I don’t know if this is anything, but you know what that hexagon layout reminds me of is my grand-dad’s accordion. I don’t know how many buttons an accordion has on it, but I think they were laid out like that.
Bump for interest . . . anyone play an instrument like this?
Hey! Yes, I’ve got my dad here, he plays concertina and accordion and he says (and I’m quoting because I don’t understand any of this): “It’s called the Wicki-Hayden note layout. No matter what button you’re on, if you go to the right, that’s a whole step up, if you go up and to the left that’s a fourth up, and down and to the right is a fourth down. The closest button directly above is a full octave jump.”
By the time that third reply happened, this comment had floated its way to the top of the thread and accordion and concertina players all over the world were chiming in. They were quickly deciphering what it would sound like if the honeycomb bits I had brought out of the Dream were played with the red hexagons representing pushed buttons. Within a half hour after that, it was clear that, though no one could say for sure what key it was meant to be played in, the hexagon patterns on the side of the 767 were a representation of “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. Carl has amazing taste in music.
Andy and I went on a research blitz, learning everything we could about the song and about CRJ, master of pop music.
Once I had all the words to “Call Me Maybe” memorized (I already knew most of them), I pulled the curtains of Andy’s guest room and got in bed. It was only early afternoon, but I was exhausted (as usual) and needed to see what I could do with this new information. Getting to sleep was not easy—I wanted so badly to make it happen. I knew that literally the whole world was waiting to see what would come of this, and I was the only person in the world who could tell them.
So I cleared my mind and let my exhaustion take over. And then I did that another twenty-three times until it finally stuck and I found myself in the lobby of a fancy office in a fancy office building. A solid thirty minutes after that I was standing in front of a 767, singing in my thready, slightly off-key voice:
I threw a wish in the well
Don’t ask me I’ll never tell
I looked to you as it fell
And now you’re in my way
And this was not actually that weird until I got to the chorus, which is so exquisitely crafted that it is very difficult to sing without getting pretty into it. The good news is that you’re always the only person in the Dream, so no one is around to see you dancing around a 767 singing, “BEFORE YOU CAME INTO MY LIFE I MISSED YOU SO BAD, I MISSED YOU SO BAD, I MISSED YOU SO SO BAD.”
My injuries didn’t follow me into sleep, so while back in my real body lifting my left arm above my head remained a goal I’d be working toward for months, in the Dream I could get down like the spry twenty-something I should have been.
And then I finished, and I was pretty sure I got through the whole song without missing a word (though I definitely missed some notes), and I started to hear a soft hiss. Then, louder, came the noise of electric or hydraulic motors as the bays containing the landing gear opened and the massive wheels came down, from the wings and the nose of the airplane. They touched softly down on the grass of the plane park and immediately looked as if they’d been there forever.
I was in.
Or, at least, I was into the very small rooms that stored the airplane’s wheels. In my studying 767s, I knew that these wheel bays were big enough for a person to be inside, until the wheels came back in, in which case a person would be very lucky not to be crushed. A number of people had climbed into the forward wheel bay to attempt to hitchhike. This, it turns out, is a fairly good way to die. But that did mean it was possible to climb into the wheel bays, which I proceeded to do immediately. I went up into the forward wheel bay first, because I knew that there was actually a port in there that led to the avionics bay, the room where all the plane’s controls were. And from there was another port that led to the interior of the plane. Both of these ports, however, are not just doors, I knew. They’re sealed and need special tools to open, but I figured that was my best bet for getting all the way into the plane. Once in the landing gear bay, I saw a remarkable spaghetti mess of tubes and cables. If I were an engineer at Boeing, I’d have a fairly good idea what I was looking at. But I was not, so in the dim light coming from the open hatch, all I saw was a big scary mess.
But spotting the hatch in the ceiling of the bay wasn’t a problem. It was marked mostly by the nonexistence of tons of tubes and wires. It was basically the only flat surface on the ceiling. Opening the hatch, on the other hand, was not so simple. It was fastened in place with dozens of flush bolts. Instead of normal Phillips or flathead screws, they were just flat, like the head of a tack.
I dug my nails as deep as I could get into the hatch, but it was so obviously fruitless that I didn’t even keep trying.
I crawled around in the bay for a little while longer, looking for . . . anything, I guess, but it all just looked like a mess.
I went back to the hatch to scratch at it a bit more because, I dunno, maybe I had received super strength in the last twenty minutes. This time, though, I noticed the texture of tiny raised letters on the handle. In the dimness of the light the letters were tough to make out—at least that’s what I thought at first. Finally I realized that it was not that they were hard to see; they were simply not letters. They were there, but they were just a bunch of lines and circles that my brain couldn’t form into words.
It was just the thing that happens when you’re off track and the detail of the Dream begins to fade. But how could that be? I’d sung the song and it worked! This had to be it!
“AAAGGHHHH!” I screamed my frustration into the empty room. That didn’t help. I aimed a kick at a collection of pipes on the wall, thinking to wake myself up in frustration. I mean, it’s not like I had nothing to report back to the rest of the world. But if they had succeeded in bringing me a clue, I was loath to come back telling them it was a dead end!
So I only kicked enough to make a satisfying thud, not enough to wake myself up.
The air was stale and oily in the bay, so I decided that maybe there was something I had missed on the outside of the plane. Maybe the secret was in one of the other wheel bays.
I circled the plane again. I yanked on every single thing I could yank on and several I couldn’t. I climbed into the other wheel bays and found nothing compelling or useful.
Frustrated, I just started walking away from the plane.
A few blocks down the street I turned to look at that massive machine. I’d spent hours in the Dream staring at it, so I didn’t expect to see anything new. And I didn’t, but I did feel my heart suddenly jump into my throat before I began running full speed back to the plane because I’d figured it out.
Back in the forward bay I had to let my eyes adjust for a few minutes before I could see the tiny engraved shapes on the handle again. They weren’t the indecipherable scribble of “on the wrong track” dream writing; they were the lines and dots of the Mayan numerical system Miranda had taught me at that hotel in DC. The same system that, I was now certain, represented the number six on the tail of the plane.
I could absolutely have punched myself in the face and looked up the system with Andy, but I wanted nothing more than to do this on my own. After months of people all over the world co-solving sequences, I wanted to be more than the vehicle through which this final sequence was solved; I wanted my name on that goddamn Wikipedia page!