12 Duct Tape and Rock and Roll

Chapter 12 DUCT TAPE AND ROCK AND ROLL Coke and Pep were still in a state of shocked disbelief as the RV pulled out of the huge Cedar Point parking lot. Mya and Bones had told them they would be safe until they got to Washington. And then this happened. Every time they let down their guard, Coke thought, every time they took a deep breath and relaxed a little, something terrible happened. Maybe they would never be safe. Maybe these lunatics would be chasing them for the rest of their lives. "So how were the roller coasters?" Mrs. McDonald asked excitedly. "Did you have an awesome time?" "Yeah," Coke replied without enthusiasm. "Awesome."

当房车驶出巨大的雪松点停车场时，可乐和佩普仍然处于难以置信的震惊状态。 米娅和博恩斯告诉他们，在到达华盛顿之前，他们是安全的。 然后发生了这样的事。每次他们放松警惕，可口可乐想，每次他们深吸一口气，放松一点，可怕的事情就会发生。 也许他们永远不会安全。 也许这些疯子会追他们一辈子。 “过山车怎么样？”麦克唐纳太太兴奋地问。 “你玩得开心吗？”“是的，”可口可乐毫无热情地回答。 “酷毙了”。

"Awesome," mumbled Pepsi. Their parents were disappointed. They had devoted the whole day to doing something just for the kids, but it didn't seem to have made the kids happy. They just sat in the back of the RV, silently. Dr. McDonald figured that after riding a dozen roller coasters and being dropped, flipped, spun, and thrown every which way, maybe the twins' brains were a little out of whack. It was getting past dinnertime. Dr. McDonald pulled into Cedar Point Camper Village, a few miles away in Sandusky. The campground featured a shuffleboard court, a game room, and an outdoor pool. But all Coke and Pep wanted to do was sleep. They didn't even want dinner. Their parents went to the snack bar to get something for themselves. Having gone to bed so early, Coke woke up at five a.m., before anyone else in the family. He pulled on a pair of jeans and wandered outside. The campground was quiet. It was peaceful. Nobody else was awake. The only thing open was the game room, so Coke went in.

“太棒了，”百事嘟囔道。他们的父母很失望。 他们花了一整天的时间为孩子们做一些事情，但这似乎并没有让孩子们开心。 他们只是静静地坐在房车的后面。 麦克唐纳博士认为，在坐了十几次过山车、被摔下、被翻转、被旋转、被抛向各个方向之后，这对双胞胎的大脑可能有点不正常。 快过晚饭时间了。 麦克唐纳博士把车开进了几英里外桑达斯基的杉点露营村。 露营地有一个沙狐球场、一个游戏室和一个室外游泳池。 但可口可乐和佩普只想睡觉。 他们甚至不想吃晚饭。 他们的父母去小吃店给自己买点东西。 睡得这么早，可口可乐早上5点就醒了，比家里其他人都早。 他穿上一条牛仔裤，走到外面。 露营地很安静。一切都很平静。 没人醒着。唯一开着的是游戏室，所以可乐进去了。

It was a tiny room, with just three arcade games in it—a shoot-'em-up called Kill Them All, a driving game called Pedal to the Metal, and an old Ms. Pac-Man machine. Despite the hour, the games were plugged in and turned on, playing their "attract mode." That's the screen display that is shown when nobody is playing an arcade game. The idea is to attract the next player. Or, more specifically, the next quarter. Kill Them All looked interesting. The screen showed guys in camouflage blowing away an army of zombies with machine guns. INSERT COIN flashed in the middle of the screen. Coke stepped up to the console and reached into his pocket. He didn't have any money with him. The coin return was empty. He

这是一个很小的房间，里面只有三款街机游戏——射击游戏《Kill Them All》，驾驶游戏《Pedal to the Metal》，还有一台老Ms。 吃豆人的机器。尽管有一个小时的时间，但这些游戏还是被接通并打开，玩起了它们的“吸引模式”。 这是当没有人在玩街机游戏时所显示的屏幕。 这样做是为了吸引下一个玩家。 或者更具体地说，是下个季度。 《杀死他们》看起来很有趣。 屏幕上显示，一群迷彩服士兵用机枪扫射僵尸大军。 “插入币”在屏幕中央闪烁。 可口可乐走到控制台，把手伸进口袋。 他身上没带钱。 硬币是空的。 他

pushed the start button for the heck of it, on the off chance that the last player had walked away in the middle of a game. Instantly, this flashed on the screen: EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC Well, it didn't take an encryption expert—or his sister—to figure out that EKOC was COKE backward. And Coke was pretty sure those letters were not referring to the soft drink. In a few seconds they were replaced by this message, in bright blue glowing letters: WBUAOHYY It flashed just once and disappeared in a simulated puff of smoke, but Coke had already memorized it. He ran back to the RV and woke up his sister. "I think we got another cipher," he whispered in her ear. "Where?" Pep asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "On the screen of a video game in the game

按下开始按钮，因为最后一个玩家可能会在游戏中途离开。 顷刻间，屏幕上闪现出这样的字样：EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC EKOC嗯，不需要加密专家——或者他的妹妹——就能看出EKOC是COKE的倒写。 可口可乐公司非常确定这些字母不是指软饮料。 几秒钟后，它们就被这个信息取代了，用明亮的蓝色发光字母：WBUAOHYY。它只闪了一次，就消失在一股模拟的烟雾中，但可口可乐已经记住了它。 他跑回房车，叫醒了妹妹。 “我想我们又得到了一个密码。”他在她耳边低语。 “在哪里?”佩普问，揉了揉她的睡眼。 在屏幕上的电子游戏中玩游戏

room." Coke took Pep's notebook and wrote the letters out. WBUAOHYY Quietly, so they wouldn't wake their parents, the twins tiptoed outside to sit at the picnic table next to their RV. "It looks a little like the call letters of a radio station," Pep said as she examined the message. "Too many letters," Coke told her. "Radio stations are always WHYY or WCBS, stuff like that." "You say you saw this on an arcade game screen?" Pep asked. "How do you know it isn't the name of the person who has the high score, or something like that?" "Before it flashed this message," Coke told her, "it was flashing E-K-O-C over and over again. My name backward. I know it's a message for me." Pep looked at the letters more closely. Obviously, they didn't mean anything spelled

房间。”可口可乐拿过佩普的笔记本，把信写了出来。 为了不吵醒父母，这对双胞胎蹑手蹑脚地走到外面，坐在房车旁边的野餐桌旁。 “它看起来有点像广播电台的呼号，”佩普一边看信一边说。 “信太多了，”科克告诉她。 “广播电台总是WHYY或WCBS之类的。” “你说你是在街机游戏屏幕上看到的？”Pep问道。 “你怎么知道这不是得分最高的人的名字，或者诸如此类的东西？”“在它闪现这个信息之前，”科克告诉她，“它一遍又一遍地闪现着E-K-O-C。 我的名字倒着说。我知道这是给我的信息。” 佩普更仔细地看了看那些信。 很明显，他们的意思不是拼写

backward. It didn't seem to be an anagram. Every second, third, or fourth letter meant nothing. The consecutive Ys made her think "why why" could be part of the message, but nothing else seemed to fit. She tried all the usual codes she knew, but none of them worked. This was a tough one. The sun was peeking through the trees. People were starting to emerge from their tents and RVs to begin their day. And suddenly, Pep got it. "It's simple!" she said excitedly. "This is a half- reversed alphabet!" Pep took the pen from her brother and wrote out the alphabet in two lines. ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ "I don't get it," Coke said. Pep drew a line under the cipher: WBUAOHYY. "If you break the twenty-six letters of the alphabet into two lines of thirteen letters," Pep said, "each letter is directly above or below another letter. The W is below the J, so the first letter of the

落后。这似乎不是一个字谜。 每第二个、第三个或第四个字母都没有任何意义。 连续的y让她觉得“为什么为什么”可能是信息的一部分，但似乎没有其他合适的东西。 她试了所有她知道的常用密码，但没有一个有效。 这是一个艰难的决定。太阳从树丛中露出来。 人们开始从帐篷和房车里走出来，开始新的一天。 突然，佩普明白了。“很简单！”她兴奋地说。 “这是一个半颠倒的字母表！”佩普从她哥哥手里接过笔，用两行字写出了字母。 “我不明白，”可口可乐说。 佩普在密码下面划了一条线：WBUAOHYY。 “如果你把字母表中的26个字母分成两行，每一行13个字母，”佩普说，“每个字母都在另一个字母的正上方或正下方。 W在J的下面，所以是单词的第一个字母