The end of the my mind looks fine from here

By Wesley Aaron Mason

Prologue
November 5th, 2001
3rd row table, Room T106, Rawley College, Kingston upon Hull
A2 Computing.

Well this sucks.
I swear, A Level Computing is going down the pan. AS Level Computing was bad enough, but we did this binary mathematics rubbish more times than I can think of.
Oh well, least I get time to check my e-mail.

Dum..dum...de...dar...load up the web page from my personal server at home, it re-directs my request to my private server in Sweden (gotta love having Swedish system administrators for friends).

A complete scam of course. "Swedish Pen-Pals International Inc."? Please! It may sound corny but it keeps the riff-raff out. And I know, I'm one of the riff-raff.

Select Inbox.
Probably just some mates sending me the latest hacks but you never know.

Dexter? Urgent?
What the?
Guess this morning isn't going to be as boring as I thought.

Chris?
Hello..Chris?
Chris Darnell!
Mr Darnell!
I look up from my monitor, and say "Uh, wha?"
"Oh, you're with us now Christopher, about time. Perhaps you'd like to explain the answer to the question on the board, as an example of your..umm...marvelous perceptive abilities? Umm?"
Oh shit.
"Sure, John." I say, quickly glancing at the binary number problem on the board.
As a matter of fact it isn't that difficult, it's just a string of numbers like 1 + 1 represented in a different way, and when you spend your nights (or deep early mornings as is often the case) trawling through problematic strings of code you tend to get a knack for these things.
"Its zero zero zero one one one zero zero one. Or 59 in denary, John." I blurt, with not the slightest big of hesitation.
Its only a second or two later that I realize what's happens. 000111001. A simple 8bit (8 digits, you see) binary number. 1's and 0's. On and off. Its simple, can be sent easily, and for some strange and unusual reason is the first part of a 128-character password I used to generate the password for my e-mail system. How the hell did it find its way into the answer of a math's problem? I hate coincidences.
"By jove.." I hear him whisper. There are people still use that phrase? "You're right...erm..somehow...well...lets move onto the next problem everyone." John Macaul says to the class. He leaves me a lone.

Dexter!

Damn that teacher and his medieval view that students should actually work during class, the bastard nearly made me forget.
The message.

Tap..tap...click....what a wonderful life to lead...lar de dar...there we go...

Crap.
Well, ain't that just a great way to bollocks up my week? Looks bad, or good. Either way it looks deep. The 12th? There's a Frenzal Rhomb show in Manchester next week. Hmmm, good excuse for me parents.

End of prologue.