Following the generally positive reception to the last snippet I posted a couple of days ago. Here is a little something else from earlier in the same novel. Just a bit of fun with "pointless" coding, but that is exactly the point. Don't try to figure it out. It will just leave you scratching your head.
And again that is exactly the point.
Happy reading.
He quickly glanced at the clock in the bottom corner of his screen.
6.30.
Shit! I’m meeting Rebekah in an hour.
Truth be told, they’d arranged it during the week but his frustrations of the day and with a mind full of code he didn’t really want to go, but that grated against his character. Among other things he was reliable and punctual so he needed to get his skates on or he’d be late.
He grabbed a quick shower and threw on some smart jeans and a shirt and was out of the door in about twenty minutes. As he walked to the bus stop, he realised that meeting Rebekah probably wasn’t such a bad thing. She was lovely after all and maybe a distraction was what he needed to declutter his mind.
She was of course already waiting for him by the door when he arrived at the pub they’d agreed to meet at. He got drinks in while she went and grabbed a table and he soon joined her.
What then followed was a very pleasant evening of warm conversation and he more than got the hint that she’d like to take things further and he was tempted, very tempted. One day he’d have to decide what to do with her and see where they were going, but not now. He was decent enough to realise to rush in now, before he was ready, would be to ruin any chance he might have later and just maybe, as he moved on from Sarah, something might grow. If Rebekah was patient enough to wait.
It’s not like she wasn’t attractive – and that was half the problem.
At the end of the evening, he dutifully saw her home and they embraced and said their goodbyes as she turned and went through the front door of her parent’s home.
Tom then trekked back home with his head full of Rebekah. She was so lovely and there was a sense that he was on the cusp of something with her. He just needed to be ready.
It took about an hour to get home and as soon as he was back in his room, he turned his computer on. Thoughts of Rebekah vanished as soon as his screen lit up. Instead, his head started filling with ideas of how to resolve the code.
For a moment his conscience twanged because of the speed with which he dropped any thoughts of Rebekah.
After the couple of beers he’d sunk during the evening he wasn’t able to even stare at the code for more than a few minutes before his frustration exasperated him and was in danger of enraging him.
He soon gave up and closed the lid in disgust, without even shutting down properly and got ready for bed. Even then the mysterious girl with the sad eyes and her code tormented him like some kind of succubus hovering over him.
But she was no demon, just a pathetic looking and lost girl who needed help.
He couldn’t shake her from his mind and so he lay there tossing and turning and dozing fitfully until finally exhaustion claimed him in the early hours. He only slept for five hours tops and as soon as he woke up she was on his mind again. He decided, despite the early hours and lack of sleep, to make coffee and have another look.
Coffee made, he flipped the lid of his laptop and it went straight to the HTML view on his browser, where he’d left it last night. There it was again staring at him and taunting him to figure it out.
It was kind of weird but somehow the break and the evening in the company of the lovely Rebekah must have done him some good. He quickly dismissed his late night annoyance as a combination of tiredness and alcohol and he was feeling surprisingly clear-headed.
Let’s give you another go.
<!-- DEBUG -->
Debug_start_yvcg_dv_gcvrjv/z_rd_r_jvo_jcrmv:yrtb;ljzu/rudze;yrjcf;i upsumsmusotm579343480btstbsttuosum_motsu :veu
Shiftcode: yrtb djx_srtb_yvcg_stopdebug
<!—End DEBUG -->
<!—DEBUG_FIX -->
Debug_SHIFTPI;SQRD;DWON_debug
<!—End DEBUG_FIX -->
It has to be here for a reason, but why?
He looked at the header section again and stared at the bits of code that were inside the comment parenthesises. He briefly wondered if they were jumbled up anagrams but with the lack of vowels particularly in the first line, he immediately dismissed this idea. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to write authentic looking code that served absolutely no purpose.
He started going through it but other than a few obvious words, that again seemed out of place, it was gobbledygook. There was no debugging and while he’d be the first to admit that he didn’t know a huge amount about this kind of stuff, he’d never come across a shiftcode command in his life. The whole thing made no sense at all, but at the same time it’d clearly been put there for a reason. It had to mean something, but what?
Again, he thought to himself that somebody had done it and it’d got his attention, but he had no idea who or why.
He tried directly Googling the mystery code and came up with no results. So he tried again using each of the phrases one at a time. It seemed that his instincts were right. There was no such thing as a shiftcode, but his Google search did break SHIFTPI down into its too component words.
Shift + PI
Where do I go with this?
Hope you enjoyed!
As always stay safe and well my friends.
