Mission: Possible
by Gary D. Snyder
Chapter 13:
Wade's small remote, with Rufus sitting astride it, rolled like a small tank down the ramp leading to the hidden installation. When it reached the thick metal doors it stopped and extended its camera lens to study the keypad. Rufus scampered up the flexible shaft and eyed the mechanism suspiciously as Wade manipulated various image-enhancement controls.
"We're in luck, Rufus," he announced. "Thermal imaging is picking up six keys that have been recently pressed. That limits the number of combinations we need to try. The bad news is that it will still take a little while to run through them and hit the right access code." He did some quick mental calculations. "For a 6-digit code there will be 720 different possibilities and if you can enter one possibility per second that gives an average access time of six minutes. That assumes, of course, that each key was only pressed once so that there are no duplicate keypresses. If that's the case, we're stuck."
Rufus made noise of protest, wrapping his forelegs around himself and shivering.
"Sorry. I mean you're stuck. Ready to go?"
"Yeah," Rufus grunted.
Wade took a deep breath. "Okay. Here are the keys to press…"
While Rufus and Wade tackled the lock Cindy and Ron were being escorted by Beautiful to a holding cell, much like the one that had been used to hold Jimmy and Kim. Having nothing better to do Cindy offered some personal observations.
"You know," she mused, "considering all the money it must have taken to build this place it seems that Calamitous and Drakken could have just invested the money and retired in the Bahamas or something."
Beautiful let out a snort of disgust. "Don't even get me started. With my father it's always millions for world conquest, but not one penny for a raise in allowance in twelve years. Just try telling him that movies aren't two-fifty a seat anymore and that gasoline is over two dollars a gallon now."
"Must be tough," Ron offered.
"Tough is putting it mildly. You try impressing somebody by treating him to dinner at McSpanky's Burger Factory. Just see if you ever get his phone number or asked out by him again."
"That sounds kind of shallow to me," Cindy said, feeling indignant in spite of the identity of the speaker.
"Well, there's also the trying to kill them," Beautiful added slowly. "Most of the guys I meet are usually secret agents or military operatives out to stop my father. That might be a factor." She confronted Ron. "You! The buffoon! Would my trying to kill you keep you from wanting to date me?"
"I guess that would depend on a couple things," Ron answered.
"Like what?"
"Like whether you'd keep referring to me as 'the buffoon' and how successful you were at killing me."
By this time they had reached the holding cell and Beautiful dropped the force field to let Ron and Cindy in. "Good questions," Beautiful said, looking thoughtful. "I'll get back to you on that…if you're still around when I come up with the answers."
"I can hardly wait," Ron deadpanned as Beautiful re-activated the force field. He headed to the bench against the back wall and dropped into it, squirming a bit as he tried to make himself comfortable with his hands tied behind him. Cindy joined him.
"Now what?" she asked.
"Well," he replied, "I don't know if it will work here, but I have a standard tactic that usually proves very effective in these kind of situations."
Cindy looked about them. "You might as well try it. We have nothing to lose."
"Okay," Ron agreed. At the top of his voice he yelled, "Kim! Help!"
Not too surprisingly nothing happened, except that Beautiful called back, "Hey, keep it quiet in there! I'm working on those answers."
Cindy slumped further down onto the bench. "My hero," was all she said.
Back outside Rufus continued with his efforts to unlock the doors using the code combinations that Wade was systematically passing him. Despite the bitter cold Rufus worked with a will, pressing the keys as fast as the numbers came to him. Finally, on the 417th try, there came a click, a hiss, and a welcome wave of warm air as the doors slid apart. Rufus slid down the camera extension with a yodel of triumph and resumed his perch on the remote.
"Good job, Rufus," Wade complimented the naked mole rat as the remote. "Do you remember how to work the manual controls to get around?"
"Oh, yeah," the rodent chirped back. He pressed several buttons on the remote, causing it to lurch wildly and speed backwards until Wade overrode the controls and brought the remote to a screeching halt.
"Are you sure?" Wade demanded as he deftly rolled the remote back to the doors.
"Sorry," Rufus apologized. He scrutinized the controls again and pressed some other buttons, more cautiously this time. The remote rolled smoothly forward and came to a halt just outside the open doors as Rufus pressed another button.
'That's better." Wade heaved a troubled sigh. Sending Rufus inside alone was not his first choice, but Kim and Jimmy were missing in action and Ron and Cindy were definitely in need of immediate help. "Okay, buddy, this is it. Once inside you should be able to contact Kim if she has her Kim-municator with her. Good luck."
Having no better reply ready Rufus snapped Wade a salute and rolled the remote into the installation. From the remote he could hear Wade's fading voice telling him that he was losing the signal from the remote, followed by silence. Once inside Rufus studied the open doors and thought briefly about some way to close them. As he could find no obvious means of doing so he shrugged and drove off, deciding that it was not his concern. He had more important things to do.
After several minutes of driving Rufus had become quite skilled at operating the surprisingly speedy and agile device. This newly-acquired proficiency proved to be quite useful on numerous occasions, as he found himself zipping around corners and into various nooks to avoid the armed security personnel patrolling the complex. He had no idea where he was going, but reasoned that the more security he encountered the closer he was to something important. He could only hope that Ron and Cindy, or Kim and Jimmy, would be among those important things.
At that moment Kim and Jimmy had succeeded in making their way further into the installation. Ron's and Cindy's arrival had provided enough of a distraction to the installation's security for them to move through the hallways and make better time than they would have made by crawling through the ventilation ducts. From time to time a pair of startled guards would find themselves in their way, and several seconds later they would both be sleeping peacefully at Kim's feet. Jimmy still couldn't figure out how Kim was able to so effortlessly pull off maneuvers that had so baffled him during his training with Cindy. In many ways Kim reminded him of Cindy, but in other ways she was unlike any other girl he had ever met.
The thought of Cindy filled him with conflicting emotions. The idea that Calamitous and Drakken would even dare think of hurting her filled him with cold rage, but his growing preoccupation with Kim wracked him with a guilt that he could neither understand nor explain. These two emotions combined to create in turn yet a third: complete and utter confusion. If he had spoken with Kim about it she might have been able to clarify things for him, but the mere thought of discussing his feelings with her overwhelmed him with panic. In any case, this was hardly the time or place. He was so absorbed in sorting out his thoughts that he completely missed what Kim whispered to him and ran right into her.
"What?' he asked, backing up.
"I said, this looks like the place," Kim told him quietly, pointing to a door that barred their way. On the door was a white sign with black and red lettering that read: INTENSE ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS. DO NOT ENTER. Kim looked expectantly at him. "You're the resident expert. What do we do now?"
Jimmy opened his backpack, glad to have something specific to concentrate on, and removed a device that appeared to be an electric toothbrush with a miniature windvane on the top and a small digital display on the side. After passing the device in front of the door several times he shook his head. "I don't pick up anything other than ordinary 60 Hz line emissions," he announced. "I'd say the electromagnet is shut down at the moment and that it's safe for us to go in."
Kim studied the door and keypad. "Unfortunately I didn't have any tools for breaking and entering with me when I started out on this assignment. I'm not sure that I know how to get in."
"Maybe I do." Jimmy began removing the keypad next to the door and pulled a device from his backpack that looked remarkably like a calculator.
"Universal access code generator?" Kim asked as Jimmy connected a cable between his device and the partially-disassembled keypad.
"Calculator," Jimmy replied. "But it's just a useful in a pinch." He began pressing keys on the front of the device. "What I'm doing is –"
"- sending every possible combination of passcodes to the device, causing the door to unlock when the correct code is received," Kim concluded.
Jimmy shook his head. "Actually, that kind of indiscriminate hacking of a high-security area could very easily trigger an automatic lockdown. That would probably work on the front door, but I'm not chancing it here."
"So what are you doing?" Kim leaned over Jimmy's shoulder to see what he was doing.
"Accessing the local communications log to determine what's been sent out to the main system recently." A list of numbers and letters began scrolling up the calculator's display. "And based on a frequency analysis of patterns this appears to be what we want."
Kim frowned. "Those aren't numbers."
"It's the encrypted form – no respectable system would send passcodes across in clear. Cross your fingers. Either this opens the door or we're going to have a lot of bad-tempered company real soon." Holding his breath, Jimmy pressed a key on his calculator and waited. After what seemed an eternity there was a click and the door slid aside.
"Nice job," Kim commented.
"Thanks," Jimmy replied awkwardly. "But once the calculator was able to negotiate a communications protocol and evaluate the local file format and directory structure it was pretty straightforward."
Kim picked up the device and gave it an admiring look. "Some calculator. Does it do algebra?"
"Basic, linear, non-Euclidean multi-variant, and iso-topological," Jimmy answered. He retrieved the calculator and stowed it in his backpack. "If you need one for your math classes I could build you one."
"Way beyond balancing my checkbook," Kim smiled, and then grew serious. "I guess this is it, Jimmy."
"I guess so," he answered, shouldering his backpack. With Kim taking the lead they passed through the open door and entered the chamber.
End of Chapter 13
Author's Notes:
Some people will undoubtedly object to the simplistic nature of Jimmy's cracking Drakken's and Calamitous' security but I always assume that there's a lot more going on underneath the surface whenever Jimmy does something. One hint of this was when Jimmy referred to the calculator having to negotiate a communications protocol and evaluate the structure of the system he was trying to crack. Since he is a genius I have to believe that he'd be able to attend to all the intricacies of serious hacking without bogging people down with all the details.
Others might object even more strenuously to Jimmy crushing on Kim. If I had met a 15-year-old girl like Kim when I was Jimmy's age I'd have been totally crushing on her. In further defense, I would ask the readers to wait until the end of the story to see what happens before getting too indignant.