. . .
Chapter 21
Greg stuck to his word and mostly fantasized about how his evening with Jorja was going to play out. Each one of his dreams ended up in the same shape or form, that being in bed with his green eyed lady and humming to the tune by Sugarloaf. There was one where he brought champagne and strawberries and after their work was done he pictured himself snuggled up on the couch with Jorja watching the Simpsons. There was another one where he opens the fridge grabbed this and that and prepared a five star meal even though he could screw up making cereal. Then there was his favorite, where he set up an elaborate ploy with a system on the network and he and Jorja would hack the system together only to stumble upon a secret code that Jorja could break and it would profess his undying love to her.
It was Saturday and Greg was as a giddy as a school girl showing off a new pair of shoes. He was counting down the hours with fevered anticipation but then he remembered he didn’t know the time. He did a quick check of his email and it turned up nothing, then he flipped open his cell and was about to call Jorja, then decided he’ll play it by ear and say between seven and eight but closer to seven. He assembled his laptop and a few disks they may need, and a nice pen drive with a few coding hacks reserved for backdoor entry into locked documents, spreadsheets, and a password protected operating system or two. One of his so called buddies in the shadows wrote that piece of code, if Microsoft only knew. Yes he was ready, and if need be, he could tunnel into his machine at work or his machine at home. He was hoping that would not be the case; there were many things on his home machine to keep from prying eyes, many, many things and lesbian videos being the least of his worries.
His car was half way to Jorja’s house and his dashboard clock read 7:06. With the hour upon him, Greg was growing rather nervous. Deep down he knew none of his dreams would materialize into reality but he always had hope. Before he knew it, he was in front of his boss’ house. Only once before had he been here and that was for a small informal Christmas party when he first entered her department. He really didn’t know her then, just idle chit chat but right away he melted every time he looked into those eyes. He parked, exited, and was just about to collect his composer and ring the bell when the door suddenly opened. Jorja heard him coming. She had her hair pulled back in the normal work mode ponytail, she had a pair of nicely fitted jeans which was not work mode at all, and neither was the white t-shirt draped over by an unbuttoned oxford. Greg felt a little overdressed in his spanking new loafers, Dockers, and the rest of his business casual attire. He handed Jorja a bottle of wine which he picked up earlier this morning. She thanked him and looked at the label. Though it was not her favorite Amarone, it was pretty damn close, it was a Valpolicella. Her mind quickly went back to the comment “I know a lot of things,” and she had a moment of uneasiness.
“I don’t know if it’s any good, to be honest it was on sale, I was going to get this Spanish wine, it looked pretty close to your name, something like Rio Ja, but some lady convinced me to get this one at almost the same price,” which was a convincing lie.
Jorja, smiled at his mispronunciation of the Spanish staple wine and her uneasiness dissipated. She pulled out a magic marker and simply wrote “Greg” and the date on the label.
“Why did you do that?”
“If we don’t drink it tonight, I’ll place it in my wine rack, and when I do open it I will remember who gave it to me and first toast that person.”
Greg was hoping they didn’t open it tonight.
“So did you get anywhere,” Jorja asked?
“Kept my word I did, looked over the directories I did, noticed a thing or two I did.”
“Alright Yoda, shall we get down to business?”
Greg could only think of one thing at that moment and it had nothing to do with work, “sure,” and added “I can,” finally following her inquiry.
She lead him into her office, Greg had been here before but the office seemed different, it was more cluttered, more like his workspace at home, with routers, modems, and from what he could see three computers, tons of computer parts, books, cables, a few backup powers supplies and enough cords coming out of two surge protectors to warrant a fire marshal investigation.
“Nice layout.”
“Coming from you I certainly appreciate it.”
“No seriously, I mean it, I feel right at home, almost like being on the star ship Enterprise.”
“I think you mean something a bit more like a Ferengi Freighter.”
“You know, you and that sci-fi brain of yours… okay let’s begin,” with that Greg pulled out his laptop and hardwired into Jorja’s home network which was eventually logged into work. He put his laptop aside and pulled out his list of directories, he too had highlighted a few. Jorja pulled out hers and compared notes.
“Where did you get those,” Greg asked?
“Same place you got yours,” she replied, “I printed out an extra set in the office.”
Greg was sure he remembered and he remembered not printing two but he chalked it up to a being completely lost within her eyes or maybe she did a little investigating on her own, either way he didn’t question any further.
They each had highlighted the word mumps. Jorja played dumb.
“Why would mumps be on this thing? I mean what does this machine have to do with diseases?”
Greg had a slight chuckle, “That’s not a disease it’s a database, that’s why I highlighted it, something is stored there and we should be able to find out what.”
“A database? Do you know anything about it?”
“Sure do, I have to, a lot of financial data, some huge banks, investment firms, and securities have this type of db, a wealth of information at your fingertips, no pun intended… not to mention hospital data since this was written by Neil Pappalardo for Massachusetts General Hospital somewhere around 1967. I would like to poke around this machine a bit more, find the size of the machine, its memory, capacity, etcetera.”
“Is there anything more you can tell me about this mumps?”
“Yes, but it’s boring, it’s just another language to learn, fairly easy, I’ll show you once we are in.”
Greg was able to get into the database without the little utility Jorja had up her sleeve. He was able to see the table structures of the database but one thing he learned over the years—a mumps database is unlike the database systems of today. Granted, there are engineers who have placed rather complicated data schemes on top of this database making data queries a piece of cake to anyone with a little knowledge but underneath lies total chaos and this is where Greg was looking, all while giving Jorja a play-by-play on the language syntax. Unlocking the secrets without access to the data structure could be next to impossible even for a seasoned veteran familiar with the mumps language. It appeared to Greg that he would have to dig a little harder to uncover the meaning behind the data. He listed out some of the raw data and most of it looked like gibberish, with the exception of some words here and there. Nothing made much sense at first glance, even at a second glance or third. He tried counting records in a few folders/tables but it took too long to come back with an answer so he aborted his previous keystrokes. He then looked at the allocations for data storage and realized this thing was a monstrosity and he checked the current block size of a few tables. He did a double take when he wanted to reconfirm his findings because the numbers he originally obtained were now out of date; they were always out of date. He rechecked again and again the numbers were even higher. They were growing at an unprecedented rate.
“Jorja, this database is being used, look at these numbers, they keep growing.”
“From?”
“I have no idea, but see these two files here… these two files are growing by leaps and bounds. There is a lot of data being poured or calculated into this machine, a lot of data, every second.”
“Can we see the data?”
“Sure,” and with that Greg punched in a few commands and
the screened filled with numbers, “My god it’s full of stars… . I mean tons of data.”
6075781211, 411945138,—82.6171865, 37.37015718405753
6075781211, 411945146,—93.076171825, 44.902577996288876
6075781211, 411945456, 75.3662109301, 42.779275360241904
6075781211, 411945897,—112.0605468789, 34.23451236236987
6075781212, 411945906,—75.0585937582, 39.90973623453719
And they kept scrolling and scrolling to what appeared to be no end in sight, hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of entries. They noticed the first set of numbers appeared sequential even though there were many duplicates, the second set of numbers were sort of sequential but with no apparent next number algorithm, well without a paper and pen anyway.
“Greg, what do you make of this?”
“I don’t know, it appears to be a pattern and then again, no. Without the data schema we would just be guessing.”
“It looks like the first number is always a ten digit number and the second always a nine digit number, the third always a negative.”
“See, not always the case, the third number here is positive . .and . .and this one here has the last number negative.”
“Do a screen print will ya,” and with that the toner cartridge became a little lower.
“If we don’t know what kind of data this is it might help to find out where this is coming from, there has to be something else in the pipeline supplying this amount of data.”
“Divide and conquer then, I’ll take the numbers and try to find meaning, in the meantime see if you can pinpoint the data stream.” With that they both went their separate ways, although they were still in the same room together.
. . .
Chapter 22
Two hours had gone by and Jorja’s eyes were numb; she had been staring at the stream of numbers on her printout trying to gather some sort of relationship and nothing came to mind. She had a pencil in hand and scratched together various patterns and algorithms to give the numbers a purpose and nothing came to mind. She subtracted, added, divided, she tried modulo division, she played with prime numbers and Fibonacci sequences, she played with dates and time, and still nothing came to mind. She accomplished nothing, no sense of purpose; in fact she was no further along than she was at the beginning of her quest. Greg was very much in the same boat. He checked processes running on the machine, he checked the open ports of the machine, and couldn’t find the entry point of the data stream, leading him to believe the machine itself was generating this data. He was systematically picking off each of the running processes on the machine but still had a ways to go, a long way. It was closing in on eleven o’clock and this had to be one of the longest stretches that Greg has been in front of an array of computers and monitors without his green can of pick-me-up but he did find a substitute in Jorja’s now dissipating perfume; a whiff was all that was needed but it didn’t do a damn thing for his stomach. Greg was not going to cry uncle when it came to his hunger, not in front of Jorja and he didn’t have to—Jorja broke the concentration and silence with her stomach growling. Greg looked at her and before he could say anything, she asked, “What do you want on your pizza?”
“Pepperoni is fine, actually anything except black olives or anchovies will do, whatever you like is fine.”
She picked up the phone and dialed her favorite thin crust specialist. After she reconfirmed her pepperoni and Italian sausage pie with her phone number, she hung up the phone and stared at the paper with the list of numbers again.
“Greg, ten digits… . ten digits, that’s a phone number, where is the six oh seven area code?”
“Let’s find out… oh Google,” and within seconds they had their answer.
“Hmmm… in southern New York… I think we are on to something.”
“You might be right, let’s do a little investigating shall we… a reverse phone search using our computers… . and waiting… . waiting… . bingo… . Mr. Royerson, age fifty-eight, here’s his address, social, tax bracket, anything else you might want to know? He really doesn’t look all that interesting, runs a family bakery, married, two kids, has a nice chunk of money in savings, owns his house, no debt on credit cards, bought groceries last on his debit card… again I say not that interesting but… but rare.”
“Rare?”
“Yes, no debt, tell me what American in this day and age is debt free?”
“Okay, I get your point, rare, try the next number.”
“Waiting… . waiting… . hmmmm phone number not in existence.”
“How about the next number?”
“Waiting… . waiting… . same thing.”
“Maybe it’s not a phone number.”
“I think you are right about that, I think I remember that first set of numbers were shorter on up the list… . hey, your bathroom is?”
‘There’s one down the hall to your left, right before my bedroom.”
“Be right back.”
“Something to drink?”
“Well I’m sure you don’t have my usual, whatever you’re having is fine.”
Greg took a second or two to stretch his legs and disappeared around the corner. Jorja took the opportunity to make her way into the kitchen and unbeknownst to her, Greg made a little detour. He took a peek in her master bedroom and tried to commit his sights to memory for a later use, that and he just wanted to see where she slept. The light from the hallway was all that he needed for his sights into a wondrous world. He admired the no hanging pictures very stark olive colored walls, though not his first choice of color and he admired the bed itself. It was a very big bed, unmade bed, masculine to a point, dark wood, maybe mahogany, maybe walnut, he wasn’t a wood expert. He saw there were none of those frilly throw pillows anywhere—the ones just for decoration that no one uses, just two pillows in their proper places. There was some sort of t-shirt thrown at the foot of the bed and piles of shoes here and there, other than that, the bedroom looked pretty tidy. There was one nightstand with an alarm clock, a small light, and a box of tissues, there were no dressers to speak of, and he correctly assumed all her clothes were stuffed to the gills in the two walk-in closets. He gave the room one more quick once around and proceeded to his original destination. When he came back to Jorja’s office he found sitting on the desk his choice of drink and smiled.
“You know me so well.”
“Yeah, like no one ever notices the green pyramid of cans you have stacked around your monitors, just think if you applied all that cash into the stock of the company, well you’d be…”
“Tired… and probably fired, but thanks for the drink, had I known, I would have asked earlier… I didn’t know you drank the stuff.”
“I don’t,” leaving Greg with an even bigger smile, “So going back to what you said before, about being a rare American, let’s say that Mr. Royerson and his phone number where not a coincidence, that maybe, maybe this is a database contains more people just like him… . debt free… wait hear me out… . I mean a database with that type of data could be worth… . well a lot I’m sure… and…”
“Jorja, let me interrupt by saying first, I estimate there are billions of entries in this database, more entries than people on this planet so your theory is already shot, plus did you forget about the invalid phone numbers?”
“Maybe they are bank accounts? . . . Umm don’t answer that . .same thing… billions of entries… can you go back to the data again, the one where we got this screen print?”
“Sure thing,” and with a few keystrokes the numbers filled the screen again, scrolling and scrolling.
“Look, the second number, the length never changes… . it’s always nine.”
“Yeah, so far so good, always nine… . like the nine planets of the solar system.”
“Eight.”
“You know kids have it so easy today, back when I was a kid we had to learn nine… nine… . number nine, number nine… . number nine… . nine minute abs.”
�
�Seven minute abs.”
“Are you sure, nine minutes sounds right.”
“Seven minute abs, seven eleven, seven doors, you know, seven chipmunks twirlin’ on a branch, eatin’ lots of sunflowers on my uncle’s ranch.”
“I know, I know, Something About Mary… . I only saw it once.”
“Well, one of my favorite comedies, that and Groundhog Day.”
“Now that I love, Bill Murray, my favorite part, him sitting around the old folks with a bottle of JD watching Jeopardy for the umpteenth time, saying what is Lake Titicaca, what are the Finger Lakes, and even before they show the answer… what is the Rhone,” and from there they must have quoted almost the entire movie before the door bell rang with their pizza.
With the empty pizza box aside and a full stomach, things turned back to business. The mind is sharper with nutriments abound and it didn’t take long for Jorja and Greg to come up with new ideas.
“Where were we?” Jorja asked as she wiped the last bit of pizza grease from her lips.
“Number nine… . number nine… . number nine… . ”
“Oh yeah, right… nine, nine lives of a cat… . it’s a perfect square… The Ennead… . the…”
“The what?
“The Ennead… Egyptian mythology.”
“Sorry, the only things I know are the pyramids, King Tut, the Sphinx, that and they were aliens from a distant galaxy brought here by a stargate.”
“Well nine represents the Ennead, the nine deities, you have, Atum the father god or first god, his children Shu and Tefnut, then their children Geb, Nut… and I forget the rest but nine in all… and there was no stargate or Richard Dean Anderson.”
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