“Yeah, Lavabit,” Amit replied. “Or we could help them get up to speed with an account to send and receive email. First, though we’d have to get them to sign in and make sure they understood how to use it.”
“We could slide a note under Marcus’s door. And Ryan’s. And anyone else we want to approach,” I suggested.
“That could work,” Amit agreed, warming to the plan. “We might not be able to persuade them to go to all the hassle of signing up for encrypted email, though.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I argued. “If they do sign up, we can help them. If they don’t, well at least we tried.”
“OK,” Amit agreed. “Let’s give it a try.”
I wrote the cover letter on my secure laptop, explaining that we had information they needed to know. Conventional email was under continuous surveillance, so if they wanted to learn what we had to tell them, they’d have to follow the instructions Amit appended.
Amit connected his laptop to our printer. “Wait a sec,” Amit said thoughtfully. “We can’t use our printer.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I replied, recalling how one of the pieces of evidence that tripped us up last year was microdots printed by a color laser printer to identify the serial number of the printer. They’re included to help law enforcement trace people who try to counterfeit money on color printers. The Civic Circle’s agents used the technology to trace our printouts of forbidden and suppressed technical books back to my dad’s printer. “Do black-and-white laser printers do the microdot thing?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Amit said. “Why take the chance? In any event, we’re using this printer for homework so there will be lots of copies of our work printed on it, publically available. Any common idiosyncrasy, like a couple streaks from the toner cartridge in the same place, and these letters you want to print could be linked to us.”
Amit copied the instructions to the flash drive we’d dedicated for exchanging files between our secure laptops. I copied his instructions to my secure laptop. “I’ll burn your instructions and my cover letter to a CD and figure out where to print it later,” I said.
“Who are you going to say the letter is from?” Amit asked.
I thought about that a moment. “How about George P. Burdell?”
Amit grinned. “Perfect!”
“See?” I pointed out, “You don’t have to be a Boy Scout to do a good turn.”
Chapter 3: A Serendipitous Discovery
I found a place in the library where I could print out the letters for Marcus and Ryan. The computer there required me to log in using my password, which would spoil my anonymity. Fortunately, they left access to the power switch. I carefully donned rubber gloves before handling the computer. I turned it off, and as it was powering up, I pressed function keys, esc, delete, to try to interrupt the boot sequence and the BIOS settings screen popped up. I reset the BIOS to boot from the USB drive, entered my Linux boot flash drive, and let the computer finish booting up. Then, I loaded my CD, printed the letters, and closed them in envelopes – without licking them shut and leaving my DNA. Uncle Rob had drilled into me and Amit the importance of not leaving fingerprints or DNA evidence behind. I sealed the envelopes in a plastic bag, so they wouldn’t pick up any contamination from me, power cycled the computer, and confirmed it booted up as normal. I left the BIOS settings alone in case I was ever in a hurry and wanted to use that particular computer again. Early the next morning, I slid the envelope under Ryan’s and Marcus’ respective doors.
Almost immediately, Amit began blowing off our Introduction to Computer Programming class, so he could sleep in later. I collected assignments and took notes. With Amit helping me on the programming assignments though, it was an easy class. I returned the favor by helping him out with his calculus and physics homework.
If there were such a thing as academic whiplash, I’d be suffering from an acute case of it by leaving programming and following up with linear circuits. The linear circuits material wasn’t conceptually that difficult. I already knew basic AC electronics quite well. The problem was the tedious complexity of the homework. The problems all involved phasors – complex AC voltages and currents that could be expressed as a magnitude and phase angle, or as a real and imaginary part. The most difficult aspect of each problem was the vector analysis – using sines, cosines, and tangents to work out the missing components of the right triangles formed by the physical quantities.
My first inclination was to find a study partner to work with – someone to compare answers with and discuss the trickier problems. Unfortunately, the only student I knew in class was Ryan, and, of course, he wasn’t talking with me.
Professor Muldoon was a ruthless and unforgiving instructor. One student asked if the homework deadline could be pushed back to accommodate the imminent football game. “Electrical engineering is not for everyone. Perhaps a transfer to the School of Management would better accommodate your active social life?”
Another student was confused about the professor’s “solution” to a homework problem. “How did you go from the second line of that solution to the third?”
Muldoon showed how the third step followed, using an obscure trigonometric identity. Then he added, “Basic trigonometry is a prerequisite to the prerequisite for this class. Perhaps you were misinformed by the registrar?”
He seemed to take a particular dislike to me, though. When I dared ask a question, he answered me. Then he added, “Not nearly as easy as ‘Introduction to Social Justice Studies,’ now is it?” I had no idea how he knew I was in that class.
The challenge in emag continued to be keeping my mind on the subject matter and away from inappropriate daydreaming about what was under Professor Graf’s blouse. She was very proper and very formal, almost too formal, as if deliberately trying to distance herself from the kind of attention she inspired in me, and probably others. Unfortunately, from my perspective, it just gave her an even more powerful sexy librarian vibe.
She stopped me as I was leaving class that first week.
“Peter,” she said. I could get used to her saying my name like that, but I had to focus on what she was saying. “I looked at the links you sent on the temperature dependence of beta decays. Very interesting. I also passed your resume on to Dr. Chen. He’s in charge of our research group, and he’d like to speak with you.” I spent a few minutes discussing the research with her, and then we set up a time for the interview.
That Friday, I met with Dr. Chen. He was not what I expected – the polar opposite of Professor Graf. Where Professor Graf was formal, distant, and reserved, Professor Chen was more brash and outgoing. He wore a loud Hawaiian-style print shirt. As I was shaking his hand I saw a curious tattoo on his upper arm – a Yin-Yang symbol with a line through it. I didn’t get a good look at it, but it sure resembled the diagram I’d seen in MacGuffin’s book. I repressed my curiosity and focused on what he was saying.
“Peter, what’s the difference between alpha, beta, and gamma radiation?” he asked. I answered dutifully. He continued questioning me on Cerenkov radiation.
“Cerenkov radiation happens when something travels faster than the speed of light in a medium, like in the water where nuclear fuel is stored.” I’d actually seen it on a field trip to Oak Ridge National Lab. “It makes a beautiful blue glow, and it was actually first predicted by Oliver Heaviside,” I added.
Dr. Chen raised an eyebrow. “Not many people know that. You’re familiar with Heaviside?”
“A bit,” I acknowledged. Then, he questioned me on some of the research I’d shared with Professor Graf, making sure I understood it. I became frustrated by all the grilling. “You know all this already,” I pointed out. “And you know that I know it,” I said looking to Professor Graf, “because I discussed all this with Professor Graf.”
“Yes, Professor Graf reports you are quite knowledgeable for an undergrad,” Dr. Chen confirmed. “However,” he added with a smile, “a good scientist always prefers direct evidence t
o hearsay.”
Dr. Chen explained his research involved studying high-energy cosmic rays. As they ripped through the upper atmosphere, they generated Cerenkov radiation: cascades of high energy light. “We use nature as our particle accelerator,” Dr. Chen explained. “We build ultraviolet telescopes that capture and characterize the flashes to learn about the original cosmic ray that triggered the flash.” He turned to Professor Graf. “Would you please show our guest the mirror lab?”
Professor Graf escorted me to the mirror lab around the corner from Dr. Chen’s office. A vacuum chamber dominated the center of the lab. At one end there was a large sink and a pallet of circular disks – glass? At the other end of the room, there was a row of bookshelves, partitioning a small office area. There were two desks with a narrow gap to allow access to an old chalkboard. At one desk, there was what looked like a fishing tackle box, only it was purple with silvery sparkles. A cosmetics case? I noted it had a couple of Hello Kitty stickers. A girl looked up at us.
“Sarah,” Professor Graf began, “I’d like to introduce you to Peter Burdell. He’s interviewing to be our new student research assistant. Do you have time to show him what we do here?”
“Sure, Professor,” she said, putting what looked like homework aside. “First stop on the tour is your desk.” Sarah pointed at the other well-worn wooden desk. I’d worked for my father as an electrician’s apprentice and for my uncle in his liquid air business, but this was the first time I might have an actual desk on a job. Sarah guided me around the lab. The central focus of the mirror lab was a large vacuum chamber. Professor Graf grabbed the control of an overhead hoist and lifted the four-foot diameter, five-foot-high bell a couple feet off the base of the vacuum chamber. Sarah had twisted a hundred or more small pieces of aluminum wire on heating coils on the base below the frame where a glass blank would fit in the chamber. Once the chamber was evacuated, the heating coils vaporized the aluminum, depositing a film of aluminum on the glass to make the mirror. I discussed with Professor Graf and Sarah the differences between the vacuum pump arrangement and the gas liquification equipment I’d worked on for my uncle. They seemed satisfied with my answers to their questions. The work didn’t look difficult, and a lot of it was just babysitting the vacuum chamber while the pumps evacuated it over the course of a couple hours.
“Please show him the kiln, bring him back to Professor Chen, and then see me when you’re done, alright?” Professor Graf left us and Sarah took me to the basement. She showed me the furnace which melted disks of glass. Finally, I was beginning to understand the mirror-making process. The kiln heated up one of the circular glass plates I saw up in the lab. The glass disk slumped into a stainless steel bowl machined to have the precise parabolic shape required. Each telescope they were building was an array of over a hundred of these mirrors. The disk in the kiln was still cooling. “We’ll be coating that one in the chamber on Monday,” she explained. Sarah patiently answered my questions, explaining the process and how it worked.
“So, what do you think?” Dr. Chen asked when Sarah left me with him.
“Looks like a great job.” I asked a few more questions about the hours and the work. The research team had a weekly meeting but otherwise I could put in my ten hours a week whenever convenient, and at least some of the time I could just work on my homework. A few critical operations, like loading the vacuum chamber took two people. I’d have to coordinate my work schedule with Sarah. I saw Professor Graf enter the office and give a subtle nod. I must have passed muster.
“You’re hired,” Dr. Chen said, welcoming me to his group. Professor Graf walked me to the physics office where I completed the paperwork.
I actually started hanging out in the mirror lab even when I wasn’t officially on the clock. Sarah was a real tinkerer. Her cosmetics case was actually a tool box, and she was working on a gamma ray sensor and payload for a balloon launch sometime in the spring. The project was part of her senior thesis. Sarah and her physics student friends often did their homework there. There was a group of them in the climbing club – they’d head out weekends to go rock climbing and rappelling. They invited me to join them, but I’d had my fill of that kind of thing in Boy Scouts. They tended to be generous with their time when I had a question about my diffy-q or emag homework, particularly when I’d volunteer to run over to the Student Center to grab dinner or to the Varsity to pick up some frosted oranges. Sometimes I’d invite Jack, James, and Josh, three of the guys from my emag class for a homework or study session.
Unfortunately, none of the physics majors were familiar with linear circuits. I’d struck out with Ryan, and tried to make friends with other linear circuits students, but none of the older students seemed much interested in collaborating with me. One evening, a couple weeks after I started working for Professor Graf, I was babysitting the vacuum chamber and working on my linear circuits homework when I spotted the pattern.
Every single triangle that came up in one of Professor Muldoon’s problems was either a common case, like a 30-60-90 or a 45-45-90 right triangle, or a Pythagorean triple with sides like 3-4-5, 5-12-13, or 7-24-25. Oh, he camouflaged it very cleverly. In one problem it would be a 6-8-10 right triangle, in another it would be 12-16-20, in yet another it would be 15-20-25. Nevertheless, they were all just 3-4-5 triangles in disguise, scaled by some factor, with the exact same angles and trig relations. Every one of the twenty homework problems was really just a simple variation of a half dozen distinct trig problems.
Come to think of it, that was exactly how Professor Muldoon solved his example problems in class. That old faker! He wasn’t solving arbitrary sines, cosines, and tangents in his head while we all raced to keep up with calculators. He had the answers memorized. He was writing down solutions he knew in advance because all his questions were drawn from a small pool of possible triangles. Two could play at that game. I made myself a study sheet and resolved to memorize the relations for all the basic triangles Professor Muldoon used. I realized that half the challenge in linear circuits was getting the problem set up and the other half was correctly solving the trigonometry of the vectors without screwing it up. By discovering Professor Muldoon’s pattern, linear circuits became about half as difficult.
Once I began working for Professor Chen on his mirror project, I began learning more about Professor Chen’s related research. In between teaching me how to run the vacuum chamber and make mirrors, Sarah was analyzing the data from a gamma ray observatory satellite for Professor Chen. Many other researchers had booked time slots in advance. She’d download Professor Chen’s data, look through it, highlight any interesting signals, and then store it in our local archive for Professor Chen or Professor Graf to analyze later. I looked over her shoulder, watching what she was doing.
“Why don’t you download this data, too?” I asked, pointing to some file names.
“That’s not our data,” Sarah explained. “See?” She selected the file I pointed at. A “permission denied” error popped up. “That lock icon means we don’t have access. Other researchers use the satellite, too. Each research team gets exclusive access to their own data.”
“What about those files?” I asked, pointing to some she’d skipped that didn’t have the lock icon. “Why can’t we access those?”
“We can access them,” Sarah explained, “but it’s garbage data. That’s just the earth getting in the way of the target the observatory is imaging.”
“Why don’t they point the satellite in a different direction?” I asked. “I thought observing time was expensive.”
“It is,” Sarah confirmed, “but propellant is even more expensive. The gamma ray observatory only has so much propellant for its attitude-control jets. When it runs low on propellant, the satellite is dead: it won’t be able to point at new targets. So, they let the earth eclipse it, and continue taking real data on the other side.”
“Mind if I look at that garbage data?” I asked. Sarah shrugged and gave me the login information and set up
a folder.
“Don’t mix it up with the good data,” she insisted.
I downloaded the data, and started taking a look through it. It may have been garbage data to Sarah, but the more I looked at it, the more I was convinced I was seeing real hits on the detectors. They all had this ramp up and ramp down behavior that was very similar. By then, Sarah had left for the evening. I printed out a bunch of the hits from the “garbage data,” and set them aside, convinced there was something there. Then, I headed back to the dorm.
“Guess who I just heard from,” Amit challenged me when I came in the room.
“Marcus,” I speculated. “Or maybe Ryan.”
“Got it in one,” Amit acknowledged. “Particularly the ‘maybe’ part.”
I looked at the note from Marcus. He’d followed the instructions and sent the note to Amit’s encrypted email from the account Amit had set up for him. Like most of the public, he didn’t think his own government would be spying on him. He didn’t believe what we’d told him about all emails, texts, and phone calls being under surveillance, though. He’d checked with a smart friend of his who assured him that it would be impossible.
“The ‘smart friend’ has to be Ryan,” Amit concluded. “They’ve been sitting together in social justice. We need some way to convince Marcus and Ryan that emails and texts truly are being monitored.”
That social-justice class continued to be an ordeal. Professor Gomulka insisted on classroom participation. Failure to get involved in the conversation led to reminders that everyone was part of the problem or part of the solution; everyone was either oppressed or an oppressor, a victim or a victimizer. There was no middle ground in Gomulka’s class, no innocent bystanders. He’d been hinting more strongly that perhaps Ryan and Marcus didn’t have the best interests of the oppressed at heart.
“We need to persuade Ryan to send a message to Marcus,” I offered. “A message that the monitors cannot ignore. A message that will make them show their hand.”
A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth Page 6