Arcane Wisdome

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Screwing up her courage, Lucy asked, “So, what do you think? Of the files I sent you, that is.”

  Ben finished his bite of St. Honoré’s Cake, nodding to show he was listening.

  “Well, the premise is a little disconcerting — using numbers to do magic. But it sure fits what’s going on better than anything I’ve been working with,” he said when he had swallowed and taken a sip of his cappuccino.

  Of all the responses Lucy had anticipated, this was certainly not the one she was expecting. “Really? Sweet.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He forked another bit of the cake, but instead of eating it at once, he went on, “I don’t think it’s magic, of course—Cosmo Bender isn’t Hogwart’s—that’s a little too ozwonked even for a gamer like me—but there may be something to the order of the numbers that creates some kind of algorithm that makes it impossible for Tom and the others to take back control of the computer. It’s something to check out.”

  “They could shut down and reboot,” Lucy said.

  “They tried that before, and the numbers just came back again, clusters again, not cascades. Curtis sent me a whole history,” Ben reminded her and popped the cake into his mouth.

  “They did try,” said Lucy, spooning some of the Crème Brûlée; the rich flavors almost made her eyes water.

  “So something else is needed.”

  “It isn’t very rational,” Lucy acknowledged. “Even if you leave out the magic part, the idea of mystical numbers ... ” She shrugged to finish her thoughts without having to express her doubts that were increasing steadily.

  “Trying the same thing over and over when it doesn’t work isn’t very rational, either,” Ben remarked, drinking more of his cappuccino. As he put the cup down, he told her, “You don’t have to mention magic, just game theory.”

  Lucy managed to chuckle. “Do you think we can convince Tom and Curtis of that?”

  “If they know anything about games, they know the first thing you have to do with a game is to learn the rules and then to play by them, and to use them to your advantage. Since whatever’s wrong with the computer seems to have its own set of rules, figuring out what they are has to be our first priority. Then we can figure out how to apply them.”

  “Okay,” said Lucy, trying to make up her mind how best to approach the Gothic Geeks with this information.

  “If you aren’t busy tomorrow, we could get together and draw up some schematics for them,” Ben suggested tentatively. “Take what we come up with over to the Geeks about two?”

  “Okay,” Lucy said again before she finished up her Crème Brûlée.

  13

  “Well,” said Tom Foster as he looked over the file on Ben’s laptop. “It’s an interesting idea, I’ll say that." The skepticism was so thick in his tone that he didn’t bother to be polite about it. “Mathematical spells making number-clusters that are spells. Never heard that one before.”

  Outside, Sunday afternoon was filled with sunshine so intense that it was almost liquid, pouring over the whimsical flowerbeds that were the usual for the Foster’s garden. Somewhere behind a screen of Nile lilies, Tom’s younger brother and sister screamed with delight as they ran through the sprinkler.

  “Do you think this might be worth trying?" Lucy asked, pointing to the screen. “There are supposed to be counter-spells that can work against — ”

  “It’s so ozwonked it’s fun,” said Bruce Paxton, easing up behind Lucy and leaning ever so slightly against her.

  “Stand on your own feet, Bruce,” said Gweneth, from her place by her own laptop set out in the central table amid heaps of magazines and manuals.

  “Lucy doesn’t mind, does she?" Bruce said, wheedling for a positive answer; he tried to breathe in her ear.

  Lucy found this just too yucky. “Yes, Bruce, I do mind,” she answered, and spoke again to Tom. “So you don’t want to try a counter-spell.”

  “Hell, no,” said Tom, laughing. He nudged Curtis Ng. “What do you think? Spells?”

  Curtis glanced up from the cascading display. “I think it might be worth a try,” he answered. “Nothing else is working. Maybe Techwhizards should use spells.”

  Lucy took advantage of this expression of doubt. “If you’ll let me see your printouts of the clusters I’ll see if I can match up the numbers to what’s in the text I’ve been using — that is, if you’ll let me borrow the printouts.”

  “I could email you the files,” said Curtis, nodding in the direction of his own laptop open on the counter.

  “I don’t think it’s wise to spread those numbers around,” said Lucy. “ Just in case, you know?”

  Curtis shook his head in disbelief, but said, “Hey, it’s however you want it. You want paper, take paper." He got up and went to the rack of hanging files at the end of the counter, removing one of the thickest. “This is through last night. Just before we rebooted.”

  “You rebooted?" Ben asked, surprised.

  “Yep,” said Tom. “Around one. We logged on again this morning, and for about half an hour, no trouble. But then— ” He pointed to the number-filled screen and held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Have you noticed any change in the numbers? Are the patterns different?” Lucy peered over Tom’s shoulder at the desktop screen.

  “Yeah." He drummed the counter with his fingers. “There are more of them and they’re closer together.”

  “And every third cluster begins with the number five, if that’s any help to you,” Curtis added, going to get himself some coffee.

  Ben held his open laptop next to the desktop’s screen. “Do you notice any of these shapes occurring in the clusters?" On Ben’s screen the outlines of various occult geometrical figures were displayed.

  Tom paid almost no attention to the figure, but Curtis, coffee mug in hand, came and perused the forms. Finally he pointed out two. “I think I’ve seen these repeated. You can tell if you look at the printouts.”

  Outside, Emma, Tom’s six-year-old sister, raced across the backyard, shrieking as she went; only Gweneth noticed, and went to close the door to keep the Foster family weekend from intruding.

  Ben moved the two forms to a new file on his laptop. “Thanks. It gives me something to look for.”

  “And I’ll look over the number frequencies and positions in the clusters, and compare them with what’s in the book I’m using,” Lucy said quickly, to remind them all whose idea this was. She realized she might not want to have the credit later, if it turned out to be nothing, but for right now she could let them all remember who thought of magic first.

  Tom chuckled condemningly. “Do you think that we’d forget this is your baby?”

  Lucy flushed. “Just wanted to do my part,” she told him.

  From the Foster house there came an outraged bellow; this time everyone in the garage but Tom looked up.

  “Sports,” he explained. “My dad’s really into international soccer. Ever since he got the new TV, he’s been wonking on sports." He couldn’t keep the disdain from his voice. “When the soccer’s done, it’ll be baseball or maybe golf.”

  “Quite a lot to watch,” said Ben, offering a tentative smile.

  “My dad’s just as bad,” said Spencer as if competing with Tom over sports-obsessed fathers. He shoved himself to his feet. “Speaking of my dad, he’s barbequing — Sunday tradition. I have to be home by four." He gathered up his laptop and peripherals. “See you guys Tuesday.”

  “Okay,” said Gweneth for the lot of them, watching Spencer slouch away from the garage before going to close the door behind him.

  “So when do you plan to get back to us?" Curtis asked Lucy and Ben.

  “Wednesday?" Lucy said, and saw Ben nod. “Wednesday. After school.”

  “Fine,” Ben concurred.

  Curtis glanced at Tom. “If we haven’t figured out what’s wrong by then, we’ll probably be willing to make offerings to the gods of cyberspace to stop it.”

  Lucy laughed, an odd note in the sound
. “It may come to that,” she said. “Chickens or CDs for the offering?”

  Gweneth shot a puzzled look at Lucy. “That means either that you think what you’re trying won’t work, or that we should get ready to offer up our old hard-drives.”

  For once Lucy paid no attention to the skepticism in the remark, and stopped herself from trying to explain what the numbers might mean. “We’ll see on Wednesday.”

  * * *

  By Wednesday Lucy and Ben hadn’t made anything like enough progress in their decoding the number cascades and clusters. Ben had picked out a reoccurring eight-number sequence in the clusters — 59524815 — and Lucy had found the same running diagonally through the cascades, but nothing beyond that. They walked together from school to the Foster’s house, going slowly, in no hurry to arrive with what was likely to be unwelcome information.

  “We can at least tell them about the repeating cluster,” Lucy said when they had covered half the distance.

  “And make up the rest?" Ben asked.

  “No,” said Lucy, inspiration striking her unexpectedly. “We get them looking for the sequence—forward, backward, and sideways. Like those word puzzles, where you have to see the words in lines, up and down, across, and diagonal, forward and backward. I think it could be the clue to the patterns we’re looking for. If the Geeks are doing something, they’ll be more likely to give us the benefit of the doubt. If we just drop it in their laps, then they won’t like it so much. They may decide to try something completely different, just to show the number-clusters mean nothing." Where had that come from? Lucy wondered.

  “That’s a great idea, Lucy,” said Ben. “Too bad you don’t do games. I ‘d guess you have a talent for it.”

  “Thanks,” said Lucy, still mulling over where that idea to search for the number sequence had come from. She couldn’t shake away the conviction that it had something to do with the spell she had cast to reveal what the problem was. Sure, she had looked things up and followed up on her hunches, but maybe that was how the spell worked for people like her — people who didn’t really believe in magic.

  “Penny,” said Ben, holding up a coin.

  “Um?" Lucy answered, wondering why he was speaking to her even as she realized that they had walked almost a full block in silence.

  “For your thoughts. You’re clearly lost in them." His shy smile took all the sting out of his words.

  Lucy gave a fragmentary laugh. “Probably not worth that much,” she said. “I know the Geeks aren’t going to buy any of the words-as-mathematical-sequences-as-spells thing. There has to be a more palatable way to present the idea. Couldn’t repetitive patterns mean fractals? I could talk about fractals." Though she had only a smattering of knowledge about fractals from her Geometry class, she thought she could manage something fairly convincing.

  “Let me do it,” Ben told her. “I can express it in gaming terms and that should bring them around, especially if Spencer’s there.”

  “You mean because of his game designing?" Lucy asked

  “That, and his conviction that everything is a game, a very nasty game." Ben hitched his shoulders. “At least I can tell them what to look for, and the patterns that might be found.”

  Lucy had never thought of Spencer in that way, but as soon as Ben said it, she could see what he meant. “Yeah. Okay. You do it, and I’ll back you up.”

  “Thanks." Ben studied her face.

  For no reason she could account for, Lucy felt herself blush. “Hey, you’re the one helping me, not the other way around.”

  “If you say so,” Ben told her, and lengthened his stride.

  “At least it’ll give them something to do. They’re so tired of not coming up with anything." She didn’t want to mention the possibility of magic, not even to Ben, particularly since she hadn’t figured out what kind of spell was being generated.

  “Okay." Ben offered her an encouraging smile. “And once they figure out what the clusters are doing, they could fix it on their own.”

  “They could,” said Lucy with a certainty she didn’t feel.

  14

  “It can’t be that simple—we would have spotted it,” Aaron Jarvis exclaimed as soon as Ben had finished his review of the schematic. He leaned over the graph paper Ben had used to show the various ways the sequence could be found.

  Tom swung around from his desktop where the number-clusters were sailing by horizontally. “Not necessarily. We weren’t looking for that kind of pattern. That’s more what this gamer would see." It wasn’t quite a slight, but close enough that Ben bristled for a few seconds.

  Niki, who had made one of her rare visits, lifted up the huge sheet of paper and scowled at it. “I guess we could give it a try, see what happens.”

  “Whose computer do we use?" Gweneth asked.

  “You mean in case it catches the numbers from this?” Curtis asked, pointing to the schematic.

  “Something like that,” said Tom. “At least you aren’t asking us to throw

  dice.”

  “All I’m saying is that the patterns exist. Lucy and I think that the repetition is important." Ben looked at Lucy. “She saw it before I did.”

  “Okay, so there is a repetitive pattern. It’s not a branching one as far as I can see, but you’re right about the sequence. That doesn’t mean it’s a spell." Tom scowled at the broad sheet of graph paper.

  Spencer came and peered over Tom’s shoulder; Curtis moved his chair closer to Tom’s. After a moment Gweneth got up from the couch and joined them. Bruce lingered back by the coffee maker.

  “Call it anything you want. It appears in several forms,” Lucy said, pointing to diagonal sequences, and ones that skipped from line to line in a zigzag pattern. She did her best to smile at the Geeks, including Bruce, who gave her his best sultry look. “It’s even repeated in a spiral here" — she pointed to the place on the graph — “and as a kind of checkerboard here.”

  Curtis began to be interested. “Very sneaky,” he approved.

  “So what do you make of it?" Tom asked.

  “I think that’s the trigger for keeping this going, that whatever it is that’s going on, these patterns are the key to it,” said Lucy. “I think the sequence has to occur every so many numbers, or the cascade stops and you get your screen back." She had decided not to mention the curse the numbers contained; the Geeks were straining their rationality already, adding a curse to the problem would be likely to discredit her with them entirely.

  “And there may be a way to stop it. Get rid of it entirely,” said Ben. “Lucy and I have been working on some gaming theory here, but this might do it. Lucy was the one who put the numbers together.”

  Lucy wasn’t sure she was pleased or annoyed at this — was Ben giving her credit or setting her up for the blame if it didn’t work? She shoved those unhappy thoughts out of her mind and set about explaining the number sequence and the counter-sequence. “Can you stop the cascade?" she asked when she was done. “Long enough to start entering these counter-sp ... sequences?”

  “For short periods, yes." Tom patted the screen. “But how do we keep it from starting up again?”

  “While it’s still, find all the sequences you can, erase the numbers and substitute these." She handed him a sheet of paper with 84279608 on it. “Get as many of them as you can. That should slow it down enough so you can block — ”

  “Dude,” Tom said, “that’s gonna take time, a lot of time.”

  “Maybe not,” said Ben. “I think once a certain number of these sequences are changed, the whole thing will stop.”

  “But there’s thousands of sequences, and who knows if we can find them all?”

  Spencer complained.

  “Reboot, and when this begins again, start as soon as you can to change the sequences,” Lucy suggested. “Get the lead on it.”

  “Sounds ozwonked to me,” said Bruce with an inexplicable chuckle.

  “Maybe,” said Lucy, “but do you have any better ideas?”

>   “What’s the harm in giving it a try?" Ben seconded.

  The Geeks moved away to the far corner of the garage where they kept steel shelves filled with supplies and files. There they stood together, whispering, making small, emphatic gestures while Lucy and Ben waited in silence. After about five minutes the Geeks came back, and Tom spoke for them all.

  “Okay. We’ll give it a try, ozwonked as it may be." He held out his hand for Ben’s graph paper chart. We’ll turn it all off tonight and log on tomorrow around nine, if you want to be here to help." There was a challenge in the offer.

  “I’ll be here,” said Lucy, thinking she might want to try a small spell tonight to reinforce what they would do in the morning, but wondered if she’d have the time to get the supplies, set up the spell, and cast it. She still wasn’t entirely sure the last spell had worked.

  “So will I,” said Ben. “I want to see if the sequences work.”

  “Your choice,” said Tom, and sat down at the desktop once more. Curtis dropped into his chair next to Tom’s.

  “Do you think this is going to work? Really?" Bruce whispered to Lucy, striving to get close to her.

  “Why would I suggest it if I didn’t think it would work?" Lucy said, unwilling to hide her scorn for him.

  “You want to be a Gothic Geek, don’t you? This could be your way to try to get in without developing anything like what the rest of us have done." He cast a contemptuous look at Ben. “A gamer like him doesn’t have a chance, but you could fool us all into letting you in.”

  “Hey, Bruce,” said Gweneth. “Nobody’s interested. Give it a rest.”

  Bruce did a Spock-eyebrow-lift at her.

  “Puh-leeeez,” said Gweneth, and turned away.

  “That’s mean,” Aaron said, and shut his mouth firmly as Gweneth rounded on him.

  “Hey, we’re Gothic Geeks, We don’t go in for sexist games, remember?" Gweneth looked to Niki. “Right?”