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The final layer of encryption on the Aperture data is proving to be remarkably stubborn. Alyx has, at least, confirmed that it is the final layer, which means the trickier code is understandable. Whatever they're, the higher-ups at Aperture wanted it to stay hidden.

Hopefully, it's something of vital importance to their portal research that could give the Resistance another edge over the Combine. But given that this is Aperture Science we're talking about, it could just as easily be Cave Johnson's secret devil's food cake recipe. Who knows?

Anyway, Alyx is in Milliways in the hope that a change of venue will help her work. She's got the laptop, a legal pad full of notes, and a heaping platter of onion rings.

(What? Just because she's working doesn't mean she can't soothe her pregnancy cravings at the same time.)

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...

"You're joking, right?"

"Exposure to concentrated Forced Evolutionary Virus at very high levels a long time ago," Ellen says. "Some kind of tree took root in his head as a result of the infection, and it started growing and he never got rid of it. Eventually it outmassed him and took over. I only wish I were joking."

Alyx looks faintly queasy. "That... how does that even happen??"

"I don't know," Ellen says. "I really don't. But FEV is the same stuff that mutates regular people into the greenskins you saw. For all I know it mutated the plant so it could feed off nutrients in human blood, or something."

Alyx shudders and pushes the plate away. "Suddenly I'm not so hungry anymore."

"Sorry?" Ellen hunches her shoulders in embarrassment. "I didn't really stop to think what that sounded like."

"It's okay," murmurs Alyx, automatically. She pushes back from the table and rubs her eyes.

"Has it been a long day?" Ellen asks. "You look like someone who's been studying for the GOAT too long."

"I'm trying to crack the encryption on this data dump we got from an old science lab off the coast of Nova Scotia," says Alyx. "They were studying Combine tech and reverse-engineering some of it. I'm hoping this data will give us an edge."

"Oooh," says Ellen. "That's got to be- wow. Codebreaking's hard. They only protect really important stuff with difficult codes, don't they?"

"And this is the third layer of encryption," says Alyx. "There was a bunch of less secure data on the other two layers."

Nothing terribly useful, though. Unless you want to know the best way to coerce orphans and tramps into being laboratory test subjects.

"Wow. I don't think they even used that much encryption to protect troop movement information before the final thrust of the Battle of Anchorage," Ellen says.

Blink. Blink.

"...why not?"

"I don't know. I only remember what I read about it in the history texts," Ellen says. "I know they double-encrypted everything and they wrote in code phrases even before they started scrambling the contents with their ciphers, but if they did any more than that then it was never declassified before the bombs fell."

"Do you know what kind of encryption they used?"

"Unfortunately no," Ellen says. "Just that some of the biggest mainframes ever built were constructed on both sides to try and crack the other side's codes. They didn't really go into specifics in the texts."

Edited 2010-04-21 03:46 (UTC)

"Criminy." Alyx facepalms. "Were they all running on vacuum tubes, too?"

"Oh, no. Transistor systems all the way," Ellen says. "Most of the historical advances in the development of real transistor technology came out of the intelligence race between Chinese and American spy organizations in the 2060s. They even developed a couple of potential standalone terminal types during that time, although I don't think those ever really got into production anywhere much."

"...you guys didn't get transistors until the middle of the twenty-first century."

Wut.

"No, no, we had them, they just weren't very good," Ellen says. "They were more of a... sort of a scientific curiosity than a real development for a long time. Too expensive to build in any kind of real numbers. The government had to start dumping research money into them in earnest to get really decent ones."

Alyx shakes her head. "That--just--they started making cheap transistors in 1945, for Christ's sake. How the hell do you get portable radios without transistors?!"

Edited 2010-04-21 04:22 (UTC)

Ellen looks at Alyx blankly.

Guess who's never seen a portable radio in her life.

"Radiation King made radios about this big before the War," Ellen says, indicating something the size of a toaster. "But they're mostly vacuum tubes. My Pip-Boy's heavy on the transistors and that was cutting-edge design when the bombs fell."

"...okay, you see this?" Alyx lifts her laptop slightly. "There is not a single vacuum tube in it. It's all transistors and microchips. And it has several thousand times the processing power and memory capacity of the computers used for the moon landing."