Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Just a little pressure and the last piece slipped into place. The pride and passion of the moment stood in the center of a small circle of cleared space on a table piled high with past puzzle challenges contemptuously cast aside once their secrets had been teased from their reluctant grasp.

Desmond pushed his wire rim glasses back up his nose as he sat back in his chair, relishing the warm glow of accomplishment over solving the most difficult puzzle he'd yet encountered. The smooth complex surface of the completed three dimensional puzzle seemed a cohesive whole, but in his mind's eye Desmond delighted in exploring and in a sense experiencing the hidden complexities of the puzzle's inner construction. Each odd shaped piece, so awkward and limited in isolation, became an integral part of a whole suffused with apparent purpose and intent.

Puzzles provided what little purpose and intent Desmond had ever found in life. School had been a moderately interesting distraction for a while, but after high school they expected students to find some direction in life not to mention that it cost a lot of money to go to the university. Unable to decide what he might want to study or convince his parents to spend their limited earnings on expensive tuitions just to give their idle son something to do, Desmond left academia after high school. Ever since he'd spent his time living in the basement of his parent's home letting life happen with as little participation as he could manage.

Desmond had tried working at a number of jobs - more in response to the less than subtle hints of his parents than any need of his own. None of the jobs had sparked any interest, and he'd always found reasons to quit or get fired. He had a few friends and occasionally spent some time hanging around the library, but puzzles were the only real bright spot in his life.

It didn't really matter what sort of puzzles they were either. Crosswords, jigsaws, brain teasers, and Chinese puzzle boxes were all sustenance to soothe his hunger. He could find hours of pleasure in a map or train schedule calculating the salesman's dilemma of finding the most efficient route between sets of locations. He had little interest in being a mechanic, but was fascinated by the way machines fit together.

A major event in his otherwise featureless life had been the day he stumbled across the little puzzle shop. Tucked into an odd corner between larger buildings, the small shop was almost invisible to most of the people passing by. But something about the asymmetry of the construction caught Desmond's attention and drew his attention. Like a piece of a puzzle jarringly out of position, in Desmond's mind's eye the nondescript little shop stood out like it was outlined in brilliant flashing neon lights.

The little puzzle shop proved a treasure trove. While in the front of the store there was the usual stock, in the dark corners at the back of the store were puzzles unlike any he'd ever seen. For Desmond, solving a puzzle often involved trying to get inside the mind of the puzzle's constructor. The hidden inner logic of a puzzle would often become obvious if he could twist his mind into the thought patterns of the puzzle's creator. What made the puzzles in the back of the store particularly difficult was a strong sense of oddity and strangeness in the mind-set of whoever created them.

Desmond allowed himself several more long minutes to admire his work, half thinking in the back of his mind that the duration of appreciation should be a reflection of how long the puzzle took to solve. And this one had bedeviled him for nearly a month. Early on he'd almost despaired of ever solving it, but after much mental flailing and frustration he'd found the faintest traces of logic patterns in a few of the many seemingly incompatible pieces. With the anchor of a starting point to build on he eventually tweezed out enough understanding to finish. The completed puzzle on the table was from the back of the store.

When his anxiousness to share his triumph finally outweighed both his private pleasure and his substantial personal inertia, Desmond carefully placed the solved puzzle in its box and sorted his coat out of the tangle of carelessly discarded clothing on the chair. Slipping out the back door quietly in order to avoid the usual questions about if he was going out looking for a job, he headed for the little puzzle shop.

The bell over the door clanged as Desmond left the bright sunlight of the street and stepped into the dusty dimness of the store, the faint aromas of wood, cardboard and plastic blending into a familiar fragrance. "I did it", announced Desmond as the shopkeeper appeared through the curtain behind the counter. "You bet I couldn't solve this one, but look here - its done!". Desmond carefully removed the finished puzzle from its box and placed it on the counter.

The shopkeeper was a small man whose shaggy ill fitting hair even Desmond could tell at glance was a wig. He wore thick rimmed glasses that dominated his facial features, a shop coat that concealed the details of his body, and gloves over his hands, leaving little of his actual person exposed to view. There seemed something odd in the way the man moved, but lacking any further source of information Desmond just assumed it was the result of some injury or disability.

The shopkeeper adjusted his glasses up and down, in and out as he leaned over to study the completed puzzle from every angle. "Yes, it appears you've done it correctly," the shopkeeper finally announced, the delay stretching long enough Desmond was starting to wonder if the shopkeeper was intentionally stalling to tease him.

"What about our bet?" questioned Desmond. "Remember you bet me a free puzzle if I could solve this one." While in Desmond's limited financial situation a free puzzle was a savings not to be dismissed lightly, the idea that he had won something with his own skill and effort was of even greater value.

"Yes, yes, I remember," replied the shopkeeper, shuffling back through the curtain. Through the curtain Desmond heard him continue, "I promise you special puzzle - most difficult puzzle I have in store. I bring out."

After several minutes and a fair amount of odd noises from the back room, the shopkeeper appeared with a large box. "You remember bet was you can try to solve my special puzzle. You either solve or fail - either way you bring it back for next to try. If you fail I give you regular puzzle - your choice. If you solve I have special prize for you - make you very happy. In many years of looking only four others get this far solving my little puzzles. But I think maybe you can do this one."

Desmond opened the box to find thousands of odd shaped small pieces all of the same dull gray material. The surfaces of the pieces were smooth and utterly devoid of any traces of machining or molding marks. The pieces felt too heavy for plastic but too light for metal. Like his most recent challenge, there wasn't any picture or diagram even hinting at what the final solution might look like.

"How will I know if I've solved it right?"

"Puzzle will let you know."

Desmond hurried home with the puzzle, his mind swirling with thoughts and questions. He particularly liked thinking about his being only the fifth person to ever attempt this special puzzle - and that he could well be the first to ever solve it. What greater honor could a puzzler ever want! And then there was the promise of a prize - something that would make him very happy. There was that nagging wonder in the back of his mind about just what sort of prize the odd little shopkeeper might think would make him very happy, but at this point the promise itself seemed more important than just what it might represent.

Slipping as quietly as he could into his basement redoubt, Desmond shut out the rest of the world. He opened the box and spread the focus of his interest across the table. On close examination with a powerful magnifying lens Desmond noticed subtle differences in the colors of some of the pieces. Some were just an indescribably more silver shade of gray than the rest. Most interestingly, some of the pieces seemed to have faint traces of heat discoloration.

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Desmond could no longer remember how many months of dogged effort he'd spent trying to solve the puzzle. The more it resisted him the greater his obsession had become. It had been so long since he'd left his basement rooms that his parents, long accustomed to his normal level of physical inactivity, were starting to ask if he was ill. He'd more than once seriously considered abandoning the puzzle as unsolvable, but each time refused to be defeated. Now with only a handful of pieces remaining he must be nearing the solution, but even though almost complete the final form still wasn't clear.

The faint heat marks turned out to be the key. The ever so slightly more silver shaded pieces occupied the center of the structure with the heat marked pieces close to them in the structure. The darker gray unmarked pieces tended to occupy spaces toward the outside. Desmond's excitement grew as he fiddled the remaining pieces into place, abandoning the slow and careful intellectual consideration needed in the early stages for quick and dirty trial and error for the last few. The vaguely cylindrical shape with odd geometric protrusions didn't suggest anything at all to Desmond but seemed the only possible way for all the pieces to fit together. The lack of a logical final form seemed almost cheating - like a mystery novel that withholds the critical clues needed to solve the crime until the last page.

Desmond paused with the last piece, savoring the feeling of pending triumph, allowing the anticipation to grow and amplify the pleasure of the moment. The memory of the shopkeeper's advice that the "puzzle will let you know" returned for the first time in a long time. Desmond had given up wondering about its cryptic meaning after a couple weeks, deciding that whatever it meant would only be clear when the puzzle was finished. Well, the moment is at hand, and it isn't telling me anything yet, thought Desmond skeptically.

With mock ceremony Desmond carefully fit the last piece and had his skepticism instantly erased. The surface joints of the individual pieces seemed to melt into a smooth seamless surface, and the whole structure started to faintly vibrate and glow with pale blue iridescence. Desmond backed away in surprise, his first thoughts being to flee in blind panic. Expecting the thing to either explode or burst into flames at any moment, Desmond was none the less frozen immobile by his paralyzing fear.

Long seconds passed and no catastrophe scattered his broken body in many directions. Whatever it was, the thing just sat faintly humming and glowing on the table. Desmond tentatively extended his hand, expecting to jerk it back in response to searing heat at any moment. But the object was cold to the touch. His panic beginning to subside, Desmond remembered again the shopkeeper's advice that the puzzle would tell him when it was correctly assembled. Returning as well was the memory of his own skepticism of only a moment earlier.

Part of Desmond's mind started to think the puzzle was a pretty good trick and wonder at how it was accomplished. He'd done a number of puzzles that involved electrical gimmicks in the past, although none as impressive as this one. Surely there were batteries, motors and lights in there somewhere, but working back through the construction in his mind he was at a loss as to which pieces might have concealed such devices. A disquieting unease lurked in the back of his mind, dulling the triumph of the moment with a lingering doubt that the behavior of the completed puzzle could be adequately explained by simple parlor tricks.

Still, this must be the proof of solving the puzzle, and he was the first! He felt a sudden urgency to seal his claim to fame by returning the proof to the puzzle shop. His real triumph - and any answers - would be found there. He eased the completed puzzle into its box with exaggerated care and headed for the puzzle store.

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"Yes, yes, I knew you were the one!" exclaimed the shopkeeper as Desmond lifted the lid of the box to reveal the glowing object within. "This is most excellent," he continued, roughly lifting the glowing object out of the box with little of the care Desmond had shown it. Flipping it end for end and rotating it with obvious unconcern that it might come apart, the shopkeeper studied the object from every angle.

"You have done it!" the shopkeeper proclaimed after long minutes of examination. "Come - I show you what you really do." With that the shopkeeper with object in hand turned and stepped more quickly than Desmond had ever seen him move through the curtains into the back room. Desmond hastened around the end of the counter and followed through the curtain.

Desmond passed through first shelves of store stock mixed with jumbles of empty boxes and paperwork, then a workshop area, then the simple living quarters of the shopkeeper. At the farthest extremity of the building he found himself in a rough finished space with double doors at one end that must be a garage. Strange looking tools and loose parts lined the edges of the space while the shopkeeper was busy dragging a tarp off the large lump that filled the center.

The lump under the tarp turned out to resemble nothing so much as an oversized arrowhead. Much of the surface appeared to be the same smooth material as the puzzle pieces, but large areas were scarred and rippled by obvious repairs. Desmond was so engrossed trying to take in the overall scene that he almost missed seeing the shopkeeper removing his gloves to reveal long pale green spindly fingers. In a moment the long fingers had opened a panel in the gray arrowhead revealing the hidden complexity under the smooth surface. The completed puzzle fit exactly in the revealed cavity, its faint blue glow rapidly increasing in brightness until Desmond had to turn away and shield his eyes.

The room was suddenly dark again as the shopkeeper shut the panel, but as his eyes became again accustomed to the dim light, Desmond could now see that the entire arrowhead glowed with the same dim blue iridescence. Unable to be further denied, the thought that had at first seemed too absurd to consider swept all other thoughts aside. What he was seeing couldn't be explained by simple batteries and lights. This thing in front of him didn't belong on earth. Then it finally filtered through his already reeling brain that neither did the shopkeeper.

For the second time today Desmond's normally placid mind was seized by an impulse to flee in mindless panic. But even if he wasn't frozen in place by paralyzing fear, the shopkeeper had quickly moved between him and the only immediately available exit.

The shopkeeper reached into the inside pocket of his shop coat and Desmond knew this was the end. In a moment he would be vaporized by some sort of death ray, and that would be that. But the shopkeeper instead pulled out a handful of folded papers and a disappointingly mundane pen.

"Please to spell your full name," demanded the shopkeeper with unexpected authority in his voice, gripping the papers and pen in his disconcertingly alien fingers. Desmond complied automatically, still frozen in place but with his panic starting to give way to equally paralyzing confusion.

"Even alien has to eat," continued the shopkeeper as he flipped through the papers, pausing occasionally to hold them against the wall to write. "Power cell fail and we crash here. Ship engineer start to repair power cell but die from injuries before finish - leave power cell in pieces. I replace damage parts with new but could not assemble. So I look for someone who could put puzzle back together again. Engineer have plans for simple puzzles he make for his children, so I make and sell here - hope that someone can do child's puzzle can reassemble power cell. While I wait for you to appear, this shop make OK living. Your prize for solving puzzle you now owner this shop. Last thing you open big doors please."

The shopkeeper handed Desmond the sheaf of papers and pen, then walked past him to the ship, shedding his wig, glasses, and shop coat as he went. A hatch opened up in the side of the ship, and just before climbing in the alien removed his face mask to reveal a vaguely humanoid shaped creature with large brown eyes, no nose, and only a thin gash for a mouth. The alien pointed with unmistakable insistence at the double doors.

Desmond responded numbly to the alien's directions, clearing the jumble of boxes and equipment piled in front of the doors out of the way and working the bolt. The doors hadn't been opened in a long time and the hinges complained at being returned to duty after setting in one position for so many years, but an opening slowly appeared. The ship backed gracefully out of the garage, paused for a moment as if to collect itself, and then became a blur as it accelerated into the sky without even stirring up the dust in the alleyway.

Desmond stared for a long time in disbelief at the spot in the sky where the ship had rapidly shrunk to a dot of light and then disappeared altogether. As the shock began to wear off and his awareness returned to his surroundings, he remembered the papers in his hand. He wasn't familiar with legal documents, but they looked official enough. Closing and locking the double doors, he put on the shop coat abandoned by the alien and strode with increasing conviction through his new abode. Stepping through the curtain, he stood behind the counter and surveyed his little shop.

The shop was small and would never make a lot of money, but he didn't need much money to be happy. What the shop did offer was a purpose for his life while at the same time allowing him to indulge his passion for puzzles. For the first time in his life he understood that real wealth was more than just bank accounts and fancy cars. In spite of the pockets of his shabby clothes harboring only a few crumpled dollars he felt like the wealthiest man in the world. He found it most pleasing to consider that he had come by his good fortune by solving someone else's problem. By solving the alien's puzzle he'd in turn also solved the seemingly intractable puzzle of his own life.