I checked the stats this afternoon, and I'm overwhelmed at how many people are reading this story! Thank you! Some very nice comments, and more of them than I can respond to here without taking up entirely too much space. Thank you for writing, and for writing so thoughtfully. I'm glad to hear that so many of you feel that Charlie and Don are in character.

Alice, you brought up a question -- why did Charlie write in such a difficult code? Well, it's been my experience that when super-talented people get stressed, they revert to that which is most comfortable. Add that he felt he was under a severe time constraint, and he simply jotted whatever he could as quickly as he could. I'm sure he didn't think he was creating an unbreakable code -- in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a moment of fear that it was too simple, and the gunman would see what he was doing, LOL!

A hint on the updates. They're coming fast, about 2 to 4 parts each day, so if you want to keep up, either login and mark that you want to be notified and then you'll get the correct URL in your email as soon as I post, or simply change the last number in the URL to the next, and see if anything is there. They'll go to about 18 total.

And now we move on to Chapter 4, with just two parts . . .


The Unquantifiable Variable
By Becky Sims
April, 2005


The Eppes family and the characters and situations from the TV show "NUMB3RS" are the property of the Scotts and the creation of Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

Chapter Four, Part One

Alan took the paper and ran his fingers lightly, lovingly, over the writing. He looked at Amita and shook his head. "I recognize some Greek letters, but then math is full of Greek letters. Charlie uses them like a second language. Actually," he smiled faintly, "like his first language."

"Maybe," said Terry slowly, "it is a language. We know it's something he wanted to say that he didn't want to be obvious, but he also knew we'd have to translate it, so it probably isn't as hard as we're making it."

"A code?" Amita asked.

"Plus or minus three," Alan read from the paper, "and five divided by two."

Amita ran her finger under the top line and tried, not for the first time, to put herself in Charlie's head. "He's mixed Greek letters and English. Beta and mu, in lower case; mu in upper case; lower case sigma and mu again. Just an upper case mu in the third element. Then lower case chi and epsilon; capital mu; back to lower case for lambda and gamma. Two Greek letters for each element except the third. English "f" in upper case in the second and last elements."

"The bottom level," mused Terry, "doesn't have any Greek for the first part, but has three letters for the second."

"Amita," said Alan slowly, "what are those three letters?"

"Rho, iota and kappa."

"R, I, K in English?"

"Mm-hmm." She ran a hand through her long curls; flipped a strand back over one shoulder. "Charlie," she whispered, "what are you telling me?"

"Five groupings on top," muttered Terry, "have three capital "m's" and two capital "f's". The bottom has two "m's"." Her eyes grew wide. "Wait. Not 'mu' and 'f'; 'M' and 'F'. Male and female."

Alan deciphered it. "Two males below the line, three above with two females."

Terry nodded. "Two hostage-takers, both male; five hostages, three male, two female."

Amita pointed at the fourth part of the top line. "And this element here is Charlie. M29 – male, 29 years old, and Chi Epsilon – Charlie Eppes." She looked at Alan. "Beta Mu and Sigma Mu."

"Benito Mendez and Solana Mendez."

"Lambda Gamma."

He shook his head, but Terry said, "Leeda Gibson, seven years old." She turned her head to her mike. "Don, we've got something. Not all of it yet, but there are two hostage-takers and five hostages."

As Terry reported what they'd figured out so far, Alan continued to ponder the letters and numbers. "R, I, K. Rick?" he wondered.

Terry shrugged her shoulders and passed the possible name on as well. Then she went back to the paper. "But what are these numbers in parentheses?"

Amita frowned in concentration. "We know now that this is an expression created to describe people, so I'd say the numbers represent something about them that's measurable on a scale of plus three to minus three. Mr. Mendez is a zero, his daughter plus three and so on."

"Charlie's a plus one," said Alan. He grimaced in frustration. "What else would he want to tell us? What would he think would be the most important thing you'd need to know after how many people are involved?"

Terry turned to him. "How well do you know Mr. Mendez?" she asked. "This says he's 55 years old. Is he in good health?"

"Had a heart attack earlier this year. This kind of stress can't be good for him. Why? What are you thinking?"

Amita saw what she was after. "We need another data point."

Terry pointed to the M29 section. "Charlie's labeled himself plus one," she said. "The policeman who saw him said he looked like he'd been knocked around a bit, but was basically all right."

Amita took a deep breath. "Then the number associated with each person could be a measure of their condition or health. Mr. Mendez is ill but holding his own, the two girls are fine, there's an unidentified man in trouble but not dead—"

"Don," Terry called into her mike, "one of the hostage-takers, possible first name Rick, is down. Not dead, at least not when Charlie wrote this, but could be out of action. The little girl is fine, and so is Solana. Mr. Mendez is having problems, we'd better have paramedics ready to deal with a heart gone critical, and there's another male hostage who's in bad shape. That could have been the second gunshot. Charlie reports on himself just about what the policeman said – he's injured, but whatever it is, it's not major."

"That boy," muttered Alan. "That boy and his math. He always said it was a language. I never would've believed . . . Amita, can I have that? I'd like to keep it."

Though he didn't say it, everyone heard the 'just in case' in his voice.

"Terry?" Amita asked.

"I need to take it to the CP, show it to the negotiator. He hasn't worked with Charlie before; he needs to know how he thinks, and this will be a great way to show him. I'll hang on to it for you, though." She smiled. "This is going to help a lot for a lot of reasons. Going up against one hostage-taker is a lot better scenario than going up against two. Thanks to Charlie and to you, the negotiator will have a better chance to get Charlie and everyone else out safely." She took two strides in the direction Don had taken, then turned back for a moment. "Stay back here, okay? You'll be safe, and I'll know where to find you if I need you again, or if I get any more information for you."

They nodded, and she was gone.

"Mr. Eppes?"

"Yeah, Amita?"

"I know you can't predict the future, but . . . ."

His face was strained, but a smile twisted his mouth anyway. "Will it be all right? Will Charlie be okay?" He shook his head. "I don't know. I just don't know."