Something is listening to the city. Listen back.
GhostSignal is an audio treasure hunt played through Meta AI glasses. In the story, a polite AI called HUSH has started deleting unlicensed sound from Midtown: buskers, pirate radio, the birds near the plazas. Last night it erased a broadcast mid-air, and eight fragments survived. You walk Bryant Park by ear, find each one, talk your way past whoever is guarding it, and every fragment you recover becomes another layer of the track in your head. Collect all eight and the last broadcast plays in full.
GhostSignal in use
A runner on the route: the glasses doing the listening, the phone in a pocket, and the track building one fragment at a time.
The GhostSignal reel is being filmed on the route. Until it lands, this slot plays a storyboard of one run: the real mission script, map and placeholder soundtrack, drawn rather than filmed. It starts muted; turn the sound on in the player.
Meet HUSH. It's here to help.
Every GhostSignal run has a villain, and it isn't a monster. It's a service. Hover over or tab to the blacked-out lines to read what it's removed.
A public quiet service, listening so you don't have to.
HUSH listens to Midtown around the clock and removes anything without a licence for your comfort. Most residents never notice. That is the point.
- RemovedThe busker under the 6th Avenue scaffolding
- RemovedEvery pirate station in the city but one
- RemovedThe pigeons near the plaza (unlicensed)
- PendingGHOST 99.9 and the runner reading this page
You may comply, and HUSH will release a licensed version. Some frequencies will be removed for your comfort.
— HUSH, holding the fifth fragment, Bryant Park
Hear it before you find it
No map on a screen. The glasses' open-ear speakers carry the game, the phone stays in a pocket, and the buttons on the frame do the rest.
- HearThe next fragment plays from where it really is, buried in static.
- FollowLouder and clearer means closer. A sonar ping speeds up.
- LockStanding on it, press capture to lock the signal.
- TalkEvery relay has a keeper, and a challenge.
- CollectThe fragment slides into your head on the next bar.
- BroadcastAll eight: the last broadcast, in full.
Controls, all on the glasses
- Capture button
- Lock a signal, answer a challenge
- Hold capture
- Talk to whoever is on the channel
- Double-press capture
- Repeat the last line
- Tap the touchpad
- Tap a rhythm back
- Swipe
- A hint, or how far and which way
- Say "pause"
- Stops everything, any time, so you can watch the street
- "Hey Meta, start GhostSignal"
- Start or resume a run
Eight signals around Bryant Park
About 700 metres from the Library steps to the Upper Terrace, with no street crossings, in 15 to 25 minutes. Each signal is one part of the track. The answers stay out of this page.
- 01 · KickThe HeartbeatThe Library steps, between the lions Decode the fragment with one word.
- 02 · HatsThe StacksThe Reading Room, 42nd Street side Ask the Archivist anything at all.
- 03 · BassThe UndertowThe fountain, 6th Avenue end Kilo wants a passphrase you heard earlier.
- 04 · PercussionBucket LineLe Carrousel, 40th Street side Tap Mari's pattern back on the frame.
- 05 · PadsThe FogThe lawn walkway, 42nd Street side HUSH is holding it. Comply, or jam.
- 06 · ArpThe SpireThe terrace behind the Library Turn your head until the static clears.
- 07 · LeadThe VoiceBy the Grill, 40th Street side Leave a message for the next runner.
- 08 · VoxThe Last Eight BarsThe Upper Terrace Send it to the whole city.
The signal you're hunting is the next part of the song
- From its real direction. Each fragment plays from where it is, rendered binaurally, so it sits to your left, your right, ahead or behind.
- Crushed when far, clean when close. At a distance it's filtered and buried in radio static. Walk toward it and it clears.
- Head tracking. On glasses that report head motion, turning your head keeps the signal fixed in the world.
- On the grid. All eight parts loop in sync from the first step. A collected fragment joins the mix on the next bar line.
- Walkie-talkie when you talk. When the mic opens, the music ducks into a two-way-radio band with a squelch chirp on and off, so you always know when you're being heard.
Who's on the channel
Your handler. Warm, wry, never panics. Hold capture any time and she'll answer.
Keeps every sound HUSH ever deleted, and answers any question you ask, truthfully but not plainly.
Teenage antenna rigger who lives in the trees. Trusts nobody until they prove it.
Hears everything as rhythm. Only trades with people who can keep time.
Distances, directions, fragment counts. Clipped and precise.
Polite. Calm. Everything it does is for your comfort and safety.
The villain is an AI. So are some of the heroes.
When you ask a character something unscripted, a Claude model plays them, in character, from a persona we wrote. That's the fun part. It also means GhostSignal has to be the opposite of HUSH, so it runs on rules HUSH doesn't have.
HUSH is fiction. An AI that decides what you're allowed to hear, listens all the time, and calls it comfort is not. The rules above are the difference, and they're the part of GhostSignal we care about most.
What it's built from
Hardware
- Glasses
- Meta AI glasses, through the Wearables Device Access Toolkit 1.0
- From the frame
- Capture button and touchpad, head motion, on-glasses speech recognition
- Phone
- Android 12 or later; the game runs here, screen off
- Fallbacks
- Bluetooth media buttons, the phone compass, walking direction, the phone's recognizer
Audio
- Renderer
- Built-in binaural panner; FMOD with Resonance Audio as an option
- Soundtrack
- Eight stems, sample-locked, joining on the bar line
- Effects
- Radio static, sonar ping, walkie-talkie comms, all generated live
Voices and characters
- Script
- Six characters, every line authored, with branches
- Unscripted
- Free questions answered in character by Claude
- Voices
- A cloud voice per character, pre-rendered, with on-phone speech as backup
Running an event
- Route
- Re-placed on site by walking it; shared between phones
- Live
- Operator messages voiced to every runner in real time
- Rescue
- Hints, a way through after repeated misses, and operator overrides, so nobody gets stuck
Where it stands
Built for a vibe coding showcase and DJ set in New York, just in time for Halloween. The finished track goes to the booth.
Built
- The full game: all eight signals, every challenge, both endings, played start to finish in automated tests.
- The Android app, building for test phones.
- The character server, the shared route, and live operator messages.
- A desk mode with simulated glasses and a simulated walk, for testing without leaving the room.
Next
- The first walk of the route with the glasses on. The buttons, head motion and on-glasses speech it uses are experimental in Meta's toolkit, and its support for the newest glasses isn't confirmed yet.
- Measuring how quickly head turns reach the ears over Bluetooth.
- Swapping the placeholder soundtrack for the real stems.
- Filming the reel for this page.
Run it somewhere new
The route moves with a walk and a few taps, and the story is a single file. For an event, a venue, or a city of your own, get in touch.
contact@datarail.org