Nonary Game: Resonance
(Current path: 52)
(Suggested listening: Quinary Game)
Lucky patted a hand on Robin's shoulder. "So, sorry I barreled into you with my entire body. What I meant to say was that I found this big light bulb hidden in the stairwell. I'm betting you know where it goes, huh?" As Robin took hold of it, he noted the vaguely red color of the glass.
"Nice, I'd say I do." He lead Lucky back to the front of the auditorium, switching the curtains back open. In a short time, he had placed the new lightbulb within the open socket.
"It's about time we finally finished up with this bullshit on the wall," Leo cheered. "Let's turn that thing on." With a simple nod, Robin did so. The spots at the back of the stage gave an interesting pattern of various reds and blacks, but it remained illegible. "I guess we shouldn't have gotten too excited; we still have to turn on the green one, don't we?"
Robin recalled the information on the curtain. "Right, can you go turn that one on? There was something else I needed to check really quick…" Leo saluted and crossed to the other side of the stage as Robin jogged to the back, returning to the breaker panel.
"Did you leave something back here?" Lucky chuckled.
"No," Robin stated bluntly. "But, I think I figured out what the deal is with this code on the inside." He opened the door then, pointing to the rectangular characters inscribed upon it.
"Does it not say SE3 or something?" Lucky asked.
"I think it's upside down," Robin answered, yanking his notebook free from the cinch bag on his back. He scrawled down the three characters, maintaining their angularity, and then rotated the entire book. "What does this look like?"
"Ah," Lucky answered. "E35."
"That must be another seat code. Do you mind going back up and entering it?" Robin asked.
"Before I do that, I'm going to offer you an idea that, for some reason, none of us have thought of until now," Lucky said, holding up their pointer finger as though to deter any interjection. "Why don't I, just, go to the seat without moving the spotlight over it? Since we know that the magnets are all under the seats anyway."
Against his self control, Robin found his face falling into a dumbfounded expression, then realizing how ridiculous the repeated trips upstairs had been. However, he didn't have much time to think of a fitting reply, as the two were distracted by Leo's voice. "Shit," he grunted.
"Whoa, what is it?" Lucky called.
"The green light. I was trying to turn it on, but it totally just popped. So much for solving this damn thing…" His anger trailed off as his attention turned to the floor below him, and he kneeled down among the shattered glass. "But now it looks like that was supposed to happen. Just like everything else in this damn game, I guess. There was a key in there." He grabbed the noteworthy item and approached the others.
"What do you think this key goes to?" Robin asked. "And uh… how do you suppose we're gonna figure out that R+G thing?"
Lucky answered with a point of their finger in the direction of the breaker panel. "There was that door we decided was probably storage back there that was locked. I'm willing to bet there's spare stuff in there."
"Or whatever else our kidnapper wants there to be. He's in complete control, remember," Leo sighed.
"Right," Robin said. "Lucky, I wouldn't be surprised if you had to go upstairs and turn the spotlight onto the proper seat even if we already know which one it is."
"I still don't see the point."
"Well, think about it like you're the kidnapper. Why let us upstairs and have the light cast the shadows on the seats? For fun?" Robin shrugged. "But… I have an idea." Putting a hand on Leo's shoulder, he began to move toward the back of the stage. "Let's see what's in this storage room first."
Wordlessly, Leo raised the small key to the lock, opening what could only be described as a closet. Most of the shelves seemed to be filled with useless junk and spare parts, but the shelf exactly in the middle had only two items upon it. The first was a glaringly white sheet, printed with a line of music in elegantly black ink.
"That sure is suspicious," Lucky said, taking the sheet in their hands and examining it as though it were a letter.
In the meantime, though, Leo and Robin heaved a sigh of relief at the other object - a box of lightbulbs. They were stuck upright into a cardboard base, in which a full case would have been packed hexagonally. However, only seven remained, and the triangular form they stood in was reminiscent of a "7" itself. "Seems like a pretty obvious clue, huh," Leo said.
"They do all look green," Robin agreed. "Probably leading us to G07?" Content that nothing else in the closet would be of any use to them, he swung the door gingerly shut.
"Now, before you tell us about that exciting idea you mentioned," Lucky stated, "I think we should get this out of the way." They held up the sheet of music with a nod, then crossing over to the piano.
Robin raised his eyebrows at Leo, still somewhat surprised that this firearms expert was also, apparently, a casually skilled musician. Leo, however, simply shrugged and tilted his head as though to say the situation was weird enough anyway.
"Don't get too impressed with me; it's only like twenty notes." Lucky stretched their arms as they took a seat, again reignited by the thought of showing off the variety of their talent. The music they played lasted for no considerable amount of time, and Robin was quite sure he hadn't recognized it when it was over, but Leo's eyes had widened anyway.
"Ah, Leo, you like someone who knows how to use their hands?" Lucky said, an innocent look softening their face.
"N...no. I just… uh, haven't heard that song in a while."
Lucky winked once. "Well, I suppose no one has. It wasn't terribly popular outside of that movie."
Robin turned to face Leo and mouthed "What movie?" Leo's reply was cut off by the sound of a small drawer opening out of the side of the piano.
"And that solves that," Lucky said. "For our trouble, we now have… a screwdriver handle?" Indeed, the tool Lucky held up from the piano was lacking the entire shank, making it little more than a small cylinder.
"Oh," Leo said, bringing a hand up to his forehead, "we should get back on the light bulb thing. I'll go plug it in and see what the situation is." As Leo jogged across the stage, Robin glanced yet again at the pattern of dots on the wall, still illuminated by only the red light. "Ready?" Before Leo's question could be answered, though, the light on the wall had changed to yellow.
"R plus G is Y, huh," Lucky said, vaguely interested.
"Hell yeah!" Leo cheered. "There's another message we can actually read now. "T40 V31," so that's pretty straightforward."
"That gives us four more codes to check, then. We should get on it," Robin urged.
"Alright," Lucky stated, "I want to hear what that idea you mentioned earlier is."
"Right," Robin said. "Lucky, if you could go to... E35 and see if you can get the magnet there before the spotlight hits it. I'll go to G07, and Leo, can you go upstairs to the spotlights? Just in case."
"Whatever makes you happy, dude," Leo said. Robin nodded his thanks and moved forward, inciting the others into action as well.
As rows E and G were fairly near the stage, Robin and Lucky made it to their destinations well in advance of Leo. However, as Robin lifted the cushion of the seat… "Whoa," he exhaled.
"Well, that answers that question," Lucky said, loud enough to be heard from the left side of the room. "It's not there." Robin waited out the rest of his time in silence, considering what possible mechanism their kidnapper had installed to prevent early collection of the magnets. In a short time, though, as the spotlight came to rest around him, he heard a faint click.
"And here it is," he mumbled. The letter that was shaded onto his cushion was a "v," and indeed it was then present in magnetic form beneath the cushion.
"It must be some kind of thing in the floor," Robin mused after rejoining Lucky. "A latch opens up and something pushes the magnet up on the seat. Not that it really matters, I guess."
"No, it doesn't seem to affect our solution to the puzzles," Lucky agreed, "but it does mean that whoever is keeping us here is exceptionally skilled in mechanical engineering, or perhaps is closely affiliated with someone who is."
"With all the puzzles they've made, I'd say they're skilled in pretty much all areas," Robin sighed. "But, whatever, I guess. What letter did you find? Mine's a "v.""
"How amusing; I've got an upside down "v,"" Lucky stated.
"How do you know it was upside down?" Robin asked. "The magnet's circular."
"But the shadow cast on the seat, my boy, is not. Good luck distinguishing between these two." With that, they plopped their magnet in Robin's other hand, causing their cohort to offer an indignant grunt. "Two more codes, huh?"
"You ready for the last two?" Leo called down. Lucky gave him a salute, and the two took off - Lucky for V31 and Robin for T40.
When the three finally regrouped back on stage, they found they had ten magnets in total. Lucky had picked up a character that looked like a short capital "I" with serifs, and Robin's was a curled "d" with a line crossing the stem. "I think the real question is what the hell all these symbols mean and what we do with them," Lucky said, as though the idea hadn't occurred to the others.
"Well," Leo started, "either they're letters for foreign alphabets, or…" Without finishing his thought, he traipsed back to the podium.
"Oh, yeah; we never figured this thing out, did we?" Robin said. "Well, I mean, obviously this is where those magnets go, right?" He lightly placed the v magnet in one of the circular indentations, again pressing the button on the end as a test.
"You didn't think it'd be that easy, did you?" Lucky asked.
"Well, no," Robin said. "We probably have to put all ten of these magnets in somewhere. But there's thirteen holes."
"Maybe we have to leave a few blanks." Leo squatted down, looking at the base of the podium. "Oh shit, look." As he spoke, he wheeled out a compartment, as though the podium had once been a dresser.
Robin was a bit embarrassed that no one had noticed the drawer before, but he made it a point to remain silent. Within the drawer was some sort of device reminiscent of the controls they'd seen upstairs, although the only things illuminated were thirteen numbered buttons. "Now that's exciting," Lucky said, rubbing their hands together. "Maybe our kidnapper redirected all of the important stuff here."
"Only one way to find out," Leo said. He pressed the button numbered "1" and waited for something to change.
"Tha. Atha." The words played over the loudspeakers, reverberating throughout the entire auditorium and causing Robin's shoulders to quiver.
"The hell was that?" he asked.
"It must be a clue about the magnets, dude," Leo said. "Thirteen buttons, thirteen indentations."
"Right, but… what the hell did that guy say?" The voice over the speakers had been masculine and mature sounding, as though a professor was teaching his students how to speak a foreign language. "I don't know any languages that say… "atha."" Leo's only response was the mumble the hard "th" sound to himself before shrugging and pressing the button numbered "2."
"Uh. Uh."
"Is this an actual experience I'm having right now?" Robin groaned.
"Listen, why don't we just listen to all thirteen and see what we learn from them?" Leo gave a slight smile before pressing button "3."
"..." The speakers' static let the trio know the command had been acknowledged, but it offered no verbal sound.
"Ah. Ah."
"Ee. Ee."
"Za. Aza."
Again, button "7" resulted in nothing but static.
"Ha. Aha."
"Ae. Ae."
"Va. Ava."
Button "11" resulted in more static. "That's the third blank, then," Leo whispered.
"What?" Robin asked. Leo held up his finger, as though to shush him, before pressing button "12."
"Ih. Ih."
"Ta. Ata."
Robin crossed his arms, letting his fingers tap a fluttering drumbeat in the new silence. "So, I'm guessing you know what all of those random words meant, Leo?"
"Actually, I do, but…" Leo glanced around for a moment, then looking back at Robin. "Lucky seems to have taken off. They must be looking around. That's good though; maybe I can talk to you about something first." The determined yet positive look on Leo's face told Robin that this conversation would likely not be terribly serious, but it was definitely something Leo wanted to get off his mind.
"Sure thing. Go ahead."
(Suggested listening: Riddle and Puzzle)
"By any chance, have you heard of the Bouba/Kiki Effect?" Leo asked. Robin shook his head, figuring he was now in for a lengthy explanation.
"Alright. Imagine you're just a random person, and I'm a scientist. I'm inviting you to participate in a simple experiment," Leo introduced.
"What sort of science are we talking here?" Robin asked.
"Nothing you need to be afraid of. Actually, do you mind if I see your notebook?" Robin granted Leo's request, and the man flipped onto the back of the page they had been using to take notes on the room. "Okay, so I've just brought you to answer a simple question. The first thing you see is that there are two shapes I've drawn." Fittingly, Leo began to doodle.
"Leo, are you having fun up there?" Lucky's words and imminent approach came as a surprise to the other two, who had thought they'd been entertaining themself elsewhere. "We are trying to escape a building we could die in, remember."
Leo's visage soured, and he dropped the pencil in the middle of his drawing. "Fine."
As the notebook was thrusted back into Robin's arms, he stared at the jagged shape Leo had drawn. What the hell is this supposed to be? Alas, Lucky rejoined them on stage, and Robin presumed he would have to figure it out later.
(Suggested listening: Quinary Game)
"So," Robin stated. "What made you think of this Bouba/Kiki Effect?"
Leo absentmindedly pointed in Robin's direction. "The sounds over the speakers. They've got to be phonemes. That's, well, sounds. Like if you can make a single individual sound with your vocal tract, that's a phoneme. Like the "b" sound or the "u" sound."
"Then why did the speaker say everything so weirdly?" Robin asked.
"You can't be heard if you're just saying a consonant sound." Leo made a face then, curling his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Did you catch that? Nope. Anyway, they say the "ah" vowel around the consonant so you can hear how it interrupts the airflow. Ta, ata."
"So if we take all the phonemes they said on the speaker, and put them all together, we get…" Lucky started.
Leo quickly played through each of the thirteen buttons again. "The eyes have it." Robin and Lucky looked at him incredulously. "Robin, can you lay out those magnets down here?"
He quickly obliged, allowing Leo to slide the glyphs around as he explained. "Each of these is also a symbol used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is kind of a standardized system that matches one symbol to one phoneme. That way, even if someone doesn't speak a language, they can still figure out how to pronounce a word."
"And these letters that we have, I'm guessing they all spell out our message?" Lucky asked.
"Yep," Leo answered. "This curly "d" with the cross is the hard "th" sound, then the upside down "v" is the "uh," then…" He left a space, indicating the silence that had played for the third button, before explaining the other letters to Robin and Lucky. Admittedly, Robin didn't quite care for all the details, so he zoned out until he noticed Leo standing. The muscular man began placing the magnets into the indentations, too focused to ask for the others' assistance.
"Well, good thing you chose this door, huh?" Lucky mused. "Let's press that button and see if it's about time to get out of this damn room."
Leo obeyed, and the trio heard a metallic clink from below them. "Something must have fallen into the drawer," Leo said, reopening it. Resting atop the soundboard was a small, jagged piece of metal.
"Oh, perfect!" Lucky said. "It's a key shank. We must have to screw it into this handle we found earlier." Lucky took the two pieces and twisted them together, forming an odd-looking key.
As Leo closed the drawer again, another thunk resounded. He grabbed the fallen item, one of the magnets, and stood. "Looks like the "ih" sound just couldn't leave us."
Robin reached for the other magnets, seeing if they had all come loose, but found that the one he grabbed held fast. "None of the other ones are loose," he said, an air of disbelief surrounding his voice.
"Remember how we found those two letters in the last two rooms we searched?" Leo said. "This must be the one for this room." With that, he handed the magnet to Robin, who stared at its short, serifed "I" for several seconds before pocketing it.
He made sure to quickly note the letter "I" into his notebook page for the auditorium before rejoining the others at the right side of the room. "Ready to go?" Leo asked. Robin gave a firm nod, and within a few seconds, the three were off.