Files and Spiders
“The File of Galadriel?” asked Frodo skeptically. “Don’t you mean via-”
“No,” broke in Bilbo. “It’s the
File of Galadriel. The Lady sent it to us when she heard how much Elrond had bet on us. Mentioned something in the letter about no-good son-in-laws... But, in any case, she said it should be used in times of great need, and this is a time of great need if I’ve ever seen one.”
He showed the disc to the others. On one side was a short inscription:
Greetings and congratulations on your purchase of the File of Galadriel, version 3.8. This latest model has the most up-to-date features of any system in Middle Earth, providing fast and easy access to the Arda-wide-web.
With that, Bilbo looked purposefully at the disc. Then he paused, looking closely at the silvery object.
“Well, go on, then,” urged Pippin.
“Yes, well, erm, I’m not
precisely sure what to do with it,” replied Bilbo. “There were three or four manuals that came with it. They’re somewhere about here...” He trailed off, looking about helplessly.
After a bit of searching, the hobbits managed to find two manuals. One appeared to be written in some sort of Orcish language (“Why would the Orcs need to know how to use it?” demanded Frodo in frustration). The other booklet, much to their vexation, was written in Khuzdűl, the language of the dwarves.
“Now what?” asked Sam.
“Well, I do have a Dwarvish dictionary,” said Bilbo. “Gandalf gave it to me some time ago.” Bilbo walked to a shelf and pulled off a large volume. He blew some dust off the cover, revealing the label “Khuzdűl for Dűmmies”.
“Doesn’t ‘dűm’ mean ‘hall’?” asked Merry.
“Shh!” responded Frodo. “Don’t ruin the cheap jokes!”
The hobbits crowded behind Bilbo as he opened the tome and laid it next to the manual. Together they began to decipher the instructions.
After some time, they had managed to translate the Table of Contents, which consisted of such items as “Get Underway Guide” and “Quandary Solutions”.
“ ‘Get Underway Guide’, that’s what we want,” said Bilbo.
Fifteen minutes later, they had gotten:
To instigate, confiscate disc from holder. Introduce disc in vacant manuscript or bulletin. Close manuscript. Tolerate ten minutes for setting up. Reopen manuscript and Skręen appears. Enter authority with pen and ink.
“ ‘Confiscate disc from holder.’ Right. We’ve already taken it out,” murmered Frodo. “ ‘Introduce disc in vacant manuscript or bulletin.’ What does that mean?”
“Put it in a blank book?” suggested Pippin.
Bilbo fetched an empty journal from his shelf. “So, my lads, do we just put it in?” he asked.
“It can’t hurt,” replied Frodo.
Bilbo took the disc in hand and slid it between two pages of the journal. Immediately the hobbits could hear whirring sound, and the book began to emit faint crackles.
“What’s it doing?” asked Sam.
“Dunno,” replied Pippin. But it says to ‘tolerate ten minutes for setting up’. Who’s for luncheon?”
When the hobbits returned from their meal-break, they found that the book was laying quietly on the desk where they had left it. They approached it cautiously. It remained inanimate.
Frodo summoned his courage and opened the journal to the first page. A beam of light streamed upward from the page, creating a rectangular image in mid-air. For a moment the image looked dark, but then a logo appeared: “Portholes 3000”. The book once again began to emit crackling sounds.
The Skręen went dark again for a moment, and then a lovely image of a forest appeared. Smaller images appeared on top of it, with words beneath them.
“What did it say after the thing about setting up?” he asked. “Something about ink?”
Sam looked at their notes. “It says ‘Reopen manuscript and enter authority with pen and ink’.”
Frodo picked up one of Bilbo’s pens. “Does it say what to write?” he asked.
“Wait a minute,” said Pippin, consulting the dictionary. “Oh, wow, you can change the background. Here, let me see...”
Pippin grabbed the pen out of Frodo’s hand and began to move the stylus about on the book. It left no trace of ink, but a small image of an arrow appeared on the Skręen and moved in accordance with the motion of the pen. Pippin tapped the pen stylus on the book, and a Porthole opened on the Skręen.
“Neat,” he said. “Look, you can have a picture of a horse of Rohan, or the White Tree of Gondor. Oh, I’ll put up a picture of the Brandywine.”
“Pippin, that’s quite nice, but do you think you might be able to help us figure out how to get out of this spiderweb?” asked Merry through clenched teeth.