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Part III
22
Ciphers
Dutch Randstad Conurbation, August 23 2047
How could a brainy little nerd like Robert be such a total moron?
Pete’s geeky little brother had sent him a short message using the bookshelf crypto scheme that Pete and Robert had used as children when they played spy. All great if you want to hide the content of a message, but utterly useless for concealing the origin of the message.
The stupid wanker. So much for the practical application of a triple nine intelligence.
With Quantum Slicing, public-key encryption had become less secure than even the most basic caesar cipher, so using their childish encryption scheme for confidentiality might have been a decent idea, if Robert's primary concern should not have been hiding his very location.
A location that the tosser might now have just given away by sending this encrypted message. That stupid little love struck brat quite clearly wasn’t thinking. Or if he was, he was thinking with the wrong organ. It seemed Robert had been so tied up in what seemed to be an impossible love interest, that he hadn’t considered that things other than confidentiality might be at stake here.
Need to know if Rachella survived. If she did,
let her know I am ok and send her my love.
Regards, Robert.
That was the message Pete had received.
With the substantial encryption overhead from bookshelf crypto, the message had taken up a full week of someone’s data quota for sure. Pete had been smart enough not to log into his own global communications endpoint, but every global endpoint was traceable at least to the conurbation from where it was accessed. Further, black market datacom was expensive, so sending this message must have cut deeply into Robert’s limited financial resources.
So much trouble and so much exposure to danger just to find out if his teacher was OK? And then the “send her my love” part! Robert wasn’t the kind of bloke to use the L word casually, so what was up with that?
Had his kid brother been shagging his teach? Damn, Robert!
Given the type of girls Robert had thus far been dating, this all didn’t quite fit. The thought of Robert switching from twenty-year-old sack of bones geek girls to, judging from the class picture Pete had found in Robert’s apartment, a somewhat aged but very well-proportioned piece of tits and ass was quite outside of Pete’s expectations.
A God damned Milf, twice his age and fucking married as well! What the hell have you been up to Robert?
With all the stuff Robert had risked to find out if Rachella was alive, walking past her house was the least Pete could do for his brother.
This was her house right there. As Pete walked past Rachella’s family home, he casually glanced through the window, or so he meant to do. Rachella had been quite alright from the look of it. First Pete’s eyes had spotted two young children. A thin girl that was probably something like 12 years old, and a boy of about nine. The boy was sitting at the kitchen table while the girl was busy putting down the clean plates, apparently preparing for dinner.
As his eyes moved on, Pete spotted Rachella’s silhouette at the stove. The lightning in the kitchen was such that it emphasized the feminine round shapes of Rachella’s silhouette and what a silhouette it was. Before Pete realized what he was doing, a big “WOW” came from his mouth and what Pete had set out to be a casual stride came to an abrupt end as Pete found himself halted in his track totally captivated by the sensuous curves that made up Rachella's silhouette.
Only a second later, or maybe two, Pete managed to take his eyes away from Rachella. At that moment Pete’s eyes locked with two stern looking eyes, eyes on a somewhat familiar face of a person now sitting at the kitchen table, shivers went down Pete’s spine as he realized the familiar face was that of one of the New Zion operatives that had visited him at his apartment. Most likely the same person who attacked his brother. Pete's blood turned cold.
Shit, bloody hell, Agent fucking Bridgewater! As he observed the agent’s swift response to his presence, Pete realized he had to run. His feet, however, were slow to get that message. Agent Bridgewater was coming for him! Need to get moving!
As Pete started running, he just managed to witness the oddest of scenes unfolding.
As Agent Bridgewater was starting to move towards the door, Rachella slapped him on the back of his head, in response, the operative not only seemed to abandon his approach, he made his way back to the dinner table while displaying an air of submissiveness.
As Pete ran away from Rachella’s house as fast as was humanly possible, a realization came to him. Rachella was not what she seemed to be! This university professor wasn’t a helpless woman at all. Robert was in deeper shit than Pete had believed so far. The bitch was a goddamn New Zion commander!
Need to get a message out to Robert. Wherever Robert is right now, he needs to move. But above all, he needed to steer clear of this woman.
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