The Message
She had been here before.
A city, looking exactly like the one she called home but…different in many ways.
The obvious difference being the large, obsidian castle in the center of the city.
She never liked it.
She didn't go near it.
She liked exploring elsewhere, seeing the many magnificent places and grand architecture that populated this city.
And seeing the one person who lived here.
Speaking of which, where was he?
A tap to her shoulder made her turn around only to see no one was there. "Huh?"
Another tap and she turned again. "What?"
"Who is-" A pair of arms wrapped around her. "GAH!"
She jumped and fell onto the ground, panting as she looked up to see…
"Got ya." The boy smiled down at her. "Took you by surprise, didn't I?"
"You know you did, you jerk." She snapped as she stood up, a pouting glare on her face. "What are you doing, sneaking up on me like that?"
"I have to keep you on your toes." He grinned. "You never know what might be lurking around the corner."
"You're the only one who lives here." She retorted.
"Yes, but I am not just one person now, am I?" He snickered. "I still remember the look on your face when you got knocked down and-"
She grabbed both cheeks with her hands. "Don't go there!"
"Ow! Ow! Okay, okay!" He pulled back, rubbing her cheeks. "You didn't have do that. It wasn't that bad."
"Says you, jerk." She turned around, crossing her arms as she pouted but refused to look at him. "I can't even remember why I came here."
"Oh? Not even to check out this amazing big coliseum I found?" He asked with a cheeky grin.
She faltered but remained steadfast. 'Don't let him get to you. You're mad at him.'
"Which I happened to fill with every musical instrument that exists." He continued on.
She was shaking a bit now. 'No, no, no, no. You can do this. Don't give in-'
"And I so wanted to hear you play one of them, Maybe I sent set up some giant speakers so then it can be really loud-"
"Okay, okay!" She spun around with an excited smile. "Show me! Show me-"
Her eyes opened and she found herself sitting up on her bed, the light of the sun shining down on her which disturbed her.
That dream…
She hadn't had a dream like that before, but it was certainly more pleasant than most of the dreams she had. Was it just a dream or was it a memory that had managed to resurface?
She couldn't tell but…she liked to think it was a memory.
Maybe it was a sign she would begin to remember more soon.
"Rise and shine, Princess." A voice called from the door. "We got a trip planned."
Finally, they reached the Hermitage and waited shuddering under the porch while Aelita inserted the key and turned it in the lock. Inside the villa had conserved some of the warmth from earlier in the afternoon, even though, when they left to catch the train, the group had turned off the central heating.
"At this point I understand if sleeping is out of the question" lamented Odd. "Otherwise, we won't get the chance tomorrow morning. But can we at least have something to eat? Who wants some sandwiches?"
Everyone did.
Ulrich lit the boiler and turned it up to its highest setting, and then the five of them took refuge in the kitchen. The leftovers from their dinner earlier included bread, part of an omelet, various cheeses and some chocolate spread. They were quickly plated up and within a few minutes all of their jaws were fully engaged in chewing.
"As far as this walled-up room is concerned" Jeremy said at last. "I think we should split up. Odd, Yumi and Ulrich, you guys work round the house knocking on the walls to see if you can find any that sound hollow. Aelita and myself, meanwhile, will explore the attic: if Hopper really did leave behind a map, then she's the only one of us likely to find it."
While the others began to beat against the walls with the palms of their hands, Jeremy took down the books off the highest shelf in the attic study and laid them on the floor; then he began methodically leafing through them.
Aelita meanwhile was wandering about the room. At one point, she noticed a worn-out leather case left on a shelf and said, "There really is a little bit of everything here, look. A little chemistry set, at least twenty years old!"
They continued their work in silence, eventually finishing with the books and instead searching through the magazines and periodicals. They had still found nothing useful: no notes scribbled in the margins, no suspicious pen marks, no scraps of paper slipped between the covers and the dust jackets.
Nothing upon nothing.
At the bottom of the attic stairs Ulrich's voice called up to them. "Guys, where are you? We're finished! And the result is a big fat zero, I'm sorry."
"It's the same up here. Come up and give us a hand" Jeremy proposed.
One by one the others arrived in the study. They all had distraught faces. But nobody complained and they kept on working.
"Nothing" Odd sighed at the end.
"What about that pile of magazines over there?"
"I already checked them."
The professor had done his job perfectly: if he really had left instructions as how to find the walled room, then they were extremely well hidden.
"Let's assume that we're looking for an actual map" Ulrich mused. "But if that were the case, then Professor Hopper could have hidden it anywhere. For example, on a wall that was then painted over, or in a piece of furniture, beneath a double-bottom..."
"I don't know why," interjected Aelita. "But I was convinced it would be in a book. And I can say that if I was hiding something I would have chosen to conceal it in this, 'The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe'."
"Why?"
"I'm feeling a sense of familiarity with it. Goodness knows why, perhaps my father read these stories to me when I was little."
Odd, who was the bibliophile of the group, an avid reader of fiction, replied: "I wouldn't buy that. Poe wrote gothic horror and mystery stories, hardly fit for a little girl. And on the subject of mysteries..."
"What?"
Odd took the book from Aelita and began to frenetically search through it. He checked the contents, and then turned to a specific page. "Here! Here! I just remembered it!"
Ulrich sighed in irritation. "Would you care to share your brainwave with us?"
"There's this famous short story by Poe, 'The Purloined Letter', in which the protagonist must find a precious letter hidden somewhere in a great hotel."
"Well, that sounds familiar."
"Yes: us."
"So, at the end, what happens?"
"Well, he eventually finds it" Odd snickered, "...in a letter box! Don't you see? The police search for this letter for days, but the single place that they fail to check is the one that's most obvious!"
"Seems stupid to me" commented Ulrich skeptically.
Odd slammed the book shut, ran down to the ground floor, went out into the garden, checked the mailbox and returned to the attic. "Ok. That was a false lead."
Ulrich rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "I could have told you that myself" he said ironically. Then he thought aloud again in a loud voice. "Perhaps he drew it on a sheet of paper, or perhaps in one of his..."
"...notebooks" Aelita finished for him. "Like this."
From the back pocket of her jeans she drew the notebook that she had removed from Kiwi's mouth the previous afternoon, during the first search of the attic. The pages were all blank.
"But it's empty" Odd observed, disappointed.
"Maybe he drew it with invisible ink."
"Yeaaaah, like lemon juice..."
At those words, Yumi's face lit up.
"Hey, wait!" she cried. "Lemon juice isn't the only kind of invisible ink that's easy to prepare. Hopper was also a science teacher, so he must have had some skill with chemistry! I wouldn't be surprised if he used potassium ferrocyanide as an invisible ink. If that's the case, all we need to reveal the secret text is some iron nitrate!"
They all turned to stare at her, their eyes wide open.
The small leather case was quickly opened out on the floor: inside were rows of test tubes full of various colored substances, alembics and a little instruction manual.
"Much of this stuff has probably expired" Jeremy ascertained.
"Hopefully it will still work for us."
Aelita chose a test tube full of honey-coloured crystals, opened it and poured the contents onto the first page. Some damp must have penetrated the test tube, because the iron nitrate fell in a single mass onto the sheet, resting on the white page like a dense stone.
Aelita began to crumble it between her fingers, delicately rubbing it into the paper. And incredibly, one by one, letters appeared: blue letters written hastily years ago.
My little Aelita, I can only hope it is you reading this...
Recognizing the handwriting of her father, Aelita suddenly felt weak. A hand went to her mouth and she sat in still silence, watching the words that had been intended for her taking shape on the sheets of the notebook.
You must go down to the basement of the Hermitage and into the refrigerator room. Once there you will see...
With her hand trembling from emotion, Aelita started scattering iron nitrate over the following pages. A little bit at a time, a stylized plan of the Hermitage appeared, together with instructions on how to access the hidden room, behind the walk-in refrigerator.
"See, I said it was in there!" Odd joked.
In total the writing spread across four pages.
At the end of the fourth there was a short final note: I love you.
And a signature: Daddy.
The remaining pages were blank.
Odd sprang to his feet. "Last one to the basement washes the plates!" He yelled, and then he rushed down the stairs.
The refrigerator room had no windows: it was a simple grey rectangle of thick walls, furnished with two rows of low shelves on each side.
Set into the ceiling were the open ends of the conduits that led to the refrigerant motor that cooled the environment. Mounted on the walls were big hooks for hanging meat on, but they were now empty, apart from cobwebs and dust.
Aelita opened her father's notebook and again read out the instructions he had left her: Standing with your back to the door, took for the third hook from the end, on the left-hand wait."
"There it is!" Ulrich indicated towards it. "'Pull it towards you"'.
Ulrich climbed onto the shelving units to reach the hook and hung onto it. They heard a loud dang and, with a soft tick, the hook dropped several centimeters from its original position. Now on the right wall, count down to the fourth shelf from the top and raise it."
Odd carried the operation out, pushing the shelf in towards the wall.
Close the door into the room. Then reopen it and shut it again'."
"I've done it" Jeremy announced.
"'Finally, pull on the hook again'."
This time as well as the click they heard a mechanical creaking, and in the far wall of the room a door opened, one so narrow and low that to pass through one would need to crawl on hands and knees.
On the other side, in a room that had been sealed for at least ten years, a light turned itself on.
They entered one at a time: first Aelita, then Jeremy, then Odd, Ulrich and Yumi. Standing, they found themselves to be in a simple room with white walls that seemed freshly plastered. From the center of the ceiling there dangled an electrical cable, a single bulb swaying slightly at the end of it. The only furniture was a dark leather couch that had been arranged to face a cabinet resting against the opposite wall, on which a television set and a video cassette player sat. They were old models: the TV was deeper than it was wide, with a curved screen and a protruding cathode ray tube that pressed against the wall.
"Nuts!" said Odd. "This thing takes video cassettes! What a museum piece!"
Jeremy smiled. "This room was sealed before DVD technology was invented."
"What I don't understand is why he went to so much effort, the enterprise of constructing this and everything, just to hide a couch and a TV" commented Ulrich.
"Perhaps this is where he came to watch sports events when his wife was hampering him?"
No-one responded to Odd's quip. And then he suddenly remembered Aelita's great solitude.
They quickly arranged themselves on the couch, Ulrich and Odd sitting on the arms because there was not enough space on the actual cushions.
Jeremy began to fuss over the video player. "There's a tape already inside. Give me a moment."
The TV came to life, showing the classic grey background that indicated there was no signal. Then the recorder clicked, and the image on the screen switched to black.
Jeremy turned up the volume and joined the others on the couch. "Whatever this thing is, it's starting."
Sweet music began to play from the old television's loudspeakers. Piano music. Images, old photos yellowed with age, began to slowly montage in time to the music. Aelita, only two or three years old and scampering through the garden of a mountainside chalet, a simple wooden tricycle standing to one side in the grass. Aelita again, at the same age and in the arms of an incredibly beautiful woman, with clear blue eyes and familiar reddish hair that grew freely over her shoulders, the two of them wearing matching short dresses patterned with flowers.
"Mummy." Aelita whispered, her voice strangled with emotion, while the sequence of images continued to play.
Her mother again, this time wearing an elegant evening dress and high heels; around her neck were a string of pearls that sparkled perfectly against her clear complexion. Hopper and her mother together, both wearing white laboratory coats. Professor Hopper was smiling widely, his round face half-hidden behind a thick, dark beard.
And then, without warning, Hopper's voice resounded through the speaker apparatus, superimposed over the music while new photos played on the screen: Aelita on the piano, Aelita playing with her favorite doll, Hopper smiling from behind a barbecue.
"My dear little Aelita. It's my hope that you are here to see this video. I've taken some care in hiding it, knowing that your passion for chemistry and the blank notebook would lead you here. I hope that I know you well enough to have not made a mistake."
The montage of piano music and photos stopped and in their place the professor himself appeared, sitting on the same sofa on which the group were now themselves squat¬ ting. He was dressed in a chessboard-patterned shirt and sitting with his back straight and his hands laced together over his stomach.
Behind the dense lenses of his glasses, his eyelids were swollen with tiredness.
"Nevertheless, if you are watching this film, then it means things have not gone well for me. I swore that if I returned to the Hermitage at the end of this great adventure, that I would come directly into this room and set fire to this video cassette. If that is not the case, then I'm possibly not around anymore. This breaks my heart.
I may not be there for you my dear. The photos from the beginning of this video are the only gift I can offer to help you not feel alone."
Jeremy turned towards Aelita: the girl's eyes were fixed on the screen as if hypnotized.
"Meanwhile, I feel I owe you some explanations. When you were born, I was still living under my real name: not Franz Hopper, but Waldo Schaeffer. At the time, your mother Anthea and I were working in Switzerland on a top-secret project named 'Carthage'. But late in the project, we realized that our work was to be used not to benefit humanity, but to dominate it, and so we made the decision to escape. But we were unsuccessful. Your mother was kidnapped and taken away from us. I don't know where she is being held captive, but I am certain that she is still alive. I can only hope that she is alright. You cannot imagine how long I have searched for her. I did all that was in my power to find her again, but I also had to think of protecting you.
I hid in this city and began teaching at Kadic Academy, under the assumed name of Franz Hopper. While here I also created Lyoko, using the same programs that your mother and I developed together under Project Carthage. It was my intention that Lyoko would protect us from the malign intentions of Carthage. But nevertheless, in the course of time, they tracked me here as well. And now that they have arrive I must make fresh preparations to escape again. But they've attempted to capture you, and injured you in the process.
And injured you severely, a bullet to the head. You were in danger of dying."
Aelita brought a shaking hand to her head and, probing between the hairs, she felt a thick scar.
"I alone had the means to cure you. And, if you are listening to me now, you already know what I mean. When I complete recording this message onto the video cassette, I will take you with me and lead you to Lyoko. To keep you safe. To heal you. But I am very afraid Aelita. X.A.N.A..."
The rest of the sentence dissolved in interference, and the image on the screen flickered for an instant.
"...but if you're listening to me know then things clearly did not go according to plan. And so you must destroy the supercomputer and everything hidden beneath the old factory."
"And here's where we came in..." Odd murmured.
"You must destroy it in order that no-one else can find it and use it for themselves. But it's not the invention itself that is the problem. It is the men. These men are dangerous Aelita. These men are evil."
On the screen, Professor Hopper dried his eyes with a handkerchief. His voice was shaking with emotion and anger. Then he continued: "And now we come to the second thing I must ask of you: open the TV cabinet in this room. Inside you will find a wooden box. It contains a chain with a pendant. It was a gift that your mother made for me, and I in turn gave an identical one to her. Please treasure it as if it is the most precious possession you have. And then Aelita, you must find your mother. I know that this is a difficult and dangerous task, my dear, but you're clever and brave, and there will certainly be someone there to help you, as there has been for me. So, if you ever need help you can call on the aid of..."
Interference cut the word in two, and the video skipped ahead several seconds.
"...ern. If you ever have need, turn to them. And when you embrace your mother again, please give her a kiss for me."
The video jumped ahead again due to further interference, but this time nothing else played.
"Nothing's wrong with the cassette" Jeremy sighed in regret, having moved forward to check the player. "That's the end. There isn't any more."
In silence Aelita rose from her place, stepped up to Jeremy and gestured for him to move aside with a light touch of her fingers. Then she opened the dark door in the front of the cabinet. Just as her father had said in the video, on the inside was a wooden box, little bigger than the palm of one's hand. She opened it and extracted the pendant from within.
It was affixed to a thin golden chain, a little larger than a coin, and shone so brightly that Aelita could see her reflection in it. Incised into the surface of the pendant were two letters, 14/and A. And beneath them was the image of a sailor's knot.
"Waldo and Anthea" she murmured, now remembering her father's true name.
"And a knot" said Jeremy
"Yes. Together, forever."