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A new short short with a little puzzle http://plottersink.blogspot.com/2017/09/inside-insight.html
Category Archives: Sci-Fi
Duke and the Cheshire Cat: Round Two
Lt. Duke LeJeune was sitting in his office staring at gruesome crime scene photos. Because he was a homicide detective this was not unusual. He was deep in thought constructing theories about the murderer when his cell phone buzzed. After a short conversation, he turned to his young colleague Sgt. Adele Palmer, a cybercrime specialist, and said sourly, “Seems like the Cheshire Cat is back at Gilgamesh, and the CEO is certain only we can save his company.”
“Cheshire Cat…you mean the anonymous group, The Friends of Lewis Carroll, is back with ransom demands?”
Duke scowled, “Yes. They’ve hacked into Gilgamesh servers again and all their systems are locked. And like last time, they’re threatening to steal Gilgamesh code to blackmail Gilgamesh customers, if they don’t get what they want.”
“Very serious, Duke. Over a 100 banks use Gilgamesh programs. And what do they want?”
“To win the rematch with the beamish boy.”
Adele couldn’t hold back a giggle at hearing the word ‘boy’ applied to the brawny, ex-Special Forces lieutenant. “You mean they want a rematch with you, three riddles again?”
“Yes…so let’s go. And this time maybe we can trace the hackers.”
The CEO and CTO, both late-thirties, both former coders, both looking grey, were waiting for them in the conference room. A large monitor connected to a laptop displayed a grinning cartoon calico cat wearing black bushy eyebrows, black-framed glasses, a black bushy mustache and a prominent nose.
“Great, the Cheshire Cat dressed up as Groucho Marx,” Duke muttered.
“Groucho who?” the CTO and Adele asked simultaneously.
“Never mind. Just look it up.” Duke replied curtly.
As they watched, a cartoon paw came into view and waved not a cigar, but a fat brown roll labeled ‘Bitcoin’.
“Can’t happen.” Adele said. “Bitcoins don’t physically exist.”
Below the Cat was the command: ‘Enter your name but only if you are the beamish boy.’
Duke typed ‘Duke LeJeune’.
Excellent. Hello Copper. First riddle. Fill in the blanks with the same letters in the same order. The _____ Red Queen said to Alice, “I’m _____ to have you to tea. I’ve _____.”
Duke stared at the monitor for a moment, then entered: The notable Red Queen said to Alice, “I’m not able to have you to tea. I’ve no table.”
The Cat’s grin widened and showed some pointy teeth. ‘So, at least you’re a literate Copper. Are you also a betting man? Suppose you play this simple card game. Every time you draw you bet $11 in the hope of winning $10 when you draw red. If you draw black you lose the $11. At the end of 42 cards, you’re even. How many reds did you draw?”
Duke wrote 10 and 11 on a page in his notepad then glanced out the window at the city fifteen stories below. He wished he was back at his desk, working on the murder case. He doodled for a moment then typed ‘22’.
The Cat’s eyebrows rose and the wide grin became more sinister. ‘Tsk-tsk! So very familiar with sports gambling? Copper, do you have a secret vice? No matter. Last round. You return from a car chase, and check your vehicles. 70% have lost the left front wheel, 75% have lost the right front wheel, 80% have lost the left back wheel and 85% have lost the right back wheel. What is the smallest percentage of cars that have no wheels, and the maximum percentage.”
Duke turned to Adele. “Please confirm my addition that 70+75+80+85 equals 310.”
When Adele nodded Duke smiled and entered, ‘10% and 70%’
The Cat’s eyebrows bounced up and down while the Cat’s face expanded to fill most of the monitor. “So, you know your Lewis Carroll. Then the Cheshire Cat slowly faded away. The black mustache and the toothy smile were the last to disappear.
A message flashed, ‘You have done much too well, beamish Copper. Next time the Bandersnatch.” Then the screen went black. The CTO’s assistant rushed in and shouted that all systems were unlocked and behaving normally.
Duke looked at Adele. “Sorry Duke, they’re using TOR.”
The CEO wheezed, “Next time? Bandersnatch?”
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.”
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.”
Candor Tasmanian Devil
(Flash fiction from SkyFireFox author Alyce Campbell. Copyright © 2017 by Alyce Rita Campbell All Rights Reserved. Candor Tasmanian Devil is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual incidents or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.)
I can’t say I didn’t have doubts, after letting my betrothed, Lou, strong-arm me into buying the empty warehouse balanced on the edge of Candor Canyon. And I mean that literally—he won the arm-wrestling match that decided what we would do with our severance pay from The Service. At least I won the coin toss and got to name the place. I chose to honor Nero, my first, my only, and now my sadly long-dead, foster pet.
Lou guffawed. “Emma, calling our speakeasy The Tasmanian Devil is just inviting trouble, but I admit it suits you. Those little critters are tetchy and can fly into a maniacal rage when facing a predator or fighting with a mate!” He laughed again, giving me a hug.
I almost spat out a snarky retort but bit my tongue so as not to prove his point. Instead I very gently replied, “Lou, that’s ‘when fighting FOR a mate’, and I have never been maniacal. Besides, it’s catchy.”
So after a few months of exhausting grunt-work, we launched, and two buddies still in The Service, Milo and Elway, drove up at noon and started guzzling my homemade whiskey. I set out dried blueberries mixed with some candied mint as a snack. At three, they enthusiastically clapped when Eva, our belly dancer, started swaying to Lou’s jazzy sax. For an hour, they sat blissfully ogling her strategically placed flower-petal tattoos, visible under her sheer veils.
But then I served the fish and chips (fish from the farm in our pond out back, potatoes and lemons from the greenhouse). Milo took one bite and glared at his plate through boozy bloodshot eyes. He growled, “Emma, this belongs in the compost.”
I should have booted him out, as he was conspicuously drunk, the thin air amplifying his buzz. But being ex-Service myself, I knew homesickness when I saw it.
“Milo, don’t give me flak. I don’t have a long menu…costs being what they are…so it’s that or beansprout salad.”
Milo snarled, “Tasmanian Devil…even that scavenger wouldn’t eat this grub!”
He stood and snatched up the plate as if to throw it to the floor.
Now I could not abide waste. Every edible ounce was a little victory in the unrelenting struggle to make our freehold profitable. Whether we would succeed or leave with our tails between our legs was still to be determined. I jumped up and grabbed his hand. Lou jumped up and grabbed my hand. We scuffled for a few seconds but, in the end, all that got spilled were the blueberries, which formed a purple mass by Milo’s glass of booze.
Milo’s pique had died, replaced by acute embarrassment.
“Emma…I’m…I’m sorry.”
Then he scooped up the berries, dumped them into his glass, and took a swallow.
I watched as surprised delight flooded his face.
“That’s damn good!”
He handed me the glass and I took a sip. The mingling of blueberry, mint and rye reminded me of lazy summers in my native Raleigh but I was still able to smell the distinct aromas of grain grown on local soil.
The drink needed a little bite so I squeezed lemon juice into the glass and swirled. I handed the glass to Lou.
“Damn good,” was all he said after he took his sip.
A knowing look passed between us.
I smiled: “So I think we do need to change the name of this speakeasy, but I still can honor Nero. I christen this drink the Candor Tasmanian Devil.
And that’s the story of the first cocktail invented on the planet Mars.