Riddle to Ride

The good news was that they’d found a way off.

The bad news was that only one of them could leave.

* * *

Conan’s head was ringing, his body shaking inside the two-person jet like a doll being rattled by a two-year-old. He yelled to his copilot, Ed, over the warning buzzes and cracking glass of the altimeter and the thunderous roar of the air protesting against them as they dove toward the island below.

“We’ve gotta eject!” he yelled, reaching for the appropriate lever. Ed just nodded, looking just as terrified as his friend.

A second later, two seats sprung out of the jet’s ejection hatch, and two parachutes deployed, slowing their descent to an almost casual float. The aircraft, on the other hand, was not so lucky; Conan and Ed watched as the nose of the plane slammed onto the shoreline, creating an explosion of sand and water and metal and leaving its mangled hulk smoking sadly as declining waves lapped around it.

* * *

They landed without further incident, their feet plodding into the soft, spongy sand as they left the ejected seats and parachutes behind to examine what was left of their plane.

It had not actually exploded, but judging from its twisted wings and steaming body, there was no doubt in Conan’s mind that it would not be flying again anytime soon. He guessed their crash might have been caused by a malfunctioning horizontal stabilizer—not that that mattered much at this point. Still, he gestured for Ed to follow him; maybe they could salvage enough equipment to send out a distress signal.

Silently, they explored what remained of the interior, most of the equipment burned or smashed beyond usability. The wreckage smoldered, giving off an acrid, metallic odor. They found a couple fire blankets; a tarpaulin; two hiking backpacks; a cooler full of burst soda cans; a few surviving articles of clothing; Conan’s sextant; Ed’s copy of Derrida’s Deconstruction Engaged; and various other odds and ends. Conan drew a breath as he beheld the crumpled heap of panels and wires. The radios were toast; for now, at least, they were alone. On an island in the South Pacific, with no clear trace of civilization.

* * *

Sitting on two boulders along the beach, Conan and Ed inspected and dressed each other’s wounds using the first aid kit that had miraculously survived. Conan passed his eyes over Ed’s playful features—his messy blond hair; his tall, bruised forehead; his lean body and lightly lacerated arms. A few alcohol pads and bandages were all that was necessary, thanks to their timely ejection from the cockpit. Otherwise, the both of them would have been maimed or dead.

Then it was Conan’s turn. As Ed cleaned off his companion’s wide brow to sanitize the gash above his right eye, they chatted to downplay the gravity of their situation.

“I guess this means we’re not going to that New Zealand resort anymore, huh?” Ed said.

Conan winced as the alcohol pad stung against his injury, but he managed a grin. “Yeah…too bad you didn’t bring a more useful book than Derrida; Robinson Crusoe could probably teach us a thing or two about how to get by as castaways for a few decades.”

Ed paused and frowned, examining Conan’s broad face. Conan’s normally well-groomed brown hair and beard were matted with sand and blood he had yet to clean off. “Come on. I’m the one with the imagination around here. You’ve always been the walking calculator of our class. How likely do you calculate our chances of being able to signal a passing cargo ship or something?”

“Difficult to say without knowing our coordinates,” Conan said. “I’ll get on that tonight. But with how far out into the Pacific we’ve gone…” He shook his head. “We can’t count on being picked up by anyone anytime soon. We’ve got to make do here for the time being.”

Ed leaned forward with a wet rag and began scrubbing the bloody grime off a cut that ran along Conan’s forearm. “So be it,” he said in a deep, theatrical voice. “Let the survival game begin.”

Conan groaned—not from pain, but from his friend’s never-ending need to make every situation into a work of creative drama. They went way back, he and Ed. Ever since they first began hanging out his freshman year of college, Ed had always displayed a flair for deep meanings and complicated moral concepts that went way over Conan’s head. Conan, on the other hand, was much more comfortable in the realms of measureable and provable facts, of figures and equations.

Still, for some reason the two of them had hit it off unusually well; he suspected it had something to do with their mutual appreciation of the outdoors as well as their mutual loathing of their European history class, which was grounded in neither fact nor fiction, but the dubious claims of textbook writers from wealthy countries that had won most of the wars mentioned within. On the idiocy of their professor’s contrived attempts at finding morals in historical events, both Conan and Ed—and Tim O’Brien, Ed would add—would agree.

And that bond had eventually brought them here, freshly graduated from Harvard, celebrating their singlehood together with a vacation in New Zealand.

* * *

The rest of that afternoon, the two old friends set up a makeshift camp on the edge of the tropical jungle with a perfect view of the beach and the ocean. They erected a rough tent using their tarp and the bamboo poles they found at the edge of the jungle further inland. Conan sat for a long while watching the stars blink into sight, feeling a deep sense of awe in spite of their dire straits. He liked to think this place had never seen human eyes.

At least, until they explored the island the next day.

* * *

Conan trudged through the sticky shrubs past dense palm trees and tried to ignore the buzzing of quarter-sized insects in his ears. His jeans and leather jacket were drenched in sweat while his brain was past caring about personal hygiene altogether. From one look at his companion, Conan decided he could reasonably assume that Ed felt the same. Both of them were still in shock after what had begun as the perfect joyride across the Pacific had become their worst nightmare. Yet both of them were smart and strong enough to allow survival mode to take over for the time being.

For the next couple hours, they pressed through the jungle, finding little in the way of edible plants or wildlife, though the occasional chittering echo from deep within suggested there would be game worth hunting if they searched long enough. But for now, they were more concerned with finding signs of human life, which would surely lead to the quickest way off. They followed a gurgling stream and, along the way, passed by a small clearing in the tree canopy that allowed them a limited view of a tall mountain on the other side of the island.

Finally, the small brook led Conan and Ed out of the trees and onto another beach. They had to be only three miles or so away from their first campsite, but considering what Conan found docked at the shore as he went before Ed onto the beach, Conan was grateful for the pack of supplies strapped to his back.

“Hallelujah.”

It was a canoe—albeit a very small one—made from thick palm tree wood. Just sitting there like an abandoned duckling.

Conan couldn’t stifle a laugh. “This is our way home, Ed! From the measurements I did last night with my sextant, we can’t be more than a few dozen miles away from Bokak, the northernmost of the Marshall Islands.”

“Bokak?” Ed stepped closer to the mysterious canoe and examined its well-crafted hull. “How can no one live here if we’re so close to—?” His expression froze. “Oh.”

He and Conan had just noticed the single occupant of the vessel: a skeleton, so bare-boned that it must have long since been picked clean by seagulls. Which made the presence of the perfectly intact canoe just that much more surprising. Poor guy, Conan thought. He must’ve died at sea of starvation or something, then washed up here as a bony remnant. The skull grinned at Conan as if it knew all too well the new problem the canoe’s presence presented.

“As usual,” Conan said, trying to keep the mood light, “you’re asking all the wrong questions. And as my old Calculus professor always said—”

“Ask the right questions before you get the wrong answers,” Ed finished, clearly tired of Conan’s left-brained logic. “I know. You’ve only quoted him a few thousand times. This month.” Then he smiled, as if he’d just thought of an incredibly clever private joke. “Then I guess the right question is: How are we gonna get home? This boat should make the trip in a few days, but if we’re both squished inside, we’ll have no room for food or water to stay alive during the voyage.”

They looked down at the boat, and then back up at each other, reaching a mutual understanding even before Ed answered his own question.

“One of us’ll have to stay behind.”

Conan nodded. They walked back up the beach and sat on a couple sandy boulders, relieving their shoulders of gear. Conan closed his eyes in concentration and rubbed his temples. Suddenly, his eyes shot open.

“I’ve gone over all the possibilities. We’re both about equally strong, equally healthy, and while you’re better at creative problem solving and intuitive navigation, I’ve got a better mind for calculation and precise measurement of distance and rationing. Either way, whoever leaves will have just as difficult a task as the one who stays behind. One of us will find people to come back for the other, and from there we should have no problem getting home. Only thing is…” He took a swig of water from his canteen. “…we have to decide who does what. I’m guessing both of us would probably prefer to be on that boat, to find help for himself first. We might as well draw straws.”

But at that, Ed’s eyes lit up in a way Conan only recognized from when his friend had been about to go off about a new favorite book, or art piece, or a new brand of utopian society he’d just made up with his distinctly right-brained perspective.

“Why don’t we have a bit more fun with it, then?” Ed said. “Instead of drawing straws, let’s make it a game. A riddle game. We’ll take turns posing riddles to each other, and the first one to answer two of them wrong loses and has to wait on this island for the other to return.”

Conan blinked. “A riddle game.” He considered it. The two of them were both quite sharp, though they still thought about things in very different ways. He knew it was a ludicrous solution to such a practical problem, but he had to admit, it could be interesting. He shrugged. “Sure, why not? Only, I don’t want to hear crappy riddles like ‘what do I have in my pocket?’”

Ed laughed. “Fair enough, Smeagol. Since it was my idea, do you want to ask me the first one so I have the first chance to lose?”

Conan wanted to say yes, but he had to confess, the challenge had caught him off guard, and right now his mind was drawing a blank. He shook his head. “Nah. I’ll answer the first one; you need the handicap, anyways.”

“As you wish.”

“One other thing,” Conan added. “If we’re gonna do this, we’ve got to set up camp and find food and water in the meantime. It’s already past noon, so whoever wins won’t be leaving until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Good thinking,” Ed said, reaching into his pack for the folded tarp.

 * * *

The first riddle took place while they had lunch at that very spot, which consisted of a couple bland but filling MREs they’d managed to salvage from the jet. Conan raised his eyebrow as his friend came back and dropped a handful of roughly equal sticks at his feet. “What’s this?”

“Your first challenge,” Ed said mysteriously. “And here it is: With these ten sticks, make ten five—without removing, breaking, or grafting any of them together.”

Conan stared down at the sticks. He thought math was his thing, so he hadn’t expected Ed the bookworm, Ed the art connoisseur, Ed the postmodern philosopher to present him with a math question.

Make ten five? he thought. How the blazes am I supposed to…

And then it came to him. Quicker than he’d expected. He smiled.

Conan knelt down beside the sticks and began arranging them. When he was finished, he presented his masterpiece to Ed, the supposed riddle master:

Ed’s smile widened; if he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. He gave Conan a light round of applause.

“Nicely done. Your turn.”

 * * *

They were out gathering firewood, kindling, and bamboo poles for shelter when Conan decided to drop his first bomb. The salty breeze rifled through their dirty hair, a welcome relief from the baking sun, though the sea spray stung whenever it hit a scrape or other wound that hadn’t been bandaged.

“Okay, Ed, I hope the crash didn’t rattle your head too badly, ‘cause otherwise this one’ll send you on a trip. You listening?”

“Yep.” Ed didn’t look even the least bit intimidated by Conan playing up the riddle’s difficulty.

“All right, here we go: A man owns a farm. He lives on it with his wife, two young children, and a barn full of ten chickens. Every three months, the chickens double in number from reproduction; every six months, half the chickens are butchered. The father is missing a finger from a combine accident. The wife hates cooking. The son has a pet toad. And the daughter is a picky eater, so after a year of good behavior, her father drives her into town and buys her a carry-out meal at McDonald’s.

“How many fingers and toes are at the farm when they begin their dinner?”

Ed had stopped gathering sticks, mouth agape, looking as if his cranium were about to implode. Conan tried not to enjoy it too much. Finally, Ed responded, his voice remarkably calm.

“Since you’ve thrown in a bunch of irrelevant details to trip me up, can I ask a few questions about the problem?”

Conan smirked. “Sure; ask all the questions you want, so long as you don’t ask for the answer.”

“How many fingers and toes do the toad and the chickens have?”

“The chickens have four on each foot; the toad’s got four on each foreleg but five on each hind leg.”

“And when this dinner starts…has the six-month chicken butchery happened yet?”

“Good question. No, it hasn’t.”

Ed said nothing until they had returned to their camp, the canoe still sitting on the beach, the skeleton sprawled inside as if it wanted to tan its cartilage.

Ed poured an armful of sticks onto the small pile they’d begun building. His eyes twinkled as he looked up at Conan. “You thought you could fool me with math…but you forget that we went to college together; we both had to pass enough math classes to satisfy an Ivy League graduation committee.

“The wife’s got 20 digits—10 fingers and toes; the two kids, another 40. The chickens doubled twice to 40 before the first butchery, and then the remaining 20 doubled twice to 80 by the year’s end. With 8 toes each, that makes 640 for the chickens. The man’s got 19, factoring in the one he lost. The toad’s legs and fingers add up to 18, and it all comes out to a grand total of 737 fingers and toes.”

Conan’s face remained inscrutable for a moment, but then it broke into a slightly mocking grin. “Very close, Ed; I’m impressed. But you forgot one thing: the daughter got a meal at McDonald’s…and guess what she ordered?”

Ed paused for a moment, then covered his face with his hand. “Chicken fingers. Of course. But how could I have possibly known that’s what she would want?”

“Easy. The wife hates cooking, so in spite of all the chickens at the farm, guess what they never end up eating? Chicken. They live off a diet of plants and raw grains. The girl took one look at the Mickey-D menu, and guess what four-piece meal caught her eye?”

Ed sighed. “Fine. Very clever. My turn.”

 * * *

It was early that afternoon when everything changed.

Conan had been creeping up toward a colorful tropical bird of some kind, makeshift spear raised, intent on making it his next meal. The dense, humid air seemed to press against him on all sides as he watched its short black beak snap down toward an insect on its branch. Its smooth-feathered head swiveled instantly away from Conan, looking off somewhere deeper into the jungle, giving him the perfect opportunity to pounce.

But then the ground began quaking—almost as violently as he’d shaken in the nose-diving jet. A distant boom pulsed through the trees, causing his quarry to leap off its branch and fly away past Conan’s head, abandoning its own prey with what must have been the bird equivalent of panic written in its beady black eyes.

Taking a hint, Conan sprinted back out of the jungle to where he had a clear view of the source of the noise: the mountain. Or, as he’d just discovered from the black smoke billowing from its peak, the volcano. The very, very active volcano.

Ed rushed to his side, panting and pointing at the most recent environmental development. “This is crazy! If it erupts completely and blows its top, we’ll be done for.”

Conan tried to think straight. “This is bad…but usually, active volcanoes like this can go for weeks, months even, before the magma actually spews out and covers the land in lava. There’s a good chance we’ve still got time for someone to take the canoe to another island and come back for the other before the eruption begins in earnest. Only…” They looked at each other, knowing they faced a very strange dilemma indeed.

“We still have to decide who’s going,” Ed finished. “And that means we’ve got to pick up the pace of our riddles.”

Conan glanced back at the jungle. “Most of the animals in there are probably on the run and will be hard to catch; let’s grab some dinner from the ocean and finish up this riddle game so that one of us can set out at first light tomorrow morning—leaving after dark, of course, would be suicide.”

They nodded and gathered their spears, heading toward the ocean. Both were acting calm and level-headed about the task ahead.

Neither of them actually were.

* * *

As they were standing waist-deep in the warm ocean, scanning its shallow depths for potential dinner with spears in hand, Ed made his next move.

“I think we’ve had enough of your number games,” he said a bit more curtly than before, briefly eyeing the smoking volcano. “It’s time for a word game, something more suitable to my style. Try this on for size:

“I am everywhere and nowhere.

My home is as small as a cardboard box,

But as vast as the universe.

I have a million voices—

Some tell truths, but more tell lies.

I can give you everything you want,

And everything you despise.

Who am I?”

Conan pretended not to care about Ed’s conundrum as he eyed a meaty sea bass flirting around his feet. He remained extremely still, then with one swift motion, dipped his pike into the water, skewering the hoodwinked meal on the end.

“That’s an easy one,” Conan said. “The devil.”

Ed sucked in a dramatic breath. “Not quite. You really think Satan can give you everything you want? If so, I think we need to have a talk.”

Conan grumbled, still partly focused on the flailing fish. “Whatever; what’s the answer? It can’t be God; he doesn’t lie.”

“Nope,” Ed said. “The answer is…the internet.”

That one actually made Conan laugh out loud. As he thought back on it, the riddle made much more sense. The trouble was, he couldn’t tell whether his own laugh was genuine or whether it was a façade for the anxiety growing inside him. They had each missed one riddle now; one more mistake and the game would be over. One more mistake, and their fates might be sealed.

* * *

That evening, their bonfire burned hot and bright, the closest thing to a friend Ed and Conan had left. They roasted their sea bass and munched on wild berries in unusual silence, the tension in their small camp almost as tangible as the sizzling sparks that flew out from the bonfire’s core.

Conan looked at his friend more closely. Ed had changed somehow during the past day. It was as if the flames of the campfire reflecting in his eyes were actually burning from within. Conan was reminded of the many times when Ed would be playing a board game and would pretend not to take it seriously, but then he would come around with such an unexpected, sidelong strategical comeback as to completely astound his opponent—and that wasn’t to mention the jubilant victory celebrations that often followed. And for the first time, Conan wondered how far Ed’s passionate competitiveness was willing to go. Back then it had only been a game; now, they could very well be deciding which of them lived and which did not, and it all hinged on the outcome of a riddle contest.

Ed’s newfound seriousness seemed to stem from the combined threat to his pride and his sense of self-preservation, and honestly, Conan was beginning to feel the stirrings of bitterness and suspicion himself; one false move on either of their parts could have deadly consequences, no matter how harmlessly it had begun. Could Ed be planning on using his creative cunning to rob Conan of his best chance at survival?

“Ask your next riddle already,” Ed said testily.

“Fine,” Conan said, taking a vicious bite out of the gutted fish. “Listen up: A man pushes his girlfriend off a cliff into a crater.”

“Charming,” Ed said.

“The cliff face is a sheer 200 feet, with nowhere to grab on to. She’s a normal human, with no padded gear, no flying or gliding or climbing equipment, and no one around to save her. The bottom is solid rock. There are no trampolines, water, or soft surfaces to break her fall. How does she survive?”

Ed shoved a handful of berries into his mouth, the red juice bleeding down his chin and between his teeth. He smiled as if he’d committed the murder himself. “Kind of hard not to survive a fall,” he said, “when you’re on the moon.”

As if in agreement, the volcano shot out another plume of ash and smoke, the dark matter forming a gray halo in the sky.

* * *

They had been staring into the flames for hours. Conan felt about ready to go to sleep, thoroughly exhausted from the day’s activities—mostly the non-physical ones. But Ed clearly wasn’t ready to call it a night.

“Let’s finish this, shall we?” Ed said, the flames casting shadows that flickered across his grave expression. “Here’s a little story of my own. Pay close attention, because I’ll repeat the story only once.

“There was a boy who lived in a poor, remote village in the mountains, barely surviving off the sweat of his brow. His parents had died when he was very young, so he was left to take care of his four little sisters while working as a stable boy.

“He heard a legend of a monk who lived high on Mount Epiphany, one who could answer any question. So on his one free week of the year, he left his sisters in the care of a friend and took it upon himself to scale the mount. He came to a rocky edifice within which he found the monk meditating on an olive tree that looked out over the misty mountain range.

“He said, ‘O wise one, I’ve come far to ask a piece of your great wisdom.’

“The monk turned to him and stood, looking him up and down emotionlessly. ‘What is your question?’

“‘All my life I have been burdened with more hardships than a child is meant to bear,’ the boy said. ‘What is the answer—the ultimate answer—to dealing with life’s problems? How am I to overcome the trials I’ve been given?’

“From there, the monk told him that in order to be worthy of this answer, he would have to pass five tests, one per day. The boy agreed, for he was willing to do whatever it took to receive his answer.

“For the Test of Strength, he carried rocks from a quarry to a stream, where he built a dam that diverted the water toward a different village that was dying of thirst.

“For the Test of Agility, he stole an egg from the nest of an eaglehawk and fled from its mother into the safety of the forest.

“For the Test of Wit, he defeated the wisest man in his village in a game of chess.

“For the Test of Charity, he sat by the side of a lame woman for twelve hours, caring for her until she died.

“And for the Test of Integrity, he confessed to the people of his village every wrong he had ever committed against them.

“Finally, at the end of the week, the boy returned to the monk and reported his success.

“‘Very good,’ the man said. ‘You are now worthy of the answer to your question.’

“The monk leaned toward the boy and whispered the answer. The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, but his heart filled with joy, for he now knew all he needed to bear his life’s burdens. He returned to his sisters and lived in peace the rest of his days.”

By the time Ed had finished the story, the campfire was beginning to die out. His eyes met Conan’s, his lips a thin line.

“Now, tell me, Conan…What was the flaw in the story?”

Conan shook his head. “Tell me the story again.”

And so Ed did. Yet Conan still had no answer.

Conan sat up and fixed his challenger with a steady glare. “I thought we said no trick riddles. This sounds like the kind of riddle that could have thousands of plausible answers, but only the one telling it knows which answer he’ll accept as the right one. How do I know which answer is the flaw you’re looking for?”

Ed smirked. “Oh, don’t worry—there is a clear way for you to win this riddle; but you can’t solve it like a mathematician. Think about it…creatively.” He stood up to retire. “You can give me your answer in the morning.”

* * *

With the fire extinguished and his supplies stored safely, Conan lay in his tent built from the tarp and palm leaves, using a fire blanket for warmth and his backpack as a pillow. Ed was already snoring beside him.

He thought over the story for what felt like hours, the soft crashing of the waves providing soporific white noise, coaxing him toward sleep. But he had to figure out the answer. The story had been short, yet complex enough that surely there were any number of details that could be the flaw.

Did it have to do with the behavior of the boy? Or the words of him or the monk? Or did it have to do with one of the tests he had to pass, or the whispered answer he’d received? Or was it something else entirely that Ed knew Conan would never be able to guess? Would Conan deceive him like that in order to get off the island first?

Then again, he supposed, what were riddles, really, but deceptions?

He felt very frustrated. If he answered this wrong, he would lose the game. And somehow, it had become so much more than just a fun way of deciding who would leave the island first. It had become a matter of life and death.

But try as he might, no clear answer came to him that night, and gradually, the pull of fatigue dragged him into his much-needed rest.

* * *

Conan awoke the next morning to discover that Ed had already left their shelter. Yawning and stretching, he stood and went outside to find his friend. What he found instead was as jarring as a punch to the gut.

There was no sign of Ed; no sign of Ed’s pack; and no sign…of the canoe.

Ed had left him. Without even giving Conan a chance to answer the riddle correctly, without even saying goodbye.

Conan was too numb with shock to be angry yet. He wandered over to where the canoe had been, finding the skeleton face-up in the sand in its place. There was no sign of the canoe on the horizon; Ed must have left several hours ago. Then he noticed a large, flat rock beside it. He picked it up and found a message carved on it like chalk.

“The flaw in our story, Conan,” it read, “is that people believe every question has a right answer.”

* * *

Days passed, and to Conan’s tremendous relief, the volcanic activity seemed to subside. He passed the time hunting and fishing and even reading Deconstruction Engaged, pondering Ed’s strange reason for leaving him behind without a chance to answer. And then, just like the sticks riddle, it dawned on him.

Conan had given his answer already; he just hadn’t known it. When he told Ed any one of the possible answers could be the right one, he’d unknowingly implied that a right answer had to exist. Just like the boy in the story, he’d assumed that his question had been a valid one. But now that he thought about it, his question had been just as impossible to answer as “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

Very clever, Ed. You win.

* * *

It had been two weeks since Ed had abandoned Conan, and still, the volcano showed no signs of activity. This encouraged Conan, allowing him to gloat in his mind that he’d actually gotten the better part of the deal: vacationing in the Pacific instead of paddling his guts out to find a rescue party.

He had no idea.

That evening, when the sun was just beginning to set, a boat-shaped silhouette appeared in the distant waters, and Conan somehow knew at once it had to be Ed.

As the canoe drew closer, the  only thing that confused Conan was why Ed appeared to be returning alone. Where were the rescue boats he’d been promised?

Finally, the canoe undulated through the shallows until it came to rest on the beach. Conan went out to first greet his friend and then punch him in the face, but found himself frozen in place.

Inside the canoe sat a fresh skeleton.