Kubrick's Game

  Kelvin: Two men came here early this morning asking for you.

  Shawn: What did they look like?

  Kelvin: Big. Older. Not students.

  Shawn: They say what they wanted?

  Kelvin: No, but said they’d be back. What should I say if they do?

  Shawn: Say nothing.

  Kelvin: Should I be worried?

  Shawn: I’ll handle it.

  After showing him the exchange, Wilson insisted Shawn move in with him for the duration of the game. With the doorman downstairs, there was no safer place.

  Late Friday night, with Wilson watching his back the entire time, Shawn had raided his own dorm room, grabbed as many clothes and personal items as he could fit in his laundry basket, and bolted with no plans to return for the foreseeable future.

  Shawn had spent the early morning Saturday re-watching Dr. Strangelove, Eyes Wide Shut, and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s seventh, thirteenth, and ninth films, all referenced in the clue. The riddle suggested a deeper significance to CRM-114, just as he’d suspected.

  HAL will solve CRM-114 for seven, thirteen, and nine. But what made Q a dull boy?

  “So what exactly is CRM-114?” asked Wilson.

  “The simple answer,” Shawn replied, “is what we discussed on the plane. CRM-114 is the code that unlocks the B-52 bomber’s communication unit in Dr. Strangelove. The number sequence 114 pops up again in 2001 on a space capsule and in a space station. No one paid much attention, but then in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick makes a direct reference to the code, perhaps realizing he was too subtle the last time. The drug that the doctors inject into Alex before beginning the Ludovico technique is called Serum No. 114, “serum” serving as a pun for CRM. Kubrick even gives it a zoom-in close-up, the same as he does with the CRM-114 in Dr. Strangelove, so that it stands out.

  “The correlation between CRM-114 and Serum No. 114 has led to speculation that it’s some kind of code, especially since both are so closely tied to the dominant thematic element of each film. In Strangelove, it’s the ‘discriminator’ that’s responsible for human annihilation. In A Clockwork Orange, Serum No. 114 is injected into Alex, causing the disturbing images and music on screen to make him nauseated. Like the CRM-114 device, it’s a tool used for destruction, but this time of the human spirit.”

  “But why is it anything other than a nod to a previous film? You said he liked doing that.”

  “It’s becoming clear that when Kubrick referenced a previous film, he was likely doing it for an important reason, not just to be cute. Following the previous patterns, the Serum No. 114 shot in Clockwork Orange now appears to be our newest doubling marker, like the two paintings of Lolita and the dual chessboards of 2001. Kubrick was telling us that CRM-114 must be investigated. The only problem is, I just watched Eyes Wide Shut, and there’s not a single reference to CRM-114 anywhere that I can see. So we have to figure out what Kubrick meant by HAL will solve CRM-114 for seven, thirteen, and nine. I know this may sound crazy, but I think HAL from 2001 is supposed to help us find where CRM-114 is in Eyes Wide Shut.”

  “Okay, not going to argue with the crazy part there,” said Wilson. “But what about the second part of the clue? What was it again?”

  “The full clue is: Hal will solve CRM-114 for seven, thirteen, and nine. But what made Q a dull boy?”

  “This sounds mad complex,” said Wilson. “Four films are indicated in this one riddle. 2001, Strangelove, and Clockwork Orange in the first part, then the second part is telling us that The Shining is along for the ride. Remember when Jack writes thousands of pages of ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’?”

  “Of course. It’s one of the most frightening scenes ever captured on film. There’s no blood, no gore, no killing, no pop-out scare, just writing on paper. Plus it was an addition straight from Kubrick’s imagination that was not in the book.”

  “Well this better not take too long to figure out. Finals and term papers are coming up. Not to mention end-of-year parties. Won’t have much time for the game until the summer.”

  “Wilson, don’t you think this is more important than school?”

  “Look at me, Shawn. I’m a twenty-five-year old college junior. I’m lost among a sea of teenagers that I have nothing in common with. I’ve put career ahead of fun my whole life and never got to have the college experience. Don’t let the same thing happen to you. Enjoying this time in your life is just as important.”

  Shawn excused himself to the bathroom and thought about what Wilson said. Was he really not getting the most out of college? Would he look back and regret all this as a waste of time? When he came back everything was clear.

  He found Wilson in the kitchen pouring himself a bowl of cereal. Shawn put a bowl next to his and Wilson poured some for him too.

  “I appreciate your concern for me,” said Shawn. “But I know I won’t regret it. Maybe I’m missing out on the fun of college, but no party has ever been as much fun as hanging with you and Sami, watching movies, and solving these puzzles.”

  Wilson raised an eyebrow and gave a half-smile. “Come here, you.” He pulled Shawn in and gave him a hug, patting him on the back with his fist to keep it manly. “You’ll always be my brother.”

  Shawn awkwardly pounded Wilson’s back in return.

  “Brother to brother,” Wilson said, “why does this game mean so much to you?”

  Shawn broke away. “Because... I need to know.”

  “Need to know what?”

  Shawn put down his bowl of cereal, accessing a vaulted memory he didn’t enjoy bringing up. “When I was ten years old, my parents had me seeing four different therapists a week. I didn’t have any friends and had no interest in making any. I was getting into a lot of fights and hurting my classmates because I hadn’t developed the sense of empathy that most children develop. One of the psychologists suggested that my parents get me a pet to see if I could care for something and perhaps trigger a sense of compassion. My parents were allergic to cats and dogs so they got me a green parakeet. They even let me name him.”

  “Let me guess. You named him Stanley.”

  “No, I hadn’t seen any Kubrick movies yet, but I did name him after my favorite movie at the time—Darby from the Sean Connery leprechaun musical Darby O’Gill and the Little People.”

  “Did it work? Did you love the bird?”

  “That was the problem. Not only did I love Darby, I became obsessed with him. I spent hours every day trying to teach him how to talk. I stopped doing my homework because I decided I wanted to build him a bigger cage, which I thought I could do by gluing together old wire hangers. While I was at school, I wasn’t paying attention in class because sometimes Darby would knock over his seeds and I was terrified that he was starving. My grades started plummeting. I knew why, but my parents couldn’t figure it out. Then, one day, I decided to sneak my bird to school with me in my backpack. I just couldn’t stand worrying about him anymore. During a math test, Darby managed to escape and started flying around the room. The kids went crazy. My parents had to come to school to pick me up. Not long after the classroom incident, I came home and Darby was gone.”

  “Oh no.”

  “My parents said they gave him away to another little boy who needed a friend, but I have no verification of that. I never trusted my parents again.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I had a meltdown, but it wasn’t just because I missed my bird. I could at least logically understand why my parents sent him away. What hurt the most was when I put myself in Darby’s brain, I imagined him forever wondering why his best friend had abandoned him.”

  “Well that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, but what does it have to do with Kubrick?”

  “Because there’s something that none of the books I’ve read, or any of the articles online, or any of the classes I’ve taken have been able to tell me. I have to know whether or not Kubrick cared about me.”

  Wilson studied Shawn for a moment. “
Kubrick didn’t know you. You were like five when he died.”

  “Kubrick has been stigmatized for being reclusive, distant, narcissistic, and even misanthropic, but when I watch one of his films, it feels as if he wants to help me get through being me.”

  “You and Kubrick are a lot alike,” said Wilson. “Maybe he was an undiagnosed autistic with his focus, OCD-level research obsession, and social awkwardness.”

  “I’m really not interested in the details of his brain function. At the end of this puzzle, all I want to know is, did he care? Kubrick is the undisputed master of cinema. I’m Darby, his abandoned parakeet.”

  To:/Shawn Hagan

  From:/Antonio Mascaro

  Shawn, you missed our meeting today. Are you okay?

  ––––––––––––––

  To:/Antonio Mascaro

  From:/Shawn Hagan

  I’m fine. There’s no need for our Monday meetings anymore.

  ––––––––––––––

  No need? I’ve shown you nothing but courtesy and generosity up to this point. Please come at once.

  ––––––––––––––

  I don’t appreciate you spying on me and scaring my friends. Consider our meetings canceled until further notice.

  ––––––––––––––

  That would be a colossal mistake.

  ––––––––––––––

  Who’s the bottom-feeder now?

  ––––––––––––––

  “What did he say after that?” asked Sami.

  “That was the end of our communication.”

  “What if he follows up on his threats? I can’t have the cameras on my tab.”

  “I checked with the school. He’s already paid for the cameras, but that doesn’t make us his slaves. I had to send him a message.”

  The two sat at a corner table of Literati Café. Sami sipped genmaicha poured from a press and shared a chopped salad with Shawn while they waited for Wilson to arrive. Shawn used the time to fill Sami in on everything he and Wilson had discovered the night before.

  Sami pondered possible meanings of CRM-114 as she finished her tea.

  “How did The Confession scoring go?” asked Shawn, changing the subject.

  “Great. Can’t believe the premiere is just a week and a half away. I’m so nervous.”

  “Won’t industry be there?”

  “Agencies and producers usually send representatives to scope for talent.”

  “So everything depends on this screening.”

  “You really know how to make a girl at ease. Speaking of which, did you apologize to Desiree?”

  “I did. She refused to talk to me about anything not game-related.”

  “Give her some time.”

  “But now we don’t even talk about the game anymore. She even blocked me on Facebook. I’ve only known her for a few weeks and I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  Sami shook her head. “Your brain may be atypical, but as a man, you’re totally typical. As soon as you can’t have something, it’s all you want.”

  “Psssst!”

  The hiss came from across the café.

  Shawn and Sami turned and saw Wilson at an outside table in a fedora and sunglasses.

  He signaled them over. “I’ve been here for ten minutes. I had to check if anybody was watching you guys. You did what I said, right? You stayed off the sidewalks and took a bus over here?”

  They nodded.

  “Good. We should be alone.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Sami. “Why couldn’t we just meet at your place?”

  “Because I found this nailed to my door today.” He slapped down a paper, on which the following phrase was written over and over:

  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

  “Somebody out there knows what the next clue is and knows we have it,” Wilson said.

  “How’d they get past your doorman?” said Shawn.

  “Who the hell knows? I don’t feel safe there anymore. Sami, do you think I could—”

  “Yes, you can stay at my place,” she answered quickly. “But hasn’t Shawn been staying with you? There’s not enough room for a third.”

  “I guess I’ll go back to my dorm,” said Shawn. “If someone comes looking for me, maybe I can get some information out of them.”

  “Thanks, man,” said Wilson. “I gotta admit I’m spooked.”

  Shawn studied the paper, wondering if it could have been a message from Mascaro.

  “Can we get back to the hunt?” Sami pulled out another paper and placed it on top of Wilson’s. “I’ve been going through the latest clue and have a few ideas.”

  At the top of the paper, the clue was printed in bold:

  HAL will solve CRM-114 for seven, thirteen, and nine. But what made Q a dull boy?

  Underneath that was an analysis of HAL neatly organized into bullet points.

  “Let’s examine all the facts we know,” said Sami. “HAL is the spaceship’s artificially intelligent computer in 2001. It murders all the astronauts on board except for Dave Bowman. Knowing that the mission would mean Earth’s first contact with an alien intelligence, HAL sees human fallibility as a threat and feels compelled to eliminate it from the equation.”

  “What about the IBM connection?” said Wilson.

  “I was just getting to that. If you take HAL and move each letter one up in the alphabet, it spells IBM. Hard to believe it’s a coincidence. All the ship’s computers are IBMs.”

  Sami showed the team screen captures of IBM labeled above the ship’s computer screens and on the wrist monitors of the spacesuits.

  She continued. “When HAL is pitifully begging for his life, he begins spouting off logistics and states that he was built in Urbana, Illinois—exactly where IBM was first based. Then, HAL famously sings the song ‘Daisy,’ which happens to be the first song ever sung by a talking computer, also an IBM. Some have speculated that Kubrick was not a fan of IBM and was connecting the company to HAL’s evil persona, but that can’t be true. Kubrick was not anti-technology. He loved innovative, pioneering companies like IBM and was always up to date on the latest gadgets. He prided himself on mastering computers before they were in vogue and used his technical expertise to help create the visual effects sequences of 2001. Being my own devil’s advocate, Arthur C. Clarke, the writer of the 2001 novel and screenplay, asserted that HAL stood for ‘Heuristic Algorithmic,’ but that does not negate the fact that Kubrick could have purposefully used HAL as a marker in this game.”

  “HAL is our new marker?” said Shawn skeptically.

  “I think so,” said Sami. “It meets our doubling criteria. There was a second HAL back on Earth at mission control.”

  Wilson rolled his eyes. “Fine, but if HAL is a marker, what exactly is he marking?”

  “The clue says ‘HAL will solve CRM-114.’ Assuming that HAL is indeed referencing IBM, Kubrick could be suggesting that we need an IBM computer to solve CRM-114. But that seems odd. Most computers, no matter the brand, are capable of the same functions. I cross-referenced IBM with CRM-114 and found nothing to go on. Then I had another thought. HAL and CRM are both acronyms. What CRM stands for is unknown, but maybe HAL is the clue to solving it. Have either of you ever heard of a Caesar shift?”

  “Caesar shift? Wasn’t that a touchdown dance?” joked Wilson.

  “Not quite. It’s one of the oldest forms of encryption, whereby words in a document are all moved one letter up or one letter down in the alphabet. Julius Caesar used it when sending confidential messages to his generals. IBM is the Caesar-shifted decryption of HAL. I think Kubrick is telling us that the Caesar shift is key to unlocking the mystery of CRM-114.”

  Shawn was thrilled by this prospect. He quickly pulled out a pen and did a Caesar shift on CRM-114 to see if it spelled out anything meaningful. It became BQL-003 or DSN-225.

  Sami shrugged. “I was going to tel
l you that I tried those combinations, but none of them made any sense to me.”

  Shawn studied the letters intensely. The letter Q was interesting in BQL, but nothing else stood out.

  “I have an idea,” said Wilson. “What if Q is referring to General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove? If we shift Q up one, we get R for Ripper. The clue is: ‘What made Q a dull boy?’ In The Shining, being a ‘dull boy’ is a euphemism for going insane. General Ripper definitely goes insane when he deploys the nukes.”

  “That feels like a stretch,” said Sami.

  “Hold on,” said Shawn. “Wilson may be on to something. Ripper is the one who gives the order. That means he’s the only one who had access to the CRM-114.”

  “Exactly,” said Wilson. “We’re talking about codes here. The CRM-114 wasn’t a code. It was a device that received codes. Wasn’t there a three-letter code Ripper sent that activated it?”

  Shawn looked at Wilson wide-eyed. “Of course!”

  The image sprang into Shawn’s head immediately. In Dr. Strangelove, the code that General Jack Ripper used to unlock the CRM-114 was ‘OPE,’ a variant on ‘peace on Earth’ and ‘purity of essence.’

  Shawn did a quick Caesar shift on OPE. He got PQF and NOD.

  PQF had potential, but NOD seemed more promising.

  “NOD,” said Sami. “Does that seem familiar to anyone?”

  “Well,” said Shawn, spit-balling, “It could mean a nod of agreement. But there’s nod’s other meaning, which connects it to Kubrick’s thirteenth and final film, Eyes Wide Shut.”

  “You mean nodding off?” said Sami. “As in sleeping?”

  “Precisely. Eyes Wide Shut was adapted from Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle or ‘Dream Novel.’ It’s about a man who explores a dream world where fantasy and reality intersect.”

  “So what are you thinking?” said Sami.

  “I’m thinking we need to watch Eyes Wide Shut and look for anything that has to do with NOD.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Wilson. At that he stood, grabbed Sami’s puzzle notes, folded them, pulled out a match, and lit them on fire in an ashtray.