Time and Temperature - Part 3

Each of 4 parts will end with a code that you may choose to solve using information within the story before moving on. The next part will reveal the answer, in case you prefer to simply read the tale.

- 3 -

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

•

“Grab the one with ‘C’ on the spine,” Allen said, pointing at a long row of shiny, dark blue hardback books that lined a bottom shelf in his dad’s office. I slid the heavy volume out and ran my finger over the gold letters on the cover.

Encyclopedia Britannica.

“You look up the Caesars,” he instructed. “I’ll check the code book.”

I was surprised to see that many of the pages were dog-eared. There were passages underlined in shaky ink. I didn’t have to look very far before finding the right entry. The information covered several pages, but in just the first paragraph, the number jumped out at me.

“Twelve,” I said. “There were twelve Caesars in Rome.”

“Nice!” He pumped a fist in the air without looking up from the book in his lap. “It says here that a Caesar cipher shifts the alphabet a certain number of letters, you just need to know how many.”

“This is crazy,” I said, amazed that Allen had access to all this information. “Let’s write it out.”

“Wait,” he said. “I want to try something really cool.”

He reached around to the back of the massive computer covering half the surface of his dad’s desk. The machine came to life with a warm hum and large, orange block letters filled the screen. ‘IBM.’ He began typing several rows of letters, numbers, and symbols. One day in science class, we had followed instructions on a worksheet for a simple code that made our names scroll diagonally across the monitor, but this was light years beyond anything that I understood.

“There,” he giggled.

“What is it?”

“A program that should decode the message. You type in the encrypted code and the key number, you hit Enter, and it should shift the letters for us and spit out the answer.”

“No way. Are you serious?”

“Try it.”

I typed in the random letter I’d written on my arm, then the number twelve, glanced at Allen’s pale nodding face, and hit the Enter key.

A second later, new letters came to digital life just below the code.

His eyes on the word made me uncomfortable. Angry. “Thanks, Al,” I said, folding the paper and shoving it deep into my pocket. “That was really cool. I’ve gotta go.”

•

I came home to a metal garbage can spitting flames in the driveway, thick clouds of black smoke pouring out like a greasy tornado. My mom stood there with a rag over her face cradling a box of my cassette tapes and magazines.

“What the hell,” I half-screamed, though these material belongings had already begun to lose their hold on me in my journey toward more existential pursuits. She tossed a handful of Metallica and Black Sabbath into the kiln where they immediately bubbled and curled up like big dead bugs.

“Satan is coming,” she said through the bandana. “I seen it on TV, on Sally.”

“Mom, what are you talking about.”

She dumped the rest of the box in, and the flames whooshed out at me. Combined with the nuclear summer heat, I could feel the air around the can singe my eyelashes and arm hairs. The reek of burnt plastic made my head pulse. She walked to the door, mumbling something.

In the kitchen, she flung the refrigerator door open and pulled out two cans of grape pop, handed me one, and fell into a chair beside the table. Sweat rolled down both our soot-darkened faces.

“What was on the TV, mom?”

She pulled the cloth down from her nose and mouth.

“The devil, Mark. He don’t sleep. He just schemes on how to get you.”

“You don’t go to church,” I said. “I though you didn’t believe in that shit.”

“There! See! Here you are cussin’ me. That’s Satan. Just cause I don’t go to church doesn’t mean I can’t see it.” She drank down half the can and breathed out a silent burp. “He finds new ways to get into kids’ heads. And we just let him right in. Through the technology. The tapes, the Walkman, slithering right into your ears, to your brain. You play ‘em backwards and suddenly you’re killing babies.” She made a sound like a laugh with the humor sucked out.

“You can’t just burn my stuff, mom.” I sat down and opened the cold can. “It’s all I got.”

“It’s the same with the TV. Movies. Even the phone lines,” she said, staring past me at the wall. “He can get us right through the goddam phone.”

•

I waited until the shower was running, my knee bouncing the whole time.

“Thank you for calling your Lanc—”

“Relativity,” I nearly shouted into the receiver.

There was a pause. “You are taking this seriously, I see. That is encouraging. There may be hope for you yet.”

I smiled widely and wondered if he could hear my lips stretching over my teeth.

“Einstein was correct in his assertions about time, but relativity extends beyond the space-time continuum. Everything in existence is relative. What is good for you may be bad for another. What is right for him could be wrong for her. Morality over here is evil over there. There are no absolutes in the universe. No true north inside infinity. Therefore, there can be no good behavior or bad behavior. It is all just behavior, most of which is completely outside of conscious control. The only question is how one chooses to harvest power for the purpose of survival and flourishing.”

There again was that shimmer, warping and coloring reality like oil in a puddle.

“The key is supremacy.” He said this with a voice that seemed almost human.

I wrote what I could, trying not to miss a syllable.

“In this time, your time, humans are like isolated trees. They stand as islands, individuals, affected only by those nearby. But under your feet, in the earth, roots are growing. Before long, great networks of cables and fibers will connect more and more of these nodes. Computers will speak to each other. Phones will be cut of their cords to become invisibly linked by radio frequency signals. Ideas will spread faster than any virus ever could. The man who controls this flow of information will have access to limitless power. You see, one may possess the will and may see the goal, but real power requires another ingredient.”

“What? What ingredient? What do I need?”

“Le chiffrage indéchiffrable.”

“Is that French? I don’t understand.” I thought I might start crying.

“And yet, understand you must. Write and decipher your future. Ready?”

“I’m ready.” My voice trembled. My pen shook.

AHUCYQNEC

“If we speak again, it will be for the last time,” he said and sounded almost sad.

•