Who knows if in the end find him, Evan RATLIFF, and where, while drinking beer in a ramshackle tavern outside Sonoma, California, or hidden in a hole in the Fifth Avenue, New York, look at the last drops of a beautiful late summer afternoon. There until September 15 is anyone of us can do. And there are five thousand dollar prize. To succeed, we can have everything that the police, the data of his credit cards, the number of your phone, we can follow his travels on the Internet looking for pictures and memories wherever we are. And there are everywhere. Matthew Alan Sheppard, too, have caught, when it seemed impossible for a stupid search listing on Google before you leave. And John Darwin, nicknamed ‘canoe man’ for how it was managed to eclipse navigating on a river, he screwed the DNA, seven years later when he wanted to return.
In the society of Big Brother, it is easier to appear or disappear? It may well be that the answer is obvious. Spar is not the easiest thing, “says RATLIFF. He decided to prove it. “Try to remain hidden for 30 days – has explained on Wired, the magazine for which he works -. Remain in the United States, in my usual environment, would not hide in a shack in Montana. Continue to use sites like Facebook and Twitter and a telephone call from my numbers. Controller my followers, looking for news about me. ”
Evan has worked many times with people and disappearance of large cheating via the Internet. The idea of the hunt came after passionate case of Matthew Alan Sheppard, manager of a peaceful province married for ten years, with a daughter of seven. So he arranged everything with “Wired”. We think the editor’s friend, Nicholas Thompson, to coordinate the hunt. Nick knows everything about him. The only thing I do not know where it is hidden. I do not know anyone, even his family. But Nick will network all the tracks are: payments by credit card (if I’m foolish or desperate enough to use my accounts, “said Evan before squagliarsela), telephone calls, e-mail.
The game provides rules. Vince who locates, identifies, and the photographer sends the images to “Wired” using password “Fluke!” Lucky shot. Who can not win, during the search, committing crimes, contact the family of Evan or physically harm him. The winner receives five thousand dollars and must agree to be interviewed, because Evan tell the whole story about each other ‘Wired’. The fame of course, is a game. But a real game. “Today – wrote on his site – it is easier to steal an identity to get rid of his own.” It is no longer as it once was, “when you could move in several states, as in the Hitchcock film, with a new name and changing your life with a minimal risk. Now your tracks from GPS chase is able to detect mobile phones, and ATM, IP addresses, electronic transactions and computer research. ”
In society we have built, maybe somewhere there is your double, but it is almost impossible that you can disappear. And ‘This is the contradiction. Matthew Alan Sheppard, the man who inspired RATLIFF was screwed by this. Had died drowning in a river before the eyes of his wife and daughter. None of them knew something and were really desperate. The search lasted throughout the weekend, but found only his orange hat. Sheppard had begun to squander the money in computer games. He had a life insurance policy and had discovered that, in face of death, the insurance would pay his wife even without the body. That is not said nothing.
But then he wanted to return, after the insurance had paid the amount due. He did not know there was an investigator that he had believed, Sergeant Roberson, one of those heavywheight we are only in movies or in books by James Crumley. Sergeant was tripped in an article that talked about Steve Fosset, disappeared without leaving traces and still never found. He had used a trick: he left the phone, hoping that someone rubasse him and lead the police on his tracks. He went his way. How odd. Matthew also had lost a mobile phone: he had lost to a gas station nearby. Sergeant reread the computer Sheppard: Matthew had only used Google and LexisNexis. But going back in time once he discovered that he had placed on its search engine the name of Steve Fosset. Bingo. The rest he did the thief who had screwed the phone: the left now, do not create any false track.
The pecking in Mexico, Sheppard. He opened an inn, and was sitting in the shade of a porch to a sip tequila after another, such as wanting to remove the taste of the mouth of death. Why disappear is a little ‘trick as death or life. I do not understand well. He will explain Evan, when he returned.
