literature

Kandar Ep 7 Answers?

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       Jessie watched as the lights, in the house across the street, turned on in various rooms. Through the big picture window, he could easily see Donnie, Coco, and Tessie passing back and forth in the living room of their house. 'How strange that they don't care that others can see into their dwelling,' he thought. He pulled the heavy drapes closed on the bay window and checked all other windows before turning on any lights in the house. 'Maybe I'm the strange one. The years of hunting and being hunted have made me different, I guess.' He turned his attention to one of the boxes lying about. 'I wonder what we got.'

       Most everything here they had bought at a "death sale". When someone in the city dies without any family to claim their belongings they left behind, it is sold off, normally at an open auction. The proceeds are said to go to charities, but the city claims they never meet the deceased's final expenses and keep everything for themselves. Many news articles and police investigations have been done with no definitive answer as to where the money really goes. Jack and Jessie had visited quite a few, until they found this particular one that fit the lifestyle of the background they had made up. In short order, they made a deal and bought everything in the place. They threw out or gave away anything with names, addresses, or pictures of people. Then, they had the movers pack it and bring it here. Dishes, flatware, pots and pans, wall clocks, and such are least wanted, and so they are cheap, and making a bid on the whole place saves man hours, so everyone wins, but the charities. Until now, all they kept was one cup, one bowl, one plate, one knife, one spoon and one fork for each of them. Anyone he worked with, and given the liberty of staying with them, knew the drill and brought their own. You eat off of it, you washed it, so that it would be clean for you, the next time you need it.

       Jessie unwrapped a stack of plates from their plain, brown paper padding and studied the design on them. 'Not something I would have picked out myself but..." He laughed at himself covering his mouth to keep quiet. 'Like I would actually pick out, and buy a set dishes. Though, I suppose it's not bad or too feminine for a couple of men to have. We don't want to give the people here the wrong impression about us." Back in the tower city, it was common for two single guys, who were not in a relationship, to live together to share rent, but he was unsure of how the people of this community would view it. 'We have our background set, best not to confusion things.' He tapped one of the plates with a fingernail and studied the sound. 'I will have to be extra careful with this stuff, ceramic is just not as durable as steel. I hope I will not have to use it much.'

       Having unpacked all the dishes and stacked them neatly on the counter, he studied the whole layout of the cabinets for which door the plates and bowls should go in. Jessie debating with himself the pros and cons of access and space of each cabinet available, never questioning where or how normal people would do this. Deciding on the one nearest to the sink, he opened the door to start to arrange the dishes inside. He was quite shocked. The space he was expecting to find completely empty, except for maybe some dust, as the house had been empty the two years, was in fact, occupied. In the center of the middle shelf, of the first cabinet door he opened in this house, he found a plain, tan folder stuffed neatly with many papers, swelling it to over 2 inches thick. The dust he expected was there, though in the cabinet the dust was less than the open flat spaces of the house, as to be expected, but on this folder was even less. It was minute difference, but he was trained to notice little differences, as they were normally traps. He knew right away it had been place here recently and dusted to look otherwise.

       Quickly, he checked the door for trip wires or a sensor plate before releasing his hand from it. He checked the rest of the cabinet and surrounding area, including the floor where he stood, for any other kind of traps or devices, being mindful of what he touched. Carefully he opened the rest of the doors, moving outward from the first methodically. Nothing! This troubled him more than if he had found something. 'Did I miss anything? I have a small scanner in my backpack, but I know we went through this place with the high level scanners and found nothing.' Now suspicious of his surrounding, he gingerly backed out of the kitchen to the living room. Grabbing his backpack off the couch with his left hand, he slid his right to the second side pouch from the left, going around several others items, and straight to the multi-scanner by memory, without ever taking his eyes off the dubious kitchen cabinets. He was meticulous and very precise about where everything went, not just in his back pack, but all aspects of his life, 'A place for everything and everything in its place,' as he would say.  Sliding the pack onto his back he apprehensively reentered the kitchen.

       Back at the cabinets with the scanner on, Jessie still found nothing. He spent more time than he normally would, as he continued to find nothing. No light, radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, lasers, absolutely nothing. 'There could be something under it!' He dug his hand into the backpack again, this time producing a plain, thin copper wire. He wrapped the ends around the tip of his middle finger of both hands. Reaching into the cabinet, he slide the wire carefully under the far side of the folder, and worked his way to the front with a side to side, sawing motion. He was very careful not to move the folder as he worked. His expert fingers felt nothing but the cabinet under the folder. 'I have found lots of these bombs before and personally set up many of them for others to find. And normally in these cases, curiosity is what kills the cat...literally.' Finally, he gave in and slid it out very gently and very slowly, all the while feeling for wires, threads, triggers, or tricks of any kind, until it rested only on his right hand. 'Easy as you can boy, there could still be a mercury switch inside.' Carefully and with skillfully practiced moves, he laid the folder on the counter, never tipping its weight in any direction.

       He looked up as he heard foot steps climbing the stairs. He waited until Jack came into view before he motioned for him to stop. Jack stood as still and quiet as he could, which was not very still, or very quiet. Taking the wire in hand again, Jessie checked between the folder and the first sheet. Still nothing. 'Why not?' He slowly opened the folder, fully expecting it to burst into flames, electrocute him, or anything malicious, until he saw the first page. "What the...?" actually escaped his lips. Written on the top, pristine, white paper in a faded, blue ink of some antiquated printer, was nothing but 1's and 0's. They did appear to have some semblance of a pattern, but there was nothing else. Just 1's and 0's.

       Jack approached, seeing from Jessie's reaction, that the danger had passed. "Wha' ya' got there, mate?" When he was tired, his accent tended to be more pronounced. Jessie was still to puzzled too admit he had no clue. Jack came up slightly to the side and behind Jessie, just in case. He was a good foot taller than Jessie and could easily see over his shoulder. "Binary?"

       "What?"

       "It's binary, a language use in computers ages ago." Jessie looked back and up at Jack confused. "It's a dead language now. Much better stuff was writt'n long ago." Jessie still stared at him lost. "When I was jus' a wee lad in school, ma' friends and I would pass notes back and forth usin' this, so even when the teacher would catch us, they didn't know wha' it said. Later, all the good hacker would sign their code wif it, cause it didn' mess with anything as it had not been used in...a few hundred years." Jessie almost laughed listening to Jack's accent coming and going. Only the seriousness of the situation kept him from it.

       "So, you can read this?" Jessie asked dumbfounded.

       "Yes an' no. I do understand binary, but is this code for an old program, or just class room notes?" Reaching past Jessie he, fliped through a few pages. "Interesting..." going a little farther "hmmm,  well there is two different codes or sets here. The top line repeats itself on a lot of these with 5-digit code, but the second and third line are running a sequence in 4-digit code, or counting. The third line in 4-digit code is counting also but starts over when the first line changes. Then the body of all of these are different and in 5-digit code. It's going to take me a few hours to decipher this out of binary."

       "Ok, it's in your field of expertise, so I will let you handle it. There appears to be no traps in the folder, so be careful when decoding it, if it is a computer code or program." Jessie closed to folder and handed it to Jack. 'A dead computer language that only a super computer geek would understand...it has to be from the old man. This would be the first answers he was talking about giving me. It scares me that he knows me so well that he is aware of who and what I have working for me,' he lamented.

       Jack looked at the folder nervously before taking it from him after that comment. "No problem, boss. I'll image it in a virtual shell world. That way, if it is a virus, I can see wha' it will try to do when it can't really do anything." Jack smiled confidently at Jessie.

       "Let me know what you find ASAP." Jack dashed off, happy to have something constructive to do. Jessie returned his attention back to the dishes. He again studied the space available and the contents needed to store in them and set about the task in a very methodical fashion. Deftly he pursued his task, as it was just camouflage to him, a piece of the background, it was needed, but would most likely never be used. Not long into his task he was interrupted by Jack screaming in excitement.

       "It's not computer code!" He exclaimed, rushing up the stairs from his lair with a tablet in hand. "The 4-digits code is numbers, it converts into a hexidecimal system and the 5-digit code is letters. Look here," he said, turning the tablet around some, so they both could view it. On the screen was the imaged copy of the papers. Blue glowing three dimensional letters over a black space-like background. Jack pointed at the screen flipping the pages as he spoke, "both use full combinations of the code, or all possible combinations, for 48 characters. 16 numbers and 32 letters. " Jessie looked at him, a bit confused. "OK, it's a 16 bit countin' system like 0 through 9, then a, b, c, d, e, f, then 10, 11, 12, to 19, 1a, 1b, 1c, get it?"

       "I am fairly well educated. I know what hexidecimal means. I knew what binary meant also, I just had never seen or heard of it being used before, and now the use of binary for hexidecimal. Seems very labored is all. So what do the letters say or do? They still seem to be just 1,s and 0's here."

       "Well, that's the real issue here. I have determined it's not a program or code lines at all. It says something, but I have used every language known, and rolling nothin' but snake eyes here. Who uses or used 16 numbers and 32 letters in their language?" Jack shrugged.

       "Kandar!" Jessie exclaimed.

       "I tried Kandar, but it has 10 numbers and 36 letters, so it don't work, nice try, add your' characters better next time." Jack smirked at Jessie

       A slow smile crept across Jessie's face. "Ancient Kandar. 16 numbers as most animals have 4 toes and 4 paws and 32 letters for the 32 families of the Kandar."

       "Well, Ancient Kandar is not in any data base anywhere, being another 'dead language,'" he snarked making quot marks in the air. "Not to mention the fact that only Kandar scholars can read any of it, and even they argue about the letters."

       The smile grew on Jessie's face. "Not that dead," he counted on his fingers aloud, "Bot, Vuu, Tol, Vex, Fin, Kul, Hel, Tra, Doe, Nee, Kay, San, Vut, Coe, Pre, Mon. Oh and there are no 0's in that. Ancient Kandar starts at one. Zero would be 'Kensay' which means 'to be without.' You cannot count that which is not there." Jessie smiled, happy with himself.

       "Great, so you were not just throwing credits away playing Jabjar and Podunk with Murine under New Cannon. You managed to learn the numbers of Ancient Kandar, of course I did not know that before now, I suppose I was not on the Need-to-know list or something, but thats not the problem here. Its child's play going from binary to hexidecimal to decimal without having to know Ancient Kandar. The real question is do you know the actual language?"

       "Yes, I can read and speak Ancient Kandar as well. My mother was teaching me a little, then while captive of the Sewer Rats I got much better at it. Their upper echelon use it like code to keep others from ease dropping on their conversations, either you are in the 'know' or you are not privy to the conversation. While they spoke to each other and read documents, they paid no attention to a half dead piece of Human meat hanging on a wall. It kept my mind going when I didn't think I would be getting out of there." Jack was at a loss for words. He knew of Jessie's imprisonment, and what he went through at the hands of the Sewer Rats of New Cannon, but not that he had picked up or refined an extra language while he was there.

       Perceiving Jack's befuddlement Jessie offered an explanation. "I'm a natural linguist, if you remember." Memories of a couple missions Jessie was on, that Jack was monitoring, came to mind where that skill came in handy. With Jack using a translator program to start, Jessie picked up the rest pretty quickly, or at least faked his way through convincingly enough to not get caught. "I'll write it out for you. You can image it and translate then?" Jack nodded an approval as he began to work on this tablet. "Of course, I didn't know there was a debate about any letters, so what you will have is what the Sewer Rats and Warf Rats used." Jessie looked up at the ceiling for a moment recalling the teaching of his mother, "I can't tell you if there is any difference to what my mother taught me. She was only teaching me the spoken word. I didn't think about the fact that she never actually wrote out any of it, until now." In his mind he began to ponder the reasons why she never did, Jack however, was as quick as a wink on the computer.

       "If you can write out the letters on this," handing Jessie the tablet and a stylus "and this code is just in alphabetical order with the number sequence, I can translate it from Binary to Ancient Kandar right here. However, since it will not be in common tongue, it will fall to you again, to translate." Jack was again amazed at Jessie. They had been working together for five years and still Jessie pulled out unique skills and unknown knowledge all the time, but then, he was never what you could call an open person.

       Jessie took surprisingly little time to write out the old alphabet. In turn, Jack quickly arranged a translation. Both were now eager to know what this was all about. The tablet was now  back in Jessie's hands as the blue 1's and 0's turned to letters of the Ancient Kandar alphabet in Jessie's own handwriting. "Hmmmm...I am surprised and a little nervous that it worked. On the very first page we have...Black, Silver Number 1, number 1, badger year twelfth moon, day of the mouse. I know that is not our calendar, but that's how this reads. Actual names are a little harder, but I am sure this says...Johnath Harris Richter...." Jack could tell he was shaken at this, Jessie quickly flipped the page. Black, Sliver, Number 2, Number 2, Badger year twelfth moon day of the dog, Carl Moss Hoosier." Jessie started flipping through them "Bob, Jean, Dog, Lara, Hawkeye."

       "You know these people?" Jack was now studying Jessie instead of the tablet.

       "Knew them, some personally...and killed them...in this order...on these dates...this is... my kill list." Nervously, Jessie looked around, his right hand grabbing for a gun at his side that was not there. "What in the nine hells kinda answers are these, you old bastard!"

       "Ummm, Jessie?" Jack more than shaken by Jessie reaction to this and to what this was. "Jessie!" Jessie meets his gaze eyes wild. "Come now, mate, theres 2417 entries in this...ledger? Journal? You can't have killed that many people, can you? Your hit list only shows 385, and thats a lot, right? Mate?" his voice trailed off, as if, afraid of the answer Jessie was going to give.

       "Well, I suppose, if you count infantry, guards, officers, agents, and thugs, and..." clearly Jessie was bothered by the amount as well. "Yeah, I guess, it could be that high. I never kept up with them but, someone has...apparently."

       "Jessie. A few very important questions here, mate. One, you're not calling me an old bastard, are you?" Jessie shook his head emphatically. "So, that's the old Kandar out in the desert you met?" Jessie nodded as he calmed down more not sensing a trap, he began getting mad at this game the old man is playing. "Two, what do the colors mean?"

       Jessie paused, studied the question a moment, then shrugged. "That's a great question you have..." He stopped mid sentence, shaking his head in disbelief. The words of the old Breema haunted his memory again 'I know better what you are, than you do.' "I suppose we are going to have to go through who most everyone of these people are, to know what the colors mean. And I bet they have a lot to do with these answer he has given us, but not right now. I need some rest." Jessie moved to the living room and laid down on an unfamiliar couch, eyes wide open as he stared at the ceiling.

       Jack took the tablet and nodded to Jessie. Even knowing this was just Jessie's way of shutting off unwanted emotions, he was unsure of what to say. He retreated to the basement again. 'Poor bloke,' he thought as he descended the stairs.

       'How can he know all of this about me? I doubt the Cross knows this much, and I was their boy for 18 years.' Perplexed, his mind was spinning with the possibilities. "And, if the answers are the Breema across the street, and who I have killed...what could the questions possible be? I am pretty sure that I cannot beat him, even one on one, so... And whats with that white Feline, Tessie? Why can I not get her out of my mind?'
Jessie finds the beginning of the answer, sent by the mysterious Breema in the desert, to the questions he must ask.

the Beginning darkmoonwolf70.deviantart.com/…

last episode darkmoonwolf70.deviantart.com/…

the next episode darkmoonwolf70.deviantart.com/…

special thanks to chikara-redwing.deviantart.com… for the help with the beta read, thank you for being so patient with me.I am getting better, just wait until you get to where I have been writing after we started this work, you will see.  

edited for spelling and grammar spaces added between the paragraphs for easy of reading. drop me a line ad let me know what you think. good bad or indifferent, just no hate mail.
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