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“What do you think?”

“Me? I could never make it past the first fifty pages. It’s garbage. Even the superfans who end up thinking it’s great literature admit it’s a slog at first. There’s a saying about it. On the first read, you can barely make it through it. On your second read, you finally get the book. On your third read, the book gets you. But hey, if you really want to talk to an expert on it, I’ve got a friend who still teaches at Eastern Michigan. He taught a special topics elective on it for a while. Talked his department head into offering the class to bump enrollment in the College of Arts and Sciences. I can get him on the phone right now if you’d like.”

“Please,” I said.

Kent pulled out his cell phone. After a few seconds, he smiled.

“Hey, Henry, I’ve got a weird question for you. Would you mind talking to a friend of mine about TTGO for a few minutes?”

I heard laughter on the other end. Then Kent put his phone on speaker and set it on my desk between us. He made quick introductions between me and Dr. Henry Pollack.

“Dr. Pollack,” I said. “There’s a phrase, apparently from this book, that has some significance to a case I’m working on. I hope you’ll appreciate that I can’t go into great detail about it. But my client is being harassed by someone who keeps leaving messages for her with the phrase Atrō te benedico or benedicto.”

Henry Pollack, PhD, let out a groan.

“That’s awful,” he said. “People have found hidden meaning in that novel for decades. It’s part of its greatness.”

“Weirdos and psychos,” Derby added. “It’s trash, Henry.”

“Kent,” Pollack said. “We can’t keep having this same argument.”

I debated how much to tell these men. But this was the first solid lead I’d had into the messages Geneva received since I started this case.

“I need to trust that you can keep this confidential,” I said. “But this phrase, there’s a substantial chance it’s connected to Derrek Sidney. Have you heard of him?”

Kent’s jaw dropped. Pollack went silent.

“The serial killer,” Pollack finally responded. “The Adonis Killer?”

“Yes,” I answered. “So what can you tell me about that phrase or that book? Kent thinks online gamers from a certain era attach significance to it.”

“You could say that, yes. Look, this book is controversial to say the least. J. Marvin Sherman doesn’t even really exist. It’s a pen name for a guy named Larry Kordowski. He’s been dead for close to thirty years now. The Traveler’s Guide is the only thing he ever published. And barely at that. It was published through Summer Song Press. This tiny little outfit in southern Florida that doesn’t even exist anymore. The Traveler’s Guide and terrible management decisions more or less bankrupted them.”

“So, what’s the context of the phrase?” I asked.

“It’s part of a poem,” Kent answered. “This thing the main character hears in a dream.”

“Not a dream,” Pollack corrected him. “He hallucinates. It’s told to him by a pixie while he’s trapped in a cave in an abandoned copper mine. Only the whole thing is a psychedelic, magic-mushroom-induced trip. Or it might be. That’s one of the more infamous scenes in terms of the disagreement on what it means.”

“It’s eight hundred and seventeen pages of self-indulgent, badly edited, amateurish slop,” Derby chimed in.

“Unless it’s not,” Pollack said, sighing. “That’s the debate.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Look,” Pollack continued. “I believe this book is a nihilist literary masterpiece. But many readers ascribe deep meaning to every passage. The Traveler’s journey is an allegory to man’s search for the meaning of life before he dies. It was ahead of its time. You’re not supposed to take any of the events in the book literally.”

“It’s weird,” Derby said. “There are all sorts of continuity errors. The Traveler has a machete. He loses it on a side quest. Then the thing miraculously reappears in his belongings with no explanation of how it got there. There are typos. Bad grammar. There is even a giant section of a chapter that is duplicated word for word in a later chapter. Like it was cut and pasted in the wrong place and nobody caught it. But these true believers think that was all intentional. That it’s part of Sherman’s literary device.”

“What do you think, Professor Pollack?” I asked.

“I think those passages my esteemed colleague references are part of what makes Sherman a highly underrated master of the craft. The book makes you think. It pits people against each other. Sherman wants the reader to question these things. It’s an allegory for the uncertainty of the meaning of life.”

“What’s your take, Kent?” I asked.

Kent shook his head. “I think it’s garbage. I think Sherman’s editor owed him a favor or took pity on him. Rumor is Sherman became increasingly difficult to deal with as their relationship wore on. The editor finally refused to deal with him and assigned line and copy edits to a junior editor unqualified to handle it.”

“Gamers glommed onto it in the late ’80s and early ’90s when more immersive role-playing games hit the scene,” Pollack explained. “You know. You play a character. You have a mission. You go on side quests. Gain skills. Collect magic items and inventory.”