Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

Hoi An to Philadelphia, she had researched the museum layout on Zawadi’s phone. She had also studied up on Mesoamerican history and achievements, focusing on the Aztecs and the sun stone.

The inside of the museum was colossal. Overwhelming. It included a planetarium she had visited before, a library, forty-five permanent exhibition halls, and over thirty-three million specimens and objects. With the possible exception of the British Museum and the Smithsonian, there was probably more information about human cultures and the natural world contained within those walls than any other place on Earth.

Under different circumstances, she would have loved to stroll the corridors and marvel at human ingenuity and the wonders of the universe. Instead she hurried past the exhibits on biodiversity and ocean life, rushed up the stairs to the second floor, and strode quickly to the Hall of Mexico and Central America.

Throughout the room, displayed on freestanding pedestals and behind a series of handsome glass cases, the hall showcased a variety of artifacts from pre-Columbian civilizations, including the Aztec, Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec.

And there it was. Hanging under sedate lighting on an orange-and-yellow checkered wall meant to evoke the colors of the Earth’s life-giving star, the replica sun stone dominated the other exhibits in the hall, both in size and ornamentation.

The English name was misleading. The circular artifact represented far more than just the sun. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the appellation of the giant stone translated to “the great and venerable mechanism of the universe.” Known as a solar disk to the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures, it represented rulership, and was a master class on Aztec mythology.

Up close, the detail on the carvings was incredibly rich. The fire serpents on the outer ring represented the stars and constellations. The date glyph on the stone spoke of the beginning of the current solar age, while four smaller suns symbolized past epochs. The Five Suns was an Aztec creation myth that spoke of four suns and worlds that had existed before the present one, a cycle of creation and destruction that would continue forever.

In the center, the face of the primordial Earth god, Tlaltecuhtli, peered outward with unnerving verisimilitude, living mythology preserved in stone. Nor did Andie miss the bodies of the two fire serpents winding around the perimeter, bearing a strong resemblance to an ouroboros.

After a pair of Japanese tourists moved on, she stood in front of the sun stone and aimed the Star Phone at the center. The room spun around her, eliciting a thrill of excitement.

I’m in the right place!

The shape and outer ring of the sun stone remained the same when viewed through the Star Phone lens, but the interior was now composed of four lines of shapes arranged in orderly rows. On each line, three groupings consisting of one or more objects were connected by plus signs, followed by an equal sign. Equations, she assumed.

On the first line, three pairs of arrows, all facing to the right, were connected by the plus signs, followed by the number 3 after the equal sign.

Six arrows, Andie calculated mentally. If each one equals a half, and each pair equals a whole, then the sum is three. Easy enough.

The next line depicted two arrows facing to the left, plus the outline of a hand, plus a heart. This time, a blank cursor followed the equal sign.

On the third line, the two arrows at the beginning faced to the right again. After the first plus sign was a hand wearing a wristwatch, followed by a heart with a crack through the middle. Again a blank cursor represented the sum.

Something to do with the nature of time? Those sorts of equations are incredibly complicated. The arrow of time? Or perhaps just solar time? That would make more sense.

The fourth and final line depicted a pair of arrows facing in opposite directions, plus three arms protruding from a single shoulder, as if attached to a multilimbed god, divided by three hands clutching a bone. This time, a question mark followed the equal sign—a classic call to action in puzzles.

Andie lowered the Star Phone, causing the screen to revert to a keyboard. She tried to toggle but was unable. When she pointed it at the sun stone again, the puzzle returned. It wants me to enter a solution.

With a deep breath, Andie memorized the sequence and returned the Star Phone to her pocket. Math was not her forte. Oh, she was far better at it than the average person. Her field of study required rigorous knowledge. But she was not in Dr. Corwin’s league. She was not a genius. If this puzzle required that level of thinking . . . then she was in trouble.

Not just that, but it was already five o’clock. The museum closed soon. Maybe she was wrong, but she had the sense that when she found the solution, she was supposed to point the Star Phone at the sun stone again. Else why include the image around the puzzle? If this was true, then even if she solved it, she would probably have to return in the morning to see the next clue. The Ascendants would have another day to catch up.

No, she had to solve it—right damn now.

The first thing she did was hurry to the gift shop and purchase a pen and a notebook with a Tyrannosaurus rex on the front. Wary of drawing attention if she returned to the Hall of Mexico and Central America, she bought a black tea and found a table in the corner of the museum café.

After thirty minutes of intense concentration, she came to the disheartening conclusion that she wasn’t going to solve the puzzle before the museum closed. There were too many variables. The four different symbols, the watch on the hand, the arrows pointing in different directions, the crack in the heart. After trying a variety of advanced algebraic equations, and not being shy with the guesswork, she still had failed to come up