The Paradox Riddle Code
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September 2012, and a Radio 4 documentary crew (if two people can be called a crew) comprised of talking head Nigel Stratham and sound recordist Jenny Parmiter, descend upon Cambridge to find out what has happened to YA science fiction writer Mike Lancaster since his last blog post at the start of the summer.
What starts out as a simple quest soon turns into a terrifying descent into madness and altered reality.
The following transcript is edited from the last tapes of the � now missing � programme makers.
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NS: ‘Cambridge, UK. September 1st. 2012.
‘Mention Cambridge and the mind immediately turns to the academic tradition that runs through the city. It as if the double helix of Science’s own DNA has somehow been encoded into the buildings and thoroughfares of the city; like the letters ACGT have been written through the middle of a stick of souvenir Cambridge rock, making it a kind of sugar-basedÌýconfectioneryÌýpacked full of cutting edge science.
‘It is here that geniuses worked and played: Darwin and Newton; Crick, Watson, Wilkins and Franklin; Turing and Hawking; Dirac and Rutherford; Fry and Laurie and the Goodies.
‘Car parking charges are, it is said, still worked out with the same heretical equation discovered by John Dee while he was at St. John’s in the 16th Century. Which, if his descendants still receive a percentage of monies generated, might go some way to explaining why Cambridge car parks are so expensive.
Ìý’But we are not here as tourists: We have come to Cambridge in pursuit of a mystery. A mystery wrapped in an enigma welded onto a riddle grafted onto a puzzle growing like fungus on a rebus and then cut up into 12,000 Ìýjigsaw pieces. Two hundred of the jigsaw pieces have been defaced with strange, cryptic symbols that are reminiscent of a Coptic interpretation of a text originally written in Minoan Linear A. And the picture on the box has been lost. Oh, and the pieces are multidimensional, or something.
‘It was on July 12th that all blog contact was lost with eccentric local science fiction writer Mike Lancaster; author of â€�3.8â€� and it’s sequel â€�7.9â€� (‘Human Cubed point 8 Squaredâ€�, and ‘The Past We Hid in a Boxâ€� for our US listeners). ÌýDespite frequent presses of ‘refreshâ€�, no new posts emerged. It was if the author had completely disappeared. Or had just forgotten how to blog. Either way, it was a case that needed investigating.
‘Mike Lancaster has become a cult figure around Cambridge; from his avant garde busking activities, his crimes against fashion, and his predilection for walking from coffee shop to bookshop to library to coffee shop muttering ‘the brown wire . . . cut the brown wire� into his antique mobile phone, which has a round dial with holes for fingers on the front, and a black and white screen.
‘I spoke to local Bookseller Aabraham Bullingbarn:�
AB: ‘Who?�
NS: ‘Mike Lancaster.�
AB: ‘The authory bloke?�
NS: ‘Him.�
AB: ‘Read a book of his poems once. Then I was hospitalised.�
NS: ‘So his poems can cause ACTUAL physical harm?�
AB: ‘No, it was completely unrelated: I’d developed ingrowing eyelashes. Everytime I looked at something it tickled.�
NS: ‘But you remember the poems?�
AB: ‘Rubbish. Guy wouldn’t know a sonnet from a dirty limerick.�
NS: ‘That’s a little uncharitable . . .�
AB: ‘His ‘Sonnet to Unfathomable Eternity� does begin: There was a young man from Sri Lanka . . .�
ÌýNS: ‘Quite. Have you read any of his science fiction?â€�
AB: ‘What do I look like? A Klingon?�
NS: ‘Now that you mention it . . . �
AB: ‘Get out of my shop.�
NS: ‘I was getting nowhere. Fast. Although technically I WAS walking. But fast walking. As fast as an old lady seeing a Georgette Heyer novel at a church Jumble Sale. Except I wasn’t haggling over 20p. Or at a Jumble Sale. And I’m twenty-eight. And male.
‘Other bookshops in the city were equally baffled.
‘A woman in Waterstones said she could order a copy in and when I explained that I was looking for the author, not one of his books, she seemed to suggest that she could order in a copy of Mike Lancaster himself. When I asked her how that was possible she got nervous, laughed as if she had just told a hilarious joke, and ran off to rearrange Lemony Snicket books in alphabetical, rather than series, order.�
‘I suddenly realised that I was through the looking glass. ÌýI had to pay for a new one. And clean up the one I’d broken.
‘I got in touch with Mike’s publishers who responded that I needed to talk to his agent, who said I needed to talk to his public image consultant, who passed me on to his particle physics guru, and part-time yoga teacher, Cranston Moggle.�
CM: ‘Ah. I wondered when you would find me.�
NS: ‘You knew I was coming?�
CM: ‘You phoned ahead.�
NS: ‘Where is Mike Lancaster?�
CM: ‘Straight to the point.�
NS: ‘I’m not one to beat around the bush.�
CM: ‘Or hide your lights under a bushel?�
NS: ‘A bushel?�
CM: ‘The answer to your question is, in many ways, to be found within the question itself.�
NS: ‘The question ‘Where is Mike Lancaster?� or the question ‘A bushel?�
CM: ‘Exactly. You’re beginning to see behind the truth of the matter. And the truth of matter, for that matter.�
NS: ‘I’m sorry?�
CM: ‘It’s okay, it’s an old one, just clean up the mess and we’ll say no more about it.�
NS: ‘I don’t know what it is with me and mirrors today.�
CM: ‘Ever wondered what you’re doing in a mirror when you’re not looking at it?�
NS: ‘Never.�
CM: ‘Perhaps the answer to your question is, on a multitude of levels, to be found within the unobserved mirror.�
NS: ‘So how would one go about seeing something in a mirror that you can’t be looking at?�
CM: ‘That reminds me of a joke that Niels Bohr told Erwin Schrodinger. (Long pause) Actually, maybe it was Morecambe and Wise.�
NS: ‘What is the joke?�
CM: ‘It only reminded me of a joke, it didn’t remind me how the joke went. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some neutrinos to polish.�
NS: ‘I had reached another dead end. All I’d gained was another seven years bad luck and more questions. I didn’t know enough about quantum mechanics to know if neutrinos even neededÌýpolishing. It was time to put my investigative skills to the test.
‘But where to look?
‘Little did I know that help was going to come from a very strange place. ÌýAnd that everything I have ever known or believed was about to be turned on its head.â€�
TO BE CONTINUED.
