Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
End of the Line: A Puzzle
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
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Note: This story is a game of skill. Can you help Thad and Elizabeth solve it?
*
“Which door should we open? Help me think.”
“I have no idea…” Thad let himself sag against the wall. Even with the support, he could feel himself trembling with fatigue and fear.
“Which one?” she murmured, studying the doors; back turned toward him, hands on hips. “Hell,” she said, “there’s a clue here somewhere. I’m positive. There has to be.”
“Elizabeth,” he began. “What…” His voice came out rasping and thin. It shocked him.
“This clue,” he said, groping for steadiness. “Explain this, please. What exactly are you looking for? How will you know it when you see it?”
“It’s obvious, I’d think,” she said. Turning to face him, she seemed to loom, then suddenly recede. Expect disoriention, he thought, you’re dehydrated.
“We’ve been kidnapped by parties unknown — my vote’s still for aliens, by the way. Held, then dropped into this… labyrinth, or whatever it is. Inched our way through. Tackled games of skill, of wit… and learned that, incidentally, our captors aren’t above penalizing us for a wrong guess — ”
“Exploding thresholds,” he muttered. “Weight-dropped arches, and that napalm thing –”
“Horrid stuff, yes. It’s clear they’d let us die here, and want us to know it. …That brings us to these doors.”
“Exactly.” Which stood before them now in a neat row. Heavy, simple, solid. Identical, except for their color. The smooth surface of the first shone with a green luster; the second, white; the third, a warm gold.
Eyes throbbing, head pounding; dehydration and low blood sugar were taking him down. “Why don’t you just pick one?” he said, feeling despair wash through him. “Hand on knob, shove it open. It’ll blow us up or it won’t. That’s better than waiting here to starve to death!”
Elizabeth scowled. “With due respect, Thad, no. Help me think this through instead. I can find the clue –”
“There is no clue, Elizabeth!”
“Everything can be understood if you look closely. We can find the key. Help me think! It’s here if we look hard enough… They can manipulate everything in our environment, Thad. Examine everything. Where would an alien put the pattern? How would they hide the key?”
It’s here somewhere. Think like an alien. Everything can be understood….
White, green, gold. How would a master manipulator hide the clue?…
Impossible. Thad closed his eyes. Elizabeth stood, silent, still staring at the doors.
~
Which is the right door? If you can find it, post your answer in the comments. But don’t explain how you solved the puzzle: let others test their wits.
I Wouldn’t Mention It If I Were You
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
You know what I liked most about being a liason to the aliens of the Third Expedition? Screwing with their minds.
Sure, there were always other human functionaries around who would’ve make my ass into an umbrella holder if they’d caught me at it, but that just added to the fun, and anyway they couldn’t speak ?’!a, so they never knew exactly what I was saying. As for me, I speak ?’!a like a native. If you learn enough languages when you’re a kid, after a while learning another one is like finding your underpants after an orgy: inconvenient, time-consuming, and sometimes sticky, but almost always doable.
This one time we were driving past the Washington Monument and I said to the aliens, “See that obelisk? It was built to the exact reported size of George Washington’s phallus.” (They double checked their information repositories here to make sure they weren’t misunderstanding. You should’ve seen the expression on their tentacles.) “I’m not going to go into details, but … listen, ever heard the phrase ‘father of our country’? George Washington. Honest to God truth. But people don’t usually like to talk about this stuff in polite society. I wouldn’t mention it if I were you.”
Or last month, when we kept seeing people walking dogs. “You can tell whether the human owns the dog or the dog owns the human by who’s choosing the direction they go in. See that little brown dog over there? One tug and they’re on a side street. The human’s definitely the pet there. The dogs keep them in little plastic rooms lined with newspaper at night. But people get touchy if you get the owner wrong. I wouldn’t mention it if I were you.”
So now that I’ve been kidnapped and am being brought back to their home planet in preparation for what sounds like a bitch of an invasion, of course I’m as scared as a man with a incontinent seagull on his new hat–but I also have all kinds of new possibilities. And who knows? Maybe I can even bend things a little in our favor.
“Hey,” I say. “Did I ever tell you what happened to the last batch of aliens that visited earth? It was a pretty distressing situation: I wouldn’t mention it if I were you. But here’s the thing: you know how we’ve only got one moon now?” …