I'm very competitive. I like to win. I like to be better than my previous best. I jump at the chance to prove myself. And I relish challenges as opportunities to prove myself.
I also love to work under pressure. My favorite stage management memories are the shows when sound went out, lights went out, actors skipped pages -- anything where I had to problem-solve to save the show. Likewise, one of my favorite college memories is when (very very out of character for me) I somehow managed to forget I had a final paper due in what was for me an easy fluff course (so it had apparently zipped to the back of my mind as low priority -- a total tortoise and the hare moment), and I didn't remember it until my final exam in live television directing the period directly before the paper was due. So I directed a live television show while simultaneously writing a final paper for another class. And I succeeded in both. I have absolutely no idea how I did that, except that I'm at my best under pressure.
And I've been a fierce observer since I was a baby (so I'm told). I see thoughts behind aborted words and actions, I see controlled impulses, I see lies, I see attempts to keep secrets....
So, not surprisingly, when you put these things together along with my love of agility and physical tests and acting, I also like spy stuff. When I was in college, I went to a recruitment event for the CIA. In a lot of ways, it seemed like the perfect job for me: physical skills, working under immense pressure, acting, high reward and purpose, problem solving and brain power usage. I still have a paper somewhere with the contact's contact info and name (which is of course not his real name). In another life, I'd like to be a spy, but in this life, I don't want to risk my life every day.
And yet, a lot of what I do still fits into that mold of the qualities that attracted me to that recruitment event. I still look for ways to get a pressure adrenaline rush, to observe things beyond the front people put out for the world to see, to problem-solve and find patterns, to have variety in my daily life, and to challenge myself.
So I was beyond excited to find out about Spyscape, the spy museum that just opened in New York City. Part museum, where you can learn about Alan Turing and breaking the Enigma code in WWII, or the capture of Robert Hanssen, or The Limping Lady (Virginia Hall), the coolest part about it (to me) is that it also includes a series of tests and challenges that result in each participant getting a unique "Spy Profile." After receiving a bracelet with a scannable tag when you check in, each visitor can complete IQ tests, personality tests, risk assessment tests, an encryption challenge, a deception challenge, a special ops challenge (with laser beams! Extra cool because I've always wanted to be Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment), and a surveillance challenge.
Now, to my fiancé, the museum was equally exciting but for slightly different reasons. He's a huge James Bond fan, so while I was all about the tests and challenges, he was getting wrapped up in the gadgets that inspired Q's creations and the spy stories. The tests were casually fun to him, while they got me all charged up ready to go like I'd had five espressos and was gunning for an Olympic medal (gold, of course). When I heard him laugh loudly while we were taking the personality tests and asked him why, he said, "It just asked if I do well under stress." (He doesn't.) Next it was time for the risk assessment test, a test in which you have six attempts to pump a virtual balloon that can break at any time. You get $1 for each pump that it doesn't break, but only if you "collect" the money before it breaks. After six "collections," you're done, and that's the amount of money you earn. The second pump on the first attempt breaks the balloon, to make you scared of the risk and less likely to keep pumping on subsequent collection attempts. So at the end, I asked my fiancé how much money he'd earned.
"Six," he replied.
"Six? What do you mean six? Six on one attempt? I mean all together. How much did you have after all six attempts?"
"Six," he replied again.
"I don't get it."
"I got six."
"So... wait... you never pumped more than once?"
"Of course not. I collected after each pump. Because it might break."
"What did it tell you at the end?"
"That I should try taking some more risks -- like trying hot sauce."
I, meanwhile, went up to 50 pumps on one attempt. I'm a bit of a risk taker, at least when it comes to virtual balloons.
When it came time for the surveillance challenge, my competitiveness (with myself, not with my fiancé) really kicked in. This, after all, was basically what I did in college while directing live television. The participant is encircled by the feeds from approximately 60 numbered CCTV cameras in a giant room while wearing a headset with a mic and has a limited amount of time to spot things on the camera feeds and answer questions through the mic about what's going on in the camera views. Each station has several headsets, so several people can do the exercise at the same time. A woman casually looked around her as she searched. My fiancé looked with more decisiveness. And I, hands on hips, did my best impression of Skyfall's young Q searching for Javier Bardem in London's subway system as I spun around the room and announced the answers with finality into my mic. But then... then... blasphemy of blasphemies... my mic stopped working. I kept saying the answer over and over, louder and louder. The woman next to me looked at me like I was crazy. But didn't she understand? This was my greatest skill, and the system was recording my abilities incorrectly! The recorded voice asking the questions over the headset announced I had run out of time on that question. And then the next. And then the next. I hung up my headset and stared bleakly at my fiancé.
"My mic stopped working. I got them all right, but it wasn't acknowledging my speaking. It thinks I didn't answer three questions."
"It's okay, it's just a game," he said.
"Yeah, but it's going to have my profile wrong now. I got them right. And it thinks I got them wrong."
"Twelve out of fifteen's not bad."
"But I didn't get twelve out of fifteen! I got fifteen out of fifteen!"
He shrugged. "Nothing you can do."
"Hm. I wonder if that's true. I wonder if the system will let me do it again."
And so I did the whole thing over. It still screwed up and didn't recognize that I knew where the man in the blue and white checkered shirt on the payphone was or the painting of the woman with the red lips (I know where both are, and I still remember their camera numbers), but at least I got 13/15 that time. I'd have done it again, but my fiancé would probably think I'm even weirder than he already does. And let's be honest -- that's already pretty weird.
I worked my way through the rest of the challenges and tests with equal competitiveness, but then I got to the part that two days later is still bugging me. On one of the brainpower challenges is this question:
What is the next number in the sequence?
12 6 4 2 1 1/2
I was stumped. Not just "I don't get it" stumped but "I don't get it and it's making me mad" stumped. I wondered about it all day. I decided it was unsolvable without more information. I complained about it to my fiancé.
"It's about the experience, Jessica," he said, laughing and shaking his head and hoping I would give it up so we could watch Sherlock.
"No, it's about doing it right and the best and winning! Do you think spies are cool with just doing it for the experience?"
"No, but they're spies. You're doing it for the experience of being a spy."
"Right. Which means the experience of doing it to win."
So I had to solve this problem. So then the next day I sent it off to my parents, who came to the same conclusion I did. Though there might be logic to it if it's two interwoven sequences, with the numbers provided there are at least three different possible answers if it's two interwoven sequences in the pattern A, B, A, B. One possibility is sequence A is "divide by two" and sequence B is "divide by two and then square the smaller factor." That gives the next number in the sequence as 1/16. (1/2 / 2 = 1/4. 1/4 squared = 1/16). But another potential answer is that pattern B is "subtract (x-1)" where x is the amount subtracted in the previous link of sequence B (6-2 = 4; 2-1 = 1; 1/2 - 0 = 1/2), and so 1/2 is then the next number in the sequence. Yet another possibility is that pattern B is "subtract x/2" where x is the amount subtracted in the previous link of sequence B. In that case, 1/2 - 1/2 = 0. So 1/16, 1/2, and 0 are all potential solutions if the sequence is two interwoven sequences, and therefore the question is unsolvable as two interwoven sequences unless more numbers in the sequence are given (specifically, the number before 12). If it's only one sequence rather than two interwoven sequences, then I'm stumped. As are my parents. As is the math genius my dad sent it to.
So, in conclusion, I love Spyscape, I hate to lose, I really hate not being able to solve problems, and if you or anyone you know is capable of solving the above sequence, please please please tell me the answer.
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