The Genius Files #4 (11 page)

Pops was jammed with customers, with a forty-five-minute wait to get a table. Mrs. McDonald was in a rush, and so she led the family to the convenience store, where nearly five hundred varieties of pop were for sale. She bought a bottle of something called Moxie. The twins bought a Coke and a Pepsi, of course.

“Are you having a nice birthday, Bridge?” Dr. McDonald asked when they were back in the car.

“This is my dream day,” she replied, thanking him with a smooch. “I love you so much for letting me do this.”

“I love you too.”

“Ugh, gross!” Pep yelled.

“Will you two knock it off before I get sick?” Coke shouted from the backseat. “We don't need to see that.”

It was afternoon by this time, and Mrs. McDonald still had a lot she wanted to see in Oklahoma. From Arcadia, it was just half an hour to Oklahoma City, the capital and the largest city in the state. It is also—from the standpoint of
Amazing but True
fans—the greatest city in America. In this one town, the McDonalds
were able to visit the American Banjo Museum, the National Softball Hall of Fame, the National Cowboy Museum, and the Museum of Osteology.

If you don't know what
osteology
means, it is the study of bones. They have over three hundred skeletons and four hundred skulls! Pep claimed to be totally grossed out by it all, but that didn't stop her from buying a glow-in-the-dark black scorpion acrylic bottle opener in the gift shop. She also got a refrigerator magnet in the shape of Oklahoma. Pep thought it might be fun to start a collection of refrigerator magnets.

Visiting the museums in Oklahoma City had been strictly a hit-and-run operation. It was in and out of each one in half an hour, tops.

“We barely saw any of those places,” Coke complained.

“At least we can say we were there,” his mother replied. “That's the important thing.”

It was almost four o'clock. Any
normal
tourist
would have had enough sightseeing for one day, but Mrs. McDonald wasn't finished yet. As the car headed south along I-35, she directed the family to the town of Pauls Valley, where they stopped off at the Toy and Action Figure Museum.

Who knew that in the middle of Oklahoma there would be a building that was stuffed to the rafters with thirteen thousand action figures? The place might as well be called Nerd Heaven. If you go, be sure to check out the Bat Cave.

Coke could have spent hours looking at all the stuff at the Toy and Action Figure Museum, but it closed at five o'clock and the family was hustled out the door.

“So, where are we going for dinner?” Pep asked, assuming the day's activities were finally over.

But they weren't. Mrs. McDonald had planned the day down to the minute, and she knew that the Ardmore Public Library in Ardmore, Oklahoma, was open until eight o'clock. And the library just happened to be the home of the Eliza Cruce Hall Doll Museum. The McDonalds jumped back on I-35 South and raced thirty-four miles so they could see three hundred rare and antique dolls made out of porcelain, bisque, leather, wood, and even wax. The highlight of the collection is some carved wooden French dolls that were once owned by Marie Antoinette.

Pep wanted to examine each one. But by this time, the boys were feeling like their stomachs were starting to devour themselves.

“We're starving, Mom!” Coke begged. “Can't we go eat now?”

“Yeah,” agreed his father. “Haven't we done enough for one day, Bridge?”

“Almost,” she replied. “We need to get on Route 70 East. Let's go!”

Reluctantly, the rest of the family got back in the car and dragged themselves another hour to the quiet city of Durant.

“What lame museum do they have here?” Coke asked. He thought he might faint if he didn't get something to eat soon.

“This is the last place we're going to visit today,” Mrs. McDonald said. “I promise!”

“What could possibly be open at this hour?” Coke asked.

“You'll see.”

Dr. McDonald did as he was told, turning on to Evergreen Street and sliding into a parking spot at the corner of Third Street. There was some sort of a monument in front of the city hall building there.

“What is it?” Pep asked.

“Behold!” Mrs. McDonald proclaimed. “It's the
world's largest peanut!”

And so it was.

Well, to be fair, the people of Ashburn, Georgia, also claim to have the world's largest peanut. But there was no denying that the peanut monument in front of the Durant City Hall was quite large, and deserved some recognition.

It had been some day. The McDonalds had driven over 430 miles across Oklahoma. They had visited twelve sites. Mrs. McDonald had gathered a tremendous amount of material for
Amazing but True
.

“I'm beat!” Dr. McDonald said as he slid into the booth at a Mexican restaurant called Taco Casa.

“This has been the most wonderful birthday I can remember,” Mrs. McDonald said, “even though there were a few places in Oklahoma we didn't get to.”

“What could we possibly have missed, Mom?” Coke asked.

“Well,” she said, “Geronimo's grave is in Fort Sill. We didn't make it there. The Wrestling Hall of Fame is in Stillwater. Beaver, Oklahoma, is the Cow Chip Throwing Capital of the World. And there's a man in Nowata who has fourteen hundred bowling balls in his backyard.”

She could have gone on and on.

The Comfort Inn was relatively inexpensive, so instead of jamming the whole family into one small room, the parents had decided to splurge and put the twins in a room of their own. Coke and Pep were worn out after the long day, and didn't even bother to turn on the TV. They just brushed their teeth, put on their pajamas, turned off the light, and went to bed.

As soon as Coke's head hit the pillow, the phone next to his bed rang. He picked it up, assuming his parents were calling to say good night.

“Look under your pillow,”
said the voice at the other end of the line. It was a male voice, but it sounded
slightly robotic, as if it was computer generated.

“Who
is
this?” Coke asked.

“Look under your pillow,”
repeated the voice.

And then the line went dead.

Coke flipped the light on at his bedside.

“What's the matter?” Pep asked from the other bed. “Who was that?”

“I don't know,” Coke replied as he reached under his pillow.

There was an envelope. He tore it open and this was written on a bright yellow piece of paper:

IWI LLME ETY OUIN LLANO ESTA CADO

“Oh no,” Coke said.

He showed his sister the paper.

“Do you think it's . . .”

“Yeah,” Pep replied. “It's a cipher.”

C
oke and Pep stared at the message written on the slip of paper. . . .

IWI LLME ETY OUIN LLANO ESTA CADO

A secret code, as you may remember, disguises words or phrases. A cipher disguises individual letters. For centuries, people have been using these methods to send information without letting other people—their enemies—see it.

It doesn't even have to be a secret message. Any symbol or signal can represent something else. For
instance, if you wanted to convey the idea of a four-legged furry creature that goes “meow,” you would write the letters
C-A-T
. Anybody who knows that those letters represent a real cat—that is, anybody who knows how to read—will understand the message. That person cracked the code!

Of course, it's not usually that easy. Often, one letter is replaced with a different letter or a symbol to hide the meaning of the message. Sometimes the letters are simply rearranged.

Governments, companies, and spies and other people have come up with incredibly ingenious ways to keep their information secret. Like this one: Shave the head of your messenger and tattoo your message on his scalp. Then allow enough time for some of his hair to grow back. Then, the only way to decipher the message is to shave his head!

Coke and Pep never got their heads shaved. But ever since they left California, they had been receiving a new cipher every few days. At first, the ciphers were coming from Dr. Warsaw himself. After his “accident” at The House on the Rock, they were sent by his young madman-in-training Archie Clone. After the helicopter crash in Washington at the National Museum of American History, Evil Elvis/Aunt Judy was sending the twins ciphers.

But who sent this one? Dr. Warsaw had a nervous breakdown back in Hot Springs. He probably was in no condition to be messing with their heads. Archie Clone and Aunt Judy were no longer alive. The bowler dudes were incompetent idiots. Who could be sending them secret messages
now
? Mrs. Higgins? Somebody else?

And what could
IWI LLME ETY OUIN LLANO ESTA CADO
possibly mean?

Unlike her brother, Pep wasn't very good at absorbing and remembering vast quantities of information. She didn't have a photographic memory. But she was excellent at analyzing information, and in fact it was a hobby of hers. She had an uncanny ability to take a series of seemingly random letters, numbers, or symbols and juggle them around to reveal their secret meaning.

“I'm stumped,” Coke said after looking at the cipher for a grand total of ten seconds. The boy had lots of good qualities, but a sustained attention span was not one of them. His sister, however, had already figured it out.

“Oh, come on. It's easy!” Pep told him. “They haven't even transposed any of the letters. All you have to do is group them differently. Watch.”

She picked up the pen from the night table and began to write directly below the message. Instead
of writing
IWI
, she wrote
I WILL
. Instead of writing
LLME ETY
, she wrote
MEET
.

“I will meet you!” Coke shouted, as if he was deciphering the message himself.

“Right,” Pep agreed as she continued regrouping the letters. “
I WILL MEET YOU IN
. . .
LLANO ESTACADO
. Or Llano Esta Cado. What does ‘Llano' mean? Or ‘Esta Cado'? It looks Spanish.”

“Llano Estacado is the part of the southwestern United States that encompasses eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas,” Coke said matter-of-factly.

“I think I should call you ‘Google' from now on,” Pep replied.

“But how does that help us?” Coke asked. “What are we supposed to do—meet somebody
somewhere
in Texas or New Mexico? Gee, that's a big help. Texas is more than 268,000 square miles. And when are we supposed to meet this mysterious person?”

“This doesn't help us at all,” Pep said. “He's just teasing us. Or
she
is.”

C
oke and Pep had been sure their troubles were over. But that was yesterday. It felt like a dark cloud was gathering up ahead. If the coast was clear, why would anyone be sending them a mysterious message?

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Pep said. And her feelings were pretty much on the mark.

Maybe it was just a meaningless, random message, Coke tried to convince himself as he struggled to go to sleep. Maybe it was meant for somebody else.

He tried desperately to remember the voice on the phone that told him to look under his pillow. He tried to connect it with someone he had met in his life. But there was nobody. It was a familiar voice, but not one that he had heard before.

The twins awoke to the sound of
USA Today
being slipped under their hotel room door. It was July 15th. The usual wars, murders, and natural disasters were going on in the world. But when they looked out the window, all appeared calm in southern Oklahoma.