Mussorgsky, Ukkonen, Genevieve

I’m kicking back on a voluminous armchair, listening to the Mussorgsky tinkling in the air, my shades sitting square on my face. There are worse places to be cooped up than the Hyatt Regency Cambridge reception, but I don’t have much of a choice at the moment. Every second I spend outdoors is a second that I risk blowing my cover—there are eyes everywhere. Luckily, this hotel has got everything that I need in it.

I spy a spry looking young man heading out the lobby. He wears his polo shirt tucked in, the telltale creases along his upper arm betraying his status as a desk-jockey. There’s a hint of an Arduino chip sticking out under his watch. MIT or Harvard is a fun game to play sometimes, but this kid makes it too easy.

“Hey kid,” I call out, dropping my voice an octave.

He spins around, a little startled, and looks at me. Score one for me; nobody Crimson would ever respond to ‘kid.’

“Yeah you, could ya do me a favour?” I ask.

My legs are stretched out over a cushion on the side, and I can only imagine what kind of a douche I must look like. When he hesitates, I tilt my head to the side and flash him a smile that’s all teeth. He comes closer, and I drop my voice low, leaning forwards for a second.

“Got a new hack in the works, I need you to put up this poster for me on one of the bulletin boards outside Professor Najbreit’s office,” I say, unrolling an A4 that I’ve been keeping next to me. It was printed right here in the Hyatt, and it’s going to be my ticket to Erin.

The guy takes the poster out of my hands and looks it over.

“The challenge problem… eight numbers corresponding to each cardinal direction indicating a direction you can move… path through New York City at this pastebin link… find the shortest set of moves appearing exactly once in the path… the answer is a phone number to text…”

The guy mumbles to himself quietly, looking over the paper. He seems lost in thought, staring off into the distance, forehead all scrunched up.

“You’re not meant to solve it,” I prod, “you’re meant to post it upp.”

“Well it’s really not that hard is it?” the guy says, frowning. “You can run Ukkonen’s to build a Suffix Tree, and then it’s just shortest substring from there, and they’re both O(n)…”

I balk. This was supposed to be a challenge problem for only my sister to solve! But if some random kid off the street can get it, she might not even find it interesting enough to solve, at which point, I’ll need to find some other way of getting in contact with her.

“Hey, it’s a cool first problem, looking forward to solving the rest of it,” the guy says, starting to head off. He pauses before he does. “Actually, one thing before I go. How’d you know I go to MIT?”

“Because you figured out the problem on the paper and not the one you just asked me,” I reply.

The clock ticks past midnight, and the date on the blinking red display now reads March 3rd. Consumed plates of room service food lay discarded on the tray at the side, a hamburger crumb or two scattered over my sheets. It’s satisfying fare, though I fear that I might have to eat it for longer than I would prefer. My phone’s been buzzing all day, receiving texts from all the oh-so-brilliant kids at MIT who’ve cracked my puzzle.

I asked them to text their names with their solution, but how was I supposed to know that half of them would use codenames? At this rate, I won’t even know if Erin herself did text me. I yawn, trying to blink away the bags under my eyes. I’ve been up for near 48 hours now, and I tell myself it’s time to sleep. I made it out of New York, and I still haven’t been apprehended yet, and that’s good enough, because it’s late, and I’m exhausted.

She’s not going to text now, she probably didn’t even notice the problem posted outside her office, I need to fucking read more math papers and create a harder problem that only she—

My phone buzzes again. I pick it up, fast, and check the notification.

Well hello again, the text reads.

I try to stay calm. Could be a troll, could be anyone.

I know who you are, the next text comes in.

That… doesn’t bode well.

Genevieve will be in the lobby tomorrow at 9.

Is this my sister texting me? Who is Genevieve? And in the lobby… does that mean they know I’m in a hotel? And how do they know which hotel? Has Father caught me?

You can trust her.

I stare at my phone, waiting for the next text to arrive, but nothing does. That’s it? What am I supposed to… my mind flashes back to the last set of suspicious messages I received—Mr. Samuel’s score went up a bit as we were exchanging those emails, so maybe…

I pull up the Affection Multiplier, and lo and behold:

Erin Najbreit, Score: 0 (+15) (as Markus), 0 (as Claude)

It’s about then that I pass out on top of my bed and start snoring.