Wallace

The first puzzle chamber looked like everything I ever imagined when playing Dungeons & Dragons. The floor was uneven, rough-hewn stone, and to either side was a broad trough, six feet deep and with about three feet of water running through it, back towards the chamber we'd entered from. The streams didn't cause much spray, but it made the air very humid, causing water to pool in the depressions in the uneven stone floor. The scent of mildew filled the room, and the mortar between the uneven bricks that made up the walls had long since turned a dark shade of green. Even the bricks themselves, no two the same size as any other, had that greenish tinge of long-damp stone.

The damp stone reflected the light from dozens of candles spread throughout the room in clusters, though I got the feeling that the designers were cheating a little. The space was far too bright for it all to be coming from a few dozen candles, and I guessed that some trickery was involved with shrouded lights making up the difference.

When selecting which chamber to enter, we'd taken the left-most set of doors, and Simon's group could be seen through a series of arched windows on the right wall of the chamber. The windows and their clear glass clashed a little with the dungeon-punk aesthetic of the rest of the room, but it afforded us a view of our adversaries and their progress, so I supposed it was an even trade. The far wall of Simon's chamber was also windowed, and some of the survivors of the airship crash were in the room beyond. Prince Guillaume had been brought in from the cold- maybe, if I were lucky, I'd get a second chance at killing him -But he'd left the butler to lead the third and final team, and from the looks of things much of the staff had come along with him.

The puzzle consisted of a pair of doors, a clock, and a pair of statue-like automatons at the far end of the room. The doors were as rough and uneven as the rest of the room, but each one looked to weigh about five tons. Aside from a rugged handle on each, they were featureless, with only the subtle differences in how each of the doors had been hewn to differentiate them. The clock was set between and above the two colossal doors, and both of the wrought iron arms pointed straight up, showing either noon or midnight. The automatons flanked the doors, and clockwork machinery could be seen ticking away through gaps in the stone facade that covered most of each construct.

The rules for the puzzle itself had been on a stone lectern near the entrance. It was just about the only thing in the room that had straight, clean lines, and the rules themselves were written, again in several different languages, in a codex. Unfortunately, while there were sections in English and French, there was nothing in Elvish, which left me to translate for Valentine.

"So we've got the two statues against the wall there," I began, gesturing at the clockwork guards, "One always tells the truth, one always lies, but we don't know which is which. The goal is to determine which of the two doors is the right one, and we're docked five minutes for either getting the door wrong or asking any question that isn't immediately followed by us walking through the correct door."

"Why do we not simply guess which door is the correct one?" Valentine frowned, "It seems to me that we could only be wrong once, we'd lose only five minutes at worst, and none at best."

"You're right, so far as I can tell," I agreed, "But I think it's a logical trap. You're right, statistically, guessing seems like the best option. On average, you lose two and a half minutes, compared to who knows how many if you try to reason out which one lies and which one speaks the truth by asking a bunch of questions. Unless," I stressed, "You can figure out which is which with a single question. Give me a sec to make sure I've got this right in my head, and-"

"Hey," Will called, and I looked up to see him standing in front of the statue on the right, "What's two plus two?"

Goddammit.

"I do not know," the automaton replied, in a stilted monotone that sounded like a rendition of Microsoft Sam, circa eighteen twenty-one.

I sighed, and shut the book that held the rules for the chamber, and replaced it on its lectern. By the time I'd crossed the room to where the others were gathered, the minute hand of the clock had already moved to the five-minute position.

Will opened his mouth again, but I slapped my hands together, and all eyes fell on me.

"Alright. This is a team game," I said, speaking in English, "We're going to work, as a team. We're not going to run off and start trying shit without talking it through."

"Hey fuck you, buddy, this is a race. I figured that if you were going to waste time chatting up your girlfriend, the rest of us should probably get to work."

"We just lost five minutes because you were too impatient to wait for me to finish explaining," I retorted, "Any time we spend working as a group is going to be worth it to avoid the time penalties we'd take if we all tried to run things solo."

"Actually, we came up with the math thing together," Matt put in.

"Yeah, we're not doing this solo," Will insisted, "But we're not going to waste our time with the girls either. Neither of them speaks English, and it's gonna take forever to figure anything out if you've got to translate everything twice. Not to mention translating whatever they say, back into English. They don't even know what the hell we're talking about now," he insisted.

Will spread his hands, "We had two-thirds of the team here, while you were standing over there screwing around. But fine, you're here now. If you're so smart, what's your question?"

I glowered at Will for a moment, before shifting my gaze to the nearest statue, "If I asked the other automaton, which door would they tell me is the correct one?"

The statue pointed at the nearest door, and I walked up to the other and pulled the handle. It extended from the door, locked, and then the clock began to tick down our five-minute penalty.

I gestured at the clock, "There you go, maybe wait the extra thirty seconds next time."

I waved the girls over to the window and checked up on our competition while I gave them the rundown on what we'd been arguing about.

The clock in Simon's chamber still had both hands at the zero position, and he stood near the doors, scribbling on a clipboard that short and slim was holding up for him. The other girls were huddled in close, advising Simon I suppose, while Jankin stood idly by. I could only just make out a flowchart of some kind before Jankin spotted me and told Simon.

Simon covered the clipboard and gave me the finger, and I responded by raising my eyebrows and nodding towards our solved puzzle.

Simon came over the windows to take a look, and after sparing a moment to scan the room and give me the finger once again, he returned to his living clipboard holder. It was sensible, I suppose. There wasn't much for him to learn, and I doubted that either of us felt much like shouting through the glass.

"He's not wrong," the gynoid admitted, once I'd finished explaining, "Will, not Simon," she clarified, "There's only so much the two of us can do, and on top of our other troubles, Valentine needs you to read her the instructions for each of the puzzles."

"Yeah, well, Will is a dumbass and we'd be in the next room already if he hadn't jumped ahead," I replied, less than charitably.

"I'm having some difficulty following," Valentine admitted, "But perhaps, Wallace, you'd have an easier time keeping the others in line if you were a little more accepting."

"I-"

"Not everyone is as obsessive about the details as you are," she added before I could interrupt, "You've been spending too much time alone with me, most people prefer the carrot to the stick. Give it a try Wally."

"Alright, alright. I'll try."

This room carried on the nostalgic theme of the previous one, and I could see through this room's windows that Simon and the airship survivors had yet to catch up, so despite our five-minute penalty, we had a bit of a lead.

At the far end of the room was a simple arched stone doorway, and while it stood empty, the room beyond was too dim to make out much detail. The puzzle then was the grid of squares that filled the distance between us and the doorway, stretching to the walls at either side.

A quick count told me the grid was thirteen squares to a side, which meant there were a hundred and sixty-nine total squares. Each one held an embossed symbol that had been brushed with white paint, and even those furthest from the entrance were large enough to be easily legible.

This chamber lacked the pair of open streams that had been present in the previous room, though the sound of rushing water was much more prominent, and it was upon taking a closer look at the grid that I found the source. The grid squares were far from regular, and while the first row was carved into the floor, the remaining rows were supported from below by some sort of frame. This left gaps of up to finger width between them, through which I could see water flowing back towards the antechamber.

I frowned, perhaps this was the elimination mechanism? The instructions in the antechamber had said that elimination would drop you off at the end to wait for the others, but maybe they gave a mulligan for the first puzzle? Or at least, the first puzzle with an elimination mechanic.

Not that I much wanted to go for a swim, but there was a little room for error, at the very least.

Like the last room, this one had a lectern near the entrance that bore the room's rules, though there were two codices in this room.

Will held the thicker of the two codices, while Matt read over his shoulder, and the gynoid perused the much smaller codex. Valentine stood by, hands in the pockets of her jumpsuit.

Matt looked up as I approached, and spread his hands, "We going to do the team thing?" he asked insistently.

"Let's try the team thing," I agreed grudgingly.

"Alright, the bionic woman there has the rules," he went on, "And they're pretty simple. Each tile has a symbol, and you're supposed to figure out which symbol to step on next by finding the one that has some relationship with the symbol you're already standing on."

"And they fall away if you get it wrong?" I guessed.

"They're trapdoors," Matt clarified, "They spring back up after a moment, but yeah, get it wrong, and you end up in the drink and have to walk back from the beginning. No time penalty though."

"So you won't have to fucking yell at me if I don't get it perfectly right the first time," Will added.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Matt cut me off, "Teams, we're a team, everyone is going to be friends, because we're a team. Right guys?"

"Whatever," Will relented.

"Fine," I sighed.

"Alright, well now that we're done bitching at each other, maybe I can finish explaining," Matt said, glancing between the two of us. When no objection was forthcoming, he continued, "This is the codebook for the symbols," he explained, gesturing at the tome Will held, "It's got each symbol, and what it means in English, along with every other language on Earth. We were just checking it over."

"Alright, well you guys check that out, I'll fill Valentine in."

"It seems clear enough," Valentine mused, once I'd finished bringing her up to speed. "Do these symbols hold any special relevance in human culture?"

"Hey," Will cut in, "There's one here for water, and one for fish. I'm gonna try it, okay? Unless big brain over here thinks he can solve the whole thing himself."

Matt threw his hands up, "Teams, we're a team," reiterated strenuously.

"Go for it buddy," I sighed, before turning back to Valentine.

I rubbed at my temples, switching back and forth between the two languages was giving me a headache. Or maybe it was just the fact I had to deal with Will.

Finally, I shook my head, "I thought at first they were hieroglyphics or something, but no, they look completely made up to me."

"Hey, hey," Will interrupted again, "Do I have permission to try this next one? Fish and rod? I just want to make sure I have permission."

"Come on, Will. We're trying to work together here," Matt sighed.

"And that's why I'm asking my team," Will responded, in an overly reasonable tone, "Just trying to uphold our standard of perfection."

"Sure, make sense I guess," I agreed, well aware that the idiot was trying to get a rise out of me.

Valentine took my hand, and I looked down to see her peering up at me with a wry look. The faint smell of her pheromones was just detectable under the scent of mildew that covered all else like a blanket.

"Careful, I think if you try putting enough pheromones in the air to make me relax, you'll put those two to sleep for a week," I told her, nodding towards the two humans.

"Yes, well, you seem a little tightly wound at the moment," she observed, "And while I've got a few other ideas as to how I might help you de-stress, I'm not much of an exhibitionist."

"Do you ever stop?" I chuckled.

Val patted my hip, "They can't understand me, besides," she grinned, biting her lip, "You like it when the pretty girl says naughty things."

There was a metallic click, a yelp, a loud creak, and a splash, and already smiling despite myself, I looked up to see that Will had disappeared. In his place, was a grid square that was hanging by one edge. Matt peered down through the open hole, unperturbed.

"Fish to rod didn't work out?" I guessed.

"Nope," he shrugged.

Then he frowned, glanced at me, and then back down the hole. And it was at that point that the realization began to hit me. It had hit Matt as well, because he turned to fix me with a wide-eyed grimace.

"He had the codebook?" I asked flatly.

"Yeah."

"For fuck's sake."

"Hey, you said the fishing rod thing was fine," Matt protested halfheartedly.

"I was trying not to micromanage, kinda figured certain things didn't need to be said," I replied, "Guess I was wrong."

"Yeah."

"Did you get a look at the codebook?" I asked in French, "I don't suppose you have a perfect memory?"

The gynoid shook her head, "I am sorry, I can store certain information, but those memory stores are meant for standing instructions and the like. I can't replay my past experiences, thank god."

"Robolady have anything for us?" Matt asked tiredly.

"Nope," I replied, "What about you, do you remember any of the symbols?"

"Well, we've got water, fish, and rod here," he offered, "I think that one's fire, and that one's air," he added, pointing at two spots some distance further off.

"Is air the one that's the three wavy lines?" I asked, doing my best to guess which of the over a hundred symbols he'd been pointing at.

"Nah, that's fire, air is the one that looks like a bowl."

"And this is water?"

"Yeah."

"So the symbols have nothing to do with the meaning."

"Well, rod looks kinda like a penis."

"If your penis looks like that, you need to see a doctor."

"I said kinda," Matt repeated, "But you're right, I've got no idea how we're supposed to solve this without the codebook."

I turned to look back through to the last chamber, but Will was nowhere to be found.

"Waiting for him to come back?" Matt asked.

"What I want is the book back, maybe it's salvageable, Will I can take or leave."

Matt just shook his head at that remark, "I'll go talk to him, you... I don't know, you solved the last one quick. Maybe there's some trick for this one as well."

His footfalls echoed about the large empty space as he retreated, with the occasional splash as he walked through puddles of water, scattered here and there."

"Simon has joined us," the gynoid observed, and I looked over at the windows to see that was indeed the case.

He'd only just picked up the first codex, but they'd made it through well ahead of the airship survivors. Any lead we'd had was about to quickly disappear.

Hmm... maybe...

I walked over to the window to get a closer look at their puzzle grid, but matters were not as they'd hoped. They had the same set of symbols, at least as far as I could tell, but they were arranged very differently.

We could still make that work for us, I realized, and turned quickly to Val, "Do you have-" I began, and Val waved the notebook she was holding, "Perfect, I want you to watch what they do, and write down any pairs of symbols that work for them-"

"Wally, that's-" she began indignantly.

"A terrible plan, I know, I know," I soothed, "But it's the least worst one we have right now."

"Fine," she agreed, "I guess it's better than what we have now."

"Thank you," I told her in Elvish, before switching to French, "You're going to-," I switch to Elvish again, "Val, can you give her something to write with? Thanks."

My head was pounding, something in me doubted it that the translation necklace was meant to be used this way, but I switched back to French and continued, "Alright, you're going to take notes as well, starting with the three we already know."

"I'm sorry," the gynoid replied, "Their meanings are what? I know which three we've tried, but did not catch their meanings."

I recited them to her, and we both scanned the grid to see if they appeared anywhere else.

"I see the symbol for fish over there," she provided, "But it is nowhere near either water or rod."

"Yeah," I agreed, "It's just a rough count, but it looks to me as if there are forty or fifty unique symbols to deal with."

"If the number thirteen has any special significance," she mused, "It may be either thirty-nine or fifty-two, meaning each symbol appears between three and five times."

"Well I see four fishies total," I replied, pointing to the two other tiles, "So maybe we actually can get some info out of playing copycat. Valentine," I asked, switching languages, "Any developments?"

"Yes and no. I'm not certain if Simon believes you have some special strategy, or if he simply wanted rid of him, but it seems he's assigned that human to do as I am."

Sure enough, there was Jankin, on the other side of the glass, watching us with a clipboard in hand.

"He looks pretty bored," I noticed.

"Yes well, as am I. They've not made much progress, I have only a few symbols here. Mostly matches that don't work. They seem happy to try whatever occurs to Simon, all but the tall, well-developed one have already fallen through."

"Progress?" the gynoid asked, once Val had finished talking.

"Some, they've tried some things, Val's noted down what has and hasn't worked. They've not made it far though, what about you, any ideas?"

The gynoid froze, "Excusez-moi?"

I shrugged, "Something like this, different points of view can be beneficial. I don't know, maybe you're not Commander Data, but maybe being a living machine makes it easier to think things through rationally? Come on, put the meatbags in their place."

She looked between the notebook and the puzzle grid, and then leapt into action, quickly sketching out a perfect thirteen by thirteen grid.

"I will map out the puzzle. As we learn the relationship between the tiles, positive or negative, I will scribe that onto the grid. Even if the paths don't meet-"

"Hey, it's something. And we can figure out how to join the paths once it becomes a problem."

"You sound less irritated than you did a moment ago," Valentine observed, "We have a plan? Must I still stand here, scribbling?"

"Yes, but now we've got a way to get something out of it, in the meantime, anything new?"

"Aside from more symbols? Ah, here-" Val shifted slightly as the gynoid approached so she could read the symbols over her shoulder, "Well the small one with the unimpressive chest seems to take great joy in throwing herself into danger, however slight it may be in this case, at Simon's order. But otherwise, there is little of note."

"Alright," I said purposefully, in French, "I'm gonna try something dumb, whatever happens, write it down."

The gynoid nodded seriously, one eye on me, one on Val's notebook.

I walked onto the fish tile, and seeing that the rod tile had already returned to level, stomped on it. I was careful to keep my centre of mass over the safe tile, which left my kick without much follow-through. It took a couple of tries to get the force right, enough to drop the tile, but not so much I'd go in the drink along with it. But eventually, the rod tile fell in, and I was left standing on the fish tile.

"I hadn't thought of that," the gynoid called, from where she leaned against the window.

"Did Jankin see?" I asked a little raspily.

It had taken a bit of doing to get it right, and I was already breathing heavily.

"Ah," she took a peek through the window, "Yes, I believe he's telling Simon now."

"Good, it'll waste some of his time."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, pretty sure these things are tuned to only fall in once someone puts most of their weight on one. This trick only works for me since I weigh a thousand pounds," I explained, "I'm going to keep stomping tiles, maybe if we're lucky we can figure them out faster than Simon does."

My strategy was simple. I didn't try to make any progress. I just stomped as many tiles as I could as quickly as I could. The point was to find the relationships, and trying to make my way across at the same time would only slow me down.

I hit all the tiles next to the one I stood on, and then went back to the starting row and stomped each tile in turn. Once or twice the gynoid would have me skip a tile if the relationship was already known, and once I was done the first row, I looked up expectantly at the gynoid.

"I have something," she informed me, a little excitement creeping into her voice, "Third from the left, two forward, two right, and two more forwards," I followed her directions even as she continued talking, "Start trying in that area, there is another chain forward of that, but there is a three tile gap."

It was far from a perfect strategy, but even without the codebook, it gave us a way to progress. Stomping around eventually gave us the information to fill in the gaps, and while my dream of outpacing Simon was left unfulfilled, we did make it across only a couple of minutes after the last of his girls made it through the door.

The gynoid made a quick copy of her map, left it on the lectern, and joined us in investigating the next puzzle room.

The next puzzle room had little in the way of damp stone and wrought iron. It could not be further from the Gygaxian decor of the last two chambers. I wasn't even sure it was a proper puzzle room.

It looked more like a Victorian-era sitting room. Against one wall was a fireplace, though the masonry was of much greater quality than the rough dungeon stone we'd seen so far, and while it wasn't lit, there was a fire built and waiting in the hearth.

The room was made to feel a little cramped by all the furniture, some of it clustered near the fireplace, some of it not, all of it overstuffed. Old gas lamps sat in prominent positions on three of the tables. Even unlit, they drew the eye to the focus of the room. Next to each lamp and its box of matches, waited a small puzzle of one sort or another. Each was different, and a note on a stand near the door told their purpose.

This room was optional and provided guests with a chance to rest and relax. When I considered the Victorian temperament, or at least what I knew of it, such an arrangement made sense. I doubted that proper Victorian gentlemen and gentleladies would be rushing madcap through the puzzles as we had, and a chance to stop and take tea sounded like precisely the sort of thing they'd go in for.

Assuming a Victorian woman would even be allowed to come along for such a journey.

Tea could be ordered upon request, according to the note, but it also teased the prizes that were earned if one completed the bonus puzzles. There were more goodies of the sort we were to expect at the end of the adventure, along with the promise of a 'hint card', that seemed either to actually give the player a hint, or simply allow the user to bypass a small part of the puzzle, depending on the situation.

"Do you want to stay and do these puzzles?" Valentine offered.

The gynoid seemed interested at least. She was already curled up in a puffy high-backed chair, working on a puzzle box.

"Sitting down to relax might just be a good idea," she hinted.

It was a good idea, and I was getting tired. I didn't have a watch on me, and there were no windows, but I knew that we must be nearing nightfall. It would be evening at the very least, and we'd both been going since a little after dawn.

But I wasn't about to listen to such a sensible hint, so I said, "No, I'm going to check out the next puzzle before we're joined by our friends. Hell, give them the spare puzzle when they show up."

"Wally!" Val insisted before I could make much progress threading my way through the furniture.

"Val," I began tersely.

"You want to get started on the next one, fine, but why don't you run me through the rules on this one," she asked gently, indicating one of the puzzles, "Before you go rushing ahead."

"You're right, sorry."

"I know, now do try to behave yourself for a moment so I can take some notes."

Ducking through the door at the back of the sitting room had the feeling of stepping out of a cosy study in London, and directly into a medieval dungeon. Albeit, a medieval dungeon that had a set of enormous concentric stone rings built into the far wall above the door. There were six rings in total, surrounding a small circular section in the centre. From the looks of things a maze had been carved into the rings, then they'd all been rotated out of position. The centre seemed to be where the path began, as while on the rings the path was a lightish grey against the dark stone, here it glowed with inner orange light.

Ramps led down at either side, to a walkway that ran just above the surface of the flowing water. Water, I noted, that ran away from the entrance. Alcoves could be seen cut into the stone below, accessible by the walkway, and positioned in such a way that someone standing in one would not be able to see the rings above. Over the sound of the stream, they'd also probably have a hard time calling out to the others.

The windows were present once again, and I could see Simon's team, already partway through rearranging the rings to light up the carved maze. Simon himself was notably absent, as was tall and busty, presumably back in the sitting room, working on the extra puzzles.

The instructions told me little I didn't already know, except for the time penalty. There was a certain minimum number of moves that it would take to finish the maze, and for every move one made beyond this number, the team would be docked, again, five minutes. As for the actual mechanism by which the rings were rotated, the alcoves I'd seen were the key. Each ring had two buttons, one that rotated clockwise, one that rotated counter-clockwise, and each alcove held two buttons.

Obviously a puzzle for more than one person, but at the very least, I could get started. Maybe figure out which buttons corresponded to which rings. The closer this was to solved before I had to deal with other people, the fewer chances there were for irritations.

My drawing skills were a far cry from either Valentine's or the gynoid's, but then my sketch of the ring's starting position didn't need to look pretty. I also drew a rough map of the six alcoves so I'd have a way to track which buttons turned which rings, and descended the ramp on my left to try my luck.

The way the penalties were laid out, the teams were almost guaranteed to take at least one. The ring could be rotated into position going either clockwise or counter-clockwise, but one would result in fewer moves than the other. So the odds were when you were pressing each of the buttons to figure out which was which, you'd have a fifty-fifty shot of moving it in the correct direction, to begin with. I could be thought of as six coin flips then, and you need them all to come up heads to get a perfect score.

Fifty, twenty-five, twelve and a half, six and a quarter, three and an eighth, so... one and a half percent, something like that.

Unless left was always counter-clockwise, and right was always clockwise, or something of the like. Inspecting the buttons gave no hint as to which ring or direction they were for, so with a shrug, I hit the left-most button and went back up the ramp to see how things had changed.

I couldn't tell yet if I'd gotten lucky. The button I'd hit was for the fourth ring, and with the puzzle in its incomplete state it was hard to tell whether clockwise was the right direction or not, but it was at least, not obviously wrong. It also told me how far the rings, or at least the number four ring, moved. One button press was sixty degrees, which meant six presses for a full rotation. So I noted down the result and went to the next alcove on the right side, and again tried the left-most button.

And was therefore very confused when I returned to the set of rings. I'd been hoping that I'd find another ring had been rotated in the same direction, giving some weak evidence that the left button rotates the relevant ring clockwise. Instead, as best as I could tell, none of the rings had moved. As far as I could tell, it looked exactly as it had at the start, and that was the clue.

I recalled the rules, two buttons per ring, two buttons per alcove. It never said that both buttons in an alcove were for the same ring. So the left side buttons in the first two alcoves both rotated the number four ring, one clockwise, the other counter-clockwise.

I updated my notes accordingly and noted that made it even less likely for a team to avoid the time penalty altogether. That was a chance lost to us now, but it did something to explain why Simon's team was only now working on solving the third ring.

I gave the buttons another look when I went back down to the alcoves, the rushing water doing a little to help me relax, but even knowing the two buttons that formed a matched pair, so to speak, I could see nothing to give a clue, even in hindsight. So I settled for hitting the other button in the first alcove and went to see what had changed.

The first, and most evident change, was that Matt and Will had joined me. The hush of the water had masked the sound of the opening door, and now the two of them stood before me, Matt, a little expectant, Will a little abashed.

"Sorry," Will said lamely.

I let out a long breath, "It's fine," I said finally.

It wasn't, of course, fine. But I wanted to get into it even less than I wanted him, or anyone, to be here with me. Besides, what was there really to say? He'd fucked up, he knew that, and I'd found a way to progress regardless.

A glance told me that Simon's group, still sans-Simon, had completed the third ring. The airship survivors, at least a couple of them, had also filtered through. However, they had yet to do anything of consequence.

"Alright, here's the deal," I explained, "Six rings, twelve buttons. One button moves the ring one way, the other moves it the other. We've got to figure out which button does which, and solve the puzzle. The buttons come in pairs, but they don't actually have to both match to the same ring. We've also only got a certain number of moves before we start taking time penalties. Any questions."

After a look to one another, they both shook their heads.

"Alright, Will, you're up here, Matt, you're on the buttons on that side there," I indicated, "We're going to try each of the buttons except for the last one on Matt's side. I'll start, and when I press the button, you'll call out which ring moved- I've got them numbered, the centremost is one, outermost is six -and in which direction. Then Matt goes, and we go back and forth until we know what each button does."

"Why not press the last one on Matt's side?" Will asked.

"Process of elimination," I replied, "Once only one button remains, there'll be only one ring and direction it could be. No sense in pressing it if we don't need to. Everyone cool with the plan?"

Again, a round of nods. Matt and I took our positions, and I called out, "You ready?" so Will could hear me over the running water.

I received a slightly muffled, "-eah!" in reply, and pressed the right-side button in the first alcove.

There was an unintelligible shout a moment later, and I leaned back to shout, "Say again?"

"Press it again," came the bellow.

I frowned for a moment, considered the button, shrugged, and did as he'd asked.

I leaned back to hear his next shout better and heard a slightly hoarse, "Again."

I ducked back into the alcove and repeated the button press.

"Again."

I frowned and considered the notes I'd taken, but after a moment I saw what he must be thinking. If each press rotated the ring a sixth of the way, then it looked as if the number one ring was set precisely opposite where it needed to be. Three button presses then were precisely what was required to get it into position. So after a moment's consideration, I hit it again.

And then Will said something very concerning. He said, "Again."

I swear to fuck.

Matt, apparently as confused as I was, summited the ramp at about the same time I did, but he didn't seem angry. More exasperated than anything else. At least that made one of us, because I could feel the anger in my belly, anger that was trying to claw its way out of my throat to get at moron in fatigues standing before me.

I forced it down and kept my features placid. Just like I'd been wrong about the buttons and the alcoves, maybe I'd been wrong about how far each button press rotated the other rings. Maybe four presses made sense.

But a small part of myself, the logical part, was whispering in anger's ear. It was reminding anger that I'd come up with a very sensible plan, a plan that Will had immediately tossed aside. I'd let him, of course, because I was trying to play nice, and that only irritated me further.

And on top of all of it, this was petty bullshit. This shouldn't matter, I shouldn't be getting so pissed off about some little contest that, in the grand scheme of things, might not even matter. But the fact I was mad about this nonsense only stoked the fires hotter.

I gritted my teeth as I looked over my drawings and compared it to what I saw before me. I'd been right about each button moving the ring one-sixth of the way through its rotation. Which meant I'd just wasted three moves, four, if Will had his way, moving the second ring to a position that might not even be the correct one. I thought it lined up if I mentally rotated the first ring to where it would need to be to match correctly, I thought it might be right.

"Will," I began, trying and failing to keep my voice level, "What are you even doing? The ring was only two positions off. It could have just gone the other way."

"It was too far," he explained defensively, "I was trying to get it to rotate back around."

"What?" I stammered, "There's more than one button, and that wasn't even the plan."

"I'm just trying to get the rings to line up, look, it's almost there," he insisted, "One more and we'll be fine."

I couldn't even form a coherent sentence, but Matt, the voice of reason, stepped in, "No, Will, he's saying that it was a shorter path the other way."

"Yeah," Will agreed, without seeming to hear what Matt had said, "And it had to go the rest of the way around to get in position."

"That's not even-" my jaw hurt from me grinding my teeth together, "That's not what I told you to do. I told you to tell me which rings were moving and how."

"Yeah, well," Will jeered, "I saw the solution, so I went for it. That's what you do? Why is it okay when you do it, but not me?"

"Because you don't listen," I growled, "I told you how this puzzle worked, I even asked you if you had any questions, and you said no."

"Who fuckin died and put you in charge?" Will demanded, "Fuckin' retard over here is getting all spastic about a game. Chill man. Stupid thing is almost solved, and you're all pissy I didn't do it exactly how you would."

"Do you even listen? Or do you just wait for the other person to finish speaking."

"Look, Will, he's just saying-"

"Yeah, coulda moved it the other way or whatever, but we don't know what that button does," he jerked his chin at me, "do we smartass? But we know what this one does, just finish pressing it till everything lines up. It's not a big deal. Besides, maybe if this asshole hadn't been keeping his notes to himself and had decided to share like a grownup, I might have known what was going on."

There was a deafening crack as Will struck the large window, and a spiderweb of fractures spread out from the point of impact. He slid down the wall and hit the rapidly flowing stream feet first. The flowing water caught his feet as if it were a conveyor belt, and flipped him head over heels before he splashed down bodily and the stream carried him off.

I couldn't recall if I'd thrown, kicked, or pushed the man. But I did know that had he not been wearing the olive drab armour which covered his torso, the impact might have broken ribs. Killed him even. Everyone in the chamber beyond, Simon included, was staring at me. I turned away to see that Valentine and the gynoid were present as well, standing just inside the door for who knows how long.

I was red, right from my scalp, down to the base of my neck. So red my skin itched. It wasn't anger either; I was embarrassed. I hated drawing attention to myself, which was bad enough when one is eight feet tall. Worse still, I hated for my control to slip. I hated even thinking about even the hypothetical or remembering times when it had happened. And then I'd gone and lost control more thoroughly than I had since I was a small child.

Matt said nothing. At first, out of shock, but once he'd gathered his wits, he raised his hands and walked wordlessly from the chamber.