Ch 31: Fallback

~
(David

A cold shower and a cup of coffee aren’t enough. I could actually use another good electric shock about now. To stop me from thinking about her.

Back to my workstation. I can’t stop my work as I feel I’m getting close to something. I’m looking at just the numbers of each “Conspiracy Fact” from JFoxe’s text. I’ll look at the names of the Conspiracies if I have to, but right now I feel it’s just about the numbers. I’m hoping that the numbers are meant to identify the words to be picked out of the Protestation. I’m mentally, manually picking out the words that correspond to the numbers, which I assume are indexed from one to 401.

I know how I’m going to use the fallback pattern.

“Listen to the Eleventh Angel…if silence falls, call the Seventh…if that too is mute, seek the Fourth, failing which the Second. God’s good Angels have deeper knowledge of each dark Conspiracy…”

If there are 11 letters, take the 11th. If there are not 11, take the 7th. If there are not 7, take the 4th. If there are not 4, take the 2nd.

228: “Monastic”. Eight letters. Take the seventh. That’s “I”.

118: “In”. Two letters. Take the second. That’s “N”.

321: “And”. Three letters. Take the second. “N”.

186: “Truth”. Four letters. Take the fourth. “H”.

276: “Was”. Three letters. Take the second. “A”.

93: “In”. Two letters. Take the second. “N”.

315: “Help”. Four letters. Take the fourth. “P”.

82: “Its”. Three letters. Take the second. “T”.

Why is this is not forming words? I continue.

131: “Faith”. Five letters. Take the fourth. “T”.

22: “Only”. Four letters. Take the fourth. “Y”.

204: “Not”. Three letters. Take the second. “O”.

68: “Foundations”. Eleven letters. Take the Eleventh. “S”.

163: “To”. Two letters. Take the second. “O”.

98: “Is”. Two letters. Take the second. “S”.

382: “Sworn”. Five letters. Take the fourth. “R”.

367: “To”. Two letters. Take the second. “O”.

83: “Contemplation”. Thirteen letters. Take the eleventh. “I”.

295: “The”. Three letters. Take the second. “H”.

The result:

INNHANPTTYOSOSROIH

What could this possibly mean? It’s meaningless on its own. Maybe I’m supposed to use this as a repeating keyword against the manifesto. A repeating-key Vigenère cipher. I’ve only read a bit about how those worked but it’s simple enough to understand if I need to.

But if this were truly Vigenère encryption with a repeating keyword, then the output, or the ciphertext, in other words, the JFoxe text, would have to look like random garbage—a jumble of letters with no easily discernible patterns. Then the repeating keyword would be used to resolve it to the plaintext. A readable manifesto like JFoxe’s text simply wouldn’t be a ciphertext. But it could be a covertext. I’m looking at steganography, not cryptography. So I’m not looking for a keyword.

Plus, even if somehow the manifesto text were a ciphertext, I remember reading that such a short keyword against a massive text like this would be extremely vulnerable to computer cryptanalysis. There’s some method I can’t quite remember the name of—something to do with finding the keyword length by looking for repeated letter patterns, and then analyzing the frequency of every “nth” letter to pull out each key character one by one. Even the early 21st century computers could crack those kinds of ciphers in milliseconds if the keyword were this short. This can’t be the answer.

I am so disappointed by this result. I have a string of nonsense letters, and no further hints from JFoxe. Am I at a dead end?

I must have done it wrong. I have to look back through everything, my research about Trithemius and his ciphers.

But I’m getting tired again. I have to find a way to sleep. Damn it!

I open my eyes. I’m outside, in the park, lying in the grass. Looking at my comms, I see I fell asleep for 40 minutes.

And I just thought of something: When cryptographers manually indexed letters for algorithmic or computational work, they usually started with zero, not one, as the first index position. Maybe JFoxe was thinking like a cryptographer. The first index position is zero. There’s still hope that I can get something meaningful.

I head back to the transit platform and get a pod. I have get home so I can look at the Protestation and pick out the words using the corrected (I hope) index numbers. The first word is indexed as zero, not one.

I pull out my comms to look for some of the music I found on Unofficial Records. I need to hear some faster beats right now, smoother sounds, no vocals, not too intrusive, so I can think and not be distracted. I choose a track. My mobile holoscreen pops up. So they do pop up automatically now. The companion token to the song pops up with the usual green and red dots symbolically asking “Y/N?” I whisper “yes”. No one listens without using the companion link anymore. But this track is underground stuff, so it just links to the music label and shows a list of artists and releases. But with the more popular music, it links to slick multimedia like video, lyrics and whatnot.

Now I’m enjoying the ride as the pod swerves along its course. Buildings and streets flying past me in a blur.

I can remember the first few words of the Protestation. The first word is “Therefore”, so that’s zero. The next is “I”, so that’s 1. “Say” is 2. “And” is 3. “Openly” is 4. There’s no point trying any further until I get back and look at the text.

The pod stops and I’m waiting for it to let me out, and now I’m hurrying back to my apartment.

If there are 11 letters, take the 11th. If there are not 11, take the 7th. If there are not 7, take the 4th. If there are not 4, take the 2nd.

The fallback pattern is 11, 7, 4, 2.

I pick out the words again and apply the fallback rule, and get the following:

228: “Practice”. Eight letters. Take the seventh. “C”.

118: “Accordance”. Ten letters. Take the seventh. “A”.

321: “Firmly”. Six letters. Take the 4th. “M”.

186: “Rectitude”. Nine letters. Take the 7th. “U”.

276: “Baptized”. Eight letters. Take the 7th. “E”.

93: “Whole”. Five letters. Take the 4th. “L”.

CAMUEL

Camuel. That’s Trithemius’s next spirit cipher, the third of 31. Thank God! This confirms that I’m on the right track.

I read the description of Camuel from a well-known text written about T-1499, exposing it as a book of steganographic ciphers. Camuel is another very simple pattern, like this:

0.0. etc. repeating

where “0” = ignore word, and “.” = meaningful word.

And you take the first letter of each meaningful word. But there are still more indexed words to resolve. I have to pick them out and apply the fallback rule: 11, 7, 4, 2.

315: of

82: contemplation

131: preserving

22: begotten

204: indecent

68: modifications

163: demons

98: contained

382: myself

367: holy

83: contrivance

295: universal