Atoma and the Blockchain Game Page 7

  “They’re sending a reconnaissance party to meet us when we are done,” Jacinda said.

  Grimwade cleared his throat. “An exploration party,” he corrected her.

  “And they will take us home after our mission is finished?” Hana asked.

  “We have a lot invested in getting you there and keeping you alive until the exploration team arrives,” Grimwade said.

  “Er—yes, sorry, Professor,” Hana said with a worried look on her face

  Rachel glanced at me with a roll of her eyes.

  “That sounds like the exploration team might not be taking us back,” I said.

  “Our mission is to prepare the way for an exploration team,” Jacinda said and this time it was she that glared at me. “Of course they’re going to take us back home.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Rachel asked Jacinda.

  “Because our new skills are going to be useful in the future,” Jacinda replied. “Isn’t that so, Professor?”

  “Yes, of course,” Grimwade nodded. “We have no intention of wasting all the time and effort, yours and ours, that expended on building this team. That’s enough questions.”

  He glanced at Major Concord.

  “Let’s move along to the capsules then, shall we?” Major Concord said showing us the way with a sweep of his hand.

  Rachel caught my eye once more and gave an ever so slight shake of her head.

  I saw her mouth the words silently, and my heart stopped as the message sunk in.

  “I told you so.”

  17

  Into the Wormhole

  Deep in the cavern, we came to a huge gleaming round tank surrounded by cranes on platforms. The rock ceiling directly above the polished rounded metal had a perfect round hole of the same width. Lights lit the interior of the shaft as far up as we could see. It looked nothing less than a missile tube.

  Tracks ran up to the tank; a huge conveyor belt that carrying racks on wheels. Each rack contained two rows of uniformly dull grey metal capsules standing some twelve feet tall on their ends. But it was the gleaming tank that held our attention.

  “You are looking at the largest diameter metal tank in the world,” Major Concorde said. “Impressive, isn’t she? And those tubes are your capsules. Ladies, what you are looking at is your transport.”

  “Sir, are we going to be paradropped by plane?” Jacinda asked Grimwade.

  “Something completely different, Commander,” he said in an excited voice. Grimwade turned to Major Concord expectantly. “Major, would you like to explain?”

  “That’s a very good question, Commander,” Major Concord said. “The capsules provided the simplest solution to the delivery problem.”

  “Sir, simple is always best,” Jacinda agreed, nodding her head.

  “Exactly,” Major Concorde said.

  “Sir, what is the environment like at the other end?” Nako asked. “Is it underwater?”

  “We are expecting it to be dry land,” he said. “But, we certainly can’t take any chances.”

  “You will find it dusty,” Grimwade said clearing up any doubt as to what he expected.

  “The gear we have been wearing underwater looks like spacesuits,” I said.

  “They are not spacesuits,” Grimwade blustered angrily, and he glared at me.

  “Oh, I think we can call them spacesuits at this point,” Major Concorde said to Grimwade. He cast a steely gaze around his audience. “You wear them in the capsule, and you keep them on when you have landed. You stay in the suits until you have made a thorough check of the surrounding terrain. The suits are your insurance; you see? You want to know that you are fully protected until you are absolutely sure it’s safe to remove the helmet. Possible dangers may include debris in the air, noxious fumes, and extreme temperature. You can walk away from these threats only so long as you remain sealed in your suit.”

  We followed the major to the tracks.

  He pointed at the capsules lined up in the racks, the vehicles loomed above us like they might be Godzilla’s eggs.

  “The problem will be landing these things. But we will get to that shortly. Let me show you how we plan to deliver you.”

  The major stepped onto a large metal platform surrounded by a barrier fence and waved to us to join him. The crane took us far enough up we could see up the shaft through the stone ceiling. The shaft continued until it diminished to a dot far above us. The crane arm swung the platform over the lip of the huge silver tank and we saw that the top of the structure was dome shaped with a large sinkhole in the center. Looking down into the hole we were able to see clear through to the bottom of the tank, or we would have if there had been a bottom to see. Instead, we saw a shimmering light.

  “Is that water down there, Major?” Nako asked.

  “Nope, that ain’t water,” Major Concorde replied. “I can’t rightly say what that is for certain.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at Grimwade.

  “Professor?”

  “No, not, water,” Grimwade said to Nako. “What you are looking at is how the other side of the wormhole appears from this end.”

  “A wormhole?” Jacinda asked in astonishment. “I thought that was only a proposal for human travel, and we were only experimenting with shifting hardware.”

  “Things move fast in places like this, Commander Moriarty,” Major Concord said. “All that is for the general public to go oh and ah over. The reality is what you are looking at now. Shifting humans across great distances in a moment.”

  “Quantum computing has accelerated our breakthrough’s,” Grimwade told her. “But it’s all strictly hush-hush, of course. It’s all on a need-to-know basis only.”

  “So, that’s why you never told us before now,” Rachel said.

  “Exactly,” Grimwade replied. “Before today, you didn’t need to know.”

  We leaned over the rail and gazed into the odd shifting glow at the bottom. There was a brightness to it that suggested daylight with a warm glow. Beyond the shifting clouds lay an assortment of faint colors patterned in a landscape. Just like you see inside the snow globe once everything settles following a shaking.

  “Swirling around like that, it looks like a big old snow globe,” Diah murmured.

  “It’s as ready as it will ever be, right now,” Major Concorde said.

  “Is it safe to use?” I asked.

  Grimwade turned to me, He forced a smile to his face, displaying to us a set of brown teeth.

  “All the nasty niggly wrinkles have been ironed out,” he said.

  “We haven’t quite got the time factor worked out,” Major Concord said quietly and glanced at Grimwade. “But it’s enough for you lot.”

  “Safe as houses,” Grimwade said.

  “A time issue, sir?” Jacinda asked.

  “Oh, it might take ten minutes or two hours before you exit the other end,” Grimwade said. “We haven’t been able to get the duration of a journey nailed down as yet.”

  “Why is that proving so difficult, Professor?” Rachel asked

  “The wormhole shifts slightly between the two gates like a serpent in pain,” he said. “Sometimes it appears to coil itself. We think it’s to do with how we have established the gates. We are still working on that.”

  “Which part of this thing is the gate, Major?” Rachel asked. “Is it the circle enclosing the glow, or is it the whole thing?”

  “The gate is the opening at either end of the wormhole the machine creates,” Grimwade informed her. “The tank is nothing more than a shell keeping the wormhole generator at a constant temperature.”

  “What does the generator look like, Professor?” Rachel asked.

  “The shell hides a polyhedron structure. That’s where things get really interesting. The struts on the polyhedron are filled with exotic matter and that’s the key to how the thing works. More than that, I cannot say.”

  “Couldn’t the mouth be wider, Professor?” Kali asked. “It seems a little tight to fit tho
se capsules through.”

  “It has to be that way. We fire the capsules straight through the center of the throat. In that respect, it works like a bullet in a gun barrel. Once you go into the throat, it’s only the composition of the capsule skin repelling it from the sides that keeps you from breaking into particles.”

  “That’s what happens if the capsule touched the sides?” Kali asked with a look of horror.

  The Professor pursed his lips and thinks for a moment. “Hmm, it’s worse than that, Kali, the wormhole might collapse. There might be an uncontrollable discharge of energy that kills us all and quite possibly also destroys a chunk of the continent. At the very least, any contact with the sides of the wormhole shreds the capsule.”

  “And you with it,” Major Concord added.

  “Oh,” Kali replied, and she gazed around her at our equally horrified expressions.

  Major Concorde laughed.

  “Don’t worry, that won’t happen,” Grimwade said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “There’s one capsule for each of you and we drop them into the throat one at a time. So, it’s in one gate and out the other.”

  “Like a poo, you mean?” I suggested.

  There were giggles from the rest of the team. All except the commander who clenched her teeth.

  “That is such a juvenile joke!” Jacinda hissed at me.

  “It is a valid comparison though,” Major Concorde said. “I believe the real inspiration for the idea was the pressurized air tube transport system used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.”

  “Capsules were used to carry document scrolls through tubes in large multi-story buildings,” Grimwade explained. “They traveled at speed by air pressure from one department to another. We have adopted the idea of using a wormhole instead of air pressure or a vacuum.”

  “You’re going to drop us into that thing?” Diah wailed.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Major Concorde said. “One of you in each of those metal cylinders, dropped one at a time.”

  “Did most of the test subjects arrive back safe and sound during the trials?” I asked.

  “It works, don’t worry,” Major Concorde said. “There’s nothing to it,” he added a little too hurriedly. “You don’t have to do a thing until you are about to land.”

  “Who would have thought capsules used in that old pneumatic delivery system could have given us our vehicle,” Grimwade said shaking his head at the wonder of it all. “It’s truly wonderful!”

  “You going with us, sir?” I asked him.

  “I would hardly blend in with you lot, now would I?” Grimwade said, and he turned to see who asked the question.

  I raised my hand to show him it was I who spoke.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” Grimwade muttered glaring at me too once again.

  Twice in one day? That couldn’t be good.

  “As it happens, I will make the same journey a little after all of you,” Major Concorde casting an eye over us. “So, you don’t need to worry whether it works or not. I have every intention of making the journey in one piece.”

  18

  Klunker Confides

  Klunker had called me to his office.

  The man had begun to make me uncomfortable whenever he was around. I don’t know why it was that I felt that way. Not exactly, anyway. It was only a vague idea he had an unhealthy interest in me.

  Whenever he had the chance, he took me aside to give me words of advice. Sometimes he brushed his arm against mine, I never knew whether by accident or because he wanted an excuse to wink at me. Since I avoided eye contact with him so I couldn’t be certain.

  But, Grimwade did notice, and whenever Klunker drew close to me while I was busy at a task, Grimwade would call him. I would turn only to see the creep scurrying away.

  When I walked into his office, I found him alone behind his desk. Alarm bells began to ring immediately, and so I left the door ajar.

  “Close it,” he told me. “And take a seat.”

  I did as I was told and swore to myself the moment he did anything weird I was going to scream.

  He strolled around his desk and sat in a chair opposite me.

  “You know it’s more than obvious that you are a bit nervous when you are in my company,” he said and he chuckled. “That’s to be expected given the difference in our ages and the roles we have here.” He waited for me to reply and when I didn’t, he shrugged and continued. “I am sure you are aware I’ve been watching you for a while now.”

  Oh, for pity’s sake! Here we go. I straightened in my chair, readying myself. After months of training, I was sure I could easily overpower him.

  He lowered his voice and leaned toward me.

  “I knew about your mother and I admired her work. Although, I had never met her, and that was a shame. I would have liked to have worked with her on a project. Our fields of interest overlapped in many interesting ways, and so, as it happened we were in correspondence often enough about one matter or another to do with our scientific work.”

  “You knew my mother?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I became nervous all over again when I saw the creepy thin smile. Yet, I wanted him to keep talking, because more than anything else, I wanted to know everything he could tell me about my mother.

  “Won’t you get into trouble talking to me about my family?”

  “I’m not telling you anything you wouldn’t eventually work out for yourself. After all, just you look at the field of study she put you into. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  I nodded my head.

  “She was a well-respected scientist.”

  “Do you know what was she like as a person?”

  “I can’t speak to you about that aspect of her. There’s a reason we blocked those memories in you. It’s the emotions attached to them that will get in the way of your mission goal. That is something we must prevent from happening.”

  “How do I know you aren’t making this up, just to win my trust?”

  “For what possible reason would I do that?” He asked, and he laughed. “Do you really think I would risk my social ranking and my academic career by messing about with a 15-year-old? And in a project of such importance as this one? You have a vivid imagination. But, yes, I do see your point about not being able to verify what I say about your mother.”

  Now that he puts it that way, I feel better.

  “What do you want from me?”

  He brought his chair closer and lowered his voice to a low rasp.

  “You are very smart, and I am certain that you have the mind and spirit of your mother. One day, if you listen to what I am going to tell you, you might not only survive the mission, you may even realize your full potential. Professor Grimwade is concerned you do not have the right stuff to be on the team. He thinks you are too self-willed. He feels you may be distracting the others. And, by the way, he’s also concerned about Rachel. He would never throw her out though because her language skills are too essential to the mission goal. You are not as essential. I want to make sure you stay in the team because you will not survive for long in a gulag. Do you understand?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Well—as you know, our civilization runs on a Blockchain. From the age of sixteen everyone becomes a functioning node on it. If you’re under sixteen you are included by default, through your mother or the institution charged with caring for you. Once you have completed the CCD ceremony, you receive your Bricard and have the same privileges as all citizens.”

  “Yes, I know all this.”

  He waved his hand at my interruption.

  “Please, don’t interrupt me. You, Atoma, are not on the Blockchain. You are not legally a human. You are a Zero. To discover the reason this has happened, you need to know all about your father and your mother.”

  “So, tell me about them.”

  “I can’t do that. One day, you can do that yourself. And, I might b
e able to help you on your return. Now, think about this. You know that being a Zero goes hand-in-hand with having no Bricard. From your perspective, there is the terrible result is that you are unable to buy anything you need simply to live. It means you cannot sell your labor on the Blockchain.”

  “I know this already.”

  He scowled at me and waved his hand again.

  “Just humor me, will you? The real point to pay attention to here is that you are not protected by universal human rights. Do you see? From the perspective of a different group, one you know nothing about, that one fact means they are able to fully exploit you and all those others on the team who are just like you.”

  “You mean for slave labor in the gulag?” I asked.

  He brought his fingertips together and leaned forward in his seat.

  “Surely you have already asked each other if there isn’t another much more important reason why all of you were selected other than for your smarts, particular skill sets, and obvious physical strengths?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “And…?” He opened his hands and raised his eyebrows. “What did you all come up with? Or did you simply decide it was because you were all girls and all around the same age?”

  I bit my knuckles. He was screwing with my head. I wanted to go.

  “Those last two seemed to us to be important, yes,” I said.

  He nodded his head.

  “They are important too. But, think about what I am saying—you and the others are Zeros—and that means you all have zero universal human rights.”

  He was keeping an eye on the door as though he expected it might suddenly fly open and the Guardians burst into the room.

  “You aren’t bound by the same restrictions as humans, so you are not like the rest of us,” he added the last quickly with an apologetic smile.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s your invisibility that is the key to understanding what lies behind the mission. Since your DNA is not on the Blockchain, it doesn’t monitor you. It can’t. Zeros are not owed any privileges. No one cares what happens to a Zero.”