There was no way of telling where the messages were coming from exactly.
Many attempts were made with sonar locating technological methods to zero in on their mysterious origin but to no avail. Dr. Alison McGillicuddy from the Linguistics Department had been classifying and analyzing the highly unusual sentence structures in these messages which repeatedly and urgently emphasized that if they were too liberally shared within or outside the city limits there would be dire consequences for all involved.
One of the messages read: “Counting numbers 11 to 19 backwards and forwards. Zip code Seo-gu South Korea. Forwards Wantagh New York.”
We were all asking ourselves what this message could possibly mean as we ate our organic peas and blueberries in the main cafeteria in the western wing of the compound.
We were quite perplexed why half the message was written in purple ink and the other half was written in orange ink. And until the ink itself was fully analyzed there was no way of determining if the substance used to write this message was ink at all. It could be some entirely unknown substance whose origin was completely indeterminable by known analytic methods.
Thankfully, one afternoon Dr. Alison McGillicuddy burst into the cafeteria and assured us that whoever composed this message was certainly over the edge and quite unbalanced. Whoever sent it was nothing more than a forlorn mad scientist holding on by a microscopic thread in a hurricane.
We all agreed with Dr. Alison McGillicuddy who had always been as dependable as a well-disciplined girl scout on a never-ending camping trip in the wilderness.
As we sat chewing our organic blueberries on the eve of the one hundredth anniversary of the institute, we received a special delivery FedEx package. We watched eight window washers wearing gray overalls busy taking care of the institute’s fourteen-foot-tall windows surrounding the cafeteria as we positioned the package in the center of the table. When we opened the FedEx envelope there was a memo from Dr. Alison McGillicuddy inside. She claimed to have cracked the message to some extent. She wrote, “If you take the first three numbers from 11 to 19, or 11, 12, 13, and treat them as one number, 111213, and then reflect it in a mirror so it looks backwards, 312111. And if you take the next three numbers 14, 15, 16 and treat them as one number, 141516, and then reflect it in a mirror so it looks backwards, 615141. And if you take the last three numbers 17, 18, 19, and treat them as one number, 171819, and reflect it in a mirror so it looks backwards, 918171. Then if you add these three numbers, 312111 plus 615141 plus 918171, it’s equal to the zip code of Seo-gu, South Korea, multiplied by nine squared or 22783 times 81.”
We put down our bowls of blueberries, astounded by how Dr. Alison McGillicuddy could have figured this out. But that’s why she’s a doctor and we’re just much lower on the totem pole at the institute. “Bravo!” we said in unison as the eight window washers dipped their squeegees into their soapy buckets. But what about the zip code of Wantagh, New York, we said to ourselves as we finished our organic sweet peas. Jackie Singleton, our new intern, pointed out that if you reflect the sum of the three backwards numbers in a mirror so they look forwards, 111213 plus 141516 plus 171819, this new sum equals the zip code of Wantagh, New York, multiplied by six squared or 11793 times 36.
We sat back in our chairs and wondered why on earth the zip codes of Seo-gu, South Korea, and Wantagh, New York, were connected in this way to counting numbers from 11 to 19. “What could it mean,” we said to ourselves as we digested our organic peas. Seo-gu and Wantagh, New York, were thousands of miles apart and the people of these cities would no doubt never have met each other, we thought.
The creator of this message must have been to Seo-gu, South Korea, known for its textile industry and he must have been to Wantagh, New York, known for its psychopathic bullies who never stop riding their Stingray bicycles through its dark and treacherous neighborhood streets looking for victims.
But then we remembered what Dr. Alison McGillicuddy had told us, that the creator of this message was nothing more than a forlorn mad scientist holding on by a microscopic thread in a hurricane. Our new intern Jackie Singleton stood up and said, “This man was no doubt flapping away in a relentless gale of wind which really wanted to teach him a lesson he would never forget.” As we listened to Jackie Singleton we could see and hear this scientist in a dream singing old songs from his childhood as he counted from 11 to 19 over and over again. Dr. Alison McGillicuddy came flying by this forlorn scientist saying, “Tsk tsk tsk,” shaking her long index finger at him. Then the madman cried out in the wilderness wind, “I never deserved to be trapped in this nightmare. What did I do to deserve this retribution and harassment? I have always paid my taxes and have always contributed liberally to the town food drives for the poor.”
The wind kicked up and a group of forty-three Juniper trees came flying by in the harsh evening air. Dr. Alison McGillicuddy stood up briskly at a moving blackboard saying, “This is what you did,” addressing the scientist as she wrote the numbers 11 to 19 in a certain pattern on the board in a shaky scrawl. “You revealed to the world this strange and mysterious connection between the numbers 11 to 19 and the zip codes of Seo-gu, South Korea, and Wantagh, New York, and you will pay dearly for it.” Then the exhausted man lifted his tired right arm and said, “But my Great Great Uncle Horace Grant Underwood founded a well-known university in South Korea and I knew I was destined to find this South Korean zip code in an unusual place.
A large oak tree collapsed onto the blackboard. Dr. Alison McGillicuddy went over to the smashed blackboard, picked up five blackboard erasers, arranged them in a circle, taped them together with industrial masking tape in the shape of an elegant crown, and placed it gently atop the mad scientist’s leaning head.
Then the scientist sprang to his feet, full of boundless energy and started tapdancing in circles. He danced upon the smashed blackboard singing the melody to Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik in a baritone voice as he spun and danced out the door, into the windy forest.
Rachel Sterling’s work has appeared in Portland Review, The Windless Orchard, California Quarterly, Mathematics Magazine, and elsewhere.
Image: Jordyn St. John, unsplash.com
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Heavy Feather Review 