“Holmes what are you thinking about?” I asked, finally getting tired of the silence.
“Hmm so 45 minutes it is,” my friend mused.
“45 minutes? What 45 minutes?”
“Nothing. I just owe Mycroft a plum pudding next time we meet,” Sherlock said, stretching out his gaunt frame.
“Why do you owe him a plum pudding?” I demanded, with a sinking feeling that it had something to do with me.
“Well I’m sure you already know why. Or at least have an idea of why.”
“Holmes I positively have no idea as to why. Please do tell me why. What did you mean by 45 minutes and why do you owe Mycroft a plum pudding?”
At that time, Player responded, “Well obviously Mr. Holmes and Mr. Holmes had a bet of some sort and Mr. Holmes just lost. I’m guessing it has to do with silence and how long you can stand it, Dr. Watson.”
“Well, well. It seems that Player has indeed learnt a thing or two from me after all. And it only took 4 months. Impressive. See Watson, once again you saw but did not observe. We had a big hearty breakfast at 10 AM. At 10:15 AM, we sat down in our respective chairs. I picked up the day’s mail, you the day’s newspaper, and Player picked up their cellphone. At 10:25 AM I put the mail down and leaned back. At 10:28 AM you put the newspaper down and after staring at me for 2 minutes and 10 seconds, you looked out the window. Hence started the waiting game. At 11:13 AM you asked me what I was thinking about and hence my comment about 45 minutes. And Player is right. Last time we went to Diogenes Club, Mycroft and I made a small bet after you didn’t even allow a 5 minute silence. Mycroft bet that under the right conditions the silence could last at least 40 minutes. I said that the only time that would happen is when we were on a case and I was deep in thought. Mycroft has won. I was not thinking about a case and yet you still managed to allow the silence to last for 45 minutes,” Sherlock explained.
Hating myself for falling for his trap and hating Player for solving the mystery, I chose to lapse into silence instead. But this time the silence would only last 5 minutes for Player exclaimed, “Oh my god Mr. Holmes! Hackers have taken over the British government’s internal servers. It’s just happened!”
“No Player. It happened 3 hours ago. I’m just waiting for the call now. Any minute my phone will ring,” Sherlock responded, looking down at his cellphone.
As if on cue it rang. “Yes Mycroft?…No I’m terribly busy…Why should I tell you?…No I cannot spare even a minute…Well I don’t really care about them…So be it…You wouldn’t dare…Oh the horror. Take that back…Fine. I’ll send Watson and Player…No I cannot come. I told you I’m terribly busy…Well it’s them or Mummy…Good. That’s what I thought.”
Sherlock hung up and said, mockingly, “Watson and Player go to the Diogenes Club. The country needs you. Oh and do tell Mycroft that if he ever tries to get the monarch to knight me again I will tell Mummy all about the Diogenes Club. Even the stuff you don’t know.”
“But Holmes you have no cases right now! And this is of national importance!” I exclaimed.
“Booooring!” Sherlock drawled. “I would rather sit in this armchair and wait for the boredom to kill me than increase my rates of dying by taking on this boring case.”
“What is the case?” Player asked.
“Oh. Yes. The hackers. They have some rather weird demands. Mycroft would work on them himself, but he is rather preoccupied. Can’t leave the Diogenes Club for even one minute. Anyways, chop chop. Go over there and solve the mystery and save the day. Take the knighthood and do get Mycroft off my back.”
Sherlock stood up and pushed us out of the room. Player and I exchanged glances and then headed off for the Diogenes Club. We were immediately escorted to the Stranger Room. Once there, Mycroft tried to look pleased, “Ah Dr. Watson and Player. Just the people I need to see right now.”
“You don’t need to act Mycroft. Sherlock made it abundantly clear that you only agreed to us because he mentioned Mummy,” I responded. “Now do you want to tell us why we are here?”
“Fine,” Mycroft sighed. He turned his laptop around to face us and said, “At 8 AM this morning, all our servers were hacked. Military, M16, finance, everything. It’s all in the hands of these hackers. And they won’t give their demands to us straight. No. They’ve sent us this puzzle with this message.”
Player and I bent down to read, “You have 24 hours and 8 steps. Solve them to get to our demands, else you will lose everything. Your time starts the moment you click on the link below.”
“And that link is the first puzzle?” Player asked.
“Of course. And no one has clicked on it. I made sure of that,” Mycroft said, ominously.
“Well let’s get started then?” I asked, unsurely.
“Of course. But are you certain that you and Player can solve these puzzles on your own?” Mycroft asked.
“What? Aren’t you going to accompany us Mr. Holmes?” Player asked.
“No Player. I have too much other business to take care of. These hackers have also set off panic amongst the general public and all branches of government. I must handle them. If Sherlock were here, he could have solved these puzzles in a second. But of course he loves being difficult in times of need. Oh well. I might be able to spare a few M16 agents for you later, but for now you two are on your own. Click on the link only when you are ready.”
With that mini speech over, Mycroft left the room. Player and I exchanged glances and then Player said, “Well looks like it’s just us Dr. Watson. Should we get started then?”
Both of us looked at the screen as the “Click Here” link pulsated.
Player took a deep breath and then clicked on the link. Immediately the screen went black and a message popped up, “Welcome Monarch. How does it feel? To be held hostage? To be helpless? To have someone presiding over you? You spent centuries ruling over others with an iron fist. Now it is your turn to be subjugated to our rules. Over the next 24 hours, you will be given 8 puzzles to solve. Fail to solve them and you will lose everything forever. Solve them all correctly and you will be able to fulfill our demands. Don’t worry. By the time you finish these 8 puzzles, our demands will be a breeze. You will get 3 hours for each puzzle. If you fail to finish on time, you will lose everything. There are no hints. There are no multiple tries. We aren’t playing a game. We are simply testing your abilities. And here’s your first puzzle.”
6 pictures popped up on screen. As Player scrolled down, he saw spaces for 5 words, each of a different length.
After staring at the screen for an hour, Player suddenly sat up and exclaimed, “I’ve got it! The dots! There are 5 colours. I bet if we write down the letters, then we can unscramble them into words.”
I got excited and said, “Alright let’s do one colour at a time.”
As Player read out the letters, I wrote them down in my trusty notebook. Once we had all the letters, we set about unscrambling the words. 20 minutes later, we had 5 words that seemed to be right. Player quickly typed them into the screen and pressed Enter. The screen became black again. As we waited, getting more and more tense, Player asked, “Did we mess up? Is it over? Are we finished?”
Then a message appeared on the screen, “Don’t worry. You haven’t failed just yet. But that was just the beginning. As these puzzles progress, we will make them more interesting and more fun. If you thought that was hard, then just wait for this puzzle. Let the fun begin.”
The message disappeared and a crossword puzzle appeared. I exclaimed, “This is absurd! How is this going to take us 3 hours? I already know 4 of the answers!”
“Yeah but there are like 40 words to fill in,” Player pointed out. “And some of these clues look hard. Let’s get started.”
Player finished typing in the last answer and then looked at me. “Good to submit?”
I examined the screen and nodded. “Yes. I think those are all right.”
Player clicked the next button and waited. The screen went blank and then a new message appeared on screen, “Well, well. You are proving yourself worthy. Congratulations. But this is not going to get any easier. In fact with each puzzle, you are bound to make mistakes and at that time we will catch you and destroy everything.”
Then the message dissolved and another appeared, “You may be asking yourself, what’s next? Well now you have to solve the patterns. You will get 25 sequences below. Simply find the next one in the sequence.”
Again the message disappeared and now 25 sequences appeared onscreen. As I examined them, I saw what the hackers had done. They had started off easy and then made the sequences progressively difficult. There would be a lot of math involved. I checked my watch and saw that 5 hours had already passed. We had only saved an hour in the unscrambling. And we were no closer to finding out what the hackers wanted or why they were doing this.
Player interrupted my thoughts excitedly, “I’ve got the first 4!”
I examined the numbers and then said, “Try multiplying by 34. There is some clear pattern in this last one.”
Player tested it and reached each number. They quickly entered the last number and then pressed enter with just 5 minutes to spare. The screen went blank and then a new message appeared. “Well, well, well. You’re almost halfway there. Good job. But things are not going to get any easier. In fact they will get harder and harder. Because you will have less to do, but it will be harder.”
The message faded and a new message appeared. At the same time, Mycroft appeared with a waiter and a tray of food. He asked, “How’s it going?”
“We’ve finished 3 rounds. The fourth has just appeared,” Player responded, their eyes still on the screen.
I was also ignoring Mycroft. While it was true that I was hungry, I wanted to read the message first before it disappeared. The message read “For this puzzle you simply have to solve some riddles. But you also need to rearrange the solved words to form a sentence. Take special note of that sentence. It will be helpful to understand our demands.”
Mycroft waited, impatiently, and then demanded, “I don’t have a lot of time. What is going on here?”
“You know what is going on Mycroft. We are solving the puzzles. It’s been 8 hours. We’ve gotten through 3. We are working as fast as we can, but these are not easy. The first one took us less time, but the other 2 have been long and painful. Now we need to solve some riddles,” I responded, somewhat cross with him for trying to rush us.
“Well then work faster and stop acting like imbeciles. If we can finish these puzzles in less than 24 hours, we may have more time to find these hackers instead of fulfilling their demands,” Mycroft ordered.
“We would work faster, if there was a ‘we’, Mr. Holmes. I don’t see you working with us. You just left us here and ran off. If you or Mr. Holmes were here, we would have already been finished with these 8 puzzles. Us two imbeciles are working as fast as we can,” Player responded, snarkily.
Mycroft looked flummoxed at that. Without responding, he turned on his heel and left. I looked at Player with newfound respect. No one ever spoke to Mycroft Holmes like that and got away with it. Well apart from Sherlock.
Player got up and went over to the tray. He filled a plate with food, grabbed two water bottles, and came back. Seeing him get food, I decided to get a bite as well. Once I had filled my plate as well, we sat down to work on the next puzzle. Riddles.
Player and I looked proud of ourselves. We had finished the riddles and solved the sentence in an hour. Now we were 3 hours ahead. We may get through these puzzles sooner than we had thought. As the screen went black, we relaxed for the first time. We were halfway there. These hackers wouldn’t be able to take us down. Maybe we weren’t such imbeciles after all.
The screen filled with a message. “Congratulations. You are halfway there. But if you thought those were hard, then you haven’t seen anything yet. You will now be going into death mode. There are doors. 15 doors. Virtual doors to unlock. To unlock each door, you will have to find the right pattern of left, right, up, and down. Five of them will unlock each door. If you enter even one combination wrong, you will immediately fail and lose everything forever. Whenever you are ready, click below.”
Player finished entering the last combo and then waited. It had been a hard round. We had to be absolutely certain with each combo before entering it. We couldn’t be wrong about even one direction, else the door wouldn’t open and the British government would lose everything.
I wondered where Sherlock was. It wasn’t like him to not even show up once. I hadn’t expected that of him. I had thought that by now he would have shown up, made some smart comment about how slow we were, and then taken over. But here we were. On the 6th puzzle, 12 hours later, and still no Sherlock.
The good news was that we were ahead of schedule. We should have been 15 hours later, but we had saved 3 hours over the puzzles and were now well on our way to complete these puzzles ahead of schedule. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the hackers. Then I would show them what threatening the monarch meant.
Player interrupted my thoughts, “The next round is here. We’ve been given 45 brain teasers to go through.”
“That’s an average of 15 per hour and 4 minutes per brain teaser. Why are these hackers doing this?” I moaned.
“No idea, but are you ready?”
“Let me get some water. Then we can go at it. Do you want anything?” I asked, motioning to the food cart.
“Yeah one of those covered tart things. That was so good!”
I grabbed the water and the tart and then we began working on the brain teasers. My brain was hurting, but we would get through these.
As Player entered the last answer, the door opened and Mycroft walked in. “Well Dr. Watson and Player. How is it going?”
“We just finished the 6th round. We’re going to find out if we did it right or if we failed,” Player responded.
“Are you here to help us?” I asked.
“Oh no. I am far too busy to sit around. And you seem to be managing well on your own. No I am here to tell you that someone is here to see you,” Mycroft replied, turning to the door.
I looked up, half-expecting to see Sherlock. But instead a young man walked in. Mycroft said, “You were complaining that you don’t have help, so I found Andrew and had him brought over from his school in Asia. I cannot tell you where in Asia. He will now work with you on the last 2 rounds. I will be back later.”
Then without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heels and left. Andrew sat down, sheepishly. He said, “Look I don’t know if you are happy to see me here or not, but given I’m here I guess you’ll just have to accept me being part of the gorup. Mr. Holmes was quite clear when he brought me over that if I didn’t convince you to let me help out, he would pull my funding. And if he pulls my funding, I’ll never be able to finish schooling.”
Player quickly said, “Man we can use all the help we can get. We’ve been at this for 15 hours and our brains are tired. And the next round is TV trivia. I know next to nothing about TV shows.”
“I’m not too bad at it. My school encourages immersion in all types of media. They even gave us access to Netflix accounts to encourage us to watch different forms of media in diffierent languages,” Andrew responded.
“Well then we can definitely use your help because there are 50 questions here and I recognize maybe 4 of these at first glance,” Player answered.
I was impressed with Andrew. When the screen showed that we had finished that round as well, I praised him, “That was good Andrew. I didn’t know that one could be so knowledgeable in TV shows as well. Thank you for the help. It would definitely have taken us all 3 hours and we probably wouldn’t have gotten them all right anyways.”
“So now instead of 21 hours, we’re done 7 ‘puzzles’ in 17 hours,” Player commented. “Alright it’s time for the last round. I wonder what this will be.”
In response, the screen popped up with a message. “In this final round you will be playing against us in a game of popularity and wit. We have over 40 answers to 100 rather intriguing questions. Now you will answer those same 100 questions and get a score that is higher than the average score. Can you do it? If yes, click below. If not, then quit now and go home.”
Andrew exclaimed, “Popularity? There’s no way we’ll be able to beat this!”
“They gave this round on purpose. We can’t check what the average is, so they’ll just set it higher than that each time and we’ll never get through,” Player agreed.
But then the screen updated. It was if the hackers could read our minds because the screen said, “To prove that we will not cheat you, we are providing you the average that you have to beat below. The average is 65. Get more than 65 answers right as the most popular and you will win. Are you game?”
Andrew frowned, “Why would they give us that average like that?”
“Hmm well maybe to convince us to take on this game. Then they could cheat us some other way,” Player responded. “This just seems like a trap.”
“Exactly! They could fake that our answers weren’t the most popular. We can’t see the most popular answers!” Andrew exclaimed. “How will we know that they aren’t cheating us?”
The screen updated again. “And to prove that we will not cheat you, the moment you submit your responses, we will share all 40 people’s answers and the most popular answer. Then you’ll be able to follow and see whether your answer was actually most popular or not.”
“I don’t trust them,” Andrew declared immediately.
Player frowned, “They’re being so open. I don’t see why we can’t trust them.”
At this point I spoke up. Just as quickly as Andrew had impressed me, I was now suspicious of him. I said, “We’re going to do this round. If they’re being so open, then they don’t want to cheat us.”
“I don’t agree. They’re obviously trying to trap us in a no-win situation. How do we know that they haven’t rigged the answers so that suddenly they are different even if we choose the most popular answer? And who are these 40 people? Why are we competing against them? I definitely do not like this,” Andrew said.
“Well if you don’t like it, then you can leave. Player and I have been working on this for so long and we can finish it off without your help as well,” I responded, immediately.
“Agreed. Dr. Watson if you’re ready, I’m going to continue,” Player said, turning back to the computer.
I pulled up beside him and said, “Let’s do it.”
Andrew looked sullen, but also pulled up beside us as Player continued to the questions.
Credit:
Tags and siggies - DreamyButterfly
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