An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (Page 50)

Of course, right now, the Defenders are disavowing these attacks. That is proper, and I honestly think that the vast majority of them would never condone this kind of action. But when the rhetoric is so inflammatory, so enraged, it is not surprising that some people would work together to take matters into their own misguided hands.

In my own less intense way, I have indeed done that very thing.

Since early July it has been fairly clear that all the puzzle sequences in the Dream except one have been uncovered and solved. The code has been compiled and seems complete except that it is asking for a password of some kind and no one knows where to look for it. Well, since before that was the case, I have known that there is a puzzle sequence in the Dream that only I have access to. I have been working on this sequence, which we’ve been calling the 767 Sequence, for over a month now, and frankly, I’ve gotten nowhere. The reason I’ve failed is that I wanted to solve this mystery alone. I wanted to be the hero that you all remember. I wanted to hold on to my fame and my exceptionality. And, because of that, I slowed down the process of us solving the Dream. If I hadn’t locked away the information I had, maybe we would have solved the Dream a month ago. Maybe we would have come through this faster and safer. Maybe . . . [And then the video cuts to the next line because I didn’t want to finish that sentence.]

I am also fully aware that Carl saved my life. The government has released a preliminary report that my attacker, Martin Bellacourt, died instantly when the inside of his body was apparently turned into grape jelly. And though this sounds like joke, we’ve all had to come to terms with it as a reality. As this was clearly the action of New York Carl, the New York grand jury will be deciding whether to indict Carl. I fully support these legal proceedings and have faith that Carl will be cleared of charges.

For those of you who have been active Dreamers, we now have one final puzzle to solve. I have put everything we know about the 767 Sequence in the Som—my posts are linked in the description. The Carls obviously intended for us to solve these mysteries together. I am sorry I spent so much time selfishly sitting on this information. I know not all of you will forgive me, and I don’t have any reason to expect you to. But I hope you will believe that I deeply, deeply regret hiding this.

* * *

—

And that was that. Within an hour of that video going live, I read this thread in the Som:

     I don’t know if this is anything, but you know what that hexagon layout reminds me of is my grand-dad’s accordion. I don’t know how many buttons an accordion has on it, but I think they were laid out like that.

       Bump for interest . . . anyone play an instrument like this?

         Hey! Yes, I’ve got my dad here, he plays concertina and accordion and he says (and I’m quoting because I don’t understand any of this): “It’s called the Wicki-Hayden note layout. No matter what button you’re on, if you go to the right, that’s a whole step up, if you go up and to the left that’s a fourth up, and down and to the right is a fourth down. The closest button directly above is a full octave jump.”

By the time that third reply happened, this comment had floated its way to the top of the thread and accordion and concertina players all over the world were chiming in. They were quickly deciphering what it would sound like if the honeycomb bits I had brought out of the Dream were played with the red hexagons representing pushed buttons. Within a half hour after that, it was clear that, though no one could say for sure what key it was meant to be played in, the hexagon patterns on the side of the 767 were a representation of “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. Carl has amazing taste in music.

Andy and I went on a research blitz, learning everything we could about the song and about CRJ, master of pop music.

Once I had all the words to “Call Me Maybe” memorized (I already knew most of them), I pulled the curtains of Andy’s guest room and got in bed. It was only early afternoon, but I was exhausted (as usual) and needed to see what I could do with this new information. Getting to sleep was not easy—I wanted so badly to make it happen. I knew that literally the whole world was waiting to see what would come of this, and I was the only person in the world who could tell them.

So I cleared my mind and let my exhaustion take over. And then I did that another twenty-three times until it finally stuck and I found myself in the lobby of a fancy office in a fancy office building. A solid thirty minutes after that I was standing in front of a 767, singing in my thready, slightly off-key voice:

I threw a wish in the well

Don’t ask me I’ll never tell

I looked to you as it fell

And now you’re in my way

And this was not actually that weird until I got to the chorus, which is so exquisitely crafted that it is very difficult to sing without getting pretty into it. The good news is that you’re always the only person in the Dream, so no one is around to see you dancing around a 767 singing, “BEFORE YOU CAME INTO MY LIFE I MISSED YOU SO BAD, I MISSED YOU SO BAD, I MISSED YOU SO SO BAD.”

My injuries didn’t follow me into sleep, so while back in my real body lifting my left arm above my head remained a goal I’d be working toward for months, in the Dream I could get down like the spry twenty-something I should have been.

And then I finished, and I was pretty sure I got through the whole song without missing a word (though I definitely missed some notes), and I started to hear a soft hiss. Then, louder, came the noise of electric or hydraulic motors as the bays containing the landing gear opened and the massive wheels came down, from the wings and the nose of the airplane. They touched softly down on the grass of the plane park and immediately looked as if they’d been there forever.

I was in.

Or, at least, I was into the very small rooms that stored the airplane’s wheels. In my studying 767s, I knew that these wheel bays were big enough for a person to be inside, until the wheels came back in, in which case a person would be very lucky not to be crushed. A number of people had climbed into the forward wheel bay to attempt to hitchhike. This, it turns out, is a fairly good way to die. But that did mean it was possible to climb into the wheel bays, which I proceeded to do immediately. I went up into the forward wheel bay first, because I knew that there was actually a port in there that led to the avionics bay, the room where all the plane’s controls were. And from there was another port that led to the interior of the plane. Both of these ports, however, are not just doors, I knew. They’re sealed and need special tools to open, but I figured that was my best bet for getting all the way into the plane. Once in the landing gear bay, I saw a remarkable spaghetti mess of tubes and cables. If I were an engineer at Boeing, I’d have a fairly good idea what I was looking at. But I was not, so in the dim light coming from the open hatch, all I saw was a big scary mess.

But spotting the hatch in the ceiling of the bay wasn’t a problem. It was marked mostly by the nonexistence of tons of tubes and wires. It was basically the only flat surface on the ceiling. Opening the hatch, on the other hand, was not so simple. It was fastened in place with dozens of flush bolts. Instead of normal Phillips or flathead screws, they were just flat, like the head of a tack.

I dug my nails as deep as I could get into the hatch, but it was so obviously fruitless that I didn’t even keep trying.

I crawled around in the bay for a little while longer, looking for . . . anything, I guess, but it all just looked like a mess.

I went back to the hatch to scratch at it a bit more because, I dunno, maybe I had received super strength in the last twenty minutes. This time, though, I noticed the texture of tiny raised letters on the handle. In the dimness of the light the letters were tough to make out—at least that’s what I thought at first. Finally I realized that it was not that they were hard to see; they were simply not letters. They were there, but they were just a bunch of lines and circles that my brain couldn’t form into words.

It was just the thing that happens when you’re off track and the detail of the Dream begins to fade. But how could that be? I’d sung the song and it worked! This had to be it!

“AAAGGHHHH!” I screamed my frustration into the empty room. That didn’t help. I aimed a kick at a collection of pipes on the wall, thinking to wake myself up in frustration. I mean, it’s not like I had nothing to report back to the rest of the world. But if they had succeeded in bringing me a clue, I was loath to come back telling them it was a dead end!

So I only kicked enough to make a satisfying thud, not enough to wake myself up.

The air was stale and oily in the bay, so I decided that maybe there was something I had missed on the outside of the plane. Maybe the secret was in one of the other wheel bays.

I circled the plane again. I yanked on every single thing I could yank on and several I couldn’t. I climbed into the other wheel bays and found nothing compelling or useful.

Frustrated, I just started walking away from the plane.

A few blocks down the street I turned to look at that massive machine. I’d spent hours in the Dream staring at it, so I didn’t expect to see anything new. And I didn’t, but I did feel my heart suddenly jump into my throat before I began running full speed back to the plane because I’d figured it out.