As large and empty as the cathedral is, the sound of the organ fills it.
No one is on the dais and all of the pews are empty except one. A tall, dark-haired figure sits in the last row all the way to one side.
It takes you a second glance to recognize Inez this time. The woman in front of you has already grown through her full height, but you can tell by the scrawniness of her arms and legs and the knobbiness of her elbows and knees that she's a teenager just starting to grow into her body.
She smiles up at you as you approach. “This is the church my family used to take me to when I was a little girl," she says without greeting. "The organist always practiced here every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. Mostly church music, but he always warmed up with a little Bach.”
“I found you,” you say testily. “Can we please go home now?”
“I’m still not the Inez you’re looking for.”
“You look Inez enough for my purposes,” you grumble.
“Except in about two minutes I’m going to take hold of my key and disappear again, to our next destination.”
Suddenly exhausted, you collapse into the pew beside her. “What’s the point of this wild goose chase, Inez?”
“You can’t tell me you’re not enjoying it.”
“I’m not,” you assure her. “I'm really not. What's this all about, anyway. Is it some kind of test?”
The grin suddenly vanishes from her face. “No,” she promises. “No test.”
“Well, you’re trying to tell me something. Why don’t you just come out and say it?”
“This isn’t the sort of thing someone can just tell you. It’s the sort of thing you have to experience for yourself.”
The music changes suddenly. Inez tilts her fact up to the ceiling, smiling. “The Dorian Toccata and Fugue.”
As you listen, the notes wander up and down the register in intricate scales, quick and light.
“It’s all about the patterns,” Inez says.
“What is?”
She nods in the direction of the organ loft. “The music. The puzzles. Everything’s got a pattern to it. Even this ‘wild goose chase’ has a pattern to it.” She turns sideways in her seat to face you full on. “Even the Universe.”
You scoff. “The Universe has always seemed like a pretty chaotic place to me.”
"Which is exactly what I said about mazes too – at least, before you solve them," she reminds you. "Maybe the Universe isn't random – maybe it's just one big puzzle you have to solve."
"Solve the Universe?" you ask skeptically.
"Why not?" she asks. "You saw how complex a pattern you can hide in a puzzle with just a two-letter alphabet. Imagine how many orders of magnitude more complex a hidden pattern could be if you had five, or ten, or dozens of letters to intertwine with one another." Her face lifts up into that same mischievous grin again. "Like this."
And in the next instant, the pew beside you is empty.
Well, nearly empty: there's another envelope on the seat she just vacated.
You just let it sit there. You sit there yourself, for a long, long time. Until after the unseen organist finishes his warm-up and the Bach gives way to more stodgy, standard church fare. Until he finishes his practice altogether and the church falls silent around you. Until there is no more sunlight coming through the stained glass windows.
At last, with a sigh, you pick up the envelope and open it. You have to carry it over to a bank of votive candles in order to read it properly – or, more accurately, in order to see that you can’t read it after all:
It’s a cryptogram. Basically, the message is written in code.
Find this cryptogram's hidden message – a single word – on the Solution Page to determine where you go next. Or you can