He glanced over at the empty platform.  “Haven’t you ever thought that maybe the song is what’s making the trains arrive?”

Something about being down here all the time must be making me stupider, she thought.  Maybe it’s the bad air. “Oh.  Hey.  I bet you’re right.  Well, sounds pretty useless to me, but since you’re so eager to learn, here goes.”

The shapeless pile of rags that was the woman’s body expanded slightly, her cracked lips parted, and then a sound that made those images seem even uglier in comparison emerged.  It was a gentle, faintly mournful tune that in no way called the image of a speeding subway train to mind.  It was the most beautiful voice he had ever heard.  Peter tried to tell himself that he hadn’t put up the fuss about wanting to learn simply to hear her sing again.  He was not entirely convinced.

And, right on cue, in the middle of a phrase, a train pulled into the station.

“There you go,” the woman said, after the mechanical shrieking had cut out.  “Practice that.  Just don’t do it while you’re standing on any train tracks, I guess.”

Peter nodded.  Years of having to memorize songs for band had given him an excellent memory for tunes, and this one wasn’t especially complicated, so he didn’t need her to go through it more than once.  He closed his eyes and ran his fingers along the flute once without blowing.  “Thanks,” he said, lowering the instrument.  “Now then, I suppose I’d better let you get back to . . . whatever it is you do here.”

The woman laughed unpleasantly.  Peter started to walk away, but then he paused and turned back.  Oh great.  What now? “One last thing.  I realized that I went through all of yesterday without ever introducing myself.  I’m Peter Hamlin.”  He extended a hand.

She took it.  Her hand was not as unpleasant as he had expected.  Then again, his only previous contact with her hands had been when they were either twisting his arm or striking his cheek.  “Nice to meet you,” she said.  I hope, she added silently.

Peter stopped shaking and frowned.  “Um, this is the part where you introduce yourself.”

She smiled.  It was an extremely fragile smile, like a suspension bridge made out of toothpicks, or a skyscraper made of playing cards, or anything else that could collapse from a slight change in the wind.  “People call me the Old Woman of Simon Park Station.”

“And what do you call yourself?”

“I call myself ‘me.’  Or sometimes ‘I.’”

“You know what I mean.”

The Old Woman of Simon Park Station sighed and looked down at her lap.  “I really don’t.”  Her possible train-summoning song had been slow and sad, but her tone of speech now made it seem like a five-year-old’s birthday party in comparison.  “I don’t remember my name.  I don’t know who I am, or where I came from.  I don’t remember anything before I showed up here.”

She expected another barrage of questions from her interrogator, questions she had pointlessly asked herself time and time again.  But instead she just heard him say, “Okay.”  She looked up to see him headed back toward the exit, but he stopped one last time.  “If you don’t remember where you came from,” he said gently, “how do you know it wasn’t worse than here?”

“Worse than here?”  She looked around at the noisy children, the bedraggled parents, the humorless faces of people who had to go into work on a Saturday.  She heard the subway doors bump roughly shut and the train pull out of the station for the twentieth time that morning.  She smelled bad coffee and oil and a number of things even grosser than that.  Simon Park Station was a world without sunlight, a world without music, a world without hope.

“That’s not possible.”

Event: The First Academy Awards Ceremony is held
Year: 1929
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Academy_Awards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Awards#History

E. 山　F. 口　G. 人　H. 女

Clearly all that stuff about being busy was just to throw you guys off.  Obviously the real reason KYPC was slow in appearing this week was because we were busy preparing for the 100th Installment! That’s right, KYPC is only the second feature on this site to survive to the extent of 100 entries.  And, of course, you know, we had to wait for an appropriately auspicious day, so that’s why it did not appear at the expected time (if there even is such a thing for this feature anymore).  Yes, that makes sense.  Lateness blame successfully avoided!

Theoman kicked things off well, not by getting a right answer, but by creating an answer that is in fact better than the so-called “correct” one.  For what could be a more appropriate representation of “responsibility” than the eternal image of the Sword of Damocles, the knife hanging over the head of the king?  Sadly, the only “real” kanji that makes use of this particular combination–plus a couple other parts thrown in for good measure–is one meaning “lapis lazuli.”  We also must give him credit for his correct answer, snapping up H, the woman, and A, her child, and putting them together where they belong; everyone likes that, right?  (Lovely Assistant’s Note: In Chinese, this character simply means “good,” and the parts originally depicted a son and a daughter, because that’s the best combination to have.)  Finally, while putting together D and E doesn’t give you a swamp, it does give you a character meaning “fishing with a net,” and well, some people would probably say that’s better than a swamp.  Some people probably like to fish with a net in a swamp.  It takes all kinds.

Shirley picked up two and a half correct answers (we’re assuming she meant to identify F as the mouth, and the half point is for calling H, the woman, a girl child).  B, unfortunately, isn’t a mountain “because it’s there,” but then again I’m sure there are some people who feel the same way about kings, which is what B is.  As a matter of fact, she reversed B and E, presumably because she’s been listening to too much Grieg.  So those aren’t bad, but on the other hand, she seems to be frightened of children (A) . . . or at least male children.  I wonder why that could be . . .

A Fan, as usual, brings us to the silver screen, but this time rather than simply reminding us about movies, he’s helping us to reimagine them.  Like the classic scene in which Dundee shows us how cool he is by saying, “That’s not a child.  This is a child.”  Or the new, horror-movie version of The King and I, in which Yul Brynner’s head is nothing but a mouth.  Or the alternate version of The Lord of the Rings in which Mount Doom is actually a person, which makes it significantly harder to throw rings into it.  On the other hand, some of his reinventions weren’t that far off the mark.  At D we see poor Randy, unable to move, lying in water (hey, snow is just frozen water).  At E we have half of the iceberg (“ice mountain” in kanji) that was struck by that boat in the famous movie, A Night to Remember.  Also, I am legally obligated to point out that his identification of H as “woman” is 100% correct, and that I can even kind of see the witch riding the broomstick in it now.

Okay, time for the educational part.  A=Child, B= King, C=Knife, D=Water, E=Mountain, F=Mouth, G=Person, H=Woman.  Woman+Child=Like, Person+King=Responsibility, Water+Knife+Mouth=Swamp (don’t ask), Person+Mountain=Wizard (you ever heard of a wizard who lived someplace normal?)

But now the main event.  For this challenge, we’re going to look at things that all contain the character that means 100.  You remember what it looks like, right?  Of course you do.  It looks like this:

百

But that’s just when it’s by itself.  When you give it a few friends, it can get up to all kinds of mischief.  What kinds, you ask?  Well, let’s see.  We’ve got an unscrupulous lawyer, a greengrocer, an encyclopedia, a gathering of beautiful women, the highest possible level of achievement, a famous poetry collection featuring one poem each from 100 famous poets, a nonstandard way of reading a kanji, and whooping cough.  Sounds like a good start to a movie to me (though even if it didn’t, we know A Fan would still turn it into one).

A. 百人一首　B. 百科事典　C. 八百屋　D. 百花繚乱

E. 三百代言　F. 百姓読み　G. 百尺竿頭　H. 百日咳

“Says the woman who threw me into the deep end yesterday by all but forcing me to learn a song that can control people’s minds.”

“That was . . . come on, that was different!  I was desperate!”

“Aren’t you still?”  Peter stood up and looked down on her.  It was a very basic trick, but a good lawyer will use any advantage, including height, to get the upper hand on a witness.  “According to your plan, I—along with some group of mystery people to be named later—am going to have to perform one of these songs.  I think I proved yesterday that I’m not very good right now.  I need the practice.  And unless you want me going around working on the Beherrschunglied, which sounds pretty dangerous to me, you’re going to teach me something else.”

“I don’t feel like it,” she said, groaning.  “Come back tomorrow.”

He crossed his arms.  “I can wait just as long as you can.”

It was an absurd statement.  The old woman had literally waited more than seven months just to meet someone.  This was longer than Peter Hamlin had waited for anything in his entire life.  And yet . . .

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“You can add ‘persistence’ to that list of traits I may or may not possess.”

“Fine.”  She scowled again as she tried to think of the most meaningless thing she could teach him.  “Here, learn this; it’s absolutely pointless.”

“I’m so glad you decided to be so helpful.”  But he knew when to compromise.  Peter raised his flute to his lips and waited.

Event: Birth of Minamoto no Yoritomo, first Shogun of Japan
Year: 1147
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_Yoritomo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genpei_war

“You’re going to be playing that card a lot, aren’t you?” Peter said, grimacing.

“Hey, my deck only has one card.  But don’t worry about it.  I’m sure you can find people.  You seem resourceful.”

Peter shook his head.  “First I’m smart, now I’m resourceful . . . I don’t know what you’re basing all these claims on.”

“I’m basing them on the fact that if you’re not these things, then I’m going to stay stuck down here.”

“So . . . no pressure, then.”  Peter stared at the ceiling.  It wasn’t quite yellow, it wasn’t quite brown, and it wasn’t quite white, but it was certainly unpleasant-looking.  He wasn’t afraid of pressure—was he?

“You said you have a large repertoire of songs with mysterious powers,” he said.  “What are some of them?”

The woman suddenly felt tired.  It was a tiredness that had nothing to do with sleep or the lack thereof.  A week ago she would have thought that she’d be overjoyed to spend hours talking to someone who actually wanted to hear what she had to say, to explain in detail every aspect of her proposed escape plan and, really, her life in general.  But in actual practice, it was just tiring.  The kid was relentless with the questions, and she found there was actually a lot that she didn’t feel like explaining.  There was also a lot that she couldn’t explain.

“I don’t know.  There are hundreds, maybe millions of them.”  Out of those potential millions, the one she had thought of most over the preceding months inevitably came to mind.  “Like, suppose there’s a song that you associate so strongly with a particular place, it’s almost like they’re the same thing inside your head.  You hear the song, and all of a sudden it’s as though you’re actually in that place; you smell the smells and see the sights perfectly clearly in your mind.  Well, from there, it’s not much of a stretch for playing or singing that song to physically take you there, now is it?”

“You’re saying the song can teleport you?”

“I don’t know what the scientific term is, but one second you’re in one place, and then the next, you’re there.”

“It could be any sort of place?”

“Pretty much.  Any spot you have a particularly strong emotional connection to.”

“Could you teach me one of them?”

The woman’s irritation level was gradually rising.  “That’s . . . not the kind you can teach.  It’s kind of a personal thing.”

“Well, what’s one you can teach me?”

E. 立　F. 日　G. 木　H. 里

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?  Well, let’s see what kind of wholes turned up.

Seeking to recreate a bell, Theoman put together ‘metal’ and ‘bird’ and ended up with . . . a drill.  Well, they both make noise, certainly, though one of them is typically seen as more pleasant than the other.  The idea of a ‘mind-tree’ was very close to ‘think,’ but he didn’t quite get there–you need to stick an eye in there as well (this is not, however, the same character for ‘think’ that I had intended).  A sun and a village, with an extra line tossed in for good measure, make ‘quantity,’ presumably referring to the large quantity of sun in Sun Village, which is the main reason people like it so much.  Standing in a rice field sure seemed like a lock for ‘gather,’ but the character I was thinking of was gather in the sense of ‘assemble’ rather than ‘harvest.’  So you put birds on top of a tree, because that’s where birds assemble.  Turns out, if you stand on top of a rice field, and add a tail, you get . . . a dragon.  Go figure.

Shirley put B, D, and E together and came up with a pretty good ‘idea’ . . . that is, if you assume that she must have accidentally typed D instead of F.  Heart-bird-stand doesn’t get you much, but stand-sun-heart is an idea, alright.  I’ll make sure to give you guys a stone to work with in the future so you can take care of these birds more efficiently.

A Fan thinks he can make me look silly by making references to a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, but I still know a thing or two.  I remember the octopus scene from Deer Hunter.  At least, I assume there must have been an octopus scene, because that’s what A Fan built with his ’stand,’ ‘rice field,’ and ’sun’ (okay, to be fair, you have to stick in a few other parts as well to get an octopus, but with that combo, no other kanji comes closer).  Then again, if he had just left out that field, he could have made some real ‘noise.’  He could have also achieved a similar effect by putting together a bell, which, by his logic, is a combination of Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and about one-third of Deer Hunter.  Which leads us to the inevitable question: are these movies really that different from each other?

So, to review:

To build a bell: ’stand’ on a ‘village,’ with ‘metal’ on the left
To build a thought: ‘rice field’ over ‘heart/mind’
To build a sound: ’stand’ on the ’sun’ (that’d better have you making some sound, anyway)
To build a gathering: ‘bird’ on top of ‘tree’

I realize that was a bit hard, so let’s make the challenge slightly different this time.  I’m still going to give you a bunch of kanji parts and their meanings, but I’m not going to tell you which is which.  We’re going to assume that Theoman already knows what most of these are, anyway, so assembly will be his job: give me responsibility, a wizard, to like, and a swamp.  A Fan and Shirley can choose to attempt this as well, or they can take on the simpler (?) task of identifying the pieces: a person, a knife, a mouth, a woman, a child, a mountain, a king, and water.

A. 子　B. 王　C. 刀　D. 水

E. 山　F. 口　G. 人　H. 女

Event: Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII, is arrested on charges of treason, adultery, and incest
Year: 1536
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Boleyn

“Sorry about that.”  Peter didn’t know if a muffin was an appropriate way to apologize for making someone run into an invisible wall.  It wasn’t a situation he found himself in often.

The woman chuckled.  “At least you only had me do it once.  You have no idea how many times I tried it before I believed.”

“And this jailbreak,” Peter said, gazing at the old flute as if it were something completely unfamiliar.  “It’s going to involve some sort of song with weird, inexplicable powers, isn’t it?”

She watched him closely for signs of sarcasm before proceeding.  “How did you know?”

“Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered teaching me one yesterday.  It was a pretty ridiculous plan.  There were any number of simpler ways to get you out of those handcuffs, and you had hours to think of one.  But you decided to go with the preposterously complicated strategy because you knew that I would need to become familiar with this sort of thing anyway, and also as a test to see if I could handle it.”

She grimaced and decided not to tell him that she really hadn’t been able to come up with a better idea.  “You’re a lot smarter today than you were yesterday.”

“Anyone’s smarter when they’ve had time to think things over,” he replied drily.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.  I’ve had all the time in the world to think about my situation, and as you can see, I haven’t made a lot of progress.”

“And why is that?  You say that music is the way to escape, and music seems to be your field of expertise.  So why are you still here?”

His tone was casual, but his questions had a strong, demanding force to them.  He seemed so different from the helpless youth of the day before that the woman was put on guard.  The interrogation wasn’t outright unpleasant, but it was a little unnerving.

“There are two reasons, I think.”  The woman spoke very hesitantly, afraid of stretching the belief of her only potential helper to the snapping point.  She wasn’t quite sure why she believed these things herself.  “Keep in mind that I don’t know who put me down here or why, so I’m sort of guessing, here.  But the first reason’s obvious: I don’t know the right song.  There’s a lot of music out there that can . . . affect the world in ways beyond the ordinary, and I know . . . more of it than I can remember offhand.  But I sure don’t know any ‘Subway Station Escape Song.’”

“And you think that I do?”

“I think that someone does.  But you can work on that later.  Because the other problem, I think, is that we’re going to need more people.”

Peter frowned.  Part of the reason he had agreed to help was that he had naively believed that no one else would have to know about it.  “How many more?”

“I’m not sure.  But I do know that some songs are too potent to be performed by one person.  Whatever’s holding me in here is a doozy.  I don’t think a solo number’s going to cut it.”

“And where do you suggest I find these other band members?”

* * *

“Hey, Dizzy.  I was wondering . . . I mean, if you had the time . . . would you be interested in helping me out with something?  Playing your trumpet, that is.  It’s no big deal or anything, but I need some musicians for this project, and . . .”

Of course Peter didn’t actually ask his sister.  He didn’t learn that he would need to look for additional musicians until the following morning.  But even if he had known, he probably wouldn’t have asked her.  It may have been partly out of jealousy and a desire to not be overshadowed.  Deep down he understood that any halfway competent musician would be better than him, but . . . he just didn’t want it to be his sister.  On the other hand, even Peter had enough musical sense to realize that flute and trumpet would make a pretty poor duet combo.