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< back | ⬆️ | next >1-11: Trophy
Light pierces Max’s eyes. He screams in agony. The stabbing light, the smell of sweat, the faint taste of injection molded plastic hanging in the air—it’s too much. He sags to his knees and throws up.
Molly is there. She’d been there; helped him get his visor off. “What happened?” she asks. “It’s all a blur. I died. Except…I continued…”
The trophy.
INVENTORY:
* MYSTERIOUS SCROLL
* STEALTH CLOAK
* IVORY TORCH OF THE ENDLESS FIRE
* TROPHY 2
“It worked! I have trophy number 2!”
“What happened to the trophy you had before?”
“Stolen right out from under me. Probably in Hemera’s hands by now.”
Max and Molly look at each other. The Muses would know. Molly reaches this conclusion at the same time. They turn toward the exit. Max wobbles on the way out the door, the adjustment back to the real world still working its way through his system. They reenter the Muses’ room without knocking.
“Where did the other trophy end up?” Molly asks.
“Max puts a kind hand on her shoulder and addresses the Muses in a more conciliatory tone. “First of all, thank you for all your assistance. What Molly is asking is if you can help us pinpoint the locations of the rest of the trophies.”
Din doesn’t look up to address them. She works her keyboard, and a table pops up amidst a sea of other information on her screen.
Trophy 0x0 HEMERA^KRAPHT
Trophy 0x1 THE_EIGENTHI3F
Trophy 0x2 MAXROOT
Trophy 0x3 #REF!
“Who’s Ref? Aren’t they an offshoot of Anonymous?” Max asks.
“No,” Din says. “In the language of the ancients, it means it’s unclaimed.”
“What happens to a trophy if it gets consumed by the black slime?”
Din speaks. “The Eigenthief and the ‘black slime’ as you call it are the same.”
Time seems to slow again as Max lets this sink in.
“The disposition of the final trophy depends entirely on the disposition of the party controlling the previous ones,” Din says.
“What’s that mean in English?” Max asks.
He looks at Molly.
“There is another node,” she says. “It has to operate point-to-point, so it can’t be far from here. We can find it.”
“You got all that from her cryptic saying?” Max asks.
“That and the email from Hemera,” Molly says, pointing at the screen.
Max has to squint to read it, but indeed an email from Hemera is on display.
“You hacked her email too?” Neither Molly nor the Muses dignify that with a response.
“A peer-to-peer network,” Din says. “The information can travel from one node to the next, but only during certain windows of time.”
“Node?” Max asks.
“Isidore had a node,” Molly says. “It was connected to the tower that everybody thought was a weather antenna.”
“What, right in our camp?”
“It was the highest ground in the area. He could’ve had radio contact with half of Sunnyvale and Mountain View,” Molly says.
“For security, they rotate the broadcast frequencies along a Morse-Thue series,” Din says. “Any two given nodes can only communicate during the brief interval in which the sequences overlap.”
“How big is the broadcast tower on this building, er, I mean, node we need to find?” Max asks.
Din makes a tiny movement with her eyes, directing Max’s attention to a blue plastic box tucked behind her monitor. it’s a garden variety wireless router with stubby black antennas about the size of fingers.
“Well, that’s not going to push a signal very far, is it?” Max asks.
“Nowhere near as well as a weather tower,” Din says.
“OK, so we’ll have to get real nice and close, and at just the right time since it only broadcasts once in a while. Right place at the right time,” Max says. “Maybe we can set up—”
“I never said the broadcast is intermittent,” Din corrects. “The key exchange is periodic, but to avoid suspicion, every node broadcasts continuously with a signal that looks like an ordinary wireless access point.”
“So how do we tell a node from every other boring access point?” Max asks. “Without going up and down every street?”
“We’d need a specially-modified…” Molly trails off. She almost seems to be communicating telepathically with Din. “No, you can’t do that. It’d leave you completely cut off.”
“Take it,” Din says. “Strength to your arm and victory to your soul. When you return it, let us know what you’ve discovered.”
Molly takes the box in her hand, a look of wonder in her eye.
As if in response, a blip in Max’s HUD seizes his attention, and doesn’t let go.
I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN YOU. LOVE, DAD.
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