really no way to gauge the length.” Fisher hit some more keys. When the
screen filled up with images, his eyes sparkled.
Sidney’s face fell as she stared at the screen. It was all gibberish,
high-tech hieroglyphics.
She looked at Fisher. “Is there something wrong with your computer?”
Fisher typed rapidly. The screen went blank and then reappeared with
the same mess of digital images. Then at the bottom of the screen a box
appeared with the command line requesting a password.
“No, and there’s nothing wrong with the disk either. Where’d you get
it?”
“It was sent to me. By a client,” she answered lamely.
Luckily, Fisher was too engrossed in the high-tech conundrum to question
her further about the origin of the disk.
His fingers flew across the keyboard for several more minutes as he
tried all the other files. The gibberish on the screen always
reappeared.
So did the message requesting a password. Finally he turned to her, a
smile on his face.
“It’s encrypted,” he said simply.
Sidney stared at him. “Encrypted?”
Fisher continued to stare at the screen. “Encryption is a process
whereby you take readable form text and put it into a nonreadable form
before you send it out.”
“What good is it if the person you sent it to can’t read it?”
“Ah, but they can if they have the key that allows you to decrypt the
message.”
“How do you get the key?”
“The sender has to forward it to you, or you have to already have it in
your possession.”
Sidney slumped back in the chair. Jason would have had the damned key.
“I don’t have it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Would someone send an encrypted message to himself?” she asked.
Fisher looked over at her. “He wouldn’t. I mean, ordinarily he
wouldn’t. If you have the message already in hand, you wouldn’t encrypt
it and then send it across the Internet to yourself at another location.
It would just give someone the opportunity to intercept it and then
maybe break it. But I thought you said a client sent you this?”
Sidney suddenly shivered. “Jeff, do you have any coffee? It seems
chilly in here.”
“Actually, I’ve got a fresh pot made. I keep this room a little cooler
than the rest of the house because of the heat thrown off by the
equipment. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thanks.”
When Fisher returned with two cups of coffee, Sidney was staring at the
screen.
Fisher took a sip of the hot liquid while Sidney sat back in the chair
and closed her eyes. Fisher hunched forward and studied the screen.
He returned to his last train of thought. “Yeah, you wouldn’t encrypt a
message you meant to send to yourself.” He took another sip of coffee.
“You’d only do it if you were sending it to someone else.”
Sidney’s eyes flew open and she jolted upright. The image of the e-mail
flashing across Jason’s computer screen like an electronic phantom swept
through her memory. It was there and then gone.
The key. Was it the key? Was he sending it to her?
She gripped Fisher’s arm. “Jeff, how is it possible for an e-mail to
appear on your computer screen and then vanish? It’s not in your
mailbox. It’s nowhere on the system. How can that happen?”
“Pretty easily. The sender has a window of opportunity to cancel the
transmission. I mean, he couldn’t do it once the mail was opened and
read. But on some systems, depending on their configuration, you can
recall a message up until it’s opened by the receiver. In that regard
it’s better than the U.S. mail.” Fisher grinned. “You know, you get
pissed off at someone and you write them a letter and mail it, and then
you regret having done it. Once it’s in the metal box, you cannot get
it back. No way, nohow. With electronic mail, you can. Up to a
point.”
“How about outside a network? Like across the Internet?”
Fisher rubbed his chin. “It’s more difficult to do because of the
travel chain the message has to go through. Sort of like the monkey
bars on the playground.” Sidney again stared at him with a blank face.