Read The Outlier #3: Lost Souls Page 4

game designer in the future combine those pieces of code together and release them as a new version of an old game? Did it already happen? How many other people received that particular update? And the mailboxes. Think, man, think! Who puts mailboxes on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, gives them special code numbers, hacks into a delivery company's system, redirects packages and then calls the people those packages belong to? Who would do all that and why?

  Dillon decided he was over-thinking the case. There had to be a simple explanation, something that would tie it all together. He considered paying a visit to the man who went home wrong, but decided to talk things over with his grandmother first. He called her up and explained what happened with the bus driver, and she only seemed saddened to hear about it. She had nothing new to add, but only repeated her insistence that the cases were related. She suggested he check the rest of the day's messages himself to see if Bermuda had missed anything, anything at all that might provide another clue.

  He did just that, later in the evening, after taking a break to workout, shower, dine and relax. He sat out on the balcony, watching the fog roll in over Twin Peaks, and scrolled through the entire collection of the day's requests. There were no other messages that seemed related, only the usual assortment of nonsense submitted by people who seemingly could not understand the simple facts of coincidence. No, it was not really curious that a dog barked at the same time every evening. The dog had its reasons. It was not strange for the same person to be on the same trolley every morning, no matter if it looked like they had a job or not. It was unusual, but not a portent of anything, that a pair of dice turned up sixes seven times in a row.

  There was only one message that stood out, and it was the one that came right after the urgent bus text, the one Bermuda couldn't get to because Kintara had made her rush upstairs. It consisted of three numbers, and punctuation:

  429?

  507!

  417.

  308,

  206 …

  Quickly, Dillon consulted a page on HTTP status codes. The message translated fluently. Too many requests?

  Insufficient storage!

  Expectation failed.

  Permanent redirect,

  Partial Content …

  Dillon looked up again at the mass of cold fog spilling over the hills and heading his way. So this is what it's like, he thought, to have an arch-enemy.

 
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