Free The Chimera Vector by Nathan M Farrugia

service,’ Denton said.
    ‘Yes, Colonel.’ Novak left the room.
    Denton turned back to the window. Damien and Jay were lying peacefully on their operating tables, their reprogramming in its final stages.
    Denton inhaled sharply. ‘I have plans for you two.’ Leaving them to rest, he headed for the Blue Gene lab.
    Glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, hands resting above the keyboard, Dr. Benito Montoya worked the front-end node of the facility’s supercomputer. As Denton entered the Blue Gene lab, he could see jeans under Benito’s lab coat. Probably accompanied by a shirt that hadn’t been ironed for a year. The cryptanalyst looked a bit worse for wear today, his iced-coffee complexion shadowed by dark circles under his pale green eyes.
    ‘I want good news, Benito.’
    Denton’s words echoed through the vacant lab, making Benito jump. He turned to face him, ash brown hair still damp from his morning laps at the facility gym. At least he was exercising.
    ‘Yes, Colonel,’ Benito said. ‘We have more information on the encrypted data.’
    ‘Can you break it?’
    ‘It’s over 40,000 characters long. I hate to say it, but even if we send it to our quantum computer in Denver, it would take somewhere between five and twenty years to breach it.’
    ‘In five years, breaching encrypted data will be the least of your concerns,’ Denton said. ‘It would be quicker to find the Chimera pseudogenes from scratch.’
    Benito’s hands fidgeted beside the keyboard. ‘That’s a very small needle in a very large haystack.’
    Denton folded his arms. ‘Define small.’
    ‘OK, well . . . the code contains the chromosomal locations for the Chimera pseudogenes; that’s spread over more than a dozen chromosomes. Each pseudogene is no fewer than 10,000 base pairs long.’ Benito’s gaze dropped to Denton’s shoes and he shook his head. ‘I don’t think Doctor McLoughlin was looking for the Chimera pseudogenes on purpose. It’s more likely she found them by accident.’
    Denton unfolded his arms. ‘I need the encryption breached; there’s no other option. Have you tried her login password? It’s NephalimGene94 .’
    ‘I doubt she’d use a password we can gain access to. And besides, I can’t try anything. The encryption has a destruction mechanism in place. If we get it wrong the first time, it destroys the Chimera vector code. There’s no second chance.’
    He matched Denton’s gaze, a little too confidently for Denton’s liking.
    ‘Colonel, the reason I called you here is that Doctor McLoughlin seems to have used a very strange encryption. The key is 40,713 characters long.’
    Denton arched an eyebrow. ‘And that’s strange because?’
    ‘Because the standard key length closest to that is 40,960. It doesn’t make sense why she used such an unusually specific key length.’
    ‘Divide 40,713 by three,’ Denton said.
    Benito appeared confused, but did as ordered. The answer was 13,571.
    Denton didn’t take his eyes off the screen. ‘Do you know what this is?’
    From the corner of his vision, he saw Benito shake his head.
    ‘Genetic code comes in sets of three, correct?’ Denton said.
    ‘Correct. The three-letter code is used to encode an amino acid.’
    ‘McLoughlin was a computer geneticist,’ Denton said. ‘The key length is divisible by three. Genetic code is divisible by three. The encryption key is genetic code.’
    Benito nodded his head slowly. ‘You could be right.’
    ‘Of course I’m right. Run a search,’ Denton snapped. ‘Find any catalogued pseudogene clusters containing 13,571 nucleotides.’
    He looked over Benito’s shoulder, arms folded, watching as the cryptoanalyst queried the pseudogene database.
    bmontoya@DesBlueGene:~$ sqlplus
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