Finding Montana

Run While You Can

I'd never been to an escape room before, so this was the most bizarre and thrilling experience of my life. The other people doing to room with Carver and me were vacationing from out of town, trying to soak in the last few days of summer break before school started up for them again. The Nakamoto family were veterans at escape rooms, and they warned both of us before we entered that they wouldn't try to take over the puzzles, but once the doors opened, it was like watching a well oiled machine. When they said they were veterans, they weren't kidding. They were the most logical, problem solving team and it made the room feel more manageable. I know Carver and I wouldn't have been able to solve it on our own since we had to have at least two people working on one puzzle at a time and there were three puzzles going on simultaneously that all  connected to one another in the end.

The room itself was tiny, well at least the beginning room we were locked up in was small. We started off the hour in a Plexiglas box, the only way out was either through the door we came in from or a door with no handle but a lock that opened from the outside. There was a key hanging from the wall adjacent and no way to physically get to it from the tiny box we were stuck in. The only thing that was in the box with us was a pile of metal rods, just thin enough that it could slip through one of the air holes sporadically placed around the walls of the box. The Nakamoto's wasted no time piecing together that the rods could lock into one another and started creating a rod long enough to reach the key at the other end of the room.

Once they retrieved it, we were able to free ourselves from the glass box and move further into the scientist's lab. Hidden Key spared no expense in creating the most sci-fi-y, creepy looking room. There were aliens floating in giant tubes lining the walls to our left, beakers and test tubes filling up examination tables in the middle of the room, and a weird, but terrifying, creature that I can only assume is the mad scientist's Frankenstein's monster. Carver and I teamed up on a puzzle to the left of the Plexiglas door while the Nakamoto's spread out and try to find other clues in the massive room.

A medium sized chest, silver and cool to the touch, was placed underneath a hand-drawn map of a fake town. The map had three letters and numbers placed above each building and house in the drawing and on the silver chest itself there was a six digit code that appeared to be compatible with both numbers and letters. Carver and I both looked at each other, dumb founded by the amount of variables as it was slightly overwhelming. A glimpse of something white caught my eye. Hidden underneath the laminated map, a small strip of paper was tucked precariously between the wall and the map and upon closer inspection we saw that the strip contained a poem that we could only assume was the clue to open the chest.

South of the tall, old chapel

Lived two brothers that fought over a tree full of apple

One, scorned and hungry, moved away to be closer to fish at the lake

While the second stayed at home, and that's where he ate

I looked at the map and back at the poem and a light bulb clicked in my head. I read off the text above the house just south of the church looking building and Carver quickly entered it into the chest; I then did the same thing with the tiny little shack positioned on the east side of the lake. The chest clicked open and we tore through the goodies on the inside. It was filled with clothes, lab coats in a variety of colors, until we found one that was bright red. It was the only lab coat with a name tag attached to it and the poem had referenced an apple, so we both assumed this is what we were meant to find. Carver and I brought the garment to the closest examination table and began digging through the pockets of the coat until we found a small, metal key. One of the Nakamoto's must have seen us complete the puzzle because the youngest rushed over and guided us to the puzzle he'd been working on with his mother. They had uncovered, locked in the drawer of one of the examination tables, a tiny box that pit perfectly with our key. Inside the little box was another riddle we had to solve; however, this one was incomplete. It looked like the sheet had been torn in half and was potentially a four lined poem, but our half only had the first two lines.

Finding companionship is a life struggle

That's why I built my own in order to cuddle

The other group of Nakamoto's finished their two puzzles they had been working on just a few seconds after us and were able to open up a test tube containing a scroll with the second part of the poem. We all rushed over to read what theirs said.

My creation, though ugly and not smart

To find the key, you must look in his heart

I saw a light bulb go off in Carver's eyes and he rushed over to the monster in the corner of the room. The poor thing, left alone and neglected the whole time we'd been in the room, was now the focus point of this part of the challenge. He stuck his hand deep into the beast's chest and I felt my jaw drop to the floor in astonishment and confusion. When he pulled his hand out of the small slit, he triumphantly held a key and we all rush towards the door at the exact opposite wall from where we started. The oldest Nakamoto child swung the door open and we were met with another big room full of puzzles and riddles. We ended up overcoming the second room that had a dozen or more individual puzzles with just a few minutes to spare. The mad scientist wasn't going to use us for his dastardly experiments this time.