by A. J. Low
“I drew a growing plant and a growing brain on this piece of paper,” Jimmy said. “Like it says in the riddle.”
“Thanks, Jimmy,” Nazhar said. “I’m sure this will come in handy.”
Jimmy grinned his Jimmy-grin.
“I think it’s in two parts,” Dad said. “Notice how the fifth line starts with ‘Once you arrive’? The first four lines are telling us to go somewhere. The final four lines are telling us to find something that is located wherever the first four lines tell us to go.”
“I think you’re right, Dad,” I said. “The second half of the riddle can only be solved after the first half has been solved.”
“Okay, so where can both plants and minds grow?” Nazhar asked.
“A park or a garden?” Eliza ventured. “Plants literally grow there, while minds can metaphorically grow there if people study the plants.”
“Like on Pulau Ubin!” Jimmy said. “There was lots to learn at Chek Jawa!”
“But there are so many parks,” Wendy said. “How will we know which one?”
“If the ‘name of the game’s not lit’rature or maths’, could it be history?” Nazhar guessed.
“No!” Dad and I said at the same time. “It’s...”
We quickly stood side by side and shouted, “SCIENCE!”while doing our “SCIENCE!”pose.
“He’s talking about the Science Centre!” I said. “The mention of baths in the fourth line is either a reference to the WaterWorks exhibition at the Science Centre where people can get wet while learning about water and water conservation, or to the apocryphal story of Archimedes discovering how to measure the volume of irregular objects when he stepped into the bath and shouted ‘Eureka!’, thereby discovering an important principle in the pursuit of science.”
Everyone stared at me in bemusement.
“...It’s probably the WaterWorks,” I said. “To the Science Centre!”
“I’m getting the Space Wagon!” Dad said. “Look out for Mom!”
He ran off just as Mom’s taxi was pulling in. Dashing towards her, Dad shouted, “To the Science Centre!” Mom stopped and stared at Dad for a moment. She then also shouted, “To the Science Centre!” and they ran off around the corner to get the car.
I was really glad to see Mom but I was finding it hard to focus; I was very worried about Watson. What if we found yet another part of my robot?
While Dad drove us to the Science Centre in Jurong, Mom looked up the Science Centre website to see if any of the exhibitions were garden- or park-themed. She quickly found the Ecogarden and read that it was uniquely set up for ecological studies: the plants are not taken care of in any special way, animals are allowed to roam free, and no special effort is made to control pests, to which Wendy sighed loudly.
“There will be all kinds of mosquitoes,” Wendy whined and crossed her arms.
It sounded exactly like a place where “both plants and minds can grow”.
When we arrived, Dad parked the car and we all tumbled out. He led us past the WaterWorks exhibition and towards the ticketing counter.
“Hello! We need—” Dad quickly counted all of us “—seven tickets and instructions on how to get to the Ecogarden.”
“No problem,” the lady behind the counter said. “It’s straight through the Atrium past Hall E, all the way in the back.”
Dad paid and thanked her. We quickly walked past the other exhibits even though they all seemed really fascinating. There was the Mind’s Eye display, full of optical illusions, the Tesla coil in the Atrium, and the Live Animal exhibition, which had a bunch of super cool animals like hissing cockroaches and hatching chicks (I had to drag Jimmy away from the chicks).
We ran through the Live Animal exhibit and when we exited, we found ourselves outside, just in front of the Ecogarden. It was a large open space with lots of plants, some sculptures and a few buildings. There were also ponds, special gardens for things like cactuses and spices and, judging from all the slapping Wendy was doing, a fair amount of mosquitoes.
“Okay, what does the second part of the riddle say again?” Mom asked. We had brought her up to speed on the drive over and she was itching to find the next clue as quickly as possible.
Eliza recited the second half of the riddle: “Once you arrive, seek a home in the foliage, but whatever you do, avoid the spoilage. Your eye will wander all over the plant, but truth be told, you’ll want to find the aunt.”
“‘A home in the foliage’ could be anything,” Eliza said, biting her fingernail.
“What do you mean?” Wendy asked.
“Animals use all sorts of plants and trees for their homes,” Eliza said. “Ladybirds and aphids use leaves from flowers as homes, while squirrels and birds use bigger trees.” Eliza’s parents owned a company that sold high-end camping equipment. She had learnt a lot about nature during their frequent camping trips to test the gear out. “But I don’t know how an auntie fits into this at all. They live in flats, like the rest of us, not in ‘foliage’.”
“Let’s split up,” I said. “We’ll cover more ground that way. Dad, Jimmy and I will go left, the rest of you go right. Look for something that might mean ‘a home in the foliage’.”
“And something that means ‘spoilage’!” Jimmy said. “That doesn’t even rhyme with ‘foliage’. James isn’t as clever as he thinks he is, he can’t even rhyme properly.”
We split up and quickly started searching. Dad, Jimmy and I found some lily ponds and a lab/classroom, but nothing that screamed out “a home in the foliage”.
“Samuel!” I heard Eliza yell. “We found it!” We ran towards the sound of her voice, passing a spice garden and two compost piles. When we got to her, she pointed at a tall tree with a structure at the top.
“‘A home in the foliage’,” Dad said, slapping his forehead. “Of course it’s a tree house.”
“And we just passed the ‘spoilage’!” Jimmy said, pointing to the compost piles.
Mom, Nazhar and Wendy were already looking around the tree, most likely looking for the “aunt” from the riddle.
“I think we’re going to have to go up, guys,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the treehouse will have what we’re looking for. Maybe there’s an auntie up there with the clue.” The moment I said it I realised how ridiculous I sounded. But it was James, so I wouldn’t rule anything out— not even aunties in trees.
“Um, you guys go ahead,” Wendy said. “I’ll, uh, I’ll keep looking down here.”
“We’ll go up together,” Eliza said, taking Wendy’s hand, “so it’s not so scary.”
Wendy smiled at her, then looked at the rest of us. “Okay, yeah. It won’t be so scary with everybody up there.”
Actually, the combined weight of everyone would make the structure more unstable, but I decided not to mention that to my sister. Also, I didn’t want to give Watson a chance to inform everyone about how my weight would—then I realised that Watson wasn’t around to do that. I had to blink back tears.
“Dad,” I said softly, not wanting anyone else to hear.
“Yes, son?”
“What if...what if James left another part of Watson up there?”
“Then we’ll call Officer Siva immediately, son,” Dad replied. “Okay?”
I nodded. I took a deep breath and said, “Okay! Let’s go, everyone!”
We walked up the circular wooden staircase that spiralled up from the ground to the tree house. There were a few landings along the way, but we ignored them in favour of reaching the top. Once inside the tree house, I saw that there were a few benches on the side and a raised platform with a book showing a few birds. I flipped through the pages (which weren’t really pages so much as printed plastic), looking for a clue of some kind.
Everybody else looked around the tree house. Nazhar found a pulley that was attached to a basket that went down to the base of the tree. A plaque attached to the wall beneath the pulley said it was for passing notes between people in the tree house and people on the
ground, so he quickly pulled on the pulley to see if there was anything in the basket. There wasn’t. Wendy stood in the centre of the tree house so she couldn’t look out of any windows and Eliza stayed with her, telling her that we weren’t that high up and that the entire structure was very sturdy. Since they were the tallest, Mom and Dad looked at the ceiling, trying to look for clues there.
Jimmy studied the walls and found some metal plates with animal designs on them. People could put paper over them to make rubbings with pencils. Jimmy saw an iguana plate and squinted at it.
I frowned. There was no one else up there, not even an auntie.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “There’s nothing here. There’s no ‘aunt’ to find.”
Eliza’s phone rang again. She took it out and it was another photo of James. This time, he was lying in a tent, sucking his thumb, fast asleep.
Eliza answered the call on speakerphone.
“You look like you’re having trouble, Sherlock,” James said. “Let me help: not everyone pronounces words in exactly the same way.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“Well that’s the only hint I will give you,” James said. “But I do have one more thing to say: Eliza, if you don’t delete those silly photographs of me, I may remove Watson’s central processor, and I don’t think anyone will want that.” James hung up.
“I can delete them immediately, Samuel,” Eliza said, fiddling with her phone.
“Please do,” I said. It unnerved me to know that James was so close by and watching. I saw Nazhar peering out the windows of the tree house and I knew he was trying to discover where James had hidden himself. He soon turned back to look at me, shaking his head.
“What’s a central processor?” Wendy asked.
“His brain,” I said, with my teeth clenched tight.
As Eliza was swiping on her phone, presumably deleting the photos, she suddenly said, “Wait. Not everyone pronounces words the same way. Americans pronounce ‘aunt’ like ‘ant’. In their accent, the words sound exactly the same!”
“Wow,” Wendy said, looking at Eliza.
Eliza shrugged. “What? I have a lot of time alone at home to watch TV.”
“No, I mean, wow, James is a terrible poet, isn’t he?” Wendy replied.
Jimmy was staring at the iguana plate, when he suddenly shouted, “I got it! There were more metal plates when we were coming up the stairs, Sherlock!” He ran back down and the rest of us followed him. He stopped on the middle landing and pointed at a plate there, with a big Jimmy-grin on his face.
The metal plate had an ant on it!
“Well done, Jimmy!” Wendy said. I went to the plate and looked all over it. I felt the back of the plate through the wooden slats and discovered a piece of taped-down folded-up paper.
“Eureka!” I shouted, pulling out the paper and unfolding it for everyone to see.
Everyone looked at me. I kept staring at the numbers.
“Well, Sherlock, what does it mean?” Nazhar asked.
I looked up at them.
“I have no idea.”
We walked down the rest of steps of the tree house. The number sequence seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“Do these numbers seem familiar to anyone else?” I asked, sitting on the bottom step. Jimmy sat next to me, while the rest stood around in a semicircle.
Everyone shook their heads except Mom and Dad. “Yes, it does seem familiar,” Dad said, “but I don’t know why.”
“Me either,” Mom said, “but yes, really familiar.”
“They’re not the Lost numbers, right?” Wendy said. I shook my head.
“Maybe they’re coordinates?” Nazhar said. “Like latitude and longitude?”
“I don’t think so, as that’s usually measured in degrees, minutes and seconds,” I said. “There are too many numbers here.”
“Maybe the fourth numbers are the decimal places after the seconds?” Eliza asked.
“I don’t think so, Eliza,” I said, not looking at her.
“But it wouldn’t hurt to check, right, Cher Lock?” Wendy said. I glared at her and shook my head, not that she had been asking for my permission.
Eliza took out her phone and entered the numbers as 21 degrees, 13 minutes and 8.5 seconds latitude, and 3 degrees, 2 minutes and 1.1 seconds longitude.
She let out a puff of air. “Unless James was able to fly to the deserts of southern Algeria between now and when school let out, they’re not latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates.”
“Could they be dates, Nazhar?” Wendy asked. Nazhar was our resident history expert, so if anyone would know, it would be him.
“Maybe, but probably not using the Gregorian calendar,” Nazhar explained. “If we take half the numbers, that would mean the first four numbers can be read either as the 21st day, 13th month of the year 0805, or as the year 2113, 8th month and 5th day. However, there’s no 13th month in the Gregorian calendar and there’s no way James can predict the future.”
“What about other calendar systems?” Dad asked. “Like the Jewish or Islamic calendars?”
“Well, as far as I know, no calendar has more than 12 months, but some calendars start much earlier than the Gregorian calendar, so the year 2113 would actually be in the past and not the future,” Nazhar said. “For example, the Hebrew calendar would say that the year 2000 is actually the year 5760.”
“That would make 2113 on the Hebrew calendar equivalent to the year 1649 BCE on the Gregorian,” I said.
“What happened then?” Jimmy asked. “Was there a great battle or something?”
Nazhar shrugged his shoulders. “My knowledge of history isn’t perfect.”
“The Middle Kingdom ended in Egypt, according to the Internet,” Dad said.
“Could it be a different calendar system?” I asked. “Or a different coordinate system?” I looked up at Mom and Dad hopefully.
“I don’t think so, Sam,” Dad said. “If we could just figure out why they seem so familiar...”
I was really stumped, and had no idea what these numbers could mean. And it seemed everybody else was too. I was starting to fear we would never find Watson, especially if we were stuck on only the second riddle.
“Maybe it’s a maths thing?” Eliza finally said. “That’s why it seems familiar to all of you?”
“Maybe,” I said, “but there are so many mathematical number systems, equations and constants that I have no idea which one these numbers would correspond to.”
“Well, they’re decreasing, right?” she said. “Is there a pattern in how they’re getting smaller?”
I looked at the numbers again and I perked up. “Yeah, there is a pattern. It’s a simple subtraction pattern. You subtract the second number from the first, and you get the third. And this works with any three consecutive numbers in series, so that 21 minus 13 equals 8, and 13 minus 8 equals 5, and so on.”
“But that still doesn’t really tell us anything,” Mum said.
Just then, Dad shouted, “I got it! It’s Fibonacci! I can’t believe I didn’t get it right away!”
I stared at the numbers: 21 13 8 5 3 2 1 1. Dad was right! It was the Fibonacci sequence, but backwards! I was sure if we hadn’t been so worried about Watson, Dad and I would have noticed that sooner.
“Why would lying to pasta help?” Jimmy asked, wrinkling his nose.
“What? Pasta? What?” Wendy said, looking confused.
“Uncle Mike said ‘fib-a-gnocchi’?”
“Fibonacci, Jimmy,” I said. “He was an Italian mathematician who helped spread the Hindu-Arabic numeral system throughout Europe, and it is now the most common numeral system in the world. The Fibonacci sequence helps to describe many spirals found in nature, including DNA spirals, petal branchings, hurricanes and even galactic spirals.”
“Okay, so it’s the backwards Fibonacci sequence,” Mom said. “How does that help us?”
Our excitement disappeared as s
uddenly as it had appeared. We knew what the number sequence was now, but we didn’t know where it was supposed to lead us. As I had said, the Fibonacci sequence occurred all over nature, and that could literally mean anywhere in the universe. In fact, I was sure that once proof of the multiverse was discovered, we would find that the infinite universes were arrayed in spirals conforming to the Fibonacci sequence.
“Hey! What about the steps outside the Science Centre?” Jimmy said. “According to the sign just now, they’re fib-a-gnocchi steps, right?”
Dad and Mom looked at each other, their eyes wide open. “Of course!” they both shouted.
We all ran back towards the entrance of the Science Centre. And there in front of the Science Centre was the Fibonacci Terrace. The large tiles were arranged in multiple spirals conforming to the sequence, with the largest ending in 21, and the smallest ending in 5.
“The largest sequence is where we should concentrate our search,” I said, “since it matches the numbers James gave us.”
“Hmm. I think there’s no need to search,” Dad said. He had his thinking face on once again. “James gave us the sequence backwards for a reason. We’ll find what we’re looking for at the very first tile.”
Dad was right. It was the tile furthest away from the entrance to the Science Centre. When we reached it, we saw a stone, and under that stone was another piece of paper. I yanked it out and we read it together:
Or tried to at least. We all looked at Mom.
“Uhh...I have no idea,” she said. “I haven’t read Chinese in a long time. Since school. I’m more than a little rusty. And this looks like the complicated traditional script. I only studied the simplified characters in school. Sorry, Sam.”
We all looked at Wendy. She looked behind her as if expecting someone else to be standing there. She then turned back to us.
“If you’re looking at me to read Chinese, then we’re in trouble.”
“I think it’s time we called Officer Siva, Dad,” I said, still staring at the Chinese characters that made up the clue.
