National Exile: A 21st Century Novel about Nobility, Poverty, and Cruelty

by Rusul A. Altaay

  Chapter 12

  The Obvious Way Out

  In the main conference room, commander Basam had gathered the remaining people at the Burj.

  “Today you are receiving your first assignment. We have some information about a guy named Aser. He is living about fifty miles from here. He has been gathering people at his place to conspire terrorists’ attacks. Your job is to make sure that this problem is taking care of. I will send out the details.” Commander Basam said.

  “So, you want us to gather more info about the guy?” Samir asked.

  “No, I said I wanted you to solve the problem not prove to me that… It is a problem. This man and his people have to be expired as soon as possible”

  During this conversation, Sidra was looking outside the window. She had so much going on inside her head. She was listening to their conversation without saying anything.

  “So, now, you want us to work as assassins?” Rafil asked.

  “Finally, someone gets it. However, not all of you are going. Only half of you are on this mission. I have another mission for the other half.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Rafil said.

  Commander Basam completely ignored him. He looked at Sidra and said,

  “I’m going to appoint a leader to the assassination team.”

  Sidra saw his reflection on the windows as he was looking at her. She immediately turned around and said,

  “Don’t look at me. I’m just an engineer.”

  “Sidra, you will be leading the team to that man’s house. I want them all to be executed right there and then.” Basam said.

  “But… Never mind… Yes, Sir. Consider it done.”

  Sidra had an immediate change of heart. Maybe the look of his scary face terrified her.

  “Say what? How can you be ok with this? Besides, what do you know about tactics and attacks?” Yazan said with a very shocked voice.

  “You heard the commander. That man, Aser, is a threat to our national security. We are soldiers after all, and we will do what we can to keep our country clean from the likes of him.”

  “Yazan, you will direct the other team here at the lab, like you always have. We are working on new bioweapons, and I thought that it was about time we get the labs at the Burj involved.” The commander said.

  Yazan just did not know what to say other than,

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He thought that it might’ve been good to see what they were planning. On top of all of that, it seemed that Sidra had switched sides all of a sudden.

  “What is she thinking? That idiot…” He thought.

  Later on that day and away from the commander, Yazan finally had a chance to talk privately to Sidra.

  “Who the hell is Aser anyway?” Yazan asked.

  “Who cares? I was just going along with whatever that idiot asked us to do.” Sidra replied.

  “Really? And how exactly are you planning to lead a team?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “For God’s sake, you are killing me, Sidra. So, you are just going to kill that man and his people like he asked?”

  “I got this. Trust me. Now, listen, I received an email from Rain.”

  “About time, I thought he is dead by now.”

  “I cracked half of the message, but I can’t make sense out of the rest. Maybe you can?”

  “Who invented that secret messaging system?”

  “I did. It is a brilliant idea to encode an entire message without anyone knowing. Only the person you are sending the message to would understand it. However, if your code is not hidden in a smart way, anyone might be able to hack it if they had access to SANA, the super computer.” Sidra explained.

  “Show me the email.” Yazan said.

  “Here…” Sidra said and showed him the screen of her smart phone.

  However, Yazan noticed something. He said with a concerned voice,

  “You’re using the 4G network? Didn’t you know that they watch literally everything we do on it? You’re going to get us killed.”

  “Why do you think he only sent few words?” Sidra said.

  “Right… You can make some sense out of this?”

  “It makes more sense to me than ‘The ceiling can’t hold us’ ever will.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind… It is just a song. I mean since when are the ceilings responsible for holding us?”

  “Again, what on earth are you talking about?” Yazan asked.

  “Sorry. I will let you read Rain’s email now.” Sidra replied.

  “Do you remember that song we grew up with? These words were played at the begging.” Yazan said.

  “Exactly… For a normal person, the words are totally random and make no sense at all. However, Rain left his clue in his signature, GSBLC. Watch this…”

  Glory  G: Google, the largest search engine in the world

  Shiny  S: I have no idea what it means

  Birds  B: I have no idea what it means

  Light  L: Maybe it does mean just Light

  Clouds  C: icloud where we store data

  “How did you know that?” Yazan asked.

  “I invented this system, remember? Now, I still do not know what the S, B, L stand for other than Shiny, Birds, and Light. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Let’s see. The first word is Google, so what is it that he wants us to Google that has to do with Shiny Birds?”

  “That is my question to you. I spent all night thinking about it.”

  “About it? Or about him?” Yazan asked sarcastically.

  “Why would I think about him? Just focus here please.”

  “Ok, Shiny Birds… ha? What exactly shines other than the sun?”

  “Maybe we need to Google something about the sun?”

  “Or maybe we need to Google something at sun-rise when the sun is shiny.”

  “Great… So, now we need the sun’s permission to start Googling. That sounds ridicules. Yazan, please be more realistic.”

  “Fine… I ran out of ideas.”

  “Oh my GOD… But this is not possible at this point.” Sidra said as if a light bulb turned on over her head.

  “What is not possible? Googling at sun-rise?” Yazan said sarcastically.

  “I was working on different projects. Activating messages with sounds was just one of them. I was told that someone else was developing a more secure way to deliver messages using a similar setup. One of those ways involved different elements like light, place, and time while activating a message.” Sidra explained.

  “English, please…” Yazan said.

  “This system is still under development. At least, that is what they told me. How did Rain know about it? I’m starting to get suspicion of what he knows and how he knew it.” Sidra mumbled.

  “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

  “No, sorry. I was talking to myself… I think I know what he means now.” Sidra said as she wrote down the following,

  Glory  G: Google

  Shiny  S: During a shiny day

  Birds  B: Use the sounds of birds

  Light  L: Activate with Light

  Clouds  C: Save it to the icloud

  “Am I supposed to understand what that means? Because I don’t, and anyone else who sees this will think it’s meaningless.” Yazan said.

  “Welcome to the epic world of the SANA. It isn’t supposed to make any sense to the general public. That is the whole point.” Sidra said.

  “What exactly are you going to Google?” Yazan asked.

  “Nothing... Yazan, I will explain later. Let us go and find a way to have access to SANA. Even if I get the code, I would not be able to activate the message without it. The program that converts the signals of the sound is installed only on SANA.”

  “Well, that commander is not going to let us anywhere near it. The super computer is in the secured facility. We
might have to sneak in at night.” Yazan said.

  “Did you not hear me? We can’t get the code if the sun is not shining. It’s already pass 10 AM now. We should have enough time before sunset.” Sidra said.

  “I have a plan. I might be able to buy you some time. I will call in a meeting and make sure no one is securing the lab where SANA is. You will have a maximum of few minutes before they send in a security guard.”

  A while later Yazan was successful in buying her some time. Sidra was able sneak into the lab where she could use the super computer. She opened the program using a hidden mini SD card in her necklace. Then, she opened her Google drive where she could not find anything. She thought that Rain had sheared some documents with her, but there were none. However, it did not take her long to remember Rain’s second clue, Shiny. She immediately took a small solar panel that they had in the lab and connected it via USB to the super computer. The sun light was converted to electricity which sent out signals to the computer. In that moment, a file on her Google drive just appeared.

  However, that was not the only thing that showed up on her screens. Another screen that was connected to the security cameras showed a guard approaching the lab. Getting caught would’ve meant prison for a very long time. The new commander never took security violations lightly.

  Sidra continued looking into the screen hoping that the guard will remain on the door from the outside. The file that Rain had sheared with her contained encrypted data. She used that data and mixed it with birds’ sound. In general, all sounds have special waves that are like no others. The wave can be translated to data.

  Sidra was easily able to mix the new waves with Rain’s file. However, the new hybrid file contained nothing. She entered the new file to SANA and the following message was displayed on the screen:

  < You missed a stage in activating this message. The code is >.

  She took that file and put it in on her iCloud account. She was getting nervous between trying to make the file work and watching for the security guard. She did not know what else to do. Nothing was working.

  She stared at the computer for few seconds and almost gave up. She remembered the word “Light”. She finally realized what was missing. Her neckless had a photocell. She took it off and plugged it into the computer. She used her smartphone as flash light to activate the cell. Few seconds after that, SANA gave the following message:

  < Now, please play the melody. >

  She found an old recording of that song online and played it. The song had to be played, so the sound waves can be converted to data. Since the walls in the lab were sound proofed, she was not worried about the guard outside. Her only worry was how to get out of the lab after she was done. As the song played, she remembered when her mother gave her the neckless. That song took her back to the days before her life was turned upside down. After the song finished playing, a message from Rain appeared on the screen:

  < Save a man named Aser. He is one of us. He lives in the capital. I know about Orb. Just find that man. We’ll need him. >

  “You have got to be kidding me.” She thought. “Now, my kill mission turned into a rescue one? And how on earth did he know that we were ordered to kill him?”

  < I miss you guys. Sidra, try to understand… I left under the hope of returning as soon as the plan is complete. I wish you and the rest of your friends around the world the best. We are counting on you. > Rain message ended here.

  “So… he knows that I am not working solo. I need to find out how he knows what he does. I’m starting to think that I trusted the wrong guy. I hope I’m wrong about him.” Sidra thought. “Now, how on earth am I going to leave this room?”

  She turned everything off and made it look like no one had been there. Then, she called Yazan to ask if he could take the guard away from the door. He never answered his phone, so she knew that she was on her own. The only problem was the fact that she was on the tenth floor. Jumping out of the window was not an option at all. If they caught her, she would not be able to explain what exactly she was doing there. So, she decided to just take the easy way out. She simply opened the door.

  “Oh… hi… sorry I got in here when you were gone. I hope it’s ok. I was looking into some files we need for the mission. Have a nice day…”

  “And that is how I got out of there? Why? What did you think I did?” Sidra said as she was explaining to Yazan how she got out.

  “That’s it? You did not jump out of the window, or kick him and run before he saw you? You just walked out of there?” Yazan asked.

  “Of course not… I told him to have a nice day.” Sidra said.

  “Never mind... Good luck on that mission.” He said. “She drives me crazy sometimes.”