The Next Round

How is one to spend their time during the six months of frigid temperatures and secondhand sunshine that New England deigns to call a “season”? By imbibing of course! Nothing says “Winter in Boston” quite like enjoying a pint or five of your favorite brew with fellow booze enthusiasts, but I’ve always wondered… do they share in my pining for a night of swilling to become something more? Consumption is the premise, but with each sip of the suds, I find my longing to veer off course into a clandestine escapade increases tenfold. Such was the case on the night of February 12, 2021.

Luckily for me, present company on that night happened to be my best friend Cole. Cole is one of those rare instances of perfectly named people. Most of the time he was hard-headed and combustible, but when the pressure was on, his mind was as clear as a diamond. The same ideal nomenclature could not be applied to our watering hole of choice that night, Earl’s.

By all accounts, Earl’s was an unremarkable establishment (with a distinct lack of British noblemen) peacocking as some kind of gastropub with a cocktail menu that called every spirit “liqueur” regardless of sweetness. It was the kind of place where nothing extraordinary happened, but this was not the case on the night of February 12, 2021.

“Dude, I’m SO glad you made it out here.” I said while taking a break from inhaling my first pint of Sam Adam’s Brick Red. Cole replied in kind.

“Me too man! It’s been too long and I started to forget the smell of your musk bro.” We shared a laugh as he went back to enjoying his drink at a much tamer pace. “I didn’t hear the starting gun…” he smirked.

“Huh?” I grunted back with all the indignation of someone who has had their cry for help answered before they’ve had ample time to wallow. “I’m thirsty bro, this week has got my weekend looking WEAK-ened you know what I mean?”

“Lol OH, check out Mr. Poet Laureate over here with his big ole WEEK! Sorry fella, I forgot you were the only person allowed to struggle.”

“Yeah, yeah” I muttered between chuckles. “Thank you for the warning officer, I’ll take my foot of the gas.”

“Just looking out for you, boss.” He said as he patted my back… not so much in a way to comfort me or make light of my recent rough patch, but just to let me know he was there. “Gonna go make some room for Jameson shots.”

As Cole got up to head to the bathroom, his chair bumped into what appeared to be a nondescript, black book.

“You okay champ?” I asked with a healthy mix of curiosity and concern.

“Yeah, luckily I’ve gotten up from a chair before. What I have NOT done before though is left a bible at a bar.” He handed me the book.

“That what you think it is?” I replied as I began to carefully examine the book… which began to feel less and less like the word of the Lord by the second.

“I-D-K man, not my top priority at the moment.”

“How strange,” I said to myself as I continued to survey the outside of the “book”. Of particular interest was the outside edge of the text block. I attempted to flip through the protrusions of the pages and to my surprise, it was no text block at all. It was a solid wall.

“The fuuu…” I mused. This was no book. I opened the front cover and sure enough, the first “page” was not your typical front matter. Written on the inside of the cover (or more appropriately “lid”) was a riddle followed by a series of numbers. They read as follows:

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

Revolutions in life rarely happen again

What’s good as gold and won’t be sold?

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

262021

2102021

38868.82

48006.18

Opposite this riddle where the pages should have been was an alphanumeric keypad with what appeared to be three small LED lights above it. I was right… this was no book… it was a safe! Shortly after this realization, Cole returned from the bathroom.

“Whoa, what you got there captain? You look like Matthew McConaughey in True Detective… the later timeline though of course… you know, the one where he’s old as sh-“

“I’m familiar!” I quipped. “Seriously though, unless M. Night Shyamalan published the latest edition of the King James Version, this is decidedly NOT a bible.” I handed him the safe. His eyes grew wide as he quickly came to the same conclusion I did.

“Dude… this is NUTS! I uh… I have no idea what to make of it lol.”

I was too excited to make any more snarky remarks. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing… we’re not getting ANY-where without some Jameson shots.”

“Agreed. Excuse me! Miss? Can my friend and I get two Jameson shots when you have a second?”

The bartender nodded in reply and promptly returned with two double Jamesons on the rocks.

“Oh sorry, this isn’t exactly what we…” before I could finish my sentence, the bartender cut me off with a mischievous half-smile that almost stopped the hands of time.

“Oh, I know it’s not what you ordered.” She confidently retorted. “But I believe it’s what you’ll need.” Cole and I looked at each other with mirrored bewilderment. “I’m not deaf, boys. Besides… no one ever solved a riddle AND cracked open a safe without ample libations.”

Before I could even ask, she told me.

“I’m Angelika by the way.”

I wanted to say something, but I had to allocate all my energy toward slowing down my heartbeat. I managed to pull myself together just enough to dazzle her with my finest, poetic rhetoric.

“Uh… hi.” I stammered.

“Easy there Romeo, she’s only introducing herself” said Cole, stepping in once again to save me from myself. The ensuing laughter at my expense served as confirmation that our new found friend would be joining us on our journey.

“Let me know if you boys need anything and I’ll be back to check on you in a bit okay?” Cole and I nodded, took a long draw from our beverages, and began unraveling the mysteries of this peculiar safe.

Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into more drinks, and still our aggregate progress was far from encouraging.

“I really don’t know what to make of it man.” I said, weakly. “Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten… I mean… that part we’ve pretty much established is a sequence of days. That is further corroborated by the first two number sequences which appear to represent dates… recent dates I might add being February 6, 2021 and February 10, 2021.”

Cole shook his head. “Yeah, but we only feel that way because we haven’t found a better way to explain it yet. It could just as easily be… I don’t know… a zip code and phone number.”

“Sure, but honestly man I don’t think that fits the tone of the riddle. The whole bit about revolutions not happening more than once in a lifetime… feels like it’s related to the passage of time.”

“I guess… even still though, let’s assume that is correct… that’s only half the answer. What is good as gold and won’t be sold? And what do revolutions have to do with it?”

I didn’t have a response, but I recognized the need to pivot.

Finally I broke the silence. “Alright, I’ve got an idea.”

“Listening,” Cole said without lifting his head off the bar.

“Maybe it was the Jameson, or the Manhattans, or the second Manhattans, but you and I are too blitzed to play Sherlock Holmes right now. We need to get some fresh eyes on this.”

“Got anyone in mind?” Cole uttered as he slowly sat up, signaling he was in agreement.

I leaned over the bar and motioned for Angelika to come join us. I felt the same feeling from before as she came closer… the feeling like she was a magnet pulling me towards my destiny.

“What can I get for you, detective?” She asked with the same devastating smile as before.

“Well, I’m afraid Dr. Watson over here and I are at an impasse. We’ve determined so far that the Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten here and first two sequences of numbers down here correspond to the dates February 6, 2021 through February 10, 2021, but the rest of it just looks like more cryptic nonsense.”

“Hmmm, let me take a look.” She studied the riddle with a comfortable intensity… like somehow this wasn’t the first time she’d helped bar patrons crack open a book-safe. “You’re positive it’s that date range?”

“Yeah, nothing else really makes sense.”

“If that is the case… I think I got it.” She paused as if giving me a chance to fully prepare for her imminent brilliance. “So, when you said ‘cryptic’ nonsense, my brain immediately jumped to crypto.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m studying blockchain engineering at Northeastern University. Earl’s is just a way to make some extra leverage to dump into my trading account.”

To say I was astounded would be the hyperbole of the century. “Of course you are,” I remarked with equal parts sarcasm and admiration.

“Anyway, the big clue for me was the second pair of numbers underneath what you deemed the date range. Those are the EXACT values of Bitcoin on those dates. Also, many people consider Bitcoin to be ‘digital gold’ or a store of value… something they wouldn’t sell.”

“Right… of course” I mumbled while clearly not following along.

“Then there’s the talk of revolutions. Cryptocurrency is going to completely revolutionize our financial systems in a way we cannot even fathom; definitely something I don’t see happening again in our lifetimes.”

“Man… that is ab-SURD!” Cole said, now fully engaged. “Okay, so let’s assume all this checks out. How does this help us figure out the passcode?” Once again, Angelika had the answer.

“The whole reason Bitcoin went parabolic this past week was because Tesla announced they were buying 1.5 billion dollars of it! So maybe ‘Tesla’ is the passcode?”

“Not likely” I replied. “The keypad only has space for four digits. You bring up a good point though; I originally thought the code would be numerically deterministic, but what if it’s not? What if it’s something like an old flip phone where you key in the numbers to spell something out?”

“DUDE! No way… okay let’s try… Elon.”

I input the numbers 3-5-6-6. The safe remained locked and the first small LED light shone red.

“Oh man, okay… try Musk.”

I input the numbers 6-8-7-5. Again, the safe remained locked and the second small LED light shone red.

“Whoa, whoa EASY!” Cole exclaimed. “Dude I was SURE it had to be that. Nothing else makes sense!”

Angelika shrugged. We all took a breath as the finality of our predicament took shape.

“This WOULD happen” Cole lamented. “We find a random safe that looks like a BOOK in a BAR, solve 99% of this stupid riddle, and now we’re about to get locked out because of some arbitrary passcode loosely related to Tesla and Bitcoin? What an absolute MEME.”

“Shine on, you crazy diamond genius” I thought to myself. The three of us agreed almost telepathically that right or wrong, we would go down captioning.

I input the numbers 6-3-6-3. After a few seconds that felt like being lost for the entire week at Burning Man, all three LED lights lit up green. The sound of the safe unlocking felt like it was joining us in our collective sigh of relief. I eagerly peered inside and found two stacks of Benjamin Franklin’s face, each wrapped in that distinctive gold and white bill strap denoting “$10,000”.

“Well… I guess the next round is on me then.”