To [Cipher: Part III]

Posted on 22 Mar 2016 @ 2:33am by Ensign James Langley

1,017 words; about a 5 minute read

“THE SECOND WORD YOU SEEK IS 'SURE.' IF YOU WANT MORE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO MOVE TO THE GROOVE. X MARKS THE SPOTS BUT YOU ARE GOING TO NEED A DRILL AND A PICK TO GET WHAT YOU WANT.”

Well that was vague. Was I supposed to go digging for some long lost music? Of course not. I wasn't a damn archaeologist. The answer had to be somewhere on the art. The whole thing was just so captivating and with each part of the puzzle I got drawn in more. It was like some temptress. Some siren. Maybe a snake? Tempting me with more and more knowledge?

So anyway, I looked all about the art for something that would leap out at me. So many beautiful and seductive patterns. Subtle imagery without the use of actual images. I saw some X's, but those lead to nothing. But then I stopped thinking about the X's after a while. I looked elsewhere.

Grooves! There they were! Grooves etched in the art in circles of different circumferences passing flawlessly between the braille dots, some spiraling inwards, some overlaying onto others making it almost impossible to follow where the correct starting point of a circle was. It was odd at first, but I had to move with the groove. Follow the line somehow with something. But what? Move to the groove. Move to the groove. It had to be musical. Like one of those disk things my grandfather used to go on about how his grandfather used to go on about.

Starfleet Academy's music history class had what I needed. I remember thinking to myself that that place, the academy, had everything anybody would ever need. That's probably one of the reasons I would go on to join. So I went into the classroom during a tour for potential students and 'borrowed' a beautifully preserved toner arm and cartridge assembly from an old phonograph. All I needed to do was attach a small motor to the arm assembly so as to adjust its speed and move the needle since the art certainly wouldn't be doing any spinning.

Damn if that assembly wasn't heavy when I was finished. So I had the pick: the needle. It didn't take me long to figure out what the drill was going to be for. That apparatus wasn't going to mount itself. And finding those X's again, the ones in braille, showed me where to mount the arm to follow the correct circular paths based on proper speed and spacing.

I suppose it goes without saying that I almost got tossed from the building when I started drilling holes in some of the X's that were written in braille. The curator came out furious. He was ready to eject me from the premises. In fact he did. It took me more than a week to convince him I was on the right track. The artist? He said nothing. I didn't even get ahold of him at first but I bet this was part of the puzzle. Getting past the obstacles. I told the curator I was only adding to the piece and that I was obviously moving in the right direction. After some insisting that I wouldn't harm the art any further after a few more holes he relented. So onward I pressed. Or drilled, more accurately. I now had sturdy spots to mount my armature.

When all was said and done I had tapped all ten X's in the art. The stylus was modified to follow a circular path with a slight inward spiral so as to not get caught on any other errant grooves and go on a path of static and I had a variable speed motor on the armature in order to adjust for the needed speed of a particular track. Finding the starting points was just a matter of patience and after some time and a lot of static I finally found them all.

A Deltan emotion symphony (though it just isn't the same for us non-empaths and not being in the actual concert hall); An Earth artist from the twentieth century named after a cooling summertime beverage; The song sounds of many planets put together into a sort of symphony of their own (that one made me cry more than the Deltan symphony); A rather tedious review of a bottle of Romulan ale (must have been an off year); Songbirds (one of which had a most dementedly monotone sound); Some Morse code (yup, I had to learn that, too) that said “Here's a clue.” Damn that was vague; Children laughing; Some song that reminded me more of food than anything (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme to be precise); And finally the soothing sounds of a beachside retreat (couldn't make out the sounds of the fauna well enough to identify the world it came from. I narrowed it down to three or four).

So now you must be asking yourself what the significance of all of these random recordings were. Well, the answer is nothing! Pretty much no significance except for two. The Morse code and those birds. The Morse code was the key and that unidentifiable fluttery chirp was the door. I went back to what I realized was not a bird at all and played the spot at a faster speed. At first the blips were indecipherable, but when played with the needle turning clockwise (on a typical player the turntable goes clockwise and thus the needle could be said to be going counter-clockwise) it spelled out this:

- .... . / - .... .. .-. -.. / .-- --- .-. -.. / -.-- --- ..- / ... . . -.- / .. ... / .-..-. - --- .-..-. .-.-.- / -. --- .-- / .-. . ..-. .-.. . -.-. - / --- -. / - .... .. ... ---... / .-..-. .. -. / - .... . / -.. . .--. - .... / --- ..-. / .-- .. -. - . .-. / .. / ..-. .. -. .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / .-.. . .- .-. -. . -.. / - .... .- - / - .... . .-. . / .-- .- ... / .. -. / -- . / .- -. / .. -. ...- .. -. -.-. .. -... .-.. . / ... ..- -- -- . .-. .-.-.- .-..-.

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