The Z Contingency

Chapter 6

What’s the deal with that jerk Ecks? He just wouldn’t leave me alone.

What’s taking so long for email to load this morning? Is management trying to keep us from accessing our personal accounts?

I was clearly trying to eat my breakfast in peace, and he plops his skinny ass down and starts blathering away at me.

He just assumes he could sit anywhere he wants. Talk to whoever he pleases. Who died, and made him king of the world?

Just because he has a P-H-freaking-D. Big whoop. I’ve got a Master’s degree in engineering, which is a lot harder than biology, or whatever he studied. I could just as easily have gotten my doctorate too.

He must have some kind of superiority thing going on.

He just kept going on and on with his inane chatter. Blah blah blah.

I should start calling him Chatty Cathy.

Finally! No wonder it was taking so long for it to load. My inbox is full of spam.... Oh, wait…. Here’s something from my patent lawyer. I’ll bet they’re going to give me a patent for my invention for using television broadcasts to send secret messages.

Let’s see…. “Your invention is being suppressed under the Invention Secrecy Act.”

Suppressed? Invention Secrecy Act? Can they do that? What the hell is this?

The government is screwing me again. They just want to use my invention and not have to pay me anything.

I’d better make sure they’re not using it. I can program my smartphone to check. The microphone should be good enough to capture the sound and find the fundamental frequency in the audio. Use that to calculate the update frequency that’s embedded in the audio signal. They’re probably too lazy to change anything in my design, so I should be able to extract the key, and then decrypt the hidden signal embedded in the television video that’s captured using the camera. I can display the hidden messages on my screen.

Those worthless thieves won’t hide from me.