Some Sort of Code

I decided that I was not going to stick around not when someone had grabbed Samantha by the arm. The boy had given me no description of the man nothing to go on, not even a he was wearing sunglasses comment. I useless walked around the shopping centre looking for clues, looking for glimpses of the girl that I was supposed to be meeting. A few shoppers glanced at me, gave me looks like that they knew me, probably seen my face on TV or something. After a useless ten or fifteen minutes of wandering around I went home not knowing what course of action was to be taken.

My apartment had been turned upside down, the TV was lying face down on the ground, the couch ripped to shreds and the material shelled out, The books from the book cabinet were strewn all over the floor books from my college years were torn out and littered all over the floor. The kitchen was strewn with saucers, and cutlery, the contents of the fridge were thrown about as if a tornado had entered. A little lonely bruised tomato sat in the corner of a counter top all alone from all the other bits of vegetables that had seemed to have it in for that little lonely tomato that even the vegetables had been calling a fruit.

My room was a disaster the bedding had been stripped from my bed the mattress shredded, picture frames were smashed all my clothes littered across the floor. Aftershave bottles kicked around the room made the room smell like a perfume factory but it didn’t do much to lighten my mood.

I threw the backpack on the ground, after which I followed hitting the floor of bedroom hard. What were they looking for? Who was it that had entered my apartment? Would they come back? Were they waiting for me outside, somewhere? Were these the same people that had taken Samantha? Who really was Samantha?

I took the napkin out of my pocket. Studied it, puzzled and bemused all at once. Now it did not look too complicated, come to think of it, it was a lot easier than it looked

01 000001 000001 00000001 01 01 00000001 01 0001 01 0000001 00001 001 0000001 0000001 001 00000001 0000001 000001 000000001 00001 001 0000001, 1

I assumed immediately that it was a code a simple code, consisting of only ones and zeros meaning it was binary. I found a sheet of paper and assumed that each number was to correspond to a word perhaps. These binaries would most probably represent a number as I vaguely remembered one of my previous co-workers was trying to explain Unary coding to me one day. He said each sequence of binary numbers corresponded to a number so assuming one was one and two was zero one, one could keep up this sequence. This was a simple example of such a code. So with a pen in one hand I wrote out what I assumed might be the corresponding number

1 1

2 01

3 001

4 0001

5 00001

6 000001

7 0000001

8 00000001

9 000000001

10 0000000001

From that I looked at the napkin and wrote out the corresponding numbers.

2, 6, 6, 8, 2, 2, 8, 2, 4, 2, 7, 5, 3, 7, 3, 8, 7, 6, 9, 5, 3, 7, 1

Half through doing this I realised how overly simple the entire code was and all I needed to do was to count the numbers to get the corresponding numbers. Now that I had the numbers I had to think about what they were supposed to lead me to.

My phone started to buzz from my trouser pocket, alerting me to a message I received on my phone. I picked it up and read the message informing me of cheaper rates with my service provider.

I looked at the phone, the key pad and then back at the message. My eyes then brought me back to the keypad realising that a number corresponded to three letters.

Try that, I thought.

2 – a, b or c? B maybe?

6 – perhaps o?

6 again? n

8? T?

No

Start again. 2 – a

6- m

I was confused; I itched the nape of my neck thinking that might help things.

Start again.

2- c

6- o

6- n

8? T, u or v? Perhaps t?

2- had to be A and then I realised that it spelt contact. I double checked it. C-O-N-T-A-C-T. Looked good.

After all the stupid little letters I came up with something: Contact Charles Retro. Though the last few numbers meant nothing and made up no word. Looking at it again I realised that perhaps it wasn’t supposed to make up a word but was supposed to be exactly that numbers, Charles Retro’s number -95371.

So I had Charles Retro’s number? The criminal who was on the run? Why would Samantha ever have his number?

I would have to ring him to find out.