It all started with a puzzling poster on a traffic pole, a sneaky Reddit thread and a mysterious phone call from a deep-voiced stranger named “Agent Smith.” Before I knew it, I was tumbling headfirst into a top secret investigation right in the heart of Durango.
Reddit has been called a lot of things over the course of its existence: a marketplace of ideas, a mindless source of scrolling and a cesspool of human brain rot. “Instigator of small-town top secret spy missions” is a new one; but that’s exactly what it became for me when I stumbled across an especially intriguing post in r/Durango in early July.
I’ll admit, I was suspicious at first. A nondescript poster left on a light post that included at least three telltale signs of potential phishing attempts set off immediate alarm bells for me. Most of the comments on the Reddit post echoed this sentiment – except one, posted by user footfungusfreak. It read:
“I called the number, it seems like maybe a scavenger hunt or something? I spoke to an AI voice named ‘Agent Smith’ who told me to go to the train station to look for a statue.”
I was intrigued. Emboldened by the faceless commenter’s assurance that the trail was more than just a spam attempt, and overcome with my own curiosity, I called Agent Smith myself in search of some much needed answers.
I didn’t say much throughout the first few minutes of the call. As it turns out, that wasn’t a problem for Agent Smith, a chatty, James Bond-esque AI secret agent who picked up immediately and was all too eager to induct me into his top secret agency.
Agent Smith introduced himself, told me a “highly classified organization” had been waiting for me, and warned me about possible encounters on my mission with “phenomena that are strange and unexplainable,” citing the need for utmost secrecy throughout the process.
He then pulled up my “first field file,” the first step on the scavenger hunt. Upon prompting from Agent Smith, I accepted my mission, donned the title of “Agent Elizabeth,” and was delivered the first location on the hunt – the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad station – along with instructions for uncovering the answer to the first clue, relating to an art piece outside the station.
Agent Smith also mentioned the possibility of him sounding “strange or glitchy,” and instructed me to hang up and call back in that event, so he could “catch his breath.”
Agent Smith’s sign-off was curt and no-nonsense: “Let me know if you have any questions before you set out. If not, good luck out there, Agent.”
Dial tone.
Maybe it’s the journalist in me, or maybe I just read a little too much “Hardy Boys” and “Nancy Drew” as a kid. Whatever the motivation, I couldn’t resist my own curiosity, and found myself headed toward the D&SNG station that same afternoon.
I won’t spoil every clue for other prospective players following Agent Smith’s directions, but the investigative trail was fairly extensive, included a good amount of humorous and intriguing clues and questions from Agent Smith, and brought me to many well-known Durango landmarks and points of interest up and down Main Avenue.
I was led to the Strater Hotel, Buckley Park, a few well-known businesses in town, down a colorful alleyway near 11th Street and, much to my surprise, eventually back to The Durango Herald office. There, I was congratulated by Agent Smith for completing the mission, and given my final instructions: to go inside the office and ask the Herald to write about the investigation.
The unbelievable irony of this caused me, a Herald reporter staring at my own office, to laugh out loud with enough gusto to startle some passersby. That final instruction ended up being the easiest step on my top secret quest.
One of my favorite elements of the investigation included seeking out an “Agent Olga Little” who reportedly went missing while undercover. It isn’t lost on me that this “agent” shares a name with Durango’s famous woman burrow packer of the 1890s, and the related Olga Little Mountain.
The need for close inspection of various statues, plaques, and details on buildings and landmarks in order to get the correct passphrases to Agent Smith and unlock each clue was a cornerstone of the hunt, and made the experience feel all the more exciting. One particularly amusing question asked by Agent Smith related to the gender of a canine statue:
“Does it appear to be a boy, or a girl?” asked the agent. “I know this is an odd question, but this detail is imperative to the mission.”
I’ll leave it up to other prospective agents to find the answer to that one.
As I reentered the Herald office following mission success, my mind was on the one mystery I had yet to solve upon completion of the intricate scavenger hunt: Who was behind the conception of the Agent Smith investigation itself?
No employees, community members or local businesses along the trail seemed to have any idea who Agent Smith was, and seemingly hadn’t encountered any other newly-inducted agents out on their own investigations. The internet, and my fellow Herald reporters, were just as stumped as I was as to who had dreamed up this elaborate scheme.
Luckily, my final call with Agent Smith involved a request for feedback about my experience, and included the option to leave a message for “the Command Center.” I explained my position at the Herald, and requested a conversation with the mastermind behind the unexpected adventure.
My office phone rang within an hour.
Braden Sanders, a Durango software developer and the human puppeteer behind Agent Smith’s electronic strings, calls the Agent Smith program a “passion project.”
“I read code for a living, and I’m really into AI technology, so, go figure,” he said.
He said “The Matrix” was a big inspiration for the project. The line at the bottom of Sanders’ posters, which reads “follow the white rabbit,” is a nod to the film.
Sanders has run two trials of the Agent Smith project. He’s collected participants through posters left on Main Avenue, and through clever online advertising – like the Reddit post I stumbled across.
The post was an intentional line set by a friend of Sanders’, and footfungusfreak was Sanders himself, trying to drum up interest and assure potential users that the investigation wasn’t a scam or a phishing attempt. If my experience was any indication, Sanders’ cleverly placed Reddit comment did exactly what he intended.
The first of Sanders’ trials was launched over Memorial Day weekend, where he got a total of 250 initial calls to Agent Smith’s number. The second attempt, which is the one I stumbled into, gained around 290 total initial calls. Approximately 15 people across both trials completed the entire investigation.
For more information
Questions or inquiries can be directed to Braden Sanders at agentsmith@sleechie.com or braden@sleechie.com.
The QR code on the Main Avenue posters sends a user to sleechie.com, where a $1 fee from users for “administrative costs” is requested in order to unlock the paid version of Agent Smith and receive all the clues needed to complete the investigation.
The $1 request, said Sanders, isn’t about money, but about data.
“I wanted to see who would be willing to pay a dollar to find out what happens,” he said.
I was one of the users who wasn’t willing to shell out for the cost, in large part because of safety concerns with inputting credit card information into an unfamiliar online system before I knew the story behind the project.
Luckily, I received a text message during the hunt from “The Command Center,” from a number different from Agent Smith’s, informing me that my progress was being monitored, and that the usual $1 fee to continue the mission had been waived. At the time, Sanders had no idea I was a reporter from the Herald; he assumed I was a willing community member or tourist, and wanted to help me along to collect more data for future iterations of Agent Smith.
Sanders is able to view participants’ numbers, and, if given to Agent Smith, their names. He also has access to recordings and logs of all conversations between the chatbot and agents out on assignment.
The ultimate goal, he said, is to create a polished version of Agent Smith in collaboration with local businesses to lead tourists and curious locals on top secret investigations through downtown Durango. Sanders is still ironing out some kinks in his code, and is working on getting in touch with willing businesses for collaboration.
Past potential business opportunities and personal passion, Sanders wants the Agent Smith project at its core to bring a bit of fun and whimsy to Durango, and to users of the system.
“I want a tourist to take away some new knowledge about the town, and see some interesting things,” he said. “But more importantly, I want the users to get a little bit of a feeling that everything is not as it seems, and that there are forces at play that you don’t understand. I want people to lean into the mystery of it all.”
epond@durangoherald.com
