Pietros maze
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PERPLEX CITY, SEASON ONE |
Solved Puzzles
The Easy Part
The Salk Family website contained a link to download the program that Pietro Salk had apparently been writing during his brief awake from his coma.
- It turned out to be a maze and initially required a laptop with OSX and inertial sensors to control it.
- On the 25th an update was issued saying they had found a bug and fixed it.
- On the 27th a cross platform version was released with a seperate tilt control .jar file, which seems to have later been updated to a smaller version with less files.
- Maze levels 1-5 were solved fairly quickly, producing messages at the end of each level.
- BriEnigma's maps:
- "I am dreaming now"
- "All I am is dreaming"
- "I will wake soon and when I wake I will die"
- "I know this to be true"
- "I am not afraid"
The Hard Part
- Maze 6 proved a bit harder to crack, however through a mixture of decompiling and/or finding files in the original controller.jar for the cross platform version of the maze, the following message was found.
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In my dreams, I am walking in a maze. I am following someone who is always just a little too far ahead. A moment before I round one corner, she rounds the next. I never see her, not even a glimpse of her cloak. She. It is a woman, then, my quarry. I follow a woman, walking in this maze. The place is quiet. There is no sound but that of my footsteps on the floor. I cannot see the floor, it is too dark. The walls are blank. It is a maze. I made this maze and now I am caught within it. The adherents of ancient religions compare the darkness of this life to the wandering in a maze. Only with the light of eternal truth, they say, will we be set free. But there is no light to follow. Only a woman, whom I know to be ahead of me. I walk a little faster. I know, without knowing how I know, that she also walks a little faster. Only a little. Only just out of reach. I try to remember who she is, this woman always ahead of me. I think that I know. I think that this maze is knowledge, that I have pieced it together, like the construction of a complex puzzle. I used to make puzzles. I do so no longer. She does not tire. She does not hunger. She does not thirst. Her speed is steady, increasing when mine increases, decreasing when mine does. If I stopped, she too would stop. This pursuit could last forever. It must not last forever. I have no time left. Moments only. Moments are all we have, of course. I remember something, a fragment, a conversation. A woman pushing a slip of paper toward me across a table. It is gone again. I walk on. I call out in the darkness: "Who are you?" My voice returns to me. It asks me the same question. I almost know the answer. In fury, I begin to run. I urge my body forward. Ahead of me, her speed increases. I strain. My lungs ache. I am no nearer to her. I run faster, as fast as I possibly can. I will never catch her. I collapse to the floor of the passage. I sit with my back to the wall, breathing hard. I despair. My time is almost up. If only I could turn the timer over, set the sand flowing in the other direction. I consider this. Yes. I think I may know how to proceed. I stand up. I turn around. Yes, this is how it was. I walk away from her. And now she begins to pursue me. I am not afraid. This is how it must be. I have created this maze. I am its author. Through dimly-lit corridors, she pursues me. She travels at the same pace as me. When I slow, she slows. When I quicken, she does likewise. Nothing appears to have changed. But everything has changed. I am the author of this maze. I know its every turn and bend, its every blind alley. I know its heart. Now, she is following me. Now I control our destination. Counting in the half-light, I pass by one entrance, then another, then another. The passages appear identical. I am looking for the heart of the maze. I choose carefully. This place is larger than one might have expected. I lead her along the route I have chosen. She is always just a little behind me, just out of view. We come at last to the place I have chosen. The heart of the maze. I know, I think I know, what will happen here. The centre of the maze is an empty room. This is the secret at the heart of every maze. She knows it too. Emptiness, a space at the heart. The room is long. It is unbending. It is as large as the maze itself. This is a mystery beyond explanation. I walk slowly up the length of the room. Slower than slow. She is behind me. She knows what will happen now. I reach the far distance. This is impossible, of course. I turn around. I see her. She sees me. She speaks a series of words. They mean nothing to me. They mean everything. They are this story. It is time for me to go. " |
- It seems we would have revealed this message 4 letters at a time at the end of each level solved.
- The program would have output the following message when you solved all the mazes:
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I understand what I must do. There is a maze. I am to lead others through it. I must. We must find her, we must discover the truth, the heart. I have placed my maze in this maze of words. The words are the maze. They will lead those who must come after me. It is time for me to go" |
The Interesting Parts
The Logs
- Michiko Clark made a comment on her radio interview
- She reported Salk's death, mentioning old files hidden in the maze.
- This led Brian Enigma to try some of the sentences from the message on the Salk Family website.
- Every sentence of the message, from the one in Maze 1 to the 'time for me to go' leads to a URL containing various pieces of the Salk logs.
- The complete conversation can be read in Salklogs.doc
The Shape
- Simon gave us co ordinates for a closed off shape in some of the later mazes.
- This may have something to do with Pietro talking about the room at the heart of the maze.
- SteveC mapped the entire empty space in every map, and came up with this shape.
- Brian Enigma did a similar task, and got the same shape in plain text.
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