OK, my little sherlocks, here's your chance to help me solve (or at least theorize) about a little mystery I stumbled across. I was going to do a little more research on this sucker but since I got to get all my crap moved from point a to point b I thought you could join in the fun. (and no I am not being lazy)

Here's the facts as I know 'em.

I first stumbled across Trey Howard and his deep thoughts while perusing the latest listings on my discussion board on July 16th. Under the title "Weirdness at an LA coffeehouse" was this post by Trey posting as "Stickpin"

"I've started going to this new place as a hang out here in LA and I swear that there is something weird about these 2 waiters. I've been watching them when I come here and they act very strange. For one thing they are twins and always dress alike I thought twins stopped that crap when they reached their 20's Another thing is that they talk to each other in a real strange way. I won't go into specifics but it's just real weird. I know you had a twin bro and I don't want to seem tactless but do twins have a special language or something that others can't understand?"

The message perked my interest cause I'm a twin. He teased me with a little more info in a later post.

"... I've listened to them and they are speaking English it's just sort of a weird slang type thing. Like when one is at a table taking an order he'll just look at the other one and say something like "fee 2" and the one behind the bar will make a coffee with 2 sugars. I'm not sure that's exactly what they are saying cause its hard to hear them with the noise in the restaurant. And yes that's what is weird is that they are still dressing alike when they have to be in their 20's. I've been to this place like 7 or 8 times and they are always dressed in identical clothes underneath their aprons."

Trey Howard is looking for clues.

When he read that I was going out to the west coast he e-mailed me and I agreed to meet him at the coffee house when Jason and I were in Los Angeles. Maybe I should have gotten a warning signal when he started telling me over the phone that my investigation should "solve everything." ('Cause if he believed that then obviously he had no idea what Freakylinks was all about)

When we met Trey at the coffee house called Nova Express I came prepared with a hidden camera under my shirt. (insert James Bond theme song here) Below is a QuickTime of the meeting.

Click here to see the movie (8.8MB).

(movie not working for you? you probably need to download the QuickTime software)

So here are the $24 dollar questions: Is there something weird going on at this place? Are the twins just nitwits or something a little more sinister? And what's up with the bathroom décor?

Here's some of my pet theories I was working on:

Conservative theory: Everything is completely normal and the twins are just geeks or they get off screwing with people cause they work at unusual place. Nova Express has this really interesting sci-fi themed bent to it and is def. not your run of the mill coffeehouse. Maybe the décor in the bathroom is just themed to go along with the rest of the place.

Middle of the Road Theory: The sloppy style of the bathroom 0's and 1's doesn't fit in with the intricate detail in the main room. A lot of time and effort went in to making these way cool sci-fi sets inside the place and the bathroom just looks like people went in there with markers and wrote on the wall as fast as they could. I called Nova Express when I got back to O-town and a manager there told me that the graffiti had been painted over and the twins were no longer working there. (He said they just didn't come to work one day) Maybe they got a better job at a comic book store...

Extremely-Liberal-Paranoid-Conspiracy-In-Every-Bathroom Theory: Those twins were up to something. They either weren't human or were something "a little more than" human. Trey was right and there was a much deeper meaning to the scribbles on the back wall. Is it a code to communicate to others of their kind? Perhaps they were waiting for a prearranged signal about some event and once it appeared on the bathroom wall they quit their cover jobs as waiters and hit the intergalactic road. Or maybe they were time travelers? Or maybe they were inter-dimensional visitors? Or maybe they were just looking for a really good latte?... Makes you wonder, don't it?

So I'll leave it up to you guys to come up with some sort of unifying theory that fits the facts. If you have the time and the willpower, do some research on your own and see what you can find. Send me your ideas and I'll post the best ones on the page for the world to read and ridicule (legalese: just understand that any theory you e-mail me becomes the property of Freakylinks and I get to do with it what I see fit) Heck, I'll give away Freakylinks t-shirts to the winners that get posted on the site.

The silver lining to this is that I thought Nova Express was one of the coolest places I went to while I was in LA. I heartily suggest if you live out there in the city of angels you take a gander at the place when you get a chance. It's at 426 North Fairfax (across from Canters) and they're open most days from 5 pm to 4 am.

September 20, 2000

From Zed

"Perhaps the twins are escapees from a government project in biotechnology: human computers. Not androids, or robots, but actual humans who are being massed produced to perform calculations (their brains are genetically rigged to be supercharged of course.)

Their sensitivity to electromagnetic fields could have been amplified to enable normal lab technicians to remotely "upload" data into their brains that would normally take hours to read. This would also allow them to "share processors" in a way by using the sections of each other's brains (via telepathy) that the other one might not currently be using to do calculations.

This could explain the apparent telepathy or shortcut words (Short cuts used to notify the conscious mind of information which has been transferred into the subconscious - sorta like file names), as well as their sensitivity to electric devices.

Then they set to work doing calculations for whatnot. Maybe it's calculations for a new faster than light easy bake oven, maybe a new program for artificial intelligence that will bring world peace (please!)

This could explain the binary code in the bathrooms, perhaps they write down binary reminders of calculations that they are putting to rest for the moment so that they wont have to waste their brains power in keeping the equation in short term memory, and they can later view the wall and resume the calculation by calling it's "file name" into current consciousness.

The reason they're twins is obvious in this theory."

From Kristy

My theory is not necessarily that the twins were aliens who came to work at Nova Express, but that the founder/owner of the coffee shop was alienistic in nature. That would explain why the whole cafe was decorated in sci-fi themes. This guy, with his advanced intellect and technology can stay completely hidden back in some control room behind the coffee bar and not ever have to be seen. His purpose is to get as many humans as possible to intake his coffee, which is probably, laced with some small, undetectable amount of drug that, after ingesting several of these small doses, will begin to change us humans from what we are to something more on his level. By transforming our race into his race, the aliens will then control the earth.

My point being, this alien guy needs to insure that the drugged coffee is reaching as many different people as possible so he achieves that goal by advertising. I'm sure there are billboards and radio ads, etc. displaying the name and address of Nova Express. The coffee probably tastes damn good so that word of mouth advertising will be effective. But then he decides that he should draw attention to his business by performing mind control over a set of innocent twins that happen to work there. If he can make them act and speak in a manner, which is not normal, it will draw attention to them, which means it in turn draws attention to him. So he uses the power of his mind to make them act and talk the way they do. The bathroom has like a refresher code on its walls so that every time one of the twins goes to the bathroom it is freshly brainwashed. That way, the main alien guy doesn't have to watch their every move.

sources

Interview with Trey Howard