When my nephew asked what foods could be substituted for flour while baking cookies, I though he was being a wiseass. The year before, I used Ritz crackers instead of potatoes when making potato salad. It did not taste good. It reminded me of the time my mother used whole Cheerios as breading for fried chicken. Scarred from the culinary experiences, I haven’t eaten crackers or Cheerios since.

After searching online for possible substitutions, I happened upon a website that provided a variety of recipes. Most of the suggested dishes were limited to six ingredients and appeared to be missing several key items. The cookie recipe, for example, listed honey, enriched flour, large eggs, pecans, mint chocolate chips, and evaporated milk. Sugar and butter wasn’t included. There was a meatloaf casserole that didn’t include ground beef.

The cooking instructions for everything on the site were also strange. Regardless of the recipe, all of the cold desserts required chilling the prepared concoction at thirty eight degrees; the heated meals at seventy seven. I had never seen cooking instructions that specified the number of minutes and seconds. The measurements appeared wrong as well.

Following the recipes seemed to encourage a result no different from eating Cheerio fried chicken. It would be memorable in all the wrong ways.

Maybe the chef was a mad genius or whatever proficiency exhibited in the kitchen didn’t translate to proofreading recipes for typographical errors. It didn’t matter. I wrote off the experience as another example of internet insanity and shut off my computer.

Later that day, while off-roading through the woods with my nephew, we stopped to rehydrate and rest before continuing with our ride. When he asked where exactly we were, I pulled out a handheld GPS and looked at the coordinates. Displayed on the screen were the longitude and latitude, listed in degrees, minutes, and seconds. The information triggered a thought.

When I returned home, I took a closer look at the recipes on the cooking website from earlier. The instructions were listed one of two ways. Either chill at thirty nine degrees for fifty four minutes, twenty six seconds, or heat at seventy seven degrees for two minutes and twelve seconds. It had to be a coincidence.

The screen name for the original poster of the recipes was listed as “North West”. The conspiracy theorist in me considered whether it was all an elaborate hoax perpetrated by one of the Kardashian children.

What purpose was served hiding coordinates in plain sight, like Easter eggs hidden in video games? Was it a geocaching treasure hunt?

I studied each recipe trying to make sense of it all. There was a peculiar pattern to the way the ingredients were arranged in every recipe. The first letter of each spelled out something.

“H-E-L-P-M-E,” I said aloud. “Help me?”

I didn’t know who needed help or what they wanted to be rescued from, but someone was in trouble. Something had to be done.