Jim Baen's Universe

Introducing: Stories by new authors

Spamdemonium

Written by John Parke Davis

Illustrated by Kip Ayers

MYSTRIE OF TEH UNIVERSE, YOURS FREE!!!!!

"Oh, you are so deleted," Pete said to no one. Something stopped his finger just over the key, though. The email sat there as he stared at it, patiently highlighted on the screen like a herald in some ancient court, bowing and waiting for the wave of the king's hand to deliver its message. It intrigued him, somehow. Most of his spam had to do with the size, quality, or usage of his manhood, but this one, this one went for the mind. It couldn't have a very broad customer base.

He chuckled to himself and looked up. Dust had gathered on the books lining the shelves of his little study, and outside, a tangle of weeds threatened the zinnias and those little white northern flowers he had planted for Peg. Normally, he kept it all so immaculate, but the whole divorce thing just left him a little drained. He would get back on his feet in a second, he told himself, quit wasting time scavenging the ends of the internet, even unto the spam folder, for procrastinatory material, and march off to do battle with the world. He would dust those books, pull those weeds, go to parties with mutual friends and smile fake smiles to acquaintances. Pete Hassell, talk of the town, fifty-five and still alive, back on his feet like he didn't even feel the blow.

But not just right now. Right now he didn't quite have the will to face the world yet. Right now, he could use a laugh. And besides, he'd hate to think that the real mysteries of the universe might be in the possession of spammers and he'd never know about it.

He hit enter and lines of oversize text filed onto the screen in orderly procession.

DO YCU SEE PATTERNS WHERE NO ONE ELSE dOES?

I see letters where none should be, he thought, smiling. But patterns, patterns was a good start. "What else you got?" he asked the screen.

CAN U LOOK PAST THe SURFACE AND SEE THE WAY THNGS REAHLY ARE?

Now they were talking, questioning the ego, daring the reader to step up. Clever, clever spammers, playing to the base human emotions: ego and penis size. Then again, maybe those were the same.

WLD U LIKE TO KNOW TAE SECRET TO EvERYTHING?

Well, what kind of a question was that? Pete glanced around the room. A bobblehead of Jesus jiggled erratically on the bookshelf by the door, but everything else was perfectly still. The whole house had been soundless since Peg had come and taken the dog. His second ex-wife, now, frantically working on ridding him of all his possessions. If there were a time to learn the secret to everything, it might as well be now.

SHOW US YOU'RE READY! THEiRS A PATTERN HEOR, RIGHT IN THSIS EMAIL!!! FIND IT, AND SHOW THAT THE SECRETS OF THE WORlD SHOULD BE YOURS!

Pete squinted at the screen. Was this for real? These spammers were smart; they knew how to set a hook, he had to give them that. But where was the product? Hidden? Who ever heard of such a thing? Really, how many people would sit here eagerly trying to decode their spam?

But then, maybe that was the looking past the surface part. Maybe this was a mystery to explore, and that was something he had never been able to pass up. Explored mysteries filled the shelves of his study: Jung, Plato, Diderot; history, psychology, linguistics. Most of them had been opened, and a very goodly percentage had been read. A flutter of fancy passed over him for just a second, a little butterfly hope lain dormant from childhood, escaping in the thought that maybe, just maybe, it was all real and there were cyclopean secrets on the other end of that email, just waiting to be explored. He quickly shook off the feeling, but it left him smiling.

A high-pitched ring snapped Pete rather uncomfortably from his reverie. He kicked at the rug, scuffling the little wheels of his desk chair back and forth until the carpet finally released its grip and sent him sailing over the hardwood to the telephone.

"Peter, it's Peg." He hadn't even said "hello." "Look, there's some things I need to come over and get. The microwave, that print in the front hall you like so much, some of the back deck chairs. I was going to stop by around two?"

Pete glanced toward the front hallway. He could just see the Waterhouse print around the corner of the door. A lone knight stretched his arms to either side, as a maiden leaned off her horse to kiss him. La Belle Dame sans Merci.

Vulture, he thought.

"Pete?"

He glanced back at the computer. The email filled up the whole screen, the herald waiting patiently again for his lord's answer.

"You know, I'm actually really busy today, Peg," Pete said, smiling. "Maybe next week?"

****

"It said chaos?" Angie asked.

"Yes, chaos," Pete told her. "That's it."

"Weird." She clenched her lips together like she always did when she was thinking. Worry and time had worn little lines at the edges of her forehead, and her curly blond hair frizzed out from her ponytail. Green sweats a size too large hung off her skinny frame; she had inherited that from Pete. Her mother, Pete's first wife, was the size of a house.

Pete shook his head. "Went over and over the damn thing, took me forever to find that. It was a great puzzle, though. Maybe they'll send more."

"You're waiting for more spam." She let out a little sigh. "I'm starting to get worried that you're spending too much time at home, Dad."

"I'm not at home right now," Pete said, leaning back. Grease and bacon sizzled in the close air of the little diner. "And we come out here all the time." He knitted his fingers together casually, resting his case.

"We come here once a week," she said. "And it's a mile from your house. It doesn't count."

"Sure it does. Out is out."

"No, it isn't." She crinkled her nose to force her glasses back up. "Look, I'm just worried that you aren't getting enough socialization since Peg left, that's all."

"Your stepmother and I still have a very healthy relationship," he told her. "She calls about once a week, more if she needs to come get something from the house. In this state, you have to be really careful about how often you see each other, because you have to be separated for at least a year before you can finalize the divorce. If you have sex even once, it's a done deal." Angie squirmed a little. "In fact, when your mother and I—"

"All right, enough!" she shouted. A little man with an off-kilter toupee turned to look at them from the next booth. Pete gave him a little nod, then turned back to Angie.

"Keep your voice down a little, sweetheart," he said.

She sighed again. "Sorry." With one hand, she massaged her temples lightly. "I'm just a little concerned about you, that's all I'm trying to say. I know this isn't where you wanted to be at this time in your life, and maybe it would help if you were around people more. Rick and I would love to have you come over more often . . ."

"Well, maybe I will," Pete said. "But you know, I'm actually getting a lot of use out of that computer you got me. I've got one board for philosophy, and another board I'm pretty active on for gardening and landscaping. Bunch of old women, mostly, but they have some good tips. I'm trying to figure out the chat thing, too, almost got the hang of it. There are some nice people online, you know. I'm keeping myself pretty busy."

A stringy-haired teen who Pete hoped hadn't been involved in the food preparation slid a burger in front of each of them. Angie grabbed hers and took a huge bite. "Welph, awright," she said around each chew. "So long as you're getting some human contact. But you really should try and get out more."

"I'm out now," Pete said matter-of-factly, salting his burger. She rolled her eyes and changed the subject.

****

By the time Pete got home, an email titled MYSTERS OF THE UNiTVERSE WITHIn!!!!! waited for him in his junk-mail folder. He patiently read the rest of his email first, trying to look nonchalant to himself, then eagerly clicked on it. A new message popped onto the screen.

YOU SOLVED OUR LASt MYSTRE DID'T YOU PETE?

Pete jumped back and looked around him. He checked underneath his desk, then looked over out the window. No one there. But how would there be?

"It's just a gimmick," he muttered to himself. "Got your name off the gardening board." Still, it was a little unsettling.

YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE, DON'T YOU PETE?

Pete rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I want to know more," he whispered. "You got me, you bastards. I'm hooked."

ThEN USe WHAT YOU LEARNEd. SOLVE TH4 MYSTeRY IN tHIS EMaIL PETE, AND MOVE ON!

There followed a seemingly endless series of letters and numbers, and occasionally symbols.

"Oh, what the hell?" Pete said. "What exactly did I learn, jackasses?" Still, after staring at the screen for a few minutes, Pete copied the pattern down onto a yellow legal pad, checking and double checking to be sure he had the order just right before he scrolled to the next line. It took nearly three sheets of paper to transcribe the whole thing. When he was done, he moved to the couch in the living room to decipher the puzzle.

He worked for hours, arranging and rearranging the letters, combining the numbers, puzzling at the symbols, all the while muttering "chaos, chaos." Sometimes a line would come up that started to make sense, but just as soon as it threatened to resolve itself, it would lapse back to randomness. S went to A went to E, then suddenly went to % or q or 14. The whole thing was chaos. It was randomness.

After nearly half a day banging his head against the impenetrable code with no progress, he was nearly ready to be done with the whole thing, call it a practical joke or something, and leave it alone. He sat back down at the computer and looked at the last line one more time.

yDar6SDHoJG6thYj6GJoPUYuKL/mbcSft6ANGeCXSWe6oldvmMhyt6SQIDFeRGK?

Pete glanced down at the keyboard, then back up at the screen. He squinted, as if squinting would reveal another layer of meaning just beyond the glowing alphanumeric code before him. Something, something about that pattern. He squinted at the keyboard. Something familiar waited there, grabbing and slapping at his mind with sharp tentacles of vague recognition. Screen, keyboard. Screen . . . keyboard. Screen. Keyboard. Slowly, he put the two together. To his surprise, it worked! Rushing now, he compared the rest of the email with his new decoder. It all worked! Every letter, every number, every symbol was within five keys of the previous one on the keyboard!

"All right, you son-of-a-bitch," he grumbled, reaching back for his pen and paper. This time, he made a graph of the range of possibilities for each entry in the sequence, then where in the range the outcome had turned up. A central line marked the main sequence, with a fan emerging from each point in the line to mark the possibilities for the next point. Each successive letter created a new possibility fan, fluxing and varying in size depending on the proximity of the individual key to the side of the keyboard and therefore its range of options for the next key. The letter G, then, had a broad fan, whereas A had a very limited one. It was fascinating academically, Pete thought, but after graphing three full lines of code, not even the hint of a pattern had emerged. Each successive key seemed to have been chosen at random from within the possibility fan of the previous one.

"Chaos," he said. "Pure chaos." That triggered a new thought. Chaos. Maybe there was a pattern after all. He jumped up out his chair, popping it off the rug and sending it sailing into the planter by the window. Frantically, he clawed at the volumes on his shelves until he found the one he was looking for, pristine and poised on the second to bottom shelf between a brand new copy of Aristotle and a dog-eared volume of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy: Bencort Manodell's Bewitching Patterns: Chaos Theory from the Ancients to Us. Pete couldn't even remember where he'd heard of this book; ten years ago, he had seen a copy at a garage sale and picked it up. Turned out that the thing was rare, having had a limited run after the author was tragically killed in a boating accident in the South Pacific. This copy looked like it had never been read before. He carefully opened the book and read the first line: "Not everything chaotic resists order; no, often much in chaos orders naturally." Perfect!

Pete skimmed through summaries of how chaos theory had been used by ancient Druids and Arab philosophers to predict cataclysmic events, landing at last on a basic how-to guide to graphing just the type of problem he currently faced. Instead of drawing a line based on what had happened, the book focused on predictive sequences, essentially making him graph out the probability fans from his previous effort. The grid grew denser and denser, creating a near impenetrable tangle of lines, progressing onward toward infinity. But within the fans, within the ever growing forest of possibility, distinct bands emerged in the graph. Distinct patterns that arose out of pure chaos.

Pete sat bolt upright. It was a giant "D."

"Weird," he said to no one. Outside, darkness had long since fallen, and midnight had come and gone. Pete pushed the graph further, and more letters emerged. An "E," then a "C," and so on. Then an @ sign! Then more letters! Pete copied them down eagerly. Soon he had a complete email address: decode@didgroup.net

Pete grinned widely. He had done it. "Unbelievable," he told himself as he typed the email address in swiftly, wrote a quick "Dear sirs, I have solved your code. Please send me whatever mystery or mysteries of the universe I may be entitled to," and leaned back in his swivel chair, triumphant. Whoever had sent these messages knew more than the average spammer, he thought. This time tomorrow, he might well be pondering the real mysteries of the universe after all.

The computer chirped out its "you got mail" message, and Pete jumped