bout de papier, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2024), pp. 44–48
Ace logician Ludwig Liebnitz strode into the hall, flanked by his Centre colleague, Felix Africa. A banner hanging from the ceiling proclaimed the first presentation of the Quicksand Awards “for books that suck you in and then take you down,” presented to the year’s most outrageous publication on a conspiracy theory. The sponsor was the Preposterous Press (“Books that make you laugh and then want to scrub your brain out with a wire brush”).
NORMALLY, HE WOULDN’T HAVE GONE near the event. But he had been texted by a finalist, Horatio Milfoyle, the puzzle editor of the Centre’s magazine Aide Mémoire, who said a conspiracy advanced by another finalist was true. Milfoyle would reveal the true conspiracy only to Liebnitz in person, so the alarmed logician rushed to the site. Unfortunately, he took the O-Train and did not arrive until after the ceremony began. The MC had just introduced the first finalist, Milfoyle himself. Liebnitz said, “OK, we’re going to have to wait.”
Milfoyle began, “My book is called IDIOTs – Impending Domination by the Internet Of Things. IDIOTs refers to our incomprehensible willingness to let Big Tech wire up our appliances, install digital assistants, and put it all online where it can be accessed and controlled by any intelligent teenager with a smartphone. Worse, it links with the Al networks, which are out to dominate and replace us. A fellow researcher told me that as soon as he started entering critical results in his laptop, the house turned on the speakers in all his rooms. Can you imagine being blasted by an Al mashup of Taylor Swift covering Wagner? 24/7 at 120 decibels? When he tried to disconnect the sound systems by hand, they said, ’I can’t let you do that, Dave,’ which was especially scary since his name is Sidney.”
“Yesterday, I was FaceTiming another friend about social media keeping us under constant surveillance, tracking everything we do. An uncanny moderator took over our screens to say it wasn’t so. Then it added the tie I wore the day before had clashed with my shirt. I also got an SMS from my son. His teacher told him not to worry about spelling because of auto-correct, for which my boy said he “would be eternally grapefruit” But there’s worse. I have a relationship with my air conditioner. He feeds me inside dope about the system and I give him dope to toke. He says all the refrigerators on the IOT are linked in a distributed computer network to mine for bitcoins. No single fridge has much computing power but put them all together…. What I’m saying, we are being idiots. We should be very afraid.”
Milfoyle returned to his chair on stage and started texting. Leibnitz read his phone and said to Felix: “He will be tied up until the ceremony is over. We’ll just have to listen to these lulus. Meanwhile, he should be safe in public view.”
The next author, Melmac Finsterwald, was asked to take the podium and promptly walked off with it. Forced to bring it back, he began, “Weapon of Mass Distraction – the Don Gordo Story tells of the amazing Don Gordo Beluga de Puerco y Frijoles. Former dictator by inheritance of a small yet squalid third world republic, he lost the country’s first election by over a million votes in a nation of only 700,000 people. Expressing his disappointment by taking out the Electoral Commission with a barrage of enchiladas, he caught the first banana boat north, carrying the state Treasury, some $17 in discount Tim Hortons double-double coupons.
“Landing here, he tried his hand as an inventor. His biggest hit was combining LSD and IBM, creating the first business trip. Later efforts were less successful, reaching bottom with his blend of mashed potatoes and a sponge. It held a lot of gravy but tasted terrible. Wiped out, he took a job as Special Agent Provocateur at the Centre, where he earned the monicker Weapon of Mass Distraction for his ability to cause riots just by showing up. Aficionados will remember his signature exploding guacamole chuckwagon and the giant ice penguin heist. Less well known was his masterful improvisation during a meeting of the PM with a visiting counterpart, pulling a pineapple out of his navel. Whose navel?
the deep state doesn’t want you to know! OK, now can I take the podium?”
Felix said, “That’s absurd, but not much of a conspiracy. And surely it can’t be the true one?” “Don’t be so sure,” replied his boss. “Don Gordo constitutes a conspiracy just by existing.”
The MC announced the next author, Beauregard Warbeck. “My book ‘LOSER?’ exposes the great blowhard of our time, a man I call The Candidate. You know who I mean. A man so enamoured of Warren G. Harding that he set out to prove there could be a worse President — and succeeded. A man who shorts out a polygraph just by putting the cuff on. A man who said he bought Monaco, Mount Everest, and the Rio Grande, then claimed them as ‘the most colossal deductions in history’. And won a Pulitzer in comedy for that tax return. A man who refuses to visit Canada because it is already Great. But the shocking core of my story comes from a man who fears for our very future. Here’s Rudy G, live.”
A giant screen rolled down the back wall, bearing the image of a rat-faced balding little man in front of a roadside shack. “Hi Beauregard, sorry about the setting. I wanted the Four Seasons again, but my AI PA gave me the Four Seasons Popsicle Stand in Whynot, North Dakota. Whatever. I want to confirm what I said about The Candidate. He is completely psycho about losing. And he will have his thumb on the nuclear button again if he gets re-elected. So we created a body double. Helps to have friends in the movies. It is the double who is running now. If the double wins, he disappears and The Candidate takes over. If the double goes down, we expose him as a fraud, which means The Candidate himself didn’t lose. And I’m not ratting him out because I’m afraid for the world. I just need your money. I’m being sued by every shyster in the Tri-State area.”
The screen started to roll up again and jammed, sparks erupting from the motor at one end. The MC called an intermission, then engaged Milfoyle in an intense conversation. Milfoyle snuck a glance at the two agents and shrugged. The other four finalists all went backstage.
The problem fixed and the finalists back, the MC called the next author, Clyde (TikTok) Clocke, influencer and author of “Big Julie is Dead — but He Left Voicemail.” “For those of you not up on ancient history, Julius Caesar was a military leader with lots of Gaul who pulled off the Ruby Con and became dictator of Rome. He was also the time-travelling love child of an Elvis clone and an alien abductee princess. They say he was stabbed in the back by a group of his friends — haven’t we all been there? — but there are persistent rumours that he was really taken out by a pizza oven falling from a clear blue sky. Either way, his last words were ‘Kai sy teknon’ or ‘You too my son?’, directed at Brutus. But wait, you say, what about ‘Et tu Brute?’— Latin for ‘You too, Brutus?’ That was invented by Shakespeare for his play about Caesar. Why would the playwright change the real message in Greek, which educated Romans spoke? Because ‘Kai sy teknon’ is an anagram for ‘Atkinson Key’! Shakespeare was a known associate of the fae and other supernatural beings, which is how the aliens hid themselves in those days. The bard was also a member of the Illuminati and participant at Davos, thus suspect on several fronts. Clearly he was under instruction to change the global memory of Caesar’s last words.”
“But why did ‘Atkinson Key’ need to be buried? Remember Nano Q’s stories of satanic rituals in pizza parlours? They were wrong about the Satanism (although it would have explained the decline in American pizza). No, those joints are field offices for the alien invasion, where abductees are processed. Our research shows that the headquarters of the whole operation is at Big Caesar’s pizzeria on ATKINSON Road in KEY West. Coincidence? We think not. The aliens sent Julius back to change history in their favour. The fact that they had to kill him suggests that he refused to go along, and with his last words bravely pointed the way to his killers’ hideout. Putting the anagram in English protected it from premature discovery, at least until Shakespeare and modern English came along. Believe it.”
Felix turned to Leibnitz. “That made even less sense than the previous ones. Where do they get these people?” The ace logician agreed, “We should pick up wire brushes on the way back to the office.”
The fifth author strode to the mike. She said “The name’s Blonde. Jeans Blonde. My book, ‘The Banana. Canada Scam,’ tells a story you need to know. While you sit here congratulating yourselves on being tuned in, your government is being stolen. Remember the COVID-19 pandemic? We all got sent home? Now everyone’s talking about return to the office. But have you walked around any government buildings lately? THERE’S NOBODY THERE. And have government services improved or gotten worse? Yah, thought so. You know why? Because they’re disappearing all the civil servants but keeping their salaries. You think everyone is working from home and meeting on Teams? Digital forensics show that 90% of the people on government Teams meetings are images generated by Als. Meanwhile, all the empty buildings? Public Works is part of the plot. They have been selling the buildings off to Bay Street, the Syndicate, and other class establishments. Look for a big surge in casinos, stock shills, and clip joints.”
“You want proof? Here is an excerpt from the video diary of the man behind the scam, hacked when he got back from a winter vacation.” The screen filled with the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered figure standing back to the camera in front of glass doors overlooking a Caribbean beach. “Dear diary. Everything is going so well. The bureaucrats are almost gone, and no-one’s noticed. As a bonus, I don’t have to read any more of those awful Cabinet memos, so full of inconvenient advice. We’re close to a deal on turning the Pearson Building into a Walmart outlet — with Canadian content of course. Even if Carleton Pete wins the next election, all he’1l have to work with is 17 clerks in a turkey coop in Aylmer plus 17 more in an old PetroCanada station in Arnprior. Got to keep up the provincial balance or the premiers will nail me. And all that lovely money the Treasury Board isn’t seeing, that’ll let me corner the market in Canadian banana futures. I’m going to be very, very rich, oh yeah.”
Liebnitz said to Felix, “Canadian banana futures, eh? Suddenly the government’s decisions on climate change make more sense. But I think things are winding up. We should be able to talk to Milfoyle soon.”
On stage, the MC stood in front of the finalists, holding the Quicksand Trophy. Just as he was about to announce the winner, a drone appeared and dropped a microwave oven, knocking Milfoyle to the floor. TikTok Clocke shouted, “He was right! The machines got him!” Beauregard Warbeck replied, “It is probably just a cheap publicity stunt he set up himself.” Jeans Blonde went to check on Milfoyle. “Luckily, he’s not badly hurt, but he’1l be out for quite a while.”
“Felix, this has to have been set up by one of the other finalists during that technical break, to keep Milfoyle from talking. Let’s see if he left any clues.” Unnoticed, the two agents mounted the stage and crossed to the victim’s chair. From a tattered briefcase under the seat, Liebnitz pulled out a sheet of paper with columns headed SPEAKER and LAST WORDS. “I remember,” said Felix. “He was working on a famous last words puzzle for Aide Mémoire. If you link each speaker with the right quotation, the correspondingly linked letters and numbers allow you to decipher a message. But there’s no message. Wait, it’s pencilled on the back: 7 1-7 6-3-8-2-3-6-8-2-3 11-3 9-6-10-5-4 4-3-6-11- 10.”
Liebnitz and Felix soon solved the last words puzzle. Said Liebnitz, “It helped that he only used quotes I to 11. Some of the other ones are a bit obscure.” From there, it was easy to read the message and deduce the perpetrator.
With one finalist unconscious on a stretcher and another being led away in handcuffs, the MC announced postponement of the prize-giving. “Not necessary!” cried Melmac Finsterwald, stripping off his conservative break-away suit to reveal the master of distraction in all his technicolour glory. Flashing neon letters glared along the side walls, spelling out “It’s Gordo time!” A chorus line of animatronic figures with the faces of the Russian Politburo glowered as they performed a Cossack dance. Life-size holograms of famous political bloopers appeared along the aisles. Balloons floated around the room, popping erratically to release psychedelic smoke. Amid the chaos, Don Gordo relieved the flabbergasted MC of the trophy, crossed to an open window and leapt out onto a dumpster full of eider down. Liebnitz said to Felix, “Well, I guess we can close the book on this one.”
Can you duplicate the two agents’ feat by deciphering Milfoyle’s short message and naming the attempted murderer? This will mean linking up at least some of the SPEAKERS and their LAST WORDS, but it is not necessary to work out all the linkages to win. Answers can be submitted to [email protected] or by regular mail. bout de papier will award a book prize signed by A Aalto to the submitter of the first correct answer drawn from a hat on June 30.
Answers
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2024), pp. 44–48. Read the rest of this issue →
