Later...
The man called Roy G. Biv sits in a creaky old desk chair. It used to be one of those high-tech jobs, the kind that if you push a couple of buttons will tilt and grow and shrink. Full of unnecessary nano, or so Roy had thought when he gutted it looking for parts to repair his arithmetical engine. Of course the whole thing was ridiculously bleeding edge, not a single damned gear to be found, and now the chair's guts live in a polyplastic tub on one of the shelves lining the office walls.
He pushes his black framed glasses up his nose with his middle finger and the chair groans under his shifting weight. How long has he been here? Three hours? Thirteen? It's anyone's guess, least of all his.
He remembers this yellowed strip of paper, what it says, how relieved he was to get it. Even before he'd been able to read enigma code like primer English, he'd known what it said instinctively, like some stirring in the back of his brain, in the places that lay sleeping from infancy.
It, along with a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, and other bits and pieces, normally sits in a location far more secure than that of the junked nano that used to make up his desk chair. There is a squat fireproof safe that sits in what passes for his kitchen, tucked under a table pieced together with polyplastic crates and what (at 2'x3') might just be the biggest piece of wood left in the city. But if there is one thing Roy G. Biv has learned from living in London for as long as he has, if you want something preserved, you had best invest in a fireproof safe.
Right now, the contents of that safe sit on his desk, in an ancient cardboard shoebox with some no-name brand's logo screened onto the side. He hasn't opened this box in a long, long time.
There are a pair of plate-metal daguerreotypes, spectral faces practically unfamiliar; a lock of a lady's soft hair held together with a short braid of copper wire. There is a photograph clipped from a newspaper of a man who looks very much like Roy G. Biv shaking hands with a fashionable sort of airman. There is a George Cross suspended from a ratty piece of ancient ribbon. Not least, there are strips and strips of paper that were once coiled into what looked like the roll of paper you put into one of those archaic receipt-machines that people used before all accounting went straight to your Voda.
That is what he is currently examining. These are the closest things he has to love letters. Those groupings of numbers, four at a time, in column that look so uniform that the monotony alone is enough to discourage half the known world from snooping. Add to that the fact that the messages within are protected by crypto based on a chain of algorithms so specific that only a few people in the world still remember them, and Roy knows his secrets are still safe. At least those ones are.
He hasn't thought of these things in years. They had faded to the back of his mind in the same place as his memories of childhood imaginary friends, until three days ago he received a message on his Voda. It was a string of numbers in a language familiar, but almost forgotten; forsaken for nano-quantum crypto and other unnecessarily complicated forms of code based on the assumption that newer automatically meant better.
This is old crypto, punched into a Voda, but perfectly preserved. It's not enigma code, but it's based on the same tricks. Just a different modulus, which meant it shouldn't be all that hard to crack. Still, even with his modern equipment, it's time consuming work. The problem with cryptanalysis isn't that it's hard--which it is--but because it requires more patience than the average person in a world of mites and holo can muster in their entire lives.
But at least he's lucky enough to have these old scraps to go on. It's going to be a long night.
He pushes his black framed glasses up his nose with his middle finger and the chair groans under his shifting weight. How long has he been here? Three hours? Thirteen? It's anyone's guess, least of all his.
He remembers this yellowed strip of paper, what it says, how relieved he was to get it. Even before he'd been able to read enigma code like primer English, he'd known what it said instinctively, like some stirring in the back of his brain, in the places that lay sleeping from infancy.
It, along with a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, and other bits and pieces, normally sits in a location far more secure than that of the junked nano that used to make up his desk chair. There is a squat fireproof safe that sits in what passes for his kitchen, tucked under a table pieced together with polyplastic crates and what (at 2'x3') might just be the biggest piece of wood left in the city. But if there is one thing Roy G. Biv has learned from living in London for as long as he has, if you want something preserved, you had best invest in a fireproof safe.
Right now, the contents of that safe sit on his desk, in an ancient cardboard shoebox with some no-name brand's logo screened onto the side. He hasn't opened this box in a long, long time.
There are a pair of plate-metal daguerreotypes, spectral faces practically unfamiliar; a lock of a lady's soft hair held together with a short braid of copper wire. There is a photograph clipped from a newspaper of a man who looks very much like Roy G. Biv shaking hands with a fashionable sort of airman. There is a George Cross suspended from a ratty piece of ancient ribbon. Not least, there are strips and strips of paper that were once coiled into what looked like the roll of paper you put into one of those archaic receipt-machines that people used before all accounting went straight to your Voda.
That is what he is currently examining. These are the closest things he has to love letters. Those groupings of numbers, four at a time, in column that look so uniform that the monotony alone is enough to discourage half the known world from snooping. Add to that the fact that the messages within are protected by crypto based on a chain of algorithms so specific that only a few people in the world still remember them, and Roy knows his secrets are still safe. At least those ones are.
He hasn't thought of these things in years. They had faded to the back of his mind in the same place as his memories of childhood imaginary friends, until three days ago he received a message on his Voda. It was a string of numbers in a language familiar, but almost forgotten; forsaken for nano-quantum crypto and other unnecessarily complicated forms of code based on the assumption that newer automatically meant better.
This is old crypto, punched into a Voda, but perfectly preserved. It's not enigma code, but it's based on the same tricks. Just a different modulus, which meant it shouldn't be all that hard to crack. Still, even with his modern equipment, it's time consuming work. The problem with cryptanalysis isn't that it's hard--which it is--but because it requires more patience than the average person in a world of mites and holo can muster in their entire lives.
But at least he's lucky enough to have these old scraps to go on. It's going to be a long night.