The Cipher by John C. Ford Page A

Melanie out of her runaway thoughts.
    This was pretty ghoulish, what she was doing.
    She printed out the email to Alice, shut off her computer, and hopped under her comforter. It was pointless to even pretend she could give this thing up—not now, not with her dad mixed up in it, too. But she resolved not to think of the affair angle, or make any other premature judgments, until she got some better information. If she was lucky, Andrei worked at Alyce Systems. It seemed possible, anyway, given the subject line. Melanie did her for-credit internship every Friday at the Alyce headquarters (with Bug Eyes, Jenna Brooke). They worked in the HR department, so tomorrow Melanie could search for employees named Andrei.
    Melanie stared up at the ceiling with a crazy energy racing in her head.
    There was something significant in that letter, she was sure. Something important to Smiles, to her dad, and maybe even to herself. The trauma of the night was fading already, replaced with a determination to discover what the letter was all about.
    It was like a test, and Melanie was excellent at tests.



“If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann Hypothesis been proven?”
    â€”David Hilbert, 1900
    FRIDAY
    â€œAs humans we must dream, and when we dream, we dream of money.”
    â€”
David Mamet,
The Spanish Prisoner

23
    IT WAS SIX fifteen a.m. and someone was pounding on Smiles’s door.
    Not cool.
    He hugged his comforter tight and buried his head in his pillow. Usually someone knocking at his door with this kind of brute force meant yet another noise complaint from the semi-hot chicks in the apartment below, who had turned out to be disappointingly anal about such things. But he hadn’t left the stereo on last night or anything, so he spent the next ten minutes hoping they’d just go away.
    They didn’t, and at 6:25 in the morning—
6:25 in the morning
—Sir Knock-a-Lot was still going at it. Smiles wrapped the sheet around himself and stumbled to the door.
    Ben.
    â€œWhat the hell, dude?”
    â€œC’mon, we need to beat rush hour,” Ben panted.
    He was wearing a polo the color of leftover salmon. With pleated khakis and gray docksiders. Did nerds actually
try
to wear the lamest possible clothes? Was it some kind of elaborate in-joke they had been playing on society for decades?
    â€œI told you we needed to leave early,” Ben said.
    â€œEarly means before noon,” Smiles said, but Ben obviously had no concern for such norms of etiquette. “Give me five minutes,” he groaned, since he was up anyway. “And no kidding, dude. For your own good? Change those pants.”

    When they got past Framingham, Smiles let it loose.
    The Infiniti hit eighty, then eighty-five, then ninety. Cruising speed.
    After rousting Smiles with the big scene back at the apartment, Ben was sound asleep in the passenger seat. Smiles had nothing to do but sit there and think about the phone call with Alice, his birth mother.
    It’s better left alone
.
    It’s better left alone
, she kept saying.
    It’s better left alone. I’m getting on a plane. I’ll have to end this call now.
Click.
    He cranked the stereo to get the call out of his head, tapping out a Green Day song on the steering wheel and watching with some relief when Ben finally shifted upright.
    â€œSo, what do you want to play at the casino?” Smiles said before Ben could nod off again. He needed some convo to get him through this drive.
    â€œI can’t gamble,” Ben mumbled, half-asleep. “I’d get too nervous.”
    Smiles shook his head. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s all about numbers, and you’re a wiz with numbers. You could tear it up at blackjack.
Rain Man
style.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œForget it,” Smiles said. Ben was already going for some book in his army backpack. He was so