Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

The code is both complicated and simple. Complicated because an uppercase F is different from a lowercase f. Complicated because the ligature ff isn’t two lowercase f’s—it’s a completely different punch. Gerritszoon has tons of alternate glyphs—three P’s, two C’s, a truly epic Q—and those all mean something different. To crack this code, you need to think typographically.

But after that, it’s simple, because all you have to do is count the notches, which I did: carefully, under a magnifying glass, at my kitchen table, no data centers required. This is the kind of code you learn in a comic book: one number corresponds to one letter. It’s a simple substitution, and you can use it to decode Manutius’s codex vitae in no time.

SLIDE 8

You can also do something else. When you lay the punches out in order—the same order they’d use in a case in a fifteenth-century print shop—you get another message. It’s a message from Gerritszoon himself. His final words for the world have been hiding in plain sight for five hundred years.

It’s nothing spooky, nothing mystical. It’s just a message from a man who lived a long time ago. But here’s the part that is spooky: look around you.

(Everybody does. Lapin cranes her neck. She looks worried.)

See the signs on the shelves—where it says HISTORY and ANTHROPOLOGY and TEEN PARANORMAL ROMANCE? I noticed it earlier: those signs are all set in Gerritszoon.

The iPhone comes loaded with Gerritszoon. Every new Microsoft Word document defaults to Gerritszoon. The Guardian sets headlines in Gerritszoon; so do Le Monde and the Hindustan Times. The Encyclopædia Britannica used to be set in Gerritszoon; Wikipedia just switched last month. Think of the term papers, the curriculum vitae, the syllabi. Think of the résumés, the job offers, the resignation letters. The contracts and lawsuits. The condolences.

It’s everywhere around us. You see Gerritszoon every day. It’s been here all this time, staring us in the face for five hundred years. All of it—the novels, the newspapers, the new documents—it’s all been a carrier wave for this secret message, hidden in the colophon.

Gerritszoon figured it out: the key to immortality.

(Tyndall jumps up out of his seat, howling, “But what is it?” He tugs at his hair. “What is the message?”)

Well, it’s in Latin. The Google translation is rough. Keep in mind that Aldus Manutius was born with a different name: he was Teobaldo, and his friends all called him that.

So here it is. Here’s Gerritszoon’s message to eternity.

SLIDE 9

Thank you, Teobaldo

You are my greatest friend

This has been the key to everything

FELLOWSHIP

THE SHOW IS OVER and the audience is clearing out. Tyndall and Lapin are lined up for coffee in Pygmalion’s tiny café. Neel is still pitching Tabitha on the transcendent beauty of boobs in sweaters. Mat and Ashley are talking animatedly with Igor and the Japanese duo, all of them walking slowly toward the front door.

Kat is sitting alone, nibbling the very last vegan oat cookie. Her face is drawn. I wonder what she thinks of Gerritszoon’s immortal words.

“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s not good enough.” Her eyes are dark and downcast. “He was so talented, and he still died.”

“Everybody dies—”

“This is enough for you? He left us a note, Clay. He left us a note.” She shouts it, and an oat crumb comes shooting off her lips. Oliver Grone glances over from the ANTHROPOLOGY shelves, eyebrows raised. Kat looks down at her shoes. Quietly, she says, “Don’t call that immortality.”

“But what if this is the best part of him?” I say. I’m composing this theory in real-time: “What if, you know—what if hanging out with Griffo Gerritszoon wasn’t always that great? What if he was weird and dreamy? What if the best part of him was the shapes he could make with metal? That part of him really is immortal. It’s as immortal as anything’s going to get.”

She shakes her head, sighs, and leans into me a little, pushing the last bits of the cookie into her mouth. I found the old knowledge, the OK, that we’d been looking for, but she doesn’t like what it has to say. Kat Potente will keep searching.

After a moment, she pulls back, takes a sharp breath, and lifts herself up. “Thanks for inviting me,” she says. “See you around.” She shrugs on her blazer, waves goodbye, and heads for the door.

Now Penumbra calls me over.

“It is amazing,” he cries, and he is himself again, with his bright eyes and wide smile. “All this time, we were playing Gerritszoon’s game. My boy, we had his letters on the front of the store!”

“Clark Moffat figured this out,” I tell him. “I have no idea how, but he did. And then I guess he just … decided to play along. Keep the puzzle going.” Until someone found it all waiting in his books.