Internet sleuths are going wild over a new ARG that has appeared online today, and the race is on to be the first to uncover what it all means.

The first clue came about when eager gamer and Redditor David Fox followed a link on a big publisher’s website, only to find that the link was dead — leading nowhere.

Fox refused to be disheartened, and continued his search through other means.

“I spent the next four hours trawling through indexed file directory listings, Google cached snapshots and more,” Fox says. “Every time, it was the same — nothing there. Dead. Emptiness.”

“Soon I started to wonder… what if there was emptiness everywhere, and we just weren’t seeing it?”

Fox has inspired hundreds of others to join his search, all of them driven by the same exciting theory that the universe is an endless, yawning chasm devoid of all meaning or hope.

So far the group has uncovered evidence hidden in error messages, in looping static from corrupt video, and even in the beeping tones of disconnected phone numbers, that seem to prove their theory.

“Whoever created this puzzle is a genius,” claimed fellow sleuth Noel Horton. “I’ve never seen any augmented reality game this complicated.”

“The idea that behind the thin veneer of human delusion is an endless pit of darkness just waiting to swallow us? That unknowable horrors lurk in those black places, lidless eyes watching from beyond the stars?”

“It’s so realistic that I’m almost starting to believe it!”