"Then what the heck happened?" Farooq asked. His head filled the space above Aleph's as the other members of his group stacked themselves like Mount Rushmore on the hotel room bed.

"Well, eventually he went into the shower and I slid the USB stick into the computer and saved the file."

"Incredible," Gyn said. Viral felt his cheeks blush.

"Soooo?" Alan asked.

Viral looked at the others, confused.

"What about the…" Alan's face had a smirk, and he was nodding like Viral knew the question.

"The what?" Viral asked.

"You know...theeeeee….." Alan's voice rose as if he'd asked a question, but Viral didn't hear it.

"I don't --"

"Jesus Christ, he wants to know about Ankur's dick," Smooshy said.

"What?" Viral asked.

Alan put his hands up in defense. "Whoa, not like details or nothing. I was just curious if you happened to...you know…"

"Oh my God, would you just say it?" Smooshy begged.

Alan crooked his pinky like a caterpillar. Viral thought of Tyler's wiggling unibrow, the furrow that had kicked this whole thing off. Then he remembered the tip of Tyler's penis poking through his boxer shorts, and Viral understood what Alan was asking. He held his hands out to accurately recreate what he'd seen dangling from Ankur.

"Whoa," Aleph said.

Viral nodded.

"You've got to be kidding me," said Alan.

"Go, Ankur," added Smooshy with a grin.

"Hello, somebody!" Farooq offered. Viral noticed that only Gyn wasn't making -- ahem -- a big deal about Ankur's pakora. But even she had a glint in her green eyes revealing pleasant surprise.

"What about circumference?" Alan asked.

Smooshy threw her arms up. "Okay, he's got a problem," she said and flopped into an armchair beside one of the two twin beds.

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"Shhh, let him answer," Aleph said.

Viral gave a look that asked if they were serious. He hadn’t heard Aleph project so clearly before. Farooq's face was stone and wasn't budging. Gyn shrugged and smiled.

Reluctantly, Viral made a half circle with his hand, then closed it with a half circle from his other. Alan turned away like he'd just watched his betting favorite come in last at the Preakness. "God damn, you got to be shitting me!" he said.

Aleph lifted her jaw with the back of her hand. "That's like an Arizona Ice Tea," Farooq noted. Looking at the loop formed by his fingers, Viral nodded his agreement.

"So what about Helen?" Gyn asked.

The room got quiet. "How do you mean?" Viral said.

"Like, is she okay? Should one of us talk to her?"

"It's not our business," Alan said.

"Gyn's right, but so's Alan," Smooshy offered. "We should let Helen decide if she wants to tell Monica."

"That feels a bit complicit," Gyn said.

"What are we going to tell Monica? That James Bond over here was spying on them?" Farooq asked.

"They gave Viral a key to the room," Gyn argued.

"Yeah, and then he stayed and watched Ankur undress until he unsheathed his luxurious doner," said Alan.

"We don't have to mention that part," Viral suggested.

"They're right," Smooshy said to Gyn. "It sucks but we can't get involved. The best we can do right now is use Ankur's research against him so he gets his just desserts one way or another."

Resigned, Gyn nodded. Her shoulders slumped inward turning her into a baby bird. Viral wanted to touch her leg to show her that he cared, but he wasn't sure what constituted tasteful contact only ten weeks into 2020.

From the console beneath the TV mounted at the front of the room, Alan spun up a Mac laptop. "Let's see what Viral got on this thumb drive," he said.

"Where's Plahnk, by the way?" Smooshy asked.

"After dinner he said he was going to go for a walk," Farooq said.

"Monica and the hot cop let him leave?"

Farooq shrugged. Smooshy tapped her front tooth and knit her forehead into to a V. Watching her from a chair near the mini fridge across the bed, Viral made note of her intensity. It was curious, though, that Plahnk had found a way to disappear…

"Mothernutter!" Alan shouted.

"What is it?" Gyn asked.

Viral pulled his chair closer to Alan's. He looked over his shoulder and saw the alert that said the slides Viral had stolen from Ankur required a password to be seen.

"I tried 'Anaconda' in lowercase and caps. No luck," Alan said.

Smooshy curled her face into a question mark.

Farooq said, "Let me see." Standing on the bedspread he stepped over Aleph and leapt to the carpet. Alan moved aside from the computer. Farooq opened the Terminal on the Mac and typed in a command. A black screen appeared then filled with white text. Farooq gestured to Aleph and she stood to take a look.

While they conferred, Viral matched eyes with Smooshy, Alan, and Gyn. None seemed to know what the other two were discussing.

After a few more seconds of intense whisper, Farooq spoke. "Well," he said, "Looks like this file and the rest of Ankur's private docs are encrypted with a function from the Secure Hash family."

“There’s no way that’s the name of a real password scheme,” Smooshy said.

Farooq nodded. Like she smelled an eggy fart, Smooshy frowned.

"Is there anything we can do?" Gyn asked.

"Sure," Farooq said, "We can find a world-class codebreaker in the next five hours."

"Great," Alan said, leaning his weight against the far wall and crossing his arms, defeated. "Where are we going to find one of those at a Ramada Inn in Delaware on a Tuesday at 9 PM?"

Like the Grinch on Christmas morning Farooq let a wide grin spread.