Worthy Of Note [FICTOID]

He discovered the notebook while researching 14th century CE tax records in the Algerian National Archives.

The notebook once belonged to the great Persian poet / philosopher / plumber / scholar of antiquity, Ali Haxan-Phrie.  It contained all of his personal observations…

…written in thoroughly unbreakable code, of course.

And just as of course, the Moroccan tax researcher forgot all about his current line of inquiry (which, to be frank, would have really been of interest only the 15th century Algerian tax collectors). 

Hiding the notebook under his coat, the scholar smuggled it out of the archives and back to his home.

There -- with the aid of numerous pots of hot tea -- he attempted to crack the uncrackable code.

First he matched the symbols in the notebook against all known languages.  Merely knowing the symbols wasn’t enough, of course.  Now came the truly hard part where the matched symbols must be laid out in their correct pattern.

He spent many a fruitless day trying to match them only to realize he looked at them from the wrong angle.

They’re not meant to be read, he thought, they’re meant to be translated as  numbers.

Once he transposed them into numbers, the next part came easy.

Adding them all up, he figured out its square root to seventeen decimal places then multiplied that by seven -- “Because that’s my lucky number!” -- then took that number as his base to make sure the new larger number corresponded to letters in the Sanskrit language itself.

Then and only then did he feel safe in attempting to translate the notebook into English. 

By now he started transitioning from the autumn years of his life to the golden ones.  The meaning and purpose of Ali Haxan-Phbrie still eluded him the way a bashful virgin would elude a lecherous prophet.

And like the virgin, he kept himself pure and steadfast.

When he died, his lifework remained unfinished.  His landlord consigned it to the rubbish fires.

After all, what use was it?

© Buzz Dixon