The Tree of Knowledge

by Daniel G. Miller

  The troll spoke with a deep Welsh accent coated in phlegm. “You have reached the valley of half-truths. I am the guardian of the bridge. One man may cross. The man who speaks neither truth nor lie. You may speak but once to me. If what you say is true, I will strangle you. If you what you say is false, I will chop off your head with my axe. You have one minute.” And with that, the troll wound a gigantic clock that hung from his neck.

  Albert paused a moment, attempting to absorb the bizarre reality into which he had been thrust. The screens surrounding him left and right, top and bottom, produced such vivid graphics that Albert couldn’t help thinking he had been teleported to another dimension. Cristina Culebra’s dimension. If he failed to answer this question correctly, the police, FBI, Cristina, Eva, and everyone else he feared would find him. Everything that Turner’s army had been fighting for would be lost. Albert stifled the most potent desire that ran through his mind and his chest: the desire to run.

  To orient and steady himself, he began scribbling the troll’s riddle furiously in his notebook. His mind knew that the troll wasn’t real and wouldn’t strangle him or chop off his head, but his heart and stomach felt differently. The ticks of the troll’s clock pounded mercilessly as if to remind Albert that his freedom was dripping away. He took a deep breath and told himself that this was just a show. A show to distract him from the logic at the core of the riddle.

  After a few seconds, Albert spoke. “OK, if I say something true, I will be killed. If I say something false, I will be killed. So I have to say something that is neither true nor false? That’s impossible.”

  The troll gurgled, sensing that he had found his next victim. “Is it? Or is your mind too puny for the great troll?”

  The troll’s insult snapped Albert’s mind to attention. His eyes brightened.

  “Alright, I’ve got it. What is your name?”

  The troll chuckled and shook his head. “You may not pass.”

  “Why? That was neither true nor false,” said Albert, complaining like one of his students over a bad grade.

  “Yes, but it was not a statement. It was a question.” The troll began to sharpen his axe with his teeth.

  “But a statement has to be true or false.”

  The troll gurgled out another foul chuckle. “Quite the paradox, isn’t it, simpleton?”

  Albert stared at the troll’s clock. Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen.

  Suddenly, he slapped his notepad in his hand. “That’s it! It’s a liar’s paradox. I just have to say something that contradicts itself.”

  He steadied himself.

  “OK, troll, this is my statement: ‘You will chop off my head.’ If you chop off my head, then that makes my statement true, which means you should have strangled me. If you strangle me, then my statement is false, and you should have chopped off my head.”

  The troll sighed and dropped his axe by his side.

  “You may pass,” said the pouting troll. A door opened where the bridge used to be.

  Albert smiled and moved on to the next room. He could sense his logical faculties overpowering his racing pulse and coursing adrenaline.

  Like the room before it, this room was composed of wall-to-wall 3D screens and nothing else. Beneath Albert and on the screens to the left and right were blue sky and clouds, which gave Albert the sensation that he was floating weightless in the sky. Four massive figures dressed in white robes hovered on clouds before Albert: a giant bearded man and three gorgeous, powerful-looking women. The man spoke first.

  “I am Zeus and you have entered the realm of the gods.” The power of Zeus’s voice shook the room.

  “You stand before three goddesses. One of the goddesses is Apate, the goddess of treachery and deceit. Another is Veritas, the goddess of truth. The last is Eris, the goddess of chaos. Apate will always lie to you. Veritas will always tell you the truth, and Eris will answer according to her whims.”

  Albert nodded, prodding Zeus to continue.

  “Only gods can see the true nature of other gods, and only gods can pass through my realm. So, if you hope to pass, you must tell me: Who is whom?”

  “This is like the riddle of the two guards. I can do this,” shouted Albert to no one in particular.

  As if Zeus could hear him, he added, “The gods speak in the language of the gods, which no human can understand. They will answer your questions with the words ‘Po’ or ‘Ko,’ but you will have to figure out for yourself which means yes and which means no. You have two minutes.”

  Zeus flipped a person-size sand timer to signify that Albert’s time had begun.

  Albert thought back to his days in Professor Turner’s logic class. He remembered how Turner had taught him that the easiest way to obtain information in yes-or-no scenarios was with an embedded question because you could create a situation where answers were either double negatives or double positives, and therefore it didn’t matter if “Po” meant yes or no or if the person were lying or telling the truth because the answer was the same. That’s how he had solved the riddle of the two guards.

  If I pose the question like a hypothetical about what the other person would do, I can just assume “Ko” means yes. So the first thing I have to do is figure out which one is the random god, Eris. Then I can focus on Veritas, the truth teller, and Apate, the liar.

  Albert took a deep breath and turned to the dark-skinned goddess in the middle.

  “If I asked you if the goddess on my left is Eris the Chaotic, would you say ‘Ko’?”

  She smiled and answered, “Ko.”

  “OK, so now I can assume that the goddess on the left is Eris the Chaotic or the goddess in the middle is Eris, but definitely not the one on the right.”

  Albert then turned to the blonde goddess on the right, whose smile seemed to mock Albert. “If I asked you, ‘Are you Apate the Liar?’ would you say ‘Ko’?”

  The goddess on the right smiled and answered, “Ko.”

  “Good, now I know that you are the liar because if you were Veritas, you would have said ‘Po.’”

  Albert rubbed his hands together and smiled at the blonde goddess, whose smirk had now faded.

  “So, Apate the Liar, I have one more question for you . . . Is the goddess on my left Eris?”

  Apate scowled and said, “Po.”

  “Well, since you are a liar, then I can assume that the goddess on my left is Eris. And that means that you, lady in the center, are Veritas.”

  Veritas smiled a warm smile and stepped out of Albert’s way as the door opened behind her.

  Zeus chuckled. “You have proven yourself worthy of the gods. You may pass.”

  Albert exhaled and proceeded.

  The third room he entered was even more striking. Albert could feel the great woman’s presence in the stark power of her office. The lights of Long Beach harbor shimmered through the expansive window. The clear white walls and minimalist furniture captivated and seduced.

  But, upon tiptoeing farther into the office, Albert knew his effort had been a waste . . . for there was nothing in it. No book. Not one potential piece of evidence of what Cristina Culebra had done or was planning to do. Not a file cabinet, not a piece of paper, not a computer. As he scanned the room, Albert heard footsteps from the passageway he had just left behind him.

  “Did you find it?” whispered Ying.

  Albert flinched and grabbed his chest. “Jesus, Ying. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What are you doing here?”

  “Turner found Moloch and the book. He sent me to come get you.”

  “Well, then he’s doing a lot better than I am,” Albert whispered. “There’s nothing in this office. This woman is a ghost.”

  Ying tiptoed around the empty office, squinting and looking for some piece of evidence.

  “You’re wasting your time. There’s nothing in here—”

>   His sentence was interrupted by a loud clap and the hum of the overhead lights being turned on.

  Albert squinted and looked toward the doorway.

  He could not stop staring at the woman who stood before him. Cristina Culebra was magnetism personified. In a way, she seemed superhuman. As though God had taken a human being and enhanced every feature. Her skin gleamed with a tan but somehow youthful vibrance. The gentle scent of her perfume massaged Albert’s nostrils. Her strong, thin frame carried a sleek power, like a Ducati motorbike. And those eyes. The deep darkness held sparks of flame. With one look, Albert knew that Eva had been the cub. This was the lion.

  Her appearance was rendered even more striking against the blank expanse of her office. A magnificent contrast of black against shoreline lights. The three adjoining walls held nothing but were composed of a hard-coat white laminate that glowed from the overhead light. Giant dry-erase boards, thought Albert. This is where she draws her game trees. A desk and three chairs anchored the center of the room. Nothing else. A sensory precision.

  “Bravo, Dr. Puddles. I must say, I gave you some of my better puzzles, which I didn’t think anyone would be able to crack with so little time. Anyone but me, of course. Please sit down. You too, Ms. Koh.”

  Albert limply sat in the chair opposite her. What is she doing here? How did she know we were coming?

  “It really is a pleasure to finally meet you,” exclaimed Cristina Culebra, unveiling a row of bright-white teeth.

  Every aspect of Cristina Culebra made Albert feel inferior. Every insecurity he had buried under his logical exterior was exposed when he made eye contact with the great woman. Like a wave smashing against rock and splattering into a thousand droplets.

  She squinted her eyes and said, “Not bad for a beginner.”

  Albert thought he had misheard her. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  Cristina Culebra rose from her seat, grabbed a marker from her desk, and repeated, “I said, not bad for a beginner.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not following,” said Puddles, attempting to block out Cristina’s condescension.

  “Well, let’s see if this rings a bell.” She uncapped the marker and began drawing a game tree on the whiteboard behind her. “Hmm, the objective of you and your partner in crime here is to obtain the book and clear your name.” She drew two branches of the tree.

  “In order to clear your name, you must do one of two things: prove that, A, you could not have committed the crime, or B, someone else did. Since you have no ability to prove that you didn’t kill the security guard and attack the police station—in fact, quite the opposite, since you are the man on the video right before the attack—you must choose route B.”

  She proceeded to cross out one branch of the tree.

  “So, if you must prove that it was Eva who, in fact, committed the crime, you must find evidence, specifically the journal. You believe that evidence to be here at Fix Industries, and thus you must determine how to obtain it.” She drew additional branches on the tree. “You can obtain the evidence by force, by manipulation—i.e., blackmail or bribery—or you can obtain it by stealth. Presumably, you’ve considered that you are up against one of the most powerful women in America, who controls a defense company and her own private army, and, therefore, determined that force was unlikely to yield positive benefits.”

  She crossed out the branch of the tree titled “force.”

  “Likewise, you considered that I’m one of the richest and currently most popular women in the world, while you are poor and not particularly likeable, and therefore ruled out manipulation. That leads us to stealth. The question is how?”

  She drew several branches illustrating different ways of finding evidence: daytime, nighttime, break-in, stakeout, etc.

  “Of course, you can’t do anything in broad daylight, so it has to be at night. You won’t be able to get to me or Moloch in public. We’re too protected. So your best chance was to break into our offices at night. To make matters worse, thanks to my friends at the FBI, time is not on your side.”

  Cristina began furiously crossing out the remaining branches of the tree. “So with that knowledge, I could say inevitably, indubitably, and irrefutably, I knew that you would end up here in my office.”

  Albert and Ying sat in motionless silence, unable to move a limb or lip.

  “As I said, not bad for a beginner. In chess, this attempt to distract and trap an opponent from a losing position would be known as a swindle. Am I right, Professor?”

  Albert nodded.

  “And swindles often work against inferior players. Unfortunately for you, I am not an inferior player. And because I am not an inferior player, I know that I am in a position of immense strength. As I look across the table at you, I feel as though I have a board full of chess pieces and you merely a king and a pawn. And so when you threaten my queen with your pawn, I know it is irrelevant because there are ten different ways for me to put you into checkmate.”

  She steadily erased the whiteboard and began drawing an alternate game tree of her own. “I could kill you, but that would be messy and inelegant. I could counter your threat with a threat of my own. For example, Ms. Koh, I’m sure your parents would be interested to hear of your recent criminal activities. But this seems like an unnecessary amount of effort. Rather, I think it makes much more sense to pursue the route that I decided on a few days ago when I realized that you would eventually find your way into my office.”

  She paused and transferred her gaze to Ying and then to Albert, letting the full impact of her foresight set in. “I’m going to simply reclaim any materials that you may have gathered tonight, and have you arrested and discredited so that no one cares what you have to say about me—or anything else, for that matter. And if you resist, then these gentlemen will dispose of you. The choice is yours.”

  She pointed behind them to reveal two Red Army guards patiently waiting beside the exit from her office.

  “You see, I play the game at a much more advanced level. It’s something to which you should both aspire.”

  With that, the lion pushed a button behind her desk, and the massive whiteboards on each wall retracted down to reveal three additional whiteboards behind them. But unlike their predecessors, these whiteboards were covered in one massive, hyperactive game tree. Branches extended endlessly in every direction, creeping and crawling across the board like an insidious vine. Each branch carried an encoded text like the tree that Eva had left behind that night in the bank. But at its center were two words in plain English: “ABSOLUTE POWER.”

  Albert and Ying stared, mouths agape. In minutes, Cristina Culebra had summarized and dismantled a plan that they had spent days preparing. She had revealed a previously unknown world, one for which Ying and Albert had been staggeringly unprepared.

  Chapter 13

  Angus Turner was prepared, and now, so, too, were his students.

  The guards ushered Ying and Albert into the elevator. The two academics glanced at each other and nodded. This was the moment for which Turner had been training them for the last two weeks. Simultaneously, the two reached into their pants pockets and removed the one tool that could extricate them from the trap into which they had just walked: Gabe’s combat glasses.

  Crossing the threshold of the elevator, Albert placed the spectacles on his face and turned to Ying, whose glasses were perched gently on the small bridge of her nose. He noticed that her spectacles sat slightly askew on her face and carefully adjusted them.

  “Seriously?” said Ying, mystified at Albert’s OCD.

  Albert just shrugged and gave Ying a final nod. It’s time.

  Albert turned first, eyeing the two guards who had walked them into the elevator. Over their shoulders, he watched Cristina Culebra with a smug smile on her face. She leaned her head back upon seeing her guests’ strange eyewear.

  “According to m
y calculations, at this moment, there is a twenty-five percent chance that you two are going to try to escape,” said Cristina. “Lest you feel that compulsion, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning my two best guards to escort you to the lobby, where you will find the Los Angeles County sheriff waiting to take you into—”

  But before she could finish her speech, Albert shouted, “Now!” and hurled a vicious strike to the first guard’s groin. The security officer doubled over. Through his glasses, Albert could see a green halo above his head with “90%” floating above it. He shoved his palm against the guard’s forehead and slammed it against the stainless-steel elevator wall. The give of skull against metal sickened him. He spun to counter the guard on the left, only to see Ying striking him down with a measured chop to the neck.

  Cristina Culebra looked on in bemusement.

  Albert’s hands trembled with rage and fear. He saw the great, devious woman in front of him and wanted nothing more than to lunge forward and grab her by the throat, choking back the life that she had stolen from him. But Turner’s voice rang in his head: “Follow the Tree.”

  He grabbed Ying by her sweat-soaked hand and dragged her through the elevator doors toward the stairwell. Albert burst through the door beneath the illuminated exit sign, and he could hear Cristina Culebra screaming, “Get backup, they’re headed for the roo—”

  As Albert and Ying leapt up the steps two at a time, combat glasses affixed to their faces, Albert felt the same sensation he had in the ring with Brick Travis. Time had slowed. He was no longer an animal reacting to the world as it came to him. He was on a higher plane; he was in the Tree of Knowledge, a place where the future was known, and he was merely taking part in events that he had already foreseen. He sensed Ying’s grip loosen and her breathing slow, and he knew that she was there with him.