“Nancy, I’ll go first, and then once I get all the way down, I’ll call up and you can follow.”
I climb down the ladder about 25 feet and reach a tunnel with about 6 feet of clearance under conduits, overhead red safety lights and pipes and an arm span across. The conduits are labeled with USN-1942. It appears this is some sort of World War 2 Navy access tunnel. I should probably call up to Nancy so she can get down here as well.
“Nancy, come on down.”
Climbing down the rungs, “I was wondering how long it was going to take before you called me.”
“Sorry about that, it looks like this is a WW2 era military access tunnel, the question is access to what?”
“Do you see a way to shut the home plate opening?”
“I think this might be it. This button is labeled TI Portal hatch with a red and green light. The Red light is lit, I think if I press this button, the portal will shut.”
“Sounds good, give it a try.”
Nancy presses the button and surprisingly we do not hear the sound of a duck quack, but the home plate hatch is moving back up to seal the top of the tunnel and the indicator light turns green.
“Nancy, let’s see where this tunnel leads to.”
“Great, from where we came down, it looks like the tunnel heads due east.”
We pull out the PFL to augment the light coming from the overhead safety lights. The tunnel has a slight downslope for about 1000 feet and then stops at what looks like a spiral staircase.
“Nancy, let’s head down the staircase and find out how far it goes down.”
“Exactly.”
I follow Nancy down the stairs for about 5 minutes. When we get to the bottom of the stairs the landing opens into a room about ten by twenty feet.
“Dad, how far do you think we went down?”
“Well, it was about 250 steps down, so about 250 feet.”
“That would put us about 100 feet below the bottom of the San Francisco Bay in this area. The bay is up to 300 feet deep at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, but hear between Treasure Island and Oakland, it is only about 150 feet deep.”
“Well, thank you Wikipedia.”
“Nice dad, so I am chocked full of useless knowledge, but in there are a few nuggets of useful stuff.”
“You’re right, I am glad you remember everything you see and read.”
We observe a map on the wall showing a tunnel system that goes under the bay and heads past Oakland, Las Trampas Regional Wilderness and ends at Mount Diablo. The whole tunnel looks to be about 40 miles long with what look like two waystations along the way.
‘Nancy, I think we can make it to the first star by tonight. I am hoping it provides a way to the surface or a place to sleep.”
“I agree, I think it is about 8 miles to the first star, and we should be able to walk that in about two hours as long as there is not too much up and down.”
Nancy takes a picture of the map with her smartphone and we begin looking around for the exit. On the East wall there is a military style water tight door.
“So, what do you say Nancy, do we open the door and see what lies down this tunnel, or head back up and catch the bus home?”
“Seriously dad, there is no way we are heading back now.”
“Just checking.”
On closer inspection of the door, there appears to have been a recent upgrade of a digital lock.
“So what do you think dad, tubastan for the code?”
“Of course not, there are 10 digits to the code and tubastan only has 8 letters and besides it is a number pad.”
“I will concede on tubastan only having 8 letters, but we can make letters into numbers with the phonepad.”
“Right, so we need to find something other than tubastan. Well, the door is labeled TI-10-19, I wonder if that has any significance?”
“Could be, didn’t we get Treasure Island from the clue on the moon map, do you think this might have something to do with Robert Louis Stevenson?”
“Good thought dad, maybe it is a book cipher, with TI being the book, Treasure Island, page 10 and word 19. I know this can be problematic if we don’t have the same copy of the book, but at least we know it needs to be 10 letters, so even if the 19th word does not fit, we should be able to find it.”
“Wow, that makes a ton of sense, if only we had a copy of Treasure Island.”
“Way ahead of you dad, when we looked up RLS 1883 on my smart phone earlier, I also downloaded an epub of Treasure Island. Let me bring that up.”
“Wow, that is awesome and you know what wow spelled backwards is, still wow.”
“We still do not know if it worked yet, so save your backwards wow for when we crack the code. Let’s see, page 10:
‘Before he went on with his talk to old
Taylor, the gardener, on a new cure for the
rheumatics. In the meantime, the captain
gradually’
It looks like rheumatics is the 19th word.”
“Right, r-7, h-4, e-3, u-8, m-6, a-2, t-8, i-4, c-2 and s-7.”
Nancy tries 7438628427 on the keypad and nothing happens.
“So much for wow, backwards or forwards.’
‘Wait, did you hit enter after the combination?”
“Was I supposed to?”
“Yes, you always have to hit enter after entering a combination code on an electronic lock, well except for when there is no enter key.”
“There is an enter key.”
Nancy hits enter and as we hear that reassuring duck quack sound, the door unlocks. I spin the wheel to open the door and it looks like the tunnel follows the map on the wall and continues East.