📝 Project Skyscraper - Timeline / Storyline Thread

[ThatBomberBoi]

This post serves as a follow up to the original top post due to character limit restrictions
It follows sequentially from where the last one leaves off.

The following day, a thread containing a message for all Operators was posted to ETARC by @the_architect, reassuring Operators that everything was going as expected, to continue sending in quality inputs, apologizing for not having being able to answer our questions yet, explaining that they had been working on this project for a long time, and requesting Operators to submit “glitches in reality” using the tag #GlitchingReality. After several requests were posted on Twitter and Bluesky by various operators, 3 images (shared by ThatBomberBoi, @pr1sm, and @sheralmyst) were added to the website, with strange hexadecimal filenames which are yet to be decoded. These images are not currently used on a page/post on the website, and it is unknown where they may be featured, if at all.

On the 9th of June, things took an odd turn as a new sec log was posted urging Operators to return to the Brussels postcard and answer the system’s question as to the status of the memory, which oscillated between It happened, It is happening and It has never happened. Realizing that the character in Smile58, Kathleen, never sent a postcard from The Atomium, @Rinha submitted the answer “It has never happened” via the memory reconstruction engine, which collapsed the page into its final state and credited the Operator. This was immediately followed by a log about the World Fair containing some strange lines of text which appear to link it to No Man’s Sky, and another about Waking Titan itself, as well as an additional present-day Diagnostic log with a link to the original Waking Titan website, titled Error 1016.

• The error linking to Waking Titan seemingly confirms the old theory that the Historical Database referred to when connecting the System to TOWER was Waking Titan itself.

Following these post drops, the website immediately began to fill up with empty memory blocs for several dates in 2016, while the Memory_bloc_restoration count slowly began to rise. Initially, only 36 new blocs were added, but an hour later, the website received an additional 27 blocs for a total of 63. Following this, a new email from Ghost, addressed to @the_architect, was sent to the /inbox page, encoded using the school cipher:

Ghost's decoded reply - Original (French)

Ils ont réussi ! System reconstruit l’année qu’il a identifié comme début.
Wow je n’arrive pas à croire que ça arrive ! Tu avais raison, ils ont utilisé une des hallucinations du System pour lui montrer l’incohérence de ses souvenirs. System a dû se rendre à l’évidence : il a oublié.
Je pense que d’ici quelques jours, la reconstruction sera achevée. Les opérateurs pourront commencer à mettre à jour les blocs mémoires.
Bientôt !

Ghost's decoded reply - Translated (English)

They did it! System is reconstructing the year it identified as the beginning.
Wow, I can’t believe this is happening! You were right, they used one of System’s hallucinations to show it the inconsistency of its memories. System had to face the facts: it forgot.
I think the reconstruction will be complete in a few days. The operators will be able to start updating the memory blocks. Soon!

• The fact that the System considers 2016 the “beginning” is most likely tied to it being the release year of No Man’s Sky, but the fact that it still contains memories from before the game’s launch is currently unexplained.
• Ghost’s exposition confirms that Memory Bloc Restoration is an ongoing process, and will likely continue in the background as the community deal with newer puzzles.
• It is currently unknown what “updating the memory blocks” refers to, but it is possible that the empty nature of the newly added blocs may allow Operators to add the correct details to said blocs.

On the 10th of June, an additional 38 empty memory blocs, all set in 2016, were posted for a total of 101 / 365 at the time. Additionally, @Selfie-Gek’s #GlitchingReality post was referenced in a memory bloc who’s contents were also submitted by them via the Memory Reconstruction Engine, seemingly linking the two submission systems.

• This was the first #GlitchingReality image to be referenced by the website.
• It is possible that Operators with previously uploaded, unused images may have to submit usable memories in order for @the_architect to tie them to the corresponding images.

The next day, after a nearly 24 hour hiatus, a set of 45 new empty blocs was added to the site, bringing the total up to 146. Around this time, a new security log was posted on the website directing Operators to an image of the Atlas Cafe in Paris with a 16-A Atlas Pass Level 4 on the table, as well as a letter by Simon De Buci, a french magistrate who died on 7th May 1369, and thus could not possibly be writing a letter in a Parisian Cafe in the modern day. After multiple Operators confirmed this event as a hallucination in the System’s memory via the Memory Reconstruction Engine, the page updated to its current state, as well as lost it’s unstable tag.

Shortly after this, wakingtitan.com was updated to redirect to https://www.aliceandsmith.com/ which raised several eyebrows within the community. Immediately after, the /neural-network-status page updated into the shape of a hexagon, reminiscent of the sigils from Waking Titan. Soon after, a new, heartbreaking diagnostic post was published, explaining that the redirect meant that the historical database (widely believed to be Waking Titan itself) had been permanently lost, and that our next steps would have to utilize the TOWER.

• It is unknown at this point who set the redirection for wakingtitan.com to the Alice and Smith website. Thanks to @YourBasicMaths’ websleuthing, we know that the wakingtitan.com domain has never shifted hands since initial purchase, and as Hello Games mentioned owning the domain in their privacy policy prior to October 2025, it seems likely that they still own the domain.
  • Additionally, it was discovered that the privacy hoster for the domain has shifted from the US → UK → US during its lifetime from 2017-2026.
• Even if Hello Games set the redirection rule for wakingtitan.com, it is still possible for @the_architect’s post to have come later and capitalized on the opportunity. However, notably, the post ID used for the explanatory diagnostic log is much lower than the “active” cadence / latest chronological post ID, indicating that this post had been scheduled for some time. It is also still possible, however quite unlikely, that The Architect edited an old post scheduled for this time (or later) with these contents and published it (possibly earlier than previously scheduled for).

Following this, on the 12th of June, an additional 53 empty memory blocs were added to the count, resulting in a total of 199 blocs being restored up to this point. The increasing amount of blocs added per dump had lead many to believe that the restoration process itself is accelerating.

Contrary to this initial realization, however, the 13th of June only saw 3 additional empty memory blocs added, leading to the total only rising to 202/365. Additionally, @YourBasicMaths’s #GlitchingReality post was added to Project Skyscraper, bringing the total up to that point to 6 accepted user-submitted images with Hexadecimal filenames.

Soon after (on the same date), The Architect posted a new unstable memory bloc detailing a bizarre new timekeeping system which was recreated by various Operators, with additional context for dates in 2016, which appeared to be directly linked to the Memory Bloc Restoration process. A few hours later, 6 empty memory blocs from 2016 had their timestamps and post dates shifted around. After overlaying the new dates with the previously reconstructed calendars, @pr1sm and @Rusty (with corrections from @Turbulentflow) were able to independently extract the word echoes and submit it to the System. Immediately afterwards, a new Diagnostic log was posted to the website, explaining how the system had erronously been adding empty blocs, and that Memory Bloc Editing Access would be provided to Operators to fix this issue. This development was further elaborated on by @the_architect in a /inbox message to Ghost:

The Architect Explains - Original

Salut ! Tu ne réponds jamais ?!

System a finalement accepté que ses souvenirs puissent être édités. Ce n’était vraiment pas simple de lui faire accepter que les Opérateurs puissent remplacer des valeurs au cœur de sa mémoire. Mais tu avais raison (encore). Ce n’était pas une histoire de code ou de programmation, c’était une histoire de psychologie.

Les Opérateurs ont gagné sa confiance en lui présentant des souvenirs sincères et chargés en émotions. Quand System a commencé à auto-générer des blocs mémoire, il a fait face au dilemme qu’on avait imaginé : pourquoi créer des blocs mémoires quand il n’y a rien à se rappeler ? Pourquoi se souvenir d’une seconde où il ne s’est rien passé ?

En tout cas, ça fonctionne ! Les Opérateurs font un travail incroyable. Ils prennent des chemins non conventionnels, mais ce qui compte, c’est le résultat ! Par contre, ne me parle plus jamais de calendrier

Donne de tes nouvelles. Dis-moi si ça fonctionne de ton côté.

The Architect Explains - Translated

Hello ! Do you ever answer ?!

System has finally accepted that its memories can be edited. It really wasn’t simple to make it accept that the Operators could replace values at the heart of its memory. But you were right (again). It wasn’t something to do with code or programming, it was about psychology.

The Operators won its trust by presenting it with sincere memories, full of emotions. When System began to auto-generate memory blocs, it faced the dilemma we anticipated : why create memory blocs when there is nothing to remember ? Why remember a second when nothing happened ?

Anyway, it’s works ! The Operators are doing an amazing job. They’re taking unconventional paths, but what matters is the result ! But don’t ever talk about calendars to me again

Let me know how you’re doing. Tell me if it’s working on your side.

Following this, 38 new empty memory blocs were added to the site, bringing the total up to 240 at this point. Additionally, the 5th January 2016 memory bloc was updated to allow Operators to inject their own data to the empty bloc. As Operators began adding information without any obvious instructions, the page started updating with snippets and pieces of Operator inputs, undulating and changing several times (at one point even plummetting down to 20% and resetting all added information) as more Operators added details as a Memory Compliance percentage varied with each snippet anchored onto the page. Eventually, the page stabilized into its current, final form, and editing access was globally revoked as the page was tagged as Verified. As this happened, the Memory_bloc_verification updated for the first time, and counted up to 1.

After a short wait, the second unverified page (at the time), 7th Jan 2016, gained the memory editing form, and after a similar process, was stabilized and verified into its current form, after which the Memory_bloc_verification counted up to 2.

• Due to its haphazard nature, many details of the Memory Editing process are unclear at this time.
• After this event, all unverified posts at the time had been verified, making it difficult to predict the next date that Operators would need to verify.
• The haphazard nature of the editing process prompted Operators to collect their thoughts regarding what seems to be a long-lasting process and plan for upcoming live editing events.

The next day, on June 15th, the website updated with a memory bloc related to Light No Fire, after a concentrated anchoring effort was spearheaded by @Rusty, as well as yet another unused #GlitchingReality image by Blindvador.

• The success of the anchoring effort has prompted Operators to congregate and work towards anchoring other significant entries by working together.
• It is theorized that emotional and unique submissions for a single timestamp have a higher chance to anchor than a rapid-spam of nearly identical entries for a timestamp. This may explain why the Light No Fire memory took hold with fewer Operators participating, compared to the Galactic Hub’s mass spam for the klaxk entry.

Several hours later, 4 more memory blocs were marked as unverified on the site. Over the course of the night, Operators managed to submit to, and verify, 3 blocs in total. Interestingly, one of the verified blocs was not a part of the initial 4 unverified memory blocs, and went live for editing as soon as it was marked as unverified. This left a total of 2 unverified memory blocs at the end of this activity period. Following the verification of the last memory bloc (till this point), yet another #GlitchingReality image was added to the website, courtesy of @Rinha.

• Whilst it appears that @the_architect will give some form of a heads-up about future editable memory blocs to allow Operators to prepare, there still appear to be spontaneous events we must all work towards out of nowhere.

On the next day, 16th June, a new Structural Analysis post was added to the site, directing Operators to an image of a 3D printed Rasamama-S36 outside of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, which were both immediately identified by Operators. Several memory bloc addition requests calling out the hallucination were fired off by multiple Operators, and the page updated to its current state. Additionally, a new diagnostic log was added to the website to acknowledge this corrected temporal anomaly.

After the temporal correction, a user-submitted memory bloc detailing the Hello Games office flood of Christmas 2013 was also successfully anchored, indicating that memory bloc addition would continue in the midst of other activities.

Soon after, an additional 2 memory blocs were marked as unverified. A few minutes later, a third memory bloc would be marked as unverified, and would immediately initiate the editing process. After its successful anchoring, Operators were instantly treated to another newly unverified memory bloc, which also instantaneously began the editing process. After all enabled editable pages had been fully anchored, @the_architect posted the following image to the site, as a possible end-of-day signal.

On the 17th of June, a series of ~46 empty memory blocs were added to the site, bringing the total restoration counter up to 286. Additionally, the secondary website was redirected to the url RecallDreams.dev with several unlisted images being uploaded to the page mere minutes after the redirect took place. The website itself initially appeared to be an in-universe “personal” website for either Ghost or @the_architect, due to the image Unknown being present in the school code page, as well as the new site, and the metadata website description reading 41 years old solo dev. French., which matches up exactly with the current known ages for Ghost and The Architect. This prompted Operators to investigate the website’s wordpress REST API, leading to the discovery of the previously mentioned images, as well as unpublished post IDs and more information about the nature of the site. Following this intrusion, the Project-Skyscraper website updated with a new sec-log, detailing the incident, mentioning that the TOWER had been targeted by multiple unauthorised access attempts, referring to Operator investigations. This lead to RecallDreams’ robots.txt file updating from a generic, anti-crawler set-up, to one denying automated-crawler access to previously unknown webpages, including /echoes, /console, /terminal and /database. Following this update, Ghost sent an email to The Architect via /inbox, asking why the latter had cut off their access to TOWER.

A few hours later, @vector_cmdr recieved a reply to an “apology” email they sent as a half-joke, ordering them to restore the connection, and stating that I need the connection.. Interestingly, the email was sent by SYSTEM, and not by The Architect.

• The current robots.txt file explicitly confirms that RecallDreams.dev is the elusive TOWER. Why it also serves as a personal site for Ghost or The Architect is currently unknown.
• The updated robots.txt, while touted as an anticrawler measure, has no effect on the various monitoring bots set up by Operators, a fact which The Architect appears to know about. Thus, the new file may just be an in-universe response to Operator intrusion, as well as a sneaky way to tease future functionality of the site.
• The last time Operators were warned about intrusions against the system, a sec-log listing 10 location codes was posted. These locations have (so far) all lined up with locations where the Structural Analysis puzzles have taken place, which may have been a teaser for this type of puzzle. Similarly, the TOWER lockdown procedures may be a teaser for upcoming website functionality.

Activity on the 18th of June only consisted of a sec-log posted on the project skyscraper website, mentioning a mirror created of the main website by @GoodGuysFree, whilst requesting Operators to provide the System with the time duration that the connection to TOWER was available. Following @Lindwur’s successful submission, the page updated to its current status, indicating that the System would attempt a reconnection to TOWER soon. The sec-log also contained a direct link to RecallDreams.dev for the very first time in the ARG, despite the page still showing a default “coming soon” screen at the time the sec-log was posted. This likely marks the new site as “active” and official from the time of posting.

The following day, however, began with a strange sec-log pointing users to a password-protected page. Analyzing the sec-log, operators realized that it was a direct reference to local ARG Legend @vector_cmdr (Use IWTS_operator ID). This prompted Vector himself to try his name as the password (vector_cmdr) which granted access to a command-line style interface, requesting commands to be performed in sequence. Vector then proceeded to check the webpage file itself and discovered the script responsible for accepting commands, which contained all of the required commands, albeit in an encrypted format, which was decoded by XORing the strings (a method infamously used by said Operator on several existing puzzles to no avail previously). After submitting the commands in the correct order, the terminal displayed TOWER STATUS: ONLINE, as well as Confirmation Code : System sees Tower. After Vector emailed said confirmation code to System, a new sec-log went live, explaining that System’s link to TOWER had been restored, thus singlehandedly solving the puzzle almost as soon as it went live. This period of activity was concluded by an additional GlitchingReality image post by @Astaroth88

The 20th of June kicked off with a GlitchingReality post by @Oskar1Up, after which 3 existing 2016 memory blocs had their dates shuffled around, quite similarly to what happened before the Six Seasons calendar puzzle, as well as the addition of a single no/value memory bloc, bringing the total number of restored memories up to 287. Soon after, a seemingly routine memory bloc editing process initiated for the 30th of October, 2016, and was, for the first time, preceeded by a Twitter and Bluesky post. Realizing that the date corresponded to the founding of the Galactic Hub, Operators began submitting memories tied to said event, including links to the initiating reddit post. Notably, this was a previously marked unverified bloc, which had allowed several Operators to “park” their submissions in the Memory Engine Tracker. As Operators @sheralmyst, @JohnnyCloud and @YourBasicMaths were unavailable at the time to submit their pre-anchored memories, Operator @ThatBomberBoi submitted said entries on their behalf, which ended up taking hold and lead to the page being marked as verified. After the completion of this activity, ThatBomberBoi posted about the submission-by-proxy on ETARC and Discord.

Soon after, however, the memory bloc page was surprisingly marked as unverified once more, and updated to include the text:

Update: Hallucination detected.
Cause: Impersonation.

Caution: Impersonation can cause unexpected results.

after which the existing memory compliance rating plummeted to 10%. “Impersonated” Operators rushed to send in their entries on their own, while @ThatBomberBoi apologized for the action and requested re-authentically submitted memories to remain anchored. Alas, almost all previously anchored blocs on the page were wiped, and replaced by the current entry, after which the page was marked verified once more. The day’s activitites then closed out with one final GlitchingReality image being posted to the website.

• This was the first, and as of writing the only, instance of a verified memory bloc shifting to unverified.
• It is unknown at this point whether @the_architect can recognize impersonation at the form-submission level, or whether the public announcement of the “impersonation” is what set off the alarm.

The 21st began, strangely enough, with a new Unverified bloc being added to the website, for 9th Feb 2020, far outside the usual date range. Alongside this, @the_architect contacted @Oskar1up directly in the latter’s stream chat, saying 08/02/2020 unverified, pointing directly to the bloc mentioned above. After a bit of digging, it was discovered that the Royal Space Society (lead by Oskar) was founded on the above date. This lead to an organization attempt regarding this and many other community founding dates, documented here.

Several hours later, two separate GlitchingReality images were uploaded to Project Skyscraper as per usual. Following this, the Dec 5th unverified memory bloc went live for editing. After a lot of deliberation and back-and-forth discussions, the memory bloc was finally anchored to its current state, where the page was verified.

Following this successful verification, @the_architect released the final #GlitchingReality image. Shortly afterwards, a brand new Structural Analysis post was released onto the website. Surprisingly however, unlike most Structural Analysis posts, this one pointed to a full-log page instead of an edited picture of a real-life location, and hid 3 seperate threads:

1. A heading under Diagnostic, reading Fragment: jerpxntr flfgrzf. This was decoded via ROT13 to spell wreckage systems - the name of a 65DaysOfStatic persistent soundscape experiment. This prompted @Alterworld to submit the initial start date of Wreckage Systems as a memory bloc, which anchored seamlessly and appears to have solved this thread.
2. A youtube link to the following video from The Matrix.
3. A link to a page listing all 16 selected GlitchingReality images in a grid, in ascending Hexadecimal order. With this, all 16 images are officially in play, and are tied directly to the main “puzzle” of the page (Action required: Cross-verification of information provided for archiving).

Additionally, at this point, it was discovered that the last GlitchingReality image’s hexadecimal filename was the only one which decoded cleanly into the plaintext word vision. It is currently unknown what significance this holds.

Following this active drop, the Memory_bloc_restoration counter rapidly began to count up. Operators waited in excitement as the counter, after about a month of waiting, finally ticked up to 365/365! This episode of hype soon turned to confusion, however, as the counter continued to count up, first to 366/365, and finally ending up on 367/365. Following this, a final sec-log was released for the day, explaining that the 2016 timeline had been completed successfully, and that System would now proceed fully autonomously, noting however that certain timestamps may still require Operator input.

• It is believed that this sec-log indicates that the Verification system will now also run autonomously, with Operators only having to manually edit certain blocs.

The next day, in comparison, progressed much more slowly, with activity only starting in the evening. This kicked off with a memory bloc being posted to the website, containing a submitted Memory by @vector_cmdr, as well as what seemed to be a hint regarding the 16 Hallucinations puzzle. The page itself was marked unverified (a first for non-editable pages) on creation. Soon after, an existing 2016 bloc was marked as Unverified. Surprisingly, however, the bloc did not undergo the usual editing process, instead being almost immediately updated to 100% Memory Compliance automatically, to its current state. This confirmed that the System would now verify existing memory blocs mostly autonomously without Operator input, as previously theorized.

A few hours later, @Selfie-Gek sent a long, heartfelt message consoling System via the Memory Engine over its recent hallucinations. The system immediately responded by editing their submitted memory bloc to change the source name from Selfie G to Friend Selfie Gek, indicating an increase in trust level. The post was also marked as verified, the first non-edited memory bloc to be marked as such.

A few hours later, @Rinha recieved an email from System itself, pointing towards this, image in the set of 16 to be focused on, which featured the date 22nd April 2016 prominently. Taking this hint, @YourBasicMaths sent in a Memory Bloc Addition request tying the date to the article “The Art Of No Man’s Sky”, published on the same date, after which the corresponding memory bloc unlocked for editing. After short, successful editing session, the page updated to its final form, after which both it, and the 1990 “hint” page were switched to Verified together.

• It is unknown at this stage whether this is the end of the 16 Hallucinations puzzle, or just a stage in a greater plan regarding it.
• Active puzzle pages were previously marked as Unstable, stabilizing only after the puzzle had been solved. The use of the Unverified tag for the 1990 memory bloc may indicate that the Unverified tag will also be used to mark active puzzles going forward, as well as serving its role of indicating future verifiable memory blocs.