- Objective
- Open the third box floating on the lake.
- You are
- Fang Li, a researcher. Kate is still beside you.
- Clue
- Another blog post on the tablet. One character is wrong—it is waiting for you to fix it.
The third box is not in the laboratory.
Kate leads you into a room filled with screens. The screens show a lake. Its surface is so still it does not look real.
A large transparent ball floats in the middle of the lake.
“That is the box,” Kate says.
“That is a…ball?”
“A water-walking ball. The kind children climb into and roll across the water.” Kate points to a zipper on the ball. “The zipper is locked.”
【Boxes in this world do not necessarily look like boxes.】The Cloak says.
〖This is adorable! I want to roll around inside!〗
Kate hands you the tablet. It shows a blog post .
“The lock we need to open this time is called ‘silence,’” she says. “Read first; you will know when you finish.”
Hint 1 · Direction
The third paragraph of that blog describes what happens after the zipper is closed.
Hint 2 · Method
One word in that paragraph trembles slightly. Click it and it returns to the intended word.
Hint 3 · Almost the answer
The original says “fill in the blank,” but it meant its homophone: a place with white clouds and sunshine.
The zipper does not move.
The zipper loosens by one notch.
“One step left,” Kate says. “Keep reading. That person later found a way to quiet the ears.”
Hint 1 · Direction
Keep reading that blog for a few more paragraphs.
Hint 2 · Method
Find the “sound-field difference” paragraph. The author says he once encountered something by chance.
Hint 3 · Almost the answer
Three characters; a sound commonly used to help sleep, beginning with “white.”
A few ripples cross the lake, then it becomes still again.
Kate turns every screen in the room up to maximum volume—a wash of white noise.
Then she turns them all off at once.
It is so quiet it feels as if someone has covered your ears.
The zipper slides open by itself.
There is no recording or data inside the ball. Only a folded sheet of paper.
You open it. It is a crayon drawing: a sun, a few clouds, a patch of grass, and a stick figure.
And a broad expanse of sky.
Green.
Scrawled in the lower-right corner: Kate, age 7, for Dad.
Kate takes the drawing, glances at it, folds it, and puts it in her pocket.
“I used the wrong color when I was little,” she says.
〖But…it is beautiful.〗
【Was the sky in this world always that color?】
No one answers.