такое кино
Isfahan. Resh (ר)
The Alchemy of Words
12 Ordibehesht 1402 (May 2, 2023)
The three days following Rustam’s disappearance passed in a stupor. The official version was family matters, an urgent trip to Yazd to see his sick mother. But his desk had been cleaned out with the same thoroughness used to decontaminate radioactive material. And the note Zahra had found in the drawer burned in the pocket of her lab coat like a piece of enriched uranium.
“Where is the house of my friend, O companions?”
74.4.12.3_9.1.5.7
Throw it away? But the uncertainty was a poison that worked slowly, yet inexorably. Inform Fakhravadi? But her channel was one-way. Unscheduled contact was an admission of panic, and in their game, panic was tantamount to death.
Only one path remained. Forward. Into the labyrinth Rustam had built for her.
The UCF facility’s library was not just a repository of knowledge. It was a mausoleum. Here, on metal shelves aligned with laser precision, rested the mummies of ideas—monographs, reports, dissertations. The air, smelling of ozone and antistatic spray, seemed too thin to breathe. The silence here was not peaceful, but absolute, like in space. It was oppressive, making every sound—the squeak of a shoe, the click of a keyboard—an event of almost cosmic scale.
She pretended to be looking for an old report on plasma behavior. In a far corner, an engineer sat immersed in his world of numbers. No one else was there. The Persian poetry section, donated by some official from the Ministry of Culture, was an absurd anomaly in this kingdom of formulas. Zahra knew that Rustam sometimes borrowed a volume of Hafez from here.
There it was. The Divan. A dark green binding.
74.4.12.3_9.1.5.7
Coordinates. Page. Line. Word. Letter. It was obvious. Too obvious.
Page 74. Line 4. Word 12: “compass” (قطبنما — qotb-namā). Letter 3: “b” (ب).
Page 9. Line 1. Word 5: “alchemist” (کیمیاگر — kimiyāgar). Letter 7: “r” (ر).
B-R. Boron. A neutron absorber. Control. Deceleration. A warning.
An icy disappointment washed over her. Was that it? Just a symbol? A warning that was already too late? No. Rustam wasn’t that simple. He was a chess player who thought ten moves ahead. This was the first layer of the cipher. For anyone who might find the note by chance. For security services. A false target. The real key had to be hidden deeper.
She looked at the words again. “Compass.” “Alchemist.” They were too precise, too symbolic to be mere carriers of random letters. Compass—navigation, a path, a pointer. Alchemist—transformation, conversion, encryption.
Navigation. Encryption.
And then her mind seemed to undergo a phase transition. She was looking at the words, but she wasn’t seeing their Persian spelling. She was seeing their shadow, their reflection in another language. In the language they both used to speak to the world of science. In the language that was a universal code.
English.
Compass. Alchemist.
They weren’t just words. They were passwords. Or parts of a password. She went back to the numbers. 74.4.12.3. What if they weren’t coordinates, but something else? A combination? A date? No. That was too complicated. Rustam knew she wouldn’t have time for a lengthy decryption. The solution had to be elegant.
She looked at the words again, now in English. And at the numbers.
Compass. Alchemist.
744123. 9157.
And suddenly she saw it. This wasn’t cryptography. It was calligraphy. Digital calligraphy. Rustam had simply replaced some of the letters in the words with numbers that looked similar.
Compass -> Compa55. Two ‘s’ letters, looking like fives.
Alchemist -> A1chem15t. ‘l’ looked like a 1, ‘s’ like a 5.
No. Still too complex, too many variations. She discarded that version. She needed to think simpler. Like Rustam. He was a poet, but first and foremost, a physicist. He valued simplicity and symmetry.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the visual noise of the letters, and focused on the sounds. Compass. Alchemist. And on the numbers. 74.4.12.3_9.1.5.7. What if they weren’t coordinates in a book, but something related to his digital life?
His work terminal. His email. His cloud storage. All of it was protected by two-factor authentication and long passwords. But every system had an entry point. And often, a password recovery option. Using what? Secret words. A seed phrase.
The line from Hafez. «Where is the house of my friend, O companions?» It wasn’t just poetry. It was a key. A question that needed an answer. And the answer was the password.
She returned to the book. Page 74, line 4, word 12. «Compass.»
Page 9, line 1, word 5. «Alchemist.»
Compass.Alchemist
Could it be that simple? Two words, separated by a dot. Too simple. Security would have cracked it in an hour.
So, the numbers. 744123 and 9157. They had to mean something.
She opened her work tablet. Logged into the corporate messenger. Found her old chat with Rustam. They rarely messaged, mostly about work. But there, in his profile, was his internal extension. His employee ID number. His personal records.
The second part of the code. It was his identifier.
And the first? 744123. It wasn’t his phone number, not his date of birth. What was it?
She thought of Hafez again. Of the book. Page 74. What else was on that page? She turned it over. At the very bottom was a printer’s number. An order number. No. 744123.
A shiver ran through her. There it was. The solution. Elegant in its madness. He had used the book not as a cipher table, but as a carrier for two random, unrelated numbers. The order number and his employee ID. And two keywords from the same book that served as a clue.
The password was a combination. Perhaps Compass744123. And the secret recovery phrase—Alchemist009157.
She went to the cloud storage. Found Rustam’s personal folder. The system prompted for a password. She entered Compass744123.
«Incorrect password.»
She tried Alchemist009157.
«Incorrect password.»
She was so close. She could feel it. What had she missed? She looked at the note again. At the _ sign between the two blocks of numbers. The underscore. A separator.
She clicked «Recover access.» The system asked a security question: «Favorite line from Hafez?»
She typed: «Where is the house of my friend, O companions?»
The system prompted her to enter a seed phrase. 12 words. No. That wasn’t it.
She returned to the login page. And suddenly, she understood. Rustam was a perfectionist. He loved symmetry.
Compass_Alchemist
She entered it as the username. The system prompted for a password.
744123_009157
She pressed «Enter.»
And the folder opened. Inside was a single text file. Encrypted. Titled «The Friend’s House.»
She knew the key. The line from Hafez. She entered it.
The file opened. There were only a few lines.
“Zahra, if you are reading this, it means I was right. I am being followed. And it’s not the Guards—I know their style. It’s others. I don’t know who they are or what they want, but I’m tired of hiding. I’ve decided to meet with them and find out everything, once and for all. If I don’t return—know this: there is a traitor among us. Trust only yourself.”
The last entry was dated last Thursday. The day she had last seen him.
The silence of the library was broken by a sound. Footsteps.
She snapped the tablet shut. Dr. Rezai was standing in the aisle.
“Finding something interesting in lyric poetry, Dr. Musavi?” his voice was quiet, almost ingratiating, but she could hear the clang of metal in it. “Decided to take a break from Maxwell’s equations?”
She stood up, clutching the tablet to her chest. Her heart was beating so hard she thought he must hear it.
“Sometimes it’s useful to change one’s frame of reference, Dr. Rezai,” she said, and her own voice sounded foreign to her. “Poetry is also a kind of code. Just with more unknowns.”
He slowly turned his head. His camera-lens eyes bored into her.
“Be careful, Doctor. Sometimes, in trying to decipher a code, one can discover that you are the unknown variable. And that someone is trying to eliminate you from the equation.”