A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor

Manuscripts parlor, he was surprised to see the room outfitted as if in preparation for a siege. Someone had brought in a small refrigerator and a hot plate and a tea service for eight, in addition to a crate of apples, a bag of dried grasshopper legs, and a large store of peanut-butter jam squares.
    Someone has to be here at all times, Sally explained from behind the desk. Her hair was pulled back severely and contained in sparkling fishnet. She wasn’t wearing freckledot makeup; Leonard could see now that she didn’t need it.
    Let’s go in, she said, accepting antiseptic gloves from Peter as they entered the small room to the side. Inside, there was a cot, on the ground next to which someone had placed a torchlight and some books. Sally, probably, since her clutchbag was also there.
    What do you know about the Voynich? she asked.
    Leonard and Felix shrugged.
    Have a seat, she said. It’s time I explained. Don’t be uneasy: Peter is standing guard.
    For some reason, this made Leonard uneasy.
    Sit, Sally said. People always sit when I give my talks.
    She opened the cabinet and pointed mechanically at the book.
    This is the Voynich manuscript. The Voynich manuscript is the only unreadable book in the universe. It is written in a code that no one can understand. Emperor Rudolph II of Bohemia purchased this book in 1586, though the book is known to be older than that. The emperor was a strange man who amused himself with games and codes. He collected dwarves—Leonard and Felix knew better than to interrupt—and had a regiment consisting solely of giants. The manuscript was sold to him possibly by John Dee—an English navigator and spy who shared Rudolph’s interest in magic and the occult. The manuscript passed through many hands, eventually being found in 1912 by Wilfrid M. Voynich. Hence the Voynich manuscript.
    The Voynich contains 246 quarto pages, of which 212 contain mysterious drawings. These drawings are of botanical, astrological-astronomical, biological, and pharmaceutical subjects, which is to say, they’re of plants, stars and planets, and so on.
    Sally removed the dustproof cloth, which Leonard noted was not the one in which she’d blown her delicate nose. She placed it on the scholar table, then carefully opened the book so that Leonard and Felix could from that distance see drawings of plants—book-size versions of the drawings on the wall, which Felix was about to remark on out loud, when Leonard, sensing Felix’s impending irruption, pinched his side. She covered the book again with the cloth.
    This is where my lecture usually ends, Sally said. Because this is where it gets interesting. The Cathars are convinced that the Voynich reveals the secret location of the Holy Grail, though they are utterly unable to prove it. They’d like very much for it to be so because they don’t have much left in the way of documentation. If they can crack the code and prove the book is theirs, they might attract new members. The Strawberry Parfait ice cream chain isn’t exactly bringing them in.
    I didn’t know—
    That Parfait is Cathar? Exactly! They’ve got no outreach, no philosophy they’re willing to share with their customers, and besides, once you’re fully initiated you have to starve yourself to death, and who wants that? But Parfait lucre helped establish this university. They’re strangling Voynich studies: they’ll only allow research that supports their point of view! We Latter-Day Baconians and some other inconsequential groups have been forced underground, practically.
    Baconians? Leonard asked. He couldn’t help himself. He had to know everything there was to know about Sally: if she was a Baconian, he had to know what that meant.
    You don’t know anything, do you? Sally said.
    Leonard and Felix shook their heads.
    I’ll have to digress, then, won’t I? Roger Bacon was an English scientist, scholar, occultist,