“Obviously you took a few history courses in college and filled your brain with a bunch of useless knowledge… . I don’t think it’s going to help us here my dear.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, well how about the fact nine is the limit of all numbers meaning all numbers can be comprised of digits zero through nine with nine being the limit.”
“How about the fact that a nine digit number has almost a billion possibilities?”
“Can we find a range of those numbers, see if there is a limit?”
“That’s going to take a bit of time, not much mind you, but I’ll have to write a little program first.”
“Wait,” Jorja remembered and was a bit hesitant, she went to her desktop, copied a program and gave it to Greg, ‘this might help.”
“What is it?”
‘A little program slash utility that a friend gave me.”
“What does it do?”
“It helps to traverse a mumps database a little quicker; he says his company uses it all the time.”
“Jorja, have you been holding out on me?”
“Just a smidgen, I did some digging this past week, not much, I just poked around and my curiosity got the best of me, I found this database and was unfamiliar with it… I did a bit of research to get up to speed.”
“Okely-dokely,” was his candid reply. Greg didn’t say another word on the subject; he knew she was the boss. He just took the program and followed the prompts when he started it and before long he had a range of numbers, a range from one million twenty thousand four hundred fifty-eight to seven hundred seventy-two million three hundred thirty-four thousand eight hundred seventy-seven, or one million to seven hundred seventy-two million, give or take.
“So, that range doesn’t start with zero or one?”
“Doesn’t appear that way, nothing smaller than a million, I don’t know how accurate that little program you gave me is but…”
“But can you see how many distinct numbers we have?”
“I’ll try, might take awhile, especially if there are about seven hundred and seventy million entries.”
While Greg was looking at the screen waiting for an answer, Jorja glanced at her inbox to see if there were any issues she needed to tend to and found none. There were just a few budget reports needing her approval but they could wait until Monday if they had to, there was one from her bank saying her pay had been deposited, two office memos, and a bunch of seemingly unimportant news snipes that the CIA tends to send out to keep everyone informed on the daily events. When she saw the email from the bank she had this nagging twinge in the back of her mind that stemmed from an HR problem she has had since her raise in salary regarding her pension fund deductions. She quickly opened a link to the internal payroll department to view her online pay stub and cursed under her breath. The same deductions were again wrong even after she talked to the head of the department. “How hard could it be?” she thought, then she compared her last pay stub to the present one. She compared every number and amount and sure enough they were the same—it wasn’t fixed so she would have to make yet another phone call, maybe even pay a visit this time. Before she closed the window to the payroll site Jorja noticed something on her pay stub and just like the bathing Archimedes proclaiming Eureka and running naked through the streets of Syracuse, she knew she might be on to something but she saved her euphoria and naked romp until she was sure. While Greg was still mesmerized by his blank screen still waiting for an answer, she opened another session into this machine and ran her own test. She ran the nice little utility and entered what appeared to be a random nine digit number. The screen filled with numbers and lo and behold the second number was always the number she had just entered, the nine digit number, the nine digit number that she knew by heart.
“Greg.”
“Yes?”
“Take a look at this.”
“Oooo… more numbers how nice.”
“No, take a look at the second number in the list, after the first comma.”
“They are all the same.”
“Yes, they are, do me a favor will ya, enter your social security into this prompt.”
“I don’t just give that out to anyone, you know it’s illegal for you to ask me,” in a sarcastic slur but he did as he was told. As soon as Greg hit return, the screen again came to life with scrolling numbers, his tax ID being the second number, “Coincidence?”
“Let me find a few more tax ID’s,” Jorja went to her employee files and picked another tax number at random, entered it and received more scrolling numbers. She entered another one, same results, thousands of entries, maybe even hundreds of thousands. She tried another employee and realized this was no coincidence. Every number she entered she got a reply—that is until she searched for her father’s social security number; she had that one memorized as well due to all the red tape she had to go through since he never had a will when he passed away. It turned up nothing. “Maybe just active numbers,” she concluded, so she searched for a few recently deceased individuals using the CIA’s computers at her beck and call. Within minutes she had a handful of more social security numbers. Older ones had no records but most of the recently deceased tax ID holders, more often than not, were contained in this database.
“One hundred ten million, one seventy eight thousand, four hundred and two”
“What?”
“That’s how many distinct tax ID’s are in this database at the moment.”
“That’s about half of the all the numbers.”
“How do you know that?”
“More useless facts in that brain of mine, there are roughly two hundred eleven million active numbers in the social security database. Looking back that range makes sense now. Seven seventy two was the last area, the first three positions, that the social security admin issued. Nothing beyond that.”
“Makes sense, no zero zero zero area either, so this is a demographics file of some sort.”
“Looks that way, I don’t recognize any of the other numbers in my portfolio, they are not bank account numbers, or credit card numbers and looking at this, the first numbers are all different and sequential to a point, my tax ID second, the third and fourth numbers seem to change but there are a lot of duplicates.”
“That first number, you’re right, sequential, let’s start at the beginning”
6070685194, 462752203,—77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
6070685495, 462752203,—77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
6070685799, 462752203,—77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
6070686098, 462752203,—77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
6070686399, 462752203,—77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
6070700089, 462752203,—77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
“So this first number, it’s always ten digits right?”
“Right.”
“Is that some sort of a timestamp or something?”
“Sure, it could be, wait… wait… look… . the last five digits get close to eighty seven thousand but not quite… in fact it never exceeds eighty six thousand four hundred, they get close, but none over that mark… . Fuck me!”
“What?”
“Eighty-six thousand four hundred.”
“Yeah?”
“The amount of seconds in a day.”
“Talk about your useless knowledge… so what does that mean?”
“You were right, it is a timestamp, the last five digits are the time… one being one second after midnight, thirty-six hundred is one a. m., and eighty-six thousand four hundred is midnight… . the first five numbers are the date.”
“Date?”
“Yeah, date, in mumps, it’s a Julian date, days since a specific date.”
“If these are Julian dates, shouldn’t those numbers be bigger if using the unix epoch… are they truncated?”
“Yeah Unix stores its dates as seconds elapsed since January first nineteen seventy, but no, mumps has some weird date
as its starting point, something around the mid eighteen hundreds… let me check on Wikipedia for an exact date.” Meanwhile Jorja just looked at the numbers on the screen, “O.K. here it is, January first eighteen forty-one.”
“Strange starting date.”
“Yeah, told you, it has something to do with a hospital and the age of a patient, the originator of the language just picked an arbitrary date that he deemed safe as to the oldest person alive at the time and their birth date.”
“I get it, so everyone’s birth date would be valid in a database, do me a favor, what is the last entry associated with my social?”
“Just a sec… . here it is… . six one five seven zero eight six four one nine two”
“Can you do a date conversion for me?”
“I think there is an algorithm that can help us in this program… by the way, who did you say you got this from?”
“I didn’t, just a friend.”
“Uhuh, well looks like there is a function in here, I hope it calculates leap year correctly… . O.K. here it is… . hmmm… today’s date.”
“Technically it’s yesterday’s date, it’s after twelve… but, but what the hell is this other information and why is there an entry in this thing using my social for just before midnight?”
“Good question but look at this, not only is there an entry in this thing for your social security just before midnight but it looks as though there is an entry in here on your social security every five minutes… . hold on… wait… . yeah look at this… six one five seven one one two three three… . that’s about three minutes ago.”
“What the hell? Why place an entry every five minutes, that’s… hold on… . that’s two hundred and eighty-entries per day . .wouldn’t one suffice?”
“It could be some simulation thing.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like a game or something.”
“Not sitting in the hills of Virginia under the protection of the CIA it ain’t.”
“True, it could have something to do with actuary tables or…”
“Or what?”
“Hmmm I don’t know yet… I’m trying to comprehend why anyone would need this much power and storage… I mean weather simulators don’t amass this much data… this thing is churning out… . let’s see… a few quick calculations… six point six gigs every five minutes times twelve times twenty-four… that’s just shy of two terabytes of data a day… holy shit!”
“Storage is cheap these days so relax… . besides I’m sure it gets compressed and stored somewhere down the line.”
“Looking at this data, it would help if we knew what those last two numbers are for.”
“Data pointers?”
“Could be, good guess, there are a bunch of duplicate numbers, yeah maybe data points into another database… for more information… yeah those two digits could be x and y coordinates on a hard drive or database somewhere.”
“So we have a date and time, and we have a social security number, and maybe data pointers… now what?”
“I’m thinking… . if we stick to your assumption, this isn’t one of those holographic storage systems… that would require a z or third coordinate… so now I have to find a system that uses this range for storage… . maybe that will get us somewhere… we have time right?”
“All night.”
Again they went their separate ways but stayed in the same room, Greg on one computer, Jorja on another. This was not like hacking in the movies where some whiz kid took a few minutes and presto they have the world’s defense systems by the balls or drained bank accounts within seconds using some hidden back door only known by the software’s creator. No, this was actually the mundane world of hacking, the most boring aspect of hacking—research, and it took time… way too much time, even with the help of some of the world’s fastest computers. They were both methodical in their approach, reading and cross checking their facts with one another. Greg dove into the CIA’s archives on computer and software companies in search of specifications that would match the range of numbers. Jorja took a more practical approach and used the web as her tool. Jorja googled the word “coordinates” and found a bunch of hits, the first was a link to geographical coordinates and based on this she redefined her search parameters to list hard drives, then she tried databases and from there it was into the world of technologies’ inner workings.
. . .
Chapter 23
His first order of business was to empty the trash cans in the two hundred and twenty eight cubes. Each cube had two cans, one for just paper that was to be recycled, the other for trash. He knew the cubes by heart. He knew if Eric Campbell was working today there would be two cans of diet Pepsi and a Subway sandwich wrapper—it was that way every day of the week. He particularly liked Chris Peterbergs’ cube for each night he would take a cinnamon jawbreaker out of his candy jar which lasted until he was finished with the cans. He noticed all the cube decorations and especially liked the primitive artwork given to the mothers and fathers by their sons and daughters. He liked the hairy fire engine in Bob’s cube and the green cotton ball clouds in Kevin’s cube and the big wide grin of a sister’s mouth with braces in Shaun’s cube and the sun’s rays shining over a lopsided house in Lisa’s cube but most of all he liked the photographs in Dane’s cube. Dane had several pictures of his daughter in various activities. In one the little blonde was in a blue soccer outfit, number 18, with her foot propped up on a soccer ball. She was with her mother in another shot, and with her older brother in another in what appeared to be a water balloon fight. Since he was the only one working this floor he would spend a few extra minutes just mulling over the pictures, sometimes even sitting down in the chair and taking a break. The little blonde girl in the pictures was what he looked most forward to each and every night… . except this night. Tonight he did his regular routine, emptied the trash cans, got his jawbreaker but when he came upon Dane’s cube his nightly ritual changed. He took down each picture and simply threw them away, he didn’t need his fantasies anymore; he already had his little girl—safe at home. He finished with the cans and grabbed the vacuum. He was done in record time. He clocked out and headed back home.
He made one stop and that was to one of those twenty-four hour mini-marts. He needed some more bananas, although a mini-mart was not the ideal place to buy a bunch, his little girl liked bananas so his little girl was going to get bananas. He also purchased an eight pound bag of ice. The kid behind the counter was bored and tried to make some idle chit-chat but he ignored his every word. He paid in cash and limped to his car. The kid behind the counter watched his every move. When he entered the car he saw the kid was watching. Before he turned the key he thought to himself, then smiled at his ingenuity. He got back out of the car and limped back into the mini-mart. He went to the wall of refrigerated drinks and perused his choices. He picked up another bottle of juice, this time it was apple and made his way to the counter again.
“Forgot my thirst, this is what I came in here for.”
“It happens all the time, 99 cents.”
“Here you go, thanks.”
“You’re welcome, have a good night.”
“Will do,” and he limped back to the car, smiling. He was thinking, if someone was trying to hide, why would they go back into the store… very clever he thought and started the car and headed back to his little girl. By the time he made it home it was a little after three in the morning and the first thing he did was to go down into the basement and enter his watching room. The light was still on but Ripley was sound asleep with the panda bear tucked tightly under her arm. She was precious. He decided to go in… . it was time. Just before he unlocked the door he remembered something and stopped. He went back upstairs and went to the second floor. He approached with much forethought, what appeared to be a bedroom door. He opened it and entered, he didn’t turn on any lights, hoping the light from the hallway would be enough. It was, there in the corner was what he was
looking for… a white wicker waste basket and back downstairs he went. He walked into the room ever so quietly. He placed the wicker basket just besides the dresser and placed the bunch of bananas next to the other food. He then brought in a small blue Coleman cooler filled with ice and bottle juice, including the apple juice. He looked around the room like he was checking if anyone was watching. He walked over to the bed and leaned over Ripley. She was beautiful. She moved and it startled him and quickly fled through the steel door. Click. Click. Click. He realized she wasn’t ready. He realized he wasn’t ready.
. . .
Chapter 24
It was growing very late but neither of them wanted to quit. They took a quick break and Greg found his way to the fridge for his own personal stash of thirst quenching goodness supplied by his friend. Jorja took the time to pop a few aspirin, hoping to cure her mild headache and knowing full well aspirin’s primary ingredient was caffeine, giving her a hopefully added boost… . she took three and back to work it was. Closing in on four in the morning neither made too much headway. Jorja wanted to retrace her steps just in case she missed anything. She again googled the word “coordinates”. Again she saw the primary links on the page were geographical in nature. She spent some time going through the links, then see tried another search and some of the same geographical links were displayed, even one for Google Maps and out of boredom she clicked on it. She entered the last two numbers into google maps on a whim and waited.
-77.05853462219238, 38.909001254076514
Nothing happened. She was focusing on a blank map. She tried to zoom in and nothing happened, she zoomed out nothing happened, then she zoomed all the way out and she was looking at Antarctica. Greg happened to look over seeing Jorja starring at a green marker on the screen.
“Looking for penguins?”
“No, just bored. I kept getting links to geographic coordinates, latitude and longitudes… I still get them confused, well the numbers don’t look like the standard geographical coordinates with minutes and seconds… anyway I tried plugging in the numbers into google maps and that’s what it returned.”
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