Cipher

Date/Timing: 27 March 2006
Setting: Hermann's bedroom, Gottlieb home; Berlin, Germany
.
Hermann sighs into his desk chair, powers up the PC, massages his knee, and grimaces. Cursing the limb—and his not-quite-healed wrists—he connects the wifi and logs into his email.
Spam (the filter is worse than useless).
Dee (hopefully an invitation to dinner).
Spam (there /must be a more effective one available).
A TU professor (probably begging him to take a given course).
/Geiszler.
He opens that one, skims the usual torrent of poor grammar, profanity, and boasting.
Then, he notices the very specific transpositions.
„You /did see it after all, you arrogant toadstool,“ Hermann smugs, then turns his attention to deciphering the message.
- Very funny Hermann ha ha.
I found and broke your little code and I am going to learn Russian just to return the favor you fucking fucker. -
Hermann's cheeks hurt from grinning.
- You made my uncle read that shit dude. Do you get off on being mean or something. -
Scoffs internally
- That is so uncool. -
Suppresses an eye-roll.
- The fact I am getting into a better school than you is no reason to be such a petty dick. If you are as smart as you think you are I am sure you will do alright when you get off vacation. For now play with your little secret messages while I do real graduate research. -
Hermann growls, smacks open a reply, types his encoded (in Russian) rebuttal.
- I see you have resorted to German for your reply. I am unsure what to make of this. Did you somehow believe that despite my place of residence and my rather ethnic name I am not fluent in the language. Or is German perhaps the only language other than English you know.
It may be beneficial for you to replace some of those graduate courses of which you are so proud with language lessons so you may join the rest of the civilized world in being multilingual. Japanese might be an appropriate choice given your apparent tentacle fetish. My university classmates assured me there is a wealth of stimulating material in that language available online. -
Hermann chuckles to himself.
Father strides in, demands, „What are you doing on the internet?“
„Composing a reply to Ms Schwartz's son,“ Hermann answers without looking away from the screen.
Father leans over his shoulder, then grunts, straightens, and leaves.
Hermann snickers, picks up his tirade where he left off.
Category:Ficlet
Category:Berlin (setting)
Category:Hermann
Category:Hermann's POV
Category:Hermann (ficlet)
Category:Newt
Category:Newt (ficlet)
Category:Lars
Category:Lars (ficlet)
Category:Dietrich (mention)
Category:Monica (mention)
Category:Ilia (mention)
Category:Ficlets with images
Category:Conversations via email
2006 03 26
Category:Celestial Mechanics