Hide and Seek

Lydia's journey to this strange building begins a few weeks earlier.

She and her friend Justin are having lunch at a roadside restaurant in the remote middle of Nevada.

They've already been driving for several hours on their way to Burning Man, a sprawling art and music festival in the desert.

We're sitting there and he's like, can you keep a secret? Well, I think so.

And then he gave me this look, you know, like he raises his eyebrows a little bit and I'm like, of course I can keep a secret.

And then he hands me this card.

Lydia holds up the white plastic card.

It looks rather like a credit card with a line of zeros along the bottom.

Justin passed it to her in a black slipcase, which carries a quiet proposition written in small gold letters.

You have received an invitation to visit the San Francisco House of the Latitude.

I'm like, Justin, what is this?

There's also a web address on the card, but it offers no details, just a prompt to book an appointment.

For the rest of the trip, I'm asking him all these questions, but he just doesn't answer anything.

He's like, you're going to figure it out.

So here we are, a few weeks later.

After a leap of faith, Lydia emerges from the bottom of the slide.

The room was totally silent.

And above the window, there was this neon sign that said, shh.

And there are three doors in this room.

I went through the unlocked door.

And that led into like a dark tunnel that I had to crawl through.

The next room she enters is a tiny library.

The shelves are lined with identical books.

Lydia picks up one at random and opens it on a lectern in front of her.

And suddenly the pages lit up and I heard a woman's voice begin to speak.

Lydia's journey to this strange building begins a few weeks earlier.

She and her friend Justin are having lunch at a roadside restaurant in the remote middle of Nevada.

They've already been driving for several hours on their way to Burning Man, a sprawling art and music festival in the desert.

We're sitting there and he's like, can you keep a secret? Well, I think so.

And then he gave me this look, you know, like he raises his eyebrows a little bit and I'm like, of course I can keep a secret.

And then he hands me this card.

Lydia holds up the white plastic card.

It looks rather like a credit card with a line of zeros along the bottom.

Justin passed it to her in a black slipcase, which carries a quiet proposition written in small gold letters.

You have received an invitation to visit the San Francisco House of the Latitude.

I'm like, Justin, what is this?

There's also a web address on the card, but it offers no details, just a prompt to book an appointment.

For the rest of the trip, I'm asking him all these questions, but he just doesn't answer anything.

He's like, you're going to figure it out.

So here we are, a few weeks later.

After a leap of faith, Lydia emerges from the bottom of the slide.

The room was totally silent.

And above the window, there was this neon sign that said, shh.

And there are three doors in this room.

I went through the unlocked door.

And that led into like a dark tunnel that I had to crawl through.

The next room she enters is a tiny library.

The shelves are lined with identical books.

Lydia picks up one at random and opens it on a lectern in front of her.

And suddenly the pages lit up and I heard a woman's voice begin to speak.