Preafter

Preafter was an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) about Uru Live which started in 2000.

• 2000: Zandi contacts the owners of a billboard in Carlsbad and leases it for one year. He puts on it a picture of a spiral (I assume the Preafter spiral) and a set of GPS coordinates.
• 2001: The second Mysterium is held in Carlsbad NM, at the Carlsbad Inn adjacent to said billboard. Zandi attends Mysterium wearing a t-shirt showing the Preafter spiral.
• 2002: The DRC web site and forums open and Zandi posts there a couple of times as himself, though his posts are deleted promptly by the DRC. Zandi then begins to hijack DRC board members' posts and add his own information to them, providing explorers the clues to track down the information they had missed at the Mysterium (i.e., Zandi's presence and the clues on the billboard).
• 2002: The third Mysterium receives a fax from Zandi with more clues, leading to the explorer community getting truly started on the Preafter treasure hunt.
• 2002: The first spiral is found in Petroglyph National Monument on the west mesa of Albuquerque NM; Zandi's Preafter website is updated to acknowledge this success.
• September 2002: The Preafter web site is updated with new clues, eventually yielding coordinates for the second spiral; the second spiral is found in Tent Rocks National Monument; Zandi's web site again is updated to reflect this success.
• October 2002: Preafter is updated with a new series of clues, leading to a mysterious phone call in Portland OR and a new set of coordinates; the third spiral is found at Turquoise Butte in western New Mexico.
• November 2002: Zandi's web site once again is updated with new clues which eventually lead to instructions for a meet-up with Zandi himself, after which the fourth spiral is found at the Bisti Badlands/De Na Zin Wilderness. The existence of Uru is unveiled on the Preafter web site, to which the DRC responds with a frenzy of forum postings about the history of the restoration and how Zandi fits in (and thus revealing the conflict between the DRC and Zandi).
• December 2002: Preafter is updated once again with new clues, this time simply asking all the finders of the four spirals to meet up and provide proof of their gathering; after this, Zandi completely revamps the Preafter web site and introduces explorers to the Yeesha hand journey symbol and the task of making their own journey symbols.

— Ainia, "Preafter mopping up". Myst Online forums. November 2, 2013.