Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 3 — The Big Reveal Carter reached out and felt around for his cell phone on the desk by his bed He opened his eyes to slits trying not to let too much morning in Finally his hand hit the phone Who is texting at dawn on a school-free Friday he grumbled as he held the phone close to his nose to read it The ﬁrst thing he noticed was that it was ten o’clock Okay he thought dawn came and went a while ago Carter blinked as he tried to make sense of the message It was from Uncle Dan and looked like random numbers and letters a9i9 3o19e21o35 Carter moaned There was no way he could 4

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 4 — do this one in his head He’d need paper That meant getting up He closed his eyes for a moment wondering what would happen if he just pretended he hadn’t heard the phone He could go back to sleep Then his stomach grumbled Okay okay he muttered as he sat up He swung his long legs over the side of the bed Carter copied the letters and numbers onto a sheet of paper It was obviously a code Uncle Dan loved codes They fed his need for security and offered a mental challenge Uncle Dan was always in favor of a mental challenge Carter ﬁgured this was probably some kind of substitution code In a substitution code some or all of the letters are replaced by numbers Immediately he noticed that all the letters in the code were vowels That meant the code might only represent consonants Carter chewed his lip as he studied the paper He wrote out the most common substitution code that only used consonants 5

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 5 — B 1 C 2 D 3 F 4 G 5 H 6 J 7 K 8 L 9 M 10 N 11 P 12 Q 13 R 14 S 15 T 16 V 17 W 18 X 19 Y 20 Z 21 Carter saw the problem with that right away The numbers in the code from his phone went much higher than 21 He squinted as he studied the numbers looking for a pattern He spotted it quickly They were all odd numbers Carter rewrote his replacement code using only odd numbers B 1 C 3 D 5 F 7 G 9 H 11 J 13 K 15 L 17 M 19 N 21 P 23 Q 25 R 27 S 29 T 31 V 33 W 35 X 37 Y 39 Z 41 Carter wrote Now the code worked for the original message it out quickly agigcomenow He grinned as he broke it into words and added punctuation A gig Come now Uncle Dan must have set a date for the ﬁrst public use of his virtual reality suits Finally they were going to be able to show other people how cool it was to enter a virtual reality world 6

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 6 — based on a book Carter thought about the last few weeks as he pulled on a pair of jeans After they’d ﬁnally caught the hacker who wanted to destroy Uncle Dan’s invention the ﬁnishing touches on the project went fast Then Uncle Dan had looked for a place to exhibit the ﬁnished product When his stomach grumbled again Carter decided he’d better feed the beast before dashing off to Uncle Dan’s house When he hit the kitchen he spotted the green and white box on the counter Yes Doughnuts He ﬂipped the lid back and scowled There were mostly raspberry jelly doughnuts yuck He nudged aside two plain cake doughnuts boring Then he found a lone chocolate and snagged it Uncle Dan would just have to ﬁll the rest of his junk food needs As he hauled open the front door he heard his mom’s voice Is that you Carter Yesph he said around a mouthful Your dad wants you to mow the lawn 7

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