A Long, Long Time Ago

Josie

Now on the sidewalk ... uuh, huh ... whoo ... sunny mornin' ... uuh, huh,

Lies a body just oozin' life ... eek!

And someone's sneakin' 'round the corner.

Could that someone be Mack the Knife?

-- Bobby Darin (Mack the Knife)

=/\=

Kevin looked over the encrypted message he'd found in the Audrey Niffenegger. The encryption kept changing, making it difficult to crack, an endless file, looping away, almost as impenetrable as the master time file's own encryption.

He had tried copying it, but that had made things worse as the looping had gotten more rapid. He had done that twice, and had essentially wasted two PADDs doing that. Then he hit upon the idea of photographing the actual file. He used a separate PADD, not connected in any manner, and every time the file changed, it snapped a picture. He now had several of the pictures projected up, into the air in front of him. The file kept changing, and the other PADD kept snapping, as he looked, seeking any sort of pattern he could recognize.

There were fewer than two hundred words in the document, if the spacing could be trusted. It consisted of one word, which seemed to be its title, and then six paragraphs of varying lengths – again, if the spacing was correct. He stared and stared at the pictures, then started to look at the newer ones when it hit him. There was one newer one where the first paragraph was written in Greek letters.

That paragraph was a short one – only six words long. It was probably the initial premise, listed right after the title. The Greek letters were all amassed together, and in Greek alphabetical order. Alpha, two betas, a gamma, four deltas – but one was at the end of the first word, two encompassed the second word and the last delta started off the third word. Then there were three epsilons at the end of the third word, with a zeta starting the fourth word, followed by, one eta, two thetas and then an iota finished the fourth word. The fifth word was the last two iotas followed by two kappas. The last word was three lambdas, one mu, two nus and it ended with a xi. Five letters, two, then four, then five, then four and, rounding out the sentence was a seven-letter word.

The words and their patterns made no sense, but maybe the letters did? He tried to ignore the actual sounds of Greek and instead focused on the letters as placeholders. Did the alpha mean A? He tried it and was rejected by the original message, "Okay, you SOB," he said to the screens in front of him, "It's not an A. Are you a B, by chance?"

Rejected again.

"All right, C, and it's my final offer."

He typed it in and the looping stopped for just a second. He stared at it, dumbfounded. The C had stuck. He had hit pay dirt.

"All righty, then," he said, "Alpha is C. I bet it's not the first letter of this paragraph or even this word. Are you maybe the first letter of the alphabet for this paragraph?" he glared at the screens again, "If you are, then, let's see, fourteen different letters. Let's say C really is the first one. Then you gotta go at least as far as, hell, C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P. Let's figure you have no Qs, no Xs and no Zs but I reserve the right to change my mind about that, you lil stinker. So are the betas Ds?"

He tried, and was rejected, "Huh. Well, we couldn't make it easy, now, could we?"

His communicator chimed. It was Deirdre, "Want some coffee?"

"Uh, just a sec. Actually, lemme bring what I'm working on with me. If, uh, if you don't mind, that is."

"Not all. Five minutes?"