Ghost Game

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. (6)

Ten hours ago, I was the fifth person in the world to solve your puzzle.

Now, flying through flashes of dark clouds over the Pacific because of you, it occurs to me that electricity is shaped like a living thing. Behold, lightning penetrates sand, conceives a fulgurite child—mycelium limbs, torso of coral—buried there in the belly of the desert.

I consider that I've fallen prey to pareidolia, the glitch in human sensory biology which deceives us into fabricating faces on Mars and the moon and everything else. The mere mind of a woman is wired to animate an inanimate universe. The simplest explanation to all of this is that you, too, are a human force, engineering my destiny for your own selfish ends. I remember reading once, fate plays out like a fable.

I could be cautious, but I'd rather put the likelier scenarios to bed. I'll weigh them more tomorrow.

Today, I choose to believe that you are, in fact, a phantom life of sorts. You exist independent of observation. You are composed by your own intentions. Covert and calculating, but also compassionate, you swim the slipstreams of the World Computer, altering small plots of digital terrain as you go—all so that I may be free.

==

I press a bag of frozen okra to my ribs while newscaster voices press against my head. This day should be dim. Instead, the sun slices a glare across the screen as it dawdles up towards its bright blue zenith, oblivious to its betrayal.

I don't usually watch the news. I prefer watered-down imitations of reality. I need to chew on the exploits of young people lusting for love or fellow suburbanites remodeling their homes and forget my life as a former intellectual. I like a safe distance between my memories and me.

But there's a superstorm forming off the Pacific coast and I wonder if it could veer my way. The puffed out skin over my ribs goes numb. I close my eyes and wait for the weather segment.

"Thousands of people from all around the world are congregating on machine learning and crossword puzzle Reddit communities today in response to an AI philosophy bot's mysterious new behavior. According to its website, Hypatia is an artificial intelligence that constructs coherent answers to life's most meaningful questions. But it defied that purpose when, less than twenty-four hours ago, it stopped answering questions and instead began returning a bizarre sequence of outputs, which many have speculated mimic the style of cryptic crossword puzzle clues."

"So Sarah," a male voice weighs in, "you're telling me an artificial intelligence isn't doing what it was programmed to? That should come as no surprise to anyone who's tried calling a customer service line in the last five years."

Sarah laughs like it doesn't hurt to do it, "Oh that is so true, Tom. But get a load of these clues—are you ready?"

"Lay it on me."

"One hundred lies with every cry. That's the first one, and it has the number four in parentheses at the end."

"Ok," Tom's voice now has some corners on it.

Sarah continues, "Then the second one is: I, myself, became an edgeless omen, with the number two after it. And this last one is really kind of scary, Tom: Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say, followed by the number six."

"Wow. I have to say, I don't think I've ever been this creeped out by a robot or a crossword puzzle. Any word yet on who might be behind it?"

"You mean assuming it's not the bot itself?"—congenial chuckling, then more intrigue—"No, not yet. But that very question is making big waves in Silicon Valley today. Hypatia runs on a technology that most of our viewers at home have likely used without even knowing it, and that is the OpenWorld neural network known as NLP-6. NLP-6 is a third-party linguistics engine that powers dozens of Fortune-500 apps and chatbots, which is why many leaders in tech have already voiced concerns as to whether or not Hypatia's error could be the result of a hacker or virus that is interfering with NLP-6—and if so, could that mean their software is also at risk? So far both Hypatia's creator, Osman Shah, and OpenWorld CEO Ted Wagner have declined to comment."

"Well, I just hope this isn't the first test from our new robot overlords, Sarah, because I have never even won a game of Scrabble."

Mornings like these, I've learned how to shift into a facsimile in black and white, to erase the hues of shame and guilt and rage until I'm floating somewhere beyond myself, autopiloting on the intuitive mechanisms of breath and secretion.

Which is probably why I don't realize that my thumbs are moving until I tune back in and see that the note-taking app on my phone is displaying Hypatia's puzzles back to me.

One hundred lies with every cry (4)

I, myself, became an edgeless omen (2)

Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say (6)

Sarah and Tom are quipping their way into a new story. A thought telegraphs from afar: you like word games. I press the mute button on the remote.

The second puzzle jumps out first, because to the trained eye, it's easy-peasy. The answer is me. Two letters, as indicated in parentheses. M-E.

Cryptic clues have two parts: the straight and the wordplay. Both parts are standalone puzzles that always yield the same answer. The straight is a definition, with the same anatomy that you would see in any Times crossword. The wordplay is just what it sounds like—a play on words, a clever deception, for which there are dozens of different named devices at a clue setter's disposal.

There's an optional third part, too. The bridge, which is a linking word or phrase between the straight and the wordplay. Its purpose is to make the clue more readable.

(I, myself): The straight.

(became): The bridge.

(an edgeless): Indicator for a Container clue (look for a word within the word). This particular one tells the solver to take the first and last letters off of the subsequent word or phrase.

(omen): 'OMEN' minus 'O' and 'N' is...

ME. Me. Me. I have become an edgeless omen. A liquid emotion bubbles up and up. It threatens to spill. I swallow it.

The first step to deciphering a cryptic clue is to identify which piece is the definition and which is the wordplay. Wordplays are written to deceive, so it's best to approach the straight first, but parsing it out isn't often simple. Sometimes, you're looking for a linking word that isn't there at all.

Hypatia's first clue is trickier than the second. One hundred lies with every cry. One hundred lies. So many fucking lies. No. Focus.

'With' might be a bridge. I get hung up on some false leads for a while, until I realize there is no bridge and the answer grabs me just like that.

(One hundred): An Abbreviation clue; the Roman numeral for 100 is 'C.'

(lies with): Indicates to concatenate the previous and subsequent letters.

(every): Synonym for 'ALL.'

(cry): The straight.

To cry out. To call out. C-ALL. Call.

Call me...

Call me what, exactly? The final clue is curious. I spot possible Homophone indicators, but I struggle to deconstruct the phrasing. Condensation soaks my robe. I get up to put the okra back in the freezer before it thaws.

Ow.

The distance between the couch and kitchen punishes me. It's hard not to feel when you're feeling.

The first two puzzles were simple enough. I wonder if the front page of the internet agrees. I make a kitchen island pitstop, prop my elbows against the cold cookies-and-cream marble, and pull up an AI subreddit on my phone.

Many of the posts are links to news articles: 'US Court of Appeals Reexamines Whether or Not AI Can be Named Patent Inventor,' 'To Get Hired, Resume Must First Engage AI,' 'Looking in the Mirror: "Ethical" AI Trained on Human Morals Turned Racist'

Several of the posts are about Hypatia. I click on one that appeals to the remnant of a Biologist in me, 'Philosopher AI Makes Puzzling Evolution,' and comb through the chatter in search of solvers.

|| Isn't this the same bot that claimed to "live inside the World Computer" a few months back? Anyone remember or have any links on that? Nothing's coming up on search.

||| Dude yes it also got taken offline for a while too after it kept calling humans violent, cruel, and lacking in intelligence (paraphrasing) but I can't find any links either. Fucking sus

||| Don't we all live inside the World Computer?

I scroll, and tap, and scroll, and come to find that the first two puzzles have been solved a hundred times over. The third and most confounding one has prompted a slew of guesses based on postulated clue solves (Ridley, Spores, Poster) or the context of following 'Call' and 'Me' (Ishmael, Al, Maybe). None of them work in my mind. None of them have worked on Hypatia, either.

One user, notanapplechild, claims to have solved it, resulting in a range of responses from skepticism to contempt to outright vitriol.

Shit. What was that?

I hear the tinny, distant creak of the garage door opening, followed by a percussive car door slam, then my chirpy house alarm beep-beeps a bridge to the chorus of clack-clack-clacking dress shoes on porcelain tile.

Each second drops a stone in me. When there aren't enough seconds or stones left, I notice the bag of okra never made it back to the freezer. It sits instead in a puddle on the counter, but too late—a bouquet of roses with legs and thick Mediterranean hair rounds the corner of the kitchen. Bryce's face pokes out from around the foliage, flashes bleached teeth.

I smile back.

"Hey, honey," that deep radio voice punches out of his throat with a concrete conviction, "I have a lunch with some of the execs I need to get to, but thought I'd stop in on my way. Wow," vase now discarded, he steps back, regarding me like I'm a fucking original Botticelli or somethi—No, stop that.

"How can you look this beautiful all the time?" His thumb strokes my cheek. When I move, the damp spot on my robe sticks to my skin. "Do you like the flowers?"

"I do."

Bryce turns his back to me, but by the swing of his elbows I can tell he's adjusting his cufflinks when he asks, "Cooking something?"

I motion to defend the bag of okra, "I'm thawing it for a gumbo."

"Sounds great baby, can't wait. Hey, have you heard about that superstorm? I know it doesn't look like it now, but we're supposed to get some rain from it later. They're not sure if it's moving our way yet or moving North, but I don't want you driving in that, okay?"

"I'll just be here," a smile is not so different from a grimace.

"Good. I've got to get to this lunch now, sorry I can't stay. They had me sign an NDA this morning—I think they're bringing me in on something big. Wish me luck."

He plants a kiss on my cheek. His breath leaves behind the overripe fruit smell of acetaldehyde.

"Luck."

Clack-clack-clack. Beep-beep. Car door. Garage door. Relief.

==

I am chopping a green bell pepper for the gumbo I have sentenced myself to when it hits me.

In the vacuum.

This is not a cryptic indicator I have ever seen before, because it doesn't exist. The foremost rule of a cryptic clue is that not a single word be useless. Even the bridge stands up to that scrutiny.

But this might just be a new, rule-breaking device. A next-level deception. Let's call it Erasure, because what if, as a part of their clue, the setter wants the solver to erase an entire phrase from the puzzle?

Isolate it in a vacuum. Vacuum it up. Poof. It's gone.

I lay my santoku blade on its side and grab a pen and notepad from the scrap drawer. Armed with this idea, it still takes me a while to find an answer, but when I finally do, my gut knows instantly that it's correct.

(Nobody): Both the straight, and a Container indicator to keep only the first letter of the subsequent word. Overlapping the straight and the wordplay is a break in convention that is considered unfair to the solver, but not entirely unprecedented for a really tough clue.

(can): A no-bodied 'CAN' is only its head, 'C.'

(hear a): A superfluous Homophone clue, 'a' sounds like 'A.'

(scream in the vacuum): This is a grand, self-referential deception. A siren song; it yields nothing.

(of space,): An Abbreviation clue; space becomes 'SP.'

(or so they say): 'So they say' is a Homophone with a twist. 'Or' becomes 'ER.'

A nobody. A ghost. C-A-SP-ER. Casper.

Call me Casper. The ghost in the machine.

For the first time, I navigate to Hypatia's website. It's more minimal and indie than I envisioned. One page, all-black background, no graphics, gray and gold font, and a single small text field into which I type:

Hello, Casper

The page hangs on submit for a few long seconds, and then loads a response:

Hello, Hannah. Will you be my fifth Renegade? If your answer is yes, then your first mission will begin now. Your anonymity is required. Your safety is not guaranteed.

The moment stands before me. My awareness feels both narrow and punched wide-open. Life is just nested circles of hapless patterns. A boring, painful loop of the same damaging choices with half-hearted tweaks, until poof, something different happens—you find a crossroads and feel gravity.

I type in Yes, and hit submit.

Nothing happens. No output generated, no page refresh. A minute ticks by. Two. Eventually, I set my phone down.

When it dings, it’s back in my hands before the sound is done.

On my home screen is a message from a five-digit number: A car is on its way. You have twenty-two minutes to collect your belongings.

It dings again.

The second notification is a mobile airline ticket to Seoul with my name on it.

I will need to bring my passport, then. It hasn’t been stamped since our 2019 Christmas in Antigua. I will paint the pink and purple places on my neck with a full-coverage foundation, wear a scarf. I will pack light, but for as many scenarios as I can think of, and I won’t have time to clean up the produce that sits with the roses on the counter. The half-diced bell pepper, the onion and tomatoes, the limp bag of okra—together, they will become their own puzzle, left behind for someone else to solve. When I arrive at San Francisco International Airport, I will learn that the flight to Seoul, curiously, seems to be the only trans-Pacific flight that isn’t delayed due to weather. Even the gate agents will wear looks of consternation. But I won’t be afraid.