Authors: Matilde Asensi
The program gave no clue about the length and type of password required, so I restarted Windows in error test mode to see if, by doing so, I could skip the damned request. My surprise grew upon discovering that not even with this trick or other similar ones—through the BIOS—could I bridge the barrier, and that since I couldn’t, the door was going to remain closed until I was better armed to open it. There existed a million ways to break that ridiculous security measure, but to do so, I had to take the laptop home and apply a few basic tools to it; so, to avoid going to so much trouble, I decided to try first using logic, since I had the absolute conviction that it was going to be very easy for me to figure out the password. My brother was not a hacker and did not have the need to give himself extreme protection. I was sure that he had acquired that software from some computer magazine or from some work colleague which assured me right from the start that I could break the encryption in a flash.
“Ona!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, turning my head slightly. I immediately heard a happy squeak from my nephew who must have been suffering at having to stay away from the office. His footsteps, quickly drawing close in the hallway, alerted me to danger. “Ona!”
“Come here, Dani!” said the voice of my sister-in-law who had followed behind my nephew to intercept his advance. “What is it, Arnau?”
“Do you know the password to Daniel’s computer?”
“The password?” she asked, surprised, appearing in the doorway with Dani in her arms, who struggled to get loose and get to the floor. “I didn’t know he had put a password on it.”
I arched my eyebrows and looked again at the orange screen. “And what do you think it could be?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea, really. Keep still, Dani, please…! I imagine that he didn’t want anyone from the department to pry into his work while he was giving a class.” She
held down her son’s two hands, since he was pulling her hair in order to gain freedom, and she moved away toward the living room. “But I don’t think it will be an insurmountable obstacle for you, right?”
It shouldn’t be. Statistically, almost seventy percent of the passwords that people used were alphabetical, which is to say, made up of only letters, and were generally proper nouns, names of people or places or objects. The length of the alphabetical password was usually no longer than eight characters, almost always being between six and eight, and it was rare for people to use capital letters. So, if you were somewhat familiar with the person whose password you wanted to find out, sooner or later you’d end up running into the solution by trying the names of his family members, of his interests, of his place of birth or residence, etc. Nevertheless, after trying unsuccessfully several times, I discovered that Daniel seemed not to be included in this unwary seventy percent: None of the words that I used worked, and that was taking into account that I thought I knew him well enough not to leave anything important untried.
I decided to try with the basic rules of numerical passwords. Almost one hundred percent of them had invariably six digits, and not because people liked numbers of this length, but because they used the dates of the birthdays most significant to them. I tried Daniel’s, Ona’s, our mother’s, Clifford’s, Dani’s…and, finally, desperately, I went through the silliest passwords that are so frequently found on the net: “123456,” “111111,” and other such simple sequences. But they didn’t work either. There was nothing left for me to do but to take the laptop home and entertain a new feeling of respect for my brother who I had up until that moment considered a clumsy and unimaginative computer user.
Nevertheless, I began to suspect how wrong I had been when, already in my study at home, I discovered that none of the attacks waged with the potent password cracking programs had the least effect. My dictionaries of passwords were as complete as they could be and the programs used brute force in combination with an incomparable calculating power, but that small application kept refusing to provide me with the key to access the computer. I was really confused, and I could only manage to think that Daniel had used a really long word in Aymara, which would make its identification almost impossible. After a couple of hours, there was not much left to do but go through it, decoding it incrementally, based on random combinations of letters or numbers or of letters and numbers together, but if I didn't want to dedicate the rest of my life to it, I would have to put all of the computers of Ker-Central to work at once and cross my fingers that the process would not prolong itself indefinitely. The problem was that many of the company’s machines kept processing tasks during the night, so I programmed the system from home so that it would only use the available computers and the dead time of the active ones.
That Saturday morning, while I drove toward the university, I still hadn’t obtained the password, but it couldn’t take much longer, and with that hope I headed to my appointment with the professor as I enjoyed the sun, the light, and the feeling of normality that the road and my car returned to me. I had left my hair, which already fell past my shoulders, loose, and I had put on one of my new suits, the beige one with a Tunisian collar, and leather shoes. If that woman was as hard as Ona said, my appearance should be that of a serious and respectable businessman.
The Autonomous University was a place I liked a great deal. Whenever I arrived there for some meeting with the Artificial Intelligence Research Group people, I felt I had found myself in some kind of great city, modern and cozy, with professors and students wandering around its sidewalks and gardens, and spreading out with their books on the grass, seeking the shade of the
trees. In winter, frost or snow covered the green areas in the morning until the midday sun left the land bright and waterlogged; but in spring, numerous groups could be seen holding classes outside, under the sun’s rays. The only thing that did not appeal to me about that place was a certain kind of building, like those found in the oldest faculties, which had been constructed following the sad architectural style of the seventies, by such lovers of ugly eyesores made of cement, aluminum, and glass that they left the tube-veins of their structures exposed.
I rejected those thoughts with a shake of my head and decided to ask around so I wouldn’t have to wander from one side of the campus to the other all day, although, as was bound to happen, I ended up getting lost, since the abundant signs on the Bellaterra campus, rather than orienting, led astray. It was a good thing I had time to spare, because on one occasion I found myself leaving campus in the direction of Sabadell, and on another, toward Cerdanyola. At last I found the underground parking garage and could leave the car, beginning an agreeable walk, briefcase in hand, toward the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, where the Department of Social Anthropology and Prehistory in which my brother and Marta Torrent both worked.
Unfortunately, that faculty was one of the old ones, so I found myself passing through long grayish halls (covered in various posters and graffiti) in search of some caretaker who could lend me a hand. I was unsuccessful, perhaps because it was Saturday, but I stumbled onto a group of students who were coming out of an exam, and they showed me how to get through that labyrinth. I went up stairs, twisted through halls, passed through where I had already been, and, finally, in the B building, I found myself in front of a door just as insignificant as the others on which a plaque announced that by way of a difficult navigation without a compass, I had managed to arrive at the right port. I took my left hand out of my pocket and knocked softly on the wood. Behind it I could hear voices and noises, so indifference was not the response I expected, but that was exactly what I got in exchange for my knock. The second try convinced me that there was nothing to be done; no one was going to open the door for me, so I had two options. I could simply open it or I could resume my knocking with much more energy. And that’s what I did. Without wasting any time, I knocked with so much force that behind the door the silence became automatically deeper and some light steps came to receive me. When the door was open, I saw four or five people who, completely motionless, watched me expectantly.
“Yes?” was the only greeting I was extended by the skinny girl with short black hair who had opened the door for me. She and the other women present examined me from head to toe, while small smiles appeared in their eyes, but didn’t reach their lips. Although I was already used to seeing that reaction in almost all women who were neither friends nor family that didn’t keep me from liking it whenever it I saw it. Humility is not negating one’s good qualities—that’s hypocrisy—but recognizing and accepting them.
“I’m looking for Marta Torrent.”
“Dr. Torrent?” repeated the girl, adding the academic title, in case I had forgotten it. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Daniel Cornwall’s brother. I have an appointment with her at….”
“Daniel’s brother!” various voices exclaimed in unison, pronouncing the name as it’s said here, with the accent on the last syllable. And, as if that name had been an unbeatable referral, they all got up from their seats and crowded around.
“You look a lot like your brother…. But in brunette!” a young woman with a pronounced chin and long bangs blurted out while she extended her hand to me. “I’m Antonia Marí, a colleague of Daniel’s.”
“We all are,” said a small man with nickel glasses and gray in his very receding hairline.
“Pere Sirera. Nice to meet you. I was the one that spoke with you when you called asking for an interview with Marta.”
He held out his hand as well and moved aside for the next one.
“So you’re the computer fat cat, huh?” demanded a woman of some forty years as she came toward me, her throat sticking out from inside an outlandish flowered dress in the style of Josephine Bonaparte. “I’m Mercè Boix. How is Daniel?”
“The same, thanks,” I replied, returning the greeting.
“But what has happened to him exactly?” insisted Mercè.
“We know that Mariona came to bring the medical leave papers, but Dr. Torrent hasn’t explained anything to us,” said the girl who had opened the door, closing it at last and incorporating herself into the group.
“All she said was that he’s hospitalized at La Custodia and that there wasn’t any accident,” Pere Sirera said slowly. He seemed to be thinking that perhaps an interrogation wasn’t a good idea. And he was right.
“Can we go see him?” Mercè wanted to know.
“Well….” How many of them were friends of Daniel’s and how many were his enemies, rivals, or adversaries? Who was actually worried and who was anxious to know whether he or she would have time to fill his position before he came back? “At the moment he’s not receiving visitors…,” I cleared my throat. “He fainted. He lost consciousness and they’re doing some tests. The doctors say that he will be able to return home this week.”
“I’m happy to hear it!” Josefina Bonaparte declared with a smile. “We were very worried.”
I tapped my pants lightly with the stiff leather briefcase, communicating my impatience. I wanted to see the professor and I couldn’t spend the rest of the morning chatting in that kind of communal lounge full of tables, chairs, and cupboards.
“I have an appointment with Dr. Torrent,” I mumbled. “She must be waiting for me.”
“I’ll take you,” said Antonia, the one with long bangs, heading toward a narrow hallway that was almost invisible behind some high filing cabinets.
“Send our regards to Daniel!”
“Of course. Thank you,” I muttered, following my hostess.
A poster with the hunchbacked image of a Neanderthal and the slogan “From Monkey to Man. Seville. The Sixth Conference on Evolutionary Anthropology” appeared stuck to the door of the professor’s office. Antonia knocked lightly a couple of times on the wooden door and opened it halfway, sticking her head in through the crack.
“Marta, Daniel’s brother is here.”
“Tell him to come in, please,” she granted in a deep, modulated voice, so musical it seemed like I was listening to a radio announcer or an opera singer. But the voice tricked me, because when the girl with bangs moved aside to let me pass, I discovered that Ona had not exaggerated in regards to the age and character of Dr. Torrent. The first thing I saw was short hair on the verge of being completely white, and, between this and some white eyebrows, a terrible furrowed brow that put me on guard. Certainly, the scowl disappeared when her eyes—covered by some modern glasses with blue frames, very narrow and attached to a metal chain that hung from the frames—left the papers they were examining to focus on me, but I had already gotten a disagreeable impression that I wouldn’t let go of for a long time. If Ona had said she was a witch, she must be right, because that was my first impression too.
In a friendly way, although not exaggerated, she took off her glasses, stood up, and walked around her desk, stopping halfway without the slightest gesture of greeting. Nor did she smile; it
seemed as if she were indifferent to me, and that interview only one of the many inconveniences that her job entailed. I had to concede one thing: She dressed with an elegance that did not belong to someone whose profession was study and research. I had always imagined that female university professors of a certain age tended not to be very well put together, but if that were the case, this Torrent woman—who must be about fifty, with a small slender body—didn’t fit the pattern. She wore a suit with a suede jacket, very high heels, and a pearl necklace and matching pearl earrings, and a wide silver bracelet as her only accessories. I didn’t see a watch anywhere. One thing was certain: She must go out every day to soak up the UV, because she was brown, truly brown, and very much so, to the point of not needing makeup.
“Come in, Mr. Cornwall. Have a seat, please,” she said with that beautiful voice that seemed to belong to someone else.
“My name is Arnau Queralt, Dr. Torrent. I’m Daniel’s elder brother.”
If the difference in surnames surprised her, she didn’t show it; she limited herself to returning to her seat in her armchair and staring fixedly at me in the hope that I would open the discussion. Unfortunately, like a good hacker, my set of social skills—not intellectual skills or work skills—was minimal and my resources came exclusively from determination and force of will, so I left my briefcase on the floor next to me and stayed silent, asking myself where I should begin and what I should say. The bad thing was that the silence lasted a long time, because Dr. Torrent was, of course, a hard woman, with a greater than normal coolness, capable of remaining undaunted in a situation that was becoming more awkward with each second.