8. The Edam Age
Once I had recovered from the link, I made my way to the well. I entered the Water Droplet value onto the carton, 1/4. Once I had prepared my wits for this age, which is supposedly made backwards, I linked.
I found myself in deep fog. The only thing I could see was a strange looking cylindrical clock, taller than myself. It was set to 4:00.
I made my way into the clock and found an hourglass and a metal panel with three strange dial controls with values around them. Everything seemed vaguely familiar. Then I remembered... the code for this puzzle in front of me is in Torus' Edam journal. I entered in the values 2, 6 and 7 where they fitted into the strange dials, noticing that the 10 and the 9 were not available. In Torus's journal, the were was a scribble "Linear to # 10". I wonder what this meant.
There are also strange symbols, which change for each value, on each dial. I wrote them down, just in case:
1: Triangle
2: Triangle
3: Arc
4: Sideways T
5: Sideways T
6: Two Dots
7: Arc
8: Arc
9: Unavailable
10: Unavailable
11: Two Dots.
I pressed the small blue button in the centre of the panel and four more controls slid into view. From left to right, the symbols on the controls were, Two Dots, Sideways T, Triangle, Arc.
I pressed the symbols in order, from 1 to 9, but then trouble began. After much fiddling, I discovered that the symbol "Linear to # 10" was the one I needed. On the dials, if you set the two left-hand dials to 1 and 2, and draw an imaginary line between them, you find that it is linear to an imaginary line draw between 10 and 11. Since the symbol for both 1 and 2 is the Triangle, I reasoned that the symbol I needed to take the place of 10 and 11 was the Triangle. I pressed the symbols in the following sequence:
Triangle, Triangle, Arc, Tilted T, Tilted T, Two Dots, Arc, Arc, Triangle, Two Dots.
This turned out to be correct, because the four buttons slid out of view, and the sand in the bottom of the hourglass rose to the top of the hourglass. This age is made backwards. The right portion of the milker combination then slid into view: Salt Shaker, Water Droplet, Pitchfork.
The sand in the top of the hourglass turned into a linking panel. Amazing.
After recording everything, I placed my palm on the hourglass, and linked back to Mylk.