Last night a strange stranger sidled up as we were trying to find our accommodations. He was young with drawn features and sleepy eyes that told untold heart-rending stories. He said, "there are twenty-one numbers but only twenty number locations. That means one of the number locations yields a two-digit number. The sea beckons. Bye-bye."
We weren't sure what he was talking about and felt relieved when he scuttled away into the darkness.
"What a strange goon," we thought.
We hadn't long been in Qingdao before we realized that much was the same as other places, save the delightful stinky sea foam and some pretty dope watered-down beer which tasted like rolling rock. Our appetite for adventure kicked up, and with it, a flourish of hives that itched for the rest of the day.
It was then we came across an ancient scroll, or manuscript, scribbled down on noodle-based parchment by a neolithic caveman-monk who called himself Uwajimaya. Our interest was peaked. We decided to follow the enclosed narrative carefully and see what came of it.
It was then we got a very clear premonition, and not for the first time. Our hives intensified and we divined from the delicious cosmos—several items would shortly be crucial:
1. A phone with google maps and wikipedia, in order to contact the demons of the cloud (on the go).
2. Three non-chinese coins.
3. A calculator.
4. Perseverance.
With these four tools in hand (albeit the last one not tangibly so), we made our way to the pier and studied the sea. Some girls were walking around; some men too, strange as it was. Some people were selling stuff. It was a crazy scene. We consulted the manuscript and went to the starting point, a big circle on the ground at the beginning of the pier, near the street. We faced the distant blue ocean, wafting, and thought we gleaned from the stench, a small sea cucumber enclave, four nautical miles from shore. After a brief squint we spied a kind of two-tier pagoda-pavilion thing in the distance, at the end. Downtown lay to our 3:00. We turned left and pranced down some steps, our stomach fluttering with certainty, and nausea from the undercooked starfish we'd just had. We walked along the beach.
The manuscript said we would need to gather numbers in order to contact the demons of the cloud, after a couple of hours. We thought that sounded fun. We were pretty sure each of the numbers would be hidden in the things we would see on the way to the demon cloud grotto, and that the order of the numbers was gooddamn important.
We walked a few minutes or less and saw a lonely barge, like a non-floating floating dock, van-sized, sitting in the middle of the beach. It was pretty beat-up but seemed like it would probably stay above water if only the tide weren't so shy. We studied the dock and noticed something. At the back was a hand-railing. We ignored this right off and looked instead at the front edge. It looked as though maybe there had been a railing here too, but it was now gone. Instead were small mounds of metal. We got the bizarre urge to do some counting, so we counted the metal protrusions on the top edge of the barge, nearest to the sea. There were [____]. We were pretty relieved that it was a single digit number. We weren't sure what came next.
We walked around the barge to the right side and found two turkeys, er, tires, screwed into the side. There were zig-zag horizontal treads on the surface. Although the tires were balding, we could make out [____] zig-zag lines on each tire. We felt a little worried about our new counting fetish and hoped nobody would judge us without getting to know us first. Then a fat Chinese man in tight blue undies ran by and we felt better about ourselves. We rested our knees against the tires, facing the big buildings and the pier, then looked to 6:00 (behind). Holy smokes, a building beyond the trees. There was a row of tall verticalish windows on the roof of the building, an arched divider in the middle, and the number of the windows was not the same on either side sides. We didn't let that dissuade us from counting all [___] of the reddish tile-covered roof windows (not including the middle arched window). We had to get up on the dock to see them all clearly. We were pretty jazzed about all the single digits and hoped nothing more complicated would crop up.
Standing on the floating dock barge thing or whatever, we began to see numbers everywhere and felt worried. Maybe we were developing OCD. We figured that was probably the case. We let our hypochondria takeover and decided to consult the cloud on this particular illness. We perused the wikipedia demon. Under the 'signs and symptoms' heading we found a shocking confirmation: Obsessions are thoughts that recur and persist despite efforts to ignore or confront them.
We were like, "that's exactly what I have. Dang it." We couldn't help but look at the citation number after the frightening definition. It was [____], another single digit. We resolved to stop looking at citation numbers; they were small and blue and stupid. We cursed the wikipedia demon and tried to enjoy the view.
We looked at the sea: so beautiful. There were some handsome muscle-guys running 'round, some sexy ladies trying to stay pale (in a sexy way). The sound of the lapping waves eased our mind. We looked to 2:00 or 3:00 and saw some tall buildings, thinking, "probably built by children, who knows, who cares."
One building in particular caught our attention. It had a weird ball and spire at the top attached to [____] support struts or buttresses (whatever those are), which were set at pretentious 60 degree angles atop the roof. We stepped down from the dock and walked a little ways, then stopped short and whirled around: “The time! I need to know it!” From here we could see [____] clocks on a nearby tall building. We didn't really care about it anymore, and said something to the tune of, 'old news, grandma.” We kept walking along the beach.
Near the end of this beach we found a small flight of stone steps leading up to the road. There was an eighty degree stone wall in front of us with a small platform at the foot, conducive to creeping along. We memorized the location of the steps and began walking, nay, creeping along the small narrow walkway, careful not to fall off (to the right) and drown. We fell into the water once, but were fortunate. A kindly fisherman angled us out by the trousers. We thanked him several times and finally made it to the other side... Our intuitive receptors felt dull, and indeed, it seemed we had lost the scent of our quest's nefarious end. We found ourself near a clusterfuck of rocks among the shallow sea foam, some kids with nets trying to catch shallow-water nymphs. "Stupid gits", we huffed britishly, "water nymphs don't live among the rocks. You'll be here all day."
We got closer and found some weird looking insects scuttling around. They seemed pretty shy, or maybe they were just blinded by our good looks. Anyway, we found a stick and skewered one. Ugly beasts like these deserved no better. There were two antennae attached to the head. Nothing odd about that. But as we studied it more closely, we noticed it also had butt antennae. These butt antennae were forked at the ends, perhaps pronged. In total there were [____] tips or ends on the backside. That number would make a fine skewer, likely.
It was clear, the way ahead was scorched, devoid of clues, and so we tiptoed back across the narrow walkway beside the stone wall, a little frustrated to have wasted so much time, all for one number. Ah well, it was worth it for the snack. We made it to the beach again and were glad to feel the not-so-soft sand undertoe.
As we crunched merrily on the squirming insect, which smacked of sea foam and bacteria, we felt our intuitive perception growing warm again. The foul breeze favored us, surely. We peered out at the pagoda-pavilion-thing on the pier and observed that each of the two tiers of the roof had [____] visible sections. We began to worry that our attention to detail would give us spattergroit, so we decided to hover here and do some simple calculations.
(x - 3)(x - 4) = [___]
x = 三
or
x = 四
We were pretty surprised about the answer; we couldn't even remember that age. Oh well. The day was moving on and our hives had settled some. We decided to see what else the manuscript had to offer. At the bottom we found a walgreens coupon, which we pocketed, just in case.
We felt a little vampish from the salty air. We sat on the stone steps at the end of the beach by the stone wall and consulted the cloud demon web-md to make sure we didn't have polio. We discovered it was probably early onset; we could at least enjoy the rest of the day. We climbed the rather average flight of stone-steps and noticed a bus stop. We studied the bus stop sign carefully and noted the number [___] at the top. We were pretty excited to see this number: “its roman numeral intersects perpendicularly with its chinese character and reminds me of a train crash.” We wavered on whether to walk or get on the seaside bus. An hour later, teary-eyed and panting, we decided, 'ahhhhhhhh what the heck, I'm a high roller. I'ma spring for the [___] yuan bus fare and go with the flow, maybe get off soon. Live life to the fullest, throw caution to the wind, that's what I always say," we said aloud to some old woman. She threw us a look of confused disdain and handed us a well-used hanky. We waited for the bus, and then felt a surge of guilt. We changed our mind and started crying again. We sulked and brooded, shuffle-footed, toward Lu Xin Park.
As we walked we realized, with a measure of nostalgia, that part A was finished, that we were nearly halfway done with our quest. We reflected on all the good times and ruminated upon the panoramic seaside. An old man with one eye was washing his clothes in the sea. We gave him a thumbs-up. Soon we reached Lu Xin Park. At the entrance of the park we felt our liver grumble and our bone fascia tingled with excitement for part B.
At the entrance of Lu Xin there was a dope looking gentleman-of-a-statue, not unlike a chinese Joe Stalin, with a "fuck yeah" haircut that seemed to say, "the wind is strong and I don't care." We pondered what might have caused him to die so young, only [______] years old. Hair like that deserves more. Wha?! A two digit number.
Once in the park, just past the statue and some bitches selling pancakes, we came across clumps of trees amid red stone bricks to the right. They were landscaped and set in small islands of dirt. One of the dirt patches was shaped like a boomerang. We counted [____] trees in the boomerang-shaped dirt. We felt our OCD coming back and wished the were someone around to listen to our sad sob-story, perhaps give us some sympathy: “a weak-minded pantheist would do.” No dice. "Balls."
We felt lonely and walked down to the water, scrambled among the rocks, watching the water crash and ripple. We took off our shoes and let the salty foam pollute our bunion surgery scars, considering the year Wang Mang first took for himself the “nine bestowments”. We apologized to the cloud demon wikipedia, who told us the bestowment revival happened in [_____] AD. Oh well I guess who cares. We put on our shoes, taking care to count the terminal digits on the leftern hoof (though we didn't record this number, merely felt reinforced by it).
We were feeling saucy and in the mood for some verbal arithmetic:
pi cubed divided by the square root of nine minus two point three and rounded to the nearest whole number is [_____].
"Ahhh, now I feel better" we said to some girls taking pictures of eachother with their phones. They asked us to take a picture of them together and we said, "Nhoh whay gherls, get out of my face. I'm on a quest and I can't waste time gabbing with you maniacs".
We returned to the park from the rocks and walked along the red brick path for a few minutes. Suddenly something in the middle of the park caught our eye. It was a giant-ass book statue made of bronze. It didn't look like it was going anywhere soon. The book rested on a monolith (or stand) before a circular platform which overlooked the sea. We studied the book carefully. Many of the characters were meaningless, then we spotted a vertical row of [____] dots that struck us as paramount. Maybe.
We oobed over to the big circle platform, facing the book, and figured we should head in the general direction of 3:00, “right, follow the path.” We minced down some stairs and walked along the seaside, basking in the horn-honking serenade, the crooning of engines on the road above.
We caught ourself watching light posts on the left. "Arg" we thought, "why are we doing this, such a waste of time!" We stopped counting after we saw light post number twenty-five; we were annoyed by their sequential tendency. We went around a bend and things got shady. Literally. Trees shaded the path. This was the life.
We kept going on the path and went down some steps which said 'caution, danger'. We became cautious and looked around with mistrusting eyes until things settled down. We walked through an open area with some avant-garde amoeba-shaped landscaping. Whatevs. We went up some stairs, if we remember correctly.
Just after a sign for the aquarium we came upon another overlook area with horizontal black guardrails and flagstones. Some gnarled shrubs provided shade and we took a rest on a bench made of wood (only the supine part). This was not the only wooden bench in sight. Our bizarre counting impulse flared up again and we made note of all the wooden benches. There were [____], and we were getting sick of writing that number. After a momentary respite, we pressed on, realizing we were near-as-shit to our quest's bifocal-trifecta-finish.
We sang an ode to our favorite digit [____], which we lovingly refer to as "Safira the sparky and naughty ellipse", and skipped along, our bunion wounds burning from salt and fungus.
We saw a pavilion screwed into the rocks to the right of the path. The roof was sloping with some curly chinese-looking swoop-a-doop things at the end. In total there were [____] swoop-a-doops. Something about the pavilion reminded us of honey-bees, but we didn't know why. We were getting sick and tired of hyphens, and wanted to register a complaint, but then we saw an excerpt of what were were doing. Indeed the neolithic caveman was keen to it, so we let it slide, fearing we might breach the third wall.
We got to the number one bathing beach and started walking in the direction of the building with the circle or disk thing on top, at the opposite end of the debacle, er, beach. We passed some bros lifting weights but didn't want to make them look bad so we kept going.
There were [____] gay-looking white flagless flag poles in the middle of the beach. We were so unimpressed we barely had time to count them.
"Holy Moses", we guffawed in sudden realization of tremendous profundity. Indeed, we now had all the numbers. But what the fog should we do with them? It was then we spotted, on the ancient scroll, a framework of infinite simplicity. Written in the chicken's-hand, beside the diagram, we saw a note. It read:
Write the numbers in the form from the most recent to the earliest. In case you didn't get that, start with the flag poles and work backward, writing each of the numbers with a "[___]" in the correct order. Notice there is a comma and a single space between the two sets of numbers. Use google maps. Using google earth will likely yield different results, although that's not such a bad thing...sorry... I'm rambling. Suck it. I'm a neolithic cave dweller. You wish you were.
We studied the form and it all made sense. We began to fill in the values with sublime glee, stopping only twice to scratch the eczema behind our knees.
_ _._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, _ _ _._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
We had all the numbers and, using them, said a short prayer to the demon god of the cloud called google maps. In this way, we divined the general location of our three-fold finish. We stood on the concrete and looked about. The sea was behind us as it should be. A small clock tower suggested itself at 3:00. Some ridiculous transmission tower loomed in the distance. So, where was the thing?
An intuition crept up. There was a nondescript shack or knick-knack stand beside the road. It had a long sloping prairie-style frank lloyd wright roof if ever there was one, and it stood out like a sore thumb. We got the urge to go behind it and run our fingers along the edge of the concrete curb which held in the landscaping. We ran there, our aortic valve struggling to keep up, grumbling in aortic dialect something about, aneurisms. A small snail shell in the dirt under the bushes marked the correct area, and after moving some dirt along the edge of the concrete, we unearthed a thing.
We found it but still didn't feel satisfied. We replaced the thing with another thing, which was not a chinese thing. Our keen senses and new-found other worldly intuitive perception had kicked into full gear, all of a sudden. Our aura smelled of caramel, and several passersby complimented us on it. We sensed still greater things lay at the end on the beach. Excited, we poohood through the sand until there was no more beach, only water and a stone wall. Above the wall and below the walkway over our heads a row of elevated arch things. We figured we would climb up and snoop around for any irregularities in the structure, keeping in mind satan's favorite number, the number of the beast (at least one of the digits, IDK).
Wow, we found two thingies, but we remembered our first premonition: there were three thingies to find. We figured we would use another GPS demon from the cloud, maybe google earth or yoohoo *shudder* maps, to check our numbers. Indeed, this time a new location surfaced. We resolved to go there, and after a short walk found ourselves beside a sporting field, probably for quiddich. We looked just behind the fifth tree and there found another stupid snail shell on a patch of soft earth. We dug around and came up with the third and final thing.
We resolved to replace all the things we had found with things of similar shape and value, and things not from china. We didn't want to provoke the cloud demons.
Praise be to the cloud demons.