bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 4 / Vol. 12, No. 1 (1995) — Spring 1995 // Printemps 1995, p. 96
“The oddest thing has happened, Liebnitz.” said Chief MacBannock as the ace logician entered the conference room. “This morning, as I logged onto my computer, I noticed an E-mail dated 12/15/94 with the subject line “PROXIMA MISSION”. When I brought it up, it turned out that the date was December 15 of the year 2094, and the message dealt with the first Solar Federation permanent mission to Obic, the inhabited fourth planet of the Proxima Centauri system.”
“SIGNET’s still having problems, I see,” replied Liebnitz. “That’s hardly fair, Ludwig!” retorted Gearloose, the Centre’s head of communications. “As far as we can tell, it’s a flaw in the Federation’s system — the High-Amplitude Interplanetary Relay or HAIRNET. They seem to have overcome the problem of time delay in interplanetary transmission — messages to Qbic would take three or four years even at light speed, for example — by creating an E-Mail system that sends messages backward in time, so as to arrive anywhere in the universe at the same time as they were sent. In this case, however, a piece of green cheese appears to have shorted the main server on Luna, distorting the flux capacitator and sending the message back exactly a century.” “If you say so, Harry,” said Liebnitz. “I can see where a time machine with E-mail capacity could be useful for other reasons too. You could wait until you see how a bureaucratic fight comes out, for example, and then put a memo back into the files a month before, supporting the side that was going to win….”
“I’m upset to hear you take such a cynical line, Ludwig,” said MacBannock. “I may have seriously underestimated your management potential. But to get back to the business at hand, we need your help to piece together the message, which was scrambled in transmission. It seems to be a list of Qbic mission personnel, in protocol order, with some notes on their responsibilities and backgrounds. All we have been able to reconstruct from the garble are the following facts, however.”
1. The protocol listing of the ten mission personnel is also in alphabetical order, except that two names are exchanged (ie one of the names is where a second name would fall alphabetically, and that second name is where the first one would be).
2. Streaming is more complicated in this future Foreign Service. Everyone has a first specialty and a back-up specialty. On the Qbic mission, each member has a different specialty and backs up a different one of the members.
3. The general rule is that a specialist and his/her back-up are of the same gender, and this is the case with eight of the ten specialists on the Qbic mission. In the other two cases, the back-up is of the opposite gender.
4. The protocol list is headed by a Martian. [“Not much has changed there, quipped Liebnitz.] 5. The trade specialist backs up the aid specialist, Eagleclaw, and the two women often play zero-G squash together.
6. Fujii comes from the Asteroid Belt and backs up the customs specialist.
7. Douglas backs up the administration specialist, who backs up Barents, who backs up the immigration specialist.
8. Hamidi falls directly between the defence specialist and the cultural specialist on the protocol list.
9. The woman from Triton falls directly between the woman who backs up the consular specialist and the man who backs up defence.
10. The consular specialist from Earth backs up the trade specialist.
11. Andichari, the political specialist, backs up culture. The man next to her on the list comes from Ganymede.
12. The immigration specialist’s place on the list is between the back-up political specialist and the woman from the L5 orbital colony (a permanent habitat between Earth and Luna).
13. The customs specialist and Gwanda are husband and wife (respectively).
They come from the same tunnel complex on Luna.
14. Chan’s place on the list is between Iglesias and the economic specialist.
15. Jellicoe, who comes from the Oort Cloud Station, is next on the list to the mission member from Mercury Coldside. Although from opposite ends of the Solar System, the two are in fact half-brothers, conceived in vitro from exported genetic material. “This isn’t all that tough,” said the ace logician after a few moment’s work. It’s interesting – there are five men and five women on the mission, and nowhere on the protocol list are there more than two people of the same gender in a row” “PC clearly remains important in the future,” said MacBannock with approval. “Not so, Chief,” replied Gearloose. “Indications are that HAIRNET is a Macintosh-based system.” Looks of incomprehension appeared on all sides. Can you duplicate Liebnitz’s feat by providing a list of Qbic mission personnel in protocol order, including the name, gender, specialty, back-up specialty and home for each? Replies submitted before creation of this puzzle have been disqualified.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 4 / Vol. 12, No. 1 (1995) — Spring 1995 // Printemps 1995, p. 96. Read the rest of this issue →
