Erra opened the door to his apartment on campus, walked through the shared living area and moved toward the bedroom where he could hear the sounds of his roommate, Anders, trash talking either his opponents or teammates, it all sounded the same to him. “Hey Anders, you got a minute?” Erra said as he poked his head through the open doorway, “Hold on, wait, wait, wait…. AHHHHH, now I’m dead!, Now I do, whats up?” Anders asked looking up from the monitor he sat in front of at Erra, who’s head was still poked around the corner of the door. “Ever heard of a book called ‘The Eye of Etherious‘?”
“Nope, what is it about?” asked Anders, now intrigued. “That’s it, I don’t know, I found it working at the antique shop, its this encrypted book that Mr Keeper gave me to keep, here take a look.” Erra said reaching in to his backpack, producing the book in hand, and turning it over to Anders.

“Erra, you find the strangest stuff at that shop” Anders started flipping though the pages, “This stuff is wild dude, whats going on with the notes?” “Its the notes of the former owner, this came from an estate sale and this was with a bunch of books that were way older than this, I think he used those books to work on this one, to crack the code.” Anders continued to flip through the pages, “looks like the old dude did not complete the work he stated. You know I have an exam coming up, why, why do you do this to me? You know I can’t not work on this.” Anders let out a huge sigh, “well can’t be helped, its here, in my hands, at least I can look up what this is all about.” Erra moved to be fully in the room and sat on Anders bed that was behind his desk. “Let’s see, Etherious, what does master internet have to say…”

Anders clicked around and after some quick reading on the matter, “Looks like its passed around in the group calling themselves Cricket 3401. Looks like they use this as a recruitment tool, solve a page and submit your results, and they verify it then you get invented to the club. Sounds like this dude was a member or wanted to join.” Erra gasped, “Wait! Cricket 3401! Their part of this? imagine we solved a page each, we would be among the ranks of the most elite code breakers and solvers in the world. Look some of the work has been done, there are forums online dedicated to solving this right?… Let me see the book” Anders handed Erra the book back to Erra, “See, this page is half solved…” “How do we know that one was not already solved?” Interrupted Anders. “Well, look it up, we just re-solve the pages that are public and work on the rest.” Erra pleaded with Anders. “My guy, I don’t have time for this.” Anders replied, “Look I can get deep into this after my exam, I don’t need this replacing what I need to know for next week. Besides people have been working on this book for ages, just like people have been trying to decode the Voynich Manuscript, that looks just a wild at this, and people are still debating what that says.”

Erra was a bit displease with Anders response, he would have to wait a week to get started. Anders was really the one that would be able to solve it if anybody. Anders was invited to the university to study Cybersecurity Scholarship and he specialized in Cryptography. From Anders’ stories of home, he wreaked havoc on a regular basis. He once hijacked the schools CCTV system, and just steamed movies for an entire day. He also claimed that he had control over all of the teacher PC, the school used a remote management system, Anders claimed he key logged the school administrator and used that to read the teachers email. Even pranked a few teachers by forwarding emails of other bad mouthing them. Good times, he commented the best part is when the police had to be called in to break up a fist fight when he forward evidence of one teacher having an affair with another’s wife. Anders had a million stories, and he was good enough that Erra believed him, Anders could seemingly see holes in anything.

Erra book in hand, went over to his bed in the same room and sat down, slid his backpack off his shoulder and set the book on his night stand, then pulled out his smartphone. “Alright Anders you win, you want pizza?” Erra asked, opening the local pizza app. “My man, you buying? Only extra cheese and extra pepperoni on my half. No onion, any time you get it, it gets on my half and infects it. Ruined.” Erra smiled to himself. “Fine, I will go pick it up, be back in 15, you owe me.”