"I was so drunk I couldn't even remember the Langlands Program," Magister Palora laughed in a fresh diaper, powder smell filling the room. Retro had put all the dirtied waste in his inventory. The inventory butler had a complete meltdown at the notion, but complied. Mindt turned around and found the two chuckling at some memory the magister told while getting cleaned up.

  Retro's way with people isn't entirely his charisma stat, she thought.

  "Magister Palora, are you ready for Cows and Bulls?" he asked.

  "Ohooo," the diaper-clad man said, "I think you will like this. I will start by giving you a riddle, and you must guess my four digit passcode containing the digits 1 through 9. After your guess, I will tell you how many cows you have, and how many bulls."

  "Can you explain what cows and bulls are?"

  "Bulls are digits that you have guessed correctly and they are in the correct place. Cows are digits that you have guessed correctly but they are in the wrong place. For example:"

  A piece of paper materialized before them showing the number 4271.

  "If my secret code is 4271, and your guess is 1234, the result would be 1 bull and 2 cows. The '2' digit is in the correct place. The '4' and '1' digit is correct, but in the wrong place."

  Mindt thought for a moment. Seemed easy enough.

  "Has anyone guessed the code before?" she asked.

  "Ohohoho, no one has," he chuckled out, glint of madness returning to his eyes. "But I have given everyone before only one chance to guess. And you, because your friend has shown me a true kindness, you will get two guesses. Two guesses in Cows and Bulls, yes. A kindness returned." He produced a rubber duck from his diaper without warning. The duck quacked in agreement.

  "To recap, you're going to give us a riddle. We solve the riddle. Then we give you our two guesses."

  "You are mathematically astute."

  "Okay, let's do this."

  The old man cackled. "OHOHO! Here's one that'll really tickle your brain barnacles!" He clapped his hands on his hips, sending out a cloud of powder.

  "One digit's what you get, my darling pets,

  When you square eight and subtract sixty sets!

  A second digit hides where you'd least expect,

  Take nineteen squared, then add three - don't object!

  Now divide by forty, and you've scored,

  That's where a second digit sleeps but floored!

  A third digit's a tricky little schmuck,

  Multiply first and second, just ask the duck!

  Add eleven, divide by six,

  Look to the ceiling. That's math, bitch!

  The last digit, my favorite, so simple and sweet,

  What a symmetrical odd number, multiplied by a three!

  The cake is a lie. You can clearly see!

  Never forget where you came from — Look for uniques."

  The rubber duck turned its head towards Mindt expectedly.

  Mindt felt herself go pale.

  "Mother's child", Retro said, equally pale.

  She took a deep breath. "Okay, let's just go over this one by one. The first digit is easy. Eight squared minus 60 is four. So the first of the digits is four."

  Retro regained his composure, nodding along.

  "The second digit. Nineteen squared is what?"

  "I'm not sure. I've never done simple multiplication before without the help of Nous," he said.

  "Me neither."

  "Mother's child," he repeated, and the old magister's wheeze of a laugh echoed loud in the chamber.

  It took them fifteen minutes to figure out that nineteen squared was 361. To that, they added three. 364.

  "Okay, now we need to divide by forty. Damn it."

  Ten more minutes, and they figured out that 364 divided by 40 was 9.1.

  "9.1 isn't a whole number. The four digit code has to have whole numbers," she said.

  "Is our math wrong?"

  "No," she said. "It's right. I think there is a layer to the math riddle. It mentions the digit is sleeping but floored."

  Retro ran a hand over his bald head, and snapped a finger. "I've got it! We are in a computer. This entire VR is a computer program!"

  Stolen story; please report.

  "I'm not following."

  "When handling decimals in computer based math, when you want to round down, you call it flooring. So that means the second digit is nine!"

  "Are you sure?"

  "Quite sure. Look, the third digit mentions looking to the ceiling. That's what we say when we round up."

  "Nice catch!" she said. "It also says to ask the duck, but I'm assuming that's not going to be helpful."

  The rubber duck began quacking the Jeopardy theme song.

  Through even more painful math, they determined the third digit was eight.

  "Okay, last digit. The only symmetrical odd number is three, assuming people add the little flag on the top of the one. Three times three is…shit," she frowned.

  "It's nine. What's the problem?"

  "The riddle says to look for uniques, so I'm assuming all four digits are unique, but we have two nines. Four. Nine. Eight. Nine."

  "It also says the last number is a lie. It's sweet, cake is sweet, therefore a lie."

  She turned to the magister. "The solution to the riddle is 4989."

  "Ohooo, perhaps it is. Perhaps it is not," he said. The old man stood up in excitement, knees wobbling dangerously and Mindt feared he may simply collapse. "Now you must guess my passcode! Remember, you have two guesses."

  "Assuming we mathed correctly, if we know three of the digits are four, nine, and eight, we have six choices for the last digit. We don't have six guesses."

  "Logically," Retro said, "we should not use any of the numbers we already know so we can deduce that last digit. If there are any cows or bulls in our first guess, we have a variable chance of guessing correctly. If there are none, we have a 1 in 2 chance."

  "Right. I get it," she said, turning to Palora. "Our first guess is 1235."

  Despite his general dishevelment, Palora's smile was a startling masterpiece of dental perfection. "One cow, and zero bulls. You have one guess remaining."

  "The final digit is a one, two, or three," Retro said. "It cannot be five because we got a cow and not a bull."

  This was it, a 33 percent chance to get through the door. If they failed here, could they really kill the old man and somehow get the code from his loot? It didn't seem likely as the door was magically sealed, and Palora was level 50. This was the Citadel with city guards everywhere. Vivashek was wrong. There was no way he would complete the zombie quest.

  They needed luck on their side. A whole lot of luck.

  "Let me. I know the answer," Retro said with a calm smile on his face.

  Retro produced the pouch of dates and popped one in his mouth before offering the pouch to the crazed mathematician, who didn't shit himself this time when he ate it.

  "Your passcode is 4983," he said.

  The magister said nothing, and slowly lowered himself back into his chair. "Four bulls," he said. "How did you guess?"

  The rubber duck gave a shriek of a quack and laid an egg on the floor.

  "My friend, you let slip that your favorite number is three."

  Palora's eyes bulged to astronomical proportions, and another banana launched itself from his diaper across the room with enough force to embed in a wooden beam. His wild hair stood on end, magical sparks shooting from each silver tuft like a fireworks.

  "By the holy differential equations, have I erred." Suddenly, he barked a laugh. "My boy, you really do listen to your elders. Here, take the egg. A reminder of our time together."

  Retro picked up the egg as geometric patterns of light traced themselves across the magically locked door's surface like luminous ivy, forming four digits that spiraled and danced. The placeholders of the passcode pulsed with increasing intensity, each digit snapping into place with a thud.

  The door began to dematerialize from the edges inward, each section dissolving into shimmering mathematical symbols that floated lazily in the air like fireflies. With a final flourish of light and a sound of a thousand librarians shushing at once, the doorway stabilized into an archway.

  She examined the egg.

  Wiki: Rubber Duck Egg

  Some may say life starts at conception. But according to the rubber duck that laid this egg, conception is just one rubber after another. This egg features a pearlescent shell that seems to ripple with gentle waves of yellow and green.

  Grants the following effects:

  The holder of this egg may transport a living entity in their inventory without killing it.

  Mindt: That's an odd item.

  Aida: It's a general rule that nothing living can go in your inventory. It will immediately kill it. So if you're trying to transport a giant miniature space hamster or whatever for a quest, don't put it in your inventory. If you try to put another Noushead, NPC, or enemy mob in your inventory directly, it simply won't work. This is a pretty valuable item.

  Before anything else could happen, an avatar of the Coach app appeared kicking open a locker room door with explosive energy. He paced like a caffeinated tiger.

  Coach: Prepare your body for this news, champion! Two levels! You just gained two levels! Level 5 came along and you just stared it down in its ugly level 5 bitchface and said, "No, I want level 6."

  You just unlocked a skill point that will make your enemies QUESTION THEIR LIFE CHOICES! Your stat points are getting so strong it makes physics uncomfortable!

  The avatar climbed onto a locker room bench and did a backflip off it.

  Coach: Woo! Level up party at the closest tavern. First round of whey protein potions are on me!

  It blinked away.

  Mindt looked over at Retro as saw he was also at level 6. They would have to look through their menus soon to figure out the best character build path.

  The magister spoke, "The Captain's Interrogation Room is open. You may speak with the zombie inside."

  Mindt just stood for a moment, not moving towards the archway. "Isn't this quest just pure luck?" she asked. "I mean, if you hadn't soiled your diaper when we arrived, we wouldn't have had that extra guess."

  "That's part of the riddle, my young friend. I always shit myself."

  Stepping through the archway into the interrogation room, Aida chimed in.

  Aida: Actually, your answer to the riddle was wrong. Retro really did get lucky when he guessed three for the final digit.

  Mindt: What? How?

  Aida: The final line of the riddle was "Never forget where you came from", meaning your roots. The square root of nine is three.

  Retro: I completely missed that.

  Aida: Also, the floor ceiling reference could have been figured out if you literally asked the duck. It talks. Roughly 1% of Nousheads have ever done basic mathematics since Nous does it automatically for them, so Jiem thought this would be a nice challenge for you all. Now hurry up and see to the zombie. I'm excited.

  Feeling a little stupid, Mindt and Retro proceeded further into the interrogation room, only to be interrupted again.

  Jiem: It's been 24 hours since the game started. Can't believe it's only been that long. Anyway, remember when I said that Nousheads outside of London would be able to watch a live stream of you while you're in VR? Some of you are very popular! Billions of views.

  I don't want you London Nousheads feeling like that world has ended when you find a savepoint just because everyone is collapsed on the ground slowly dehydrating to death, so I've added a new screen for you all to look at. Analytics! It will allow you to see your personal streaming stats. How many views. How many people favorited your channel. Annnd, a list of people who viewed you most. You don't even need to pay a monthly fee to access your analytics.

  Please check it out at the next savepoint, you dopamine addicted hooligans.

  Mindt was stunned by the announcement. Millions of people in London would die because they didn't enter the game when they were told.

  She felt Retro's hand on her shoulder. "Drop by drop is the water pot filled," he said to her. "We have to keep moving." He turned and led the way.

  Deep into the room was another door where Retro waited for her. He gave a nod and pushed it open. That's where they found him, the zombie that would change everything.