The Enigma Source

“We have two attack vectors in front of us, as I see it. ICABOD and I have been working on one of the ideas we hit on to try and find Chesterfield’s money. We believe that since we can’t find his money, we should coax the money to us. To that end, our new program, Non-linear Aggregation of Unrelated Galactic Heuristics with Temporal Y-axis intercepts, or NAUGHTY, should be able to lure what you and Jacob postulated was a flight to crypto-currencies built on Blockchain technology.”

In a rather deadpan way, Petra asked, “Have you been thinking naughty again?”

Quip brightened and stated, “Catchy, don’t you think? Anyway, with our NAUGHTY program we want to launch a crypto-currency brokerage/clearing house service for all the digital currency that is awash out there. We begin grooming the participants’ list, looking for likely suspects that might lead us to discover where Chesterfield’s money went.”

Petra studied Quip a moment then said, “Are you serious? Launch our own crypto-currency exchange? That is like saying we are setting up Adolf’s Bank and Trust! You don’t just launch a crypto-currency exchange without regulatory permissions, gobs of funding, and a flock of political support that…”

Quip cut her off. “The crypto-currency exchanges that are out there and coming online every other day are currently un-regulated. Our NAUGHTY program spotted that right away, so your first objection is irrelevant. The NAUGHTY program is designed to piece together what shouldn’t be possible and to determine who has the C-Cs, which is the first step to find where they are.”

Petra finally closed her mouth, swallowed and said flatly, “Boy, when EZ is gone, your view of life takes a very narrow focus. I mean really, NAUGHTY?”

ICABOD interjected, “Mistress Petra, Dr. Quip insisted on the naming convention which was over my protests. I unfortunately will have to endure the tarnish that this naming convention brings.”

Seeing no point in arguing further, Petra asked, “You said two attack vectors? Please tell me the other one has less color to it?”

Quip blinked several times to collect his thoughts, then offered, “Well, actually there are three, but we discarded the third one so we could focus on the second one, which is to relaunch the crypto-currency base code we obtained from Su Lin. We take it and add it into the crypto-currency noise that is out there, as you suggested, to become a competitor. This also has the possibility of luring our prey into our clutches to retrieve the missing Chesterfield funds.”

Unable to continue that line of thought, Petra reluctantly asked, “Alright, I have to know. What was the third one?”

Quip grinned and said, “Why, military intervention of course! I always wanted to lead an armored division into battle against incredible odds, much like Alexander the Great! The armored attack vehicles give it more panache, don’t you think?”

Petra thoughtfully commented, “Perhaps we should have let you go with EZ.”