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Back In the Dark Save as PDF
Chapters (90)
  1. Cover
  2. IN THE DARK
  3. PRELUDE
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. WIND LISTENERS
  11. Blind Abing
  12. 1
  13. 2
  14. 3
  15. 4
  16. 5
  17. 6
  18. 7
  19. 8
  20. 9
  21. 10
  22. 11
  23. 12
  24. 13
  25. 14
  26. 15
  27. 16
  28. 17
  29. 18
  30. 19
  31. 20
  32. 21
  33. WIND READERS
  34. An Angel with Problems
  35. 1
  36. 2
  37. 3
  38. 4
  39. 5
  40. 6
  41. 7
  42. 8
  43. 9
  44. 10
  45. 11
  46. 12
  47. 13
  48. 14
  49. 15
  50. 16
  51. 17
  52. 18
  53. 19
  54. 20
  55. 21
  56. 22
  57. 23
  58. 24
  59. 25
  60. 26
  61. 27
  62. 28
  63. 29
  64. 30
  65. THE SHADOW OF CHEN ERHU
  66. Diary Excerpts: 25 March 1987
  67. 26 March
  68. 27 March
  69. 28 March
  70. 2 April
  71. The Letter: Day One
  72. Day Two
  73. Day Three
  74. Day Four
  75. Day Five
  76. Day Six
  77. Day Seven
  78. Two Old Letters
  79. WIND-CATCHERS
  80. A Vietnamese Ghost Story
  81. 1
  82. 2
  83. 3
  84. 4
  85. 5
  86. 6
  87. 7
  88. 8
  89. 9
  90. THE BEGINNING

‘That’s exactly what I thought, and it’s been affecting my usual sixth sense, so I really can’t get a handle on this. But it doesn’t matter whether she’s actually gone down that route or not, because I’ve been inspired by her to create one like that.’

I couldn’t stop myself from asking her, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I designed an algorithmic cipher, and the four previous ciphers represent four different encryption methods. What you need to do now is to go home and look at the four messages together, because I used four different encryption methods in conjunction with my algorithmic cipher. What I want to tell you is hidden in the final cipher – so you go away and read it. I can give you a clue though: the key to cracking the cipher is “four”, the number four.’

I went back and put the four messages together in order and then using the key she had given me, I circled the fourth word of each message. Immediately the words that I least wanted to see were in front of my eyes.

The message was: ‘I really love you.’

16

The moment I got to work the next day, Huang Yiyi came to my office and asked me if I had worked out what it was that she really wanted to say to me. I looked as serious as I could, and glared at her. ‘I really don’t think you should say that sort of thing to me! If that’s all you have to say, go back to your office, because I have nothing to say to you.’

‘Clearly you don’t understand in the least what I mean,’ she retorted.

It was only much later on that I realized that she was using this method to test her theories about RECOVERY. ‘I really love you’ – these four words have an unusual characteristic: you can arrange them in any order. ‘I love you really’, ‘Really I love you’, ‘You I love really’, and so on, and the meaning never changes. That’s a special kind of language, and she had been wondering if RECOVERY might not be that kind of cipher, which worked whether you ran it backwards or forwards – just like a ring of dominoes, where there is no start and no finish. Or rather the start and finish are man-made, and could in fact come anywhere. The clack, clack, clack sounds emanating from her office came from falling dominoes.