The Locke Cipher

by Gabriel Kron

  Friedmann’s Residence. Day 31.

  Karin had told me that Clive would be arriving just after dark. It was a ten hour drive using the Eurotunnel, so he would stay for one night and rest up during the next day before travelling under darkness again back to England.

  I kept myself busy during the day by continuing to translate the Lockridge notebooks. Some of the entries were date-stamped but most weren’t. About half way through the first notebook, one particular entry caught my attention as I translated it:

  The others are having trouble getting new brushes that work. Only D knows about the brushes, but says he cannot get what he needs any more. D will not tell me what he needs only that they won’t let him have any...

  Kaspar Locke was talking about other generators that existed and was confirming another aspect of the online myth. Most people, it would seem, couldn’t get replacement brushes. More important than that, it appeared that Kaspar Locke may have tracked down the inventor of the device, simply named here as D.

  ~~~

  I hadn’t noticed the time and was surprised when I heard the beep of a car horn outside and realised it was now dark.

  Henrik had already opened the door by the time I got to the entrance hall.

  “Daniel, you’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you. Here,” Clive said handing me Lee’s passport straight away, “Your passport home.”

  “Thanks. Looks like I should trim my beard a bit,” I said looking in the hallway mirror.

  After the initial introductions, Karin showed Clive to his room on the third floor where he could freshen up and then meet back in the kitchen for a late dinner that Henrik had prepared.

  Dinner was a simple savoury mince dish and it felt good to have Clive present as well. After going over our plans for the journey home, our conversation turned to the Lockridge.

  “I’ve been working on the translations,” I said putting my notebooks on the table.

  Clive started flicking through my efforts. “I’ve had a look through, but can't read German and not had any time to really get into it. Have you come across anything helpful?” he asked as he continued reading through my notes.

  “Nothing yet, but there is mention of other devices that existed,” I said.

  “What, local to here?” Clive asked.

  “Not any more. He writes about how the others couldn’t get new brushes, but there’s nothing I’ve found so far that tells us what they were.”

  “Nothing on the photos, no?”

  “None, they were hidden in the commutator.”

  I felt disappointed that none of the pictures I had taken showed any of the brushes that provided the electrical connection to the spinning rotor.

  “So, you are all mad scientists, ja?” Henrik asked.

  “Must be mad doing what we do,” Clive answered.

  “Mad, stupid, nuts?” I said. “Before this trip I thought we were like mad scientists, working against the laws of energy conservation. But now five people have died because of it.”

  “Nothing is worth dying for, so perhaps you should walk away before anyone else is hurt,” Henrik said.

  “You may be right, but people have died already in trying to help. If I knew before starting this that people were going to get hurt, including myself, then I wouldn't have started. The speed at which they reacted and the severity of that reaction tells us that whatever it is we’ve uncovered must be important. There's no way we can let this knowledge be buried again or their deaths will have been in vain.”

  I looked around the table. Everyone here was a parent or grandparent. Clearly the risk involved with the Lockridge was great. Maybe I should just get out and hide somewhere? Stay away from the Lockridge device. I doubted I could actually do that. The Lockridge device had cost me dearly so far. I was a fugitive, and a targeted man. Hiding would be hard, but I had to prove my innocence somehow.

  Friedmann’s Residence. Dawn, Day 32.

  I woke at the crack of dawn and decided to cut short my daily exercise regime and only did Kushanku kata the once. There was a long journey ahead, one that I hoped was going to be boring, but I figured I would need as much energy as possible if only to stay alert. I hadn’t left the Friedmann’s property for about four weeks and other than a few phone calls to Becs and my parents, I had broken all contact with the outside world.

  As I walked back towards the house, I looked around the Friedmann’s garden. It had become my private dojo, the place where those who learn a Japanese martial art go to train. Literally translated as: the Hall of the Way, where the Way of the Empty Hand, Karate Do, is practised.

  I felt sad to be leaving this place. I felt safe and cared for here. Karin and Henrik had been the perfect medical team, although Henrik was beginning to grow impatient. I had heard the Friedmanns arguing on more than one occasion. Although I couldn't understand what was being said through the walls or the German itself, I felt that perhaps I was the cause.

  I stopped at the well and finding a small pebble, I counted the seconds it took before I heard it splash. Three seconds, which I worked out to be forty-four metres deep.

  I showered before breakfast and found everyone already in the kitchen. The conversation was typical intellectual anecdotal humour.

  It struck me that sitting around the table were some of science’s elite. How many degrees, PhDs, medals and certificates between them didn’t really matter.. What I had seen the Lockridge device doing, none of their qualifications or experiences could explain.

  “Good morning all, worked out how it works yet?” I said.

  “Nope,” answered Clive handing my notebooks back to me. “Thank you. I sat up most of the night studying them, but there doesn’t appear to be anything in the drawings at least that would suggest anything new or unusual.”

  “I agree, and from the text I’ve translated so far, it seems that Kaspar Locke was just as confused. But I’ve seen it working, so I know what it can do and the fact that the Lockes were still using it sixty to seventy years later suggests that Kaspar Locke must have worked it out.”

  Henrik had insisted on cooking Bauernomelettes, a German omelette with onion, potato and bacon, and was just starting to serve up the first batch.

  “I have a question for you all,” said Henrik, as he poured the egg mixture onto the sautéed onion and potatoes. “I am a medical doctor, and if one of my colleagues came to me and said he had discovered how to make amputated limbs or damaged organs grow back I would be expecting it to be a joke or would need to see it to believe it at least. Daniel claims to have seen a device that Karin tells me breaks one of your most fundamental laws and if proven right will turn your science on its head. Your science is like religion for you all, so how do you feel about effectively losing your faith?”

  It was a good question. If the Lockridge device was outputting more energy than was being input, then it was surely breaking the laws of thermodynamics. This meant that the maths and models every electrical designer used were flawed or had been deliberately manipulated to ignore or write out the possibility of another source of electricity.

  Karin finished up her omelette and said, “Well I think these are very interesting times, but now I must go to work and apply some good old fashioned quantum physics, whilst it’s still valid.” She kissed Henrik and left.

  “She’s working at the Einstein Tower today, in Potsdam near Berlin. It is a place we must take you and Brenda to one day Clive,” Henrik said as he sat down finally to eat. “And what about your point of view?”

  “Well it would certainly cause a storm for sure. The EE departments will have to rewrite large sections of the textbooks, once it’s been accepted,” Clive said.

  “It’s going to be us that rewrite the text books,” I said, but then added, “if they don’t kill us first.”

  In light of contemplating the existence of the Lockridge device and the enormity of its impact on science, society and the economy, it was all too easy to forget that people connected to it
were being killed.

  “Indeed,” Clive agreed. “When I came over here last month I have to admit that I was really hopeful that you were correct and that we could possibly be going home with either the machine itself or at least its secret. Instead it nearly got us killed. It’s a shame it’s gone.”

  Gone. Was the device lost?

  “It might not be gone you know,” I said.

  “How’s that?” Clive asked.

  “Okay, okay, this is purely speculation, but it keeps popping its head up in my thoughts. I haven’t been back to the Locke place obviously, but they apparently burnt down the shop. The Lockridge was hidden in the basement, so unless they found the entrance and took it, it should still be there.”

  “And could it have survived the fire?” Clive asked.

  “Don’t know until we look,”

  “What are you suggesting?” Henrik asked.

  “Well, we’ve got time,” I said, knowing that we weren’t going to leave until night fall.

  “It’ll be too risky,” Clive said.

  “It shouldn’t be. We can drive by and only stop if it’s clear,” I said.

  We discussed whether we should go and visit the Locke farm. The main argument against was obvious. If we were seen and the police called, then I would be at risk of arrest.

  “It’s a risk I want to take,” I declared. “If there’s something there that can either help us understand the Lockridge or provide any proof it exists then I think I owe it to Sophia, Johann, Dominik and Jack to find it, as well as myself. I need to prove my innocence.”

  After some heated debate, we decided we would pay a visit to the Locke farm, on the long shot that there may be something left of the device.

  The Locke Farm. 11:10am Day 32.

  Clive slowed the BMW down as we passed the Locke place. There was police tape all over the entrance, but no one guarding it. A few hundred yards up the road was a lay-by; we parked up and walked back along the road to where Anitiquitäten Locke Emporium had once stood.

  As we walked across the yard, the extent of the destruction of the shop became apparent. All that was left were several charred vertical wooden studs where the walls had been. The shop area was now just a pile of burnt remains of its contents and the collapsed roof.

  Clive had assumed the role of photographer as he’d remembered his digital camera and started taking pictures of the destruction. The fire had pretty much devoured most of the building and contents. Sheets of rusted corrugated iron, formerly the roof, stuck up through the charcoaled timbers of rafters, joists and walls that had crashed down into the inferno that had engulfed the shop.

  “This end—” I pointed, “is where the entrance to the basement was. There was a hidden room that led to the basement stairs. It may not have been found.”

  The area where the entrance had been wasn’t as piled up as the rest, and as we looked closer it became apparent that it was because the floor had collapsed. What was the basement was now full of burnt timber and unless there was good drainage, may be full of water from the fire tenders and any rain over the last month. If the Lockridge device was still down there, then it was as good as buried in concrete without excavation machinery.

  “It could still be down there,” I said as I tried to see if there was anything else in the ashes.

  “No way are we going to get it now. We’d need a JCB,” Clive said as he also started looking closer into the debris.

  In amongst the burnt left over sections of joists, I could see what had been Johann’s desk. Crushed flat and scorched badly, I could still make out where the green leather writing panel had been, so it hadn’t been completely burnt.

  “Clive, give me a hand please,” I asked and started to try and shift a section of corrugated sheet roofing.

  “Sure, what'd you see?”

  “Johann’s desk.”

  Clive helped shift the section of rusted iron and pushed some of the burnt joists to one side. On all fours I was just able to get to the desk. I opened one of the drawers and was surprised to see that the contents weren’t completely burnt. The other drawer contents hadn’t been so lucky. Both drawers had water sitting in them, I guessed from the fire tenders. There was, however, something else at the back of one of the drawers. A metal tin, partly sitting in the water. It looked like a tobacco tin of some sort, although the label appeared to be something to do with Bosch. It had started going rusty, but the lid was still firmly on.

  “What’s that?” Clive asked.

  “Not sure yet,” I said as I gently shook the tin. There was something solid in it. I popped off the lid.

  “Look at this.”

  Inside the tin were three carbon electrical motor brushes, or at least the bits to several of them. About an inch and a half in length and half inch square. The complete brush had two lengths of copper braided wire embedded in the tail end. The two other broken or snapped bits of brush were thinner in cross section which suggested they had been filed or sanded down.

  A large drop of rain hit the tin lid in my hand, prompting me to put the lid gently back on and suggest we move into the dry of the farm-house or at least the shelter of the front porch.

  I tried the front door to the house and found it open. It had been forced and the frame was split. Inside was a mess. It looked as though someone had been searching for something as every cupboard, shelf, drawer and bookcase had been emptied.

  Opening the tin again we took a closer look at the contents.

  “Are they for the Lockridge?” Clive asked as he handled one.

  “I’d assume so,” I replied as I tipped out the tin onto the window sill.

  At the bottom of the tin, and a little charred, was a folded piece of graph paper. Carefully I unfolded the thin, crispy dry, sheet of squared paper. On it was a page of typed numbers, neatly in columns.

  “Now this might be important,” I said and showed Clive the page.

  “Looks like machine code to me,” Clive said referring to a computer programming language.

  “Don’t think so,” I said. “Machine code is hexadecimal, there’s no letters in this at all.” I looked closer at the columns of numbers, which had obviously been typed on an old fashioned ribbon typewriter. The paper was old, the creases weak and already ripped in places. The page was also stained and charred but it appeared that most of the type was still legible.

  Clive took several photos of the page and then continued to photograph the inside of the house, before saying “I think we should probably go,”

  “In a minute, I need to see something, I’ll see you outside,” I said.

  I wanted, no, needed, to see where Sophia and Johann had been killed. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt I needed to. I stepped carefully through the mess and made my way upstairs, assuming they’d been murdered there.

  As I approached the top of the stairs, I saw the first white forensics cross on the floor boards. A dark stain, not very big, but clearly visible. Johann or Sophia?

  The same as downstairs, any cupboards or drawers had been turned out, the contents strewn across the floor. The first bedroom was clearly that of the old man, Johann. The second room was Sophia’s from the contents of the cupboards across the floor.

  The large headboard of the bed had a large dark stain on the upholstery. I realised this was where Sophia had been shot. It looked as though she had been sitting up in bed at the time.

  I felt sick. Nausea rushed up from the pit of my stomach, my mouth salivating uncontrollably. I looked away and took deep breaths whilst looking out of the window across the yard towards the remains of the shop. Clive carried on taking photos in the yard.

  As I looked at the burnt out remains of the shop, I noticed a dark grey car parked out on the road opposite the entrance.

  It wasn’t there when we arrived. It was time to go. Now.

  As I stepped out of Sophia’s bedroom I found myself staring straight into the barrel of a handgun.

  “That’s far enough,” the gunman said in a
German accent. He was shorter than me, but only just and looked fit. I backed up slightly, but the gunman pressed forward keeping the muzzle of the gun just inches from my face.

  “What do you want?” I asked as I stumbled back into the bedroom.

  The fight or flight response was burning inside me. What should I do? There was no time to think. I just needed to act.

  I grabbed the door and slammed it into the attacker pushing him sideways. But more importantly the gun was no longer pointing at me. I slammed it again, knocking him further off balance. I shouldered the door, trapping his arm. Again and again I slammed my body weight into it until finally he dropped the gun.

  Suddenly the door flew towards me and sent me scrambling backwards. I fell and before I knew it the attacker was on me. I took two hits to the face but when he pulled back to try for a third I managed to palm heel him square across his chin and break free.

  The gun was on the floor near the door and the attacker was about to get it. I kicked his arm hard as he reached for it; the gun skidded across the floorboards. As the attacker crashed to the floor he rolled hard into my legs and shoved an elbow into the side of my thigh. I broke my fall well but a kick caught me in the ribs, winding me and then came another. This time though, the pain was different. The crescendo of pain came from my wound. A third kick was on its way, but I parried it and hooked his leg. Without hesitation, with one of his legs held firmly, I side kicked his supporting leg. The attacker finally showed signs of actually being hurt as he dropped to his knees.

  I positioned myself up for another kick, but saw the flash of steel. He had a knife and slashed towards me. The tip of the razor-sharp blade sliced across my thigh. The cut was deep but caused little pain. I could feel blood starting to flow down my leg.

  Backing away from him, I scanned around for a weapon.

  He lunged at me, stabbing, and I just barely avoided it. Unlike in the martial arts classes I took, this attacker actually knew what he was doing. He didn’t over reach, leaving himself open to a classic knife defence. Instead he redirected the stab into a slash and the blade slid across my rib cage, slicing through my jacket, t-shirt and skin down to the bone.