Scientific Wizard Agency

Composed by Yuki Neco

Chapter 6: Lumina's Fault

Lumina was seated in the backseat of the white Mercedes driven by Madison’s bodyguards bound for Taylor’s residence. She took her laptop and some memory sticks with her. About 20 minutes after she left Freedstone University, she found that she had left the SD card received at Krudeland University.
“I forgot!” Lumina screeched.
“Miss, there’s something wrong? Shall we return?” the driver asked.
“Sorry, it’s nothing. No, thank you. Please keep on the way to Madison’s house,” blond-haired girl replied.
She sighed to soothe herself and thought, “That’s okay. I read all the data and stored them in my laptop. The attackers are currently after me and the theory; they must be struggling to get it. I don’t have much time—how long do I need to finish my work?”

The Mercedes entered the garden through the gateway of Taylor’s residence, subsequently running on the garden drive to the porch. As the car screeched the brake to stop, the front door opened and Madison walked out of the house with two housekeeping maids. The time was already 11:30 p.m.
“Good evening, Madison,” Lumina greeted stepping out of the Mercedes.
“Good evening, Lumina. My house is a safer place than the university. Please come on in,” Madison took the long-haired girl into the house, pushing the back.
“I’m sorry for causing so much bother,” Lumina apologized to her friend when she was stepping up the stairs.
She was guided to a room on the second floor, as Madison said, “You can use this room. I presume you are very tired. So take a shower and go to bed, Lumina.”
“Thank you very much, Madison.”


Next morning, Sakura exclaimed with a joy during checking her e-mail reception. “Li, we got data from Vicky! Come on.”
Li jogged to the desk she was working at, “Did she have some actors from various counties pronounce the lines and record their voice?”
“Yep, the data contains a lot of voice patterns of different accent,” she jofully looked in the list of files. “I hope we’ll be able to identify the flattened accent from the guy who attacked Lumina last week. Now, we’ll be busy today.”
“Okay, let’s get the intonation pattern of those data,” Li said.


Meanwhile, Lumina was frantically writing equations on the whiteboards aligned in the room assigned for her. Now there was no one else in the room. Perhaps, bodyguards were standing out by the door. She had been working without sleeping; her eyes were bloodshot. Holding in her left hand the graphs of expetimental data she printed out, she scribbled and scribbled the equations with symbols such as creation and annihilation operators—looking like hieroglyphs—on one of the whiteboard and onto another. Occasionally, she paused and stepped back, looking at the Feynman diagram she had drawn—with some straight line and wavy lines—at the bottom left corner. Comparing the diagram and the equations with her bloodshot keen eyes, she curled up her mouth.

“I’m almost there!”
She strode closer to whiteboard, picked up a red marker, as she cancelled the terms on the equation with crimson backslashes. Subsequently writing an equal symbol, she then continued the equation, until she wrote Q.E.D., whispering to herself, “quad erat demonstrandum,” as she chuckled.
“That explains it! My mathematical form can succeed in giving the explanation to the experimental data... teh heh heh...”
She staggered backward and collapsed onto the bed on her back, giggling.
“Yes, my theory is completed!”
Her giggle gradually grew, but finally turned into a high-pitched laugh. She kept on laughing though she didn't know what was funny to laugh at.
There were bangs on the door. “Miss, what’s the matter?! Are you all right?!”
The bodyguards worried about what just happend in the room, talking to the girl inside.
“I’m all right. Please call Madison here!” Getting back to herself, she answered with a heavy sigh.


Sakura and Li worked in extracting all the intonation patterns from the data for three hours.
“Right, the extracting process is finished,” Li said with a heavy sigh.
“Let’s take a break, before getting down to the matching process,” Sakura suggested.
“Okay, I’ll go get some coffee,” Li jumped on his feet.

She has become a hard worker right after she got the SD memory card at Krudeland University. Moreover, she got in a hurry as soon as she received an e-mail from her father.
Li felt something unfulfilled about the change of Lumina’s attitude. He didn’t quite understand what made her hurry that way.
“Hey, Sakura, is it just me, or Lumina’s found something important in Dr. Allison’s e-mail? She didn’t tell us what was written in it.”
“Something important?” Sakura repeated the phrase in an asking intonation.
“It was all of a sudden last night that she insisted she leave the office. Besides, she said Dr. Allison will come out in a few days. What will happen when he appears? What’s she prepareing by the time of his appearance?” Li shrugged.
“Are you worried about her?” Sakura looked into Li’s face and asked.
“Uh... yes,” Li replied, “there’s no problem about the security cause she’s now in Madison’s mansion, but I kind of worry that she keeps working without sleeping.”
“I don’t have a clue what she has to work that hard for,” Sakura looked by a side glance at the desk Lumina had been working until the day before. “Lumina’s father’s reasearch is so crucial and dangerous that someone evil is eager to obtain in hand?”
“Maybe it’s beyond our understanding, at least for me and you,” Li replied. “Uh, well, now let’s start what we have to do. Shall we start the matching process of the intonation patterns.”
“Okay, today’s work will totally rely on Zachary’s software. I don’t think there’s a part for the Star Cards to play their roles,” Sakura giggled.


Madison Taylor ran into the room in the residence where Lumina is waiting for. Lumina was lying on the bed with her blond long hair running across her face, surrounded by the sheets of paper with graphs and equations printed on them.
“Lumina, did you stay up all night working?” Madison asked her with half worried and half disgusted manner.
“Yeah, but...” She pointed the whiteboard, “I came to the conclusion.”
“Great! You should have a good sleep, then...”
“No, I’m not through, yet, Madison. I still got what I have to do.”
What is this girl trying to do after she found something encrypted in those equations?
“I want you to prepare a relay station...” Lumina restarted talking to Madison.
“What...? Relay station...? Of the television or something?”
“Not such a big one... I just want to...” she whispered in Madison’s ear.


“Holy cow!” Li shouted at the matching result they calculated between intonation patterns extracted from the voice data. The voice was ascribed to actors from various regions, such as New York, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and even Hawaii, London, Tokyo, and more.
“It’s a good idea to compare the voice patterns of people from many cities,” Ken Matthews who just came to check the result said impressed.
“But the attackers’ intonation doesn’t show so high ratio of likeness with any regions’ accent,” Li said.
“Some region’s accent sure sound flattened like the attacker’s speech, though,” Sakura added. “More interesting is the the attackers’ speech is most similar to the monotone speech spoken by an amateur lousy actor.”
“Hey, does that mean the attacker weren’t for real, they’re just playing a lousy drama?” Ken asked in astonishment.
“Yes, I should’ve suspected the attack was a fake from their flattened speech, but I convinced myself the attackers were for real because I had heard Lumina that she was terrified the two guys were about to abduct her. And there’s more. We found the attacker spoke in a different accent in one moment,” Li said when he clicked the play button, as the sound recorded by Lumina was played.

Don’t scream, I’m warning.    (attacker’s voice)
Nnngh!    (Lumina’s groan)
Hey, ah ya hidin’ somethin’?!    (attacher’s voice)
Leave me alone! Who do you think you’re attacking?    (Lumina’s voice)
We haven’t got much time. Take her into the car.    (attacker’s voice)

“Here,” Li explained, “the attacker spoke in southern accent saying ‘are you hiding something’ unlike the other part. I guess the attackers were speaking as the script made up in advance, but the ‘are you hiding something’ was not in the script. He must have talked in response to see Lumina’s moves.”
“Southern accent in the middle of flattened accent, that made you feel sure their attacking was just pretending, right, Li?” Ken asked with his arms crossed.
“That’s right. I should’ve suspected it could be a fake much earlier,” Li regretfully said. “Then what did the attacker played such a cheap drama for?”
“The simplest scenario can be Ted FitzGerald,” Sakura said, “he made up the script for making friends with Lumina... for retrieving information on Dr. Allison.”
“So we gotta catch FitzGerald and question him,” Li said, walking in a frustrated manner.
“Not so fast, Li,” Ken warned him, “There’s no sufficient objectivity about the attackers’ accent leading to FitzGerald’s evil plot. At this rate, he can evade our questions.”
“Hmm, you’re right,” Li agreed.
“We have to wait for him to take another evil step,” Sakura bit her lip.


Lumina woke up and found she had dozed off for an hour while she was working with her laptop. It was about four o’clock in the morning. After all, she hadn’t had little sleep the day before, so she was very sleepy.
“Maybe my work will be done in a few hours,” she thought. “When I’m through with it, I’ll go back to Freedstone University to see Li and Sakura.”
At this time, Lumina received an e-mail. She checked the newly received mail as she gasped in an impact of surprise.
“What?! The mail from Dad again,” She got surprised. Reading the e-mail message, her surprise grew bigger, because it was the same mail as she received right before she left Freedstone university.
“Could that be...” her eyes opened wider, as sweat come out from the head.
“Someone might have resolved the password inspried by the speed of light. The SD memory card I obtained in Krudeland University is stolen?”
First she didn’t want to believe the SD card was stolen, but soon she remembered one thing.
“Oh, no, I left it at the temporary office. I suspect that the office was broken in!”

At the very moment, Lumina’s cell phone rang. She picked it up and answered; it was from Sakura who was upset.
“Our temporary office was broken in!” Sakura said in a fast speech, “Sorry we were careless, we were all out of the office last night. The culprit must have been watching us and waiting for the time to break in. However, because you took away all the data with you laptop, luckily any crucial data was stolen.”
“Ohhh... Sakura, I just have to say this but...” Lumina started to talk with a shiver of guilty feelings, “I left the SD memory card at the office.”
“What? Is it possible that the culprit has found it?”
“D-definitely yes,” Lumina answered in panic, “Now I just received an e-mail, the same mail I just received before I came over to here Madison’s house. I am really... sorry... that’s the sign that the culprit has already resolved the password!” “What?!”
“I’m sorry. I’m coming to the temporary office to see you and Li,” Lumina hang up.

What should I do? Did I do anything else stupid?
Remember what I did the day before I came to Madison’s house.
That night I received an e-mail from Dad, and I downloaded the data attached to it. What did I do with the attached data? I just copied it in this memory stick... Wait a minute, I kind of remember I failed copying first... and I retried copying. What kind of failure? What did I do...?
Oh my God! The failure was... I stored the data in the SD memory card by mistake! That means... now the culprit has all the data in hand. I hope the culprit has not resolved the password to the final data...

“I blew it! Excuse me, Ms. bodyguard, please drive me to Freedstone University ASAP!” Lumina frantically said with tears.


Lumina and Madison hopped in the backseat of the White Mercedes. The car runs fast in the street of the early morning head to the university. Lumina carried her laptop and memory sticks. Even though she was almost crying with guilty feeling, she continued working with the laptop.

The car came and stopped at the parking space in the unversity, Lumina, Madison, and two of Madison’s bodyguards started moving to their temporary office in the physics department. Lumina holding her laptop was crying in the thoughts that her fault could even spoil her friends cooperation and her own hard work.

In their way to the office, they bumped into Margaret O’Reilly and Ted FitzGerald. Margaret looked at provocative look and said, “Good morning, Lumina Allison. You are an early bird, but what are you crying for?”
“I’m not crying! Let me through,” Lumina said with a frustration.
“Oh, why? You’re wearing glasses today, Ted. You look different,” Madison said to Ted.
“Oh... I just...” Ted stammered in answer.
“He lost his contact lens today. Just his luck,” Margaret replied for him. “He looks different in glasses, and I think he looks better on contact lenses.”
“We’re in a hurry, excuse me!” Lumina said, as the group restarted to run toward the office.

Lumina swung the door to the office open; Sakura, Li, and Ken were waiting inside. From the fatigue from her hard work, she tripped at the doorway and fell. Li caught her falling in his chest.
“Wh- I’m sorry, I’m such a klutz...” Lumina blushed in still-crying face.
Even in an awkward position, it was true that Li caressed Lumina in his chest. Even though she was as tall as ordinary girls at the age, Li felt as if she was little and fragile. By just one pulse, Li felt heart beat was so intense that he couldn’t look at her straightly. He averted his eye from her, taking her laptop from her unstable arms, and then whipsered, “Be careful, Lumina. This is all the work you’ve done.”

This scene gave Sakura a strong impact. It looked like that Li was playing a romantic scene with another woman. This happening made her recall the change of Li’s attitde these days; Sakura finelly felt sick. “She’s a vampire,” Margaret O’Reilly whispered in Sakura’s mind. “He’s beginning to get bewitched.”
What am I thinking? He just caught her when she triped and fell. That’s all there’s to it.

By a glance at Sakura in a sad mood, Li stepped backward. Then as the natural subsequence, Lumina fell on the ground.
“Why me...” Lumina groaned scratching the ground. But this unexpected bad treatment recovered her from crying mood, anyway.

Ken began explaining the scene of the crime, “Someone broke in the office last night. He looked for something, and during his search he broke the glass on the bookshelves before running away.”
Li continued, “You left the SD memory card in the office, Lumina. Do you remember where it was?”
“Yes, in the drawer,” she opened the drawer and confirmed the SD memory card was truly stolen.
“This is all my fault. I’m sure they have the SD card including the final data in hand and they have resolved the first password.”
“What do you mean by the first password,” Li asked.
“You remember the multilayerd password block Madison called?” Lumina explained, “The first password is the one I demonstrated to resolve by the speed of light. I got the same e-mail this morning as I got when I resolved the first password; that means they succeeded in resolving the first password.”
“And the SD memory card contains the final data as well, right?” Sakura said in a lowered voice.
“Sorry, that’s my stupid mistake. Now, they can access the final data if they’ve resolve the second password.”
“They haven’t resolved it yet, right?” Madison asked.
“I hope so...” Lumina cried.
“If they haven’t resolved it, they should contact us with some evil action,” Ken said.
“Dr. Matthews is right. We gotta find a key to put them into a corner, from this scene of the crime.” Li turned and handed his handkerchief to Lumina, whipering, “So stop crying, Lumina. It’s not all your fault. We all had a mistake that we left the office last night. When you were out, we took our guard down.”

“I... I’m going to look for Ted FitzGerald,” Sakura started out.
“No, we haven’t gotten enough evidence,” Li tried to calm her down.
“We’ll find it when we get him and question him,” she continued.
“Stop. Calm down, Sakura! Breaking in the office, he must have left some clue in this room. It’s a good opportunity for us to get their track.””
“We’re wasting time. They can resolve the password in any minute! I’m off!”
“Don’t. If he is truly the one who did it, it’s dangerous!” Li warned.
“I have a skill to do with the danger, you know. At least, you should worry about the delicate girl beside you,” Sakura ran out of the office with her hands covering her nose and mouth.

“What’s she mad at?” Li stood in a puzzled look.
“Is she all right?” Ken asked in a worrying tone.
“Sakura will be all right,” Madison said. She turned to Li and said to him in a strong attitude unlike her usual self, “Above all, don’t you forget Sakura worked very hard in the case? Did you say thank you or something to her these days? You and Sakura have been together for a long time—such a long time and so close—that you can lose care for her before you know it.”

As a response to Madison’s words, Li began walking around the room without a word and looked up at the ceiling for a while. He looded down about 30 seconds later, then he talked slowly:
“Yeah... Madison... I may be wrong... I better look for her.”
When Li was about to run, Madison took his hand to yank his arm slightly, as she shook her head.
“No, Li. Give her a time to think. She will calm herself down in an hour, and be back here in stead of taking the risk.”

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