(The Zero Protocol) White Knight Errant (Private)

[Zodiac]

Math... wasn't exactly her strong suit. But one thing she did know? Conspiracies. And rather than augmenting herself any further to enhance her knowledge of math and science, she took the route that she was much more familiar with to work on the cracking the code.

She did know it was likely to be math related, and that this wasn’t the most effective means of cracking it, but she drew on a wide variety of experience as her desk was quickly taken over with notes and equations of a sort – templates, really. Templates helped with a wide variety of ciphers, and when it came to code cracking and such…

Well, really, given what Bishop may very well have been building here Zoey really was surprised that he hadn’t heard of the Sphinxes. No matter, she had, and this was a fantastic test of her abilities towards that end. This was her game. This was one of the things she most loved.

Stress? Wasn’t even in her vocabulary here. She took notes between some of the other messages that had been posted around that she’d gathered with which to cross-reference her work as she continued…

… this was such fun.

  Occult route - 4sux

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-08-05 00:13:47		Zodiac rolls 11 to Code Cracker! (Int+Occult+Runehold) (10 Again)		10, 8, 2, 7, 1, 1, 10, 4, 10, 4, 1, 4, 4, 7		4 successes

[Samaritan]

Something tucked at the edges of her conscious self. She could not place her finger on that, but it was there. Like a gale of wind, gently brushing over hairs standing on edge.
Oh, the letter was forged, there was no doubt about it. Logically speaking, Turing passed even before the notion of an artificial intelligence had even surfaced. His suicide was real, that was certain. But this letter, there was something in it. It conveyed a message, somewhere deep below the mere letters flickering over the screen. It had a certain ring to it and Zoey spent a couple of minutes going over it line by line, like softly scraping a piece of graphite coal over a paper beneath which was an intricate structure. Slowly, something surfaced.

Then, realization dawned. A sunrise over a fast and empty sea.

The patterns suggested, that this text had been carefully constructed to hold a spell of mental impulse. This digital copy was inert, of course, and no traces of supernal energies remained in it. But the original of this had held something designed to subtly nudge a curious reader into a certain direction. To make him...believe. And act on this believe. This letter could very well be the first step stone, that had lead to the formation of the virtual community that streamed over the screens of Zoeys laptop.

Finding the man, who had stumbled upon this text first was a very solid lead.

Please give me a Wits + Intelligence (roll is not required, if the merits Eidetic Memory or Trained Memory are available).

[Zodiac]

  3 sux

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-08-06 19:36:17		Zodiac rolls 7 to Int+Wits (10 Again)		3, 9, 1, 9, 7, 6, 8		3 successes

[Samaritan]

Following an impulse from memory, Zoey opened a new tab and browsed local newspaper websites. It took some time, because the article she remembered was already archived as it seemed but a little digging found her another crumb of bread to follow.

A journalist named Gerald Fitch had written an article commemorating the influence of Alan Turing on the early days of cryptology and the breaking of the Nazis Enigma code. He elaborated on his brilliant mind and also on the fact, that he was driven into suicide by a blinkered and ignorant society enforcing barbaric laws upon homosexuals and other "queer" folk. Fitch claimed to have done research at the Royal Society in London and also retrieved Alan Turings letter of farewell, from which he quoted some sentences relating to his frustration with society. The article concluded with an elaboration on the advances in computer technology since Enigma and its possibilities on generating an artificial intelligence, speculating how long it would take to digitalize the mind, granting a form of quasi-immortality.

Gerald Fitch works for the Sacramento Bee, a place two other well known Guardians of the Veil also work at. One Erin Murphy and one Andrew Preacher, also known as Ariadne and Bishop.

[Zodiac]

That wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to matter. She knew those people and knew well enough that it was sensible that they'd be linked - no outsider would have that same knowledge, and it wasn't relevant to continue on that path of pursuit to be certain. There had to be a better way to isolate it. There had to be a better way to work her way into the roots of this thing - perhaps even make a point of temporarily interrupting the server.

She had respect for Bishop. She had respect for the project he'd started. And that was precisely why she did what she did. She dug. She found flaws. She even took a series of notes, which she intended to encrypt before passing on to Bishop. It was up to him to break through an encryption this time.

But now... no. She had to find a better way to thoroughly tie this in to Bishop and Ariadne. She had to find a clearer way to make it obvious. But that was going to take an exceptional amount of work, and she doubted that Bishop or Ariadne would make foolish enough mistakes to get themselves caught. Still, it wouldn't hurt to check access points... nor to send a set of notes to Bishop through his own channels.

That, however, would require identifying Bishop by his UN. And that would require a good number of other things. So, time to research, plan, and sort out her next step...

  5sux

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-08-14 15:20:59		Zodiac rolls 10 to Next Step? (Int+Investigation) (10 Again)		9, 10, 5, 7, 1, 7, 5, 5, 10, 10, 3, 8, 2		5 successes

[Samaritan]

It was hard work from here on out. Zoey started comparing log-files, user-lists of the chat-rooms, digging for patterns. It took a good deal of time until she finally got something. The log-file with the earlisest time stamp available noted the installation of a chat-programm, derived from the trusty mIRC-client software. Shortly after, the chat was used. The very first users were three Administrators, Hub-0, Stack-0 and Switch-1. That in itself was not really notable, it did not even hint at Bishops hand in this. What was notable, was that the very first new user by the name of B4ch was immediately granted superuser-rights. No chat-logs were available. Shortly after, a fourth admin was installed, dubbed Splitter-1. Referencing online times quickly showed, that Switch-1 and Splitter-1 were never online at the same time. So these four were undoubtedly the innermost circle. B4ch did not fit into the picture somehow.

That made Zoey curious. B4ch had apparently good ties to the four admins, as a few other logs suggested. From the looks of it, he was some sort of creative head behind some agendas the whole community had followed. Things such as the statistical distribution of the fifteen-minute window of the mysterious server over the day. Suggestions for programs and such things. Though he never did any of it himself. Even the admins had their own blogs and did postings. B4ch never did anything himself, he was only quoted, mentioned and seen as a general facilitator.

His last idea was taken up by someone dubbed 1CBr34k, one of the major programmers in the community with a webspace hosting downloadable tools and programs. The idea was to set up a software company for licensing the programs. That in itself was not entirely off or suspicious - rather prudent. However, Zoey had an advantage - she knew, what the Zero-Protocol was. And deriving a steady income from it was the handwriting of a skilled Cultor.

With her suspicions now a lot more solid, she dug a little further until she found another tiny detail. On one day, there was a steady stream of new users registering, tallying at 38 users within six hours. When most of them passed into the inner circle of users that had penetrated the first riddle, most of them told in various forums, that they had discovered zero.net because they had had lodgings in Sacramento during a computer conference at the Hostel Hi. Roughly three quarters of the new influx had stated, that they had talked to some older guy at the Hostel and that his handle was the name of some medieval composer, who had had a knack for symmetry and mathmatics in music. That man's name had been Johann Sebastian Bach.

It was only a tiny detail. And without the proper background knowledge, it was totally useless. But this little act of vanity, his admiration for the composer and his pride letting him choose this name as handle, had given Bishop away to Zoey.

She now knew, who to sent her text to.

[Zodiac]

And there it was. The key.

The message that was sent had no discernable return address, but it was unlikely that Bishop would be confused by it, given that he knew what was going on in some way. And that was that. B4ch had mail.

There is an ancient invention still used in some parts of the world today that allows people to see through walls.

What is it?

White Knight to G-7. Check.

Your move.

Code? Not really. It was simply a matter of getting out again without getting caught, wasn't it? That was the primary challenge.

  6sux to drop message and get away clean!

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-08-25 22:33:04		Zodiac rolls 9 to Clean Getaway? (Int+Comp+Apprentice Forge-Coal) (10 Again)		6, 10, 8, 9, 10, 4, 2, 10, 10, 4, 6, 6, 4		6 successes

[Samaritan]

Very Nice. Scene Concluded.