driftfleet | video + text + action

Entry tags:

video + text + action

Who: Agent Carter + YOU
Broadcast: Fleetwide.
Action: Aboard the Starstruck or the Iskaulit.
When: Today!

[ not too long ago, peggy pitched the fleet a diversionary puzzle. with all this talk of encryption and subterfuge, she's reminded how the puzzles were meant to be part of a series (of sorts) and so she gets out her notepad and pencils. after a few scrapped ideas (too long or too advanced or too dull), she settles on a code that's only a half-step up from her last one. ]

Last time we talked ciphers, we did a simple substitution. [ peggy addresses the network directly, and with little else in the way of a greeting. ] This time 'round, I've got something only a teensy bit tougher. Frankly, it can be just as handily brute forced as the other one -- but I'm more interested to know if anyone can figure out the math behind this one. Brute force only brings you so far in this hobby and I'm already working on something for next month that will require a lighter touch.

Extra credit, as ever, to those who can identify the source. Or express the cipher in modular arithmetic. And apologies for those in the Fleet who cannot speak English. Despite our augments, code seems to defy translation.

FA UYBDAHQ UE FA OTMZSQ, EA FA NQ BQDRQOF UE FA TMHQ OTMZSQP ARFQZ.

[ she'll field questions and answers for a little while from aboard the starstruck, but then it's off to the iskaulit where she passes an hour in the library -- in search of new source material, perhaps. for those players whose characters should be able to decode it but who don't want to try decoding it themselves, here is the quotation. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sometimes, puzzles are a means to an end. [ explanation unneeded, of course, but she appreciates that he tries to give her one. to show her gratitude, she decides not to make a fuss about it. ] Having people solve puzzles was one of the ways my first employers would handle recruitment.

I'd have never gotten a job, then.

[He rolls his eyes.]

I hate puzzles.

Prefer to just flip them off the table... Old man loved the challenge, though. Think we had a closet with nothing but jigsaw puzzles...

[He's not really sure where it comes from. Normal memories, anyway. Being in the fleet has really done a number on him. But then, talking about what few memories of his dad he has is far, far easier than trying to remember his life as a husband and a father, himself.]

Edited 2017-03-02 20:53 (UTC)

[ she's about to clarify that she hadn't meant those sorts of puzzles -- but out tumbles his unexpected revelation, and peggy realizes she wouldn't want to reroute it. ]

Don't tell me you'd flip his puzzles. Cheeky bastard.

[Puzzles are puzzles are puzzles, Peggy. If they make him think too hard, he's gonna flip 'em, metaphorically or not.]

Mm. I was kind of a bastard. Liked to jump off high things 'n accidentally break lamps.

Drove him nuts.

[ -- peggy's laugh is easy. quiet, but replete with melody. while any laughter is rare from max, it's this particular laughter that's heard less often from peggy. ]

Funnily enough, it's not so difficult to imagine.

[He wrinkles his nose.]

What, y'think I've always been a road-thirsty little barbarian?

[a pause, as he tests the title in his head]

... S'accurate enough.

Your words, Max. Not mine.

Hnn. Maybe I've been talking too much. [He doesn't seem wholly bothered by it, though. Maybe later, when he can't sleep and he just stares at the cargo bay roof through the shuttle window.] ... You were probably a little monster, too.

My mother certainly thought so. [ even now, she can hear the sharply said margaret elizabeth carter! shouted, exasperated, over the back garden. ]

Aahh. Probably could have used one of those.

[He quirks his brow. His father had to be a bit of both...

And, well. His father wasn't much of a mother.]

You give people split lips then, too?

Edited 2017-03-03 21:24 (UTC)

[ she doesn't press him with questions -- not about his mother. some subjects are best left to other moments. other conversations.

instead, she tackles his question. ] My brother's, mostly. Until I went away for school.

[Hmm, he's never had a brother, either. No siblings. Just mostly him and his father, and the occasional aunt or uncle who sometimes vanished — and Max, too young to understand why they were suddenly just out of their lives, sometimes. It would have been interesting though, for sure. Lot of energy in too small a space.]

Nice to see it didn't change much.

Good God, are you comparing yourself to our Michael? [ a shake of her head. there's laughter hiding behind her eyes. ] Sorry to say, he was much funnier.

[He blinks, and actually looks a bit off guard.]

Ahh — didn't... mean it like that. M'not.

[He motions with a hand, as if grasping for time to think of a better sentence.]

I just meant... hitting people in general.

[Max almost treats it as a sin, as a crime, to compare anyone to something as sacred as family.]

[ she reaches out and steadies him with a hand on his arm -- the usual grip; the usual pressure. by now, this very gesture must have grown familiar. peggy uses it instead of words when she knows words aren't what he needs. ]

Well, I'll cop to that.

[ hitting people. in general. ]

[He relaxes at the touch, just a fraction.

Still doesn't reciprocate, but it's hard for him to even summon the willpower to be like that. He doesn't know how people do it; just giving Maggie his sincerest behavior had left him exhausted.

Her hand is softly over the jacket, and beneath it, the shape of a handprint burned into his flesh. Hardly feels the touch, but it's nice. Perhaps he's touch starved, too bitey to let people help him adjust and feel like a human being who needs that sort of thing. Work in progress.]

... Besides, I'm not much of a brother...

Pretty sure people would think I'm the weird uncle.

[ she touches him only so long as is necessary to help him put aside the strangeness of this conversation, and the things that don't quite get said. peggy's hand doesn't outstay its welcome. ]

Weird uncles do things like collect the keys off potted meat cans and watch birds. You're something else entirely.

I like to watch birds.

You like to watch birds because there are no moving pictures in the wasteland. Yes? No chorus girls and no art museums. Unless I'm mistaken, Max, and you've got a well-annotated field guide in your pocket and I've misjudged you entirely.

Guess so.

... I watch them because I get hungry.

[He makes a gun with a hand, cocks it. Pow, pow.

Dead bird, hello dinner.]

Field guide sounds pretty nice, though.

[ he makes her laugh. bright and sincere -- because nothing's funnier than dead birds. right? ]

They're meant for bird-watching. Not bird-hunting.

[Totally funny, man.

He smiles, just a little, hands in his pockets as he shrugs.]

Sounds like the same thing to me.

[The quip almost makes him the Max Rockatansky sitting in the kitchen months before, young and shaven and without a limp. Little ghosts of it.]

... Might try to find a bird catalogue now, though. Your fault.

Don't you dare blame me for whatever weird little habits you pick up, Max. [ vehement, but affable. in truth, she loves it. ]

You're right, wouldn't want a lecture.

[:)]

Or be forced to solve codes. Don't know which would turn me rabid faster.

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