Stone Age (2 page)

Steve Parkington

4:30 P.M.

Clear Lake, Michigan

Steve Parkington was up to the twelfth level of Killer Zombie Apocalypse Part XII on the X-Box, when an unfamiliar tone from his computer prompted him to stop.  Just before a Nazi zombie was to take a bite out of him, he hit the pause button on his controller and examined the smallest of the five computer screens to the right of his primary screen.   His search algorithm had been scanning the net for specific keywords and it scored a hit.  He clicked on the link on his screen.  This took him to an unfamiliar Internet message board page.  The page contained a simple text message of stark white letters against a solid black background and an image at the bottom. It said:

Hello again.  Our search for intelligent individuals now continues.

The first clue is hidden within this image.

Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us.  We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through.

Good luck.

3301

Below the text was this image:

“Ha.  There you are Mr. Cicada,” he exclaimed excitedly.

He heard about Cicada 3301 from an Internet Relay Chat group where he often communicated with fellow hacker-friends.  Most were twenty-something like him.  By the time that he tried to follow the trail, it had grown cold.  He wrote the algorithm to scour the Internet in hopes that it would appear again.  His efforts paid off.

Arguably, his interest in this was due to a gene passed down to him by his father, John, who founded two successful Internet-based companies, the second called Picshare made his family wealthy.  Steve, like his father, was an IT person by vocation, founding his own digital security company prior to beginning high school.  However, his skills for this test were spawned by his long-time passion for hacking and cryptography.

“Okay, what is hidden in this image then?” he asked out loud, considering his next move in this chess-like game.  He reasoned that it must use some form of digital steganography, the concealing of secret information within a digital file.  He started picking apart the pixels using an open source program he loved using.  He ran different combinations, adjusting the color of every first pixel, and then second, and so on.  On the fiftieth pixel combination, the image changed and revealed writing.  There was a reference to “Tiberius Claudius Caesar” and a line of seemingly meaningless letters.  He deduced it must be a Caesar cipher, an encryption technique used for private correspondence by its namesake Julius.  He also knew this as a shift cipher, one of the most widely known encryption techniques, consisting of substituting or “shifting” letters in a message with corresponding letters some number of positions down the alphabet.  Since Tiberius Claudius was the fourth Caesar in Rome, Steve reasoned that for every letter in the meaningless jumble of letters, he would substitute a letter four letters forward in the alphabet.  This gave him a web address, which he entered into his browser, excited to see what it would reveal.

“Nuts,” he said disappointed.  It was a picture of a duck with the following text:

Whoops.

Just a decoy this way.  Looks like you can’t guess how to get the message out.”

“Okay, you don’t fool me that easily.  I’m guessing your duck message is a literal clue,” continuing his conversation with the screen’s author.

He opened his trusted OutGuess program, which helped him in cracking many similar encryption codes.  With this, he found another hidden message, which linked him to a message board on Reddit:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hash: SHA1

Welcome again.

Here is a book code.  To find the book, break this riddle:

A book whose study is forbidden

Once dictated to a beast;

To be read once and then destroyed

Or you shall have no peace.

I:1:6; I:2:15; I:3:26; I:5:4; I:6:15; I:10:26:; I:14:136; I:15:68; I:16:42; I:18:17; I:19:14; I:20:58; I:21:10; I:22:8; I:23:6; I:25:17; I:26:33; I:27:30; I:46:32; I:47:53; I:49:209; I:50:10; I:51:115; I:52:39; I:53:4; I:62:43; I:63:8; III:19:84; III:20:10; III:21:11; ; III:22:3; III:23:58; 5; I:1:3; I:2:15; I:3:6; I:14:17; I:30:68; I:60:11; II:49:84; II:50:50; II:64:104; II:76:3; II:76:3; 0; I:60:11

Good luck.

3301

Steve remembered hearing this poem once.  He searched for a few minutes, using various parts of the poem.  By accident, he ran across a similar poem, which pointed to the book,
Liber AL vel Legis
by Alester Crowley, also known as
The Book of Law
.

Deducing that the rest of the message pointed to different lines in each chapter of the book, he found a web address for a Dropbox.  He entered this and downloaded the 130MB file, some sort of .iso image. 

“This is getting interesting,” again, speaking out loud to no one but himself.

When booting from the image, a series of numbers started to appear, one after another on his screen.

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19…

“Ahhhh.  Prime numbers,” he said while watching his screen.

The prime numbers continued to appear in succession on his screen until they ended in “3301.”  Then the screen went blank for a moment and flashed, “The key is all around you.”  Then the image of the Cicada appeared again.

“What’s with the damned cicada?”  He wondered out loud and pondered this next clue.  He remembered cicadas from his childhood in Chicago, or what they all called a “17 year locust,” since they appeared every 17 years.  He giggled at a long forgotten memory of being outside in his elementary school playground, when the girls would scream at the site of cicadas flying and covering nearly every inch of the ground.  So, ubiquitous were these bugs that upon walking home that day, he remembered every step was announced with a crunch, as his sneakers would end the lives of a half dozen or so of those things.

“Steve?” His mother’s voice from down the hall broke his thinking.

He looked up from the screen, and yelled out, “I’m here in Dad’s office.”

A couple of seconds later, his mother’s voice said a little louder, “When you get a chance, could you make a trip to the station and top off the boat?  I want to make sure we have enough before they run out during the holiday.”

“Sure, Mom, I need to take a break anyway.”

He snapped a picture of the image on his computer with his iPhone and emailed himself the data he collected.  Then he stood up from the plush leather chair, leaving the computer and all five screens on.  He loved using his dad’s office since he always had the fastest and most top-of-the-line computer.  He also had an X-Box, another shared passion of theirs.  He could have used his own laptop, but he was accustomed to using multiple screens, and Dad let him keep many of his programs on this computer for those times when he visited. 
Mmm, obviously there was method to his madness
.

This visit, he would enjoy a whole week of friends, family and events at Clear Lake.  It was a great break from his company.  Mostly, he was hoping to connect with Darla King, who he heard from Darla’s grandpa, might be visiting.  It would be a nice diversion, and who knows, maybe the sparks would fly again.

He closed his dad’s office door and headed to the kitchen for the boat keys to complete his one task of gassing up the boat at the pumps across the lake.  His mind wandered to images of a girl he always loved, and of the cicada.

International Space Station

17:30 E.S.T.

Lt. Coronal Randal Thomas Cunningham examined for the third time tonight the Automatic Telemetry and Guidance System or ATAGS on the International Space Station’s USOS or US Orbital Segment.  He had been in space six times on the Space Shuttle, before the sequestered budget cuts scuttled that program. 
So, when the International Space Agency chose him over so many other fine astronauts from NASA, he was really excited.  Other than simulations, and the occasional practice in a jet trainer to keep some of their flight skills on edge, there was very little space travel to do as a NASA astronaut.  The only opportunity for space flight was the ISS, if you were chosen, or with the Russians, who were not looking for skills as much as large cash payments for the use of their Soyuz-era rockets.

The telemetry was wrong again, but it didn’t make sense.  When his computers compared their data to the data from Marshall Space Flight Operating Center in Huntsville, the readings were different.  There had to be something wrong with his computers or the orbiting satellites.  He would have to reset ISS’s computers, essentially a re-boot. 

“Damn,” he exclaimed under his breath, realizing he was going to spend more hours than he wanted, coordinating with Mission Control Center in Houston to reestablish a baseline.  This work was the kind that R.T. found tedious, even if it was necessary.  Still, it was better than being on Earth. 

He looked at his mission clock, amazed at how quickly the time on this mission flew.  It was his tenth “evening” in space.  He just wished this mission didn’t have all of these insipid technical problems, especially the last couple days.  He was going to head home in less than five Earth days, and then, who knew when he would get another opportunity to go into space, maybe never.

He wanted to take in every moment of his normal work, and not deal with computers.  He didn’t like dealing with his computer at home, and he certainly didn’t want to mess with one in space.  Naturally, this was the one big drawback of the ISS.  Each of them did multiple jobs.  With NASA, everything was about backup and backing up the backup.  At any moment, there were fifteen ground-based technicians tasked with dealing with the shuttle’s computers.  Instead, he, a commander of three shuttle missions and this mission as Mission Commander, was doing menial computer testing.

Hearing a soft exhale of frustration, he looked to the left through to the next pod and saw Melanie, deep in her work.  His whole demeanor changed. 

Dr. Melanie Sinclaire was an astro-microbiologist with PhD’s in astrophysics and microbiology.  She was onboard to study the effects of solar radiation on human tissue.  She too was chosen over many potential scientific studies submitted to the International Space Agency.   Besides being a knock out, she made her field of study interesting.  Plus, she also liked working late nights, analyzing her data and setting up the next group of experiments before they were to experience the sixth sunrise of the day. When in orbit, they averaged one every hour and a half.  Mostly, he enjoyed working with Dr. Sinclaire. 

“Evening R.T.,” Melanie called out down the corridor between her pod and the main pod of the space station.

“Evening, Doc.  How bad was the sunburn on Romeo & Juliet?”  She named her rat pairs after famous couples, although he couldn’t remember if the two she was looking at were Bogie and Bacall. 

“Ha.  That’s good.  I’m actually not as concerned about Samson & Delilah as I am about the radiation readings.”  Melanie rotated 180 degrees in her swivel chair attached to the side of the laboratory module so that she was staring at her computer screen.  “Have you seen any of the recent radiation readings?”

“Hang on, all my computers are being reset, so I’ll come to you,” R.T. said.  He pulled himself up and over, sending his fit 185-pound gravity-free frame towards the port exit of the USOS, connecting to Melanie’s laboratory pod.  He then pulled himself to the entrance, poking his head through.

“Permission to come aboard?” said R.T., playfully chiding the formality of several of his fellow astronauts, who seriously asked this question each time before entering another’s module.

“Here, look,” she said, pointing to her computer screen, ignoring the levity of his comment. 

He pulled himself beside her, enjoying their closeness.  He only wished he could take in her fragrance too.  The physics of space voided that sense and therefore that possibility.

“See?  The readings are way out of the norms.  You’d have to be three times as close to the sun to get these kinds of readings.  I’m actually a little concerned about us.  Have your computers given us any radiation warnings at all?”  She asked, looking up at him.

“No. In fact, I’m having problems with my computers.  I doubt this is a coincidence.  I guess it’s time to wake up MCC.  You mind lending a hand?”

“No problem.  Always happy to help my Commander,” adding her own playfulness to cut through their pending computer tedium.  “Besides, I want to get to the bottom-”

“Whoa, look at that!”  He cut her off.

Melanie looked up and saw that he was pointing to her left out the aft porthole window.  She turned and they were both witnessing the most beautiful multi-colored aurora either of them had ever seen. 

A sinewy river of green, red, & blue undulated and danced on top the Earth’s atmosphere below them.  The green part of the river expanded and grew past its invisible banks, like a time-lapse video of a flood, appearing to wash over the whole atmosphere.  Most of it appeared over China.

“Wait, that’s not the Aurora Australis, is it?  Hold on.  What are we looking at?  Isn’t that China?  How is this possible?”  Melanie asked.  Her face was contorted in an exaggerated expression of both awe and concern.  “That’s nowhere near the poles.”

“I believe we have a bigger problem than you thought.” R.T. expressed what was on both of their minds.