Ch 33: Camuel Speaks

~
(David)

To my elation, and my horror, I resolve in my mind some of the JFoxe text. I’ve found something meaningful in it, beneath its overlay of insanity. And it’s enough to tell me that I’m in danger.

I’ve resolved just a portion of the opening paragraph of the text text using the Camuel Five Off One On cipher (00000.00000.):

“This is a work of truth, not fiction. It will tell of things that have clearly been proven by reputable news reporting and sources. The “official news” versions of every one of these stories yelled “conspiracy theory”. But years later, “theories” reveal themselves to be “facts” and even the most skeptical are forced to admit it. Ideas that they said were impossible or ridiculous are routinely revealed as the truest facts of all. Naturally they always make fun of those who dare to find out the truth and to publish actual facts. For they are without truth; to them, truth is heresy. Please, reader, research these facts and find out for yourself. Especially Reptilians and the underground Antarctica UFO Revelations. After being abducted by Reptilians, I receive psychic messages every single night. The messages are from Martian guerrilla fighters who tried to overthrow the forces that destroyed their planet one billion years ago. We must never let the Reptilians….”

With just that much I’ve seen more than enough. It resolves to:

t o p s e c r e t s r o f f p w h a r r i n g t o n

TOP SECRET – Sr. Off. PW Harrington

I immediately close all the documents and now I’m pacing back and forth. I don’t dare resolve any more of the text, which I now know is a covertext. There is no question: The JFoxe manifesto contains a lot more than psychotic ramblings. I’m convinced that it reveals something extremely important. Something that by its very “top secret” nature would be considered a form of anti-government espionage merely to possess.

(Harrington)

WRAITH alerts me to look at this subject. I’m too busy for this but I know to look when WRAITH tells me to. Live playback starting 5 minutes ago, detection of intense physical stress, possibly intense emotion. Something is happening.

“Okay WRAITH show me playback.”

I watch him. He’s silently staring at his display with his arms folded in front of him. Just staring. He’s concentrating. Not in pain. He closes the documents, gets up quickly. He’s pacing with his arms still crossed tightly with a look and posture of extreme anxiety. Okay, I see. He’s finally losing his grip. He looks just like an un-medicated schizophrenic. That look of pain and fear and suspicion. I know it well.

“WRAITH end playback and close.” I have to get to my next appointment in the spa. It’s Tania’s turn today. Lucky girl.

(David)

These first few words say enough. “Top Secret” and the name of our Regional Leader, Harrington, apparently in his former capacity as a senior officer Leader-class, likely in Security-Intelligence. I’m afraid to solve it using any of my tech. I did already absorb the entire covertext one time, when I first found the manifesto, using my neurotech. But it’s no longer in RAM and I prefer it to stay that way. I will not look at it again with my neurotech engaged. I won’t look at it at all, if I can help it.

I fear that if or when resolved, the covertext will show something that, if displayed on any of my tech, will instantly be flagged and I’ll lose any opportunity to release it—not to mention that I’ll probably be arrested or killed. I have this ongoing fear that Secur-Intel may be able to watch people in ways that only the most paranoid among us can imagine. There is this persistent feeling, which rationally I know is crazy and paranoid, that someone has been watching me closely, somehow knowing what I’m looking at, almost like they’re watching through my own eyes.

This Camuel cipher is so childishly simple, I wonder how it was never detected.

It’s possible that this kind of pattern was never noticed because it’s so ancient, and doesn’t use anything resembling modern algorithm-based cryptography. It’s not even cryptography—it’s steganography. It is older and much simpler than even the famous “Trimethius cipher” or Vigenere ciphers using the Trithemius’s tabula recta, his poly-alphabetical table.

And I remember the research I did. I remember the steps I went through to find the final cipher, each step depending on knowledge of the last.

I review all the steps I’ve gone through to get his result, all conceived by JFoxe, obfuscated by the layering of methods and the use of arbitrary human choice:

JFoxe’s manifesto gradually revealed itself to be a covertext containing a message hidden by steganographic methods. It appears to be insane conspiracy ramblings. It expressly contains “Conspiracy Fact” headings with specific numbers. The manifesto ends with a kind of valediction signed “Angel 2/31”.

Step 1: Discover that “Angel 2/31” means Padiel (Spirit 2 of 31) from T-1499, Book I of Trithemius’s Steganographia. No one previously made this connection, and T-1499 was purged from the feed. I only knew the because I learned of Trithemius’s “31 spirits” years ago at the Academy. I had forgotten it and only remembered the nickname “Black Abbot” in a half-dreaming state.

Step 2: Apply Padiel cipher (pattern: .0.0. — on/off/on/off — alternating words, take the first letter) to the valediction paragraph itself. Just the second valediction paragraph, not the first one. Result: “Use the Protestation”. Padiel didn’t resolve to anything when applied against the first paragraph of the valediction with the “11th, 7,th, 4th and 2nd good angels” who reveal secrets in each dark “Conspiracy.”

Step 3: Notice the “Conspiracies” in the manifesto are numbered. Through some trial and error, discover that the conspiracy numbers all fall within the range of 0 and 400, 401 being the number of words in the Protestation. “Use the Protestation”. Index the words of the Protestation and pick out the words that correspond to “each dark Conspiracy” number.

Step 4: The first paragraph of the valediction said God’s good angels would reveal more in each dark “Conspiracy”. This part of the valediction is a fallback rule: 11, 7, 4, 2. Look at each word from the Protestation that is picked out by the index numbers of the “Conspiracies” and apply the fallback rule.

Step 5: Apply the fallback rule as a letter-picking rule. If letters are 11 or greater, pick the 11th. If less than 11 but at least 7, pick 7. If less than 7 but at least 4, pick 4. If less than 4, pick 2. The indexed words were arbitrarily chosen by JFoxe from a number of possible choices, rather than being chosen by a single rule or algorithm. The human in the loop, to confuse the AI algos.

Result: the letters chosen by the fallback rules spell: “Camuel five no one yes”

Step 6: “Camuel” is another Trithemius spirit cipher from his T-1499 book. It’s a more comlex iteration of the pattern, described by Gustavus Selenus as the “5th class” of Camuel, as follows: 00000. — Skip 5 words, take the next word, take the first letter of that word. Repeat.

STEP 7: Apply this “Camuel 5th-class” cipher to the entire JFoxe manifesto.

The resulting plaintext, the solution to the JFoxe manifesto, begins with the words: “TOP SECRET – Sr. Off. PW Harrington…”

That’s where I stopped.

And all of this based on a text that rambles on psychotically about Reptilians, flat Earth, and a war a billion years ago on Mars. Typical “conspiracy” stuff that looks like entertainment no one needs to take seriously, least of all the authorities, but which tends to attract curious people.

And now I know the JFoxe text says something extremely important, even if I don’t read it.

I just want to release it. I don’t know specifically that it will help me if I release it, but I do wonder if it would help. Whatever it is, I want to release it as an act of defiance against this torture. Even if it kills me.

But how do I release it?

I have to get it out as widely as possible in such a way that people actually feel the need to look at it. If I just resolve the entire plaintext and post it somewhere, it could be taken down, or even if I made it difficult to take down, it would simply be marginalized as another crazy conspiracy theory. I don’t want it to just end up as a kooky manifesto that no one cares about, sitting on a forum somewhere.

In any event I’m afraid to resolve it completely to the plaintext. I’m afraid that as soon as it appears on any display or in any neurotech, it’ll be detected and instantly traced. I’ll be arrested before even releasing it. Anyone who looks at it or possesses it will probably encounter the same fate.

Ideally, I need to release it without even resolving it, much less looking at what it says. I have to release it before it is ever stored or seen on any display or in any neurotech.

I’m not even going to look at the JFoxe text again unless I absolutely have to.

So I have to release it encrypted, but I also have to provide the solution, the way JFoxe did. But I have to somehow encourage people to solve it the way I did, except I want them to resolve it immediately. But how? How can I convince people to resolve it?

I’m concerned that any use of cryptography, even something as ancient and simple as a Vigenere cipher using a repeating keyword, would actually be noticed by the surveillance algorithms which presumably look for scrambled-looking ciphertexts containing encrypted messages, and can decipher them using sophisticated frequency analysis or brute force attacks performed in milliseconds.

And aside from being encrypted, it has to be presented in a way that encourages the recipients to decide for themselves that they believe it. People don’t necessarily believe what they are told; they tend to believe things they find out for themselves.

I decide I have to use this very same JFoxe covertext rather than creating a new ciphertext or using some other innocuous covertext. This JFoxe text has been sitting on the feed, possibly for years, without triggering any response from surveillance algos. The Trithemius text was apparently released either with it, or in fairly close proximity to it, and the authorities only reacted to the Trithemius text because of its heretical religious content, the Protestation.

And JFoxe himself told me that his manifesto would be difficult to take down, as it’s distributed broadly as a SIG link that will retrieve the bit-perfect document from wherever chunks of it may be found on the feed.

It seems that JFoxe released the manifesto and the Trithemius “key” text separately and simply hoped someone would make the connection. And no one ever did. But now I’ve cracked it, or at least I think I have, and it’s all on me now, of all people. Of all people, me. I’m shaking my head. Why me?

If I simply post the cipher and the JFoxe covertext together, many people will resolve it very quickly and they may be more inclined to believe whatever it says, because they solved it themselves. But they’ll instantly be flagged as accessing or possessing contraband material. Contraband not just for being religiously unorthodox, but in view of the “Top Secret” designation, actually politically subversive, like espionage against the state itself — much more immediate and serious consequences. They’ll be picked up and taken way to who knows where.

I make a tough mental calculation. If I release it as broadly as possible, yes there will be casualties. But maybe if it’s distributed broadly enough, it will be effective. I’ll regret hurting some people by doing this, but to me it seems this is a necessary and acceptable cost. Whatever this information is, I feel it has to be shared as widely as possible.

But I remember, sadly, that I’m doing this mainly to save my own skin. Selfishly. I feel a moment of shame and declare that God forgives me. I don’t feel any better about it.

A beep from my comms. It’s Finn and it seems urgent.

“D-man get on live comms NOW!”