Club Genius

[Cee Cohen]

Cee and Adam had stricken a fairly friendly relationship, all things considered. This might have surprised most people, considering how very different the two were. Where Adam was more sullen, Cee was cheerful. Where Adam could be strict, Cee was—okay, the computer instructor could be strict, but only when it came to certain limited topics, like installing programs on the computers that shouldn’t be there or yanking out cords. There were lots of things students could do to misbehave and they were often surprised to see the normally mild-mannered and friendly computer teacher come down hard. But while Cee could be chatty and Adam seemed to dislike chatty people, they had gotten along. They were both very smart, and Cee’s calculus knowledge was coming back to him with practice. They’d started communicating after Cee had wandered into Adam’s office where he was doing math. Cee had—surprisingly for him—settled down on one of the desks and had sat there with a cup of coffee in his hand, watching. And then he’d asked questions. It had gone fairly well and now became a regular occurrence. When Danny had something to do or Cee had a block off, he’d come to visit Adam. He’d bring some coffee and snacks that he’d nabbed from Ferris’s office and come to relax there. Today was no different. He knocked on Adam’s office door once, then slipped in.

“Hey,” he said cheerfully. “What are we working on today? Disproving Einstein? How’s Nory?”

[Adam Deulane]

Adam looked up from the papers he'd been grading at his desk with the unfocused, owlish look that appeared on his face whenever he was distracted from a task. Then he recognized his friend and smiled. "Afternoon," he said. "Take a look." He gestured to a whiteboard with his red pen before returning his attention to the paper in front of him. Either a small rodent had been recently dismembered on Adam's desk or a student was not going to be very happy to get back this piece of work.

Adam and Nory had both gone back to Oregon for summer break, so it was only a short time ago that Adam had returned to Hammel. It had been two months since he had been able to talk to anyone regularly about math, and he had looked up something particular in hopes that Cee would stop by today. An algorithm for RSA encryption graced the whiteboard on the east wall. Adam had thought Cee would enjoy picking through it, since cryptography seemed a perfect marriage of mathematics, computers, and secretive conspiracies.

It took him two or three minutes to finish correcting the paper in front of him, and then he slid the stack to the side and pushed his chair back. "She's doing fine." He moved next to Cee to examine the whiteboard. "Happy to be back and sad to be gone, you know," he added absently as he rolled a marker in between his hands. "What do you think of this bit?" He pointed out a section with an alarming number of arrows and Adam's scribbly handwriting, pseudo random? There was also a half-drawn three dimensional cube in the corner.

[Cee Cohen]

Cee always seemed slightly surprised that the math teacher greeted him with such a friendly air. Admittedly Adam’s formidable reputation had proceeded him, but Cee was pleased to call Adam his friend. The math teacher didn’t seem to find Cee all that odd—or more odd than usual—and the two could keep up spirited dialogues on cryptography that kept the man quite entertained for days. Periodically he’d send him puzzles to keep the math genius occupied. It never seemed to take very long. Cee stepped forward to look. He had his contacts in, which helped, but he fetched a pair of glasses and slipped them on to get a better look.

“I understand,” he said absently. “I am pondering taking Danny to see his grandmother during our next break. I don’t personally believe it would be wise but he does care for her and there are many things that I would prefer to bring up with her.” Oddly enough, Cee was frowning here. For once, he looked extremely unhappy. But Cee couldn’t stay unhappy for long, and he loved puzzles. He blinked at the redirect and was suddenly as focused as a hunting dog, leaning in to examine the bit Adam had pointed to.

“I think you outclass me as per the normative,” he said cheerfully. “But I do think you forgot to carry here.” He pointed. “What algorithm are you using and what applications do you believe this could possess?”

[Adam Deulane]

Adam did like Cee. As far as first impressions went, sitting down and asking insightful questions about a sample of work could only be improved upon if Cee had also handed over an envelope of money. His friendly intelligence had earned Adam's goodwill, and his bizarre good humor had kept it. Aside from this, Adam discovered they had a lot in common--they were both passionate, left-brained, non-powered teachers at a gifted school, both had a younger relative attending said school, and both were humongous nerds.

He paused when he saw Cee's expression droop. His eyes flicked to the board at Cee's question. Adam wanted to talk about the algorithm. But Cee was upset. But it was a very interesting algorithm. But Cee was his friend, and Adam had precious few of those. But if Cee wanted to talk about it, he wouldn't have moved on to the next subject. But he was a spaz, and maybe he was just being polite. But Adam was tremendously more qualified to talk about algorithms than feelings, and he didn't want to make it worse.

Adam cleared his throat. "You, uh, seem upset with his grandmother," he observed awkwardly.

[Cee Cohen]

Cee blinked. He liked Adam, despite the fact that he was vaguely suspicious that he had more skills than the math instructor—a weird fact that often had Cee scratching his head, because his social skills certainly weren’t any good. But he would admit that he never would have thought of Adam to ask personal questions. This didn’t bother him. Cee talked a lot but rarely about anything personal. He was quite fine with and quite good at distracting himself with something completely unrelated to any other topic. It was one of his best skills, as it happened. But this had been bothering him for some time, and even if Adam just made vague agreeing noises it was bound to help somewhat.

“I…” he hesitated. “I don’t agree with how she behaved with my son. I don’t agree with her perspectives on many things and I worry that he seems so tentative. But I am truly hoping that I am capable of helping him.” He made a vaguely unhappy face, then waved a hand. “Nothing a phone call and a good yelling bout won’t fix. I’m hoping Kateri hasn’t kept flirting with you, has she? She’s relentless. Not unkind, but relentless.”

[Adam Deulane]

Adam made a vague agreeing noise. The mathematician had a lot of issues, but offspring appearing out of nowhere was, thankfully, not one of them. The closest he had was his younger sister, and of all her caretakers he had done by far the poorest job. "I'm sorry," he said awkwardly. Then, after a pause, "So! The algorithm!"

The squeaking of his whiteboard marker was undercut with a low growl. "The woman's a man-eating terror," he grumbled. His forehead had turned very slightly pink. Adam was about as accustomed to the attention of women as he was to the attention of secret service agents, and he reacted in a similar manner to both. If it had been genuine amorous intent Adam would have abandoned the staff lounge and kept to back hallways in order to avoid her, but she was clearly keeping up with her comments for fun and because she enjoyed the reaction she got out of the young mathematician. To be flirted with as a joke was awkward and made him feel bad, not that he would ever admit it. So in return he kept up a steady diatribe of retorts, largely relating to her age. Squeak, squeak, squeak went the whiteboard marker. "Does she ever go after you?"

[Cee Cohen]

“It is satisfactory.” Despite his words, Cee still looked slightly glum. Perhaps that was no surprise. These last few months had been challenging to the reclusive and odd engineer. He loved his son very much—with a ferocity that probably would’ve surprised many who knew him and knew his avoidance of personal matters. Or not avoidance. Just generally…not telling. For talking all the time Cee could say surprisingly little.

Cee offered Adam a sympathetic smile. “Yes, but she bakes very good cookies. And she’s quite useful on a rainy day.” Had he known the story, he would’ve felt even more concern for Adam. Kateri was generally harmless but she still shouldn’t go antagonizing her fellow instructor. She could sometimes carry it too far. Still, Cee liked her. Mostly because she, like most others, felt sorry for him and had a tendency to pop up with his glasses. “Not particularly,” he admitted cheerfully. “I’m not her type. I am not attractive enough, and she calls me ‘scattered.’” He didn’t view Adam as attractive because Cee rarely noticed other’s appearances, but she must have thought him to be fairly good looking. “So, the algorithm! What were you challenged by?”

[Adam Deulane]

Adam could tell that Cee was still upset, but he didn't know what else to say. He rubbed the side of his face with one hand and turned to the whiteboard. Math always helped him feel better. Maybe it would help Cee.

"I don't see why I would be 'her type' and not you," he grumbled as he added a few notes to one section. This went to show that both of them were equally bad at judging relative attractiveness of other men. Adam the pimply teenager had grown into his impeccable jaw and cheekbones about the same time he had stopped talking to anyone, and he still seemed oblivious to their existence.

He pointed to a section of whiteboard. "Not so much challenged, but it's interesting. Instead of just multiplying the primes, this part here..."

It was an intriguing twist on a well-known encryption algorithm, and while Adam understood how it worked, he didn't know enough about computer networks to see where its application would be useful. Other than the simple pleasure of sorting through it, Adam particularly wanted to hear Cee's opinion on that.

[Cee Cohen]

Cee blinked at him. “You know, I may not know much about women, but I do know that they’d definitely prefer your appearance to mine. After all, you look of a similarity to those in the movies. I am hardly that. Besides, I think it appears to bother you. I very rarely notice it when she attempts things so that perhaps is the cause of the situation.” He smiled sympathetically. “But fear not my handsome friend. You will recover I think.” He patted his shoulder, then stepped back because Adam wasn’t one for personal contact. He was definitely one for math.

“Interesting,” Cee hummed when Adam was done explaining. And it was a hum. The engineer-turned-teacher had a pen in his hand and was pointing at a certain segment. “This is fairly standard for encryption. The pattern is well enough known, not as intriguing as it could potentially be otherwise. But this twist here brings a certain freshness to it. Due to the similarity to one that is well known I wouldn’t recommend it for large prominent security firm but it would perhaps work best for smaller items. What do you think?”

[Adam Deulane]

Adam's mouth dropped open in shock. "What?! I don't--I'm not--" His protests dissolved into sputtering, though it was difficult to tell if it was from rage, disbelief or embarrassment. His face looked like it was steadily filling with boiling water, and he jumped when Cee patted his arm. "I'm not handsome," he protested, instinctively clutching his whiteboard marker close to his chest. He pronounced it like one might say, "I'm not infected."

The conversation had spiraled from Cee's feelings to Adam's relationship with women, and he was desperate to abandon ship before it got any worse. He tried to claw back to familiar territory. "I agree!" he said, somewhat more forcefully than normal. He began writing on another section. "But this part of the algorithm would be computationally expensive, how would you distribute the load of that over a network?"

[Cee Cohen]

Cee blinked. He honestly hadn’t expected Adam to get so…well…offended by his statement. He didn’t really know what handsome was. After all, he was legally blind, even when he’d remembered his contacts. And of all the things to get upset over… “Um.” For once, the normally verbose engineer was at a loss for words. “Sorry? I’m sure the majority of women find you quite hideous.” Would that suffice? What a weird thing to be worried over. Cee shook it off and turned back to the algorithm with just as much force as Adam.

“Well, it wouldn’t be such a strict load if you could join the computers together into a network or provide slaves for another. Of course with the computational power of computers these days it wouldn’t be particularly challenging to create one that is powerful enough to handle the load. In fact, within a couple of years it would be possible. But then you run into the issue of is the code still relevant at that time…” He shook his head. “A challenging situation. Could you simplify it and achieve the same results?”

[Adam Deulane]

Adam nodded his way through Cee's explanation. He didn't have the engineer's extensive knowledge of computers, but he knew enough of the terminology to understand what he was talking about. He scratched the beard starting on his chin and examined the algorithm. "Possibly. The trick is to do it without making it any less secure. Let's see, this piece here..."

Adam plunged into the algorithm with joy. It was a conceptual problem more than anything, and he tossed Cee a marker to help out. He talked while he worked, asking his companion about how one piece would translate to a network, or what kind of memory restraints it would likely face. In the abstract realm he displayed far more grace and ease than he ever did in person, letting Cee play to his strengths while Adam played to his. Finally, he stepped back from the whiteboard with a smile on his face. "So, what do you think? Would it work?"

[Cee Cohen]

Cee nodded in agreement. “That would be quite the trick,” he said. “Not entirely sure we could manage it but on the other hand I fail to see why it couldn’t be possible, given enough time to determine things. Don’t you agree?”

It wasn’t so very difficult to dive into the algorithm. Adam wasn’t the only one who used work to completely avoid certain circumstances. He’d always done that, actually. And was quite good at it. He was more than happy to answer Adam’s questions and ask some of his own, stepping forward to point at parts of the algorithm. Then he stepped back to examine it and then he grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I might implement it into the school systems as it happens. Unless you want to lay claim to it first. I can help you through the procedures.”

[Adam Deulane]

"By all means." Adam waved his hand at the whiteboard. He was sitting back against his desk with an easy smile. "It's not mine anyway. I read about it in a paper on computational complexity." He tried not to sound too smug as he added, "Besides, I've got several much more interesting things I'm polishing for publication. This is just for fun." He absently scratched his upper lip with the tip of his marker. "But if you decide to implement it, let me know. I don't know enough about the hardware side of this, and I'd like to see how it works."

[Cee Cohen]

Cee laughed at him. “You sound just like an old friend of mine who always believed in publishing over accomplishing. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with that perspective in life but nevertheless, it is slightly odd. So you presented this to me for a puzzle?” Cee considered this for a moment, then nodded. “That’s very kind of you. I’d be interested to examine that as well,” he said. “I think I will attempt to give it a try. I have some old servers in my apartment that I can repurpose. Can you send this to me to implement?"