The man’s body had given up long ago. It was only his perverse, sadistic mind that made him keep on. He plodded through the desert, lifting one heavy foot after another. The sand sucked at his feet, the sun sucked at his soul. There was no moisture left in him for sweat. He ran a tongue that felt like sand paper over his parched lips. He stopped, swaying a little. This might be a good spot. As good as any. To lie down and die. He looked up for a moment, preparatory to closing his eyes and calling it a life. He froze. There, in the distance, a nearly impossible distance, about twenty feet away, was a refrigerator. It had a glass door, and he could see misty condensed air swirling in it, and row upon row of bottles. Water, mostly, and some coloured sugary drinks too. He reached it, after an eternity. He was going to open it, when he noticed the combination lock. And a small post-it note on the glass alongside the lock.
He was light headed and weak, and it took far too much time, but he read the note:
‘The key: 3 digits.
For the first number, solve this sequence: 7, 5, 8, 4, 9, 3, ?
For the second digit, answer this question: How many toes does a Grioprifiliosaurus have?
For the third digit, what is the 40th number after the decimal point in the value of pi?’
He leaned tiredly against the glass door of the refrigerator. It felt unbelievably cold. There was only one explanation. He had already fallen and this was a dream, come to entertain him while he was waiting for oblivion. Real life could not be so cruel.
Now he looked up and saw that a new character had appeared in the dream.
A desert dweller, on his camel. He looked down upon the man, his expression unreadable. Then he slid off the camel, strode up to the refrigerator, pushed the man aside, firmly but not rudely, pulled the door open, reached in, took out a bottle of cola, opened it with his teeth, emptied it in one gulp, and threw it away. He looked at the man strangely again, mounted his camel, and rode away.
The man stared after him for a long time. Then he nodded to himself. The desert dweller was unlettered and could not read. That explained it.