《Numberland》 Hard Landing Numberland Chapter 1: Week 21, Day 1 Every once in a while, Wilson would walk into a room and then immediately forget what he came in for. He wasn¡¯t alone. Many people have this experience every day. It¡¯s one of those universal human frustrations, like stubbing your toe. One day Wilson found himself walking in the woods, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn¡¯t remember what he was doing there. He was overcome with that same sense of disconnection, that feeling that his brain had skipped a step. But this time he wasn¡¯t standing in the kitchen with a dumb look on his face. He was standing on a narrow cobblestone road just wide enough for one person to walk on. It stretched forward and back between evergreen trees that pressed their needles in so close he felt like he was standing in a hallway. He could only see a few feet in front and behind him before the natural curve of the road and the foliage on either side blocked his view. It was a chilly morning. A thin fog hung in the air. The sun was just beginning to rise. Wilson stood in place mentally spinning his wheels, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn¡¯t remember why he was here. He didn¡¯t even know where ¡®here¡¯ was. He couldn¡¯t even imagine a reason to be on an ancient cobblestone footpath in the middle of the woods. He couldn¡¯t even remember the last time he¡¯d been up this early. He didn¡¯t even like hiking. He genuinely had no clue. What Wilson would normally do in this sort of situation (that is, the situation of standing in the kitchen with a dumb look on his face trying to remember what he¡¯d come in for) was to carry on with his day and hope the reason eventually came back to him. He decided that was exactly what he should do. The situation was slightly different, but the logic was the same. He must have had a reason to come this way in the first place, so the only thing to do was to keep walking and hope it eventually came back to him. Anyway, he couldn¡¯t just stand around and do nothing. ¡®Maybe my car ran out of gas and I¡¯m walking to the gas station,¡¯ he thought. ¡®The gas station that¡¯s in the middle of a spooky forest, just down this old cobblestone footpath that¡¯s way too narrow for a car.¡¯ The only other option was to go back the way he¡¯d come, but if he did that then he¡¯d just have to turn around again when he did eventually remember where he was going. He walked down the road. The sun rose a little over the horizon. The trees in the east cast dark shadows over the path. Eventually he came to a break in the trees. Before him, a stone bridge went over a little canal. He called it a canal and not a river because it was obviously man-made, with retaining walls made of the same stone as the path. To the left and right the canal stretched into the distance, curved slightly concave away from him. It was narrow enough that Wilson could have jumped across it, although he walked across the bridge instead. On the other side of the bridge the trees were different. Instead of being bushy pines that clustered densely together and filled the gaps between them with needles, these were tall and skinny. Their canopies fought for space overhead, but the forest floor was relatively clear. ¡°Huh,¡± he said aloud. He thought, ¡®Two monocultures of trees, separated by an obviously artificial gap. Am I in a tree farm? It would make sense if the canal was for irrigation, but why is it so bespoke? I know there are a lot of old stone structures in Europe, but unless I forgot crossing an ocean I¡¯m on the wrong continent for that. And this looks too twee to be colonial-era New World architecture. Am I in a theme park?¡¯ ¡°Where the heck am I?¡± Wilson asked the empty air, mostly just to hear his own voice. He kept going. It wasn¡¯t like he could do anything else. The forest was thinner on the other side of the bridge, so Wilson could see much further in front of him. After walking for just a few minutes he spotted something between the trees. It was hard to say what it was, exactly, but he could see a great big brown lump about the size of a barn. It looked like a pile of sticks and mud, but it was tough to say peering at it from a distance between trunks and foliage. Maybe it was a building. If he was lucky, there might be people there he could ask for directions. He jogged down the path. It didn¡¯t go straight towards the thing, or straight anywhere for that matter, but instead twisted and curved in whimsical ways. A few times, Wilson found places where he could avoid a loop or a U-turn just by cutting across a stretch of forest. Eventually he came to a square plaza. The road connected to one of the corners of the square, and three other roads connected to the other three corners. In the middle of the square there was a statue on a pedestal. There was a plaque on the pedestal, and a sheet of paper stuck to the statue¡¯s feet just above. The big brown thing was right up against the edge of the plaza. On closer inspection it really was a big pile of sticks and mud, or maybe it was just artistically styled to look like that. It was a huge blocky pile of branches and dried mud piled up to the height of a 2-storey building, with nearly vertical outer walls that made it look like a hut or log cabin. It could have been a beaver dam, except that there was no water anywhere and its walls were far too steep. Despite the lack of an obvious door, Wilson¡¯s first thought was that he must really be in a theme park and this must be a themed building designed to look like a beaver dam or a caveman¡¯s hut or something along those lines. The structure was right up against the edge of the plaza, very much like a building would be. Wilson went straight for the plaque, not even glancing at the statue. He was carrying an almost desperate hope in his heart that the inscription would be a hint about where he was. A name. A date. A dedication. Anything. It was not to be. The plaque read, ¡°Princess Alison Arrives in Numberland,¡± probably just the name of the sculpture. There wasn¡¯t even a date. No useful information. Disappointed, he glanced up at the statue. It portrayed an ordinary-looking woman in mid-stride, not very princess-like at all. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, and she seemed every bit as dazed and confused as he felt right then. There was also the sheet of paper that was stuck to the statue¡¯s feet. It had writing on it. It said: ¡°If you¡¯re reading this, exit the plaza via the road to your left and follow it until you reach a door. Go through the door and up the stairs to reach the village.¡± ¡®Huh,¡¯ he thought. ¡®I must not be the first person to get lost here. This note is phrased so oddly, though. It tells me to walk until I reach a door, but you¡¯d think it would be until I reach a building with a door. And then there¡¯s a village upstairs inside a building?¡¯ He would check it out, but first he wanted to check out the big brown thing. The way it was positioned right along the edge of the plaza, it seemed like it should have been a building. It was big and blocky enough to be a themed building with a facade designed to look like a pile of mud and sticks. For that matter, it seemed way too big to be made of just mud and sticks and stay standing. And if it was a building, there might be people inside. If there were people inside, he could ask them for directions. He walked up to it and touched it gingerly. The mud was real mud, and the sticks were real sticks, it wasn¡¯t just painted plaster. How it stayed up was a mystery. The biggest beaver dams could get this big, but they didn¡¯t have sheer walls. They were more like hills, gently sloped on all sides. This was a building. It must have been built around a core made of sturdier materials. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. There was no sign of a door, but there were irregularly spaced circular tunnels about a meter wide each, leading deeper into the structure. They were too small for a human to pass through easily. Wilson thought, ¡®Maybe this really is the den of a wild animal, like some kind of land-dwelling beaver.¡¯ He backed away, but as he did a small furry head poked out of one of the tunnels. Bigger than a housecat but smaller than a dog, it had long ears like a rabbit and buck teeth like a beaver. Its eyes were narrowed in something that looked like pure hatred, if you could even read expressions on a rodent¡¯s face. The instant it laid eyes on him, it let out a shrill squeal and pounced at him. It was fast, and he didn¡¯t even have time to turn around before it was on him. He tried to kick it away, but the creature seemed to have no concept of fear. It latched on to his ankle with its buck teeth. ¡°Ouch! Damn it!¡± Wilson yelled, more out of shock than pain. Its bite hurt, but not as much as he would have expected. The little monster¡¯s teeth were too blunt to cut through his jeans. He shook his leg to try to dislodge it, but the rabbit creature refused to let go. He stumbled back and fell to the ground. Rather than get back up, he took advantage of the fact that he was sitting to kick with his other foot. Even being kicked in the head didn¡¯t make the thing let go, but he kept kicking. The fifth kick dislodged the thing and sent it flying. Just then, another rabbit creature crept out of one of the tunnels, followed quickly by a third. When they saw Wilson they flattened their ears and growled. Wilson sprang to his feet and sprinted away as fast as he could, not caring which direction he was going. He remembered the note telling him to go left, but it would have to be his left when he had been facing the note, and he didn¡¯t have time to stop and work out which way that was with the rabbit-creatures hot on his heels. He ran out of the plaza by the first path he came across. The path led up a hill then down again. It led across another bridge, around a bend where the road curved to avoid a thicket, through a tunnel and out the other side. The rabbits followed him all the way, trying and mostly failing to snag his ankles with their teeth, apparently not caring when their faces got kicked in the process. He would have assumed they were timid herbivores just to look at them, so he couldn¡¯t guess why they were being so persistent. Wilson started to worry that he might have no choice but to turn and fight. He had never fought anyone or anything in his life. He didn¡¯t like any part of the idea of kicking rabbits, beavers, dogs, or whatever these things were, even if they were being aggressive. But he also knew he couldn¡¯t keep running forever. Just then, he realized that there was a wall in front of him. It had been there the whole time, he just hadn¡¯t recognized it. The thing he had assumed was the sky was actually a huge blue wall. It had clouds on it, but now that he was closer he could see that they were unmistakably just painted on. The wall stretched up as high as he could see. He couldn¡¯t see a point where it ended and the real sky began. Maybe it didn¡¯t end. Maybe he was inside a ridiculously huge building, and the blue wall connected to a blue ceiling. He didn¡¯t have time to think about it. All at once he broke out of the trees and saw that the wall was right in front of him, a hundred meters away at most. The path led right up to the wall, and at the point they met there was a door. Wilson broke into a dead sprint. It didn¡¯t matter where he was or why, that door was exactly what he needed right now. All he had to do was get through and close it behind him. The rabbits would be trapped on this side, and he¡¯d have plenty of time to catch his breath and think. He didn¡¯t have space to slow down, so he stopped himself by slamming into the wall next to the door instead, ignoring the pain. The rabbits were even more reckless, and one of them slammed head first into the door. The door was painted the same shade of blue as the wall. The only part that stood out was the silver handle. Wilson grabbed it and pulled. It was unlocked. Relief washed over him. He had to get through, but he also needed to stop the rabbits from following him. This, ironically, was something he had experience with. Who hadn¡¯t needed to get out through a door while keeping a cat or dog from following, at some point in their life? He turned around backwards as he opened the door and blocked it with his body. One of the rabbits took the opportunity to latch on to his leg. ¡°Leave. Me. Alone!¡± he said, standing on one foot and using the other to kick the rabbit. It remained stubbornly attached to his leg. He stepped backwards through the door, trying to close it on the rabbit¡¯s head, hoping it would let go and get stuck on the other side- -and his foot touched empty air. He¡¯d walked backwards through the door, so he hadn¡¯t seen that there was nothing on the other side to stand on. He fell, the rabbit¡¯s jaws still latched on to his leg. Then everything happened too fast to process. He landed butt-first on something hard, bruising his tailbone. That hard something was also steeply sloped and covered with water, and he found his fall turning into a downward slide. He spun around and banged his head twice, still sliding. Finally, he plunged into deep water. Wilson¡¯s instincts kicked in and he swam to the surface. He found himself in a swimming pool in the shadow of a huge water slide. It was a tightly coiled spiral of yellow plastic supported by steel beams, two storeys tall. A geyser of water poured out of the bottom of the slide and into the pool. At the top of the slide was the door he¡¯d come through. It was hanging slightly open, twenty feet above Wilson¡¯s head, swinging over open air. He¡¯d fallen down a water slide. Who in their right mind would put a door directly over a water slide, just to trick people into falling in? That had to be illegal. The other side of the wall had been painted sky blue, but on this side it was decorated in a checkerboard pattern of pale yellow and aqua that reminded Wilson of the wall of a public swimming pool he¡¯d been to as a kid. He started to swim for the nearest edge of the swimming pool. Just then, the rabbit burst out of the water. It had been knocked away at some point in his trip down the water slide, but now it had found him again. It lunged for his face, jaws chomping on empty air. He shoved it back and they both plunged back underwater. They struggled together. The rabbit was small and a weak swimmer, but it seemed to care more about hurting him than it did about keeping its head above water. For a terrible minute it seemed like it would succeed in taking them both down together. Then Wilson¡¯s foot touched solid ground. Their fight had drifted to a shallower part of the pool and now he could reach the bottom with the tips of his toes. He could feel that the bottom of the pool was sloped, and he frantically splashed and hopped uphill until he could stand with his head above the water. Now that he was standing instead of paddling, he had leverage. He grabbed the rabbit and forced it under the water. It bit into his sleeve with its blunt teeth, but he didn¡¯t relent. He held it down until it stopped struggling. ¡°You want a fight that badly, you little monster? Fine.¡± he said, still spitting water. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just leave me alone?¡± He wasn¡¯t sure how long it took a rabbit to drown, and he wasn¡¯t even sure if it was a rabbit, so he held it down even after it stopped moving just to be safe. Suddenly, there was a loud pop like the bursting of a balloon, and the rabbit seemed to burst open in his hands. He reflexively let go, and as he did a cloud of smoke burst out of the water all around him. He sputtered and stumbled his way free of the cloud, walking uphill through the water towards the shallow end of the pool. When he was out of the water, he stood by the edge of the pool and took a good look around him for the first time since falling through the door. He was not outdoors, as he had first assumed. He was inside a building. There was a ceiling. In the other room it had been painted sky-blue, but here it was the same yellow and aqua checkerboard pattern as the wall, clearly artificial. The roof was unbelievably high. He got vertigo just looking at it. Looking up the wall, the yellow and aqua squares dwindled until they became too tiny to make out, and that was less than halfway up. Wilson didn¡¯t have the frame of reference to even guess how high it was, but it seemed like kilometers. It didn¡¯t seem physically possible for it to stay up. It should have collapsed under its own weight. In front of him was the water slide. It was huge, as big as a house and more than two storeys tall. It seemed tiny in comparison to the vast empty space above, under that cavernous and distant ceiling, but it was still more than he thought he could reasonably climb. He doubted he was going to be able to go back the way he¡¯d come. To the left and right, the wall seemed to extend for miles. It was perfectly straight, and in the distance, he could see that it turned back at a right angle. He got the impression that he was in a square or rectangular room blown up to absurd size. Considering the height of the ceiling it might even have been a cube, as absurd as that was. It wasn¡¯t empty. In every direction there were water features. Pools, slides, fountains, wave pools, lazy rivers, and other things Wilson couldn¡¯t identify were scattered haphazardly through the space, with no apparent rhyme or reason. They all connected to each other, slides leading to pools flowing into rivers and so on, so much that it seemed like you could get around more easily in a boat than by walking. No attempt had been made to line them up or leave space for natural walkways, so it would be impossible to get anywhere without passing through or over water. Most of the features were clustered on the ground level, but some were elevated. There were occasional plateaus and elevated pools, many of which poured out through slides into ground-level pools. In the distance, he could make out a few towers made up of multiple levels of swimming pools pouring into slides into pools into slides. It was a water park, maybe the most elaborate water park ever built. But there was no one in it. As far as the eye could see, Wilson was completely alone. Hop To It Numberland Chapter 2: Week 21, Day 1, continued Wilson was starting to regret his mad dash away from the rabbit. As a lifelong city dweller he had no experience with animals aside from the occasional cat or dog. Running away had seemed like the sensible and humane thing to do. He hadn¡¯t wanted to hurt the thing. He had never hurt an animal before, and he didn¡¯t like the feeling of having done it. He hadn¡¯t expected it to chase him so far. It was so much smaller than him, and so obviously not a predator, that it should have been more afraid of him than he was of it. Some herbivores would aggressively chase bigger animals away from their nest or territory, but the rabbit had kept going after him to the point of suicide. It was disturbing. The point of being aggressive like that was supposed to be to scare off predators and avoid a fight, not to go down to the bitter end. A dog would bark at a bear, and the bear would back off. Both the dog and the bear would know that the bear would win a real fight, but the dog might get a good bite in. Fearing a nasty injury that might take weeks to heal, the bear would think better of it and go somewhere else. This hadn¡¯t been like that. The rabbit had been more like a bee. Once provoked, it was committed to deliver its sting and go down in the process. It was uncanny for a mammal to act like that. Knowing that now, he wished he had turned and killed the thing before falling down this absurdly huge water slide. The trouble was that he didn¡¯t think he could get back up. The flow of water inside the slide was too strong to climb up, and the only other way would be to climb on top of it all the way up the spiral. Against its smooth, wet surface, he thought it was more likely he¡¯d fall off and bash his head against one of the supporting beams. And the only clue he¡¯d found was the note back in the plaza, the one giving directions to ¡°the village.¡± Directions he wouldn¡¯t be able to follow unless he could get back up there. ¡°Nuts,¡± he said aloud. He had two options. He could either stay put and try to climb up, or he could walk along the wall and try to find an alternate route. He¡¯d already pretty much ruled out the first option as too likely to get him killed, so he decided to explore. If he could find another way back to the plaza, he could follow the directions and reach ¡°the village,¡± where (hopefully) he could get his bearings and start making his way home. Before going anywhere else he needed a system, and he needed to start keeping better track of where he was. He arbitrarily decided to refer to the direction he was facing as North, to his right as East, behind him as South, and to his left as West. That meant the plaza was more-or-less directly North from where he was, and to get there he had to go either East, then North, then West, or West, then North, then East. He had no idea if the direction he was facing was actually North or not, and odds were that it probably wasn¡¯t, but he hoped that naming the directions would help him keep his bearings straight as he worked his way back. He was already lost, he didn¡¯t want to get even more lost. That decided, Wilson set out East. He tried to follow the wall, but it wasn¡¯t easy. The area - it was hard to call it a room given how unbelievably huge it was - was filled with a seemingly random jumble of pools, canals, and water slides that all connected to each other. There was no straight path anywhere, least of all along the wall. Water features went right up to the wall, and he was constantly presented with a choice to go around or through. He was already soaking wet, so he didn¡¯t mind wading through knee-deep water since he was already soaked through, but the deep pools were different. Swimming burned a lot of energy. Crossing the Olympic-sized swimming pools was doable, but doing one after another would have exhausted him quickly. Going around was easier, if there was a bridge or a shallower section that could be waded across, but often that required a long detour. He found himself straying further and further afield, looking for shortcuts and crossing points that seemed to be more common the further he got from the wall. Fortunately, the wall was impossible to lose sight of. It seemed to be miles high, and no matter how far away he got he could always see it. After walking quite a way with no sign of another door, Wilson spotted something else that gave him pause. Quite a long way off, he saw an animal that looked a lot like a penguin. It was hopping along with apparent purpose, eyes fixed on something in front of it. It was mostly black and white, but had a crown of brilliant yellow feathers sprouting from its head. Thinking back to his encounter with the rabbit, he ducked behind a nearby slide and watched it from a distance. The penguin took no notice of him. Its eyes were locked on something in one of the pools. As it approached it ducked low and slid into the water. At first he wondered how it was going to get back out, but a few moments later it shot out of the water like a rocket and landed on its feet on the edge of the pool, clearing the surface of the water by half a metre in the process. The penguin had come up with a yellow ball clutched in its beak. It was small enough to carry but clearly too big to swallow. The penguin seemed unbothered by this as it toddled off back the way it had come with its prize. Curiosity piqued, he followed after the creature from a safe distance. It seemed pretty slow on land, unable to move except by hopping along, and he felt confident that he could outrun it if he had to. It either didn¡¯t notice him or wasn¡¯t bothered by his presence as it made its way to the nearest of the towers. The towers were by far the tallest structures in the area. There were seven that he could see, spaced far apart from each other. Each one was easily twenty or thirty storeys tall. Each floor was made up of a single huge circular swimming pool, and the levels were connected by water slides that flowed from the higher pools to the lower ones. There didn¡¯t seem to be any way to safely get up to the higher levels. He also couldn¡¯t imagine what the towers must be made of to support so much weight. They were supported by metal beams, but it was still unbelievable that a structure made of more than twenty vertically-stacked swimming pools could stay standing. Unless the pools were empty - it was impossible to tell from below - they should have collapsed under the weight of the water. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. As the penguin got closer and he followed, Wilson saw that the tower¡¯s ground floor was ringed by a row of strange machines. They were a bit like vending machines and a bit like slot machines, with a funnel sticking out of the front, a big lever on the side, and a clear plastic tube sticking out of its top that ran up the outside of the tower. Each machine was decorated with numbers and pictographs - a banana, a coin, a red ball. The penguin walked along the row, glancing at the pictures as it went. Finally, it came to a machine with a picture of a yellow ball on the front, matching the one the penguin was holding. The penguin hopped up and deposited its ball in the funnel, then jumped up to grab hold of the lever with its beak. The ball reappeared inside the tube, quickly sucked up into the higher levels of the tower. As Wilson watched with astonishment, the funnel spat out three coins and the pengaroo deftly caught each one out of the air, storing them somewhere he couldn¡¯t see. ¡°Unbelievable,¡± Wilson said under his breath. He felt a bit like he was filming a nature documentary. He turned around to slink off, then practically jumped out of his skin when he saw another penguin come around a blind corner. Now that he was up close he could make out a lot more details about the creature. It had a pouch on its front like a kangaroo or an opossum. Between its pouch and its way of moving on land by hopping, it was more like a half-penguin half-kangaroo than it was like a penguin as he¡¯d originally thought. It was only about a metre tall, so Wilson liked his odds if it came to a fight. He was pretty sure he could kick it into the nearest pool like a football, if it came down to it. Not that he enjoyed hurting animals, but after the encounter with the rabbit he had to be realistic. The next critter that came after him was getting the boot. It froze when it saw him, watching him intently with inquisitive eyes. When Wilson didn¡¯t move, the penguin - or kangaroo - or pengaroo - started to move again. Without taking its eyes off him, it slowly moved around him in a broad semicircle before returning to its original route. Unlike the rabbit, this creature seemed (appropriately) more afraid of him than he was of it. That was fine by him. He wouldn¡¯t bother them if they didn¡¯t bother him. A relationship based on mutual caution and sensibility. When it had gone, he approached the base of the tower. There were more pengaroos around him the closer he got, all either coming or going. They didn¡¯t seem to stick around, but a steady trickle of two or three pengaroos would arrive each minute carrying a colored ball to deposit in one of the machines. They quickly got used to his presence, not seeming to care as he stood watching them use the machines from a few metres away. A closer look revealed that they were storing the coins they collected in the pouches on their stomachs. When he had been watching for a few minutes, he saw a pengaroo arrive without a ball in its beak. Curious, he watched as it approached one of the machines, one with a picture of a bright blue fish on it. Like the others, it had a funnel sticking out of the front. The pengaroo fished coins out of its pouch one at a time and dropped them down the funnel, having to handle them one at a time in its beak. After dropping the fifth coin, it hopped up and grabbed hold of the lever with its beak, pulling it down. A bright blue fish that looked just like the picture on the machine shot out of the funnel. The pengaroo caught it out of mid-air and swallowed it whole. As he watched the bird eat, Wilson realized he was hungry. He couldn¡¯t remember eating breakfast, and with all the walking he¡¯d done he¡¯d worked up an appetite. And with what he¡¯d seen, he was pretty sure he could copy the pengaroos to get food out of one of these machines. Raw fish didn¡¯t appeal, but he did see a machine with a picture of a banana on it. He didn¡¯t know if he¡¯d get another chance to find food in this bizarre place, so he decided to try it out. First he took a closer look at the machines. Each one had a funnel which seemed to serve as both an input and an output, a large lever on the side, an image of an object, and a number beside an image of a coin. Based on what he¡¯d seen, it seemed that the image was either the item you got out of the machine when you put coins in, or the item you put into the machine to get coins out. Possibly it was both. The number beside the coin symbol was presumably the number of coins you paid or received. Of course, there was only one way to be sure. He had to test it. He wandered around looking for one of the colored balls. He¡¯d seen them before, drifting down rivers or floating in pools, but had thought nothing of it. It quickly became apparent that there were none near the tower. It made sense that any that were close would have been picked clean by the pengaroos already. He decided to continue the way he had been going and set off back towards the wall at an angle. He found a red ball floating in a pool before he was halfway there. For the sake of efficiency he decided to bring it with him but keep on and continue searching for a door, as he had been before. Unlike the pengaroos, he had no trouble carrying more than one ball at a time, so he just picked them up as he went and turned around when they became too much to carry. He didn¡¯t find a door, but he did find five more colored balls while walking along the wall. By the time he made it back to the tower, he was walking as slowly as a pengaroo as he precariously cradled a double armful of them. He had to set them down to feed them into the machines, but he kept a close eye to make sure that an ambitious pengaroo didn¡¯t steal his haul. He came to a machine that offered 3 coins for a yellow ball - assuming his theory was right. He fed it a yellow ball and pulled the lever, and just as predicted three coins shot out of the machine. He had to chase after them to stop them from rolling away, but other than that it went exactly as planned. He was able to get a look at the coins for the first time. They were oddly large and thick like some kind of novelty item, about the size of a quarter but more than twice as thick. They were made of some kind of shiny, heavy, gold-colored metal. He guessed it was probably brass. Each one had the number 1 embossed on its surface. He had only had that one yellow ball, so he moved along the line of machines until he found one showing a color he had. This machine offered only two coins for a green ball. Just as he was about to use it, he spotted another machine further down the way that also had a picture of a green ball. He decided to check it out, and found that it promised three coins. ¡°Huh. So the machines aren¡¯t all equal.¡± Wilson was developing a new theory for where he was, albeit a wild one. Maybe he was in some kind of research facility studying these strange birds. This whole thing seemed like an experiment into animal intelligence - can the Pengaroos understand money well enough to preferentially use the machines that offered more coins? It was just a wild guess, not useful to his current situation. To get the best value for his work, he decided to do a circuit of all the machines. He found that all the prices ranged from 2 to 4 coins, with 3 being the most common. He wasn¡¯t able to find a machine offering 4 coins for his green balls, so he exchanged them all at the 3-coin machine. Then he went around and systematically exchanged all his other colored balls for coins, taking care to get the most he could. In the end he had 35 coins to work with. So far his hypothesis was doing well. Now for the next step in the experiment: Getting something to eat. He found a machine with pictograms of a banana and a coin, then the number 5. If he was right about how this worked, that meant he just had to feed in 5 coins and pull the lever, and a banana would shoot out. He did just that and - the banana shot out and he failed to catch it. It sailed into a nearby pool. He had to go for a dip to get his prize back, but other than that it was a complete success. He stashed the other 30 coins in his pockets, finding them heavy but manageable, and sat down to eat his hard-won breakfast. As he ate, he started to make a plan.