Project: Death for Classroom Zero

Chapter 34: Upside Down Caesar's Box

“We’ve got only one hundred twenty minutes. Two hours in simpler term.” Blaze was looking at the set of jumbled letters formed at the screen.

Tristan could not help himself but to look from time to time to Amara. He was afraid that the black reaper would became unorganized, and would just kill the helpless woman being wrapped by rustic chains.

“Tristan. Let’s leave Amara like that first,” Timmy said. “We’ve got some puzzle to solve here.”

Tristan looked at them and gave an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. Amara’s in danger, and it would be heavy for my conscience if she’s … she’s going to die.”

“Not just you, Tristan. You know that we will carry that burden too,” said Rain.

“Th—That’s why we’ve got to solve this problem. It’s the only way that we can do so that we can save Amara. Time is ticking, and it would not be good if we’re going to just stare at her, d—doing nothing. That’s why let’s… let’s… let’s solve this problem first.”

Tammy was right. They need to solve the problem on the screen first. Tristan realized that just looking at Amara and continuously worrying at her, while doing nothing will never solve the crisis that they’re suffering. What they need to do is to face the problem courageously, and find the answer for it. On this case, the answer lies on the jumbled letters arranged on a screen.

“I think it was the same problem that we’ve got from our professor earlier,” said Seven. “It was jumbled, and it doesn’t have a clue.”

“Agree. Guess we need to try what you’ve done earlier Tristan,” said Timmy.

Now Tristan’s attention were back to the jumbled letters on the screen. His eyebrows were meeting each other, thinking of the possible things that may happen with the jumbled letters.

“I’m trying,” said Tristan.

“But you’re hesitating,” Rain said, looking at him straight in the eyes.

Seeing Rain looking at him that way, his breathing partially stopped. However, he had done his best so that no one would see him being affected by that intensified stares. Instead, he nodded at her.

“Yes, I am,” he frankly said. “You see, in ciphertext, there are vast amount of methods that can be used in order to hide the message really well. It means so much time and dedication to decode one certain message that is brilliantly disarranged.”

“That means this message may or may not be Caesar’s box,” concluded Rain.

With that, Tristan nodded. “It could be pigpen’s, playfair, Hill’s or anything. There are various ways to hide a message. But… there could be possibility that this might be Caesar’s box. So I’m trying.”

Tristan sat in front of the screen. Below the floating letters is a space, which he assumed, can be used to write something. When he touched his index finger, traveling downwards, a line of black color was appearing. Having decided that he would answer the quiz, he started creating a box with intersecting lines on the screen.

He made a seven by seven table—seven columns and seven rows.

His groupmates had sat on the floor as well, watching and guiding Tristan doing the table. In just a span of minutes, they were all drawn to the problem, tightly focused, and would surely not break away from it not unless everything was clear and done.

Tristan looked at the set of jumbled letters. He knew it was much more difficult than what professor Buenavista had given to them earlier, because it has forty-six total number of letters.

DSECRWEAEHEEOKECTBHRADNEDTCTSISAUEIRUEOHSPAHNT

In decoding a ciphertext, the more the letters included, the more it would be difficult to be cracked.

“Man, the no-patterns sets of letters a headache,” complained by Timmy.

“T—Tristan, why did you make a seven by seven table if… if the letters were only f—Forty six?” Tammy asked. Her face is filled with confusion.

“Ah, in Caesar’s box, if you meet a set of letters that is not a perfect square, you’ve got to find a perfect square that would fit the number of the letters. Since this is forty six letters, we’ll get the square of seven which is forty nine—that means forty nine slots so that all forty six letters will be inside the perfect box. We can’t get the square of six because it would be just thirty six. Too limited for the number of letters needed to be decoded.”

“The message Professor Buenavista written on the board, it has a perfect square, since it has twenty five number of letters,” followed by Blaze.

“I see…”

Now Tristan had started writing the letters on the box. Just like the others, he badly wanted to finish and find the answer to the problem, so that they could save Amara from danger.

He wrote:

S I S A U E I

R U E O H S P

A H N T D S E

C R W E A E H

E E O K E C

T B H R A D

N E D T C T

“That doesn’t make sense. There is no message that can be read,” said Caspian.

“Was it not Caesar’s box? Then what is?” Tristan heard Blaze whispering.

“Why do we leave the last three slot blank? Was it in purpose?” asked Timmy.

“In finding a no perfect square sets of letters, we will have to mentally block the slot that was excess to the perfect square that you are using. In our case, we used a 7 by 7 box, which means it has forty nine slots. Now, since we only have forty six letters, we will need to leave blank the three remaining rows.”

“Oh I see.”

“But either way, the message has not been decoded yet,” said Rain. Her voice was calm, but Tristan could sense the irritation inside her. She was growing outpatient in finding the answer.

“But what could it be?” asked Seven. “There were no even satisfying and concrete clue that we have. What ciphertext method will we use?”

“Still Caesar’s box.” Having it said by Blaze, everyone had looked at him, except Rain.

“What do you mean?” Caspian asked.

Blaze looked at Tristan. Then, he asked; “Tristan, is there any possibility that Caesar’s box would be modified?”

Tristan’s forehead scrunched. “Modified? You mean change the way how it will be decoded? I am not sure. But I think it can be. There’s a lot of possibility to hide the message through code.”

Blaze nodded. “You see, there were no new clue that Professor Buenavista had given to us. So there’s a high possibility that it was still somehow Caesar’s box way of decoding.”

“But we’ve done it. N—No message came right off.”

“Can be modified, just like what Blaze said,” said Tristan.

“If that so, then we need to change approach on how we shall put the letters on the box, right?” asked Seven.

For the first time, both Tristan and Blaze had the same thoughts running on their head. They simultaneously nodded as an answer for Seven’s question.

“The only problem is in what approach would we need to have to do?” asked Blaze. Unnoticingly, he cupped his chin, and started thinking.

“There must be still a clue here,” said Caspian.

Tristan sighed. He knew ciphertexting was a difficult thing to do. It was mentally draining—even head cracking. And this problem, though he knew was far from professional and real ciphertexting problem, has still proven its difficulty.

He looked at Rain to ask her if she have something in mind that can be used as their clue. They need hundreds of suggestions in order to find the right one.

But when he was about to ask Rain, he saw her mindlessly looking at the back where they had came from, earlier: at the room of fake mirrors.

“Rain?” he asked.

“The reflections,” she said. Her voice was cold, yet something powerful. Because of that, every group members that they had in their group started to look at her.

“What about the reflections, Rain?”

“It was upside down.”

Upside down…

Tristan’s hands started to tremble.

Upside down.

He smiled and started to rewrite the jumbled letters on the table he had done. He felt energized. Because upside down … that’s the clue.