The Puzzle Place

“This star produces no infrared light,” Haticat says, standing on the platform side of the bed where the engines are.

“That’s impossible,” Nathaniel says next to him.

“Check for yourself.” Haticat steps away from the spectrograph. Nathaniel and Haticat discover a region of space with strange properties. Near the perimeter, the stars produce no radio waves. Near the center, they produce neither radio nor infrared. Changing course to get a better look, it quickly becomes obvious that it is not the stars that are unusual, but something in front of them much closer to the ship. It superficially resembles a black hole a mere kilometer across, but light of different wavelengths behaves differently at its boundary. Long wavelength radiation such as radio bends around it most easily, becoming completely blocked at a radius of 756 meters. Short wavelength radiation such as x-rays bend with less of an angle, and become completely blocked only at a radius of 410 meters.

“This is artificial gravity,” Nathaniel says.

“I’ve never heard of artificial gravity strong enough to trap light,” Doctor Bill mentions.

“Neither have I, but there’s a first time for everything,” Nathaniel says.

“What’s making it?” Fred asks.

“Probably a space station someone wants to keep hidden, so let’s take a look,” Nathaniel says. They land bed side down on the surface of a large metal ball where a layer of air has been trapped by the gravity. The gravity on the space station is much less than that further out, trapping the light. They bounce along in one fourth Earth gravity, exploring the surface. There are many other ships here of many designs. The explorers walk until they stop under a ship shaped like an inverted letter U.

“Freeze!” yells someone behind them. In seconds, they are surrounded by five Humanoids in black uniforms. They are blue skinned with completely black eyes. Each wears a camera embedded in the middle of their large bellies and carries some sort of energy rifle. “Disarm them,” one says. Their laser pistols are quickly confiscated.

“What’s going on here?” Nathaniel demands.

“I’m Captain Quill of the starship Zoyyix. Who are you?”

“Captain Nathaniel of the…uh…my ship,” Captain Nathaniel says. “We’re explorers.”

“I’ve never heard of the Myship, interesting name. You landed immediately after us. Were you following us?” Quill asks.

“No, we never saw you,” Nathaniel answers.

“So your timing is a coincidence?” Captain Quill asks.

“I believe that the time dilation of the gravity barrier causes time to run slower here such that days or even weeks might have passed outside while you exited your craft. Then, when we finally arrived, it would have seemed that it was immediately after,” Nathaniel suggests.

Captain Quill says, “You’re probably telling the truth, but I can’t allow you to leave and spread word of our location, so you’ll be joining my crew temporally. We’re explorers too; that’s what the cameras are for.”

“So what do you know about this place?” Nathaniel asks.

“Very little. It’s coordinates were found in a computer once owned by a being who called himself The Genius,” Captain Quill says.

“Oh, I’ve heard of him,” Nathaniel says.

“We believe all his best inventions are stored here,” Captain Quill says.

“They’ll probably be impossible to figure out,” Nathaniel says.

“I doubt it. My crew is made up of the most intelligent and most educated citizens from my planet. If anyone can understand it, they can,” Captain Quill claims.

A sixth member of the crew approaches. “Did you finish downloading the video files from the previous team?” the captain asks him.

“They were totally scrambled,” he replies.

“So we don’t even know if they made it inside?” another comments.

“Well, we’ll figure it out,” Quill says.

The ten explorers walk around until they find a structure with nine doors in it, each with a puzzle lock. One of the blue aliens steps forward to solve. He shuffles the squares around until it forms the correct picture and opens the door. “Come on,” Captain Quill says, but once the first crew member is through, the door slides shut and the lock retracts into the machine. They try knocking and they try the radio, but they cannot make contact.

“Whatever this strange metal is, it is impervious to all scans,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Let’s see if it’s impervious to this!” Captain Quill fires his energy rifle at the door. It squeals and whistles and the energy is absorbed and channeled away without the tiniest bit of damage.

“I guess we need to solve the puzzles,” Nathaniel says.

They solve another puzzle lock but the door will not open with two people standing on the pad. Then the moment one steps off it opens. “I’ll hold it for you,” the front crewmember says but the door slides closed so fast it cuts off his hands.

“Each door only takes one person. There are seven doors left and eight of us left. This is a game – a contest to see who is smartest,” Nathaniel speaks in ominous tones.

Captain Quill turns to the crewmember on his right. “Go back and guard the ship. If we aren’t out in three days, return home and report to the president.”

Suddenly, there is a loud rushing noise. “What’s that?” Haticat asks. The air begins to move past them faster and faster. Huge flaps uncover grates in the surface of the space station.

“It’s removing the air!” Nathaniel yells.

“Okay, everyone back to the ship!” Captain Quill yells.

“It’s too far. We’ll never make it!” Captain Nathaniel yells, barely able to stand up against the wind at this point. The air is already getting thin. He rapidly solves one puzzle for Doctor Bill, one for Fred, one for Haticat, and finally one for himself before stumbling inside.

Nine of them sit in a small room with eight doors. One of the blue aliens sobs in the corner while his friend bandages the ends of his arms. In the middle of the room is a cube on a pedestal. A very flat dead alien lies next to it. “Where is Quinquay?” the captain asks.

One crewmember looks nervous. “Tripped. Wind blew him away.”

The captain turns around. “What kind of broccoli-stinking place is this?”

“The genius probably thought that one day he might be captured and brought here under guard so he designed the machine to only allow one individual all the way through to the end. Being a genius, he probably figured he could pit the others against each other and make sure he was that one individual. He might have even used this place as a way to rid himself of any captors,” Nathaniel muses.

One of the aliens looks over the cube. It is made of many smaller cubes designed to slide past each other. It is a larger, three-dimensional version of the slider puzzles. One has to build a three-dimensional picture that includes the interior blocks that can’t be seen, relying on memory alone. “Do you think this opens all the doors?”

The two captains step closer. “That looks like it would take a long time to solve,” Nathaniel comments. Ding! A clock on the wall starts to move.

“Broccoli!” Captain Quill curses.

“Yikes!” Haticat exclaims.

“Get by the doors,” Nathaniel whispers to Doctor Bill before joining the aliens frantically trying to solve the puzzle. They immediately start bickering and then shoving.

“One person at a time!” Captain Quill orders.

“Which should be me!” another says.

“I developed the field of transmath,” another says.

Unnoticed, Nathaniel moves blocks around using his super speed, but he is still too slow. The clock finishes one rotation. Ding! Then the ceiling starts to move downwards.

“Oh! Oh, no!” an alien shouts.

Working more franticly, Nathaniel accidentally knocks one of the blocks right out of the assembly. He runs and picks it up. “Wait a second.” Then he removes all the blocks and sorts them. Now he can build the required picture from the ground up, without actually having to solve the puzzle. It takes him 20 seconds. All the aliens run to the doors as they open, bent over because of the still-lowering ceiling. Nathaniel outruns all of them by using his super speed.

Eight of them step into a room with seven doors. There are multiple corpses here. “You shot Dequesh!” an alien shouts.

“So what? It was either us or him, and he didn’t have any hands; he would’ve slowed us down,” Captain Quill shouts back.

“And I suppose you’ll shoot the rest of us, too,” the crew member says.

“No, just him,” Captain Quill says, pointing his gun at Nathaniel‘s face.

“The puzzles will only get harder. Are you sure you can solve them without me?” Nathaniel asks.

Captain Quill hesitates for a moment. “Hey, we need him. Maybe I should shoot you,” says the other alien, reaching for his gun.

“What are you doing? I’m the captain of this mission,” Captain Quill says.

“Maybe, but I looked around and this isn’t your ship,” the other alien says.

Ssshhweeeeeeet! An energy beam bursts from the end of another crew member’s gun, killing the one challenging the captain. “Good shooting,” Captain Quill says. Then, turning to Nathaniel, he adds, “Very clever of you to pit us against each other while placing your own crew first. From now on, I decide who stays and who goes. Find a way for us all to get out, or I kill the little Stuffian next.”

Nathaniel looks around the room. At its center is a box on a pedestal with seven levers poking out of it. He pushes and pulls on them, causing the others to move in counterintuitive ways. Figuring out how it works seems impossible. “Doctor Bill, can you scan the inside of this box?”

“It seems to be as impervious as the walls,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Is it getting hotter in here?” Haticat asks.

“Yes,” Fred answers.

Nathaniel stares at the box for a long time as the room gets even hotter. Finally, he gets it. The box is unimportant. There are seven levers and seven doors. By each door is a small hole with cross-section the same as one of the levers. They are detachable. He needs a distraction. he calls Doctor Bill over.

After talking with Nathaniel, Doctor Bill scans the room. “Guys, there seems to be a weak area in this wall where scans penetrate into an adjacent room. I think several energy weapons focused in this spot just might burn through.”

“Really? It’s worth a try,” Captain Quill says. The three remaining aliens fire beams of energy into the wall. Nothing much seems to happen.

“Keep trying. The molecular Bonds are destabilizing,” Doctor Bill says.

Nathaniel removes all seven levers from the box. Then he hands one to Haticat, one to Fred, and one to Doctor Bill. Next, they run to the doors, unlock them, and escape.

Hearing the sound, Captain Quill turns around. “Hey!”

Nathaniel enters the next room safely. There are corpses here too. Suddenly the levers in his hand become scalding hot. He drops them on the floor with a clash and holds his hands together. “Aah.”

Then one of the other entry doors opens and all three aliens walk through. “What happened?” one asks. Captain Quill looks at the levers on the ground. “He cheated. That’s what happened.”

“Maybe, but now we know it’s possible to get everyone out. One of us just has to cheat again and the computer will have to let everyone else go too,” Nathaniel says.

Captain Quill grunts and then looks around. This room has six doors and a computer displaying four numbers on the screen: 1, 3, 111, and 214.

“What could that mean?” Haticat asks.

“Maybe we have to guess the next number in the sequence,” Nathaniel suggests.

The aliens crowd around. “Try 314,” one says.

Nathaniel types in 314 and hits enter. Bzzz! “We need to think about this,” Nathaniel says.

The alien mathematicians debate about all kinds of potential sequences and what the following number might be including some with seventy-six million digits. Nathaniel paces back-and-forth doing his own thinking. Twenty minutes later, he has an idea. Without waiting for permission, he types in 1141111. Ding! One of the doors opens. “So that’s the trick.”

“What’s the trick?” Captain Quill asks.

“Each digit tells us how many identical digits in a row there are in the next number in the sequence. It doesn’t even matter what they are. 1 tells us that there was one of something, in this case 3. 3 tells us there are three of something, in this case 1s. So, 1 gives us 3, 3 gives us 111, 111 gives us 214, and I chose ones and fours to make 1141111. The next number must have ten digits. What about 4211113462?” Nathaniel types it in and hits enter. Ding! Another door opens. “These numbers are going to get big quickly if I don’t use smaller digits. What about zeros?” He types in 1111002102111222200000011. Ding! Another door opens. “Now, if you cheat by taking the computer with you, the machine should let us all through like last time,” Nathaniel says.

“Oh no, you’re coming with us just in case it doesn’t work,” the captain orders.

Nathaniel types in 1010110110101100110010. A fourth door opens. He looks back at his crew as the aliens remove the computer from its pedestal. Haticat waves. Then the four of them exit. The computer instantly explodes, knocking the alien carrying it into the wall and snapping his neck. Captain Quill spins around and pokes Nathaniel‘s nose with his gun. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

“No,” Nathaniel answers.

The fifth door then opens, allowing Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill through. The remaining six explorers find themselves in a long hallway. They turn a few corners until the hall terminates in a large cubic room with a hole in the upper part of the opposite wall. In the middle of the floor is a short pedestal with a large red button on which there are two opposing arrows. “I suspect it reverses gravity,” Doctor Bill says.

Nathaniel looks up. “That’s a long way to fall.”

“It’s survivable,” Captain Quill says.

“Yes, but at what cost?” Nathaniel asks. Quill kicks the button with his foot and they are all in the air.

Thud. They hit the ceiling hard. Nathaniel sprains his wrist. Everyone else seems fine. The explorers follow another long hallway until they reach a single door flanked by a lever on each side. There are more corpses here than anywhere else. Captain Quill pulls on one lever and then on the other. Nothing happens.

Nathaniel looks around. “All these bodies have blast wounds. They didn’t die from dehydration. They killed each other because they couldn’t work together. Try pulling the levers at the same time.” He and the remaining alien crew member attempt it. It takes them four tries to synchronize properly. There is a loud click and the door rises. They all go through.

The explorers follow another long hallway until they enter a room with five doors and a blue ceiling. On the opposite wall are two large blue buttons and a small panel of nine lights, some lit and some not. There are no corpses here. Doctor Bill starts scanning while Nathaniel checks out the panel. He finally hits one of the buttons. A door opens and the arrangement of lights changes. He hits the other button and narrow poles suddenly rise half a meter from the floor and then stop. “Whoa!” the alien crew member says, caught by surprise when a pole erupts under his foot.

The others walk around the room. There are silver circles imbedded in the tiled floor that may be additional poles. “Captain, the ceiling is a thin layer of glass holding up liquid monoczene. That’s why it’s blue,” Doctor Bill reports.

“That’s deadly!” Fred comments.

“So, we’ve got to figure out which button opens the…opening things, and which button raises the…going up things,” Nathaniel says.

“The doors and the poles?” Haticat asks.

“Right,” Nathaniel says. The more he has to focus on material objects that could kill him, the less he can focus on the arbitrary semantic labels people attach to them. He studies the panel of lights, carefully comparing it to the previous configuration in his memory. He hits one button after the other pausing in between to think. Sometimes the poles rise. Sometimes another door opens. There seems to be no pattern.

“There are three doors open now. We should get ready to run through in case the monoczene escapes,” the alien crew member says.

“We can’t leave the Nino behind. He’s figured out every puzzle,” Captain Quill says.

“But he keeps prioritizing his crew over us and they haven’t contributed anything. Do you have any doubt that he’ll betray us all as soon as we find the technology vault?” the crew member says.

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, he’s our only chance to get through the next puzzle,” Captain Quill says.

“Listen to me!” The first alien grabs his captain by the shirt.

“Hey!!” the Captain shouts, shoving the first alien against a pole and causing it to flex. “Would you rather be killed by me than him?”

Nathaniel, who has not been paying attention, hears the captain’s raised voice and turns just in time to see the pole snapped back into position. He turns back to look at the doors, then he looks behind him. Stepping away from the buttons, he pushes on another pole. It bends. “Captain, I have an idea.” Nathaniel explains that if the poles keep rising, and if no one uses the doors, soon at least one of the poles nearest the doors will be the right height to bend through the doorway. “Too short, and it won’t stay in position. Too tall, and we won’t be able to get it underneath. We’ll have to hold it in place until the poles extend again. Then the door won’t be able to close and we can all use the same door. Everybody lives.”

Everyone agrees and Nathaniel hits another button. The poles extend. They pull one down. “Someone pull that one too. I don’t know which will extend farthest.” He looks up at the ceiling nervously. There are already two poles a mere meter from the glass. Nathaniel hits the same button. Another door opens. He hits the same button. Some of the other poles extend. He hits the same button. There was no point trying to figure out the panel of lights. He was sure now that they were random, just a trick to throw him off track. The final door opens. Taking a deep breath, he hits the button again and the first bent pole extends through the doorway. “Go!”

The two blue aliens, three Stuffians, and Nathaniel all run through the same door as it struggles to close. The pole is bent so far down that Nathaniel, being the last one through, has to crawl. “That was scary!” Fred says.

The explorers find themselves in another long hallway. It wraps around and back and forth. Then they pass an alcove with a large door of a different design. On each side are computer panels. “Impervious to scans, just like everything else,” Doctor Bill reports.

Captain Quill studies the panel carefully. “It has a firewall. Fortunately, I’m a trained computer hacker.” He types in some numbers and minutes later the door rises. Out falls a corpse that had been leaning against the inside of the door. The seven explorers look inside. The enormous room is packed with strange machinery and computers. There are cabinets full of potions. There are racks of guns. “All the knowledge of The Genius. Every invention. New ways of controlling energy. All the health, wealth, power, and pleasure anyone could want.”
Nathaniel extends a hand. “Wait.”

“What is it now?” Captain Quill asks.

“I don’t see another door in here,” Nathaniel says.

“So?” Captain Quill says.

“So, how do we get out again?” Nathaniel asks.

“We use this door, stupid,” Captain Quill says.

“Then why didn’t he?” Nathaniel points at the body next to their feet. He pulls out his own scanner and scans it. “He died of dehydration – slowly. All this technology available to someone clearly smart enough to have made it this far in the game and he couldn’t even find a way to open the door or make water in the time it took him to die.” He steps back and hits the button to close the door again.

“What are you doing?” Captain Quill asks.

“I know a trap when I see one, and this entire space station is a trap for smart people. The Genius would never have shared his technology with anyone as smart as him,” Nathaniel says.

“How do you know? He was trying to make everyone smarter for reasons incomprehensible to the rest of us,” Captain Quill says.

“I know that’s what he said. I don’t know that I believe it,” Nathaniel says.

“It doesn’t matter. There is no gain without risk.” Captain Quill hits a button on the second panel, opening the door.

“No.” Nathaniel uses the first panel to close the door again.

“Step aside.” The captain raises his gun. “If you follow orders, we’ll share. If not, we’ve already made it to the treasure so we don’t need you anymore.”

“Drop the weapon!” Fred shouts. He points a gun at Quill while Haticat and Doctor Bill cover the other alien. “We outnumber you now.”

“We disarmed you,” Captain Quill says in surprise.

“Yes, but you didn’t disarm the corpses,” Fred says.

“We helped ourselves,” Haticat says.

“Good work,” Nathaniel says.

Quill sets the gun down. “I’m not leaving without something.” He opens the door again. Then, he quickly constructs some programming with his other hand to send repeated “open” signals twice every second. Nathaniel keeps hitting “close,” but the door only jerks slightly. “Our predecessor on the floor was likely alone and had no one on the outside to open the door for him. Fortunately, I know how to keep a door open.”

“Do you?” Nathaniel‘s hand sweeps across the controls, writing code to send “close” signals ten times per second.

Quill responds by programming his panel to open the door 1000 times per second. Nathaniel creates an algorithm that inputs Quill’s number and adds one to it. Quill adds two to Nathaniel‘s new number. Nathaniel multiplies by two. Quill multiplies the number by itself. Nathaniel raises the number to a power of itself. Quill raises the number to itself raised to itself. Nathaniel raises the number to a stack of powers with as many members as the value of the number – a level four operation. Quill immediately modifies the number with an operation of a level equal to the input number. Nathaniel‘s mind spins into overdrive. He must create an algorithm that can beat iterated arithmetic and he must predict what Quill will do next. He defines a set of three sequences and then calculates the members of all three sequences whose places in the sequences are themselves members of all three sequences whose places are also members and so on, as many times as is the first member of the sequence higher than Quill’s last number. It takes him twenty-nine seconds, which gives Quill an idea. He defines the next number as the largest possible number to be described using the panels available to them in less than one minute’s time. Now he has reached the limits of the hardware. What can Nathaniel do? After thinking it over for several seconds, Nathaniel defines a number as the largest possible number that can be stored in all the memory of the entire space station with or without data compression. The moment he hits enter, the lights go out.

“What happened?” Quill asks. Gradually, the lights come on again. The panel screens are cleared.

Nathaniel tries logging in to the station systems. “I think the game is starting over. Another ship just landed.”

“What?” Quill tries to open the vault door, but it does not move.

“It won’t open unless you beat the game first,” Nathaniel says.

“We did beat the game,” Quill says.

“Not according to the station memory. The number I put in replaced everything and now the station is running it as if it were a program. It’s the same program that was running when we arrived and the time dilation allowed us in,” Nathaniel says. He looks up at the wall. “We weren’t the first to do this…”

“At least it’s not a total loss. We have our cameras so the next team will know how to beat the game,” Quill says.

“There are hundreds of rooms here, machinery to create and destroy rooms, and the most advanced software I’ve ever seen. I don’t think they will do any good,” Nathaniel says.

“Hey, my video is scrambled,” the remaining crew member says.

“If the big number overwrote the game, does that mean it overwrote all The Genius’s secrets?” Haticat asks.

“Probably,” Nathaniel says. “That’s why our predecessor couldn’t make use of any inventions.”

“Or the secrets could be hidden within that number,” Dr. Bill suggests.

“Maybe The Genius was right when he said no one could understand his motives,” Haticat says.

“Maybe,” Nathaniel says as he starts to walk down the hall.

“Where are you going?” Quill asks.

“The game has restarted. That means there’s air on the surface for a limited time. I have to get back to my ship,” Nathaniel says, starting to walk faster. The others follow him a short distance down the hall. A door suddenly shuts behind them unexpectedly.

There is no panel to open it. “No!” Quill yells.

“Come on,” Nathaniel says. They are all running now. There is one final door and then they are outside. The air is already being pumped inside. “Come on,” Nathaniel says again. There is no time for goodbyes. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill barely make it back to their ship. They have no idea whether the blue aliens escape. Minutes later, they have left the space station and its artificial gravity field behind.

Exhausted, Nathaniel climbs down the side of the platform to the bedside underneath. Artificial gravity holds him there just as well as if he was on the surface of a planet. He takes off his shoes, props himself up on some pillows, and watches the stars speed past in between the orbiting defense pillows. His Stuffians join him. “I’m tired of puzzles,” Fred says.

“Well then next we’ll go to a planet with no puzzles,” Nathaniel says.

“That sounds good,” Fred answers.

SUPPORT