She was visiting her friend a few days after the funeral.
It was more like a summons than an invitation. They had been close friends since there school days. Although they were now both in their mid- twenties and both single, while the visitor had no siblings, her friend had recently lost her brother in a fatal car accident. She and her brother had been extremely close and in the main, quite comfortable with sharing confidences. There had only ever been one exception to this. It concerned his most recent home project. Although he had worked in a scientific institution for a number of years, he was continually working on various projects of his own, in the back room of their house. This much, her visitor already knew.
When her friend first arrived, they sat in the lounge with cups of coffee, generally catching up. The bereaved sister knew three things about her friend. The first was that she had regularly been top of their class in mathematics, she had been a covert hacker for a number of years and she often described herself as an accomplished code cracker.
The conversation eventually turned to the project. “I wanted to tell you more about what he was doing,” she began. “Well, you remember what my brother was like, when it came to building things; you know, all sorts of contraptions.”
“Of course.”
“It’s about his latest project. There’s this thing in the back room, some sort of cabinet. It looks like one of those cubicles that you go into and have your photograph taken. I know he was unusually protective of the thing, when he was building it. All in all, he must have spent the best part of three years working on it.”
She paused, thinking about it with a loving grin.
“Anyway, the only time he talked about it, in any detail, was the day before the accident. He said it was some kind of time machine. He said he had successfully used it several times. He swore blind that it worked, and I have no reason to think he was lying.”
She shook her head.
“He told me he wanted to reveal it to the world and was thinking about how he would go about it. He said if it was managed properly, as partners, we would become extremely wealthy and it would remain that way for the rest of our lives.”
She paused. “All of this, the day before he died; the day before the car crash.” At this point, the tears came. She sat sobbing, using several tissues, while her friend sat patiently giving her time and taking in all that she had been told.
When she had recovered, her friend said, “You’re telling me you have a time machine in the back room, that works!”
Still snivelling, the other nodded. “That’s why I contacted you… of course. Apparently, he had worked out a very strong password for it.”
“A password. OK.”
At this, she flapped her hands. “That’s the thing, you see. That’s the problem. The only thing besides the cubicle is a side table that he must have used as a work bench. There’s a small, metal box with a keypad. When you switch it on, a long display panel lights up with a row of seventeen squares. Besides this, there are bits of wire, some electrical equipment and a few tools, and there’s a book.”
Her friend’s eyes lit up.
She went on. “Before you get too excited, I can tell you that I’ve read it cover-to-cover several times and there’s no sign of a password or code. I mean, if you can figure it out, I would be happy for you to replace him… as a partner, of course.”
Her visitor stood up, and with a hint of suppressed excitement in her voice, said, “Okey dokey, let’s take a look.”
In the back room, after spending a few minutes looking at everything and powering up the unit to confirm the panel’s configuration of squares, her visitor picked up the book and began reading.
The other said, “There is a page in there with the heading ‘Password’, but it didn’t help.”
After more reading, the friend said, “I see where he was going. He says here the code should contain upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols and at least three special characters, in all, at least twelve characters. He obviously used seventeen.”
The other groaned, saying, “You see what I mean. It seems hopeless.”
“Yes, but underneath his notes, here at the bottom,” she held up the page, “he’s pencilled the number seventeen, in brackets.”
The other shrugged.
“Don’t you see? That’s the number of fields the display panel is showing.”
It was then that she realised how much her friend was deluding herself. Giving her a brief smile, she said, “OK. If you think it will help.”
“Well, it’s a start. Can I take the book with me, if I promise to keep it safe?”
“Sure.”
A few minutes later, at the front door, her friend said in a low voice, “I’ll give it my best shot,” then waved goodbye as she walked away.
Waving back, she watched her go.
Good luck with that, she thought.