Trust Me

This is your old friend, Dane, remember? Let’s have a little honesty here. Three years ago you set yourself the goal of getting married. You know how you are when you’re working on a project. You just keep going until it’s finished.”
    “Not this time. I have officially abandoned the goal.”
    Dane studied his manicured nails. “Just as well, since she’s not exactly your type.”
    The comment irritated Stark. “I’m well aware of that. But I don’t have to worry about it. I’m going to go with the flow in this relationship.”
    Dane smiled. “You? Submit to the chaotic forces of romance and unbridled passion? I’ll believe that when I see it.”
    “I’m not submitting to anything. I’m having a simple uncomplicated affair, and that’s all there is to it.”
    “You always manage to complicate things,” Dane said. “Trust me, it’s your nature.”
    Alone in his shadowed study that evening, Stark sat at his computer and mulled over the effect Alison’s evening phone call had had on Jason and Kyle.
    On the surface things appeared to have gone fairly well. The boys had taken the news of their mother’s vacation with Titus in stride, just as they had accepted their father’s trip to Hawaii.
    “Sam?”
    Stark looked toward the door. Jason stood in the shadows. He was dressed in his pajamas.
    “I thought you were in bed,” Stark said.
    “I was. But I couldn’t sleep.”
    “Probably the pizza. I warned you not to order the Garbage Truck Special.”
    “It was good.” Jason wandered farther into the room. “What are you doing?”
    “I’m working on a program designed to protect computer systems.”
    Jason peered at the screen. “The stuff on the screen looks all scrambled up.”
    “It is.” Stark punched a couple of buttons. The random characters that cluttered the screen began to reform themselves. “But underneath the surface there’s a pattern. I can retrieve it with the right code.”
    “Yeah?” Jason watched intently as the meaningless array of characters became two neat paragraphs. “I can read it now.”
    “That’s the whole point.”
    “This is cool. Where did you learn how to do this stuff?”
    Stark shrugged. “Most of it I taught myself.”
    “Can you teach it to me?”
    “If we have enough time.”
    “Mom said we could stay here the whole summer. Is that enough time?”
    “It’s enough to get started.”
    A small sound in the doorway caught Stark’s attention. He glanced around again and saw Kyle.
    “What are you two doing?” Kyle asked.
    “I was showing Jason how my new security program works,” Stark said.
    “The one you call ARCANE? I want to see, too.”
    “Okay.” Stark hit a key. The screenful of data went back to its scrambled state. “ARCANE has several features. One of them is encryption. I can encode the information that I want to protect inside a lot of constantly shifting garbage.”
    “Is that what you call chaos?”
    “Complexity. Now, then, the secret of complex structures is that they aren’t truly chaotic. They just look that way at first glance. The variables that control them are very, very subtle. Once I discover them, however, I can use them to manipulate data.”
    “That stuff on the screen now looks just like the pizza we had for dinner,” Jason said.
    “Exactly. It conceals the data we want to protect behind a cloud of static.” Stark pressed a few more keys. “By altering some more variables, I can retrieve the information that was hidden behind the static.”
    “This is great.” Kyle looked at Stark. “Is this the kind of stuff you sell?”
    “Yes.”
    “If I was as good as you are on a computer, I’d invent games,” Kyle said. “Not business stuff.”
    Stark smiled. “Working with ARCANE is a lot like playing a very complex video game.”
    “Is it?” Jason asked.
    “Sure.” Stark hit a few more keys. “I told you, ARCANE has several features. In addition to encryption and decryption it can also act like an octopus.”
    “An octopus?” Jason looked intrigued.
    “It has tentacles that can reach into other computers and probe network systems.”
    “Sam?” Kyle kept his attention on the screen.
    “Yes?”
    “Mind if I ask you a question?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Mom says you were about our age when Dad left you and your mother.”
    Stark kept his eyes fixed on the computer. “She’s right.”
    “He never came back, did he? I mean, to stay.”
    “No,” Stark said. “He never did come back to