by H C Edwards
“It’s just a computer. How can it cause all of this?”
“It isn’t the computer, per se,” Griffin stated. “It’s the housing. Our Quantum Computer sits suspended in a chamber as large as the Pantheon itself. The field is a layer of protection, keeping sound waves from penetrating the interior of the computer and damaging its functions.”
“What about the field covering Akropolis?” Trey asked, not able to help playing devil’s advocate.
“That field is a phase variance field with electromagnetic properties. An electromagnetic field wouldn’t repel the radiation alone. The phase variance creates what is known as an electrostatic force field that repels waves of radiation, much like the earth’s atmosphere does with solar radiation. In essence, it’s safe. What we have to worry about is the one protecting the Quantum Computer.”
“But, ” Quentin protested. “Without the field we wouldn’t have the Quantum Computer…or the Cloud…or anything.”
“I know,” his father replied grimly.
Trey stood up, running a hand over his head.
“So you’re telling me that the thing that’s been keeping us going is also the same thing that’s making us go extinct?”
“I am.”
“You’re certain of this?” Trey pressed.
“The model is sound. I’ve poured over it a thousand times since then.”
Trey looked towards the door, seeing a clear course of action.
“We need to tell the council about this,” he said. “Show them your model.”
He didn’t expect to see the doc shaking his head.
“They won’t listen.”
“And why is that?” Trey replied.
“Because Rachel already tried,” Griffin said exasperated. “She presented the model over four years ago.”
The silence this time was palpable.
“I don’t know how it went over with the council,” he continued. “What I do know is that Rachel brought me a copy of all the data she had collected. Combined with what I had learned, it was pretty damning. There was no reason it should not have been taken seriously, unless…”
“Unless they already knew,” Trey finished somberly, feeling the air deflate from his lungs.
“Or guessed,” Griffin confirmed.
“But,” Quentin interjected. “They couldn’t have just ignored it. Rachel-”
“Is dead,” his father stated evenly. “Has been for about three years now, and no revival order.”
“So you’re the only one with the evidence,” Trey pointed out the obvious. “Do they know you have it?”
“No,” Griffin breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t know what would happen if they did.”
“What does this have to do with Sia?” Quentin asked, attempting to keep all the pieces together in his head.
“Sia is the failsafe,” his father explained. “I altered her programming to act like a virus when it became obvious that nothing was going to be done on the council’s end. I’ve been testing her sister program at the Pantheon in the closed system for the past two years.”
“How does the program work?” Trey asked.
“When she links with the mainframe of the quantum computer, Sia will self-replicate lines of code with the purpose of disabling all functions attributed to the computer. When that happens the quantum computer will react by shutting down to protect its files, the first time in over three hundred years.”
Quentin was stunned. Such an act of sabotage held repercussions he couldn’t even fathom. To believe his father had orchestrated this program years in the making for this specific purpose was terrifying; even more so was that he had felt it necessary.
“There’s only one problem,” Griffin admitted with a frown.
Trey looked at him heavily, knowing everything had a catch.
“What’s that?”
“The firewall protecting the Quantum Computer. I can hack it from the computer in my office, but it’ll red flag me instantly. When that happens, they’ll know it was me.”
“Let’s take it one problem at a time,” Trey said. “What happens when the virus is uploaded? Will it shut down the field?”
“For a time,” Griffin said. “But others will be able to find and isolate the virus. It might take awhile but I’ve no doubt they can. Either way, they’ll have it back up and running, which is why I never dared to go through with it.”
“How long will it take them, Dad?” Quentin asked.
Griffin shrugged, “A half hour, maybe more, and that’s if we’re lucky.”
The sober admission was delivered with a sense of hopelessness the likes of which Quentin had never seen emanating from his father. This burden was just one of many he had shouldered over the years. It was no wonder he had kept his secrets.
“If what you say about the council knowing is true,” Trey began.
Griffin was adamant, “It is.”
“Then the real question is,” Trey mulled. “What are we going to do about all of this?”
Quentin didn’t have to think about it. The answer was obvious, despite whatever consequences came, and he knew the other two men felt the same. They were simply talking their way up to the solution.
“We have to shut it all down,” he said simply. “Permanently.”
Trey smirked.
“Easier said than done, kid.”
Quentin leaned forward.
“If the virus is uploaded, you said the field would shut down.”
“I did,” his father replied. “But they’ll know it was me, and when they access my terminal they can track down the virus and contain it. The field would only be offline for a short time. It’s hardly what I’d call a permanent solution.”
“Then we would have to use that window of time to destroy the quantum computer,” Quentin said, studying the reactions of the two men before him, both of which seemed stunned by the proclamation.
“It would take care of the field permanently,” Trey said thoughtfully, the first to break the silence. “I don’t suppose you have any suggestions on how we accomplish that?”
But Quentin didn’t respond. His attention was suddenly directed elsewhere, past the shoulders of the two men and towards the front door.
Trey was on his feet instantly, his pistol drawn and aimed in one fluid motion.
“What is it, Son?” his father asked breathlessly.
“A councilman…Sia says it’s a councilman,” Quentin replied through numb lips.
Into the Mountain
Mia led the way, though it was difficult to know if all in their meager group were still present. They were surrounded, packed tight by people on all sides, suffused with panic and steeped in near hysteria. The rattle of gunfire had ended minutes ago, but the last explosion was still ringing in her ears, no doubt impressed upon the minds of all those that were currently doing their best to escape the area.
She held on tightly to Chase’s hand, the one person who was familiar and recognizable amidst the throng. They were shuffled here and there like cattle, moving in waves, surging forward a dozen steps at a time, heaving back two or three, and then onward again.
When she dared to look behind her, she finally spotted the others in her group. They were the calm, determined faces in the sea. Though there was strain and stress, they were not wide-eyed with fear, but purposeful.
She felt instantly better, knowing that they had not been left behind or lost. With renewed resolve, she began to barrel ahead with her shoulders, shoving aside man and woman alike with her free hand. They didn’t seem aware of her forcefulness, nor of the rifle slung across her back by a strap. It was beneath the jacket, but the barrel stuck out and kept banging against the back of her thighs. She hoped the others had theirs hidden as well, or at least partially.
The crowd finally moved out of the small tunnel and into a larger corridor, carved from the rock but with pipes running overhead. They dispersed in all directions, though there was still the occasional person who was knocke
d to the ground or pushed against the walls.
Mia instinctually wanted to help those that were being battered around, but she had to remind herself that she couldn’t risk exposing their group.
Ignoring them with effort, she looked to the ceiling, recognizing the water pipes overhead. She pulled on Chase’s hand, leading them down the corridor to the left.
Out of the main traffic, she rested against a wall, counting the others as they appeared in the tunnel to join them. People were still running past them but they had their own worries, oblivious to their group.
When all were accounted for, Mia moved onward, not quite hugging the wall but using it as a guide, periodically looking up to make certain they were still following the same set of pipes.
After a few minutes of winding through the tunnel, they began to hear a very different sound. It was a vibrating humming noise like the buzzing of many bees. As they approached closer, the buzz became more discernable, gradually breaking apart into the conversations of people, accompanied by the clinking and banging of objects and other wares.
At that moment, Mia felt as if she could close her eyes and drift backwards in time, straight to the days when she followed at her father’s heels into the free market, amidst the hustle and bustle of the vendor aisles, where everything from clothing dye to blind pet fish could be traded for a few tickets or some extra hours on a shift detail.
When the tunnel finally opened up into the main trade area, she had to pause to soak in the sight. A lot had changed, but not so much that she didn’t recognize it. The cavern was larger overhead and all around, most likely due to further excavation to accommodate the growing population, but the stands and booths were familiar, as were the concrete and steel buildings that sat on giant springs lining the cavern walls. There were fourteen of these large buildings altogether, seven on each side facing their counterparts, the common trade area in the middle between them, a vast expanse of almost fifty yards in width and a hundred in length, filled to the throng with teeming pockets of people wandering from booth to booth, stand to stand.
Mia remembered her father telling her that before The Mountain was a sanctuary it was some sort of military base, and that the buildings were comprised of living quarters and recreational areas. They had long since been converted to trade banks where the vendors would turn in their tickets of transactions for food coupons, preferred shift exchanges, and even free hours in the recreational areas. Money had long been forgotten but the tickets were as coveted as the old monetary system. The Mountain wasn’t as affluent as Charlottesville or anywhere near Akropolis, and so limited resources begat the trade system.
Normally, there would be the shouts of people hocking their wares for trade, hooking those that walked by and reeling them in with their spiel, but this morning’s events had already reached this hub. No one shouted their lines or brandished their items. Rather, everyone stood in pockets, the rumbling of their worried conversations rising and falling, people still darting here and there, portions of the crowd moving away from the branching tunnels. The only reason there wasn’t mass panic was because the main paths were teeming with guards, walking along the open aisles, posted at the larger tunnel openings.
Mia froze as she spied a squad of four guards about twenty yards away, walking along the wall towards them. For the moment their attention was fixed on the main floor. She turned towards her group and uttered a low whistle and jerked her head at the nearest gathering of people. They understood and followed her lead as she quickly crossed the distance, weaving back and forth until she was in the thick of the citizens. Glancing back, she saw that the others had spread out a bit, mingling here and there to avoid standing out, but their eyes inevitably coming back to her every few seconds.
She gave a brief nod to a few and then let go of Chase’s hand, making her way quickly but without urgency, trusting the rest to follow as closely as they could. Avoiding eye contact, she instead looked to the end of the market cavern. After a couple of minutes she was able to spy the large lift elevators, realizing that they were not operating. When she was within fifty feet, she realized with a sinking heart why it was so. There, in front of the platform was a trio of guards, armed with rifles and scanning the crowd in front of them.
Pausing, Mia half-turned so as to avoid appearing conspicuous, stepping up to the outer ring of a large group of people who were conversing in muted tones. She caught a few snippets of their back and forth, fear interlaced with paranoia, wild talk of a rebellion or a terrorist faction that wanted to breach the self-contained system. It was surprising how fast the news had spread, or at least a semblance of it.
Mia felt a slight pressure at her back and started, nearly spinning around until she heard Chase’s hushed voice.
“What do we do now?” she whispered, having obviously spied the same guards as she.
Mia licked her lips nervously, almost shaking her head. The truth was she didn’t know what to do. It hadn’t occurred to her that the lifts would be guarded, but then again she hadn’t expected the ‘diversion’ that Bear had created either. Her instincts told her to flee, that they needed a different approach, except this was the only chance they had.
She turned and eyed the rest of the group, or the ones that she could see from her position. They appeared anxious, the calm determination they exhibited earlier starting to show signs of wear. It was here and now or never, she realized.
Desperation suddenly brought a form of inspiration. Tilting her head a bit to the side, she whispered back to Chase.
“Follow my lead.”
Without waiting, Mia turned and broke from the crowd, stepping up towards the lift platform, one hand consciously pushing the barrel of her rifle to the middle of her back, hoping that it wouldn’t be seen sticking out from between her legs.
The guards noticed her the moment she put a foot on the platform. One stepped up but didn’t raise his barrel.
“No one’s going anywhere for awhile,” he directed. “Get back with the others.”
Mia frowned as she stopped, fitting an annoyed expression on her face.
“I’d love to but the boys from downstairs called. Whatever the hell happened back there,” she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder, “has ruptured some pipes. My crew and I need to get down there ASAP and patch them up before we lose too much water.”
“No one leaves the market,” the guard replied more forcefully.
“Look,” Mia argued, feigning exasperation as she squinted at his nametag. “Guard Reilly, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but if you don’t let us do ours then there’s going to be hell to pay. We let those pipes bleed and I can’t say how much water we’ll lose. You can bet your ass that we can all forget about our tickets for the next few months.”
This seemed to finally break through his stoic resolve. He grimaced, half-turning to look at the other guards. One shrugged.
“Call it in,” was his response.
The last guard couldn’t be bothered it seemed, still scanning the crowd.
The one named Reilly turned back to Mia.
“Bring up your crew. We’ll call ahead. If it checks out you can go on down.”
Mia nodded, turned her head, and motioned with a hand for the others to come up. They followed her prompt, or at least some did, breaking apart from the crowd and mounting the platform. She noticed that only about half joined her. She assumed the rest didn’t because their weapons would have been too visible close up.
Guard Reilly reached up with a hand to tap his ear and activate his comms, but before he could make the whole movement, Chase quickly closed the gap and pointed a pistol right at his stomach. He noticed it right away and froze, but his silhouette blocked the view for the other two guards.
Chase smiled.
“Don’t move or I’ll blow a big ass hole in your belly,” she said almost sweetly, as if they were passing the time of day.
Mia immediately stepped past the guard, her hand reaching down and sna
gging the pistol from his holster. Her heart was hammering in her chest fit to explode, but she didn’t hesitate. Raising the weapon at waist level, she too closed the distance.
It was only three seconds from the moment Chase stepped up to the instant Mia raised her own pistol. In that short amount of time, two men from her group had also drawn their own guns and surrounded the two other guards.
She didn’t doubt that they were lucky, but it seemed more than that. It was as if they were tuned to each other in that moment, moving as one unit.
The guards were taken completely by surprise, finding a number of guns pointed at their mid-sections in the space it took to draw a couple of breaths. Like the first guard, they both froze, eyes widening and jaws gaping.
“Don’t talk and don’t draw attention,” Mia said in a low and calm voice, though she felt anything but. “Take your hands off the rifles, turn around, and walk towards the lift. You make any other move and we’ll have to put you down.”
For a second it didn’t seem like they’d comply, that perhaps it would turn into another firefight. The two guards in the back glanced at each other, their hands tightening around the grips of their weapons. That’s when Mia lowered the barrel of her gun, pointing it at one of the men’s crotch. She cocked the hammer back.
“Try it and your balls go first,” she said evenly.
The guard licked his suddenly trembling lips, and just like that he released his grip on the rifle, holding his hands out to his side. The other guard followed suit, and like shepherds, they corralled them towards the lift.
From behind, Mia could hear some in the crowd start to murmur louder, but she paid them no attention. If she looked back now she was certain that they would be noticed even more. As they marched the guards into the lift, she saw from her peripheral that the rest of their group had joined them. Chase broke apart and closed the gate behind them, the guards looking meek and anxious.
“What floor?” Chase asked.
“Take us all the way down,” Mia replied.
The Solution