Layers Within Layers Tuesday May 15, 6:03pm
Ah, the Apolyton Institute. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to have no function other than stopping anyone finding out what they actually do. Unsurprisingly, no one at the institute was prepared to answer any of my questions. But I did have lunch with my super-secret contact Cassia, one of the new puzzle scribes, who spent several years doing mysterious things at Apolyton.
She's a funny one, Cassia. I always get the feeling when I talk to her that there's a lot more going on under the surface than is visible to the naked eye. She pauses before she speaks, as if she were taking care to choose every word with incredible precision. So, after my long-winded explanation of the whole neural override/Apolyton/parcels/Earth/music festival connection, she paused, took a sip of mint tea, and said:
"I never worked on any device of that sort."
This wasn't, you notice, precisely what I'd asked.
"OK, but did you hear anything about it? Do you know who might have worked on it?"
Another pause, another sip, a thoughtful air.
"There were rumours. But in a place like Apolyton, you learn not to listen too carefully to rumours."
Right. This time I decided just to wait out the silence.
After another few moments, she said:
"Yes. I'll help you."
"You know what it does, how it works?"
"No. I'll find out."
And then, without quite knowing how it happened, I found we were debating the merits of the Perplex City Ballet Company's most recent shows, and not talking about Apolyton at all.
But she was as good as her word. Early this evening, I got a short note from her with the plans attached. Who knows what she did to get them, but whatever it was, it seems to have done the trick. Of course, nothing's ever quite that simple. Unless you're using an Apolyton key, the files are fragmented. So, we'll need to reassemble them. Can you help?
And if you're stuck for something else to work on, Paul Denchfield on Earth is trying to decipher a timetable which will tell us when Cyrus is planning to air the primer. If we can stop that, we'll be in a much better position.