Minjae scoffed. “Yeah, okay. What does that have to do with how we solve the codes?”
– Man, I thought Minjae was going to be my favorite player, but I’m being proven wrong.
– He’s a piece of smart trash.
– Not smarter than Zeno, though.
– Is this the part where Zeno makes us all fall in love with his wit?
Zeno ignored Minjae, stepping to the orb furthest left—small, grayish, and dull. Below it, a worn, leather-bound book sat on a pedestal. He opened it and went to the very last page.
“244 pages,” Zeno muttered.
Annie leaned over his shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“Mercury has a radius of around 2,440 kilometers,” he said. “In scientific notation, that’s 2.44 x 10^3.”
Ari pursed her lips. She loved science and reading books, but even then, she could never imagine memorizing the radius of each planet.
The production crew was also at a loss. They placed those books as hints, but they didn’t think the contestants would get the correlation! It should have served more as a distraction.
Zeno nodded once, flipping the book closed with a soft thud. “The page count correlates to each planet’s radius. They’re coded.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Minjae blurted.
Zeno raised an eyebrow. “Oh, shouldn’t someone like you know about it?”
Minjae muttered something under his breath and stepped back. “Show-off.”
– Burn.
– Zeno’s showing the mathematician how it’s done.
– And to think that Zeno didn’t even go to college.
– Was he playing with all of us beforehand? He’s actually really smart, is he?
“So…” Minsu murmured, stepping between orbs, “This is Mercury, then Venus… Earth—where we found the food.”
“That adds up,” Billy added, wanting to sound smarter than he actually was.
“So it’s just planets?” Minjae interrupted, already stomping toward the nearest keypad. “Great. Watch this.”
He typed with enthusiasm.
M-E-R-C-U-R-Y.
Beep.
The temperature rose again.
40 degrees.
Minjae growled, jabbing the buttons harder. “It’s Mercury! What else do they want?!”
Zeno shook his head slowly. “It wouldn’t be that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Just because,” Zeno muttered, making Minjae even more frustrated.
Zeno walked over to the planet that represented Mercury before glancing at the others. They had followed him now, albeit reluctantly.
Annie and Ari were doing it willingly, though. They felt like they could trust Zeno with this mission.
He walked around the orbs again, his eyes scanning the spheres, pausing briefly under each one.
“Orbits,” he muttered. Most of the time, there was a clue in the name of the mission itself.
Zeno believed this mission wasn’t different.
“Orbital periods,” Zeno clarified and stopped beneath the blue-green orb.
Earth.
He bent down and tapped the keypad.
3 – 6 – 5.
A different kind of beep rang through the Death Area this time. The orb glowed bright with its colors.
The room gasped.
– THIS IS SO FREAKING COOL.
– Show them, Zeno.
– He’s handsome and smart? He’s the perfect man!
– I feel like I’m seeing him in a completely different light.
“No way,” Minsu breathed.
“He’s a genius,” Annie whispered.
Zeno’s fingers danced over the keys again, this time under the gray Mercury orb.
8 – 8.
It lit up.
Venus.
2 – 2 – 4.
Another glow.
“It’s orbital periods,” Zeno said again, this time loud enough for everyone to hear. “How long does each planet take to revolve around the sun?”
A stunned silence followed. Even Minsu had nothing humorous to say.
– Who knows the planets’ orbital periods in the back of their minds?
– Does Zeno have another brain he could tap into?
– Just how smart is he?
“How do you know this stuff?” Billy asked, unable to contain his curiosity. And maybe, a little bit of envy.
Zeno just moved to the next orb, the one with a reddish hue. Mars.
6 – 8 – 7.
It blinked on.
“I just… remember it,” Zeno muttered. Having lived for that long, this was the kind of information that had been instilled in his mind.
With that, Zeno breezed through the eight planets with ease. However, it was a problem when they got to the ninth one.
“Wait,” Billy blurted. “Aren’t there only eight official planets?”
Everyone turned toward him.
He puffed his chest slightly, proud that he remembered something. Pluto wasn’t an official planet anymore.
Zeno paused, glancing at the eighth orb. Then the ninth—smaller, hovering slightly apart from the rest with a deep violet color.
Minjae’s smirk widened. “Heh. Bet you didn’t think I’d know this, huh?”
He swaggered up to the last orb and typed confidently.
9 – 0 – 6 – 4 – 0.
It was the orbital period of Pluto.
The keypad flashed red.
41 degrees. The room let out a collective groan while Minjae froze.
– This guy is a wrong-answer machine.
– Has he done anything good except for complaining and getting the answer wrong?
– I’m not kidding. He needs to go home, please.
– What’s this? Is peace finally arising? There are so few hate comments about Zeno.
– We’re still here. He’s a piece of shit.
“That should’ve been it,” Annie frowned. “Right?”
Zeno didn’t move. He was staring at the last orb, eyes narrowed.
There were eight official planets in the solar system. In 2006, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union.
He remembered the news pretty clearly.
The production crew, again, wouldn’t have made it so easy for them. This planet must be an unofficial one like Pluto, one that wasn’t known by the public but was acknowledged by the astronomical union.
If Zeno could guess, the production crew would make them strive for yet another clue. However, as he continued looking at the orb, it began to make sense.
What a coincidence.
With that, Zeno’s mouth finally opened.
“Avalis.”
The staff gasped inside the monitoring room.
“How could he know that?” they began to speculate. Zeno had read right through them. They were supposed to play a game that involved sacrifice in order to get the last planet right.
However, that wasn’t the most shocking thing for Zeno. It was that he wasn’t the only one who said those words.
It was faint but unmistakable.
He turned to Bacon PD. He had said it too—Avalis.