I poke around through my mother’s files and find one marked READ ME STEPH. That seems promising, but it’s this weird, disjointed list that she clearly intended to turn into a letter but never actually did. MASSIVE INTEGER FACTORIZATION ALGORITHM is one bullet point and YOUR FATHER HAD ME WATERBOARDED is another bullet point, and there’s a whole set of file names and a couple of hints for passwords that are—thank goodness—much more obvious to me than where we went for my eighth birthday. (I’m pretty sure that by my favorite book, she means Stellaluna; I test this out and the file decrypts. I look at it. It’s a bunch of code. I have no idea what this is even for.)
I try googling MASSIVE INTEGER FACTORIZATION ALGORITHM and get a Wikipedia page about math. After poking around and discovering only more math, I try reading the Wikipedia page and discover that this is maybe something about cryptography, although I’m not sure. I try pulling up the Clowder but keep getting random groups that aren’t what I want, and anyway, almost none of my friends are online, probably because Marvin, Hermione, and Firestar are all on their way to Cambridge.
Ico’s on, though. I send him a private message to ask him if he has any thoughts about what a massive integer factorization algorithm might be.
“Well, it could be a reference to the holy grail of computer hacking,” he says. “An awful lot of online encryption—not all of it, but lots of it—is done with very large numbers that are the product of two primes, and if you could efficiently factor them, that would make it super easy to break into, say, almost all the banks.”
“What could you do with this? Steal money? Launch nukes?”
“Probably you couldn’t actually launch nukes. You could definitely steal a lot of money, though.”
“What if you wanted to make yourself dictator of the world?” I ask, thinking about what my mother said about my father.
“Hmm,” Ico says. “That’s a harder question. I mean, you could steal a bunch of government secrets along with the money. If you were smart, you could certainly get yourself a whole lot of power. For a while, anyway. There are types of security everyone could switch to once they knew someone had figured out the prime factorization thing.”
In my gut, I think this is what my father is after. It makes more sense than him still being after my mother, all these years later.
I consider uploading my mother’s file for Ico to look at, but then he adds, “Now, if what you wanted was to bring down civilization as we know it like a house of cards in a magnitude 5.8 earthquake—that you could probably do.” I decide I don’t want to just hand it off to Ico. I mean, I like Ico, but that doesn’t mean I entirely trust his impulse control.
“Wow,” I send, and I log out. And then log off. And then turn off my mother’s laptop. My father definitely doesn’t know where I went for my eighth birthday. If he catches up with us, I at least want him to have to work to get in to that file.
New York goes on and on and on. I’d always pictured New York as a city, but the state is full of woods and farms, and weirdly, it actually looks a lot like Wisconsin: corn and dairy farms.
“Which one of us is going to drive in the city?” I ask. There’s no going around this time; we’re heading into Cambridge.
“Me,” Rachel says. “Because if we get into an accident, we’ll be in way more trouble if you’re the one driving.”
We pull over at the WELCOME TO MASSACHUSETTS rest area tourist info thing and trade seats. More of my friends are online; I start pulling people into a large group message, since the regular Clowder still doesn’t want to work.
“How much farther is it?” Rachel asks.
“Two hours.”
“TWO HOURS. Okay. We should figure out where we’re all going to meet. And by we, I mean you should figure it out.”
I’m almost done pulling people in when it occurs to me to check my own phone for texts.
I have one. Again, it’s from a strange number.
It’s Mom. Keep moving. He’s after you. Don’t let him find you. Don’t text back, this is a borrowed phone.
I feel a flush of deep relief, despite how ominous the message is. Mom’s okay.
27
Clowder
LBB & Georgia: Okay, is this working?
Firestar: HOLY SHIT WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON WITH THE SITE TODAY
Hermione: I’m going to guess that it doesn’t work well without any of the admins around?
LBB & Georgia: I found a feature to let me set up a multiuser chat, so whew. I can only add people who are currently logged on right now though.
{Marvin has been added to the chat}
Marvin: GROWN-UPS ARE NAFF
Firestar: You got grown-ups? I got an RPG group and it was awesome.
Hermione: You’re leaving us for gaming?
Firestar: NEVER.
I want to be consensually polyamorous with you and gaming.
LBB & Georgia: We are in Massachusetts. Cambridge is about two hours away. I think we should meet at Cherry Pi, which is a place that sells coffee and pie.
Firestar: Pie is always good.
Marvin: I am already in Boston.
I am actually sitting next to Firestar.
HI FIRESTAR
Firestar: HI MARVIN
Marvin: And technically Firestar has just informed me that we are not in Boston but in Cambridge. So we can definitely meet you at the Cherry Pi in two hours. Right now we’re hanging out at Harvard pretending to be the sort of people who hang out at Harvard.
Hermione: Technically, you are the sort of people who hang out at Harvard! Since that’s literally where you’re hanging out!
Marvin: Where are you right now, Hermione?
Hermione: I am on a bus.
I’ll be in Cambridge in an hour.
{Greenberry has been added to the chat}
Greenberry: Oh hi everyone!
LBB & Georgia: We’re figuring out where to meet in Boston. You don’t have to
