maskormenace | ALIGN 01 ☰ VIDEO

[ Kid hasn't had cause to make a network post yet, and given the importance he's placed on this one, he looks even more serious than usual, the expression at apparent odds with his age. He's using the mirrored network as instructed for this message to prevent it from being monitored, though his ID is attached unfiltered. ]

Earlier this month, several of the Young Avengers went to Brycha, Michigan, to investigate strange goings-on there, and also to find information on the Hornets. At an abandoned warehouse on the industrial waterfront, a laptop was discovered. The laptop has been wiped clean, both of data and identification information, and of physical traces like fingerprints.

There are currently people working on this to see if anything might be recoverable, but at present, the only thing we have is the following message on paper which was left with the laptop, which I've reproduced here precisely:

A rich vex, lo!
A Canonical Testing Mirth.
A lore hunk.Some things of interesting note: the particular capitalization in the middle line, which isn't mirrored on the other two lines. "Canonical" could refer to either its religious meaning or the encompassing of any literary body of works as genuine. I haven't had any luck in identifying if this is supposed to be a formal style of line and syllable length, although it could be a variant of haiku called ku-matagari, or segment straddling, which is a contemporary style.

[ Someone is a fountain of useless trivia... ]

We haven't had any luck yet deciphering its intended meaning, so any speculation or conjecture might prove useful and would be welcome.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

anagram?

Really, out of everything, it's the capitalization that looks most important to me. Why capitalize 'Canonical Testing Mirth' but not 'lore hunk,' 'rich vex,' or anything like that?

It's certainly possible, though the capitalization and punctuation are then peculiar.

That was my thought as well. If you take those capital letters singularly, you have C M T. If you add the additional two A, you have 120 combinations, assuming no repetition.

Not to mention, there's a whole secondary aspect if you treat the letters as numbers, where A could equal 1 or 01, C could equal 3 or 03, and so on.

[ He's been spending some time on this already... ]

That's just assuming that those letters are those letters. It could be a code, where it's B, D, N, U or something like that.

True, although it is an exceptionally convenient cipher if that's the case, to make full words, even if they don't appear to make much sense at first glance.

I'm no Enigma Machine, I don't know that much about how ciphers work. [ said with a nonchalant S H R U G. ] Anyway, if it is that much a convenient ciper, perhaps whoever this was intended for was slightly dim?

Edited (wow totally forgot clarification) 2015-01-25 16:34 (UTC)

[ He presses a finger against his lips, pensive. ]

The capitalization is odd... they could represent the beginning of a sentence or be misleading.

Edited 2015-01-24 11:56 (UTC)

I don't want to steer anyone anywhere, but they did leave a note about ... finding them. If we could.

It could be linked, it could also not.

Interesting. What else was on that note?

Nothing else. Just the two notes were left.

That's odd. If there ware just two notes there, then it's possible they were planted.

Why would someone come in and plant a note with a cipher?

[ dryly: ] I believe we were the intended party, Mr Gray.

Indeed. I've tried rearranging the words using those capitalized words as leads, but I haven't had much luck with that. I'm hoping that someone might see a pattern.

I don't know, why would someone leave behind a wiped laptop?

To rub it in our face that they were prepared for us.

[ an annoyed siiiigh before, ] I really hate all this John Le Carre leaving behind untraced messages bullshit.

I'll grant you that. But if they were prepared for us, why leave behind a message that obviously means something, knowing full well that people will try and decode it? Why not simply leave behind a piece of paper saying 'sucks to be you'?

[ Kid's kind of amused at one literary referencing another, but he think that's probably bad manners to point out. Instead, he merely nods his agreement. ]

I do have to agree with Kate, however. I believe the messages left indicate a desire to be traced, rather than mocking an inability to do so.

Nothing is coming to mind right now. Though... it's odd anything was left at all for you to find.

Because they weren't trying to kill us in Maine.

They were trying to capture us.

I believe that it was invitation.

[ his genre isn't spy fiction, Kid! ]

I hope you're right. I'd much rather like the former, at least.

So it's potentially a trap.

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ALIGN 01 ☰ VIDEO | MIRROR NETWORK

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