bout de papier, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2022), pp. 48–50
Stifling a yawn, I chased another bennie with a shot of espresso. The men across my desk were not exactly the dynamic duo. D. Essex Mackinaw was the world’s driest lawyer. As a charitable sideline, he helped the recycling campaign by desiccating left-over coffee back to instant crystals.’ His client, who he had introduced as Max Ordinal, blended so well into the beige armchair ling almost disappeared.
MACKINAW RASPED, “MR. DIKK, I believe you may know the name Elongate Bozo?” I nodded. “Right, the tech billionaire.” I had just read an article about him. He had made himself rich with cutting-edge gadgets like the E-sausage,* the TurboTurnip Extreme game console and the Ultimate Lemon electric tricycle. None of them blew up, at least before the warranty expired. He had a reasonable reputation as a boss and philanthropist, but he was a complete recluse. No-one knew what he looked like. In public, he wore a mask. Some talk of a disfiguring childhood ailment. The media was fascinated.
“Quite so. Mr. Ordinal is here as his representative, with full powers. He will explain why we wish to engage your services.” Ordinal looked up from studying his fingernails. “I am assured by Mr. Mackinaw that what I tell you will be in strict confidence, whether or not you take the job. Is that correct?” I said, “If I work for you, full discretion, and these preliminaries are covered by my retainer with Mr. Mackinaw.”
Ordinal nodded. “It’s a missing person case, Mr. Dikk. My employer has been working with an independent bio-geneticist named Claire de Loon. Mr. Bozo has long been interested in the concept of uploading human consciousness to a computer. He considers this to be the wave of the future not only for computing but for the human race. He has run into a number of challenges, however.”
“This led him to Dr. de Loon. She gained fame as a costumed thief with an avian theme. Her gang was made up of genetically-modified birds with the size, strength and intelligence to follow her meticulous plans. You may remember the crime spree she masterminded.” I replied, “The 600-pound canary was particularly unforgettable.”
Ordinal said, “Then she stopped, saying she had enough money to complete her research on reversing biodiversity loss among birds. Given what she saw as the lack of serious effort along conventional lines, she came up with an alternative. She would give birds increased intelligence and let them figure out their own way forward. But individually their brains were not big enough, so she thought of networking. Find birds who fly in large flocks and inject them with tiny microchips, linked by short-range wireless communicators into neural networks capable of complex computation. The chips would be built and maintained within the birds by nano-assemblers, which would also replicate and be passed down through eggs to later generations, ensuring that the new creation would grow and spread.”
“That’s crazy!” said Effie.* I coughed. “I’m sure New Scientist will be fascinated, Mr. Ordinal, but what has this to do with your missing person?”
“Oh, right, sorry. Well. Mr. Bozo realized that her work was just what he needed for his upload project. So he got in touch with her, which wasn’t easy, as she is a wanted criminal. But they came to an agreement to combine his knowledge on computational networks with hers on avian genetics. Long story short, by earlier this month the first flock of enhanced birds was already in the air and everything was ready for the first human trial. Then, two days ago, Dr. de Loon disappeared.” * All our communications links with her have gone dead and she has not been seen anywhere. But she did leave a note.” He handed me a slip of paper.
You will find me in the eye of the peacock.
What have I watched?
1 4-22-16-3 25-22-23-21-4-3-6 23-4-3 17-18-22-21-7-17-1-5-6-24 2-9 7-2-24-2-16-2 // 4-1-11-4 1-12 23-4-3 23-25-1-18-1-23
24-7-10: 22 6-22-5-7 19-2-1-5-3,
VA He went on. “Here’s where things stood when she vanished.
There are two sets of the uploading device, one in our offices and one in her lab, so she could calibrate the connection with the birds. She alone was responsible for choosing and inoculating the first flock. We don’t know what species of birds she is using or where the flock is located. We can’t carry out the test without her, since only she has the codewords to launch it. So we really hope you can find her.”
We took the case. Given the complexities, Mackinaw got us some specialist help from the Centre — rotund deconstructionist Don Gordo Beluga, the flamboyant Manitoba Jones and Bugbyte, our leather-clad systems geek. We met around my conference table.
I opened, “Claire de Loon is missing and all we have is this incomprehensible clue. The number sequence looks like a substitution cipher, but the message is too short for a frequency analysis. Where do we go from here?” We looked at each other. Effie waved a newspaper and beamed. “Well, it says here in the society pages, there’s a big do on Friday at the Natural History Museum, a fundraiser for the biodiversity foundation. The big draw is the Akbar Khan diamond. It came from the Peacock Throne of the Mughal emperors and is sometimes called the Peacock’s Eye.” Max Ordinal spoke up from his chair against the wall. “That’s right. Dr. de Loon told Mr. Bozo she was the donor. Anonymous of course.” “Great catch, Effie,” I said. “So, gang, how do we get our hands on this sparkler?”
Friday night in the museum, Ordinal and I stood on a balcony overlooking the Great Hall. All was glitter and champagne. Half the floor was overlaid with an ice rink, towered over by a 20-metre carved ice statue of a peacock. At its base was a heavy crystal case containing the Akbar Khan, a narrow walkway across the ice connecting the case with the ballroom floor, so that people could stroll over and look. The case was in full sight of the whole room and an armed guard stood at each end of the walkway. Waiters in penguin costumes criss-crossed the rink on skates delivering drinks and canapés to guests along its edges. Three of the skaters were our centre ringers. A band named Exfoliated Kibble did unspeakable and possibly illegal things to Broadway numbers.
The band finished off “Some Enchanted Evening” ° and swung into the slow opening of Ravel’s “Bolero”. To one side, Bugbyte pressed a button on a small remote controller. I explained to Ordinal, “She’s activating a pre-programmed shut-off of all the room’s security cameras. Originally we planned to overwrite live coverage with a loop from earlier footage. When we saw that the security people have a window over the floor as well as the monitors, we switched to a taped broadcast of ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Donald Trump’ to distract them.”
As Bolero built up, the waiters put down their trays, lined up across the ice and linked up to a long stretch of rope. They twisted and jived as the line began to whirl faster around its centre. The guests began clapping in time. The music accelerated and the line shifted to a “crack the whip” formation, with Don Gordo at the free end and Jones next to him, both yelling their heads off.
Standing at one edge of the rink, Bugbyte watched the line. As the tip of the whip passed an inconspicuous mark, she pressed a second button on the remote. Small explosions severed the rope either side of Jones. The two ringers hurtled off. Don Gordo ricocheted off an Aztec sundial (accidentally re-setting the fifth sun apocalypse), the mayor, a giant tureen of anchovy chowder (exchanging phone numbers with the chef), a cabinet of unusual musical instruments (getting his leg stuck in a mechanical cello) and looping around the Black Hole of Calcutta (not the historical prison, an actual black hole from India) before slamming his full 150 kilos into the ice penguin and knocking it over.”
Jones pulled a flashy stop in front of the mayor’s wife (exchanging phone numbers with her), then skated, whistling nonchalantly, towards a second mark in the ice near the crystal case, which the toppling penguin promptly smashed. Crushed ice and broken glass fountained all over. Jones stuck out his hand casually and a glittering object fell into it. Trousering it, he raced elegantly toward the exit, only to trip over an anchovy-covered cello bow and skid under the bar, where he found the band taking cover with three real penguins and a Japanese tour group.’ The other two ringers extracted him and they left the Museum.
I joined them inside a large white van parked nearby, its side displaying the logo of Stay-Puft Marshmallows. I asked Jones if he had the diamond. “No sweat,” he said. “With all the stuff on the floor, they probably don’t even know it’s missing.” He passed it to Bugbyte, who sat in front of a complex piece of electronics. She inserted the gem into the base of the device and turned to a computer screen displaying pale lines in crystalline formation. “I’m assuming she’s laser-written a message at the molecular level at the core. If so, I can read it.” She adjusted two dials, humming.” “Oh yes, Dr. D. you sweetheart, there you are — and sent to printer.”
What came off the printer was I lines of boxes, each with a clue underneath. I examined it and said, “This is straightforward. Each clue gives you the name to put in the line above, a name that includes the name of a bird. The shaded boxes with the numbers give you the links between numbers and letters in the cipher — for example if an A falls in the box with the number 1, then A replaces I in the cipher.” We soon had the clues filled in and the message deciphered. “Which tells us something, but not a lot. Manitoba, you go back into the hall and put the diamond where someone will find it.” ’ll go and report to Mr. Ordinal.”
At the Bozo building, D. Essex Mackinaw was waiting in the lobby. We went up to the penthouse. Max Ordinal ushered us into the chairman’s office, a room of dark wood and deep carpets, with a floor-to-ceiling window along one wall. Ordinal went and leaned on the edge of the large desk. He said, “Have you solved Claire’s message?” I replied, “I think so, Mr. Bozo.” He smiled. “How did you figure it out?”
I said, “It wasn’t that hard. No-one knows what you look like. Everyone says you are pathologically shy, but you also need to be able to run a hands-on business. So you created an alter ego, someone who is not a genius, not even very interesting, but who is good with people and can carry your authority. Max Ordinal in fact. Although that’s a bit of a slip. Ordinal numbers are for ordering — second, seventh, thirtieth — and the maximum ordinal would be “‘first”, or number one. Then a minute ago, you called Dr. de Loon “Claire”. Meek Mr. Ordinal wouldn’t do that, but Mr. Bozo would.”
Bozo mimed applause. He had straightened up. His eye was brighter and his mouth firmer. “My compliments. I guess I got the man I paid for. Now what does the message say?” I told him. He closed his eyes and said “Thank you, Mr. Dikk. You can have no idea how much this means to me.” I replied, “Probably not, since I don’t think you’ve told me the whole story.”
“Quite right. But I no longer need to keep secrets. First, I have no lingering childhood ailment — that myth just helps keep people out of my hair — but ironically I am dying of an incurable progressive disease. So the uploading is for myself as well as humanity. The second thing is that Claire and I fell in love and she agreed to join me in the upload. But she always needs a last-minute twist. So she uploaded herself and challenged me to follow if I could. The answer you just gave me provides the bird species and the location of the enhanced flock, which make up the code sequence for the uploader.”
Mackinaw broke in. “For one last time, Elongate, I appeal to you not to do this. This woman is unbalanced, a known criminal. You have no real proof that she has uploaded to the new flock. She has taken a lot of your money. Maybe she has faked the research, banked the cash and is waiting for you to zap yourself out of the picture. Please don’t take the chance.”
Bozo looked at him and said, “Essex, have you never been in love?” The lawyer paled, looked down and said in a low voice, “Once. Just once.”
Bozo walked over and put his hand on the lawyer’s shoulder. Then he stepped to the wall, opened a panel hidden in the woodwork and took out a headset. Seating himself at his desk, he plugged the headset’s cord into a slim black box and swivelled the chair to face the night. Pulling down the microphone, he spoke four words. His head fell on his chest. And the moon shone down.
Can you duplicate Dikk’s feat by deciphering Claire de Loon’s last message and providing the four-word upload code? bout de papier will award a book prize signed by A Aalto to the submitter of the first correct answer drawn from a hat on May 31, 2022. Not necessary to win, can you also fill in the 13 clues? The Akbar Khan diamond is a real thing and may or may not have been the Peacock’s Eye. Thanks to Barry Hughart for the Key Rabbit and to Dan Aykroyd for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Van.
A AALTO joined the department when Prime Minister Trudeau led a minority Liberal government informally supported by the NDP.
Answers
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2022), pp. 48–50. Read the rest of this issue →
