Thread - April 20, 2012

[note: this was written during a writing exercise: we had 20 minutes to write something inspired by the word "thread". This is the result, unedited, exactly as it appeared when time ran out. You can read all of them in the waves category]]

Thread- Squiddy Geiger - April 20, 2012

Evan studied the screen for awhile, hoping to find a pattern. Nothing stood out; nothing made an impression. It had to be here somewhere, or he'd be screwed.

Lila paced up and down behind him as he worked. The note had been precise: figure out what the rest of the message meant, or they would execute Annette. It could be a bluff, but he had no way of knowing. He had no idea who they were, or what they wanted, other than what had been in the message.

Annette was their daughter. She was in Grade Six and should have been in school, but when the note arrived, Lila called the school. They'd told her that Jason had called to say she was sick. She was not in school. Jason, of course, had not called. He'd been with Lila since Anette left teh house for school. They had not yet called the police because the time limit was short - he had another 45 minutes to figure things out.

Jason scanned the work, and tried to remember what he'd learned about cryptology over the years. He scanned the page, looking for patterns. Was it a simple substitution or complex? could he just go by them being offset by a set amount? It had to be simple. An hour to break a complex code was impossible.

He did a search online for decryption pages, and found what he was looking for - a page you could copy and paste into, that would decrypt. He pasted the entire message in, and was rewarded. It was further instructions, including a phone number to call, each number written out long form: two-zero-one five-five-five seven-three-one-six. He grabbed the phone and dialled it quickly.

A recording came on, with a URL to go to, and instructions on how to find the next set of instructions. Pick the tenth, fourteenth, and twenty-fifth words in the first paragraph, then the first, seventh and eighth in the second paragraph, and so-on. He had to call back three times to get the message to play again while he wrote feverishly.

The deadline for getting through it to the next bit was only five minutes away, so he worked quickly. It was an email address to send message to, consisting solely of the word 'hurry'. By his watch, he made it with a minute to spare, but god help them if the email was delayed anywhere!

Through six more roadblocks he fought to keep up, until the last, another puzzle, defeated him. He deciphered it only to read: "We're sorry, you have already missed this deadline. However, you've been good sports so Annette's location will be relayed to you in one hour. Please accept our gratitude in playing The Game."

Posted by Squiddy at April 20, 2012 08:15 PM | TrackBack