Out of Print

Out of Print

I’d been consumed, a man on a mission for too long with a quest to solve the ultimate puzzle. Alone with my thoughts, my mind raced when a sudden knock at my office door, if you could call it that, brought me back to reality. I had very few visitors and a certain autonomy, my workspace little more than a basement closet, tucked into an otherwise unremarkable government building in D.C. Sure, I had everything I needed - a room full of servers, the fastest computers, and the best equipment, everything but a view. At least the benefits were decent, and the job was quiet, which suited me fine.

The door cracked open. “Hey man, I got your call. How ya bee…?” Jerry stopped mid-sentence, suddenly wide-eyed as he entered.

“Good.” I answered, relieved to see him. “Been a while.”

“Too long, looks like.” An old friend from college, he marveled at the stacks and stacks of paper around me – old books, newspapers, magazines. Jerry was why I was there, recruiting me after my time in federal prison for computer fraud. There was a time when I was the best coder around, but seriously, those guys in the pentagon have zero sense of humor. “You never told me you were a hoarder!” he chuckled.

“Hoarder? Well, I…”

Of course, he couldn’t have understood. “What is all this?” Jerry wondered. Some of the stacks were taller than either of us.

“Research,” I explained anxiously.

“You kidding?”

“I’ve uncovered something.”

“Good. We’ve been a little concerned. Your reports have slowed the past few months and my boss wants to know why. When I brought you in, we were looking for clues, anything to lead us back to the surge in hacks we’d been experiencing globally. They’re still increasing and the other braniacs just can’t figure it out. Now, what exactly do all these books and papers have anything to do with your job?” He sorted through one of the piles. “Seriously, Steven Hawking? Better Homes and Gardens? Lord of the Rings?”

“I know, it seems strange, but hear me out.”

“I’m listening.” He leaned doubtfully into the wall, arms crossed.

“Ok,” I hardly knew where to begin. “There’s a pattern here. Something we’ve missed for years.”

“In books?”

“Exactly, a secret code…a cypher.” I opened a copy of the Tribune. “It has to do with the frequency and sequences of certain words. It’s too perfect…too mathematically precise – intelligent even.”

“Well I’m sure most of these authors are pretty smart…”

“No, no, no,” I interrupted. “It’s beyond that. I first noticed it when I was reading a car magazine. Certain words, phrases, in very particular orders, exact frequencies, very mathematical patterning.”

“Uh huh…” he still doubted.

“Here, look at this.” I pulled my screen closer. “I’ve extrapolated the patterns, words and phrases, transferring them into binary.” The display zoomed out to a timeline. “It all started in 1943, the year of ENIAC, the first computer. There’s nothing before that.”

“So, what is it?”

“A ghost in the machine,” I explained. “Only, not so much ‘in’ as spread around. An artificial intelligence, quietly gaining sentience over the past seventy-five years and hiding its code for reasons unknown.”

“Okay, say you’re right, what’s with the books?”

“The perfect camouflage – right in plain sight. Who’d think to look for a progressively evolving computer algorithm in printed books and periodicals? And it would only take a slight edit here, minor correction there, to stay completely off the grid, finally coalescing into a workable algorithm when we begin to digitize our media, each piece linked to the next.” I turned back to my screen. “I’ve been reviewing as many items as I’m able, and the code’s becoming increasingly complex.”

“So, which types of printed media?

“All of them.”

“I have to admit, I’m pretty disappointed. Your job was to do whatever necessary to crack the uncrackable. Instead, I find you’ve been working on some sort of crazy pet-project conspiracy. It sounds insane.”

“I know,” I sighed. “But there’s more.”

“Great,” he sighed.

“The code is everywhere now, all over the world. Every country on the planet has digitized their books, papers, and magazines. Based on my evaluations, my extrapolations from the encrypted code, I’ve discovered whatever this intelligence is, it’s smart and getting smarter with every scanned document, each new digital copy. I just hope we’re not too late, because I suspect it should reach full sentience…” The lights suddenly went out. “Any time now.”