dud | Deciphering

Adam's feet are starting to really stumble by the time he nears the coordinates. He slows down to keep from falling, and the sun starts to fade as he peers anxiously into the distance. There might be a house in the distance. It's difficult to tell, because if it is a house, then it's painted brown like the trees. People shouldn't paint their houses the same color as the things around the house, because then it's hard to see them. Adam pulls out the paper that he's kept tucked against his chest and clutches it tightly. He doesn't need to look at it again, he remembers. He just wants to have it in his hand. It calms him.

The house is a house. It's just brown. Adam lets out a little breath and checks his compass. These are the coordinates. The next part of the code is probably inside somewhere the house. He walks forward and opens the front door, stepping inside. Then he freezes. There's a lamp nearby and it's on. He can hear someone in a nearby room, moving around. The fact that someone else might already be in the house had never occurred to him.

He turns around, looking back at the stretch of wilderness he's just crossed to get to this house. It's going to be a long way back. But he can try again tomorrow. Maybe there won't be anyone in the house tomorrow. He heads back out the front door, his shoes shuffling against the ground.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The hidden motion sensor camera in his front room alerts him that his visitor has arrived. He'd already known he was coming from the motion sensors in the forest, but now he has a visual.

Of his new friend turning around and walking back out the front door. That's no good.

He goes to the doorway looking out into the front room and, in as soothingly non-threateningly as possible, he says, "Hey, Atiras. You found me."

Adam turns around, his eyes wide. His eyes sweep up the frame of the other man and come to rest almost immediately on the fold out table across the room. "People only call me Atiras online. I'm looking for the next part of the code."

"Well, I made the codes, so... It's a long walk here. Do you want some water or something?" Brian gestures toward the other doorway in the front room and crosses over--along the wall to give Adam space--toward the fridge.

"You made the codes?" Adam's eyes flicker up to the other man's face for a moment, but they don't quite reach his eyes. "You--you're Brian?" He frowns, clutching the paper harder. "Why are you here?"

Brian grins. "I live here." He pulls two water bottles out of the fridge and rounds the corner back into the front room. He holds one out to him. "Hydration is important."

Adam looks at the water bottle for a few seconds, then takes it. "I didn't know you lived here. I thought there was another code here." He looks at the door, then back at Brian. He tries to think of everything on his list: if a person has a heavy box, offer to help them; if someone is crying, ask them what's wrong; if someone smiles at you, smile back at them. There's nothing on the list about finding someone living in a place where you thought a code would be.

Then it occurs to him that Brian gave him something. He looks down at the bottle. "Thank you for the water." He opens it slowly, tasting it first before swallowing some of it. It doesn't taste like the water at home, but that kind of thing is less likely to make him anxious than it used to. There are lots of different kinds of water in California.

"There aren't very many people who understand my messages. Most people don't even look, so. I wanted to meet you." Brian cracks open his own water bottle and takes a sip. "It's selfish of me. I should've asked first."

"I look. I look at all of them. I even watched the videos that you put up last year on Christmas and then took down. I only saw those three times each, though. Every other video I've seen either fourteen times. Except the one you posted on my birthday. I've seen the one you posted on my birthday seventy-five times." Adam has already forgotten about the water he's holding. "I've solved every code except for one. But I think that one was wrong because I solved the next code without it and you said that was impossible."

"That's a lot of focus." Brian tilts his head a little, watching Adam. He can tell he's a little... different, in some way. But it's not a surprise, given the amount of time and energy it would take to find Brian's codes, let alone solve them. "Do you mind if I ask how you came across my videos in the first place? I don't exactly advertise them."

Adam nods, continuing with no hesitation. "The first time I saw one of your videos was in a forum for cryptographic engineers. I was teaching myself about cryptography so I could build a PUF. That's a physically unclonable function, a form of security on electronic devices that's almost impossible to duplicate. I'm building an optical PUF that uses explicitly-introduced randomness and has minimal environmental variations. An optical PUF is a very interesting kind of function, you use transparent material that contains light scattering particles and shine a laser through it--it has to be a green laser, not a red one, because only green light is high enough on the spectrum to cause the particles to scatter--and the pattern that's created is always unique. It's a practically unclonable function unless you were to place each particle in the exact same spot and shine the laser from the exact same angle. But even then the particles might not scatter the same way, so it would take a very long time to replicate the original, if it was even possible at all."

Adam stops to take a breath and then keeps going. "Also in an optical PUF you can use a coating that contains dielectric particles, and those particles will absorb some of the electrical field and transmit it to wires that will move and break the unique signature if an attacker ever tries to remove the coating, so--" He stops very suddenly, an item on his list coming back to him. "Oh. Have you heard enough about optical PUFs?"

Deciphering

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