Bread and butter

     Last time you visited, everything seemed normal between you two. You had the usual warm beverage with scones, while sitting on the porch outside the shop. You were both laughing and telling anecdotes, describing how the previous days had been and updating each other on life in general. You can still hear his full laughter resonate in your ears after you told him about your plans for the summer.

     This is precisely why the strange mail you received from him last night shocked and worried you.

     “Come over to the bakery tomorrow; let’s sort things out for the bigger” informs the paper in your hand, which you are reading while hastily making your way to his shop. As far as you are aware, there is nothing to sort out. You haven’t got into any kind of fight with the Breadmaster, and you cannot understand what has happened. You can even feel his urgency, having made a mistake in anxiously writing the letter, confusing “better” with “bigger”.

     You reach the Bakery at the edge of the Neopian Bazaar, push the door inwards and enter. The small bell hanging at the top of the door welcomes you, and you expect to hear the familiar “Yech” uttered by your friend; but it never transpires.

     You stop and stare in utter disbelief. The entrance hall of the Bakery is in total disarray. Random objects are scattered on the floor, flour poured over them haphazardly, while ripped pages from cookbooks are plastered on the walls. The counters around the hall, where the fresh produce is usually sold, are empty and filled with dust and Spyder webs.

     “What’s happened here?” you think in confusion. The worst rushes through your mind, as you can’t see the blue Kacheek you expected to greet you.

     “Where is the Breadmaster? And more importantly, if the bakery is in this state, who even sent me that message?”

     You carefully walk further in the shop, trying not to step on the flour and leave unnecessary and incriminating footsteps. You notice that there are three doors at the back of the shop. You have never walked through them before, but you assume that they are used for storage, ovens and other important baking equipment. The three doors are strangely bolted shut with chains and locks. They also have a rectangular metallic plaque fixed in their middle, labelling each one of them. You can make out that the room on the left is called ‘Enhance’, the middle one is ‘Advance ’, and the one on the right is ‘Balance’.

     Right in front of the doors is the central island counter with the till, where the Breadmaster makes his transactions. There is something peculiar that catches your attention. Despite the chaos in the room, six objects are neatly placed in a row on the surface of the counter.

     Six famous culinary masterpieces, frequently prepared fresh by the Breadmaster. An Anti-Chia Cake, a Jam Pastry, a Chained Vault Cake, an Arrow Cake, a Left-Over Turkey Sandwich and a Blue Berry Pie lie motionless on the counter, immaculate and spotless. What are these items doing here? Why haven’t they fallen victim to the wrath of whoever entered the shop and, potentially, hurt your friend?

     Are these items here for you? Did someone call you in the bakery today only to show off some of the goods the shop offers? You don’t understand. But you are intrigued. This cryptic feeling that emanates from a perfectly ordered stock and contrasts with the disorder in the rest of the room makes you want to understand what’s happening.

     As you stare at the items, you remember your friend's last - or someone’s first - communication with you. A strange letter which you felt was unexpected and grammatically incorrect.

     Unless it wasn't incorrect? You grab the paper in your pocket and check it one more time. “Sort things out for the bigger". What if the typographic error was intentional by whoever sent this message? You glance back at the items. They seem ordinary and just like you remember them. The Chained Vault Cake is big, towering over the rest, while the Jam Pastry is small and perfectly circular. The rest of the pastries seem quite normal-sized, except the Left-Over Turkey Sandwich, which is surprisingly larger than normal.

     “Sort for the bigger,” you hear a voice in your head. Did you hear that in the Breadmaster’s voice? No, it can’t be; there was no “Yech”.

     Thus you start sorting. On the far left of the row, and next to the till, you place the Jam Pastry. As it is the smallest, it should be the first in a list ordered by size. Right next to it, you move the Blue Berry Pie, which is about twice the size of the pastry. The next two in line are quite tricky. You ponder between the two cakes which have similar sizes, but you decide to place first the Arrow Cake and right next to it the Anti-Chia Cake. There is an argument here to be made about which of the two is actually larger, but you can always swap them around if this is wrong. Second to last, you place the abnormally large Left-Over Turkey Sandwich, before slowly sliding the Chained Vault Cake into the last position. It truly is big, as you feel its weight while dragging it.

     You look at the newly formed row. From left to right, bakery items range from small to large. You repeat their names again and again out loud, until something registers in your mind. You say the first word of each baked good.

     “Jam Blue Arrow Anti Left Chained”.

     You understand. You turn your back to the counter and frantically start searching for a blue arrow which you believe you have seen before, hidden inside the pile of random junk on the floor. You quickly retrieve it, giving it a pat to clear the excess of flour from its surface and rush to the door on the far right - that is, the anti-left chained door labelled ‘Balance’.

     With a swift movement, you jam the blue arrow into the padlock that holds the chains together and turn the arrow clockwise. It clicks, and the padlock drops to the floor, allowing you to push the door inwards and rush into the next room.

     The ‘Balance’ room is mostly empty; however, there is a delicious smell whiffing through the air. As you enter the room, on your left, there is a counter with a blender on its top. At the back of the room, there are two more doors, although from this distance you can’t read their names. In the middle of the room, there is a table with a very strange apparatus. A long, transparent cylinder is placed on the surface, with one end of the cylinder open and hollow, placed vertically. The other side ends in an arrow, which is pointing downwards onto the surface of the table. You get closer to examine further, and you notice that the apparatus is placed right in the centre of the table. On the top, its opening is very small. You doubt it can fit anything larger than a ping-pong ball. A weighing scale lies on the right-hand side of the apparatus, and next to it there are at least four dozens of Card Suit Cupcakes. The most interesting aspect of this spread of unlikely items, though, is found behind the arrow.

     Four more Breadmaster delicacies are placed in a line, their succulent smell oozing throughout the room. You stare at the Club Sandwich, the Chocolate Heart, the Mint Chocolate Spike Ball Candy and the Diamond Ring Cookie, and wonder what new task awaits you. You consider these four items, and then turn your gaze towards the cupcakes. Your brain is trying to make the connection - there is one; you can feel it - but you can’t yet put your finger on it.

     “What information do I have?” you think out loud, talking to yourself. You do this often when you feel there is a pattern here, but you haven’t figured it out yet. You see in front of you cupcakes, each labelled with a card suit. You also have a sandwich, a ball, a chocolate and a cookie?

     No that’s not it.

     That’s when you see the correlation between the items. Each of the baked goods must correspond to a card suit. These items have been chosen on purpose. The first ones to correlate are the Chocolate Heart, which corresponds to the hearts, and the Diamond Ring Cookie, which corresponds to the diamonds. It has taken longer, though, to recognise that the Club Sandwich corresponds to the clubs because you usually refer to the card suit as trebles. Which leaves the Mint Chocolate Spike Ball Candy to correspond to spades, and you wonder why, before realising that spades are also called pikes. There were probably no pike-themed pastries to use in this challenge, so whoever prepared it settled for spike instead!

     Next step, how does this information relate to the hollow arrow pointing downwards? You tiptoe, reaching up, to see the open top clearly, and you confirm that it’s too small to fit any of the four bigger items found at the back. Of course you could always mash them up into a fine paste and force them to fit, but what would be the point of that? However, that opening is the perfect size to fit something smaller and more round, if inserted one by one. Like cupcakes.

To be continued…