Under Vanishing Skies
Page 14
“Any seconds?” Ahmed said.
What was she doing?
Ahmed clacked his gavel loudly and he said, “The motion is dropped. Now, can we continue with the vote?”
I didn’t say anything. I just stared at Shannon.
“Alright. Will all those in favor of the list please raise your hands.”
I watched as each person around the table raised their hands. Shannon looked at me with sad eyes and lifted her hand into the air. And just like that, it was over. The list was final.
Chapter 12
I didn’t wait around to talk to Shannon or to see if she would come and talk to me. There wasn’t enough time to deal with that bullshit. I had to get back to Lohifushi and deal with real problems.
I sent Kamish a message and he picked me up a couple hours later, around six. We raced against the dark clouds advancing from the east and reached Lohifushi just as the storm hit. Kamish ran for cover in the equipment shed next to the old bait shack, but I braved the pelting sleet and rain. The weather fit my mood.
William wasn’t in the hut when I arrived, which was a good thing. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I changed into something dry and unpacked my bag. Reaching inside, I pulled out a mostly empty bottle of moonshine and poured myself a shot. If there was ever a time that I really needed a drink, it was now. I choked on the first sip, but drank through it, enjoying the warmth as it passed through me.
My mind circled a single question: what was I going to tell William? I couldn’t convince Shannon to delay the vote, I couldn’t decrypt the messages, and worst of all…I had let myself love that kid.
The realization of it all hit me with the impact of a helojumper slamming into the ocean. I guess I got what I deserved...a big stinking pile of shit to deal with.
***
The sound of beeping pulled me out of my dreams and into the conscious world that I had tried to escape. I opened my eyes and stared at the vaulted ceiling. It took me a moment to get my bearings. I was in my own bed. I reached for my data mat, but it wasn’t beeping. The sound came from William’s data mat. I looked over and saw him sitting cross-legged on his bed, acting like he didn’t know that I was awake.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I asked.
He shrugged while keeping his eyes glued on the game.
“What time is it?”
“Lunch time,” he said.
I rolled into a sitting position and put my hands on either side of my head. When the pain subsided, I said, “You’re probably wondering why I’m back so soon.”
“Nope.”
“You’re not even a little curious?”
“Nope,” he repeated. “Everyone got the message from the Council. It said that the list was approved. I figured you’d be back.” He tilted his data mat and tapped the screen, seemingly pleased with whatever results the move had netted.
“Did it say when the list would be released?”
“The day before the shuttle takes people up to the ship. Helen said it had something to do with maintaining public order and stuff.”
That sounded like something Ahmed would say, but I knew the truth. That bastard didn’t want people to look too closely at the list. If they did, he would have a full blown revolt on his hands. And by waiting until the day after the ship arrived, the captain wouldn’t have any reason to suspect anything was wrong.
I stood up and almost fell back onto the bed as pain shot through my head. William continued to play his game, and I wondered if he knew something was wrong. If he did, then his acting was getting better.
I watched as he played the game. He chewed his lower lip. Rick used to do the same thing, usually when he faced a particularly difficult technical challenge. Rick loved challenges…the tougher the better.
“William?”
He scowled, paused the game, and looked up. “What?”
“Where’s the data mat that I asked you to keep safe for me. Jin’s data mat?”
“Outside.”
“Can you get it for me?”
“Now? Can I finish this level first.”
“Now…please.”
He sighed, set his data mat on the bed and stomped outside. I walked over to the window and watched him shimmy up a palm tree. He scaled the tree as easily as most people walk down the street. He climbed down with the data mat clenched in his teeth. As he entered the room, he tossed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said.
He was already playing his game again. I could tell that he was pissed. I couldn’t blame him. I’d violated one of our new rules: never bother your roommate when he’s playing a video game.
I went out onto the front deck and plopped down in a chair. I had three days before the list was made public, which wasn’t much time. If I could prove that Ahmed was involved with the pirates, even if it didn’t have anything to do with the list, it might give the ship’s captain enough reason to take a good hard look at the list. At this point, I didn’t care if the captain knew anyone on the list or not. At least he wasn’t under Ahmed’s thumb, and that was good enough for me.
***
I ran my hand thought my hair.
Five hours! Five hours and nothing. It had to be here.
My stomach growled. It wanted something to eat. I decided to take its suggestion.
Helen was in the kitchen preparing dinner when I arrived. She turned and smiled when she saw me.
“Well, well, well...you weren’t kidding about coming back soon, now were you? Can I get you something to drink? How about some mango juice?”
“What is it with you and Mohamed? Why are you always pushing the mango juice?” I sat on a stool next to the butcher’s block. “How about a hot cup of chicory? I could smell it brewing all the way down by the beach.”
“Coming right up.” She went to the stove and filled a mug. I took the mug and said, “Thanks.” Then I took a sip. It wasn’t like the coffee I used to drink every morning at the corner bakery back home, but it was hot and bitter. It did the trick.
“No worries, dear,” she said. “So...the list is final, huh? I guess that means we’ll be saying goodbye to William and a few others soon.” Her voice cracked, “It’ll be hard to say goodbye to him.” She looked at me.
To hell with it. I had to tell her sooner or later. “He’s not going.”
She froze, teapot still in hand. “What? Not going? That can’t be. But you said—.”
“I know what I said, but I can’t send him up there unless I know what’s going on.”
Tears began to spill down her cheeks. “I don’t understand.”
So I told Helen everything. I told her about the list, and how Ahmed used Viyaja to threaten everyone on the Council, including me. I told her about Jin and the messages he’d intercepted and how I believed that Ahmed was in cahoots with the pirates. And I told her about North Point and what had happened there, including the video conference where I saw Jamal.
“So now you understand, don’t you? I can’t send him up there...not without knowing what they’re up to,” I said.
I could tell she didn’t fully understand, but at least she had stopped crying. She dried her eyes with her apron and stood up straight with her chest pushed out. “Well then...you better get cracking.”
“I’ve been cracking ever since I got my hands on Jin’s data mat. I’m just not finding anything useful. He was a clever guy...too clever.”
She walked over and took my empty cup, stared me in the eyes, and said, “Poppy cock! You are just as clever as he was. I knew Jin too, you know. He used to come in here and have tea with me sometimes back when you boys were putting up that tower. Such a sweet man.”
Raising my eyebrows, I said, “Sweet? Not exactly the adjective I would use to describe him. Smart, yes. Clinical, definitely. But sweet...no.”
“Well I guess you didn’t know him as well as you thought. All the man used to talk about was his family. He went on and on about them. Used to say how the only thing important in his life was his family. They
meant everything to him, you know.”
I knew that he was a family man, but he didn’t talk about them much to me. Maybe he knew the pain that it would cause. The only time I remember him mentioning something about family was when he spouted off those stupid Chinese proverbs like ‘A happy family is but an earlier heaven’ and ‘The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.’ His favorite was ‘A man searches the world for what he needs and returns home to find it.’
I jumped to my feet and said, “That’s it, Helen. It has to be. You’re a genius!”
I kissed her on the cheek and ran out of the kitchen. As I ran past the tables in the dining room, I heard Helen say, “Glad to be of help.”
***
William was still on his bed playing video games when I returned. He gave me a quizzical look as I grabbed Jin’s data mat and sat down.
By now, I knew the folders and their contents better than the trail around this island. Every folder was meticulously labeled and all of them contained files related to the IICN or the satellite hacking project. The only exception was the one labeled ‘Family.’ It was the one I had barely examined. It only contained photos and videos of his family, some taken in China, but most on the island.
I created a new folder and then copied each picture into it. Then I searched through his apps until I found a pattern recognition tool.
It took the tool about ten minutes to analyze the first picture in the folder. After I finished running the tenth picture through the app and I received another negative match, I said, “Shit! It’s gotta be here.”
“What are you doing?” William asked.
“Huh,” I said, looking up to find William peering over my shoulder. “Oh, it’s kind of complicated.”
“I’m not stupid, you know. I wrote that video game on my own.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I smiled. “It’s a tool that your dad, Jin, and I had used to analyze signal patterns over the network. It’s pretty basic, uses something called an SVN model. That stands for Support Vector Network.”
He nodded as if he understood, but I could tell from the expression on his face that I had already lost him.
“The SVN model recognizes data patterns by using a non-probabilistic binary linear classifier regression algorithm.”
“Oh.” He nodded again. “So what kind of pattern are you looking for?”
“That’s just it...I don’t know. I think Jin left me some kind of message embedded in one or more of these photos.”
His face brightened up. “I get it. It’s like those holograms. The ones you stare at and then eventually you see a hidden picture inside?”
“That’s right. But to find an embedded picture, you need to know how to look at it. It’s not as easy as you’d think.”
There was a whole academic field dedicated to it called steganography. I wasn’t an expert in the field. Hell, I barely passed the class in college.
“So if you don’t know how to look for it, how can you find it?” He said.
“I configured the app to look for any known patterns. Here, see?” I pointed to the screen. “I set the pattern probability to ninety nine percent. The tool analyzes the pixels that make up the picture.”
A window popped up on the data mat to let me know that it didn't find any patterns. I selected the next photo in the list, a recent family shot taken in front of Jin’s hut, and I let the tool do its thing.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” William asked.
“No. It just takes time. Probably be another few hours before—”
A window popped up again, but this time it read:
POSITIVE HIT: 99.999% CERTAINTY
PATTERN FOUND: RIEMANN ZETA-FUNCTION
“Holy shit!” I said.
William leaned over and read the screen. “What’s a Riemann Zeta-Function?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea.” Math wasn’t my strong suit. “But whatever it is, it’s the key to seeing the hidden picture.”
After a few minutes of reconfiguring the tool, I had it pull out the bits that fell within the pattern and then reassemble them into a binary file. When it was done, I opened the file with a text editor.
“That sneaky son of a bitch!” Smiling, I turned and grabbed William by the shoulders. “We did it. Look, there’s the message.”
Stepping back out of my reach, he said, “You did it. I didn’t do nothing. I just asked stupid questions, that’s all.”
I stood up. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t getting anywhere until you jumped in. From now on, we’re a team. We’re going to solve this problem together. Deal?” I held out my hand.
He looked at it for a second and then shook it. “Deal.”
Chapter 13
The morning sun illuminated the room. But it wasn’t until I felt the rays pouring through the skylight that I realized it was well into the next day.
I hadn’t pulled an all-nighter like that since I was back in college. I chuckled at the thought of how many gallons of soda and how many pounds of chips I’d consumed trying to meet a homework deadline. Only this deadline was different and the realization of it drained the smile from my face.
I looked over at William. He was staring intently at his data mat. I knew that look. It was the look of a seasoned coder in the zone, oblivious to the world around him.
Last night he’d come up with an idea to bootleg CPU cycles from inactive data mats around the islands. There were probably some pissed off people wondering why their data mats ran so slow, but I didn’t care. His idea had cut the processing time from a few days to ten hours. For the first time since I had started looking through Jin’s data mat, I actually believed that we might be able to decrypt those messages before the ship arrived. Scratch that. I was positive that we’d decrypt those messages. We had to. William belonged up there. I knew that now. After seeing what he was capable of last night and knowing what he could do for the colony…hell, I’d pack him in a box of plantains if that’s what it took to get him up there.
My data mat beeped. It was another message from Shannon. I deleted it. I didn’t have time for her bullshit now.
“It’s done!” William said without looking up. “The last picture is done.”
I got up, went over to his bed, and looked over his shoulder. “Did you find any more hidden files?”
He tapped the window to display another screen. “Two more files.” He tapped the screen a few more times and said, “There you go...I just sent them to you.”
My data mat beeped, but before I could open the files, there was a knock at the door.
“Hello? Anybody home?” Helen asked before knocking again.
I walked over and opened the door. “Good morning, Helen.”
“More like good afternoon. I’ve been worried sick about you two. You missed breakfast.” She walked in with a tray full of food and set it down on the small table in the corner. “Well, come on then. You must be hungry. I can tell that you’ve both been up all night. You have the same look my old Bob had when he crawled home from the pubs at five in the morning.”
She lifted a cloth, unleashing the smell of sweet bread. My stomach woke up and grumbled. William must have had the same reaction, because he grabbed a piece and gobbled it down before I reached the plate.
“We were working on that thing that I told you about yesterday. You know the—”
“Aron Atherton, didn’t your mother teach you not to talk with your mouth full?”
“Sorry.” I swallowed and took a drink of mango juice before continuing. “We found the information that Jin left behind, thanks in large part to William here.”
William rolled his eyes and took another bite of bread.
“I told you he was smart, didn’t I, Aron?” Helen said. “Well then, what is it? What did you boys figure out?”
I paused before taking another bite and said, “We don’t know yet.”
“But I thought you said you found some information.”
I’ll leave you two at it, then,” she said, turning toward the door. Before leaving, she looked back and added, “Try to get some sleep. You two look like road-kill wallabies that have been lying in the sun too long.” She smiled and closed the door behind her.
“She’s right,” I said. “We should get some sleep.”
“But I’m not tired. Let’s keep going?”
I shook my head. “Trust me. I learned a long time ago that brains don’t function very well without sleep. Let’s take a power nap and pick up where we left off.”
“I’ll lie down,” William said. “But I’m not taking a nap. I told you...I’m not tired.”
“Suit yourself.”
After finishing the food, I laid down. My mind was still spinning and I was having a hard time slowing it down. What did Jin have in mind? Most of the files didn’t make any sense, at least not on the surface. One of them contained a spreadsheet with the names of Chinese cities with some kind of number sequence next to them. The numbers appeared random, but at the same time they seemed familiar. Other files contained information like communications equipment inventories.
I yawned. Before I closed my eyes, I turned my head and glanced over at William. I smiled. He was already snoring.
***
I slept but my brain kept working on the problem. The number sequences turned into snake-like creatures. They surrounded me and formed themselves into a web-like cocoon, trapping me within the shell. A giant spider was about to plunge its fangs into my neck when my eyes flew open and I found Shannon caressing my cheek with the back of her hand.
“What are you doing here?” I blinked to make sure this wasn’t just another part of the dream.