Reflections on Paulbert Pontifex

Many people have been asking me if I will be in attendance at A Death Well Died, the memorial for and will reading of Paulbert F. Pontifex. As Pontifex was my predecessor at LUX and a longtime acquaintance, I will of course be present to remember this man and his contributions to the fields of technology and film entertainment.

It is only natural to expect that whatever Pontifex has left me in his will, it will in some way set me up for success in steering this company to greater heights. Rather, it would be natural to expect that, if Pontifex himself ever managed to make an ounce of intentional sense in his life.

The likelier story is that he has left everything up to a series of puzzles and esoteric riddles. He always was fond of making things infinitely more difficult than necessary. If that is the case, I would like to offer a word of advice to those who have a vested interest in this weekend’s festivities: nothing is off limits.

If Pontifex mentioned it, even in passing, it matters. If he wrote it on a memo thirty years ago and then crumpled that memo up and tossed it in his desk drawer, it matters. If he sent you broken up pieces of only half the picture in letters mailed to your home address with months between them, it most certainly matters.

Pontifex did the latter to me, on his last trip around the world. For the first half of it, he would send me a letter regularly. Then, mysteriously, after several months, he stopped. Since the map of this journey will be on display at A Death Well Died, I have no doubt that the itinerary of his trip is involved in one of his hare-brained puzzles.

The letters were long-winded and an utter pain to read, so I have condensed the information to only the essentials. From what I can tell, the first half of his world trip followed this precise trajectory:

NYC, USA to Paris, France

Paris, France to Rio De Janiero, Brazil

Rio De Janiero, Brazil to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea to Vladavostok, Russia

Whatever this puzzle requires, I do hope this information can be of some use to someone.