“This crime scene’s been tampered with.” She walked from the bookcase over to a massive collection of objects.

“By whom?”

Waving at all the observers in the room in disgust and raising her voice so they could hear her, she said, “Couldn’t wait to get your hands on your inheritance, could you? Had to go touch everything for yourselves?” They remained silent, looking anywhere but at her.

“The police took photographs. Can’t you use those?” I suggested.

“Photographs! They’re all two-dimensional.”

“Perhaps we could reconstruct the crime scene, then?”

“We’d never get everything right. All the cards, for example, have to be exactly as they were when the police arrived. We can’t have an ace where a ten was.”

“Why not? All the cards are of the same set.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make them the same. Take this, for example.” She bent down to pick up the four of clubs. “What do you see?”

“It’s rectangular, with rounded edges and a design on the back. It’s the same as any other in the deck.”

“But see this?” She pointed to the upper left-hand corner where there was a speck of…something. “And look at this card.” She picked another off the floor, this time the four of spades. “This one doesn’t have a speck, and therefore cannot possibly function as the four of clubs, even though they both give the same message.”

“And what message is that?”

“Don’t go out at four in the morning.”

“Huh?”

“It’s irrelevant.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“Because four in the morning is the strangest of times and it’s best not to go out then.”

“Umm, oookay. So, moving on, cards aren’t the same. What do we do now?”

“Nothing.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’ve failed. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know what will happen.”

“But the murderer is still out there! And he said he would kill again in that letter!”

“What letter?”

My teeth clenched. “The letter that you read over and over again for three whole hours.”

“Ooooh, that letter.”

“Yes, that letter. You never told me what you made of it?”

“I made it a hat for a dear little friend I named Ben.”

“You what?”

“I made it into a hat.”

“That was evidence! You made a paper hat out of the evidence?!”

“What would you have done with it?”

“I would’ve given it to the police!”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because that’s what you do with evidence!” My jaw was starting to hurt. I tried to relax and get back to the point. “So what did you think of it?”

“I thought it very straightforward. He stated exactly what he intends to do. I like people who get right to the point; makes things so much easier.”

I gave her another eye roll, which proved to be ineffective. “Great, he’s very literal.”

Abruptly, eyes lit up, she shouted, “Literal! That’s it! He’s very literal! Too literal! Let’s go visit Ben; I need that hat back.”

Heyas. I’m Caitlin, a 19-year-old comp sci major, born in Pasadena, Calif. I moved to Minnesota, which is where my parents were originally from and where my sister was born, when I was three. Then we moved to St. Louis, Missouri when I was five, and to Maryland when I was 8. I think that’s when I lost my ability to connect with people face-to-face. See, when we moved here, there weren’t any kids around my age and school wasn’t going to start for another 3 months, so I basically spent my days inside playing video games all by my lonesome. Not trying to score any pity points here, but since then I haven’t been able to make friends easily, and I have difficulty speaking aloud (meaning not only do I not know what to say a good portion of the time, but when I do have something to say, I think of two different ways to phrase it and begin with one way and end with another so the whole thing doesn’t make any sense. And I have now retyped that sentence about 5 different ways). But I’ve finally reached the point where I actually prefer being alone, because with people, you’ve got all that awkward stuff going on, like what do I say now? What should we do? OMG I just had food fall out of my mouth when I asked them how they’re doing….

Anyway, I prefer to eat alone, and I don’t really like conversation unless it’s about one of my obsessions (listed in no particular order): Doctor Who, dragons, Gymkana. But I /do/ really like to play games with other people, especially Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon (both the video games and TCG), and Banagrams. My avatar is from a game I used to play, called Neopets, which I bet a bunch of you used to play, too. It’s a zombie cybunny. I picked it because it’s weird, ugly, but kind of cute, too, which is how I see myself. It’s also my Facebook profile pic, because I don’t really use Facebook and wanted to be somewhat anonymous, even though I used my real name.

As for why I’m taking this course: I love stories and this was the only DCC course this semester that sounded even remotely interesting to me, need I say more? I really /do/ love stories, though, even though I’m not really good at telling them. I’m not very good at coming up with original ideas, either. But, I do know how to code in HTML, Java, and make cool 3D objects in Google Sketchup, if that helps my case at all.

And, like everyone else’s posts, this one is getting kind of long. So….