The Punch-Card CiphersBy DF Short
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I.
Albert Cesar DeSilva was once a writer of repute as brief as it was inexplicable. His fame was entirely based on a quirky series of short stories that appeared in noir detective magazines in the ‘50s. Known later in their collected form as Life and Death Computations, their unlikely protagonist was a pioneering computer scientist named Capperby, who used an analog device of his own invention to solve murders. In one story, which happened to be the final chapter of Capperby’s adventures, his punch-cards even managed to name the place and time of a future murder.
It wouldn’t be entirely apt to call the tales themselves quirky. Each story too slavishly followed the same rather dry scheme for that; however, given they made use of none of the usual conventions of the genre, they were a surprising break from form. They possessed no love interests, no femme fatales, no run-ins with corrupt cops or gangster club owners, no sidekick, and no expressions of grim irony or smart-alecky wit. Settings in the stories consisted of nondescript rooms where Capperby did his work, a maze-like habitat of documents and cabinet-sized computer terminals. Suspense amounted to Capperby nervously waiting for bulbs to blink on, as he set down his coffee half on, half off a coaster. While the stories’ scenarios were those another mystery writer might make great use of, DeSilva seemed to prefer inventory over narrative. There were no actual close-calls, sudden plot twists or anything that might convince the reader that something might be at stake in Capperby’s efforts. After solving a murder, the unlikely sleuth dutifully submitted an anonymous report to the authorities, complete with an air-tight citation of evidence, in a manner civil-minded and bereft of pride or passion.
The ten installments that recorded Capperby’s achievements as a P.I. were minimal, dressed down affairs to be sure, verging on the perfunctory. A letter submitted to one magazine compared them to refrigerator repair manuals; another rather comically posed the question-- “The humanity! My God, DeSilva, where is the humanity in these tales of neither woe nor wonder?”
The “humanity,” or rather the reason for the editors’ interest in DeSilva’s work, lay in the punch-cards. Each magazine that included one of his stories also included an accompanying punch-card, which was joined along a perforated edge to the magazine’s spine. Though neither DeSilva nor the editors, even in response to repeated reader queries, provided directions for the use of the cards, a curious, determined reader might have discovered it by positioning a card over text, at the top of a designated subheading.
The stories were divided into three sections, so each of them offered up three excerpts of a coded message, which was in turn a fairly simple substitution cipher. Thus, assuming the reader collected all the magazine texts, found the proper text-card parings, then broke the ciphers, he or she would have discovered there were two verbal realms in which the writer DeSilva dabbled-- stilted forays into dreary sci-fi detective fiction and something of a more whimsical, pseudo mystical nature that came into view through the seemingly random, inert apertures of each card. DeSilva, a grad student in the burgeoning field of computer science at the time, thought writing the ten stories with accompanying “cereal box” code a “lark” worthy of a few weeks of his summer break. He even managed to convince the editors to allow him nearly carte blanche over the stories’ layout and design, given the role they played in aligning the punch cards with the cipher text.
Soon after his summer’s dalliance with writing, Professor DeSilva focused exclusively on his chosen profession, but, at first frequently, then less so, he received inquiries from readers bent on verifying whether they correctly located each message using the punch-cards. Early on, he thought it amusing. He even responded to one or two letters from young readers-- “You almost got them all,” he wrote encouragingly. The rest he ignored, immediately tossing them in the bin when they arrived. Increasingly, he dispatched such inquiries with venom, with such phrases as “Get a life!” and “Losers!”
II.
One day, quite a curious thing happened. The professor picked up the ringing phone in his office to the question, “Mr. DeSilva?”
“Yes, this is DeSilva.”
The man on the other end was a reporter seeking comment on an oddity arising from one of his stories. Was it true that one coded message read, “Planet nine is on the march. Death shall occur in its ancient shadow”? Knee-deep in professorial duties, he felt blindsided by the query, which caused a familiar sense of embarrassment to resurface. It was indeed from one of his stories, but he didn’t write it, not unaided anyway. His girlfriend at the time, Fran, a young poet, helped phrase the portions he would later encode as ciphers. They hadn’t been together long and he knew little about what sort of life she went on to live, only that she died at a relatively young age. To hear the question abruptly put after so many years conjured up unpleasant associations. He wasn’t so much guarded as unnerved.
“May I ask your reason for... “
“Yes, of course, Mr. DeSilva. I’m the science editor and tomorrow we’re running a story on a possible ninth planet, which some are saying is quite large.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. Why the interest in the code?”
“One of the reporters here is, was, a fan of your work and he recalled the quote. What do you say? Can we say you’ve verified the text? It’s an amusing coincidence, wouldn’t you say? In the end, your stories might even get a second wind.”
“I see. Well, as your reporter probably knows, we never offered any guidance regarding any codes that may or not be in the stories. I’m sorry, I would prefer not to comment. But thank you for the interest.”
The fact was if someone managed to track down the editors, after so many years had passed, they likely would have freely discussed the coded aspects of the stories, but DeSilva preferred to keep people guessing. In any case, the piece about a possible giant planet nine, whose existence could be gleaned from the influence it exerted upon other bodies in the solar system, ran the next day as promised. DeSilva’s code was mentioned, but in passing, as if its existence was based upon hearsay. The precise nature of the code remained speculative fare for readers with rare access to all the magazine issues and punch-cards, which was the way DeSilva preferred it.
Yet, the pot was stirred. Some of DeSilva’s fans who were frustrated in their efforts to collect the stories and cards or to properly align them, chose to go straight to the source to seek remedy. The calls often began with “Mr. DeSilva? Albert DeSilva? You don’t know me but I was wondering...“ Against his better judgment, he looked at one email he knew better than to open. It simply said, “fuckface!” In the days following publication of the article, he found it necessary to switch off the ringer of his office phone and remove his email from his faculty web page. If DeSilva’s thoughts had tended toward the paranoid or maudlin, he might have sensed a rising vendetta being directed toward him from beyond the grave. But he was neither of these things. He was just annoyed.
As he thought about the strange influence the stories continued to have on his life, he couldn’t help but wonder about questions a reporter or fan would likely put to him: Mr. DeSilva, what connection is there between the murders and the codes identified with the punch-cards? And, Mr. DeSilva, what do you make of the strange reference in your story to a large “ninth planet”? Oh, and finally, Mr. DeSilva, are there any other codes in the stories that have remained hidden from readers after all these years?
To come completely clean and answer question one truthfully, he would explain that it was Fran’s job to construct a cryptic reference to one or more themes found in each one of the stories. For DeSilva, the cryptograms were simply a list of puzzles to solve: once the reader solved one, he or she crossed it off the list of ten total puzzles. Fran, however, hoped each decryption made the reader feel as though some deeper truth was unearthed; she even hoped some of the phrases might beam with a certain poetic resonance. For example, the phrase about a ninth planet was in reference to a victim in one of the stories, an astrologer, and her manner of death. A crazed customer, convinced the adept was trying to control his thoughts through sorcery, bashed her head in with a glass decorative orb she kept in her office. In addition, the phrase echoed an ominous, gothic image in the story, which, truth be told, was also of Fran’s devising and a pleasant departure from DeSilva’s mechanical prose. It described a towering, stretched shadow of the orb on the wall behind it, its jittering motion controlled by the flame of a lit candle. Question two, then, interested DeSilva very little since he viewed Fran’s reference to an actual ninth planet as unintended, just a coincidence.
Question three interested him most. Indeed, he was all too aware of the fact that concern for it prompted him to imagine the interview in the first place. “Ah, yes,” he might tease about the possible extra code, “perhaps there is, perhaps there is... “
That he enjoyed reveling in such a pointless, momentary fantasy made him blush crimson. The extra bit of code he did add was quite juvenile, the simplest of substitution ciphers, an addition he never bothered mentioning to anyone. The more pride he felt for such a hollow accomplishment, the more his face burned with shame. DeSilva was brilliant in his way, but like many lovers of puzzles and one-upmanship, he could be vain and petty.
Back when he composed his stories, he constructed 10 punch-cards, each with three groups of holes. Once the reader aligned a group at the top of the proper section, the layout of each story’s text offered up part of a substitution cipher. In addition, twenty-six of the cards’ sections were labeled p.1-p.26, respectively; four of them were unnumbered. The lettering of the labels was in narrow, elongated computer-type, which made the print look almost geometric and quite difficult to immediately make out. And, of course, over time, due to crinkling and rubbing of the paper’s surface, much of the print might now be illegible. But it would have been possible for the reader to notice that each of these 26 cards possessed a counterpart-- a letter displayed in similar type within a stylized graphic that marked the end of each section.
Assuming one correctly matched cards to text, the numbers on the cards indicated the position and thus the arrangement of the following string of 26 letters: “RIBPOFGTOFAIBRSFHVSAOWZPCL.” He felt there was some inherent beauty to the structure of a maze nesting inside another. And he enjoyed imagining, replaying in his mind, his cloaked words--smoldering as they lie on the cusp of being understood--suddenly stripped of what he called their Edenic state. For DeSilva, their interest lay in the potential they had to mean something, even if what they ended up meaning was utter drivel.
DeSilva of course wondered if anyone had bothered to notice and break the cipher, but preferring his state of wonder to knowing an answer, he dodged messages from fans whenever possible. Just after completing the stories, he took added relish in imagining a scenario in which his fake clue sent the “eager beavers” searching for treasure. “Perfect idiots,” he thought.
III.
Almost a year had passed since the mention of his stories in the press. It was now a day in mid-October, and as DeSilva walked home along his usual route from campus to home, the air around him verged on a harsh coolness. Low-angled, often blinding light shot passed swaying trees and mini cyclones threw leaves around his feet. These, the seasonal portents of momentous change, drew the character of the day, yet to all such things he remained indifferent, preoccupied as he was with his current work.
Professor DeSilva’s near-sightedness was his alone, honed as it was after years of living. While it afforded him the ability to notice many things, it blinded him to much else, mostly, as it happened, things he saw as having little importance. Usually, he peered out defensively from behind his glasses with head and shoulders locked in a slightly downward position, as if this was the best posture for dealing with a surprise incursion from any angle. To gain the professor’s attention, students and faculty alike often ran up to him as he passed and gently tugged at his sleeve, at which point his head sprang quickly around. It wasn’t that DeSilva was overly nervous. He prided himself in being a realist, someone who should be ready for the unexpected.
Today, as it happened, he was challenged to apply his dictum when, not ten feet from his front door, there stood a man he had never seen before. As his walk slowed, he noted the man was taller, much more broad shouldered than himself. He was an imposing presence.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see a DeSilva. Albert DeSilva.”
“That’s me, I’m Al DeSilva. But, look, if this is about the stories, I really can’t... “
“Mr. DeSilva, I’m not here about that. My name is Connor Mackleroy. I’m here about Fran. Fran Czerny.”
“Fran?
“Yes, I believe you both dated.”
DeSilva said the word “Yes” slowly, as if he was just learning to speak.
“I’m Fran’s former husband.”
He seemed actively trying to adjust to the idea, but offered, “I heard about what happened. I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you. Look, sorry to drop by like this... “
DeSilva assured him it was fine, then invited him inside, making a motion for the door.
“Thank you, but I really can’t. Please just take this.” He presented a small sealed white envelope, which was discolored and a bit rumpled. “I should have come sooner, I realize.” He paused to suppress nervous speech, then continued with a voice steady, a bit louder. “For some reason, I remembered it last Monday. It’s the time of year, I think.” DeSilva took it with some hesitance.
Barely looking up from the envelope, he saw that Connor had left. He couldn’t help but feel the sting of some rebuke, though he couldn’t possibly say for what.
When he entered the house, he set down his things, including the envelop, on his desk. He walked over to the window and starred out and thought about the brief exchange. He wished to doubt it, doubt Connor was who he said he was, but the handwriting on the envelop spelling out his name was obviously Fran’s.
He picked it up and sat down, considering what to do. For a while he sat watching the last evidence of sunlight on the wall. It winked and writhed within a square of watery shadow projected by the window’s curtain, and his mind bounded from this to that association, a rare vacation from his accustomed linearity.
Sorry, Mr. DeSilva, this really will be the last question: This Fran, your “collaborator” as you call her-- would you say her contribution went beyond the plaintext of the ciphers?” Practicing it to himself, he weighed his response: “Well... yes. One could put it that way, but...” At this, he paused, wondering about the pause itself, how it might appear to others.
He pivoted, instinctively, toward recalling “Fan Affright,” the last of the Capperby tales. As with some of the others, Fran thought of much of the scenario. It was about a series of slayings that coincided with movie-going activity in a given geographic area. Capperby’s machine surmised that the killer followed, then attacked, unsuspecting lone movie goers, always female, from one theater after another, always on the day of a new film’s release. Rather conveniently, the lethal buff’s migrations appeared to proceed alphabetically, according to the theaters’ placement in the yellow pages. Three murders had been committed over the span of six months when Capperby’s vacuum-tube-super-brain identified the pattern. It predicted that the murderer would next strike at a theater called the Zephyr-Radiant in the early hours of October 7th; true to formula, the authorities dismissed Capperby’s counsel and the murder happened as mechanized inference had foretold. From DeSilva’s perspective, the series ended on the high-note he had sought, but, surely, many readers must have tired of his character’s cold and aloof quest, devoted as it was to putting his computer’s wizardry on display to the world, despite, or even due to, the carnage it surveyed.
“A galloping mirror is a false maze. Do not follow!” This was Fran’s last epigram, “Fan Affright’s” cryptic revelation. DeSilva thought its reference to a camera as a mirror and a motion picture as a “galloping” one quite fitting. But unlike the other cryptic counters, its tentacles went broader afield. As in the grand spectacle of a movie’s illusion, the galloping mirror distracts by the images it flashes at our eyes. We lose sight of the nature of what we follow, what rhythms we set our own pace to. We find ourselves lured into a false maze, where all is detour. Yet, in the story, he mused, it wasn’t the movie fan’s interest in any film, per se, that got her into trouble; it was one blameless desire among many that coaxed her out into the dark.
DeSilva held the envelope up to the faint window light, which revealed nothing. He turned on his desk lamp then used a letter opener to avoid the seal of glue, slicing through the paper along the top. The paper inside, unfolded, showed a brief message: “Bent mirror bends u, faux lad, ham!” He didn’t notice the rebuke, just the string of letters, which he of course recognized.
Albert Cesar DeSilva was once a writer of repute as brief as it was inexplicable. His fame was entirely based on a quirky series of short stories that appeared in noir detective magazines in the ‘50s. Known later in their collected form as Life and Death Computations, their unlikely protagonist was a pioneering computer scientist named Capperby, who used an analog device of his own invention to solve murders. In one story, which happened to be the final chapter of Capperby’s adventures, his punch-cards even managed to name the place and time of a future murder.
It wouldn’t be entirely apt to call the tales themselves quirky. Each story too slavishly followed the same rather dry scheme for that; however, given they made use of none of the usual conventions of the genre, they were a surprising break from form. They possessed no love interests, no femme fatales, no run-ins with corrupt cops or gangster club owners, no sidekick, and no expressions of grim irony or smart-alecky wit. Settings in the stories consisted of nondescript rooms where Capperby did his work, a maze-like habitat of documents and cabinet-sized computer terminals. Suspense amounted to Capperby nervously waiting for bulbs to blink on, as he set down his coffee half on, half off a coaster. While the stories’ scenarios were those another mystery writer might make great use of, DeSilva seemed to prefer inventory over narrative. There were no actual close-calls, sudden plot twists or anything that might convince the reader that something might be at stake in Capperby’s efforts. After solving a murder, the unlikely sleuth dutifully submitted an anonymous report to the authorities, complete with an air-tight citation of evidence, in a manner civil-minded and bereft of pride or passion.
The ten installments that recorded Capperby’s achievements as a P.I. were minimal, dressed down affairs to be sure, verging on the perfunctory. A letter submitted to one magazine compared them to refrigerator repair manuals; another rather comically posed the question-- “The humanity! My God, DeSilva, where is the humanity in these tales of neither woe nor wonder?”
The “humanity,” or rather the reason for the editors’ interest in DeSilva’s work, lay in the punch-cards. Each magazine that included one of his stories also included an accompanying punch-card, which was joined along a perforated edge to the magazine’s spine. Though neither DeSilva nor the editors, even in response to repeated reader queries, provided directions for the use of the cards, a curious, determined reader might have discovered it by positioning a card over text, at the top of a designated subheading.
The stories were divided into three sections, so each of them offered up three excerpts of a coded message, which was in turn a fairly simple substitution cipher. Thus, assuming the reader collected all the magazine texts, found the proper text-card parings, then broke the ciphers, he or she would have discovered there were two verbal realms in which the writer DeSilva dabbled-- stilted forays into dreary sci-fi detective fiction and something of a more whimsical, pseudo mystical nature that came into view through the seemingly random, inert apertures of each card. DeSilva, a grad student in the burgeoning field of computer science at the time, thought writing the ten stories with accompanying “cereal box” code a “lark” worthy of a few weeks of his summer break. He even managed to convince the editors to allow him nearly carte blanche over the stories’ layout and design, given the role they played in aligning the punch cards with the cipher text.
Soon after his summer’s dalliance with writing, Professor DeSilva focused exclusively on his chosen profession, but, at first frequently, then less so, he received inquiries from readers bent on verifying whether they correctly located each message using the punch-cards. Early on, he thought it amusing. He even responded to one or two letters from young readers-- “You almost got them all,” he wrote encouragingly. The rest he ignored, immediately tossing them in the bin when they arrived. Increasingly, he dispatched such inquiries with venom, with such phrases as “Get a life!” and “Losers!”
II.
One day, quite a curious thing happened. The professor picked up the ringing phone in his office to the question, “Mr. DeSilva?”
“Yes, this is DeSilva.”
The man on the other end was a reporter seeking comment on an oddity arising from one of his stories. Was it true that one coded message read, “Planet nine is on the march. Death shall occur in its ancient shadow”? Knee-deep in professorial duties, he felt blindsided by the query, which caused a familiar sense of embarrassment to resurface. It was indeed from one of his stories, but he didn’t write it, not unaided anyway. His girlfriend at the time, Fran, a young poet, helped phrase the portions he would later encode as ciphers. They hadn’t been together long and he knew little about what sort of life she went on to live, only that she died at a relatively young age. To hear the question abruptly put after so many years conjured up unpleasant associations. He wasn’t so much guarded as unnerved.
“May I ask your reason for... “
“Yes, of course, Mr. DeSilva. I’m the science editor and tomorrow we’re running a story on a possible ninth planet, which some are saying is quite large.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. Why the interest in the code?”
“One of the reporters here is, was, a fan of your work and he recalled the quote. What do you say? Can we say you’ve verified the text? It’s an amusing coincidence, wouldn’t you say? In the end, your stories might even get a second wind.”
“I see. Well, as your reporter probably knows, we never offered any guidance regarding any codes that may or not be in the stories. I’m sorry, I would prefer not to comment. But thank you for the interest.”
The fact was if someone managed to track down the editors, after so many years had passed, they likely would have freely discussed the coded aspects of the stories, but DeSilva preferred to keep people guessing. In any case, the piece about a possible giant planet nine, whose existence could be gleaned from the influence it exerted upon other bodies in the solar system, ran the next day as promised. DeSilva’s code was mentioned, but in passing, as if its existence was based upon hearsay. The precise nature of the code remained speculative fare for readers with rare access to all the magazine issues and punch-cards, which was the way DeSilva preferred it.
Yet, the pot was stirred. Some of DeSilva’s fans who were frustrated in their efforts to collect the stories and cards or to properly align them, chose to go straight to the source to seek remedy. The calls often began with “Mr. DeSilva? Albert DeSilva? You don’t know me but I was wondering...“ Against his better judgment, he looked at one email he knew better than to open. It simply said, “fuckface!” In the days following publication of the article, he found it necessary to switch off the ringer of his office phone and remove his email from his faculty web page. If DeSilva’s thoughts had tended toward the paranoid or maudlin, he might have sensed a rising vendetta being directed toward him from beyond the grave. But he was neither of these things. He was just annoyed.
As he thought about the strange influence the stories continued to have on his life, he couldn’t help but wonder about questions a reporter or fan would likely put to him: Mr. DeSilva, what connection is there between the murders and the codes identified with the punch-cards? And, Mr. DeSilva, what do you make of the strange reference in your story to a large “ninth planet”? Oh, and finally, Mr. DeSilva, are there any other codes in the stories that have remained hidden from readers after all these years?
To come completely clean and answer question one truthfully, he would explain that it was Fran’s job to construct a cryptic reference to one or more themes found in each one of the stories. For DeSilva, the cryptograms were simply a list of puzzles to solve: once the reader solved one, he or she crossed it off the list of ten total puzzles. Fran, however, hoped each decryption made the reader feel as though some deeper truth was unearthed; she even hoped some of the phrases might beam with a certain poetic resonance. For example, the phrase about a ninth planet was in reference to a victim in one of the stories, an astrologer, and her manner of death. A crazed customer, convinced the adept was trying to control his thoughts through sorcery, bashed her head in with a glass decorative orb she kept in her office. In addition, the phrase echoed an ominous, gothic image in the story, which, truth be told, was also of Fran’s devising and a pleasant departure from DeSilva’s mechanical prose. It described a towering, stretched shadow of the orb on the wall behind it, its jittering motion controlled by the flame of a lit candle. Question two, then, interested DeSilva very little since he viewed Fran’s reference to an actual ninth planet as unintended, just a coincidence.
Question three interested him most. Indeed, he was all too aware of the fact that concern for it prompted him to imagine the interview in the first place. “Ah, yes,” he might tease about the possible extra code, “perhaps there is, perhaps there is... “
That he enjoyed reveling in such a pointless, momentary fantasy made him blush crimson. The extra bit of code he did add was quite juvenile, the simplest of substitution ciphers, an addition he never bothered mentioning to anyone. The more pride he felt for such a hollow accomplishment, the more his face burned with shame. DeSilva was brilliant in his way, but like many lovers of puzzles and one-upmanship, he could be vain and petty.
Back when he composed his stories, he constructed 10 punch-cards, each with three groups of holes. Once the reader aligned a group at the top of the proper section, the layout of each story’s text offered up part of a substitution cipher. In addition, twenty-six of the cards’ sections were labeled p.1-p.26, respectively; four of them were unnumbered. The lettering of the labels was in narrow, elongated computer-type, which made the print look almost geometric and quite difficult to immediately make out. And, of course, over time, due to crinkling and rubbing of the paper’s surface, much of the print might now be illegible. But it would have been possible for the reader to notice that each of these 26 cards possessed a counterpart-- a letter displayed in similar type within a stylized graphic that marked the end of each section.
Assuming one correctly matched cards to text, the numbers on the cards indicated the position and thus the arrangement of the following string of 26 letters: “RIBPOFGTOFAIBRSFHVSAOWZPCL.” He felt there was some inherent beauty to the structure of a maze nesting inside another. And he enjoyed imagining, replaying in his mind, his cloaked words--smoldering as they lie on the cusp of being understood--suddenly stripped of what he called their Edenic state. For DeSilva, their interest lay in the potential they had to mean something, even if what they ended up meaning was utter drivel.
DeSilva of course wondered if anyone had bothered to notice and break the cipher, but preferring his state of wonder to knowing an answer, he dodged messages from fans whenever possible. Just after completing the stories, he took added relish in imagining a scenario in which his fake clue sent the “eager beavers” searching for treasure. “Perfect idiots,” he thought.
III.
Almost a year had passed since the mention of his stories in the press. It was now a day in mid-October, and as DeSilva walked home along his usual route from campus to home, the air around him verged on a harsh coolness. Low-angled, often blinding light shot passed swaying trees and mini cyclones threw leaves around his feet. These, the seasonal portents of momentous change, drew the character of the day, yet to all such things he remained indifferent, preoccupied as he was with his current work.
Professor DeSilva’s near-sightedness was his alone, honed as it was after years of living. While it afforded him the ability to notice many things, it blinded him to much else, mostly, as it happened, things he saw as having little importance. Usually, he peered out defensively from behind his glasses with head and shoulders locked in a slightly downward position, as if this was the best posture for dealing with a surprise incursion from any angle. To gain the professor’s attention, students and faculty alike often ran up to him as he passed and gently tugged at his sleeve, at which point his head sprang quickly around. It wasn’t that DeSilva was overly nervous. He prided himself in being a realist, someone who should be ready for the unexpected.
Today, as it happened, he was challenged to apply his dictum when, not ten feet from his front door, there stood a man he had never seen before. As his walk slowed, he noted the man was taller, much more broad shouldered than himself. He was an imposing presence.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see a DeSilva. Albert DeSilva.”
“That’s me, I’m Al DeSilva. But, look, if this is about the stories, I really can’t... “
“Mr. DeSilva, I’m not here about that. My name is Connor Mackleroy. I’m here about Fran. Fran Czerny.”
“Fran?
“Yes, I believe you both dated.”
DeSilva said the word “Yes” slowly, as if he was just learning to speak.
“I’m Fran’s former husband.”
He seemed actively trying to adjust to the idea, but offered, “I heard about what happened. I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you. Look, sorry to drop by like this... “
DeSilva assured him it was fine, then invited him inside, making a motion for the door.
“Thank you, but I really can’t. Please just take this.” He presented a small sealed white envelope, which was discolored and a bit rumpled. “I should have come sooner, I realize.” He paused to suppress nervous speech, then continued with a voice steady, a bit louder. “For some reason, I remembered it last Monday. It’s the time of year, I think.” DeSilva took it with some hesitance.
Barely looking up from the envelope, he saw that Connor had left. He couldn’t help but feel the sting of some rebuke, though he couldn’t possibly say for what.
When he entered the house, he set down his things, including the envelop, on his desk. He walked over to the window and starred out and thought about the brief exchange. He wished to doubt it, doubt Connor was who he said he was, but the handwriting on the envelop spelling out his name was obviously Fran’s.
He picked it up and sat down, considering what to do. For a while he sat watching the last evidence of sunlight on the wall. It winked and writhed within a square of watery shadow projected by the window’s curtain, and his mind bounded from this to that association, a rare vacation from his accustomed linearity.
Sorry, Mr. DeSilva, this really will be the last question: This Fran, your “collaborator” as you call her-- would you say her contribution went beyond the plaintext of the ciphers?” Practicing it to himself, he weighed his response: “Well... yes. One could put it that way, but...” At this, he paused, wondering about the pause itself, how it might appear to others.
He pivoted, instinctively, toward recalling “Fan Affright,” the last of the Capperby tales. As with some of the others, Fran thought of much of the scenario. It was about a series of slayings that coincided with movie-going activity in a given geographic area. Capperby’s machine surmised that the killer followed, then attacked, unsuspecting lone movie goers, always female, from one theater after another, always on the day of a new film’s release. Rather conveniently, the lethal buff’s migrations appeared to proceed alphabetically, according to the theaters’ placement in the yellow pages. Three murders had been committed over the span of six months when Capperby’s vacuum-tube-super-brain identified the pattern. It predicted that the murderer would next strike at a theater called the Zephyr-Radiant in the early hours of October 7th; true to formula, the authorities dismissed Capperby’s counsel and the murder happened as mechanized inference had foretold. From DeSilva’s perspective, the series ended on the high-note he had sought, but, surely, many readers must have tired of his character’s cold and aloof quest, devoted as it was to putting his computer’s wizardry on display to the world, despite, or even due to, the carnage it surveyed.
“A galloping mirror is a false maze. Do not follow!” This was Fran’s last epigram, “Fan Affright’s” cryptic revelation. DeSilva thought its reference to a camera as a mirror and a motion picture as a “galloping” one quite fitting. But unlike the other cryptic counters, its tentacles went broader afield. As in the grand spectacle of a movie’s illusion, the galloping mirror distracts by the images it flashes at our eyes. We lose sight of the nature of what we follow, what rhythms we set our own pace to. We find ourselves lured into a false maze, where all is detour. Yet, in the story, he mused, it wasn’t the movie fan’s interest in any film, per se, that got her into trouble; it was one blameless desire among many that coaxed her out into the dark.
DeSilva held the envelope up to the faint window light, which revealed nothing. He turned on his desk lamp then used a letter opener to avoid the seal of glue, slicing through the paper along the top. The paper inside, unfolded, showed a brief message: “Bent mirror bends u, faux lad, ham!” He didn’t notice the rebuke, just the string of letters, which he of course recognized.
Daniel F. Short, a writer and visual artist, is currently at work on a collection of short stories entitled The Punch-Card Ciphers and Other Tales. Originally from the Chicago area, he’s taught at universities in both the U.S. and Japan.