Hello again,
This chapter contains more spoilers Catching Fire and Mocking Jay. Enjoy and please review. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Draco Ranger
I do not own any of the trademarked people, ideas, or creations within this text. All the ones that are not trademarked I am not able to sell either. They are my intellectual property, although I do not make money off of them.
Capitolites and Ciphers
Uhh... I blinked slowly into the bright lights, letting my eyes adjust to what was most obviously not the meeting place. Oww... hangover, haven't had one this bad since I ate 20 of those alcoholic gelatin deserts. Then, I needed to get my stomach pumped. I wonder what they do with inject-
A man standing just outside my vision interrupted my train of thought, "You gave us quite a scare. I've never seen someone inject .05 liters of Rot-artery and survive before. We needed to add about 500 g of medical activated carbon to your bloodstream to keep it from shutting down, and then we put you on dialysis for a few cycles. So, on that note, you will be peeing black for the next few weeks and it is possible that the inside of your veins will be yellow for the foreseeable future. Other than that you should be fine, but you will have a headache and need to stay away from high pitched noises for a while." Someone who I assumed was a doctor stated with the learned bedside manner all new doctors have. However, he did save my life and answer my question, so he is not added to the must-kill list, yet.
"Thank, doc." I state, and then felt my hangover throb. Apparently, they haven't given me a painkiller or rehydrated me. On to the must-kill list he goes.
The doctor says, with a smile in his voice. "You probably don't want to talk, it will exacerbate your hangover," he states after the fact, before continuing, "You should be fine within a day and up and around in two. Until then, you must stay sedated in bed..."
Opening my mouth to object, he beats me by continuing "... normally. In your case, I will have your personal messenger brought to you. Your team will be assisting you in helping your tribunes..." Oh god, that means that E- "...except for Ms. Trinket, as she appears to interfere with ultrasound equipment, and is rather difficult to work around." Feel my pain doc. Feel 24 years of doing just that.
Apparently finishing his little speech, and anticipating that I would be unable to call him back, the doctor opened the door and walked out, leaving me alone and sober for the first time in ages. Thus, I finally had time to think. Oh, god WHY!?
To delay the virtually certain Post Traumatic Stress Disorder type flashbacks I experience, I force myself to think about random stuff, realistic plans, eventual goals, and hobbies that would hopefully get me off drink at some point. I don't really expect that to actually to happen, but even I am not entirely un-self-aware and know that drinking is either a temporary fix or a permanent end.
)()(
Despite my attempts at the contrary, as with all recent dreams, musings, and idle time, my thoughts inevitably turned to the Games and beyond. The current games are about as loaded as it can be. The Gamemaster is rebelling against the Capitol and he believes that Katniss actually matters. She is practically setting herself up to be a figurehead... Ahh, the little rebellion, a substantial portion of which is made up of Capitolites. There is nothing sadder than a self-loathing Capitolian. But the city practically breeds them. A decent percentage of the upper class hates the Capitol, while enabling it to exist. The lower class is usually too drunk or to obsessed with fashion to do anything about it.
Honestly, this rebellion is the same as any of the others. People are fighting to replace a group of other people who are too incompetent to have actually done what people accuse them of, with a group of self-obsessed egomaniacs who will claim to fix everything just to get popular support. But both the rebels and the ruling people need the same money, which is owned by people like Maximilian, and that gives them power. Max, Max, Max. He is the principal reason that this rebellion can even take place. How else would a rebel group cut off 75 years ago get ultra high tech weaponry? Who else could bribe a hovercraft crew to "die" and crash land in the forbidden zones? Regardless of the philosophy, the rich stay in power or they move to where they are safe. This uprising is going to change nothing. I'm just working with the rebellion because President Snow is on my Must-Kill list for reducing the alcohol content in my favorite drink and killing off my entire family. I take that list seriously, nobody messes with my self-medication.
)()(
Those cheery, pro-rebellion thoughts are interrupted by a nurse who bringing in my private messenger. Knowing I am in for an onslaught of noise, I mute it as it turns on, and engage the speech to text feature. Then I do something I have never done before... I call Effie.
"..." I hear over the messenger, joyful at having discovered the perfect way of contacting Effie. I am momentarily in heaven. Assuming she is talking about the Games, I pull up a scrolling commentary by Caesar Flickerman. Caesar enjoys obscenely lengthy messages, minutely detailing every possible detail in a scene. This is why everyone in Panem can know the exact composition of the metal that makes up the aglets on the Tribute's shoes, the exact amount of calories burned when suffering from a shoulder wound and blisters while running from a mutant that is 3 meters tall, and the exact radial force necessary to cleave a wind pipe so it prevents breathing but doesn't cause decapitation or arterial spray. Believe me, you do not want to see the entire series of messages Caesar rattles off constantly.
So, I turn on a commentary of Caesar's commentary , instantly reducing long unwieldy messages to one or two sentences. "And there you have it folks, Katniss and her team have figured out the traps in the Arena! They are now virtually immune to anything the Gamemaster might throw at them!" The shortening tends to make the nuances of the games disappear, but it should be sufficient for speaking with Effie.
Oh, shi... I forgot about her. Minimizing the commentary, but keeping the audio, "...and with the food supplies provided by the mentors, Katniss and co. should be set for a LONG time...", I bring up Effie, prepared to apologize for the first time in 24 years, but she hasn't even noticed. All I can see from here is a long stream of run on sentences, the dysfunctional nature of which I will not relate. Suffice it to state, I discovered that Effie's voice could hurt my eyes as well as my ears.
I state into the messenger "Hi, Effie, can you put Cinna on?" Cinna is Katniss's clothing designer and happens to be a far better assistant than Effie. Not much praise, truthfully, but an accurate statement nonetheless. I rapidly receive a reply. I doughnut no where he is. He hasnt ben sein science be 4 the games start ed. The AI who controls the speech to text feature was once asked what 1/0 is. Since then it has devoted 99.7% of its RAM to working on the problem. Therefore, it consistently fails. Miserably.
"Ok, Effie, if Cinna isn't there, can you put on another mentor?" I reply. A look of confusion passes over her face. I clarify, "I mean one of the mentors of our alliance." I thought that my statement was fairly self clarifying, considering that I am the only mentor on our team and Katniss and Peeta are in an alliance with other Tribunes who have mentors. For once Effie decides not to speak and simply nods, then hurries over to another District, instantly causing them to scatter. Eventually, Effie manages to get one of the Mentors to stop fleeing long enough to come over to the District 12 messenger and communicate with me.
Surprisingly it is Jamaica man that answers. Honestly, you would have thought that after working as a Mentor for such a long time, I would actually know everybody's name, and what district has a Jamaican accent. But no. That's what alcohol does to your brain. Memory loss. Yep... What was I thinking about? Right. Jamaica man.
Jamaica man walks towards the communicator, pulls out a memory stick, sends me an email, and walks off. I guess I irritated him somehow. Ignoring this slight, and deciding to not put him on the Must-Kill list, I pull up his message, which reads...
To: Mr. Abernathy
From: Richards Hammingfest
Subject: Games
Do dn odhz ajm pn oj mzwzggdjn. Rz rdgg wz agtdib jop ojibco. Rz rdgg kdxf pk ocz Omdwpizn viy bj oj Ydnomdxo 13. Ocz Xvkdojg rdgg avgg! Rz rdgg xmzvoz kzvxz, epxodxz, viy amzzyjr. Gjib Gdqz ocz Mzwzggdjn. Gjib Gdqz ocz Mzwzggdjn!
Mdxcvmyn Cvrrdibazno
(Richards Hammingfest)
Ok, then. Either Hammingfest, presumably Jamaica man, knows a very unusual language, or he tried to encode it. So, it is probably a simple direct translation, which is more likely as he actually put his name into both. So probably an offset cipher as that A is not an Z. What is the keyword though? Let's see. H to C is five letters off, so I wonder if that's the offset.
Might as well try it out.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
#####ABCDEF GHIJKLMNOPQRSTU
VWXYZ
Translating, and the final product is...
To: Mr. Abernathy
From: Richards Hammingfest
Subject: Games
It is time for us to begin the rebellion. We will be flying out tonight. We will pick up the Tribunes and go to District 13. The Capitol will fall! We will create peace, justice, and freedom. Long Live the Rebellion. Long live the Rebellion!
Richards Hammingfest
(Richards Hammingfest)
Well that was fun. The result was appropriately crass to act as a good red herring. There is no way something so easy to crack is the actual code. Any decent rebel would have an alternating cipher, preferably mechanical to prevent computer intrusion, with multiple possible answers, and no possibility of direct translation. I mean, he wouldn't actually be stupid enough to send a message like this over a Capitol monitored network, in such a simple code that a brute force program could decipher it within seconds. HA HA HA. Wait... would he? No, he would not be that dumb, heh, heh. Oh, god, please don't tell me he's that dumb. Ohh, sh*t.
"Hey, doc? Can I get some alcohol to go?"
Thank you for reading. The next chapter will probably be the last one in this fic. I hope you have enjoyed it so far. Thank you Beth and Audrey for reviewing, you are both great! Thank you for reading. Thank you followers for denoting that I am good enough for you to receive a message about this work. Thank you reviewers, you make this all seem worth it.
moonlight goose- thank you for the support and I hope you like how the story is going.
To everybody reading this, please review. I will mention you by name and reply to anything you send me.
Sincerely,
Draco Ranger