Free Here & There by Joshua V. Scher Page A

the owner likes me, and managed, as a favor, to secure that pretty pink one for you. I would’ve gotten you a matching pink eye-patch, but they were on back order.”
“That’s just a little neurological trick. By selectively presenting information to the left eye, which is connected to the right hemisphere, I’m hopefully tickling the anterior superior temporal gyrus, the part of the brain responsible for insight.”
“Forced right brain thinking
?
! I guess the one-eyed man is also king in the land of the lab.”
Reinier put the mirror down on top of the pile of wrapping paper on the table and then leaned back and stared at her.
Elle had long been inoculated against the gazes of men. They were as commonplace to her as a handshake or a sneeze. Still, in this moment she felt her cheeks warm as blood rushed into them. Something about the way he looked at her. It wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t ogling. There was no agenda behind his eyes. They were devoid of bias or preconception. He just seemed open and observant and curious. He was present to her. She met his gaze.
“What if I wanted to tell you a secret
?
” he asked.
Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She had not expected this question.
“Here,” he said, tearing off a piece of wrapping paper. “Pick a number, write it down, and don’t tell anybody what it is.”
She took the paper from him without realizing, still more confused than anything. He dug two pens out of the inside pocket of his tweed sport coat, handing one to her.
“I’ll do the same,” he said as he wrote down seventeen. He frowned at his choice. Scratched it out and wrote seven. “For ease’s sake, you might want to pick a reasonably small number that’s not zero or one. Those numbers tend to misbehave in calculations.”
The word calculations seemed to snap her out of her daze. She smiled, looked at her piece of paper, and wrote down four.
He smiled at her. “Ok, so you and I each have our private numbers. Nobody but you knows yours, and nobody but me knows mine. Now suppose we’re sitting next to a man who’s had a littletoo much to drink and in his inebriation shouts out Sophie-Germain primes—”
“What’re those
?
Remember I’m the Centre’s face, you’re the brains.”
“It’s just a prime number that is both prime itself as is the number you get when you multiply it by two and add one. So, eleven is a Sophie-Germain prime.”
“Because eleven is prime as is two times eleven plus one.”
“Precisely. Not just face after all.” He smiled.
She looked down at her paper.
“Ok so our inebriated friend hiccups out eleven and,” he shrugged, “three. Everybody in the bar hears him say those two numbers.” To emphasize the point, Reinier yelled to Naelle, “Eleven and three!”
“Eleven and three what
?
” Naelle challenged.
“Just that, eleven and three.”
“I’m making the mojito. Timing me only makes me go slower,” she says, while muddling the mint in the glass.
Reinier turned back to Elle. “So now we do a little math. It’s called mod, but don’t worry about that. Let’s take our public three. Raise to the exponent of your private number.”
This took her a moment. Three to the fourth equals, three times three is nine, times three is twenty-seven, times three, eighty-one. “Got it.”
“Ok now figure out the remainder when you divide that number by our other public number
?
”
Eighty-one, closest multiple of eleven is seventy-seven. “Got it,” she says.
“I got mine too. Ok, now tell me the answer you got, and I’ll tell you mine. Wait.” Naelle comes over with Elle’s mojito. As she rests it on the coffee table, Reinier asks her, “Naelle, just listen to this a moment. Ok Elle, tell me.”
“Four.”
“Good. Mine’s nine. Did you get all that, Naelle
?
”
“Course I did. You’re all spoutin’ random numbers. Eleven, three, four, and nine. Don’t you be testing Mama Naelle’s memory. It’s a-sharper than a moray eel’s