It was yet another morning in his new world for Shekhar. About a month ago he had landed in this country for his PhD. And though his resume suggests that he intended to do a high quality research, his friends in IIT Kharagpur knew that the sole reason for him doing PhD was that he could go to USA. What started as a possiblity in 2003, became an obsession by 2006, especially after he failed to get a Foreign Training during the summer of 2006. Perhaps only GOD knew how he would have reacted had he not got through. But that is no one's worry now as Shekhar somehow made it to the US and is very content, to say the least.
He had just finished the first class of the day in Vivian Hall of Engineering, the 7-storeyed building which hosts his department. The Downtown LA looks very beautiful from the top of VHE with the extension of Hollywood Hills forming the backdrop behind the high-rises and the not-so-high rises. After the class he used to sit in his desk in Seaver Science Centre-300. The SSC -300 was an extension of his reearch group. In general, SSC hosts many laboratories and offices. As he settled down in his chair, he saw a note stuck on the board. The content of the note clearly meant it was for him. It read:
for shekhar
Y r s n o e e a u t e s a o a s
"Ok", Shekhar said to himself, "what the hell is this !!"
No one was around to answer. His office-mates had not arrived yet. But even if they did, it was no point asking or doubting them as he was still a newbie in the office and the occasional 'Hi's were all they exchanged. Shekhar himself was a big time introvert which kept on postponing any meaningful communication what-so-ever. He did have some meaningless communications with the girl whose desk was beside his, owing to her talkative nature. But still it was too early for her to play such prank on him. He did doubt her for few moments given that she was a Computer Science Major, specializing in Process Optimization , but that was it. She couldn't have done that. This note was left for him by someone who knew him very well.
Though Shekhar did not pay much attention to studies when he was in IIT, he liked things that were out of norm. And this little note really excited him. He set down to decode it.
for shekhar
Y r s n o e e a u t e s a o a s
the first line clearly was an address to him. All he had to do was to decode the next line. He was not into books much, the total number of books he had read being in single digits. But he had read Dan Brown, all of them, and loved them. And by the nature of the code, he knew that the person behind the code was also a Dan Brown fan. Shekhar never knew that he had to actually apply Dan Brown some day. But nevertheless, he started. He counted the no. of letters in the code which turned out to be 16.
"That's it. You are not so smart, Mr. Code."
Few of the earliest methods of encryption were invented by Julius Caesar. There was Caesar Cipher, which decoded the message by a lateral shift in the alphabets. But Shekhar knew this code is a problem of Caesar Square, now known as The Transposition Cipher. Since 16 is a perfect square, it can be written in a 4X4 matrix. The Code is written across in a square matrix and is then read downwards. When the code was written in a matrix form, it appeared like:
Y r s n
o e e a
u t e s
a o a s
And reading it downwards, Shekhar got
Y o u a r e t o s e e a n a s s
Which, after adding the spaces, became :
You are to see an ass
"What the ****. What the hell does that mean?", Shekhar was not at all pleased. Apparently Mr. Code was not that stupid either. Succumbing to instincts, Shekhar actually looked down the window to see.... well ... if there actually an ass was around. But it was not to be.
"Ok, Mr. Code. You want to play it. Let's play." Shekhar loved such challenges. Not that he was very good at overcoming them, but he loved to try and give it his best shot.
You are to see an ass
"I will see an ass. There can't be an actual ass inside the campus or, for that matter, outside the campus unless someone had a pet ass." If not actual ass, then comes the more widely used meaning of ass. Shekhar now found a different kind of humor in the latter part of his previous statement. "But there are so many of them. What's so special", he thought, coming back to the problem in hand.
It HAS to be something different.
He thought his brains out but no use. He couldn't get anything out of the sentence. "Did I decipher it right?", he doubted his method. "No, it can't be a mere co-incidence that the code contained 16 characters. The words were chosen to make it a perfect square. The method is correct.", he reassured himself.
You are to see an ass
He had by now repeated this phrase umpteenth times in his mind. Still no result. He decided to give himself himself a break. And during the 'break', while his subconscious was still trying to figure out the code, his conscious surfed the net. He opened his favorite sites and after going through his mails, orkut and facebook accounts , he moved on to indiatimes.com for the latest news. India had defeated Pakistan 3-0 in the Twenty20 World Cup Tournament. Now the margin of victory sounded more like a soccer or hockey result, except that it was a cricket match result. The match had ended in a tie and the winner was decided with a bowl-out. As amusing as this may sound, some signals were exchanged between his conscious and subconscious and BANG !!! It wasn't the tournament, but its name and the way it was written that gave him the clue. The code was broken.
...... to be continued
