Probe

by Douglas E Roff

  Edward continued, “So there are three parts to what Team Cryptography can do. One is the knowledge base each has in cryptography; two is the excellence of each in applied mathematics, and third is the skill each possesses associated with the application of computer software engineering to the mathematics and cryptography of the tasks at hand.

  “We can start by acknowledging that all four teammates are excellent in mathematics, although Marcus might be the weakest link followed by Alvin, while Richard and Tawney are probably the most skilled, especially when applied to complex encryption issues. Richard and Tawney are also at the top when discussing the application of computer technology to cryptography. Here Richard is more experienced than Tawney, but Tawney has been using software engineering for a great while, taught initially by her father who was instructed by Adam.

  “On the issue of cryptography, we differentiate between complex systems and simple systems. Tawney is best when it comes to the knowledge of both, Alvin and Richard when it comes to the knowledge of complex systems, and Marcus is without peer at the simple systems employed by criminal organizations and the like. Obviously, that’s connected to his work at the FBI.

  “So, each has specific interwoven skill sets, and together they can cover a lot of ground. Are any of them the best in the world? Probably not. But together they’re formidable. And they would’ve had an amazing private sector company if they ever decided to go in that direction. But they all are dedicated to their governments and would prefer to perform their services not for gain, but for patriotism.”

  Misti thought over what Edward had just shared and understood what he was trying to get at.

  She said, “Then how does all this apply to our little project. I think I see, but I’d rather you give it to me straight. And where does Adam fit in here?”

  “OK. Let me ask you a question before I continue.”

  “OK, fire away.”

  “When we consider the Gens, based on everything we know, would you surmise their encryption system to be simple or complex?”

  “I’d have to say complex. They have money, and talent, and global resources, so I’d think their encryption is pretty sophisticated.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “The importance and relevance of the need for secrecy and the work they are doing. Wouldn’t want prying eyes.”

  “Who’s watching?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Who’s watching? I mean who’s out there watching them? Who knows about them? Who cares about their research or their activities?”

  “OK, I see your point. Let me amend my answer to “simple”. More like a Mafia code.”

  “I agree. Probably, but not a certainly. The approach to our analysis must be both simultaneously. We need all the members of Team Cryptography working together to find out what the Gens are using. We need the translations first to see what can be translated, that’s your bailiwick, then we need to analyze what isn’t translated to see if it’s encrypted. Then we go from there. But there’s more.”

  “What? More what?”

  “There’s even more complication.”

  “Which is?”

  The Gens Collective isn’t the only Gens problem we have.”

  “You mean the Black Shirts.”

  “Yes. Them. They’re another wild card creating another set of problems. They may be more lethal and more sophisticated. Just can’t say yet.”

  “I see.”

  “Then there’s Adam.”

  “Oh, him. Why him again?”

  “Not sure how much Adam shares with you about every aspect of his work.”

  “A lot but probably not everything. And I’m not interested in everything he does. Should I be?”

  “Yes, you should. Not the details, but the highlights for sure. As my chief lieutenant and heir to the empire, you should know what I know plus be doing your own work.”

  “Am I being paid enough?”

  “Do you include a husband in the financial equation? You know, salary, fringe benefits and a working husband?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then, yes, you are. On the other hand, the family owes you more than we can ever pay for your exceedingly important husband management services. You cannot even begin to appreciate just how different the family is now. How much better and happier we all are. How much happier he is. It happened and it happened fast. The most appreciative, and by far the happiest, is Maria. Mom. You do know that. Right?”

  “I guess I do. Adam says the same thing, but he never elaborates.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s OK. He tells me he loves me, he needs me and how important I am for everybody. And he does so much for me and in so many ways. It’s not just the things he does but things, you know, he … permits. I have all the freedom to just be who I am in every way, to grow and experience and he never judges. Never. And I’m safe, I’m always safe with him. Safe inside and out, safe in the world we have created, safe in the world he lets me see. His world. And he does that for Noki and Alana too.”

  “You’re happy then? And the ladies too?”

  “Yes. Yes, we are, all of us. We all feel the exact same way, but we would all have trouble putting it into words. It’s very different for each of us, what each of us needs and wants. It just is … this amazing thing we have. Together. A perfect puzzle of a million pieces fitting together, all of us helping each other with this one common denominator, this force of nature who binds us all together. And we don’t all sit around talking about taking care of ‘our man’; we all believe that he takes care of each of us.”

  Misti looked at her mentor, smiled and then laughed.

  “Plus, he cooks and cleans. And he makes big bank. He’s a dream come true for all of us in the harem.”

  Edward laughed too, as a thought crossed his mind.

  “And to think that he has only been fully domesticated recently.”

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess. It’s a fact and it’s huge. This project we’re on is weird but, in the midst of all the cruelty, the danger and the high stakes, our family has never been more united and happier. Happy. The rest of us would like to take credit, but it isn’t any of us. It’s you, Misti. It’s you.”

  Misti smiled, a little uncomfortable with the mushy accolades. Very un-Edward like. She said, “But we digress.”

  “We do. Let me continue then.”

  ***

  “The Black Shirts cause us a problem on many fronts. We know almost nothing about them, where they are and what they are up to. Their capabilities seem better than the Collective; less predictable, more spontaneous, and definitely more creative. Vastly more like us. Clever and devious.”

  “And ruthless.”

  “And ruthless, that’s correct. We’re attacking the problem of ‘them’ by the same route we chose to go after the Collective. In this regard, we haven’t found their secret places, at least not yet anyway. But Adam has been working on finding a way into the Black Shirt tech world following the attack in London. Alana was a lot more on top of what the retaliation might engender and was prepared to go after the communications of the Black Shirts, many of whom fled before the attack took place. Once we had the names of the survivors, and their cell, and computer data, Alana traced their whereabouts and found out where they went. Once that happened, she began tracing calls and communications between the survivors and unknown parties. She assumed they were all Black Shirts themselves or sympathizers. She has done an amazing job of finding everything they have. But, unlike the Collective, they use standard modern English as their language, but the naughty bits are fully encrypted. That’s where Adam and Team Cryptography come in. Especially the differentiation between simple and complex cryptography comes in. It took all of the team to figure out the Black Shirt codes, but between what Adam and Alana provided and what the London Team could do, they found the answers to all their questions.”

  “Like what?�
�

  “Like everything the Black Shirts are up to, how they’re doing, and what they intend. We have their financial data, where it is and how much; we have the locations, identities, and roles of their people worldwide; we have their Labs, and their science and what they’re doing with the data they have been stealing or altering and we know who their key players and command structures look like. We have data and intel on their military and security structures. We have their plans, what they will do and why. Basically, we have everything.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little too convenient. All in English and all available?”

  “Yes. That’s what Hannah thought too. But not when seen in the light of what they stand for. They are a total departure from everything the Collective represents. They are new; nouveau everything. They want to tear down the old rules, and constraints, and lead their people into a new age of Gens dominance. They don’t care who finds out what they’re doing; in their minds, it’s too late for us to stop them.”

  “Is it?”

  “No. They were right about everything. But they made one small mistake and it’s going to cost them; the one thing they never considered.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Time.”

  Chapter 22

  The group was gathered in the Tech Center at the Manor in early afternoon, awaiting a call from Dr. Mendez in Southern California. It had been some time since Adam, Misti and Edward had last spoken to him in hopes of gaining new clues or insights into the yet undecipherable Gens language. While they believed it to be some arcane variation of ancient Aramaic, Misti had postulated that the characters might’ve been a variation of Aramaic script but representing a non-Aramaic language. If one could date the script, one might discover the language. Misti, having no expertise in ancient languages whatsoever, had suggested this based on the use of Chinese Han characters in the dozen or so principal dialects of modern Chinese as well as Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese.

  As smaller ancient Western Asian kingdoms were conquered beginning in the seventh century BCE, and Aramaic introduced to the local cultures to unify the empire under a single language, there might, she conjectured, have been a transitional form of language and script.

  Dr. Mendez had remembered at least one such example of just this type of dialect/script transition, but he couldn’t off hand remember just where. Fortunately, one of his graduate assistants who had been tasked with cataloging Dr. Mendez’s life works did remember it, and remembered the professor who had worked on the study back in the 1970’s. He was now a full professor of Linguistic Anthropology at San Diego State University.

  It just so happened that Dr. Miles Stanton had done his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic; his thesis was an in-depth study of the Achaemenid Empire and its use of the use Aramaic language as a cultural and politically unifying force. He had extensively studied the manner in which the Persians, under Darius the Great, had first transitioned smaller cultures with disparate languages to Aramaic, written and oral. He had catalogued over forty examples, and one matched almost perfectly the script used by the Gens.

  The call with Dr. Mendez had been arranged by his young associate, Dr. Norman Drake, who had cataloged the research and contacted Dr. Stanton on behalf of Dr. Edward St. James. Though Dr. Mendez’s memory might be failing in odd ways, Dr. Drake was very familiar with Dr. St. James, his son Dr. Adam St. James and his younger son Rodrigo Suarez. As a teen, he had read the Curse of the Minotaur, which had been a great influence on his choice of careers.

  The Curse of the Minotaur, with its intrigue, betrayal, murder and larger than life characters, all real, was all that was required to spark the imagination of a bright young academic with no direction in life. Now, all these years later, Ph.D. in hand, Norman Drake considered himself lucky to have a decent salary, a cramped basement office at the U and any access whatsoever to the secretarial pool. His job was to digitally record and reintroduce to the academic world to the seemingly arcane and mostly irrelevant collection of ancient languages that represented the life’s work of a dogged man who remained unheralded and underappreciated even in his own academic circles.

  Unknown, but not unappreciated.

  Dr. Edward St. James had known Dr. Mendez for many decades and although the elder academic seldom recognized friends and acquaintances any longer, he still knew Edward’s work. Dr. Norman Drake had never envisioned where he might end up and wasn’t unhappy with the outcome. A little more field work, and a modicum of travel would be welcome, but, at age twenty-eight, he still believed it was possible.

  He hoped he wouldn’t just be a younger version of Dr. Mendez; he respected his boss but hungered for a more interesting line of work.

  The video conference started promptly on schedule as Dr. Mendez began to speak. “Thank you all for making yourself available today. I have much to discuss with you and I wish to make an announcement, but I shall reserve that for a little later. First, I would like to ask if Missy or Mindy, the young lady I spoke to on the last call is here on this call?”

  “Yes, Professor, I’m here. It’s Misty St. James. We spoke last time.”

  “Oh good. Well, it turns out, Mindy, that you were correct, we do have a very unusual case here and it was mostly as you suggested.”

  Edward interrupted his old friend, “Professor, could you fill us all in on what that supposition was? We have a lot of folks here today listening in and they weren’t on the first call.”

  “Oh bother, you should prepare more thoroughly, young SinnJinn. Preparation is the key to success; you should be more like your young Missy.” The Professor paused, “Very well, then. Mindy suggested that the script might be a form of standard Aramaic, but the language itself some other dialect. Like Mandarin and Yue Chinese dialects. Different dialects but each still uses Han characters. Indeed, one of my former students wrote his thesis on the topic and my colleague, Dr. Drake, Norman I mean, recognized the script you sent as resembling that script and that dialect. That’s the good news, according to Norman.”

  “There’s bad news too?”

  “Yes and no. The dialect is very similar, but there are some differences, the technicalities of which I will not discuss here. We’ll come back to them. The script contains not only a standard alphabet but some additional letters and letter combinations.”

  “What are those?”

  “It would be like, in English, the letters A and B, but then a new character, A/B. We think the new characters stand for vocal sounds that cannot be achieved with standard Aramaic script.”

  “What else?”

  “Translation is very slow. Or as Norman says, super slow. He has translated what you have sent, but that was only a few pages and it took a week. Norman says we could use a mainframe to speed up the translations if we could write better programming. But the programming would be very complex due to many grammatical, syntactical and morphological rules and patterns.”

  Adam interjected, “How are your coding skills, Norman.”

  “Good, but not Adam St. James good. It’s like I know what I want to do and generally how to get there but getting the program functionality to work is super hard.”

  Adam said, “We can help you there. Have you spoken with Dr. Stanton at San Diego State?”

  “First place I went. He was happy to share all his notes, raw research data and recollections of the project. But he says he’s moved on from that project and has no time to get back involved. He did say if we needed to speak to him, he would make himself available.”

  Edward said, “OK Norman, when can you be ready to take up a new assignment?”

  “Immediately. Today, seriously, if you needed me.”

  “Nothing to wrap up?”

  “Nope. Ready to roll. Where do you want me?”

  “London. Tomorrow. Day after at the latest. I’ll send you an e-ticket for your flight and we’ll handle everything else. Send me your bank account data, and we’ll put some dollars in your checking
account and a credit card we will want you to use when you arrive?”

  “London, England?”

  “Yes. Where did you think I meant?”

  “I’m Canadian. From London, Ontario.”

  “Leafs and Jays?”

  “All my life.”

  “I feel your pain on the former and your utter joy on the latter.”

  “And I used to be a Cubs fan.”

  “Damn. We have a great mental health plan as part of our health care package.”

  “Just in time.”

  They finished the call now understanding the way forward. Dr. Norman Drake would join the team immediately at the Manor and coordinate activities with Adam to translate the Gens Common Tongue using the computing power of the DL Main. It would take time, and mistakes would be made, but in time they would’ve the entire Gens Library translated.

  Two other team members would later join Dr. Norman Drake’s translation team; their input and creative abilities would refine and enhance the final digital dictionary he produced.

  ***

  The next morning, a call came in from Lansdowne Park. Misti had sent the gang there an email with the news of what Dr. Mendez and Dr. Drake had found. It was good news, in fact very good news, but there was much work to be done before any high fives were in order. Norman would need to get here then he and Adam, and perhaps Alana, would begin constructing the software and algorithms that could code the rules of the language that would be necessary to translate the ancient language into understandable English. It may have sounded easy, but it really wasn’t. Consistency and reliability were minimum requirements. Close but no cigar wasn’t acceptable.

  Marcus had been out visiting Tawney and Team Cryptography, and given the news out of California, he had important new news.

  Everyone from Lansdowne was on the call, along with the Manor crowd who were related in any way to linguistics and software development.

  Marcus started, “We hear there’s good news on the translation front.”

  Adam said, “There is. But it may be a little while before we can start achieving desired results. We won’t know for sure until I have a look at the work that Dr. Drake has already done. If I understand what he has been working on, he has established all the rules and requirements for the literal translation of the language along with the standard characters used, exceptions and variations as well as vocabulary. If he has the roadmap essentially finished, then Alana and I can do the software and algorithms and begin testing. But it’s not like when we have 25% of the software completed, we can get 25% of the translations in the bag. We need 100% of the software then we can start at 1% of the materials to be translated.”