The Decipherment

  * * *

  It felt like falling from total nothingness. Isabelle stood up and looked around her. She was back to where she had entered the dream; everything was the same around her. The other dreams moved and shifted around her in hazy colors. It was all exactly like she had left it – except that the dream of the chess board wasn’t there anymore, just like the previous one had disappeared.

  Maybe because I finally understand what it meant.

  She knew she couldn’t spend all her time stuck here . . . in her dreamland. That made her wonder what time it was. She locked at her watch. It read 12:30 AM. It was the time around which she had fallen asleep. Was her there something wrong with her watch, or had time really stopped here?

  She reminded herself that she had to keep moving. She wouldn’t waste more time. Finding a way out of this place was her only objective now. She took one last look at the dreams around her; dreams she wished she could explore, reach, see what they wanted to show her and where they wanted to take her, but she pushed away that longing and turned away. She didn’t know where she was going. It was all dark and . . . empty, like walking into a vacuum. She just wished she wouldn’t end up in some other portal, or fall into a hole or something . . . but then she heard it. A distant sound that sounded somewhat familiar to her. She could make out the soft and rhythmic melody of light violin strings playing somewhere very far that made their sound muffled.

  As she tried to strain her ears and her mind to concentrate more on the sound, it became more audible. And then suddenly, the first sparks of realization dawned on her face.

  It’s Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata . . . my favorite!

  During her first year at the university, Isabelle had heard the name Beethoven from the mouth of one of her cryptology professors, Mr. Higgs. He had been teaching the class how to make codes and symbols using music. The musical instrument chosen, whatever it might be, like a violin for example, would make a small sound and the waves from that sound would be captured on a small humming device that was the creation of Mr. Higgs himself. He called it machine de chiffrement mélodie, French for ‘melody cipher machine’.

  To show the class how it worked, he had taken a violin and had played a small C major 5th scale, which was a hard and loud yet harmonic sound. As he pressed the bow on the violin strings for a long time, rows of words and then gradually sentences appeared on the monitor screen attached with the wave-capture device. He had then explained that the way to decipher a code made in such a way was to play the right tunes with the musical instrument it was created with. With the right notes played, the code would crack open itself.

  Then he had played few other notes from different symphonies by some of the greatest composers of all time, including Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. He had praised each one of them as he played parts of their symphonies. That was when Isabelle had heard the name Beethoven for the first time.

  She had wondered why the name wasn’t familiar to her, especially if it was mentioned with some of the masters of music. Ignorance was not something she liked. When she went home that night, she had done a lot of research and it didn’t take a long time for Ludwig Van Beethoven to inspire her, just like he did a million others all over the world, every time they laid eyes on his charismatic personality.

  She had felt a soul-deep sympathy for him. A person not being able to hear his own music, music that he put all his heart and soul into. It struck her how he never gave up; despite the fact that he couldn’t hear the music he himself created.

  While going through his works, Isabelle had found the Moonlight sonata, listed as one of the most prolific creation ever made by using only a single piece of musical instrument, the piano.

  Most found it rather melancholy, its tune sounding gloomy and desolate to the ears. But Isabelle found it peaceful. Listening to it reminded her of the pains and struggles of its creator. It was like he spoke of his miseries through each notes of the sonata, telling the world of how it could never understand him, how it always made him dejected and how helpless he had been to not hear the art of his own hands. She found the sound of it soothing, keeping the demons in her mind silenced.

  Now, with that same sound reaching her ears and calming her restless mind, she wanted to just give it all up and sit there and listen to that soft hum play on its own.

  But she thought better of it.

  You have to get out of here, she reminded herself.

  She couldn’t see where the sound was coming from; it was dark and empty.

  Follow the sound.

  She took a dew steps back, but the sound seemed further. When she moved forward, it grew fainter. To her right was no luck either. Only one direction remained for her to go. Moving to her left, she strained her ears to hear if it was any clearer. That would mean she was closer to it – and she was. She started walking fast, following the sound, and then she started to run, as it became more loud and clearer. She was close. Then she stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t know where she was. The same void and darkness surrounded her. But wherever she was, the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere here. It was the loudest here.

  Isabelle tried her best to concentrate on the sound, hoping that maybe somehow she could see where it was coming from. After all, anything she thought of was coming to life here. So maybe if she thought more about it, she could see its source . . . and she was right.

  She forced each neuron in her brain to just concentrate on the sound. And then all of a sudden, everything changed, and the emptiness was no more.