The Only Mystery Worth Solving

Author’s Note: This is a continuation of last week’s story An Ancient Inhuman Book. This story is stand alone, but if you enjoy it then you will definitely enjoy the first part of the story. Rodney will be back next week, but I can’t guarantee that his professor will be. Enjoy: The Only Mystery Worth Solving.

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“You want answers to the mysteries of the universe, kid? Then take this,” Stanley said as he shoved a book into the frizzled young man’s grasp.

Martin Carrus clutched the book before it slipped out of his grasp and hit the ground. “You think it has answers?”

Stanley shrugged the question off, “I don’t doubt it has answers. But I think it will fill your life with more mysteries than anything else.”

Martin thumbed through the book, the words were squiggles, and the figures were equally mystifying. “Is there a translation, or at least the start of one?”

Stanley, whose age and adventures had brought wrinkles to his face chuckled softly. “No there isn’t. It took the university’s best linguists months to decipher what the cave had written in.”

“You found this in a cave?” Martin responded with disbelief.

“Well, it was a cave that was being used as a temple. And I’ll tell you what, it was a bitch to get to. I think I still have some mosquito bites from that expedition.”

“Why are you giving it to me?” Carrus asked.

“Lots of reasons,” the man said with a snicker. He took a drag from his cigarette, let out a small cough, then offered it to the young scientist. “You’re probably going to want some of this. We’re about to get into some heavy shit.”

The joint hung between the old adventurer and the young scientist. He had a rule that he didn’t smoke while he was working, but then again he wasn’t sure how close to work this was going to resemble. He took a short drag from the cigarette figuring he would split the difference.

“Good, now let’s get into this before the shrooms kick in,” the man said while relaxing in his armchair.

“The what?!?” Carrus asked in shock. His mind immediately went to the tea the man served him, and he stared at his cup. It was already half empty.

Stanley let out a laugh that filled the apartment’s living room. Even the thick shag carpet couldn’t absorb the sound. “Don’t worry my friend. I didn’t waste any on you. I took them a few minutes before you arrived. The joint helps with the transition and the tea helps me stay hydrated.”

Martin wiped sweat away from his brow. “Then I guess we should get into this quickly,” he said while looking back at the book.

“You asked me why I gave it to you,” Stanley started, “And I don’t have a simple answer for you. The best answer I have is that it feels right. My brain wants to make a dozen excuses for why I should, but truth be told, it’s just pure animalistic instinct.” Carrus nodded and let the conversation continue. “The book, as far as I can tell, relates to something scientific. And my university has had it in our anthropology department for long enough. They’re not getting anywhere with it. Anthropologists are a bunch of tautological hobbnoggins.”

Carrus laughed at the word. He was feeling a little light-headed, so the comment came off funnier than it should have. He then proceeded to point out, “Aren’t you an Anthropologist?”

The old man smiled and nodded, then protested “Yes but I made that choice under duress. They said I would only be able to go on the cool archeological explorations if I had a degree.”

“You must have been a hell of a student,” Carrus remarked wondering what kind of students he would have once he got his doctorates and became a professor.

“Anyway, where was I?”

“You were complaining about Anthropologists.”

“Yes, yes, yes, they can only get us so far. And they won’t admit this, but they’ve hit a wall with this book. You see when trying to translate something from another language you need to establish a common ground. The translators need something that will connect the foreign language to your native language. With indigenous people, this is in the form of pointing at something and getting the word for it. But that doesn’t work with written text. Sometimes we can extrapolate from present text or context from the site, but the writing in the cave temple doesn’t match the writing in the book.”

“That makes sense. You mentioned that this book was not from our world.”

“Yes, exactly, there’s no related language like this so we can’t learn what it says.”

“But if the anthropologists and linguists can’t figure out what the book says how the hell am I going to? I’m an American physicist, the only foreign word I know is ‘prost.'”

The old explorer lifted his teacup and made a cheers gesture at the young scientist. “I’ll drink to that.” He took a sip of his tea and made the most serious look he could, considering that he was a little stoned. “You do share a language with this book though. This book is about how worlds interact. It’s about science. Something that no anthropologist will ever spend time learning. I believe that’s the common ground between mankind and that book.”

Carrus looked at the book and thumbed through a few pages. “There’s not a single equation in here.”

The man shrugged and smoked the last of the joint. He put it out in the small ashtray, finished his tea and leaned back in his chair. “That’s what the anthropologists told me. You know what I think?”

Carrus looked up from the mystifying pages and shook his head.

“I think we have bigger problems than their numbers looking slightly different from our numbers.”

Carrus looked down at the book. It was open to a page with a large figure displayed. At least Martin assumed it was a graph. The coordinates were perplexing and the axises that were labeled he couldn’t read. Carrus concluded that the man was grossly uninformed, whatever wrote this book wasn’t just using a different symbol for numbers they were using a completely different number system or thought process. But Stanley could be right, math could be the same across worlds, and if it was maybe Carrus could beat his head against the book long enough to get a translation out, but he suspected it would take all his life.

“There’s more to this book,” Hastings added. Before Carrus could respond with oh great the man continued. “I told you that it’s not from this world and we did end up translating the temple’s walls.”

“Mhmm,” Carrus responded.

“Well, the cave talked about a room that they had accessed. It might have been deeper in the temple, that’s what a lot of the archeologists took the translation as since parts of the cave had collapsed and we didn’t have the funds to excavate them. Me and the other ‘forward thinking’ explorers thought the linguist could have translated a word the indigenous people used differently.

“You see it read like ‘transcend’ and most just thought that meant travel, like from room to room, but I think it indicated travel in the way our spirit travels through different heavens and hells when we die.”

Martin had never bought into any religion. He blamed it on his parents, the science he did didn’t have much room for a bearded man who could snap a world into existence. Because of this, he responded with, “what do you mean spirit?”

The man smiled and leaned forward in his chair, “There’s more to this world than your science can explain. Every religion and culture since the beginning of man has brought up the idea of a spirit or consciousness. This cave-temple we found was no different. It mentioned the ability to move their spirit from room to room. One room they found was called the Infinite Library.”

“They called it that?”

The man giggled, his high hadn’t worn off, but Carrus was as sober as a Quaker. “They didn’t have the word for library,” Hastings responded, “They didn’t have the word for infinite either, but they used a word like vast, endless, and enormous. Infinite Library sounds much more impressive than ‘enormous endless room of writings.'” He laughed at his joke realizing that Martin wouldn’t. “Lighten up. This isn’t even the fucked up part.”

“Let’s get to the fucked up part then,” Martin said. The corners of his mouth weren’t bent in a frown or a smile.

“Ok but one last thing. I don’t know how they got there, but they described what they found. It was a room full of books. There were books written in thousands of languages. Languages they couldn’t read. But they didn’t all match the book you have there. Some were written in their native language. Chances are there were some written in English. They described it as a wealth of information. I suspect it has every book ever written. But I have no logical reason to believe that.”

“What if a race that didn’t wear loincloths had access to it?” Carrus asked.

“Then I have a feeling the hydrogen bomb would be the least of this planets concerns. But don’t mock the loincloth, it’s comfortable, and they got into the library, we haven’t.”

Carrus sat back in his chair. The jet-black book lay in his lap. He looked at the gold pattern on the front, but he couldn’t stare at it for long. The inhuman design disturbed him.

“Well,” the man drew out the syllable, “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?” Carrus responded. A score of questions entered his mind, but he couldn’t form them into words.

“The obvious question, everyone asks it.” The man paused waiting for Martin to chime in. He didn’t so Stanley continued, “Don’t you want to know where they all went? Everyone always wants to know how the indigenous people disappeared.”

The thought hadn’t even crossed Martin’s mind. He shrugged and asked the question his friend wanted him to ask, “Where did the indigenous people go?”

Stanley Hastings smiled looked at the young man and said, “Nobody knows.” He said it in his most mysterious tone like he was beginning a haunted house tour.

“Then why did you make me ask?” Martin complained.

“Well, we have a pretty good idea. And by we, I mean a few other people who were at the site and me. Let me warn you that this is quite an unconventional belief.” The man smiled and showed his friend his palms.

“I have a feeling most of this conversation isn’t a conventional belief,” Martin retorted.

The man ignored the jest and went on with his theory about the original owners of the book. “They traveled. I’m not sure how they induced it, I’m inclined to believe it was through psychedelics. But the travel seemed to invite a type of demon into their tribe. The natives called them watching people. They never interacted, just watched the natives go about their travels. Some of the archeologists working on the dig called them librarians. They might have been right. I was inclined to call them Overwatchers. It sounds more ominous, and I believe that is what these things are, ominous and malicious.

“There were drawing of these things on the walls of the cave. Black figures with red dots as eyes. These were discounted as just being how the librarians or priests of the temple dressed, but I think it was more than that. They watch you, Martin. They just sit there and watch you talk, or sleep, or read. They don’t interact with you or the book. But inevitably once they watch you for long enough they make their move and take you away. Maybe they take you to the Infinite Library, more likely they take you to whatever dark universe they came from.”

A shiver went down Martin’s spine, and a cloud must have floated in front of the sun because the once well-lit room seemed to be as dark as the explorer’s words. “The temple had writing that described this disappearance?” Martin asked.

The explorer shrugged, “not in so many words. If it did explain it, we never got to the point of translating it.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Well, it happened to the three anthropologists who were studying the book I just gave you.”

Martin looked down at the now deep purple book and its disturbing gold design. “They took the archeologists away?”

Stanley nodded his head.

“How? When? Why?” The scientist asked.

“Each of them mentioned dreaming of the Overwatchers, then they complained about seeing them in real life. I chalked it up to poor sleep due to the nightmares and being overworked without making progress on the book. Then they disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yeah, like they stopped coming into work, their car was still in their driveway. Their doors were locked from the inside, and one of them even left the oven on. The Overwatchers have the power to transport through worlds, that’s obvious from the ruins we found. What I don’t think was mentioned was that they can transport people too.” The explorer shivered and looked at his empty teacup.

“If you knew this would happen why did you give this cursed book to me?” Martin accused.

“Because you wanted answers about the universe, you’re a physicist after all. And I’ve been having dreams about the Overwatchers. Sometimes I see them when I’m awake. It’s terrifying, and it freezes me. One has been watching us since I brought them up in this conversation,” He said this with a smile but kept his gaze locked on Martin.

Martin looked around the room slowly trying to find out where the monster was hiding. The man laughed at the scientist’s panicked gesture. “It’s been sitting behind you. Don’t know why. It’s not interested in you yet, just me right now. I’m surprised this worked so well.”

“What went well about this?”

“Typically I freeze up when they’re around. I can’t do anything but move my lips, and that takes all the effort in the world. But right now, I’m carrying on a conversation.”

“Why?”

“Why can’t I normally move? or why can I hold a conversation?” He asked looking for clarification.

Martin had none and responded with “both.”

“Well I don’t know why I can’t move, it might be their control of time and space. As for why I can move right now, well, that has to do with the shrooms I ingested before you got here. It was a theory I had. Psilocybin has some interesting effects on the brain and its perception of time. I thought it might help me combat the freezing up. Maybe, when they inevitably come for me, I’ll have a fighting chance.”

“Good to know,” Martin said unenthusiastic, “How long until they come for me?”

“Hard to say,” Stanley said nonchalantly. “It’s different for everyone. The first archeologist held on to the book for ten years but then the next two disappeared months away from each other. I’ve been holding onto it since then, about five years. After you mentioned that you were a scientist looking to solve all of the mysteries of the universe I started having more dreams about the Overwatchers. I took it as a hint and figured I’d give you something to focus on.

“I’ve learned a few things, and at the risk of sounding old and showing my age, I’ll tell you, don’t try to solve every problem you come across. Pick your battles and fight them until the end. The universe holds many mysteries. In time, science will solve as many. But if you try to solve all of them, you’ll be pulled every direction. Focus on one battle and learn everything you need to conquer the enemy.”

“This is a mystery worth solving?” Martin said looking down at the book that would soon become his most important work.

“Martin, this is the only mystery worth solving. If you figure this book out, then you will be able to unlock answers to questions no one ever conceived of.”

Martin considered refusing the book and the challenge. He could set it on the man’s coffee table and walk out the front door. The man’s delusions of monsters that Martin couldn’t see would remain in the house. But Martin trusted his friend. The man had told him dozens of stories, as many were true as were false. And because of this Martin had trained his gut to be able to smell one of Stanley’s tall tales. His gut told him this one hadn’t strayed far from the truth. “Thanks for the book,” he replied, “I guess I should get to reading it.” Martin stood up. His legs were shaky either from the drugs or the lengthy conversation.

“One thing,” Stanley said as he stayed in his chair.

“What is it?” Martin was curious what other oddities the man would add to his life.

“Would you mind leaving through the window of the bedroom. I left it open. Overwatchers tend to get scared off when doors open.” A smile flickered across his face.

Martin looked at the front door. It was bolted shut. He had no reason to protest the man’s strange request. “I can do that. See you next week or something.” Martin reached out his hand to shake his friend’s hand

“See ya,” Stanley replied as they shook hands. “Forgive me if I don’t get up. You know how these things can be,” He gestured at the ashtray.

“Of course,” Martin replied.

The young scientist climbed through the open window and went to work. His life became busy, and he didn’t get around to calling his friend for a month. The explorer was a known recluse, so after not picking up Martin’s phone calls he determined he would visit the man at his house. When Martin arrived the door was locked, and no one responded to the bell.

Martin checked the bedroom window and it was still open. He climbed through and went to the living room. Nothing had changed, the house was as messy as ever, and two empty teacups sat between the armchairs.

The only new thing he found was a note marked up with sloppy handwriting. It read, “I guess I’m going on an adventure.”

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Author’s Note: What do you think of the story so far? This is an idea that has been rattling around in my head for awhile. I will probably write a few more parts to this story to bring Carrus and Rodney’s story to a conclusion. Although, similar to the book itself, I hope this story will bring you more questions than answers.

Photo Credit: CJS*64, Ted’s photos, Thomas Hawk,