The Novida Code Read Online Free PDF Page A

complicated. We could be certain that our rooms were bugged. From now on, it would be far harder for Auxana and me to keep each other updated and compare notes.
    I decided to discuss the matter in the only relatively safe place that remained to us: my apartment. I had deliberately omitted to notify the town hall of my change of address when I left my family home. My ID card therefore still showed the address of my dear stepfather.
    This harmless little act of rebellion proved very useful right now, for Olden had probably made use of the time we spent visiting the HQ to search our respective apartments. As it happened, I'd arranged my apartment to reflect the image I wanted to project of myself, but it would take them a little while to find my new address, which, of course, Léon didn't know.
    We could safely assume that – for that evening at least – we'd be safe from enemy eavesdroppers. I therefore suggested to Auxana that we move our things that evening, and we duly set off from the HQ for my place.
    In my apartment, I immediately went into the living room and placed a classical-music crystal in the player, adjusted the volume and got down to business:
“Well, your thoughts so far?”
“Why did you agree to live with them? It's too risky!”
“I know.”
“How are we ever going to manage to talk to each other? Those bedrooms are bound to be under holo-surveillance.”
    “ I had no choice; you could tell that Olden was testing us.”
“I thought as much.” Auxana sighed.
    She looked so terrified. Although I knew full well what her answer would be, I asked: “Do you want to pull out?”
    She merely glared at me by way of reply, then repeated: “How can we communicate with each other?”
    My gaze was suddenly drawn to the music crystal revolving slowly in the orange-coloured light beam on the living-room table, sending flickers of light all around the room.
    I got up and went to look for some blank crystals. I'd hung on to a few, although that could have branded me as a log pirate if ever they were discovered. But they had cost me a small fortune, and, after all, certain much-respected individuals pirated logs. It had even become trendy in posh schools.
    “ I think I have the answer,” I replied to Auxana, holding out one of those crystals.
“What are you going to do with a blank crystal?”
“Look at them a bit more closely. These crystals will store and release information as many times as you want when they're played through a beam. But with just a minor modification, they can be made to give out the information just once and then destroy it.”
“OK, but that's of no use to us if they need to be passed through a beam player”, replied Auxana. “Even if the player is modified so we're the only ones who can listen to it, the message is still traceable.”
“Not if it's us who're the beam player.”
“I don't understand”.
“That's because you're not a log pirate. Crystals weren't initially intended for use in a beam player. They were supposed to work by direct contact and pass information to the brain. It was only later that they were modified to stop them responding to human contact.”
“So, why use players?”
“Some people said that, in the long run, such usage was damaging to the human brain, although no scientific study has ever corroborated this. I don't know why the use of players became compulsory. Perhaps the suppliers paid a backhander, or maybe the Government banned a mode of transferring information that was completely beyond their control. As you say, beam players can be traced but brains can't.”
“So, you modify blank crystals so they work on contact and then use them for passing messages.”
“Single-use messages, which are destroyed as soon as they've been read.”
“OK, but how do we record onto the crystals?”
“That's the tricky part. If you place a crystal in a player, what happens?”
“The player reads it.”
“Yes. But if the crystal is a blank,