It was one of those days. You know, the ones when you feel a little lost when you’re looking for something. It’s just that you don’t know what it is. Just a nagging, little voice in the back of your head.
After all, just one of those days.
As I walked down the street, my eyes wandered here and there, to store windows, people, traffic, searching.
I sighed as I watched it all. The everyday bustle of urban life.
Then, out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed it. A little book store that sat perfectly nestled between two enormous office buildings.
I don’t know why, but my eyes came to rest on it. It was a small, cozy-looking place with a laid back atmosphere.
A few moments later, I stepped inside. I wasn’t really a reader, and neither was a collector per se. I guess I just liked to browse, and every once in a while I bought something on a whim. One of my shelves was filled with two dozen books I’d bought that way. I hadn’t bought them to read them; it was more about their titles, the covers, or the general feel they gave off.
And it was always odd books. That’s what I liked most, odd little things you could store away at your home to add just a tad bit more character to it.
The old man at the counter gave me a friendly nod.
“Looking for something specific, young man?”
“No, just browsing,” I said with a smile and continued onward.
The store was chaos. Ramshackle bookshelves lined the walls, their wood straining under an unevenly placed load. I saw novels, picture books, children’s books, and nonfiction all thrown together haphazardly with any sense or order. Here and there books littered the floor, and in certain corners, I found dusty, towering stacks of them that seemed to shake with each of my steps.
I smiled. There was a certain touch to the place.
For half an hour I wandered the store. It was bigger than I’d originally thought. There were multiple backrooms, each one more chaotic than the one before. I leafed through multiple books here and there before something caught my eye.
At the bottom of another stack of books, half-hidden behind an old reading chair, I saw a gigantic tome.
The book was bound in thick leather, but there was no indication of what it was. No words lined its spine. One by one I removed the books on top of it, but to my surprise, the cover was as empty as the spine.
When I opened it, I found it even thicker than I’d originally thought. As I went to the end of the book, I noticed that the number of pages far exceeded 2000.
What can I say, this strange book intrigued me.
As I looked through it, I noticed that each page comprised multiple, short bodies of text, neatly divided, each with its own title.
At first, I thought it was a book of anecdotes, maybe quotes or sayings by famous people. When I read one title though, I was a bit puzzled.
‘You step into the dark forest,’ one of them said.
‘You ascend the stairs,’ the one below read.
A little confused, I went on to a different page and read another one, only to find a similar title above it.
‘You eat the remains’
Even more confused, I read the text below it.
‘You carefully constructed a small fireplace from the stones around you. It takes you a few minutes, but you succeed in lighting a small fire. You carefully begin roasting the strange meat. A weird, sweet smell fills the air. Finally, the meat looks ready to eat. What do you want to do?
Eat the meat. Go to page 219.
Throw it into the fire. Go to page 811.
Leave the fire and the meat behind. Go to page 86.’
It took me a while to realize what I was holding. It had to be one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
I smiled a little but wondered at the sheer size of this monstrosity. A Choose Your Own Adventure book of this size? There’s no way. Maybe it came with illustrations, maps, and lists of items and enemies. Hell, maybe it was a collection of different adventures.
Yet, as I went through it, I found nothing but text. There were no maps, no illustrations, not even a division between different adventures. When I checked the first page, it was the same as the one I’d opened before. There was no table of contents, no title, nothing.
What an odd book, I thought. Odd, but interesting.
I picked it up and holding my price, I went back to the front.
When I approached, the old man looked up again. For a moment, something washed over his face, but a smile instantly replaced it.
As I put the heavy book down, the counter creaked under the weight of the book.
“Well, isn’t that something, you picked quite the book, young man.”
“It looked interesting enough.”
“Sure does, doesn’t it?”
“It’s one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, right?”
The old man nodded.
“So, why it’s so big?”
“Because it’s hard.”
“Hah, very funny.”
I laughed, but the old man didn’t join in.
“You ever gave it a try?”
“Sure did.”
“So what’s the deal with it?”
The old man shrugged. “There’s a reward at the end.”
“You finished it?”
The old man gave me a simple shrug.
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but then I let it slide. No reason to pester him longer than necessary.
“So, how much is it?”
The old man thought about it for a bit. “Tell you what, how about five bucks. Not like anyone’s going to come buy it any time soon, anyway.”
A little surprised about the low price, I handed him the money before I tried to shove the giant book in my backpack. It almost didn’t fit. Only after some rummaging and taking out my water bottle was I able to push it inside.
With that, I said goodbye and went on my way.
Once I was home, I opened the strange book once more. For a little while, I leafed through it before I went back to the first page and started to read the first chapter, if you can call it that.
I had to start right here, didn’t I?
To my surprise, it didn’t seem to be the beginning of the adventure, but a random part of it.
‘You hold the Desert Orb high into the air
You raise the Desert Orb towards the sky. For a moment it gleams in the hot, unforgiving sun before it crumbles in your hand. Nothing remains, but a set of thirteen colorful marbles that come to rest in front of your feet. What do you want to do?
Pick them up. Go to page 1522.
Stomp on them and destroy them. Go to page 772.
Throw them into the sky. Go to page 382.’
Great, I can play with marbles, I laughed. This wasn’t too exciting, so instead of picking any of the three choices, I went on to the next brief chapter.
The second one was even duller, talking about a flower store in a small village. Yet, the third one stood out to me.
‘You wait in the clearing
You wait in the clearing. Suddenly the Thousand-Eyed Dragon descends upon you, staring at you with its thousand eyes and basking you in their iridescent glow. The dragon closes in on you quickly. What do you want to do?
Stay and await the dragon. Go to page 522.
Pray to the Gods of the Earth. Go to page 311.
Run. Go to page 1899.’
This was more like it. As for my choice, I ran and went to the back of the book to find page 1899.
It was the fifth chapter on the page.
‘You run from the Thousand-Eyed Dragon
You hurry away as the beast approaches you. Your steps led you through the dark forest, past gnarled trees, and thick underbrush. Suddenly you fall, tripped by a root, and crash hard to the forest floor. By sheer coincidence, your hand closes around a strange, glowing object.
Pick it up. Go to page 455.
Destroy it. Go to page 390.
Ignore it and continue on your way. Go to page 111.’
I picked the object up and had to return to the earlier pages of the book.
The object turned out to be the so-called Ruby Orb. The glow of the object basked me in red light and I could faintly make out something inside. I was asked once more what I wanted to do. The first two choices were to either stare into it or simply pocket it. The third option made me lookup.
‘Push the Amulet of Roe against it. Go to page 1023.’
I read it questioningly, shrugged, and went with it. Sure, I didn’t know what the Amulet of Roe was or even if I had to find it before I picked this option, but it sounded much more interesting than the other two choices.
I searched for the corresponding page only to read I burst into flames and disintegrated.
Well, great, I thought, I just died.
I went back and pick the choice to stare into it and found out I went stock raving mad. Great, another death, I thought.
This time I pocketed the damned orb and went on my merry way.
I spent the next half hour continuing through the forest only for my character to die half a dozen times because of cryptic references I had no clue about.
It was at this point I took a break.
My stomach rumbled, and I realized I had eaten nothing since I’d made it home.
I prepared myself a simple meal, comprising a few sandwiches, and put on a movie on Netflix.
Yet as I sat in front of the TV, I couldn’t help but stare at the couch where I’d dumped the strange book. Its open pages were almost bidding me come back to it, calling out to me to continue.
I’d barely finished my meal when I was back. There was a certain kick to this thing, I had to admit. It was interesting trying to figure your way out.
Instead of continuing where I’d left off though, I went back to the confrontation with the dragon and picked choice number two, to pray to the Gods of the Earth.
To my surprise, the Gods answered, and the dragon flew off, leaving me alone. I was left to continue my adventure unobstructed. This time I didn’t enter the forest but followed a small path that led away from it.
This, however, didn’t change a damn thing. Half of my choices ended in a painful death, the other half made no sense or referred to certain objects I hadn’t yet heard about.
There was talk about The Obsidian Sword, a treasure map, a Crown of Ice, and many other, similar objects. Yet, whatever I tried, I ended up dead as often as in the forest. Hell, at one point I was even transformed into a strange snake-human hybrid. I humored the idea for a bit, but I was ultimately and quickly killed off by a group of knights I ran into.
When I followed another option, my character became infused with elemental fire, only to evaporate when I tried crossing a river.
Goddamnit, I cursed out loud. This damned book was way too hard!
Eventually, I got fed up with the damned dragon, the forest, and everything else related to it. Instead, I went to a random part in the book and started reading from there. Who knows, maybe I’d have more luck there.
When I started reading, I wrinkled my brow. My character had been an adventurer in a fantastical setting, running through forests, hiding from dragons, and traveling the land. Why was I suddenly on a... spaceship?
Either way, I picked one of the three choices only to find out that my spaceship and myself evaporated.
I went back and picked another one and followed this outlandish path for a while.
It was as hard as the fantasy one. Once again, every other option meant certain death, while the rest was filled with odd references.
At one point I was even assimilated by a hive mind. Even stranger my character didn’t outright die, but I could continue. I read a few more parts before I realized how late it had become.
Without realizing, I’d spent almost two hours with the damned book.
Still, as confusing and terribly hard as it was, it was also damned interesting. There was something about it. With all the objects and all the references, you could tell there were hidden hints everywhere. I guess you just had to understand what they meant to progress further.
I checked my phone, read a post on Reddit before I gave the book another shot.
This time, I opened it relatively close to the middle and absent-mindedly leafed through the pages for a bit. When I started to read I found myself at the home of a mage who offered me a bunch of potions, five in total. I could only drink one of them, and below was a choice for every single one of them.
I tried one and frowned when my character died again, this time because of poison.
When I read another one I was transformed into a creature of terrible power, the Thousand-Eyed Dragon.
I’d read that before, hadn’t I? That was the dragon that had attacked me in the forest! Why’d I suddenly turn into it? God, this was way too confusing.
I was about to pick another one when I noticed how late it was. Shit, I had to catch some sleep.
When I got home from work the next day, I heated some coffee and before I knew it I found myself in front of the book again.
I thought back to what I’d read before and gave the damned forest another try. Better start at a point I already knew.
This time, though, I had a plan. I’d write down the page numbers of each chapter I went through, so I had a simple way to find my way back should I get stuck.
It wasn’t long before I realized this wasn’t enough. If I wanted to have any chance of figuring this confusing book out, I’d have to map out my way entirely.
And so I started to write down not only the page numbers of the small chapters I went through, but also the choices for each one of them and the pages they sent me to. Then I’d go through all of them until I’d find a way to continue.
Yet, I quickly stumbled upon another problem. There wasn’t just a single way forward, not even two or three. While many choices ended in death, almost as many sent me off in entirely different directions, not related to one another.
For the next days, I slowly mapped out my way around the forest, the areas next to it, and eventually the small fantasy world I was supposedly in.
I can’t say why I put so much effort into it, but once I’d started, once I’d filled out the first few pages, there was this strange feeling that urged me to continue. After all, I’d done that much already, hadn’t I? There was no way I’d just stop and leave it be now.
Even more so, the book fascinated me, had me spellbound, you could say.
For the longest time, I’d done nothing. I’d stumbled through life one day at a time with no actual goal or ambition. This book actually intrigued me. I wanted to solve it.
As I continued mapping out my way, I soon realized that this adventure was even more complicated than I’d thought.
Only after I’d filled out another entire page, did I realize that the chapters and choices I was following seemed oddly familiar. When I went through my notes, I realized that I was back at a certain point I’d been at before. Without knowing it, I’d followed a freaking loop in the story. After I’d left a small town near the forest, I continued on a path that eventually led me to a waterfall and a mystical cave, only to follow up another path back to the same town.
I laughed a little. The damned book had got me. This entire freaking waterfall and cave thing was only here to throw me off. It was a loop that would continue endlessly. So, I put down a little footnote not to go to the waterfall again.
Soon enough, I realized that the waterfall wasn’t the only such loop. There were more of them. After a while I realized that some even led into one another, throwing you off even more. Without my notes, I might have very well stumbled from one loop into another without even realizing it.
Eventually, I reached a singular path I’d not been on before. After a few more choices and a few more painful deaths, I was back at the home of the magi. This time, I decided to go through all of his five potions.
I knew the first one would instantly kill me and the second one would transform me into the dragon.
Of the remaining three, one didn’t do a damn thing, and I left the mage’s home, while another killed me yet again.
It was the last one that was more interesting. After I’d downed it, I was asked if I wanted to ascend to another realm.
This time I was greeted with a plethora of choices.
Go to the Land of Never-Ending Seas, Return to the Cradle of Mankind, Take to the stars, and more than half a dozen others.
On a whim, I picked Take to the Stars.
When I went to the corresponding chapter, I suddenly found myself aboard a spaceship.
I looked up. This was the freaking spaceship I’d read about before!
As I’d noticed, this one was as strange and as hard as the fantasy world I’d been in before.
However, with my newfound way or recording my path, I could slowly progress through it.
It was by sheer accident that I stumbled upon a teleporter after my ship crash-landed on a planet.
The teleporter turned out to be similar to the mage’s potions. Each choice below represented a different button on it.
Going through the choices, I was disintegrated multiple times, sent to some sort of space prison before I made my way to a place between the realms.
Similarly to the ascension option from before, I was asked where I wanted to go. What picked my interest was the first choice, The Land of Magic and Dragons. To my surprise, I ended up standing in front of a burned down farm, the bodies of my dead parents next to me about to set out on a grand adventure. As I’d expected the choice labeled ‘Take to the Stars’ sent me back to my spaceship.
When I choose The Cradle of Mankind, I awoke in a cave, now wearing nothing but a pelt. I read two more brief chapters and realized that this was a sort of Stone Age setting.
I went back and tried to rest and realized that each and every one of them sent me to a unique setting, or a different adventure path, as I came to call them. With the three I’d already tried, there were eleven in total.
The Land of Magic and Dragons - Fantasy
Take to the Stars - Space
The Cradle of Mankind - Stone Age
The Land of the Never-ending Sea - Ocean and Pirates
The Ruins of Nevrath - Desert Ruins
The Peaks of the Sky - Mountains
The Grand City - City-State
Crossing the Rubicon - Ancient Rome
The Jungles of Ulthum - Jungle Tribes
Calmheim - Small Village
Lesh’turath - Underwater Civilization
I just stared at my notes. This was crazy. It had taken me days to make my way through the fantasy path and another two to stumble upon this teleporter and you’re telling me there were eleven in total?
Absentmindedly, I rubbed my temples to push away the phantom pain that started at the prospect of working my way through all of them. This was way too much work.
That evening, I left the book alone and went to bed early. I was too frustrated to continue like this.
The next day though, right after work, frustration was replaced by motivation. It was almost as if a surge of dedication pulsed through me. I knew I could do this. All it would take was time, and I had more than enough of that.
I decided to try my luck with The Cradle of Mankind next. I read chapter after chapter, got eaten by a sabertooth tiger, killed by one of my tribesmen, found a magical stick, got empowered by a meteoroid, and finally I found a strange glowing object.
I went with the choice to pick it up and look at it, only to frown.
‘You stare at the strange glowing objects and within moments you realize what it is. It’s the Ruby Orb, a ghastly artifact from another realm. Only those who destroy it will learn its secret. In fear, you leave it behind and wander on.’
The Ruby Orb? I’d heard about this in the fantasy path.
I went through my stack of notes frantically. There it was, in the damned forest. I noted down the place I was at and went back to page 1899. This time I picked the option to destroy it and went to page 390.
The chapter this time was short and there was only one option at the bottom.
‘You throw the orb to the ground. With a thunderous roar, it burst and explodes into fourteen pieces. You stare at them in utter indifference before you continue.
Continue on your way. Go to page 111.’
I checked my notes. This was the same freaking page I was sent to if I didn’t even pick it up. What the hell was this bullshit? Why was there a meaningless chapter like this?
No, wait, maybe it wasn’t meaningless. There’d been something about a secret. Yet, all the chapter said was that the damned thing burst into pieces. Frustrated, I was about to return to the Stone Age path. Then I stopped.
It hadn’t said that the orb simply burst into pieces. It had said it burst into exactly fourteen pieces.
Oh, you’ve got to be freaking kidding me. I went right to page 14 of the book.
The first two chapters were completely unrelated, but the third one stood out.
‘The Secret of the Ruby Orb,’ it read.
What I found below made even less sense.
‘The secret of the Ruby Orb lies hidden between the births of two men of brilliant genius. One, a writer most famous, no other than John Milton. The other, an astronomer who would change the entire world, Galileo Galilei.’
I read it once more than a third time before I sat there, utterly confused. Why the hell was the book bringing up Milton and Galileo? This made no freaking sense! Between the births... what was that even supposed to mean?
I spent the rest of the evening trying to make sense of it. Did Milton and Galileo come up as characters in the book? But the freaking book was set in nothing but fantastical realms. At least from what I’d seen so far. Could it be that one of the more mundane sounding paths included them? If so, what was this about births?
God, none of this made any sense.
That’s what I thought until an idea popped into my mind the next day at work.
What if it was not referring to anything in the book, but their actual births?
I leaned back in my office chair, took out my phone, and googled the two men.
John Milton was born on December 9th, 1608, while Galileo Galilei was born on August 25th, 1609.
Great and how the hell... then I thought about it. The freaking years, 1608 and 1609. The damned book had far over 2000 pages. Was this damned riddle referring to certain page numbers?
But what was there going to be between two consecutive pages? For the rest of the day, I entertained other, different ideas, different scenarios, like their location of birth, but they felt even less plausible to me.
The moment I got home, I threw aside my backpack and hurried to the book on my table. I tore through the pages until I reached page 1608. I read through the text, scanned the page, the margins, but there was nothing special about it. So it had to be the next page, page 1609. Yet, when I turned it, I found a different number. I suddenly found myself on page 682.
What the hell? I turned to the page, after which turned out to be page 1609. At first, I considered it a misprint, but the text had talked about a secret hidden between them. Was this a secret page, then?
I started to read it. The page was filled with four chapters, but they differed from anything I’d read in the book so far. They were completely unrelated to the adventure.
It was just descriptions of various stars in the night sky.
Below it, there was a single line that stood out to me.
‘There are many a star in the sky, but only a few of them shine brightly.’
I sank back onto the couch. So this was supposed to be another hint. Only a few stars shine brightly, I reasoned. There had to be something about stars, about some that shone brightly!
Yet, before I went on my search for stars, I had something else on my mind, something beyond the meaning of this little saying. This very secret page here. Did it mean that even some of the pages in this book were mixed-up?
This page here was page 682. So it had to be missing where it was supposed to be, right? I instantly went back, but I found it right there. Page 628, containing normal chapters related to the adventure, preceded by page 681 and succeeded by page 683. So the secret page I’d found was a double, hidden somewhere within the book. At that moment, I wondered. What if it wasn’t the only one?
I slowly went through the next hundred pages of the book. When I was done, I’d found three more secret pages.
In sheer frustration at this new, mysterious discovery, I put the book down and cursed to myself. This was freaking useless. The more I went on, the more mysteries I found that were related to it all. How the hell was anyone supposed to solve this?
Still, a few minutes later I poured over those three secret pages. Maybe they contained a hint that would help me make sense of them.
They were all the same, though. They all talked about topics that had no connection to the adventure whatsoever. One talked about the different ages of the Earth, starting from the Precambrian. Another talked about the evolution of apes and the last one of a certain subset of plants, roses to be exact.
For a moment I tried to think of any way on how to relate those things to the adventure. There had to be some tie-in, something I hadn’t discovered yet. Maybe there would be an odd reference in one of the other adventure paths I hadn’t explored yet.
For a moment I fell back on my couch, telling myself this was impossible. What if this entire thing wasn’t even about the adventure at hand, but about cryptic references and hidden details? What if the entire adventure was nothing but a red herring, only there to hide the real clues between its text?
No, enough was enough. I had done what I could, and I would not waste any more time with this bullshit. I got up and sat down in front of my TV.
Merely half an hour had passed before I sat back in front of the book. I cursed myself for doing it, but I couldn’t help it. I’d done so much work, I thought as I stared at the stacks of notes on the couch table. No, there was no way I’d give up so easily.
Yet, at the time, I had no idea just how little I’d actually done.
I made a simple enough plan. If I wanted to get anywhere, I had to first decode all the eleven different adventure paths. It should be easy enough, I told myself. After all, it was nothing but trial and error and watching out to not be caught up in any of the useless, ever-repeating loops.
At first, I did what I’d done before. I noted down the page number, the different choices, and made references whenever I found something interesting. However, this would only work on a smaller scale. What I needed was to get a better view, a bigger picture.
And so I started to map them all out, to draw each and every individual path. I started with a normal notepad, but those pages were way too small. Even taping multiple pages together wasn’t enough. No, I needed bigger sheets of paper for this.
I was on my way to the mall a minute later and barged into the office supply store. After pestering an irritated clerk, I bought a stack of the biggest sketchpads they had available. I didn’t look twice at the price it cost me. With those and new motivation, I made my way back home.
The first thing I did was to determine the starting point of each different adventure path. This was easy enough. After that, I started with the first one, the fantasy path.
Thankfully, I only needed to copy the notes I’d already taken and turn them into a visual map of the entire path. I wrote down the very first page number, added the three choices, connected those to the next, and so on. Things got complicated quickly. I had to start over multiple times because there simply wasn’t enough space, not even on the huge sketchpads.
Before long I had to resort to taping those together as well, creating giant, confusing maps of lines and numbers. I even kept a stack of notes related to every single path, filled with all the objects, references, and hints that seemed important. When I realized my living room table wasn’t big enough, I turned to the floor before I eventually resorted to putting the giant sheets of paper up against one of my living room walls.
Over the course of the next two weeks, I mapped out all the eleven paths as well as their general connections. By then, almost my entire wall was covered by a giant, crazy mural of color-coded lines and numbers.
When I was finally done, I stepped back and had a look at it. God, there was so much. This was absolutely insane. It almost made my head spin and a nervous laugh escaped me.
I was proud, however, proud of what I’d accomplished. With this, I was close to solving this entire thing.
I had to be.
As I’d expected though, there was no actual end to the normal adventure. You either ended up back at the beginning or you ended up at one of the hubs, as I came to call them, where you could switch to a different path. There was no final, secret path and no final chapter that told you you’d made it.
That’s when I knew the solution was what I’d feared. It wasn’t on the surface, not part of the general adventure, but hidden within it.
The first of the secret pages had talked about stars. I knew what I had to do then, I had to restart my search for a reference about stars. Even though I couldn’t remember any on the fly, there had to be one. I was sure of it.
For the next day, I meticulously went through my notes, explored all the different adventure paths, but there was no hint of anything. There was no mention of stars anywhere. The word appeared nowhere in the damned book. Except, that is, on the secret page.
Then I thought of something else. That riddle about John Milton and Galileo Galilei hadn’t been related to the book. What if the mystery behind those secret pages wasn’t related to the book either? I almost laughed with misery, wondering how much more insane the book could get.
I opened up Wikipedia and quickly found a list of the brightest stars in the night sky. It was a long list, containing star after star and name after name. Well, that’s great and all, but what the hell was I supposed to do with that? The same was true for the history of the Earth, the evolution of apes, and the page about plants.
I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be looking for!
Then I took a step back, took a deep breath. Hold on for a moment, Todd, hold on, this is an old book, right? There was no information when it was published, but the book’s pages were slightly yellowed and gave off the distinct smell that only older books held. It meant the damned thing had most likely been around long before Wikipedia ever existed. I cursed and closed my browser.
Maybe it was all bullshit. What if all those freaking secret pages with their stars and apes and plants weren’t even related to the mystery? What if they were a red herring, placed in the book to throw you off and send you on another search that would lead nowhere?
Or, I thought, what if there was something else to them? What if it was similar to the overall adventure? What if it wasn’t their content, but what was hidden within it?
I instantly decided on a new approach. I had to find all those pages and look for some sort of similarity.
When I was done the next day, I’d found 53 in total. They all talked about different, obscure topics, all entirely unrelated to the adventure: plants, snakes, the moon, even micro-organisms.
I noted them all down, but I still felt like I was going in the wrong direction. Once more I told myself to take a step back. Don’t get hung up on the content. Look for something else.
Over the course of another damned week, I tried to find as many of the small riddles that led to these pages. I found a total of 21. I analyzed the hints and riddles meticulously. All were unrelated to the book, yet they only pointed to the place the pages could be found in the book. It seemed utterly useless.
When I decided to abandon this idea, at least for now, the book had been in my possession for over six weeks.
I looked up, stared at my living room wall, at the stacks of notes, and wondered what the hell I was doing. Why was I even doing it?
“There’s a reward at the end,” the old man had said, but I knew I didn’t do it because of that. No, I just wanted to solve this thing.
But, why? I asked myself.
To prove it, the little voice in the back of my head answered.
None of this is important, though. Yet the little voice protested again.
You’ve spent six weeks of your life on it already.
Yes, and that’s enough. I won’t fucking solve it anyway.
With those words still lingering on my mind, I stormed to the damned wall. I tore down the first of the many pages, the first part of the ghastly mural of insanity, and began crumbling it up.
I’d barely started when I stopped again. I looked up. So much work, it had been so much work, the little voice piped up once more.
And I knew what it was saying. What if I’d discovered something important the very next day? What if I came up with that single piece of information I needed to solve it all right after I’d destroyed it?
“No, put it back, put it back, you idiot!” I heard someone scream. For a moment I jerked around, only to realize that it was my very own voice.
I carefully got down on my knees and smoothed out the paper before I put it back with shaking hands. A sigh of relief escaped me. It was still all there. I hadn’t destroyed it.
What the hell had I been thinking?!
After this outburst I labored over the book for two more hours, sitting in front of a giant map of lines and numbers. I went through the Ancient Rome path twice, explored all the connections it had to some of the others, trying to find if there was anything there I’d missed.
Only when I looked up did I see how late it was. My eyes grew wide, and I cursed. It was past two in the morning.
Shit, I had to get up for work in three freaking hours!
Work went terrible that day. I was a sleep-deprived mess, operating on nothing but strong coffee, and two times I caught myself having dozed off in front of the computer.
“Long night, Todd?” one of my co-workers asked, giving me a little wink.
“You’ve got no idea,” I mumbled in misery. “Those freaking secret pages are driving me insane.”
“Those... what? Pages? The hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, eh, nothing. Just a, eh, movie I watched that got me thinking.”
He eyed me curiously for another second before he shrugged and walked off. Shit man, keep it together. You don’t want to end up as the office nutjob.
The freaking book was getting to me. No, the fact that I had made no freaking progress was. I felt myself getting mad just thinking about it.
“Freaking hell,” I cursed to myself and made another one of my co-workers look up.
“You okay there, Todd?” she asked.
“Yeah, just tired, made a mistake, that’s all.”
For the rest of the day, I forced myself to keep my mouth shut and not mutter about anything related to the book. Hell, I told myself not to think about it, but that was a feat of impossibility. Even as I stared at the screen, even as I went through customer reports, my thoughts were with stars and apes, with dragons and potions and freaking spaceships. I couldn’t think of any other freaking thing.
I spent the next few days in this strange purgatory of non-decision and non-hints. I had no clue what to do. I went through the book, again and again, even trying to follow the paths backward in desperation. I went through the secret pages one by one again, looking for references.
Yet, there wasn’t a damn thing to be found.
At work, as I slaved away in front of yet another Excel-document, copying and pasting customer purchase numbers I finally thought of something. Numbers.
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