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%77%61%74%65%72%40%69%61%6d%74%72%79%69%6e%67%74%6f%62%65%6c%69%65%76%65%2e%63%6f%6d%22%3e%77%61%74%65%72%40%69%61%6d%74%72%79%69%6e%67%74%6f%62%65%6c%69%65%76%65%2e%63%6f%6d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b'))</script>

So I sent an email, just to see what would happen and I received this auto response:
Thank you for your interest. It is now clear to me that Parepin is a completely safe and effective agent developed to protect us from bio-terrorism. The Administration is acting purely in the best interests of its citizens; to suggest otherwise was irresponsible and I deeply regret it.

I'm drinking the water. So should you.

It gets even better from here.
I dug around and was able to find a community that is researching the internet phenomenon. Here is the thread:
www.echoingthesound.org/phpbbx/viewtopic.php?t=20265&start=0

Apparently there are many people who have discovered this and are trying to link together the story. Here is a brief clip of what is known.

People are finding flash drives in the restrooms of Nine Inch Nails concerts In Portugal and Spain. The flash drives contain leaks of the new Nine Inch Nails album. Some one was savvy enough to run the first song that was released "Survivalism" through a spectrograph, which lead to this:
http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=holyfuckingshitea8.png
As you can see, it is the presence.

Another code was found from yet another t-shirt “ this time the highlighted code was 13102951040 “ this is an actual US phone number. Call it. It has a sample clip of survivalism and odd messages related to the story. There are several links, pages and little random sites that all pertain to this ARG. Another audio clip can be found at 216-333-1810. This one is a little more disturbing, but a clue to unraveling the story.

What the actual story line is has yet to be discovered. Look folks, I have been digging through this all day when I should have been working. There is way too much information on this than I could possibly put in a quick review. So you all can join in on the fun, here is every single link I could find. Happy hunting.

www.iamtryingtobelieve.com/
www.consolidatedmailsystems.com/nooneimportant/
www.anotherversionofthetruth.com/ (side note, click and drag on the picture, this is amazing)
www.bethehammer.net/
www.105thairbornecrusaders.com/
www.churchofplano.com/
www.consolidatedmailsystems.com/nooneimportant/
www.uswiretap.com/case_number_required/
www.uswiretap.com/71839J/

www.MySpace.com/MovementMagazine

Rest assured this post in NOT part of the game and is not affliated with Trent Reznor or NIN. Special thanks goes out to Alex Pagan and Movement Magazine for sharing this info.