The Tree of Knowledge

by Daniel G. Miller

  The Trithemius cipher used what the inventor titled a “tabula recta,” which was a square table of alphabets, with each alphabet shifting one to the right. Using the tabula recta, a person could decode a message by moving down one row of the table for each letter in the message. This enabled the message writer to encrypt the message easily by hand while at the same time enabling an amateur to decode the message.

  Albert quickly grabbed his well-worn copy of Introduction to Cryptography from his alphabetized bookshelf and flipped through the pages until he came upon the legendary tabula recta. He ripped the page featuring one of the most well-known images in cryptography, posted it on the chalkboard, and began to translate the cipher.

  The first letter was P.

  The next letter, O.

  A good sign. “PO” could be the start of a word.

  Albert continued. P-O-I.

  His throat tightened. There were very few words in the English language that started with P-O-I.

  Ying recoiled as Puddles finished the word in front of them.

  P-O-I-S-O-N.

  Chapter 6

  The Princeton police station anchored the main street through town like the sofa in a living room. Everything about it oozed small-town charm and stability. The brick facade and careful yet understated landscaping said to the passersby, “Things are quiet here, and we like it that way.”

  Unfortunately for Detective Weatherspoon, the everyday quiet and soothing boredom of his normal police work had been fractured by the recent murder. Instead of investigating which one of the neighborhood kids sprayed “don’t” on the stop sign on Spruce and Chestnut, the former All-State offensive tackle was spending night and day investigating a murder. His dark-brown skin seemed to be gaining cracks by the hour, and his large, square head seemed to be losing hair by the minute. He imagined that he’d get up tomorrow morning and be a bald, wrinkled prune of a man, one of those useless old fellows his wife, a nurse, liked to make jokes about.

  And I got squat for evidence, thought the detective as he massaged his aching knees.

  “Barb!” Weatherspoon shouted to the station’s assistant. “Get me someone over at that defense company who knows something about codes.”

  “You mean Fix Industries?”

  “Yeah, Fix.”

  While the detective waited for his treasured assistant to hunt down yet another egghead, he thought about all the dead ends that he had run into so far.

  No witnesses.

  No video surveillance, other than the ten seconds it took the perp to put down the security guard.

  No description.

  No license plate.

  All he had was one ripped sheet of paper with some letters and boxes he didn’t understand. The detective chuckled, thinking about the meek professor he had talked to today.

  What kind of a name is “Puddles” anyway?

  Weatherspoon liked Professor Puddles, even though he thought he looked like a kid in his dad’s suit. Unfortunately, Puddles hadn’t given the detective much cause for optimism about his ability to translate the paper. Even if Puddles did translate it, it probably wouldn’t give him anything useful.

  Detective Weatherspoon flipped through his disturbingly barren police report. He squinted at the name on the safe-deposit-box registry.

  “A. Turner.”

  Who is that?

  “Line one, Dr. Belial from Fix Industries,” shouted his assistant.

  “Hello, Doctor, I’m wondering if you can give me a little info on a case I’m working on,” boomed the detective as he put the phone to his ear.

  “It would be my pleasure to help in whatever way I can,” replied Belial in a nasal voice.

  “Great. Well, you see, I’m following up on a burglary over here. The thief left behind a piece of paper, but it’s got some kind of cipher on it. I’ve got a guy over here at Princeton working on it, but we don’t know what the symbols mean yet. Anyway, he didn’t seem optimistic that he could solve it, so I thought I’d get another pair of eyes on it.”

  The cryptographer paused. When Belial finally responded, Detective Weatherspoon thought he could sense some nervousness or anxiety. It sounded as if Belial’s throat were constricted in some way.

  “Yes, ah, I can look at the code for you. I doubt I’ll be of any help, though. You know, these codes can be quite complicated.”

  Weatherspoon sighed. “Hmm, I spoke with one of your colleagues who seemed to think that you could break almost any code.”

  Belial’s voice quavered. “Well, of course, I . . . well, I’ll look into it.”

  Weatherspoon squinted his eyes as if to stare down Dr. Belial through the phone. The cryptographer’s evasiveness framed every word.

  “Alright, Doctor. I’ll send a copy of the sheet over to you. This is confidential, of course.”

  “Of course, Detective . . . One quick question . . . Who did you give the tree to at Princeton? Talking to him may give me some insight.”

  “A guy named Puddles in the Math Department.”

  Another long pause. “Hmm. Don’t know him. Good luck, Detective.”

  Weatherspoon hung up the phone and turned to his computer.

  Something isn’t right about that guy.

  ***

  As Detective Weatherspoon absorbed the disconcerting call, Dr. Belial picked up the phone and dialed. He tried to steady his high-pitched voice. “General, I just received a disturbing call from the police. They gave the tree to Dr. Puddles at Princeton. I didn’t give the detective any information, but Puddles will crack the cipher. Someone needs to clean this up before it spreads.”

  Chapter 7

  Eva gazed out the window of Delta flight 457 from Los Angeles to Newark. She had spent the last thirty minutes attempting to extract herself from an inane conversation with the whiskey-breathed, married businessman next to her. Why was it that men—who were typically so rational—lost all ability to reason around a beautiful woman? The businessman had been leering at her chest and attempting to seduce her with winning lines like “I like your black shirt” and “Where are you from?”

  Did that ever work?

  If I were a balding, overweight, married businessman—in an ill-fitting suit—and I saw a good-looking twenty-eight-year-old woman next to me, I would rationally assess the situation and say to myself, “There is no pickup line in the universe that is going to enable me to have sex with this woman.”

  Eva tried to shake off the exchange with the businessman and focus on the chain of events that had put her in this position. She had been a victim of her own ego. As the general had said, “There is no room for ego in logical reasoning.” The general had been right.

  Eva could feel the businessman once again looking over at her, his wet brown eyes reminding her of the eager, stupider-than-average mutt her neighbor brought home from the shelter recently. To prevent what would surely be another lame salvo, she pulled out her iPad, opened her Economist magazine app, and focused on the screen.

  “A Queen or a Democracy in California?” read the headline.

  Leaders the Economist a Queen or a Democracy in California?

  Cristina Culebra’s uplifting campaign belies a worrying drive toward authoritarianism.

  At first glance, Cristina Culebra appears to be everything that voters say they want in a candidate. She’s staggeringly smart, having graduated with a PhD in mathematics at the age of 25. She has been wildly successful in every venture she has undertaken, including creating a global business empire, writing a bestselling business book, and raising a successful child. Her campaign oozes efficiency and optimism as evidenced by the slogan “Government that works for you” and her logo of a tree in full bloom. She even has movie-star good looks. For these reasons and many others, the 53-year-old Ms. Culebra holds a commanding fifteen-point lead in the race to be California’s governor, d
espite campaigning under the banner of the newly created Reason, Enlightenment, and Democracy (RED) Party.

  However, upon closer examination, Cristina Culebra’s cause takes on a much more sinister air. In addition to her campaign, Ms. Culebra has quietly channeled millions of dollars to an organization that supports a controversial citizens’ initiative to restructure state government. Of course, in California, citizen referendums are passed frequently with little fuss, but what makes this referendum so disturbing is that its sole purpose seems to be to subvert the democratic process and give Ms. Culebra nearly dictatorial powers.

  Initiative 471, or the “Make Government Work” initiative, would temporarily suspend the state’s house of representatives and senate and replace them with an advisory board. This board would have no formal power but would merely serve as a councilor to the governor, thereby freeing the governor to take immediate, unilateral action on the state’s most pressing problems.

  Proponents of the initiative say that this measure is needed to break the legislative gridlock, and history is on their side. The California legislature has failed to pass a budget in the last two years, while squabbling and infighting among legislators are at unprecedented levels. The state is almost bankrupt, and the current governor, Evan Adams, has been limited to the role of referee. Meanwhile, California faces crumbling infrastructure, record unemployment, and a housing crisis that is among the worst in the nation.

  While it is tempting to take Ms. Culebra and her supporters at their word, we at The Economist have seen this movie a few too many times. Nearly every foreign dictator in recent memory has used government inefficiency or ineffectiveness to justify the “temporary” suspension of the democratic process. However, once this power is concentrated in a single pair of hands, it becomes nearly impossible to remove.

  Fortunately, for the citizens of California, their likely governor controls a state, not a country, and as a result has no military to use against them once they grow weary of her reign . . .

  If they only knew, thought Eva.

  Eva finished the article and swept her finger across the tablet’s screen. Just as she had hoped, a new email stared out at her from her inbox.

  The title of the email sent a curl of anticipation and excitement through her body.

  “NEW ASSIGNMENT: HAIRCUT”

  The Society believed that individuals needed regular assignments to stay motivated. Simply giving someone a position and a set of responsibilities was far too amorphous. A process of reason demanded steady, unrelenting progress achieved through the disciplined delegation and monitoring of tasks. While others chafed, Eva loved the system because it broke her work up into new, exciting, and discrete challenges as opposed to a monotonous ongoing “job.”

  The Society deemed this type of assignment a “haircut” because it involved cutting off loose ends. Whenever members of the Society made mistakes, there would inevitably be loose ends that would need to be cut. These loose ends could be people or things, but their common characteristic was that they provided a link back to the Society and its plans. These links must be eliminated.

  Biting firmly on her lower lip, Eva opened her new assignment. Her eyebrows pinched together as she gazed upon a picture of a young, bookish-looking man before her.

  Could it be?

  Eva’s brain swam through memories as her eyes slowly scrolled down the page.

  “PROFESSOR ALBERT PUDDLES.”

  Chapter 8

  Albert blinked rapidly in the hopes that the image in front of him was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. The deciphered game tree mocked him with its weaponized logic and unrepentant cynicism. Never had he seen such a raw disdain for humanity encapsulated so clearly in a tangible object. He blinked again, but the haunting game tree stared right back at him.

  “Does this mean what I think it means?” inquired Ying.

  Albert looked sadly at Ying. He appreciated her boisterous, youthful innocence and hated to see that sadness in her eyes. Albert also feared that, in this case, ignorance was indeed bliss.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that this is a game tree detailing the thief’s approach to the theft,” he whispered.

  Ying sighed, adjusted her glasses, and stared intently at the tree.

  “So, if I’m reading this right, the thief thought that there were two major obstacles to obtaining the Tree of Knowledge: the security guard and getting access to the storage room. Obtaining access to the storage room was simply a matter of obtaining the security card, which, of course, was held by the guard. That’s why you see that branch of the tree ends there and the box is shaded.”

  Albert massaged his forehead, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He carefully ran his finger along the spine of the game tree. Puddles executed every movement with the same care and precision as a man walking an endless tightrope. “I’m afraid so. The most disturbing part to me is that, judging by the tree, the thief evaluated dealing with the security guard through force and persuasion equally. There’s literally no acknowledgment that using violence is wrong or more costly. The two concepts are presented as equally valid, and the thief ended up choosing violence.”

  The thought made Albert feel queasy. He searched the diagram for some sign of compassion, but the tree rebuffed him with its amorality.

  “One part of the tree is wrong, though,” said Ying, pointing to the box titled “incapacitate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to the tree, the murderer didn’t mean to kill the security guard. You see how the tree branches off at ‘incapacitate’? It looks like the murderer just intended to incapacitate the guard with some poison.”

  Albert got up from his chair and looked out his office window. He watched the students roam across the campus quad, laughing and texting. The sun shone brightly, painting a glorious contrast between the school’s emerald-green lawn and the multicolored stone buildings. For the first time in his life, Albert was aware of how far removed his life here at Princeton was from the raw brutality of the “real world.”

  “What an honorable thief,” said Albert sarcastically as he continued to gaze out the window. “The problem is that we don’t know that for sure. This is just the prima facie.”

  “You’re right. That’s not necessarily the route the thief finally chose.”

  “More important, it doesn’t give us any insight into who the thief is or what they stole, and I have no idea what ‘Tree of Knowledge’ means. I have a feeling that Detective Weatherspoon won’t find our observations particularly useful.”

  “Are you sure about that, Professor? If you think about it statistically, we can probably narrow it down quite a bit. I mean, how many people can there be who both have the familiarity with decision trees and the cryptography to make this?”

  “That’s a fair point, but anyone with an interest in logic and cryptography could do this. Even someone who just took a couple of intro college classes or went down an internet rabbit hole. Just think how many people have taken Turner’s cryptography class—”

  Albert swiveled around from the window and grabbed the cryptography book that he had laid on his desk. “That’s it! Turner. Turner’s the only guy I know who uses Latin in his work. Remember?” Puddles paged through the book. “He used to call his first efforts at anything ‘prima facie’ and his second ‘secundus fortuna.’”

  “Yeah, second chance,” replied Ying. “Every other person in the field uses the term ‘scenario one’ or ‘base case’ or something normal for their original analysis.”

  “He loves the ancient philosophers. Whoever made this must have been a student of Turner’s. Nobody else would have ever put the words ‘prima facie’ on this tree.”

  Albert grabbed his leather shoulder bag and stuffed the satchel with the books on his desk.

  “Ying, pack up your stuff. We’re going to pay Prof. Turner a visit
.”

  While Ying ran into the main office of the Math Department, Albert picked up his cell and removed Weatherspoon’s business card from his wallet. He dialed the main line of the Princeton Police Department.

  “Hello, could I please speak with Detective Weatherspoon?”

  The assistant on the other end of the line blandly replied, “Detective Weatherspoon’s out of the office but should be back shortly.”

  Albert pulled his fingers through his hair. “OK, will you leave him a message? Tell him Albert Puddles called and that he’s solved the cipher.”

  Chapter 9

  Eva smiled as she walked through the gates of the Princeton campus. Besides her house in Los Angeles, this was the only place that had ever felt like home. She wistfully surveyed the students as they meandered across the walkways of the grounds, their backpacks bursting with textbooks and laptop computers. Eva chuckled to herself and remembered how intimidated she had been by kids like these when she attended the school.

  Like her mother, Eva had been a mathematical savant from the beginning. By the age of fourteen, she had conquered her high school’s mathematics curriculum, so her mother enrolled her in classes at Princeton. Walking through the gates of the campus, the young girl had felt as though she were in the presence of giants. Each student towered over her small frame and looked down at her in quizzical disbelief.

  The classroom magnified her intimidation. The high, echoey ceilings of the lecture halls snarled at her in contempt. The other students squinted at her either in disdain or bemusement; of the two, Eva strongly preferred the former. Disdain she could prove wrong. The professors were tolerable, but they were old and fossilized from the laconic weather of academia, hardly the comforting peers for whom Eva had desperately longed. She was afraid she had no peer—no one who would see her as more than an oddity, a brain incongruously housed in an unimpressive body. Eva was beautiful now, but at fourteen, she had been merely cute. One student had the kindness to welcome her not as a charity case or a babysitting project but as a fellow student, a friend.