“Yes.”
“When does the next cycle start?”
“When players begin discovering something we refer to as The Phrase.”
“A phrase? What phrase?”
“There’s a phrase that always precedes the beginning of the game, something that starts appearing just before the next iteration is about to begin.”
“What’s the phrase?”
“The Door Is Open.”
I felt like I’d uncovered something in the arcane mythological puzzle that was Rabbits—an access point to a world as far away from our own mundane existence as Narnia or Middle-earth. It was a world of mystery that I desperately wanted to access.
The Door Is Open.
Those were the words I’d heard coming from the radio the night of the accident with Annie and Emily Connors.
Did my hearing those words coming from the radio back then mean that a new iteration of the game had begun? And if so, was it version six? Seven?
From this point forward, Rabbits became more than an obsession. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning, and the last thing I considered before I fell asleep at night.
Rabbits was everything.
NOTES ON THE GAME:
MISSIVE BY HAZEL
（AUTHENTICATED BY BLOCKCHAIN）
It’s commonly accepted by those interested in Rabbits lore that The Phrase and The Circle can appear anywhere in the world at any time. Before and after each iteration of the game, players from all over the globe flood underground Rabbits chat rooms with pictures and reports about finding the phrase “The Door Is Open” or what they believe is an official representation of The Circle.
There have been rumors of The Circle showing up spray-painted on the side of a building in Red Square, replacing the track listing on side two of a Wilco vinyl record in 2002, and more than one player reported seeing The Phrase listed in the end credits of an independent Canadian film that screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010—although, so far, no video or screen capture evidence has surfaced to support these alleged appearances.
No organization has ever officially addressed how or why The Phrase or The Circle appears, which isn’t all that surprising, considering the fact that no organization has ever officially acknowledged the existence of the game itself.
—HAZEL 8
10
WORGAMES
A few days after we’d brought Alan Scarpio’s phone over to the arcade, Chloe called to tell me that the Magician wanted to take another look.
When I got there, Chloe and Baron were waiting. The Magician stuck a Back in Fifteen Minutes sign on the window, locked the door, and led us up to his office.
“You said Scarpio received a call while you were sitting with him in the diner?” The Magician motioned with his fingers, and once again, I handed over Scarpio’s phone.
“Yeah,” I said, “but we checked, there’s nothing on the phone. No call log, no records of anything.”
“Right,” the Magician said, “but call logs are stored in a few places, both on the device and in the cloud.”
“We checked the cloud,” Baron said. “There’s nothing there.”
“Did you find something?” Chloe asked as the three of us watched the Magician plug Scarpio’s phone into the same laptop he’d hooked it up to before.
“The last time you were here, I checked if this phone’s data had been updated with the call he’d received while you were in the diner, but the cloud connection had been completely wiped.”
“Exactly,” Baron said. “There’s nothing there.”
“So what are you doing now?” I asked.
“Rooting the phone.”
“That’s definitely going to void the warranty,” Chloe joked.
“Apparently, this particular phone backs up call and messaging information in a database file, and that file is accessible only by rooting the phone and using a file manager application.”
“Shit,” Baron said. “That’s a great idea.”
Rooting a phone—or, more accurately, hacking it to gain root access—isn’t uncommon among people who want less “restrictive” experiences with their mobile devices. Chloe was right, however; rooting would immediately void the warranty.
It took the Magician two minutes to locate the database, and another two minutes to crack it open. Eventually, he spun the laptop around and showed us the contents of the file he’d discovered. There was one entry: the call Scarpio had received while he’d been sitting with me in the diner. That entry contained three pieces of information: the time of the call, its length, and the incoming number.