Read Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things for Free Online

quickly.”
    “I’ll be old before we check them all! Isn’t there a better way to do
it?”
    “Ah, that’s the good news!” Tinker said. “I deal only in Exact
answers. But there is a brilliant Composer who lives in Permute, named Hugh Rustic. He deals in Good
Enough answers. I send him all of my hardest cases. I’ll write an IOU that you can take to
him.”

Chapter 7. Read Me

    Laurie and Xor were halfway to Permute when a creature with red skin and horns and a black
leather jacket pulled up on a red motorcycle. On the back of the bike was a huge bag full of
packages and envelopes.
    “Hello, who are you?” Laurie asked.
    “I’m a daemon. Who else would I be? Hold on, there’s a message for you in
here somewhere.” He rummaged around in his bag and handed Laurie a plain envelope. When she
opened it, all she found inside was the strangest nonsense:
    L OREM I PSUM ,
E SXIHU ! S IT AMET, CONSECTETUR
ADIPISICING ELIT, SED DO EIUSMOD TEMPOR INCIDIDUNT UT LABORE ET DOLORE MAGNA ALIQUA .
U T ENIM AD MINIM VENIAM, QUIS NOSTRUD EXERCITATION . . .
    “Are you sure this is for me?”

    “Are you sure you are you?”
    “Well . . . yes.”
    “Then that’s for you,” said the daemon. “I never make a mistake of
identity.”
    “But how can you be sure?”
    “How can you be sure you are you?”
    “Because I’m right here!”
    “See? It’s only logical.”
    “But I can’t read it,” Laurie said. “What does it
say?”
    “How old are you, that you can’t read?” said the daemon. “That’s
a real shame.”
    “But—”
    “Did you know that kids in some countries start reading when they are only 12 months
old?”
    “I can read—I just can’t read this . It’s gibberish!”
    “That,” said the daemon, putting his riding gloves back on, “sounds like a
whole lot of Not My Problem.”
    “But—”
    “Do you accept delivery? Or do I have to bounce it?”
    “Well, yes, but—”
    “Look, Miss Well-Yes-But. I’m a mail delivery daemon. I work for the Colonel. My
job is to deliver messages. What the message says is Not My Problem. Good day!” The daemon
sped away, his tires spitting dirt and gravel all over her.
    “ Ooh! ” Laurie was so mad that she actually stamped her foot.
“That little d-d—”
    “What is it, Laurie?” asked Xor, who had been napping in her pocket.
    “I think it’s a message for me,” she said. “But I don’t
understand it at all.”
    “A secret message!” Xor said, rubbing his little claws together. “It’s
lucky for you that my mother’s half-brother is a Cryptosaurus.”
    “A what-asaurus?”
    “A Crypto saurus. We know everything there is to know about secret
messages. Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Xor crawled onto the message for a
closer look. The paper was white, so of course his skin turned black.
    “Hmm. This is a hard one. I don’t recognize these letters at all.”
    “Why are you looking at it upside down?” Laurie asked him.
    “Of course, well, uh, sometimes you can see patterns in secret messages that way.”
He turned the right way around.
    “Now, um, let’s read it through slowly and look for clues. Con-sec-te-tour
a-dee-peace-ick-ing el . . .” Xor’s skin rippled as he moved across the letters.
“. . . dew-is ow-tay . . .”
    “Hey, Xor, wait a second.” Laurie had noticed something odd. “Back up just a
little.”
    “Like this?”
    “Yeah. Now, think really hard about blending in.”
    “Okay. What do you see?” he said.
    “Your skin. I think I can read it.”
    When Xor was lined up just right, L OREM I PSUM E SXIHU in black on white became L AUREN I PSUM G REETINGS in white on
black.
    “You are unhiding the message!”
    “Really? I mean, see? I told you I could do it.”
    “You are wonderful, Xor! Can you get closer to the paper?”
    “If I were any closer, I’d be behind it!”
    Word by word, they unscrambled the message. But even then it didn’t make much
sense:
    L AUREN I PSUM ,
G REETINGS ! W ITHOUT A DOUBT,