Cassie had always considered herself a budding detective. She certainly
researched the subject whenever she could. The problem, however, was that she
never encountered anything that would require the use of her deductive
skills. It could be because she chose engineering instead of something at
least peripherally related – say, forensics or law or at least psychology – but engineering was the
only subject she really liked.
At this rate, that chance would never
come, she told herself as she walked out of the exam hall. It was the end
semester exams. There was only one exam left, and that was two days away. The
previous exam had been okay, but it was formulaic. Some lecturers knew how to
make the most boring subject interesting, but this one apparently knew how to
make an interesting subject boring. Cassie's mind craved stimulation, and above
all, variety. The next exam was two days away, so she would have little time
for that.
As she left the building, she stopped to
discard the bottle of the juice she had been drinking. As she opened the bin,
she noticed a crumpled-up paper there, on top of the PET bottles. She was
slightly disgusted, but she decided she didn't want to touch a suspicious piece
of paper. She had almost closed the bin when her mind finished processing what
was on the piece of paper. She opened the bin again and took another look at
it.
It looked like a sheet from a set of
printed lecture slides. The subject was probably environmental studies or
something to do with biodiversity. That meant that the slides were from a
different faculty, or that it belonged to a final year student, who had to take
some subjects like that.
What interested Cassie wasn't the
printed content of the slides. The paper had been crumpled hurriedly, so it
stood partially open. The edges of the reverse side of the sheet were clearly
visible. On it was a set of neatly drawn, thin, rectangular boxes, perhaps 5 mm
wide, and about 1.5 cm tall. These boxes were all coloured with what looked
like a coloured pencil.
Cassie's curiosity got the better of her. She reached in, took the paper out, and flattened it out. there were almost three lines of these sketched near the top of the reverse side.
She stared at it a little. She could think of a few benign explanations for this. Someone could have finished the paper really early and doodled on the back of their notes - most exams were open book after all. The neatness could be accounted for by the person in question being a neat freak. Or really bored because they finished the paper two hours ahead of time and the invigilator didn’t let them leave. Still, if that was the case, would they just abandon it half-way, like this person seems to have done?
The other explanation was that this was
a code. Cassie didn't dare take it with her. Was this a plan for some major
crime? On her campus? She had to know. Perhaps, it was her calling. Her time
had finally come. If she cracked this, she could potentially save a life.
Perhaps she could uncover a plan for a theft. It could be something more
complicated - like a financial crime. She had to find out.
There was only one thing she could do.
She took a photograph of it, and then took another to be sure. She placed the
paper back in the bin carefully. She looked around. A couple of students were
looking at her. That was no surprise - it looked like she was dumpster diving
in a bin that mostly contained discarded notes and food wrappers. She didn't
recognize any of them, and they likely didn't know who she was. That was a good
thing.
She walked off rapidly. She decided to
stop at the canteen for lunch. As she entered, someone called to her. It was a
few of her classmates, and a few others from the senior batch. The seniors
seemed busy - their test was likely in the afternoon.
"How was the test?" asked
Anna, one of her classmates.
"Easy enough," said Lex, one
of the seniors, "right?"
"No, it was quite hellish,"
replied Cassie, "just let me get my lunch first."
"Let's leave now, Lex," said
Rick, another senior, "we need to study in peace. The MCQ will be fine,
but we still have to get a few points off the rest of the questions."
"I see, ‘in peace’ and the first
person plural in the same sentence," said Bella, another senior.
"Are you being sarcastic? I am not
sure I can tell the difference," said Lex, getting up, "alright,
guys, enjoy the peace while it lasts. bye!"
This was typical, thought Cassie.
Chances were, they were going to keep up the verbal sniping until the exam
actually started. She focused on getting her lunch.
After lunch, she returned to her dorm.
The next exam was relatively easy. She had studied for it in advance, so she
had some time to spare. She started on the colour code she had found.
There was no visible pattern there, as
far as she was concerned. Colours were reused, sure, but they were not reused
at a regular frequency.
She counted the number of individual
colours used in the sketch. There were 109 coloured bands overall - 14 black,
13 brown, 16 red, 14 orange, 16 blue, 20 grey, 7 yellow, and 9 green. There
were eight distinct colours used.
That was highly unusual. First of all, nobody
sold coloured pencils in boxes of eight. It was 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, or 48 as far
as she knew. The second was the number of lines - 109, a prime number. Either
each line stood for a single symbol, or the number of lines in a symbol were
variable.
Cassie thought the latter more likely,
since there were more grey lines. It could also be a space. Perhaps the symbols
were in pairs. Were they octal numbers? Did it translate to the alphabet if
taken in pairs?
There was no other way to find out - she
had to try to decode it by hand.
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