Genius

by Leopoldo Gout

  “Tunde,” he told me, “you can do this. Just a little more than a day ago you were in Nigeria. You got yourself here. Just the same as you built Okeke. Just the same as you connected with me and Wolf. Stakes are higher now, but I can’t think of anyone else I know who can do this. And make it amazing.”

  I admit I smiled on reflex. These were words I needed to hear.

  “We are here for you,” Painted Wolf said. ‘Tell us how we can help.”

  Thanks to these good friends, I quickly regained my composure.

  “Our focus needs to be on passing Phase One,” I said. “If we can build and program the jammer tomorrow, that would be incredible. For now, it is enough for us to remain in the Game. If I was to go home in the morning, that would be beyond disastrous. Let us go back to the auditorium. I think it is important that we see what Rex has discovered up close.”

  We were all in agreement.

  “‘All steps of learning should be sought for nature,’” Rex repeated as we walked. “‘All steps of learning should be sought for nature.’”

  “Okay,” Painted Wolf said. “Let’s tease it apart.”

  “On the surface, the obvious part is that it says that we need to turn to nature for everything we learn. That maybe all human thought comes from nature first,” Rex said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But this sounds too simple.”

  “The moth is natural. Maybe learning comes from the moth?” Painted Wolf asked. “Maybe it is a quote by someone who studied moths?”

  Rex shook his head. We fell into a few moments of silence.

  I did not like wasting time.

  What if we were wrong? What if Rex gave us the wrong letters? Perhaps we should be in the library with the other contestants? What if the RSA cipher really was a working code and not a hidden surprise?

  We could not be wrong. We had to be right.

  My family depended on it!

  “What about the context?” I asked. “This phrase was hidden in the wing.”

  “Not the wing,” Rex interjected. “The RSA cipher.”

  We chewed over that for a few moments before Painted Wolf suddenly leaned forward with a big, beautiful grin on her face. “It was in a cryptograph. It was hidden. That is the context. Who created the RSA cipher?”

  “Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, 1977. But that’s too recent. This expression sounds old to me.”

  “Very old,” I added. “Who speaks like this?”

  Painted Wolf grinned.

  “Leon Battista Alberti,” she said.

  “Who?” I asked, confused.

  “If it’s about cryptography,” Painted Wolf said, “then maybe it has something to do with the history of cryptography. Leon Battista Alberti was an architect who’s considered by some to be the father of cryptography.”

  On the steps of the auditorium, Painted Wolf motioned for us to gather around her cell phone. She was downloading an English translation of a book titled De statua (On Sculpture), written by our friend Alberti in 1462.

  Painted Wolf flipped through pages. “The book’s pretty short. But I don’t think we were meant to find just that sentence. We were meant to find this book. Question is: What’s so important about this book?”

  “Read it to us,” I said. “At least a few pages to get a sense of it.”

  Painted Wolf read the opening pages aloud. Alberti wrote, in very exquisite prose, about the history of sculpture and the purpose of it as art. Just as we were getting into the rhythm of the writing, Painted Wolf stopped.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s misdirection,” Painted Wolf said, looking up.

  “What do you mean?” Rex asked.

  “Listen,” Painted Wolf said. Then she read again from the book. “It says that sculptors want their work to ‘appear to the observer to be similar to the real objects of nature.’ Do you get what that means?”

  “No.” I was greatly concerned and confused.

  Painted Wolf lowered her phone. “You have to think strategically, Tunde. This is about weeding out players. Kiran isn’t going to just hand us the answer.” Rex and I watched as Painted Wolf pulled a large silver earring from her left ear and twisted it open. I was stunned to see a headphone jack inside. How clever! She plugged the jack into her personal cell phone and turned it around so we could see a video, filmed surreptitiously, of the speech Kiran gave. “Think back to what Kiran said at the meeting. He put the moth on the screen and then sent it to everyone’s phones. What did he say about the moth? Think back to the exact words he used. He said that the moth on the cell phones was a copy.”

  Rex brightened. “Oh man…”

  “Watch.”

  In the video clip, Kiran said, “And originals are the key to success. We live in a world where everyone is copying everyone else, but copies are a distraction.”

  Painted Wolf pressed pause and smiled.

  Suddenly, the truth of it crashed into my head like bright African sunlight. It just dey copy-copy! Very excited, I said, “He told us that only originals find success. Copies only lead to more copies. He gave us the clue at the very start.”

  Rex raced up the remaining steps. “We have to see the original moth!”

  12. CAI

  02 DAYS, 08 HOURS, 38 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR

  The auditorium door was unlocked.

  We stepped inside to find the room empty.

  Rex flicked on the lights and we made our way to the stage where the original moth was fluttering in its loopless pattern.

  Tunde and I climbed up to look it over closely.

  “It is projected onto a mirror here,” Tunde said as he ran his fingers along the glass. Touching the screen did not alter the image. “The bigger question is how do we manipulate it? Surely it is similar to the moth that we all received on our cell phone. That one worked on touch, but this is different. We need to find a way either to interrupt the light source or to add to it.”

  Rex stood nearby, stroking the light stubble on his chin.

  “What do you think, Rex?” I asked.

  He said, “Adding to it is interesting. I’m sure there’s a code beneath the surface, same as the copies. But, code’s got to be different. That’s my guess.”

  We were suddenly interrupted by a booming voice:

  “And it’s a very good guess!”

  We hadn’t heard the doors to the auditorium open, but we heard them slam shut. A group of three additional competitors walked into the room.

  “You guys are quick! We thought we were first to find the clue.”

  A young man with a bold personality and narrow eyes climbed onto the stage and pulled a laser pointer from his jacket pocket. When he shone the laser light on the moth, it trembled, the surface of its digital skin peeling back to reveal layers and layers of code everywhere but on its eyes.

  Tunde clapped.

  Layers of code beneath the surface of the moth

  “Brilliant, Norbert,” he said. “Sharp guy!”

  Norbert bowed. “Actually, I wasn’t sure it would work,” he said. “I figured it might react to some interference, and laser light seemed natural, but … it worked. I want to introduce you to my friends.”

  His companions were quite a disparate pair. The first was a boy, no older than nine, who had short dreadlocks and wore a puffy hoodie with the distinctive black-and-white color scheme of a panda bear. It even had ears. The second was a girl, around fifteen years old. She was tall and pretty, with long brown hair. She wore a floral skirt, and avoided all eye contact.

  “I’m Kenny Prime,” the boy said.

  “Anj,” the young woman mumbled.

  “Nice to meet you all,” I said. “I’m Painted Wolf. This is Rex Huerta, a coder, and Tunde Oni, an engineer. We just got here, too.”

  “Anj’s from the Philippines. She’s into biochem. Kenny’s a freshman at Yale. He’s from Haiti. Computer science guy,” Norbert said.

  “Your name’s Kenny, huh?” Rex asked. “Yale?”

>   Kenny nodded, very sure of himself. “You know David Gelernter there? You know, one of the guys who inspired Java? He’s a legend.”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s my mentor,” Kenny added smugly.

  “I’m jealous.”

  “You should be,” Kenny said without a hint of humor.

  Rex rolled his eyes. I wondered how they knew each other. Was it just that Rex was something of a sponge, absorbing all the information that crossed his path, or was there a history here? Maybe they’d encountered each other online? Regardless, even if they weren’t exactly on good terms, I saw an opportunity to use that competitiveness. We didn’t have much time and there’s no better motivator than rivalry.

  “Kenny, come on up,” I said, motioning for him to join us.

  I borrowed the laser pointer from Norbert, revealed the underlying code, and then knelt down beside Kenny. “You’re a coder like Rex. Tell me what you see.”

  Kenny looked me over, unsure about having me so close. “You don’t smell bad,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  It didn’t take long for me to realize why Rex had a problem with Kenny. This was one obnoxious kid. If I didn’t get him focused, we could be in real trouble.

  Kenny moved close to the flickering moth and analyzed the codes. “These are hex strings. They are the same on both wings. Mirrored. Repeated.”

  “And you can decode them?” I asked.

  “Of course. With a computer.”

  “But we do not have a computer here…,” Tunde began, sincerely concerned.

  Norbert spoke up. “Paper. Pencils. Enough time, we can do it.”

  “Are you serious?” Kenny scoffed.

  Rex said, “It’s going to be insanely hard.”

  They continued to grumble until I interrupted.

  “Here’s one thing I’ve been wondering,” I said. “Why a moth?”

  12.1

  Anj cleared her throat.

  If she hadn’t, I think we all would have forgotten she was there.

  “Sorry, um, it’s Dysphania percota,” she said with a thick accent. “Blue tiger moth. It’s native to India. I’m only mentioning it because it might have something to do with solving the code. There were codes in the duplicates on our cell phones.”

  “Any guess on why it’s a blue tiger moth and not something else?” I asked.

  “Um, it’s a geometrid,” Anj said. “The name’s derived from the Latin for ‘earth-measurer.’ That’s a poetic sort of reference to the inchworm’s locomotion. Fitting, really. This one is male, you can tell by the length of the antenna.”

  “Can you tell us what makes this moth different?” I asked. “Is it unusual?”

  “It’s actually pretty common,” Anj said. “Ubiquitous, really. The only unusual thing about it is … Oh my God, I can’t believe I missed that.”

  “Missed what?” Painted Wolf asked.

  “The eyes,” Anj said. “The moth’s eyes are wrong.”

  Everyone turned to look at the moth. Its eyes didn’t appear wrong to me.

  “What’s wrong about them, Anj?” I asked.

  “They’re not positioned correctly. They’re too far apart.”

  “What does that tell us?” Rex asked.

  “It tells us to focus on the eyes.”

  Kenny frowned. “No it doesn’t. It tells us that whoever drew it was a terrible artist. I’m not going to read too much into this business. The only important thing is figuring out what’s in the hex strings.”

  As I watched Anj duck back into her shell, I thought of the many young women I knew like her back home. These were people who felt bad about taking up room at a table, started every sentence with “sorry,” and were embarrassed to ask questions and deathly afraid of being seen as bossy or impertinent.

  I wanted to grab Anj by the shoulders and let her know it was okay to yell and shout and scream and make a fuss. I wanted to tell her that taking up space was human and that in scientific discourse you should never feel like you need to start a sentence with “sorry.” I wanted her to know her ideas were just as valid.

  “Everyone,” I said as I dragged a chair across the stage to the moth.

  I slipped my boots off and stood on top of the chair.

  “We need to work together if we’re going to solve this,” I said. “We don’t have more than six or seven hours left.”

  As I scanned their faces, I organized them in my mind.

  “Norbert, you and Rex are coders. I’ll get you the image of the code on the wings from my phone and I need you two to crack it. Tunde and Anj, see if you can come up with why Kiran chose this moth. Maybe do some research into the species, its environment, anything that will give us more clues. Kiran has a calculating mind. He wouldn’t have chosen this moth randomly. Kenny, you need to jailbreak the cell phones that Kiran gave us. Maybe there’s something in the programming we haven’t seen yet.”

  “Seriously? Who died and made you boss all of a sudden?” Kenny sneered. “What’s your job?”

  “I’m already doing it,” I said as I hopped off the chair. “Now, let’s get to work.”

  13. REX

  02 DAYS, 08 HOURS, 12 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR

  Norbert and I spent the next two and a half hours code breaking.

  Have you ever built a cell phone from rubber bands and toothpicks?

  No, neither have I.

  Outside of being impossible, can you imagine how hard that’d be?

  How insanely frustrating?

  That’s exactly what trying to break a code on paper is like.

  Using archaic tools (the first graphite pencil was invented in the seventeenth century, by the way) to solve modern problems results in more complications. All of the calculations the computer would normally do, the easy stuff, stacks up. What would take a few minutes in front of a screen takes hours.

  So, yeah, it wasn’t easy, but I’m not ashamed to say my grasp of frequency analysis and affine shift ciphers was better than Norbert’s. We got along well enough, both locked on our cell screens and talking nothing but math. It wasn’t like trying to work with Kenny, but then Painted Wolf had clearly known that.

  Watching her in her element, directing us all, problem solving, strategizing, I was in awe. She could run a country if she wanted to. Turn around an economy. Probably cure cancer if she had the right team of people to organize.

  Kenny jailbroke the cells and handed them out just as the doors to the auditorium opened and in waltzed at least half a dozen other contestants. Damn. They’d caught on, too. Unless we wanted to help everyone else advance to the next level, we not only had to work double-time but also we couldn’t do it out loud anymore.

  Cameras are eyes.…

  Microphones are ears.…

  I set my teeth, focused on the jailbroken cell, and pushed myself into the zone. Given our situation and the amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins, I knew I was capable of impossible things.

  I spent the next forty-two minutes coding.

  I couldn’t talk. I was thinking too fast for that.

  My fingers moved like wildfire.

  The code unfurled on the screen. I don’t feel cocky saying it was glorious, because it was. It came out organically. I was practically channeling it, as though the cell phone screen and my fingers were on their own wavelength and I was sitting back, taking in the ride.

  When it was over, I exhaled. “Over here, guys.”

  I marshaled our little team. All of them huddled around my phone.

  “So what does it do?” Norbert asked, peering over my shoulder.

  “This.” I pressed enter and the program ran.

  Within fifteen seconds, it had solved the hex strings.

  “No way,” Norbert gasped as he watched the program spit out the answer. “How exactly did you just do that?”

  “Reconfigured Schneier’s Twofish…”

  “But you can’t…,” Kenny said. “Impossible…” He turned to Norbert.
“He can’t do that, right? No one can do that.”

  Norbert shrugged. “I guess Rex can.”

  There, flashing in neon green type on my cell screen, was a cryptic message:

  25mm takes to the sky and wrong philosophers consider life anthropomorphic machines in wonderment of why. The image is the missive and only revealed when it dazzles.

  14. TUNDE

  02 DAYS, 06 HOURS, 45 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR

  We were all exhausted, but I never let my mind slow.

  I could not afford it. The words of my mother and the harsh voice of General Iyabo reverberated in my ears.

  Looking at the poem on the cell phone screen, Painted Wolf spoke first, “Twenty-five millimeters is an inch. Could be something we are meant to build, like a disguised blueprint. The words could disguise measurements.”

  “It’s an inchworm. A caterpillar,” Anj said. “I think that’s what it means when it says twenty-five millimeters takes to the sky. An inchworm becomes a moth.”

  “Could inchworm be a program?” Painted Wolf suggested.

  She looked to Rex and Norbert.

  “Not that I’ve heard of,” Rex said. “Maybe it’s another trick.”

  “We don’t need maybes, we need answers!” Kenny roared.

  Rex could no longer control himself. He shouted directly at Kenny in Spanish. Kenny screamed back and began pushing Rex. Norbert jumped between them, putting himself in the middle of this fray. It was a brave move, like stepping between two battling dogs. He dey enta da fire!

  “It’s like I said!” Anj yelled. I did not imagine she was capable of such noise given her temperament, but it worked, the fighting stopped. Everyone turned to her, even the other contestants in the auditorium. Anj lowered her voice again and motioned to the moth.

  “It’s all in the eyes,” Anj said. “We have to dazzle them.”

  “What?” I gave voice to what we surely all thought.

  “Dazzle,” Anj clarified. “In the poem, that’s how it is revealed.” She grabbed the laser from Norbert and shone it on the moth. As before, everything on the moth unfurled to reveal code beneath. Only the eyes remained unchanged.