It was 10:00 before I finally made it back my dorm room, exhausted from an evening of rehearsals and group meetings.  While the thought of drafting papers or doing reading assignments was overwhelming, the thought of cross-referencing all those little numbers into that book I had checked out was irresistible.

I sat down at my desk and set out the book and note, starting from the “WELL” I had discovered earlier and moving forward.  D-O-N-E.  A congratulatory message to start.

Though exciting at first, the work quickly grew tedious.  I found myself having to check and re-check letters as I lost count over and over again.  My back grew stiff from being tense and hunched over.  Still, each newly formed word gave me a little boost to keep going.

In between look-ups, I couldn’t help but inspect some of the passages of the book.  ”Lengthening of the human lifespan to superhuman levels,” ”direct connection between our minds,” “as if those robots were parts of their bodies.”  Everything sounded a little out there, a little new age.  But the book was clearly presenting these ideas from a scientific standpoint.  The word, I quickly learned, was transhumanism.  My interest was piqued, and at several points I had to remind myself of the task at hand after getting caught up in a particularly curious chapter.

Finally, I reached the end of the small paper and had a complete message:

WELL DONE YOUVE COMPLETED THE FIRST CLUE
YOUR NEXT CLUE TIME AHEAD THE INNOVATOR BEHIND THE
STARS BELOW THIRTY STEPS EAST LOOK BENEATH

The clue didn’t make much sense, and I thought maybe the words were jumbled, but “thirty steps” seemed to indicate a place somewhere on campus.  I checked the clock and found that an hour had passed.  I needed to get up early the next morning to finish up some reading and work for my classes and couldn’t justify spending more time on this puzzle thing.  Besides, it would be easier to find whatever I was looking for in the daylight.  I turned out the lights and got into bed, thoughts of the clue floating through my head as I began to fall asleep.

The sound of someone outside my door drifted into my consciousness, not uncommon in our shared hallway.  But the sound of something being slid underneath my door was enough to jolt me back awake.  I sat up quickly enough to see a shadow in the light from the stairwell and watched it retreat.  I held my breath, only barely able to discern the sound of light footsteps quickly making their way back down the stairs.

I got up and retrieved the item, another small black envelope, same as the one I had received that morning.  I briefly considered bolting out the door and down the stairs to chase down my messenger, but knew it was too late to catch up.

I opened the envelope and took out a card with a single, brief message.

You’re running late.

To be continued…

Despite feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data it presented, that little piece of paper burned a hole in my pocket all the way to the dining hall.  I argued back and forth with myself over whether I really needed to eat anything that day, and it was all I could do to grab the first plate I saw, bringing out the note before I had even sat down.

I quickly lost my momentum, however, as my eyes darted over those numbers again.  So many numbers, zero context, somehow it felt like there wasn’t even anything to figure out.  Those numbers could mean anything.

Decidedly less interested, I put the note away and walked to my psych class, a lecture with about 300 other students.  I sat through the whole class, my mind turning not even once to the frustrating little note.  The professor gave us our reading assignment for the next class:  Chapter 7, pages 209-237.  As I wrote the instructions in my notebook, a small spark of realization was lit and the note full of numbers floated back into my mind.  The spark formed into a coherent thought — could the numbers be directions pointing toward something in a book?  The professor’s voice faded away as the pieces began to fit together in my head.  The numbers did have context; I had found the note inside of a book.  It wasn’t just an arbitrary hiding place.  I had been too hasty.

By the time the class was over, I was so sure of my hunch that I could hardly keep from running all the way to the library, containing my enthusiasm to a brisk walking pace.  I made my way back to those oddly-lit stacks, somewhat nervous that the book might have been checked out in the meantime.  I felt simultaneously relieved and more anxious as I saw it still sitting there.  I took it off the shelf and retrieved my note, heading over to an unoccupied desk.

My first plan of attack had come directly from my professor’s instructions, thinking that the numbers might represent chapter-page-line, or chapter-line-word.  I skimmed through the fairly small book and found that there were only 11 chapters, and some of the sequences began with numbers upwards of 100.  Those had to be page numbers then, I decided.  I turned to the last page of the book and confirmed that there were no larger numbers on the note.

That would make the other two numbers represent line and word.  But the word numbers seemed too high as well.  Finally, page-line-letter seemed to check out as a plausible interpretation, and I set to work on the first few sequences.  W, it began.  Then W-E, a good start, nothing gibberish yet.  W-E-L-L.  That was good enough for me.  I felt a jolt of excitement at the sight of that word.   I had no doubt I was on the right track.

But time wasn’t on my side.  I still had two more classes, dinner, and evening commitments.  I checked out the book and decided that I wouldn’t try to keep working on the code until I was back at home for the night.

To be continued…

I held the small piece of paper in my hand.

RB155 .N27 2005

The “2005″ jumped out from the rest of the text.  Clearly a year, but what about the rest?  Stumped, I leaned back in my chair and looked around again, wondering whether someone was watching from afar to see how long it took me to solve the first clue.  I watched the rows of bookcases that filled half of the room, searching for a pair of eyes peering through the books or the slight movement of a figure staying just out of sight.  My surveillance didn’t last long, however, as a flash of inspiration from those bookcases turned my mind back to the clue.  Could it be a call number?

I gathered my things and found the nearest computer dedicated to library database searching.  It was hard to shake the feeling that I might be being watched or monitored somehow as I self-consciously typed in the text from the card.

My hunch was correct.  One result came back, a book called More Than Human by Ramez Naam, located in the new stacks of the engineering library, checked in.  Not the library I was currently in, but still close by.  A short walk in the crisp autumn air, and I was there.

I had never had much reason to explore the stacks of any of the libraries on campus, and mostly stuck to studying in the main areas.  The stacks in the engineering library were in the basement, with low ceilings and yellow fluorescent lights.  A heavy-looking door at the end of the room lead to the old stacks, and I was tempted to go exploring there, deeper into the heart of the building, but decided to stick to my task instead.

The stacks were quiet in a stuffy kind of way, well-insulated with carpeted floors and no windows.  The atmosphere could easily trick you into assuming you were alone, startling you when a person appeared in between the shelves, moving with impossibly quiet footsteps.  The place could be cozy or spooky, depending on your outlook.

The shelf I was looking for was easy to find, and the hunter green book, its dust jacket removed, was waiting there as promised.  I pulled the book from the shelf and began flipping through the pages.  Nothing. I looked around the area for the discreet black envelope tucked away somewhere on the shelf, but again found nothing.

I returned to the book, this time searching more carefully.  Finally, I found a small piece of notebook paper slipped between the pages, hardly substantial enough to call attention to itself.

But it was unusual.  The paper was covered, front to back, in number sequences, hand-written in pencil in a small, deliberate print.

… 113-8-29  80-19-2  198-3-35 …

There had to have been at least a hundred sequences in total.  My head spun just looking at them, and I wondered if my mysterious journey might end before it had really begun.  I put the book back on the shelf, put the note in my back pocket, and headed for the dining hall with the intention of studying the strange numbers over lunch.

To be continued…

It was late autumn of my first year of college, and in my effort to keep clinging on to the ultra-studious persona I had cultivated in high school, I had been making myself go to the library after my early class and study until lunch.  But that early class was early, and the library was always so cold.  Most mornings, my time there was spent with my head resting on my folded arms, Franz Ferdinand’s only two melancholy songs playing on loop through my headphones while I drifted in and out of a doze.  Those cubicle-style desks just made it so easy.

One particular morning, I had dozed off so deeply that, when I woke, my heart leapt, nervous that I had slept through lunch and missed my afternoon class.  I checked my phone for the time–I had only been asleep for 10 minutes.  I sighed and sat up, figuring my unexpected adrenaline shot would prevent me from falling back asleep any time soon.  I turned to the stack of books I had dutifully gotten out when I first arrived, despite having known I probably wouldn’t open them.  There was something set on top of my books, something square and black.  An envelope?  I stared at the thing while my fuzzy brain tried to remember what it was, but there was nothing.  It wasn’t mine, and it hadn’t been there before I had fallen asleep.

I picked up the envelope and turned it over.  No markings.  I looked around to see if anyone was nearby, leaning back to look in the cubicles beside me.  All empty.

A note from a friend?  I wondered as I opened the envelope.  Probably.  Still, the thought of the whole thing made me feel a bit uncomfortable.  Those cubicle walls gave a false sense of privacy.

Inside the envelope was a single piece of white paper with the following written in flowery script:

This is a test.
There is a prize at the end.
Should you choose to participate,
here is your first clue:

RB155 .N27 2005

I turned over the note and found nothing on the back.  A test?  It could still be a joke from a friend, I thought, but it seemed a little too elaborate.  My heart began beating a little faster as I considered the mysterious origins of my note.

“Should you choose to participate…”

Yeah, right, I thought.  It was apparent that it would be impossible for me to ignore such a curious item.  There was only one thing to do: figure out what “RB155 .N27 2005″ meant.

To be continued…