Part 3

I had already eaten the pizza when I was reading my father’s note again. Roger and others had left. Roger hurried away saying he'd be back but he needs to go to his friend who was a ‘Centaur’, but Jack assured just before leaving that he meant ‘Senator’ and that Centaurs don’t really exist.

I heard a knock and Levandar’s voice “Daniel?”

“Anderson. Daniel Anderson”

“Oh. Ok. Daniel Anderson. Can I come in?”

“You can call me Daniel. It’s fine!” I tried to recover from my mistake.

“I’m coming in.” the door shrank - the wood squeezed, its width reduced to the size of a book. She came in and the door sprung back to its original shape.

“Sorry for coming like this but it was cold outside.”

“I’m sorry Lav. Lavender. Can I call you Lav, do people call you Lav? I was going to let you in…”

“You’re sweet Daniel. You can call me Lav. I apologise for leaving earlier without saying anything.”

“Oh no. It’s fine. It’s great. But actually, I was wondering why you left. But it’s okay now that you’re here.”

“I think you may not trust me right now. Roger doesn’t like me too much either. I had to go to pick up my mother and didn’t want to ruin your moment with the dog” she explained while stepping near me.

“Discordant,” I added.

“Is that its name, isn’t it sweet?” she was standing very close to me now.

“I don’t know, I haven’t tasted him. I don’t lick pets usually. Or ever, to clarify. But you probably meant his name, yes that’s a sweet name. Yes”

“Shhh” she whispered coming very close to my face. Next moment our lips met and we kissed.

I stood there frozen for the most part, not because the kiss was cold, which was in fact, very hot, but because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands.

“I really wish you find your dad soon. Ping me when you need me, here’s my console ID.” She handed me a slip of paper which had just appeared in her hand. The door was already squeezing when she started walking back to it.

I wanted to say “will do”, “bye” or “see you later”, any of that would have been fine, but instead I stammered, “will do you later”. Fortunately, she smiled and waved me bye instead of stuffing me into the wall.

When the dust settled, and I meant literal wooden dust from the door, I got hit with a pressing question, “Did she just materialise paper from thin air?”

I messaged her on the console chat app and asked how she managed to do it without root access since it was supposed to be impossible.

Later in the night, I was thinking of the README note again. I hadn’t heard back from Roger, and I didn’t know his console ID. I hadn’t heard back from Lavender either. I re-read my father’s note.

“I love you, sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you and your mother” one line read.

I skipped to one of the later sections.

“I don’t know how much time is left. This virus will sooner or later destroy me”

I jumped to the last section.

“Take help of others. Don’t do it alone like me. Destroy this virus. I’ll share some of my tools. Be careful with them, they’re very advanced. Give my love to your mother and her dog. Also, use the dog.

ㅝკ⊗ቱഝ઒ഐŊཙᆿᗶᆰⵥჵᆰⴴ᧐㊿ყⅻഐঃᆹŊཙᆿᗶᆰⵥჵᆿ⋋㊿ᄯቿᗺᆰⴴᆿŊཙᆿᗶᆰⵥჵᆿ⋋㊿ᄯቿᗺᆰⴴᆿკ⊗ቱഝ઒ഐ ”

My attempts at decoding the message had failed. I also had no idea what he meant by "using the dog." As far as I could tell, that mutt had gone to great lengths to prove his utter uselessness at any task I could think of.

I don’t know when I slept but I was very sure of the moment when I woke up.

I woke up for two reasons. Firstly, while dreaming, I realised that the note had read ‘Give my love to your mother and her dog,’ but the dog was never hers. The only dog she had was a stuffed dog in her bedroom. Secondly, and more effectively, there was a loud roar that came from beneath the floor.

The voice grew louder and suddenly the floor gave away in front of my bed creating a large hole. From the hole, a black box began to rise, which I soon realised was an elevator.

The door opened and Roger emerged from it. He didn’t look too happy, although he was apologetic “Daniel my boy, sorry for baring in like this, but it’s an urgent matter. Lavender has taken over the weapons.”

“What? Which weapons?”

“All of them, of course.”

“All of them? What’s she doing with them.”

“Nothing good you better believe. She controls the parliament now. The president’s life is at risk. She demands full control of the projects.”

“My father talked about the projects. What are they?”

“Oh. These are the top-secret projects being developed by RARPs. They are really big and important projects.”

“What’s RARPs”

“We are RARPs Daniel. Us programmers. Well don’t ask why we are called RARPs, it’s an embarrassing history. Oh, what the hell, you’re gonna know sooner or later. We started by calling ourselves Real Programmers.

Because we truly were the real programmers you know. Programming reality. But then javascript became popular and those who knew C and C++ started calling themselves real programmers, so we had to change our names to Actually Real Programmers.

Before long, people started developing all sorts of things using AI, so the Javascript folks began smugly calling themselves real programmers too. This bummed the C/C++ folks, who then switched their name to Actually Real Programmers.

That’s how we finally ended up with Really Actually Real Programmers – RARPs to truly distinguish ourselves from mere computer programmers.

Boy, you distract me. Lavender shouldn’t be able to do this unless she hacked the console to get root, which mind you, is near impossible to do.”

“Roger, I think she has root access. Last evening she conjured a piece of paper from nowhere just after we kissed.”

“You did what? You kissed? Boy, you are an outlier like your dad, only while he’s smart, you’re as dumb as Clippy.”

“What’s wrong with a kiss?”

“She kissed away your root privileges Danny boy. Kissing is an intimate act. During the kiss, she had access to all your secrets. She probably modified all the access files.”

I felt cheated and distraught. I got up only to sit back down with a thud.

“Don’t feel bad for yourself now. You’re only learning. Now. We have much to do. I had a guy research the encryption algorithm that created the cryptic code. I’m pretty sure we’ve found the algorithm. We just need the passphrase to solve it.”

“What could it be?”

“Well, you should be telling me this. Think boy, didn’t your father ever tell you some secret phrase?”

“No, but I have solved a clue in his note. We should go to my mother’s bedroom right now.”

I found the stuffed dog in my mother’s bedroom which my father hinted at in the note. Hidden inside it was a piece of paper which read:

‘astp://yasdlxkas.de/U9axz’

“It’s a link to a console website. Let’s open it”

We tapped our foreheads together. Roger opened the link to reveal a map of the world. There were multiple blue dots spread throughout it.

“Dev nulls of dev nulls, unbelievable!” exclaimed Roger “look at all these names. All of them are RARPs. Amazing!”

“I can see one Lavender! She’s in Europe.”

“Nice boy. This will be very useful. However, we’ll be powerless against her.

We still need to recover the root access. Maybe the tools your father built can help, he must’ve used them to gain the root access after all. Do you think any of this will help us crack the code? What should I try in the passphrase? I have already tried your name, your date of birth, your father’s place of birth…”

I wanted to ask how he got all that information but there was a feeling of dread inside me. I was hoping that the stuffed dog would lead me to the passphrase, but it had nothing but a link to a map. “Stupid stuffed dog,” I cursed to myself.

“Wait a minute, have you tried my dog’s name?” my eyes lit up “Use the dog! The note said to use the dog! Use Discordant”

He started typing in quick strokes. "It worked!" I felt an immense sense of joy, but it was short-lived. The message read:

“Beat you again Roger. Love - Lavender”