29/11/2022 - The Riddle of the Eggs
Reading time: 5 min
Photo by Christopher Stark on Unsplash
I finally know what I have to face.
It’s just math, it’s a puzzle, and I’m really good at puzzles.
Once I open this enclosure, the safety system will start the cleansing routine, 17 minutes in total, and I need to bring with me these four dinosaur eggs.
The sounds of the raptors scratching the door behind me almost push me through the enclosure to the tracks, where the little train connecting the island to the mainland waits, but I can’t open it, not yet, not before I understand how I can bring everything with me.
You see, the train was never meant to carry humans. My butt will occupy two of the egg containers, so I can carry only two at a time with me. Also, if the sensors notice an egg outside a container, or if the container is not sealed properly, the train won’t start.
As if this wasn’t enough, once the eggs are in place, they’re scanned, and the train adjusts its velocity depending on the fragility of the specific egg it’s carrying.
1 minute for Compsognathus. I’ll call it C.
2 minutes for Stegosaurus. I’ll call it S.
5 minutes for Triceratops. I’ll call it T.
10 minutes for T-rex. I’ll call it X.
Obviously, it will pick the slowest possible speed in the case of multiple eggs.
And, finally, the train won’t start without an egg, so I have to carry one with me at all times.
Think, Frank, think.
The raptors now seem to have multiplied, and I can hear their claws against the walls, digging on the roof, crushing air ducts, bursting pipes, and even playing too close to the boilers and occasionally blowing up in the process.
Think, now, how do I carry them all?
I draw a scheme in the dust with my finger, but every combination I can think of amounts to more than 17. If I’m on that track while the cleansing starts, I’m dead. And I don’t think it would be a more merciful death than being eaten alive by the raptors.
I have designed the cleansing routine myself, and I didn’t do it to make it gentle.
All the fences, gates and doors shut immediately, and the island gets flooded with the water from the dam. But just to be on the safe side, I’ve also designed the flood to break a seal to an acidic component that will make the water as deadly as poison.
I don’t want to be on that track when it happens.
A window above my head explodes and glass shards cut the side of my head, almost blinding me, and as I look up, I see the bloody mouth of a raptor pushing through the metal bars trying to bite me.
I roll down, unbearable whistles ringing in my ears, and the T egg almost slips on the floor, adding a heart attack to the list of possible fatal risks to my persona today.
I move sideways, trusting the bars to protect me a little longer, and I jot down a combination that seems promising.
I start with C and X. It will take me 10 minutes to cross, but only a minute to come back, and I can repeat the process with every egg. 11 minutes. Then, I go with C and T, it makes 16, come back to grab S and we’re at 17. By the time I grab the last egg, the dam would already have been emptied.
I massage my temples, blood still running from the cuts when my mobile rings. I thought it had no battery.
“Help! Help!” I scream into it, I don’t care who’s on the other side, but then I recognise my son’s voice.
“Dad? Dad? Where are you?”
“Mike! Oh my God, don’t worry, daddy will be with you in a second.”
“Dad, you don’t need to carry everything all the time.”
“What?”
“Just come back, you can leave stuff there.”
And that’s when the phone dies for good.
But what Mike said makes perfect sense. I don’t have to carry everything all the time. I can drop the eggs whenever I need to.
I make my calculations once more in the dust with the sound of the raptors clawing their way in to slice me into pieces, and it works. It has to work.
I open the enclosure and the countdown starts—exactly 17 minutes—but I place my first two eggs in the train and do my thing. Across and back, across and back and across one more time.
I’m done. I’ve got the four eggs with me, and I can see the island and the track being inundated by the poisonous water just as I jump out of the train. Exactly 17 minutes to do this, and I did. I raise a middle finger to the raptors and laugh out loud, my head exploding, blood dripping onto my shirt, but it doesn’t matter.
That nightmare of an island is now buried forever, and I will get to hug my son again. I’m alive, and I’m going to be rich. No more lectures at the University. No more waiting for black Friday to buy me a new tv. No more asking that idiot of my brother-in-law for money when we need to take Mark to the dentist.
I am rich. Extremely rich.
There’s a short corridor in front of me, and then two sets of doors. Behind the doors, safety. A few soldiers are waiting for me and will welcome me like a hero. I even saved all the remaining eggs.
I open the last door with a smirk on my face and show the four eggs safe in their carrier to the soldiers, and one of them screams, punches the carrier on the ground shooting at the eggs until they’re just a smudge on the floor.
Humans are weird. They do things, all sorts of things, believing they do them for a reason that’s simply not there.
About this story
Prompt:
ELEMENT ONE: The sky’s the limit
We’re talking about the upper limit of our FFM wordcount. Today’s story must be exactly 999 words.
ELEMENT TWO: Taking a look back
Your starting and ending lines must be the same as a starting or ending line from a previous story you have written this month. You can use the same story or two different stories to find your starting and ending lines. You can also turn a previous ending line into a starting line, and vice versa. Don’t say we never did anything for you.
ELEMENT THREE: Puzzling it all out
Your story must contain a puzzle, cipher or code.
This element cannot be a riddle, which is something written out in plain language. You’re all very clever, and that would be too easy. Describe what your characters are up against. Create your own secret code, or just have a physical puzzle in there for characters to look at and despair. (You CAN write a riddle if it's in code. If you must.)
OPTIONAL ELEMENT: Everyone suffers!
Your puzzle (cipher, code, etc.) must be solvable by the reader.
Send me a message or comment here if you:
solved the puzzle in the story.
know which stories I’ve used for the first and last sentence of this one.
From the official page of FFM 2022.
Notes on the challenge
Each and every story published here has been written, reviewed, polished and published in less than 90 minutes. Which means you’re going to find spelling mistakes, ugly sentences and weird structures. I still hope you’ll enjoy them!
