“If you’ve collected this token then you will now be seeing the Carlton lighthouse. The lighthouse has stood on this spot since it was built in 1704 to guide sailors around the foreboding Carlton Bay. It now plays host to the finale of our drama. Please tune your radio to 1303AM.”

Graham placed the token on his lap and switched the radio on. It took him a minute to figure out how to allow the car to manually tune the radio but he finally got the station. The signal was weak and the voice sounded as if it was being broadcast from a submarine.

“…then you are the first to have discovered the Symptom Prize. You will be rich and famous. The prize that has eluded hunters for decades is now within your reach. But before you complete the quest, it only seems fair that we the creators of this mystery ask you, “why?” Why do you want to win this prize so much?”

Graham quelled his excitement to ask himself the question. For 19 years he’d been pursuing this goal. It had over-taken his marriage. His relationship with his children. His work. It had become his life. Why did he want to win the prize? Because it was there to be won. He thought of his own father driven so mad by his wrestling with the Symptom clues that he had eventually succumbed to suicide. Graham wanted this for him as much as anything.

“The truth is that the Symptom Prize matters more as a journey than a destination –“

This was standard stuff from the writers, they liked their cliches.

“-you must ask yourself in claiming the prize if you are truly prepared to remove this opportunity from the fingers of others. Or if you can stay happy knowing that you beat the game and won? Activate the final token with key number 4011. This message will now repeat. If you are listening to this message then you are the first…”

Graham tapped 4011 into the token and with a flourish it revealed the co-ordinates. From the lighthouse he needed to walk 150 feet on and 12 feet due west. Then he could dig. He skipped over the wet grass and stood with his back to the red lighthouse door. He imagined all the people warm in their beds and realized he wouldn’t swap with them for a fortune. He was going to solve the Symptom Prize! He started to count the distance by laying one foot next to another. It took him a while and took him over a gravel path which led to a lookout. Presumably people gathered there to marvel at the crumbling cliffsides.

He was only at 138 feet when the ground ran out. The grass at the verges was longer, nearly knee-high and Graham looked nervously around. In the void below him he could hear the whisper of the waves on a shingle beach. He returned to the lighthouse and counted the steps again, but it only returned him to the same spot. He thought of all the twists the game had taken over the years. The price he’d paid. He knew that the creator of the game was a genius. He trusted that the game knew what he was doing. He stood at the cliff’s edge and laid his foot beyond. The game would catch him.