First Doors: Number 7 - The Curtain

Verification Code: 8472FK43KU3R697383789P72NW11
It all started when new content appeared on "The Curtain Falls", one of the sites hosted in geo.town and part of the Fantastical Fenomena Web Ring. The page contained space for three embedded videos, named "Part 1", "Part 2" and "Part 3", but only the first was available at the time.

All of the videos are hosted on a YouTube Channel created by 'Ruth Skeeter' (an anagram for 'Truth Seeker') and these are the only videos uploaded up to this date.

### The Curtain

In the videos, we see an image of an old radio with a screen that shows the waveform of the sound we hear (this image will end up being the same for all of three episodes). The audio is a compilation of different calls made to a radio show. With this, we learn that "The Curtain" is a 90's program, "a show about mysteries, the great unknown and stories of wonder", hosted by Jo Carraway. "The Curtain Falls" is a fan page dedicated to this show.

### Part 1

In this 16 minute broadcast, we hear some stories told by the callers regarding monsters, hidden codes, paranormal experiences, etc. The real discovery though are specific words hidden throughout the video. At five specific times, a word is spoken on the audio track and that same word flashes on the screen with one of its letters in bold. These words are:

 05:13
 11:17
 12:14
 15:18

The bold letters, in order of appearance, spell the word 'imgur'. We deduced that we should expect the rest of the link to an image in the next two videos, but we had to wait for them to be available.

(Screencaps for the words here)

### The Door Opens

A week later the seventh door opened. When verifying the code received, we were redirected to "The Curtain Falls" site, now with all three videos available.

### Part 2.1 - Imgur

In the second video, the announcer talks mainly about the mysteries regarding "The Voynich Manuscript".

Like in Part 1, there are also some words that appear in the screen but this time, the words appear flashing on and off a certain number of times (this coincides with the number being said at that point in the audio track). These words are:

The number of times each word blinks is used as an index to retrieve the corresponding letter in that word, counting from left to right. We form the word:

```
bEfbuem

```

Combining this result with 'imgur' obtained in Part 1 we get the following link: https://imgur.com/bEfbuem

### Part 2.2 - Two Books

Here we see a pretty dark image with a message in Braille 'hidden' in the center, rotated 90° CW. It translates to:

```
Two Books

```

Also, the description of the image in imgur reveals:

```
116.97.107.97.104.97.115.104.105.47.116.76.88.83.85.114.52

```

These numbers translated from Decimal to ASCII spell:

```
takahashi/tLXSUr4

```

Using the second part of this decoded text we obtained a new imgur link: https://imgur.com/tLXSUr4

("Takahashi" and "Two Books" will be used later)

### Part 2.3 - "The Curtain" callers

In this picture we had to fill the empty spaces of 7 lines of text, with some letters missing. We soon discovered that each of these lines relate the name of a caller to "The Curtain" and the topic of the call he or she made (the first five of which are found in Part 1 and the last one in Part 3). The solved text is:

```
Oliver : bigfoot
Ron : THE TOXIC LADY
Connor : NUMBERS 3 9 4 5 11 3 0
Harry : MISSING WIFE
Helen : STATIC
Martin : Leap Year Society

```

In the top-right corner of this image there are three letters encoded again in Braille: FXR. This refers to "Forward Transformation" (to be used later).

Upon closer inspection of the image, you can see some dots under some spaces with missing letters. The number of dots indicate the position this letter should occupy in the final decoded word. This gives us:

```
sU0Wt4S

```

Again, this indicates a new imgur link: https://imgur.com/SU0Wt4S

### Part 2.4 - The Book

This last image resembles an open book, where we see some question marks spread across different positions on the pages and text written around the outside. This text is the same for both pages with the exception of it being written clockwise on the left half and counter-clockwise on the right half. It spells:

```
MS.408/
EVA/
15-7-1-2.
38-1-1-5.
5-4-1-4.
108-7-2-3.
115-27-2-3.
6-9-3-1.
111-4-2-1.
56-1-5-3.
83-5-5-4.
75-14-1-2/

```

MS.408 refers to the "Voynich Manuscript", which is catalogued under this code in the Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

EVA in this context means "European Voynich Alphabet" which is a translation made to the cryptic alphabet used in the Manuscript to help with cryptanalysis.

With this in mind, we deduced that the following string of numbers is an indication to take specific letters from the Voynich Manuscript. Each group of 4 numbers separated by a dash (-) represents 'page-line-word-letter'. We have then to find 10 letters and decode them using EVA. This was particularly difficult to obtain for the last letter (75-14-1-2) because of the circular layout of the text in the manuscript, which you can view in its entirety here.

However, the earlier hint "Takahashi" led us to a transcription of the Manuscript made by Takeshi Takahashi, which was significantly easier to work with.

Taking the corresponding letters from the "recto" (r) side of the numbered sheets, the decoded message spells:

```
ARIES SOYGA

```

Using the hint "Two Books" we've found our second tome (the first being the manuscript): "The Book of Soyga". This book present some mysterious tables with letters. We need to use the "Table of Aries" (from the last hint).

If we now overlay our question mark image over the table, we notice that the question marks align with specific letters in the table. Reading the corresponding letters from left to right ("FXR", or forward transformation, interpreted in this context) they spell the words:

```
MECHANISM FINDER BIRTHPLACE DEITY

```

### Part 3

In the last part of "The Curtain" Jo mentions "The Antikythera Mechanism", an ancient Greek machine used to track the cycles of the solar system that was lost for nearly 1400 years.

Upon some investigation we discovered that the FINDER of this machine was Valerios Stais. His BIRTHPLACE is Kythira, and this place is once fabled to be the home of the DEITY "Aphrodite".

### Finale

After entering the word APHRODITE in the contact form, Door #7 was officially solved and we were rewarded with a 7th (and last) Octagon picture, containing Octagons #8 and #9.

### References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Curtain Falls - "The Curtain" Fan Site
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 The Curtain - Part 1 - Youtube
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Curtain - Part 2 - Youtube
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The Curtain - Part 3 - Youtube
5. ↑ Ruth Skeeter's Youtube Channel - Contains parts 1, 2 and 3 of "The Curtain"
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 The Voynich Manuscript - Wikipedia
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Door #7 - Two Books - Imgur
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Door #7 - "The Curtain" callers - Imgur
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Door #7 - The Book - Imgur
10. ↑ The Voynich Manuscript - Pages
11. ↑ The Voynich Manuscript - Takahashi transcription
12. ↑ Book Of Soyga - Wikipedia
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Book Of Soyga - Table of Aries
14. ↑ Antikythera Mechanism - Wikipedia
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Valerios Stais - Wikipedia
16. ↑ Octagons 8 & 9 - Door #7 (APHRODITE) - Imgur