Algorithm - Book 1 - The Medallion

Chapter 15

            Percy burst into the lunch room, and while trying to catch his breath, he wheezed, "I've found something, something incredible."

            The three ran to the TMS lab.  Percy led them to his main computer screen and explained. "Like I mentioned earlier this afternoon, the carbon-13 particles appeared to line up in a spiral, and they consist of four distinct sizes.  I was able to transfer the sequence of these four sizes for a string of about a million to our data analysis systems."

            Percy spoke in a controlled manner, which resulted in an irritatingly slow delivery. Adam prodded him on. "And you found?"

            Ignoring the rib, he continued in a methodical and almost robotic cadence, intermittently pausing to catch his breath. "Our protocol … consists of … first storing the data in files … which in this case simply means … that I gave them the numbers one to four."

            Linda caught on. "Which means you have a big file with a linear sequence of numbers limited to those four."

            "Quite. Quite. And then I looked for patterns.  However, after hours of analysis nothing came up."

With a wry grin, Percy added, "No secret messages … or anything of that sort."

            Sarcasm. Nice.

Adam spurred him on. "But you did find something."

            "Quite. Quite.  So then, I searched other databases where we store a wide variety of information from a wide variety of sources."

            Losing their patience, both Linda and Adam spoke simultaneously. "And?"

            Now Percy's grin widened into a full-fledged smile, revealing a single gold-capped canine. "And I found a hit."

            Before they could spur him on any further, he turned their attention to the screen. "You see the colored bands displayed here? The one on top is a depiction of your carbon-13 sequence: red, blue, yellow and green for the four particle sizes."

            Linda gasped. "And the one on the bottom is a DNA sequence with the four bases displayed in the same colors."

            "Quite. Quite." Percy added, "And what do you see?"

            "The two bands are identical. That DNA sequence is from what?" Adam asked.

            Linda looked at the coding information displayed alongside the colored band and answered, "It's the DNA code for human albumin."

            Seeing that the two were glued to the screen, Percy slowly turned a dial on his keyboard.  The two bands scrolled in tandem across the screen.