The Silence of Six

by E. C. Myers

  “A Lady Gaga CD. Yeah.”

  Max glanced over the list of songs and, sure enough, Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” was number seven. Outside of the pages of comic books, Evan’s heroes had been brave people with conviction, who put their lives and freedom on the line, like Chelsea Manning, Daniel Ellsburg, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Aaron Swartz, and Michael Hastings.

  “I’ll just copy the files off,” Max said.

  “Take it. It’s yours,” she said. “That’s the only physical copy. I wanted you to see it to prove it came from Evan.”

  “This is his handwriting,” Max said.

  “And the tracks are the key to the encryption he used. He likes—liked puzzles.”

  Max rotated the CD case to read the titles through the translucent front, reading the song titles: “Everything Has Changed” by Taylor Swift, “Team” by Lorde, “We Might As Well Be Strangers” by Keane, “All Kinds of Time” by Fountains of Wayne, “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic. He recognized many of them as Evan’s favorites.

  Evan listened to everything. While lots of people downloaded hundreds of gigs of music, movies, or books that they would never even use, Evan consumed everything. He hoarded, but he didn’t keep anything he didn’t have a use for.

  “What’s really on here?” Max asked.

  “I found two files, but they’re hidden and encrypted. The first one is called ‘LinerNotes.txt.’”

  “Let me guess: not liner notes?”

  “Sort of. They’re liner notes about you.”

  “Me? Evan doxxed me?”

  “He couldn’t help it. When Evan loves something—”

  “He has to know everything about it.”

  Deety smiled wistfully. “He also left instructions to contact you if I didn’t hear from him after the debate.”

  “All that’s in one text file?” Max asked.

  “It isn’t a text file. Change the file extension to .odt once you copy it over. You have OpenOffice?”

  “Not on my current machine, but I’ll get it,” Max said. “What’s the password?”

  Deety smiled. “Don’t you want to figure it out for yourself?”

  “Maybe when I’m not being chased by FBI agents,” Max said.

  “I work better under pressure. Anyway, not that you need to see the contents of that file, since it’s all about you, but the password is pretty simple: the track number followed by the first word of each song title, working your way toward the center.”

  “I would have figured that out,” Max said.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “It would have taken me a while though.”

  “We’d talked about different ways of encrypting files before. I got it on my fifth try. And that passphrase doesn’t work for the second file.”

  “Which is. . . ?”

  “The one labeled ‘Discography.txt.’ Not a discography, I bet. It’s a huge file, but that’s all I know about it, because encryption. You’ll have to do a little cryptology of your own. Good luck with that.”

  “I may already have the password,” he told her, referring to the text message Evan had sent him.

  She shook her head. “He took a big chance.”

  “He’s—he was always careful.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t work out something more secure with you beforehand, like with me.”

  Max looked down. Evan had been trying to reach him for weeks and he’d kept putting him off. He might have been able to send this data to Max directly without involving Deety, if only he’d made himself available. He might have been able to do something to help Evan sooner, so he didn’t have to take his own life.

  Max retrieved his laptop. “Well let’s see what’s on it,” he said.

  Deety put her hands on top of the computer to prevent him from opening it.

  “Not here,” she said. She snatched her hands back as if they’d been burned. “Sorry.”

  “It isn’t mine,” Max said. “And I’m not that sensitive about my equipment.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And that’s my cue to get going.” She slid out of the booth.

  “Don’t you want to know what Evan died to protect?” he asked.

  “Definitely no way. I’m not willing to die for it.”

  “He was your . . . friend.”

  “He was yours first. I barely knew him.” She sighed. “Look. My life is complicated enough. I have responsibilities. I can’t get involved.”

  “But you’re already involved.”

  Her expression hardened. “My part is over. Don’t kill the messenger, right? That’s all I am. The messenger. Now you have whatever it is, the way Evan wanted. You decide what to do with it. I’m out.”

  He looked at the microwave mounted on the other side of the counter. He picked up the CD. She followed his glance.

  “Do whatever you think is right,” Deety said.

  That’s what Evan had said. But Max needed to see the big picture before he could make a decision like this, and he owed it to Evan to see what had been so important to his friend. Maybe it would help him and Evan’s family understand why he had killed himself.

  “I just want to go back to my old life,” Max said.

  “Too late for that,” Deety said softly. “Those days are gone forever, along with Evan.” She looked at the time on her phone. “I have to go. It’s a long way home.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” Max said. “How can I find you again?”

  “You won’t.” Deety turned and walked away.

  She went out the door, sending a blast of cold air into the restaurant, without glancing back or saying good-bye. And after Lorraine dropped off his second check and cleared their plates, he realized she hadn’t paid for her meal either.

  Lorraine brought Max change from his bill while he was transferring the contents of the CD—music tracks in .cda format and two hidden .txt files—to an encrypted folder on his laptop. Until he knew what he had, he wouldn’t know what to do with it or where to go next.

  “Aren’t you going to be late, honey?” she said.

  “Huh?” Max said. “For what?”

  “School, dear.”

  He’d forgotten it was a school day.

  The time on his computer said it was 8:18 a.m. He had planned on staying here to work, but that didn’t seem to be an option. If he holed up in the library or a coffee shop in town, he would be challenged for not being in school, and that would lead to other questions.

  He needed to go someplace where he wouldn’t attract attention.

  10

  Schools made their students’ safety theirtop priority, yet they often left a wealth of unprotected information online. After a few minutes on the Roseburg High School website, Max had a copy of the student handbook, the bell schedule, and a campus map. The school’s blog gave him insight into student life there, and it was easy for him to memorize the names of the administrators and faculty.

  No one stopped him when he ran inside with his backpack slung over one shoulder, mingling with the other students trying to beat the late bell.

  Max figured that in a school with over fifteen hundred students, he wouldn’t have any trouble going unnoticed for one day. He took a quick moment to orient himself on the map on his phone. He watched the flow of bustling strangers heading for their first class.

  Max turned right and headed straight for the Media Center, which contained the library and student computer lab. When he got there, a class was settling down, taking up all twenty computers. Slipping into the school without drawing attention was one thing, but a teacher and other students would know he’d never been to the class before.

  He hurried to the back of the library, hoping no one would question him, then turned off the aisle and ducked down behind a bookshelf.

  He
crouched and pretended to be looking for a book on a low shelf, listening for someone to give the alarm. All he heard was the usual before-class chatter.

  Still crouching, Max made his way along the bookshelf until he reached the far end. He moved to the corner and sat on the floor with his back against the wall. The dome security camera was directly above his head.

  He picked out the other security cameras in the room, none of which had a clear line at him. He figured no one was actively monitoring each one of them all the time anyway. At Granville, they were mainly there to provide evidence if there were some kind of incident—and to foster a false sense of safety.

  Max wondered how much trouble he could get into here if he were caught. He didn’t have a weapon or anything, but he was trespassing. An arrest would notify the FBI of his whereabouts, and local law enforcement would hold Max until the Feds collected him.

  He’d just have to make sure that didn’t happen. If he were challenged, he would just pretend to be a new student considering a transfer, or a cousin visiting a student or something. Evan might have been better at behind-the-screen hacks, but whenever they had to talk their way around security measures in the real world, Max had taken the lead. If all else failed, he would run.

  Max added this to his growing list of crimes, which paled in comparison to stealing two cars in one night—not to mention the file he was carrying, which could contain any amount of illegally procured information.

  It was time to see what Evan had entrusted him with.

  Max fired up his laptop and half-listened to the teacher, Mrs. Bradshaw. He had happened into an introductory programming class, where the kids were designing and coding basic computer games from scratch. Maybe one of these kids was a hacker too, or would soon enter that world, never suspecting things could end as grimly as they had for Evan.

  He located the hidden folder and the encrypted files Deety had mentioned. As curious as he was about what Evan had written about him in the LinerNotes.txt file, Max was more interested in the mysterious Discography.txt file. He connected to the school’s open Wi-Fi and downloaded Evan’s favorite encryption program, NewCrypt, and OpenOffice. Evan had never trusted other people enough to rely on standard PGP encryption, claiming that “Pretty Good Privacy” wasn’t good enough. NewCrypt scrambled the contents of a file, folder, or drive so only one passphrase could unlock it.

  He installed the programs and launched NewCrypt. When he opened Evan’s file with it, a password dialog box opened. So far, so good.

  He typed the long string of alphanumeric characters into the password field. He placed his right index finger on the Enter key and held his breath.

  He pushed down.

  The colorful Apple beach ball swirled at the center of his screen for a moment, then NewCrypt spat out a decrypted file. So the text Evan had sent Max moments before he died had in fact been a key, and after two days of searching, Max had finally found the lock. He could hardly contain his excitement.

  But then Max’s ears perked up. The students in the class weren’t talking about their projects anymore.

  “He doesn’t have many friends,” a girl said.

  “Nice try, Jordan,” Mrs. Bradshaw said. “Sign out of Panjea.”

  “This is news. It’s relevant,” Jordan said.

  “Really. What are you looking at?”

  “Evan Baxter’s profile.”

  Max gave them their full attention.

  “That hacker from the news?” Mrs. Bradshaw said.

  “They say he was part of Dramatis Personai,” Jordan said.

  Max opened a browser. The lead story on CNN had been updated from this morning. The FBI now revealed that Evan was connected to at least a dozen high-profile corporate hacks perpetrated by Dramatis Personai in the last year. They claimed he had been part of a long-term investigation into several members of the hacktivist group.

  So they were already trying to spin a story around Evan that made him look like an unstable, amoral criminal, and the implication was clear: Evan had felt the noose tightening and killed himself rather than be arrested and questioned. But Max didn’t see how the FBI could have known about Evan all along—he was just too careful. The only way they could have connected him to Dramatis Personai now was if someone else in the group had given them that information.

  Although there was still no discussion of how he killed himself or what his possible motives were, apparently the FBI was actively pursuing a lead on a possible accomplice, a fellow student at Granville High who had disappeared after the debate.

  A shiver went down Max’s back. They had to be talking about him. And he still didn’t know why they were so interested.

  Max switched back to the text file from Evan and tried to open it, but all it displayed was gibberish. As with the other file DoubleThink had already cracked, Discography.txt wasn’t really a text document—Evan had altered the file name to hide its contents.

  Max examined the code, looking for a hint as to the type of file it was. Then he spotted a word he knew in the garbled sequence of characters: “Kill_Screen.”

  He started to see more names scattered among the weird characters: “PHYREWALL,” “0MN1,” “GroundSloth.” He grew excited; this file had something to do with Dramatis Personai.

  Following DoubleThink’s steps, Max changed the file name to an .odt file, the extension for OpenOffice text documents. The computer warned him that this might render the file unusable.

  It’s already unusable, he thought.

  OpenOffice didn’t know what to do with the file either.

  “But don’t you think it’s weird?” Jordan said. “Everyone is talking about Evan Baxter and ‘the silence of six’ online, except on Panjea. I’m not seeing anything about it in my news feed, and whenever I post about it no one comments on it.”

  “You shouldn’t be on Panjea right now anyway, Jordan,” Mrs. Bradshaw said.

  That is weird, Max thought as he studied the troublesome file.

  It was huge, much larger than most Word documents, even when they were loaded with graphics. It was almost like it contained multiple documents, or perhaps lots of large images. Evan had always taken pride in the thoroughness of his research, whether he was doxxing someone or studying the company he and Max were going to infiltrate next.

  Max ran through all the file formats he knew, starting with common video files, in case Evan had made another recording. But there were dozens of file name extensions for dozens of formats, and checking each one by one was tedious business.

  “Tooms has to be hiding something,” another boy said.

  “Why?” Jordan asked.

  “He’s the government. The government is always hiding something. Tooms resigned from the Senate Intelligence Committee last year. Maybe he did it over this ‘silence of six’ business.”

  “I think he’s cute,” Jordan said.

  “The Senator?!” her friend replied.

  “Evan Baxter,” Jordan said.

  Max smiled. Evan would have blushed furiously if he’d heard a girl call him cute. He never would have had the nerve to talk to her though, even if he knew she liked him. Not in person, anyway.

  Then again, he’d managed very well with Deety. Max couldn’t believe Evan had hung out with her. What had that been, anyway? A date? Was she his secret girlfriend?

  It didn’t matter anymore, except that this amazing thing had happened in Evan’s life, and he’d never breathed a word to Max about it. Just like he’d never mentioned Dramatis Personai, but had that been for his—or Max’s—protection?

  Max considered the possibility that he was looking at many different files. How would Evan have made them look like one file?

  Duh.

  Max changed the file name to “Discography.zip.” He opened the software that extracted zipped files and was rewarded when it gave him a file folder named “
BABEL.” Inside were more than a dozen files: OpenOffice documents with names, mostly hacker handles he recognized from Dramatis Personai, like Kill_Screen.odt. He opened that one and found a complete dossier on a twenty-one-year-old college student at MIT named Leroy Brown, complete with a photo and clippings of political cartoons he had drawn for his college newspaper.

  Evan had doxxed his fellow members of Dramatis Personai. That’s why the folder was named “Babel”: One of Evan’s all-time favorite comic books was JLA: The Tower of Babel, in which Batman revealed that he knew the secret identities of the other heroes in the Justice League and how to defeat them—part of his preparations in case one of them ever went rogue and he had to take them down.

  That was Evan: always prepared. Just like the goddamn Batman.

  Max closed Kill_Screen’s file and scanned through the rest of the list. He hovered over DoubleThink.odt then moved on. There was a group of files at the bottom all sorted together in alphabetical order under the letter X with usernames he didn’t know.

  Six of them.

  Max’s pulse quickened as he opened the first one, X-1_Miller.odt. The first page was a screenshot of a Panjea profile for Ariel Miller, a twenty-three-year-old systems administrator from San Jose, California. She had long brown hair, pale skin, freckles, and a self-conscious smile. She had taken a selfie with her cell phone in her bathroom mirror while wearing a bathing suit with a pattern of R2D2 from Star Wars.

  The next page was a copy of an article from the San Jose Mercury News where they had interviewed Ariel Miller, then age nineteen, for a story about people named after characters from pop culture. The reporter had asked if she liked The Little Mermaid because of her name, suggesting that the names parents give their children are self-fulfilling prophecies or attempts to influence their lives from birth. Ariel had said, “Well, it’s a great movie. I can relate to Ariel’s desire to be part of a world she isn’t meant to be in.”

  The third page showed another photo of Ariel. She had dyed her hair red and wore torn burlap tied with rope as a dress.