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“Can you send us the actual message?” Yaeger asked.
“Sorry,” Kurt said. “In true cloak-and-dagger fashion, they self-destruct seconds after I receive them.”
“At least they didn’t blow up,” Yaeger joked.
Kurt appreciated the quip. But he was too focused on getting answers to offer a laugh. “Any idea how they got here in the first place?”
“They have to be reaching you via our satellite network,” Yaeger said. “Max, can you check the operational data and find out where this message came from and how it’s getting through our filters?”
Max was Hiram’s masterwork, a supercomputer that used a unique coding language he’d designed himself. That language, along with other design features Yaeger had perfected, made Max a one-of-a-kind machine, virtually impervious to hacking, since only Hiram and Max herself knew the coding language he’d used.
“I’ve already looked into it,” Max replied in a sultry female voice.
While computers didn’t technically have gender—at least not yet—Hiram had chosen to give Max a voice that sounded like his wife’s. An earlier version of the program included a shapely hologram that also resembled Mrs. Yaeger, though Hiram had deleted that program from the operating system at his wife’s request.
“Ahead of the game as usual,” Yaeger said smugly. “What have you found?”
“There’s no record of the message passing through any of the servers or being transmitted by the encrypted communication system,” Max said. “Tiny errors in time coding indicate a sophisticated program was used to enter the message in our system, transmit, and then erase both the message and the path it took getting to Kurt.”
On-screen, Kurt appeared genuinely surprised. “Are you trying to tell me someone has outsmarted the two of you?”
“Looks that way,” Yaeger said.
“Temporarily,” Max insisted.
Kurt laughed. He knew it was just programming and highly complex algorithms, but he enjoyed teasing Max, who seemed to have a prickly ego at times.
“What about the numbers at the bottom?” Kurt asked. “I’m pretty sure those same numbers appeared on the other text, but they vanished before I could write them down. Do they mean anything?”
Hiram looked over the string of letters and numbers, agreeing with Kurt’s assessment that they resembled a product code or encryption key. He deferred to his computer. “Max?”
“Processing,” Max said. “Stand by.”
While Max crunched the numbers and compared the data to any known codes or encryption systems, Hiram turned back toward the text, considering the words. They were direct. Almost personal. Plaintive. Almost desperate. As if the sender was hoping to make Kurt feel or infer more than was being written. Then again, that’s how hackers worked. Get someone to think they know you and they were more likely to reply.
With Max still working on the string of symbols, Hiram decided to tap into Kurt’s human intuition, an instinct that couldn’t be more antithetical to the work Max was doing. “What do you think? What’s your gut telling you?”
“Initially I thought it was a prank or a glitch,” Kurt said. “But the technical hurdles someone would have to overcome to get these messages through to my phone make me think it’s more than that.”
“A sound analysis,” Max chimed in.
So instinct and computing power concurred. Hiram liked when things worked out that way. He asked Kurt another question. “Any hunch who these ‘children’ are?”
“No,” Kurt said. “The first message suggested something coming our way and that their fate was in my hands. When the stranding began I thought the sender might be referring to that. At the very least, the timing was suspicious. But now it seems like it’s something else.If it’s anything, that is.”
“Speaking of anything,” Yaeger said, a tiny hint of frustration in his voice. “Have you foundanything, Max?”
Max replied curtly. “I’ve checked the string of symbols against two million known forms of code. It corresponds to none of them. Using standard code-breaking techniques, I’ve analyzed the numerical and alphabetical sections independently and in conjunction. The result is null. Nothing to indicate it was a coded message. Though the sample size is so small, it’s not impossible for that to be the case.”
“What if it’s not in code?” Kurt asked. “We’re assuming it’s something encrypted, because the letters and numbers don’t give us anything we recognize, but why would someone send half a message in plain text and the rest in code? Especially if that message is going to erase itself as soon as it’s viewed.”
“One point for intuition,” Hiram said. “Max?”
“Stand by.”
Hiram grinned. He’d continued to enhance Max’s speed and power over the years. As a result, Max became full of herself at times. Being outthought occasionally helped cut her down to size. “Kurt, you may have stumped the computer.”
“I was asked to examine the text for code, not other possibilities,” Max insisted.