It was a cool summer evening -- I had just sat down at my typewriter and started typing this exact phrase. Realizing that there's not much story in telling the events of the present, I decided to go back to where it all started. The Case of Loony Labs just got hairier than Mata Hairy's Toon Resistance uniform after a long C.F.O. battle.



This is gonna be a long one to catch everyone up to speed on The Case of Loony Labs, so I highly recommend reading my previous case summary before moving forward. If you're one of my top sleuths who already know all of the details of this case -- you'll want to hold out for Part Two.

Yes, Part Two -- I've had to split this case summary into two parts: A recap, followed by my newest findings which I'll report in another post this week. A detective's work is never done.

Now, let's get this case cracking!

The Hydrant Anomaly

Our case continues on a fateful day in March, the 26th to be exact, two months after the date of my previous investigation. All sorts of tomfoolery has happened since then -- and I’m not talking about Doctor Tom. The aptly-named Silly Street’s silliness began to build, causing a Fire Hydrant to spring to life.

This wasn’t smoke and mirrors: This was a clear cut case of a Fire Hydrant turning into a self-aware object if I ever saw one.



Based on my observations, Professor Prepostera was able to convince Doctor Surlee to finally take to Silly Street after disappearing from the public eye. The Doc hadn't been seen since the Fissiontons appeared, which is a telltale sign for cooking up some sort of scheme. Oh, and the Doctor had a scheme indeed.

Doctor Surlee reported that before any hunt for Doctor Fissionton's location could be conducted, he'd need a coincidental 2,600,000 Silly Particles for his research. Such a large number wasn’t enough to deter Toontown, however. Toons banded together to find Silly Particles all around Toontown, and boy did they do it well.

As each Silly Particle got collected, the Fire Hydrant seemed to take on more life -- as though it was cheering on all of Toontown on their mission.

Meeting The Fissiontons

This is where things get as juicy as the full juicebox sitting on my desk... Make that half full. 

The Toons met their Silly Particle goal, and after a wild goose chase for Professor Prepostera's key card, something outstanding happened. A secret door led Toons to the construction site of a brand new Toon Hall, designed to hold a machine of massive proportions.

On this day, however, the room held something far more complex: The Fissiontons. There are few situations where I could be filled with absolute wonder -- the last was when I won Daisy Gardens’ Annual Potato Sack race in a photo finish -- and this one was for the record books.



It was unlike any room I had seen before, with bright blue walls and more space than your typical run-of-the-mill shop. In the corner, the work-in-progress of Surlee and the Fissiontons’ project sat for all to see: a Silly Meter. Throughout the building was a strange aura, bringing the feeling that something big was about to happen. Off to the side lay a closed off hallway, the future location of Flippy’s office.

The building inspired hundreds of Toons, myself included, to ask: “What will come of this work?”

Remembering is Key

After more and more Toons had entered the secret area, Doctor Surlee posted something on the Toontown Blog, with a rather cryptic postscript. Toons with a sharp eye will recall the key that one of the Fissiontons had mentioned ("You could say that 'remembering' the password is key."), which will yield this message when put through a decoder:

Fissionton told me to leave this here, somewhere hidden in plain sight for future reference. For those of you who crack the code: Let's leave this our little secret.

Mysterious. The postscript also contained bolded letters which gives letters to the word “memento”. This word turned out to be the password for a new folder found in Terminal 26 on LoonyLabs.net, giving Toons several new documents and puzzles to solve.

Reading the Chalkboard

The chalkboard was a mess of equations and the occasional doodle, but what was most striking were the sticky notes posted on the board, filled with circles and dots and small drawings of gags on them.

When the notes are arranged in the right order and interpreted into a number-filled code called “binary” (and then further decoded by our Toony sleuths), we end up with the text bravery-in-times-of-trouble, which would be the password for the next file: A story written by the Fissiontons called "The Center Silo."

The Center Silo

Upon opening The Center Silo file, we can read up on Doctor Fissionton's past and his memories of the first Toon encounter of the Sellbot Factory. There were additional squares of strange patterns and seemingly randomly highlighted letters in the text, however. Even in these memories there were layers upon layers of puzzles -- ones that Toontown banded together to solve, of course.

The squares resulted in six “plates” that had holes in them, each a specific color and edge pattern. Piecing them together was simple enough, and aligning the holes in the right colors revealed several words: terminal forty three, red herring, experiments, swiss cheese, jumedowfibukti, and chocolate cake.

Still there were additional writings and images on the border of the document, such as numbers that translated to twentytwo, and morse code that translated to twoney. And when the plates are removed, the highlighted letters reveal the word "Caesar" in scrambled order. Taking all of these clues and applying it to the phrase from the plates, "jumedowfibukti," resulted in the phrase savingforlater. Ladies and gents, we have a password for Terminal 43’s Experiments folder.

Slowly but surely, all the pieces of this elaborate puzzle were coming together.

Doctor Surlee’s Experiments

There were two new additions to Terminal 43, the previously mentioned Experiments folder and… a grocery list? 

It was an unconventional grocery list, that’s for sure. It had three items on the list, but all that was on the list were blanks. The number of blanks were familiar, fitting the supposed red herrings from The Center Silo document. The passcodes unlocked a trove of information about the mysteries of the "Rewritten" experiment... As well as its side effects.

Maybe the most worrying of all side effects of the pocket watch spinning is one that I’ve seen with my own two eyes in Toon Hall: the Fissiontons are flickering. To where, one might ask? Out of time? Out of place? Back into one Fissionton? It’s a mystery that even I can’t solve, and I solve plenty of those for a living.

The full scoop of Doctor Surlee's experiments can be read in each of these chapters:

1. The Pocket Watch's Flaws
   
2. Explaining the Unexplained
   
3. Silly Meter Mirage
   
4. Fissionton's Flickering
   
   

Phew! I haven't had a case that large since I helped that elephant find his missing trunk. Now that the recap is done, it's time to figure out how to bring this case to a close. Keep a magnifying glass close for clues! I'll be back for Part Two.