One’s got to make the best of things. So Bob decided to put the trapdoor and the wooden key out of his mind. That enlightened decision may or may not have been preceded by a vigorous attempt to cut open the trapdoor with the hunting knife. Unfortunately, if there was a trapdoor there, which there probably wasn’t, it was fronted by stone or metal shielding and he’d had no luck forcing it open.
No — he mustn’t get distracted. He had two objectives: first, he needed to secure more firewood to make sure the fire didn’t die on him; second, he needed to figure out where the key was hidden and escape the room.
Bob pulled out his map and assessed the likely hiding spots. The most obvious suspect was the bookshelf. A thin strip of metal? You could easily slide it between two pages and from the outside it’d be nearly impossible to tell the difference. Even opening the book, you’d have to flick through every page to make sure you didn’t miss it.
Perfect. Synergy between objectives one and two. Bob could work efficiently here. Who doesn’t love efficiency? He would have to remove the books anyway to secure the shelves for firewood, so at the same time, he’d check each book for any hidden keys or other secrets. While he was at it, Bob decided he might as well make a chart of the arrangement of the shelves and their contents. Some things you could only see when you had the whole picture in front of you. Bob was very proud of himself when he thought up this plan.
He’d start with the stack he’d already emptied and then move systemically down and west. Bob drew out a large graph across two pages of the exercise book. For each book, he would write its coordinates on the cover page, flick through the pages looking for the key, then write down its position in his graph as either an E (empty) or T (text). Finally, he would group the books on the ground based on whether or not they had text. Bob figured there was a good chance the seemingly nonsensical text could be decoded. Otherwise, you know, what was the point? Once he cleared a shelf, he would cut out the wood and pile it beside the hearth, adding more logs to the fire as necessary.
It took him a long and boring hour and a half (at least so he guessed) to clear all the shelves. By that time the floor was a maze of stacked books, divided into two large sections, those with text and those without, while the bookcases stood empty like great big, wooden coffins. In that time, he’d needed to burn eight of the fifteen planks. And for all his effort, for all his sweat and suffering, Bob had found… nothing. Or not quite.
For one, he had a large and intricate diagram of the original arrangement of the shelves, as well as an impressive collection of statistics. Who does enjoy statistics? Each shelf had exactly seventeen books; Bob didn’t know if that was important or irrelevant, but he made a special note of the fact just in case. 5 bookcases * 4 shelves a bookcase * 17 books a shelf = 340 books total. Again no idea whether that was important or not.
Out of these, the vast majority had been empty. In fact, there were only fifteen books with text in the whole collection. Of these, there had been three in each of the five bookshelves; or done by rows, four on the top row, six on the second, four on the third and just one on the bottom. Their relative arrangement in the bookcases didn’t seem to mean anything. At least, even after staring at a picture in his exercise book and experimenting with lines and angles, Bob hadn’t been able to figure anything out.
His second acquisition was a little pamphlet. He'd found it stuffed inside an empty volume in the lower, right section of the bookshelves. The pamphlet was vividly colored in green and purple splotches, think trippy leopard print. There was no title on the front and its contents were less than illuminating. Each of its nine pages was absolutely bursting with text, no margins, no spaces or new lines, not an empty spot. The difficulty was that the whole text, without exception, consisted of the single letter J printed over and over and over. JJJJJJJJJ... You get the picture.
Bob didn't know what to make of this. Bob doubted anything could be made of it. In Bob's opinion, it was the kind of thing he might have thrown in as a practical joke. A complete wildcard just to confuse and befuddle candidates. That didn't mean he would dismiss the J-pamphlet, the jamphlet, out of hand, only that he had no idea what he was supposed to do with it.
Lastly and most annoyingly, there had been no key. Bob had been pretty thorough checking; if only because he hadn’t want to have to go over all three hundred and forty books again. He’d even done a sweep of the bookcases after they were emptied, but no key was lying on the ground or trapped in a corner. There had been a little red spot on the wall behind the bottom row of the second bookshelf that looked suspiciously like dried blood and had not come off with rubbing. But he tried to avoid thinking about it. Aside from that, nothing. No the only real discovery was learning that dust and mud stuck together just beautifully. A happy surprise.
The absence of a key stumped Bob a little. He didn’t quite know where to look next. He’d searched the side table, top, bottom, inside, outside. He’d got down on his bare knees to peer beneath the armchair. He’d ransacked behind the cushions. He’d doubled back to the west wall, patted it down, examined for hidden joints, stepped back, crossed his arms and searched the blank stone, but saw nothing, save perhaps an oddly mocking expression in the stonework. He’d thought maybe it was at the bottom of the grate and had used a plank to fish around in the depths. That had hooked him only a smear of grey ash. Where else was there to look?
Bob had even tried several methods of uncovering invisible ink. He’d heated one of the pages: nothing; he’d taken a rubbing with his pencil looking for imprints on the page: nothing; he’d tried looking through a page while holding it up in front of the fire: nothing (not entirely sure why that should have helped, but worth trying all the same). The books seemed to be just that: empty
The only untapped lead was the encoded books. So he ferried the stack of fifteen books in front of the hearth, added a few planks to the fire and plugged himself down on the ground to begin his research. He noticed a few things immediately. For one, all of the books had exactly the same spacing and punctuation; the capitals were in the same places, the lines divided into the same words, the page broken into the same set of paragraphs. A couple of the books were true copies of each other, letter for letter identical.
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The natural conclusion, indeed the only explanation that Bob could think of with his limited, mortal mind, was that the base text of all of the books was the same. In other words, there was only one work, but it had been encrypted in many different ways. That meant there should be a mapping between letters that would allow Bob to decode and read the text.
Conclusion: Bob was going to have to brute-force the mapping and then translate the text. How many possible mappings could exist? Was it worth wasting time trying to figure out how long and painful the task might take? Yes, yes it was. The first letter could get mapped to twenty six others, the second to twenty five, and so on. That meant twenty six factorial (26!) or 26 * 25 * 24 * … * 2 * 1. Bob didn’t have his phone on him and he wasn’t about to do that multiplication in his head. But even roughly, there were going to be at least 20 zeroes on that number…
Still what other choice did he have? Bob flipped through the book on his lap. Did this volume really have the clue as to the key’s location? Bob was a little skeptical. After all the work was ultimately book length. It had well over two hundred pages of solid text. How long would it take him just to decode the text, let alone somehow parse and interpret a single clue hidden within?
His mind was starting to wander a little; it had been another long day and a hopeless, unending task didn’t help. His eyes were drawn to the armchair. It looked especially comfortable with the warm firelight dancing over its cushioning. He might be sitting there, stretching his feet out and letting the warm air bake over them, his toes wiggling happily. He took a step towards the chair.
No, Bob, don’t give in. Bob’s eyes had already been gliding peacefully shut as he prepared to drift off into a long and enjoyable slumber with happy dreams of far away places. Wake up! Bob slapped himself lightly on the cheek. He selected the least dirty apple from the side table and bit down. He needed to focus and sugar could only help.
Indeed, it seemed to help a lot. Bob saw at once that he’d been going about the decryption process all wrong. Trying to guess the mapping was a fool’s game. He quickly copied out the first page into his notebook:
> Iwt Hnhitb Egxbtg
>
> Ktghxdc 19.0
>
>
> Xcigdsjrixdc
>
> Ltardbt id iwt xcitgktght! Lt pgt staxvwits id wpkt ndj. Ndj pgt iwt 73,926iw xcwpqxits eapcti id qt xcrdgetgpits. Bpcn Rdcvgpijapixdch.
>
>
> Eatpht jht iwxh egxbtg id prfjxgt qphxr upbxaxpgxin lxiw iwt ldgzxcvh du iwt hnhitb.
>
>
> Iwgtt htpih hipcs detc pi iwt qpcfjti du phrtchxdc.
He was looking for patterns, shortcuts, loopholes, anything he could exploit. A number followed by two letters. Suspicious. "73,926th" perhaps. Ok good start, "i" maps to "t" and "w" to "h". What's this here? A three letter word in the title, "iwt" (th_), beginning with "th", "the" anyone? Ok so "t" goes to "e". Aha, "id" (t_), a two letter word beginning with "t", so "d" goes to "o".
Things were going swimmingly. He wondered why he'd thought this was going to be so hard. "du" went to "o_" which had to be "of". Next was "Lt" (_e), that could be "Be" or "We" but at the start of the sentence, "We" seemed more likely. Which meant the "qt" later on was probably "be".
The other two letter and three letter words eluded him for a moment until he happened on "lxiw" (w_th). That pretty much confirmed "We" and netted him the vowel "i". Now he could tackle "iwxh" (thi_): "this" and then "jht" (_se): "use".
After that it was only a matter of time, "hnhitb" (s_ste_) => "system", "Ltardbt" (We__ome) => "welcome." He had all the vowels but "a" at this point. None of the remaining words were obvious, but Bob’s deductive reasoning was not to be stopped. He eyed "qphxr" (b_si_) with the discernment of a trained professional. The second letter had to be a vowel, ergo, “p” mapped to “a”; that gave “basi_” which could only be “basic”. Context proved enough for the rest.
Now to see if all this effort had been worth anything.
> The System Primer
>
> Version 19.0
>
>
> Introduction
>
> Welcome to the interverse! We are delighted to have you. You are the 73,926th inhabited planet to be incorporated. Many Congratulations.
>
>
> Please use this primer to acquire basic familiarity with the workings of the system.
>
>
> Three seats stand open at the banquet of ascension.
Interesting stuff, if rather a little mundane. Bob drew out a little alphabet to aid with further decoding. A - L, B - M, C - N, D - O… Wait a moment, Bob thought he smelled a pattern here. It looked like all the letters had just been shifted around the alphabet. Yes, rather a simple pattern this. He probably should have figured it out a little bit quicker. Nah, it had been super difficult.
"A" needed to be moved 15 spaces to reach “L” so this book was a fifteen-shift. He took up another book with text and compared the first lines. This one was a seven-shift. All the others followed the same pattern: identical base text with differing shift numbers. He took out his exercise book and the little rubber from the pencil case. He carefully rubbed out each T (text) and replaced it with the encoding number for the book in question. Bob liked to do things properly.
That sorted, Bob got back to the business of decoding. On the next page was a table of contents:
> 1. Stats
> 2. Classes
> 3. Companion Objects
> 4. Skills
> 5. Achievements + Titles
> 6. Quests
> 7. Levelling
> 8. Evolution
> 9. Settlements
> 10. The System
Classes, oh yes, Bob liked the sound of that. He wanted something appropriately epic and destructive. Inferno Master or Volcano Berserker. The kind of class that commands instant respect and background dread. He flipped to the chapter and started reading:
> So you think you're an adventurer. Well I'll be the judge of that.
>
>
> At the end of the system initiation, sentients are presented with class options based on their performance. Each class is a blueprint for growth, dictating stat increases per level and unlocking a specific ability tree.
Bob closed the book and groaned. "Class options based on their performance..." Bob wasn't going to end regretting that first E, would he? Of course not, he'd be sure to do splendidly in upcoming challenges. This is Bob Brown we're talking about here. Now where was that bloody key?
A system primer documenting the world outside was great and all, but here and now, on the clock, in a locked room, this wasn’t really the information he was looking for. He needed a physical key. A strip of metal with the right shape to open the padlock. How much time and energy had he wasted on decoding this book and all for some bonus prize of a post-initiation world, a world he was feeling less and less confident in ever reaching. There goes his only lead. What a joke, honestly, what a bloody joke? If the books were a dead end, Bob couldn’t even think of what else to try.
Had the moment finally come? Would he at last be allowed to slump down in a comfortable armchair and pity himself? Screw it. Screw it all. He plopped himself down in the chair and leaned back. He needed a break. Sometimes a man just needs a break.