by K. Makansi
When I arrive, I rap lightly on the metal so I don’t startle Firestone. It’s more out of habit than courtesy; I don’t think anything could shake him. Firestone’s got messy black curls and angular features that don’t quite all fit together right. His eyebrows and his chin are too pointy; his nose seems angled in the wrong direction. His real name isn’t Firestone, but no one knows what it is or who started calling him “Firestone” in the first place. He’s one of the few Resistance members at our base from a factory town. Eli says he split off when he was about twenty and lived out in the woods for a year or so by himself, and no one really knows why. One of our hunting parties happened across him one day, half naked and living in a tree. He’d gone more than a little crazy. But when they brought him back to base, it turned out he’s an experienced pilot and a whiz mechanic who can take things apart and put them back together better than they were before. He’s pretty quiet, but Eli’s managed to get on his good side by rehabbing old machinery with him. And I think they get along because they’re each, in their own ways, a little insane.
“Heya, Remy,” he calls. “Guess Jahnu got word to you that your mum’s calling in?”
“Yeah.” I sit down at the chair next to him and pull on the big old-fashioned headphones. They’re antiquated, but I’ve gotten used to them by now. I flip the call switch, and instantly I hear my mom’s breath.
“Sorry,” I whisper apologetically. “I forgot we were supposed to talk.”
“It’s okay.” Her voice is soothing but does nothing to calm my nerves. Every time I talk to them, I just realize how much I miss them—and how much I’m afraid to lose them. “I wasn’t worried. I just wanted to make sure we got to talk before you head out on this next mission.”
“I know.”
“Dad can’t make it right now. I’m sorry, but—”
“Why not? Is everything okay?” Panic lances through my chest.
“He’s fine.” I can almost see the reassuring smile flit onto her face like a little butterfly. “He’s just out gathering food. We’re a little short, so he went to forage.” I sigh. The knowledge that they’re on the verge of running out of food doesn’t do much to calm my nerves.
“Are you guys going to be okay?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“We’ll survive. We’ve been in worse situations. The Director has arranged another food drop for us in a few days.”
“Okay.” I try to convince myself that this is okay, that they’re not going to starve, that everything is going to be fine. “How’s the mission going?”
“It’s going well. We’ve had a lot of success at this Farm. We’re really starting to see a change, and more and more people are coming to us for help, for medicine, for good food.”
“Is that why you’re short?”
“Your father is more liberal about giving away food than I would recommend,” she says wryly. I laugh weakly. My father, the dreamer, the idealist. Always thinking that change is just around the corner, that bread and fish will materialize out of nowhere, that people will change their minds if you just say the right words at the right time. Of course he wouldn’t stick to the ration limits.
“So what’s the mission this time?” she asks, changing the subject. “I know you can’t tell me where, but …” Her voice trails off.
“It’s another seed bank raid. Rhinehouse is looking for information.” I can’t tell her this, but we’re looking for information that might help us solve the DNA puzzle. Even with Rhinehouse’s more sophisticated machinery and computing power, we still haven’t cracked the code, and Eli and Rhinehouse are clearly getting frustrated. Rhinehouse got the notion in his head that my grandfather may have left some old research notes at Seed Bank Carbon, so that’s where we’re headed. If Rhinehouse is right and Granddad did leave some of his old notes there, there’s a slight chance they might be able to help us out. “It should be easy. Just like last time. In and out, two hours tops, if all goes according to plan.”
“Be careful out there. Come home safe, okay?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I choke out, but the words catch in my throat. No one in the Resistance has been caught or apprehended yet, but that can only last for so long. Eventually the Sector is going to get smart, and they’ll catch us somehow. We’re trying to stay one step ahead of them, but who knows how long that will last?
“Okay, I need to go. I love you, darling. I’ll talk to you after the mission, okay?”
“Yeah. I love you guys, too. Tell Dad. Bye, Mom.”
I hear the click on the other end, and I know I’ve been disconnected. Reluctantly, I lean forward and flip off the switch on my end, as well. I take the headphones off and look at Firestone, who is slouching in his chair, brushing his long hair out of his face.
“All good, little lady?” he asks. I shrug.
“As good as I could hope for, I guess. How’s your new batch of beer coming?”
“Not too bad. Just about to rack. Making a darker brew this time. Added some hops and spice, too.”
“How the hell did you get hops?” I demand.
“Rhinehouse started growing them for us a while back.”
“Nice.” I grin at him. Firestone and Eli have been brewing beer for the last year or so, and their concoctions are becoming increasingly popular around base as they get better and better at it. At first, the only people who would go near the beers were me and my friends. But in the last few months, the brews have gotten so popular that Eli and Firestone have started taking requests, and the Director gave them each two hours per week to work on the brews, arguing that it’s good for morale—even though we know she really just wants a few more bottles for herself.
I hear footsteps outside the comm center, and to my great surprise, Rhinehouse appears in the door frame.
“Hey, old man,” Firestone drawls. Rhinehouse glares at him but says nothing. I’m astonished, but I keep it to myself. I would never get away with calling him that!
“Firestone,” he says, rapping on the door with his fist. “Did you already lose Brinn?”
“Call’s been disconnected,” Firestone says, nodding.
“Damn,” Rhinehouse swears. Firestone sits up and starts pressing some controls.
“I can try to get her back, if you want,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rhinehouse grumps, and then turns away. Just when I think he’s gone, though, he pokes his head back through the door frame. “Firestone!” he barks, though it’s not like either of us need the call to attention. “When’ll that next batch of beer be ready?”
“Nary another week or so,” Firestone responds with a lazy grin. “You lookin’ after more already? We just gave you twenty bottles two weeks ago.”
“I just want to see how my hops are doing,” Rhinehouse growls.
“Oh, they’re just fine, old man, don’t worry. You’ll have your brew soon enough.” I can’t hold back a laugh at this, but I swallow it when Rhinehouse turns his narrowed eye on me.
“What are you looking at?” Without waiting for an answer, he turns and stomps down the hall.
“Wait!” I call after him. I nod hurriedly to Firestone by way of thanks, and then dash out the door after Rhinehouse. “Rhinehouse—”
“What?” he snaps, turning. I recoil. Our recent interactions have been almost pleasant, so I’d forgotten what a grouch he can be sometimes.
“I just … I wanted to ask why you wanted to talk to my mother.” He glares at me for a moment before deciding to respond.
“Just wanted to ask if she knew anything about this DNA you kids have gotten your hands on,” he says, his eye fixed solidly on me, unblinking. “As Kanaan’s daughter, I thought she might know something.” He releases me from his gaze and glares at a spot on the wall. “Was never her area of interest, anyway,” he mutters.
“Okay.” I don’t know what else to say. As usual, despite my best efforts, I just can’t seem to make the old man like me. “Sorry. I was just wondering.” I turn to leave.
“Remy,” he says, which surprises me. I turn back to him. He opens his mouth, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to say something nice, something conciliatory. But then he shuts it again.
“Tell Eli to meet me at my lab after the meal,” he says finally. “We need to go over mission plans again.” I nod, and he turns and harrumphs off.
****
After dinner, I find myself huddled up in our little broom closet again, crammed into this tight space with Soren as we pore endlessly over the A, C, G, and T combinations left for us by my grandfather. Soren takes his usual mathematical approach to the problem and begins testing different algorithms and cryptographic codes, searching for patterns that could translate to something, anything. I take up my tablet again and use the holographic projector to twist and spin the strings of DNA, zooming in and out, staring at the coiled double helix and hoping desperately it will snake itself into something meaningful. But it doesn’t.
Sometime later, Soren turns to me and says, “Remy, come look at this.” His blue eyes look tired and pale in the low light of the monitor, and I have a sudden, strange urge to wrap my arms around him and hug him. I fight that instinct and instead stand up and pull my chair over to his monitor screen.
“Look here,” he says, pointing at two different lines in the sequence he’s highlighted. “These two sequences are the same. Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven base pairs, twice in a row, perfectly identical. That can’t be coincidence, right?”
I stare at them for a minute, trying to process what he’s saying. Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven base pairs … perfectly identical…. I scan the rows he’s highlighted, trying to confirm there are no inconsistencies.
“Show me where those sequences are on the chain.”
He pulls up the picture of the bacterial cluster Hawthorne found the DNA in.
“The first instance of the repetition was found here,” he points, “in what Hawthorne labeled cell 137.” He pulls up a molecular image of the DNA found in that particular cell and zooms in on the string of molecules. “It’s located on this edge of this petal.” He then points out the other repetition, located on the 139th chromosome. “We may have been missing these repetitions because they’re so large. None of the other algorithms we’ve been using would have detected them.” He pauses. Then: “That’s also a prime number.”
I congratulate myself silently for knowing what that means. He does a few things on the computer, and two more sequences pop up.
“Holy shit,” he mutters.
“What?” I ask.
“There’s two more repeating sequences. Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.”
“That’s only two more base pairs.”
“I know. It means they’re twin primes.”
“What’s that?”
He sighs. I’m sure he wishes Kenzie or Eli or Jahnu or anybody besides me was here right now.
“So, prime numbers are numbers that are indivisible by anything but themselves and one, right?”
I nod.
“And as you get into bigger and bigger numbers, primes become fewer and fewer—and there’s more and more space between them. But every now and then you’ll come across two that are right next to each other, with only one other number in between them. Three and five are twin primes. Eleven and thirteen. Forty-one and forty-three. But the higher you go, the fewer there are.”
“Okay, I get it. So what’s the significance of these two primes?”
“I don’t know yet. There might be more. Those might be the important sequences—we could pull those out and test them again for simple translations.” He types rapidly into the computer for a few minutes and then sits back and waits. I can hear him breathing in our cramped room as I hover over him, watching the monitors flash and glow. I try not to look at him, to admire his narrowed, pensive blue eyes and the slightest blonde stubble forming around his chin, but I can’t help examining him out of the corner of my eyes. The array of cells on the screen suddenly flashes, but this time there’s nothing.
“Damn,” he swears.
“What does that mean?”
“I put in a search for the next few pairs of twin primes, but there are no more repeating sequences.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t know. Maybe those two numbers—13,997 and 13,999—are significant somehow. Maybe they contribute to the decryption algorithm. Maybe it’s just coincidence.”
“I doubt it,” I respond stoutly. “It’s got to be a clue somehow.”
“We’re getting somewhere, at any rate.” He grins up at me with a cheeky expression and then turns back to the computer and starts typing in a series of unrecognizable commands.
But a few hours later, we still haven’t found anything else. No more twin primes, no more repeating sequences, no more nothing. Just as Soren’s getting ready to power everything down, he pauses.
“I wonder if it’s an RSA encryption,” he comments.
“A what?”
“It’s a type of algorithm that requires two large prime numbers to decrypt. I remember studying it in my first class on algorithms at the SRI,” he says. “And—I just realized.” He pulls up a visual of the cells the repeating sequences were found on. “One hundred thirty-seven and one hundred thirty-nine. They’re twin primes, too. That has to be a clue. It’s got to be the RSA algorithm.”
“But what is that?”
“It’s a type of encryption. What it means is that two large prime numbers are used to scramble the initial information, and then a code word is used to reorganize the information. Your grandfather could have used twin primes as a clue. The fact that these repeating sequences were found on cell 137 and 139 only makes it more likely that he was using the RSA algorithm to encrypt the information. The problem is, we still don’t know the key.”
“What’s the key?”
“Well, if these two primes are the correct ones, and your grandfather was leaving us a clue, then that’s all well and good, but we still don’t have the keyword. We have to have a keyword to unscramble the information.”
“Try sunflower,” I suggest. “That’s what the DNA looks like, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s the keyword.”
A few minutes later, Soren has modified one of Eli’s decryption programs to use the RSA algorithm with the two primes we found. He types sunflower into the code for the decryption key and runs the program. What comes up is a meaningless jumble of ones and zeroes.
“Fuck,” he swears. “I almost thought we had it.”
“Do you think it’s the algorithm that’s wrong?” I ask nervously.
“No, the more I think about it, the more I’m almost certain it’s the RSA algorithm. There’s only one reason why your grandfather would have coded two repeating sequences into the DNA—and it’s statistically almost impossible that those repetitions, in such large strings, would have occurred randomly. You were right. It’s a clue. And there’s no other repetitions. It’s got to be the RSA algorithm.”
“Maybe sunflower just isn’t the right keyword,” I say, dejected. There’s an infinite number of words that my grandfather could have used. How will we ever find the right one?
“Maybe not. But we’ll leave that problem for Eli, Jahnu, and Kenzie in the morning. I’m exhausted. I’ll write them a little note so they know what we found. They can check my work. Maybe Jahnu knows some other encryptions that are based on prime numbers.”
“Okay,” I yawn. “Let’s get out of here.” He doesn’t get up to join me.
“Have a good night, Remy. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Aren’t you coming?” I ask, surprised—and maybe a little disappointed.
“I’ll follow you in a sec. I need to shut the computers down.” He doesn’t look at me. I sigh, and head out the door.
Despite my mental and physical exhaustion, I can’t sleep once I’m in bed. I just lie there, staring up at the ceiling. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about keeping K
enzie up—evidently her moonlight soiree with Jahnu is going well enough that she hasn’t come back yet. There are too many things pressing in on me for me to sleep. The mission, the DNA, my parents—the worry and stress cycles through my brain in a seemingly infinite loop. The events of the last weeks seem to swirl around me, painting the insides of my mind with vivid images and emotions: bitter, happy, sweet, and angry all rolled into one.
But there’s something missing, a hole inside me, a vacant and empty space that needs to be filled.
12 - REMY
Fall 89, Sector Annum 105, 03h12
Gregorian Calendar: December 18
I stare into the darkness, my night-vision contact lenses illuminating the world with ultraviolet and infrared colors. I was so excited—so excited—about this mission, about the possibility that we’d find something, some clue left behind by my grandfather that would help us crack the code. But now I’m anxious. The air is too heavy, too tense, and something feels wrong. Nearly invisible bugs buzz in my ears, and I swat them away. I shiver again. It must be ten degrees centigrade: a chilly winter night. I wrap and unwrap my fingers around my weapon; the hard grip and the weight reassure me somehow. My breath is steady and quiet, but faster than normal. The faint sweet scent of rain lingers in the air.
Eli, Jahnu, and I were selected to go into the seed bank facility itself to search for the information. Eli proposed that since I knew my granddad the best, I might be able to help figure out what was important and what wasn’t—assuming we find anything of his, of course. Kenzie and Soren will be keeping watch outside, and Firestone’s hovering somewhere above and away from us with our dented old airship. He had dropped us off about a kilometer away from the facility to avoid detection by cameras or any guards who might be present.
Seed Bank Carbon is well-hidden in the ruins of an old industrial city. Collapsing factories and the remains of vast manufacturing complexes sprawl into the distance. It’s been centuries since anything rolled off an assembly line here. The name Cavalier Electric looms ominously in dark, printed letters at the top of the building. From the outside, you would never think there was an array of high-tech equipment inside, designed to manufacture, engineer, and preserve thousands of seeds per day, operated remotely by OAC scientists back in Okaria. It looks like everything else on the horizon.