Carpenter the Crow’s New Movie

Carpenter the Crow is hired as the director for the remake of a famous horror movie.  In the movie, a small coastal town is enveloped in glowing mist that brings in the wrathful wraiths of dead deckhands.  Carpenter decides to change the color of the mist and to add a lot of special effects that he hopes will thrill this generation’s audiences. He shows the first cut to several movie reviewers.  They like it, except for one, Brad Hebert, who complains that the mist is too thick and should be less green. ‘ Pa’ DeWack, the young special effects lead, is very disheartened.  Carpenter just shakes his head dismissively and says, “It just flick flak, Pa DeWack, leave the fog alone.”

Daniel the Spaniel in the Coffee Shop

Daniel the Spaniel is window-shopping when the aromas from the coffee shop are too much to resist. (Dogs have an ultra-sensitive sense of smell!).  Daniel trots to the counter and points his nose at the display of pastries.  The barista named Patty Wack pulls out a cookie, but Daniel shakes his head.  Then she pulls out an oatmeal bar and Daniel shakes his head.  She tries again and pulls out a cheese Danish.  Daniel shakes his head.  Patty calls over to her manager Pete and asks “Can you help? I can’t figure out what this customer craves.”  Pete replied, “Just a thick snack, Patty Wack, give the dog a scone.

Lil Red the Hen and Dilly Duck and Frilly Frog

Lil Red the Hen lives on Old MacDonald’s Farm.  She has become known as something of a celebrity for her weather predictions, so the senior editor of the Barnyard Digital Gazette has asked her to write a weekly column.  Nervously she presents her first essay to the junior editor, a Mr. Patrick DeRack.  The junior editor marks it up then gives it to the senior editor.  After a few minutes, the senior editor frowns and scolds, “Red’s no hick hack, Pat DeRack, leave the blog alone.”

Meanwhile, Lil Red’s friends, Dilly Duck and Frilly Frog go the electronics store.  They walk around looking at all kinds of communications devices from tablets to pagers.  Then they stop, confused.  A novice sales associate named Patricia Rack strolls over and says to Frilly Frog, “You want to be able to talk to Dilly, don’t you?”  Frilly nods. The sales associate has been trained to steer customers to the most expensive items so she leads them over to the tablets and starts extolling the advantages from word processing to instant access to email to live video conferences.  The associate’s manager, Billy Bear has been observing and walks over.  “She wants a quick quack, Patti Rack, give the frog a phone.”

Duke Unlocks Carrollians Ransomware and the Cheshire Cat is Gone

Lt. Duke LeJeune, a homicide detective, drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk.  He was staring at a digital image of a Cheshire cat sitting beside a digital golden key.  He and his colleague, Adele Palmer, a cybercrime specialist, were in the luxurious conference room of Gilgamesh Software, a global company whose applications were used by over a hundred big banks.  Duke and Adele were investigating a new type of ransomware, from a new anonymous group that called itself Friends of Lewis Carroll and referred to themselves as Carrollians.  The group had hacked into the Gilgamesh AI and other systems and had easily bypassed all the protections the IT team had put in place.  Now the system was frozen by the software program they had left behind.

Duke caught murderers so he had tried to beg off, but the Chief had insisted that completely locking down all the firm’s computers and holding encrypted files hostage was effectively a plot to murder the company.  Duke’s job was to try and find a way, if he could, to unfreeze the firm’s computer assets.

The Carrollians didn’t want money from Gilgamesh.  Instead, they intended to use the company’s apps to extract money from the company’s clients, which the CEO knew they could.  Like all software, Gilgamesh code had flaws.  But the Carrollians also had a peculiar sense of fair play.  They offered to free Gilgamesh from the digital shackles if its champion could solve three riddles.  The CEO, no prize in either the logic or the humor department, had immediately called the SFPD and the SFPD had immediately sent Duke and Adele.

To start the riddles, the user had  to press the letter Q, so Duke pressed Q.

The Carrollians’ ransomware program unlocked the monitor and the keyboard, then displayed the first riddle.  This riddle was easy because it was famous and from Alice in Wonderland.

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?” 

Adele, hailing from Virginia, whispered, “Because Poe wrote on them both.”

When Duke typed that response in, the Cheshire cat’s grin grew a little wider and the golden key became less lustrous.

The next riddle was, in Duke’s view, just goofy and made him wonder if they somehow knew that a policeman and not the CEO was answering the questions.

“There are two bodies on the floor surrounded by water and broken glass.  How did they die?”

Duke typed, “The fishbowl got knocked over. They’re gold fish.”

After a few seconds, the Cheshire cat’s grin grew even wider but showed some sharp teeth.

The third riddle was a digital image of the Queen of Hearts with a cartoon balloon over her head which said:

“If you tell a lie, we will steal all your software.  If you tell the truth we will erase all your files.”

The CEO put his head into his hands and groaned, “We’re done for.”

Duke thought for a moment and typed, “You will steal all the software.”

The Cheshire Cat disappeared and the display said, “You have done well, beamish boy. But beware the Bandersnatch.”  Then the head of IT came running in and said all systems had been released and the AI was behaving normally.

Duke looked at Adele.  “No luck Duke, we still don’t know how they came or went or if they’ve left a software bomb for another day.”