Stressful is an understatement.

First, it's worth noting that Vanderdecken12 paid for our board by winning a wrestling match against 5 of the locals without taking any damage. Now for the rest of the post...

We were sitting in separate corners of the small, ten-by-ten room for literally hours tonight without any of us saying anything. Vanderdecken12 was pondering a way to bring the mad scientist from the past. Aleck was doing some weird yoga exercises or something. And I was trying to bypass the endless security measures just to get ACCESS to the internet in such a locale as this. I mean really, HOURS without talking to each other.

Then Vanderdecken jumped up, "I've been looking at it the wrong way!"
Aleck didn't even move a muscle from his "stand on one hand" pose. I glanced up but then went back to hacking.
"I've been thinking about Ludwig Einstein" (that's the mad scientist's name) "I should have been thinking about Oleck."
Neither of us looked up (I'm serious, we were both meditating...in our separate ways).
"Ben!"
"Hmm?"
"BEN!"
"Can't you see I'm busy doing the impossible?" I asked with at least a note of sarcasm.
"Yes I know, but this is more important."
I looked up at him, "What?"
"Oleck said in his letter that he'd started thinking about Ludwig's methods. There's a chance he succeeded."
"But wouldn't he have come to you already if he did?"
Aleck looked up from his 'hang from the ceiling with your feet' pose, "Not necessarily; he might prefer to go to a year Vanderdecken12 is the same age as he is."
"Which would be at least twenty-seven..." Vander nodded, "OK, Ben, here's what I need you to do. Set up a face recognition program using the photos I took of Oleck and embed it into all security programs so it'll register the security cameras. When they detect him, embed a message in the law enforcement so that they will go to him and tell him to come back to November 12, 2009 at the time you establish the code and at our current coordinates. And it needs to be done before morning."
I rubbed my eyes in exhaustion.
"What? Can you do it?"
"It's just too much. Besides not even being close to getting into the Chinese system, I'm not even sure I can hack into the security programs from here, let alone write all that code for even a primitive face recognition software."
He was staring at me, squinting his eyes, and then he nodded, "I believe you can " he said softly.
"That's exactly the point. I'm afraid of letting you down."
He nodded but said no more.
And now I have to get to work....