Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong by Kelley Armstrong

Author:Kelley Armstrong [Armstrong, Kelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781616962029
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2015-08-16T22:00:00+00:00

The Collector

The wooden puzzle box floated on my computer screen, a 3D model perfectly rendered, the liquid display bubbling under my fingertips as I traced the series of twists and turns that would unlock its mysteries. There, and there and . . . yes, there. I smiled.

I couldn’t resist mousing over to it and clicking, just in case it proved interactive. It wasn’t, of course. Simply an amazing piece of art, the splash screen gateway to the website of a small publisher of puzzle books.

I clicked the “enter here” entreaty, feeling a frisson of grief as that perfect puzzle evaporated, replaced by a perfectly boring website. Now I imagined the solution to another challenge—how, as a Web designer, I could make this site so much better. From the looks of it, though, my services would be more than they could afford, so I directed my gaze to the upper right corner where, as I’d been told, there was a second entreaty—this one to try an online puzzle and win a prize.

So I clicked and read, checking it out so carefully you’d think they were asking me to donate a kidney. But you can’t be too careful on the Web. Ninety-nine percent of freebies are bullshit. Fortunately, most of those are obvious—badly worded and misspelled missives that never quite explain how a Nigerian prince got the e-mail address of Mrs. Joe Smith in Nowhere, Idaho.

There is, however, that other one percent—legitimate giveaways for promotional exposure—and this seemed to be one of them. Solve a puzzle; win a prize; progress to the next level for a bigger prize. The entry-level contest would win you a downloadable, sixteen-page puzzle book. A reasonable reward for a reasonably simple puzzle, one I solved absently as most of my brain was still occupied reading the page’s fine print.

I entered the solution for the anagram and was redirected to a page with my prize available for immediate download. I scanned the file for viruses, of course, but it was clean. And that was it. They didn’t even request an e-mail address so I could be signed up for “exciting promotional offers.” The page simply gave me a code that would allow me to progress to the next level . . . after a twenty-four-hour waiting period.

I jotted down the code, bookmarked the site and flipped back to my work.

Over the next week, I proceeded through four more levels, solving a Sudoku, a Tangram, a Tower of Hanoi, a Takegaki, and winning a sample e-book, a three-volume e-collection, a limited edition omnibus and a brass-plated n-puzzle with the company logo on the tile’s squares. I needed to provide a mailing address for the last, which was fine. I gave my post office box. I wouldn’t be rushing to collect it, though. My reward came in knowing I’d already gotten farther than anyone in the puzzle enthusiast e-mail loop that had first announced the contest.

By day eight, I was sitting at my computer, one eye on the clock, waiting for my next twenty-four-hour hiatus to be up.

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