Weary from a long and fruitless quest for the newest puzzle cache, I walked into the nearest store, GPS receiver in hand, and rested heavily against the display cases. Strange and not entirely pleasant odors struck my senses as I surveyed the tiny shop. It was a pet store, but not like any I had ever seen. Every case was filled with wriggling, scaly creatures - lizards and snakes of every size and description. I realized with a start that the case on which I leaned was occupied by a cobra of impressive girth, and it eyed me with obvious menace. I had accidentally covered the skull and cross bones warning sign with my body. I jumped back, heart racing.
"Ken I hep you, mon?" intoned a voice from my rear. It was a deep, lyrical voice with an accent I could not quite place - Louisiana Creole, perhaps, or possibly rural Alabaman, but with a touch of some Caribbean dialect. I turned and was even more startled than before. The man who faced me was unlike anyone - or should I say, anything - on this earth. His skin was the blackest ebony I could imagine, and every square inch of it showing from his loose clothing had small, blue-black semicircles tattooed in regular rows like the scales on a snake. His head was totally hairless, whether shaved or naturally I could not tell. He was tall and lean, almost to the point of emaciation, and his tongue flickered in and out as he spoke. I almost gasped as I noticed that his tongue had been surgically split at the end to resemble a snake's, and his eyelids had likewise been altered to remove the lashes. He was the closest thing one could imagine to a human serpent.
I was stunned into speechlessness, but he noticed my GPS receiver and laptop and casually remarked, "I see dat you be geocachin. An interestin' hobby is dat."
"Y- yes, it is," I managed to stammer. "I have been unable to make heads or tails of these coordinates that have been posted for the latest puzzle cache. There are just two numbers, but they don't seem to fit any system of coordinates I know. I just came in here to rest a bit. But what is this place? I thought it was just an ordinary pet store."
"No, mon," he laughed, "ordinary it is not. Dis is the most complete collection of snakes and reptiles you will see outside a museum of natural history. I am devoted to dem. I have not got no fancy Ph.D. but I know these beautiful animals like I was one of them. I know dey spirits and dey power." Then added under his breath, "And dey evil." His tongue slithered in and out once more. He extended his hand. "My name be Heterodon Platirhinos, but dey call me Black Adder." He pointed to a nearby cage containing a rather sinister-looking black snake that was making a hissing sound as it appeared to be preparing to strike at me.
I took the proffered limb and shook it gingerly, then read the sign on the cage:
Black Adder (Heterodon Platirhinos)
also known as, Eastern Hognose Snake, Puff Adder, Blow Viper
"Uh, pleased to meet you. I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm really not a customer, so I should not impose on your hospitality any further." I tried to sound friendly as I started to back slowly out the door, a cold panic creeping up my spine.
"Be you not afraid, mon. We be harmless here, tho we may look odd to the likes of you." He smiled. "Minnie and me, we be doin' the geocachin' some time, too." He held up a well-worn Garmin eTrex and hooked his thumb in the direction of the back of the store. I craned my neck around a display to see what he was pointing at, and yet another surprise met my eyes. There was a short and enormously fat woman sitting on a small sofa in the office area, knitting. "Minnie, she be my exact opposite in everythin' but we git by some fine. Dey say opposites attract."
Indeed, she seemed to be his opposite in every conceivable way. Where he was tall and black, she was short and pale. He was thin and snake-like in his build, while she was rotund. He was friendly and talkative, but she scowled and said nothing, even though she could not have missed overhearing the conversation. As I mused over the remarkable disparity between the two, the man gently pulled the printout of the cache page from my hand and examined it. The numbers read:
4241878 7961969
"Have you tried UTM?" he asked.
Brought back to reality, I answered, "Yes, but these numbers don't make a valid set of UTM coordinates in either order. I've even tried viewing them as degree and minutes coordinates, like 42 degrees north, and so on. I didn't know what to do with the 61 minutes in the longitude, so I tried treating 60 minutes as one degree so that second number was 79 plus 1 or 80 degrees, 1.969 minutes, but that ended up with a cache in Lake Erie. This cache was posted here in Silicon Valley, so it can't be back there. I just don't know what to make of it."
The man's eyes suddenly rolled back in his head and he pulled a small gourd from his pocket. He muttered some indescribable syllables into the hollow of the gourd and waved his other hand rapidly around over our heads as he crumbled some dried herb into powder and let it fall. An overpowering stench filled the air and I nearly staggered. Then just as suddenly, he returned to normal and calmly stated, "I know the longitude." He wrote a number on my sheet. "And Minnie, she be knowin' the latitude." Without saying a word, Minnie got up, walked over to me, wrote another number on my paper, and returned to her knitting.
The voodoo incantations sent chills through my entire body. This had to be total hokum, but it seemed too real to ignore. My mind reeled; I had to get out as fast as I could. As I headed for the door, a thought struck me and I asked the man, "Wasn't there a TV show called Black Adder about a man who could travel through time? It starred some actor named Atkinson, first name started with an R."
The reply came with surprising fury, "That Atkinson is a total fake! You cannot trust him. I am the real Black Adder." He flew into a fit of rage and began flailing his arms. I turned and ran. When I finally caught my breath I was alone on the deserted street. I examined the numbers the strange couple had written on my sheet. Knowing their voodoo could not be real, I almost threw the whole sheet out, but some inner voice told me not to disrespect anyone's gods, no matter how incredible. I programmed in the numbers and made my way to that location.
With astonishment I found the cache tucked neatly in place.