Atoma and the Blockchain Game

by Gerard O'Neill

  “I can’t remember them either,” she said, cleaning up the last of the omelet from her plate. “And I’m pretty sure I had none to remember. From what I remember of my life I don’t see how I could have had parents.”

  “But how can you be so sure?” Diah asked.

  “I’m nearly certain I’ve been raised in an institution.”

  “Do you remember where you lived?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” she admitted. “I remember friends and places and things I did though.”

  “I wish I could their faces,” Diah said. She held her hand to her forehead as if it might help.

  “Me too,” Rachel said.

  “I used to have my hair differently to this,” I said pulling my ponytail. “I’m certain a lot of the time there was someone doing something to my hair, and that I really liked it.”

  “It was probably your mom,” Nako said, giving me a gentle smile.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Don’t even bother trying,” Jacinda said.

  “It was your boyfriend,” Hana said with a grin.

  “Who has a boyfriend that does their hair for them every second day?” I asked.

  “No one,” Sinead said with a snort of derision.

  “If it was a friend, it would have been a good one,” I said. “So, I should be able to remember them.”

  “They will probably give us all buzz cuts before on the final week of training,” Jacinda said with a knowing chuckle.

  “That’s not going to worry you, Sinead,” Kali said, and she laughed.

  Sinead passed her hand over her spiky head.

  “It would,” she said indignantly. “I like it just the way it is now.”

  “Mine was special to me too,” I said, and I pulled off the ponytail. “If I could only remember what it looked like.”

  14

  War or Peace?

  We were months into our training and it showed. We were eight now that Isabella was gone. Isabella had been the cheekiest among us we were missing her hard ass humor. We could only do our best to fill the gap. We continued the card game she enjoyed ever since she had talked Klunker into giving us a pack.

  My bed was now the card table and each evening we sat around it and played poker. That was the game Isabella had taught some of us to play. It was the only game she ever played, with strips of paper we used as chips to make our bets.

  Jacinda played poker too, and while she always expected to win, she almost never did. Each evening we found ourselves playing in the hope we would take all her chips. It brought out the scheming, vicious side of our characters, and it seemed appropriate. We ganged up on Jacinda, and eventually, she would tire of losing and leave us to it.

  My bed was between Diah’s and Rachel’s. Diah was asleep as soon as the lights went out. That’s when Rachel whispered her thoughts about where it was we were going to be sent, and what we would be doing there. We decided China was our most likely destination, but for entirely different reasons.

  Although Rachel had never been to China, she was sure her parents had migrated from the mainland. She said it was just a feeling. Like the rest of us, she couldn’t remember a single thing about her family.

  Rachel wore her shiny black hair short, and most of the time she had her face set in a frown. It was obvious to anyone she had a chip on her shoulder. She had no idea what that was about. We figured it must have something to do with her parents. She said finding a reason wasn’t important to her because she was mean by nature.

  I thought that she exaggerated greatly, but she did have a most violent temper. When it flared, she threw anything within reach. Then the anger evaporated just as quickly as it appeared.

  She was also smart. I’m talking smart like bordering on genius. She spoke a variety of languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese, at least two of the aboriginal languages from Formosa, and Japanese. She spoke all of them fluently. You would need to be a genius to accomplish that at the age of fifteen. More than the linguistics though, you could simply tell she was the kind of girl that actually talked intelligently. She could make you feel stupid, only she doesn’t do that. She was not as mean as she made herself out to be.

  “We’ve each got something special,” she announced to us as we were about to turn in for the night.

  “A combination of things they want,” I said.

  “Like not having a heart problem for a start,” Jacinda chimed in.

  “That’s right,” Rachel said. “But, also a special skill. Mine is languages.”

  She rearranged the selection of cards in her hand.

  “Did you know that Nako and I share the same languages?”

  “The other languages I speak are Asian,” Kali said. “From the Sub-continent for the most part.”

  Tall and lithe, with long, thick, wavy black hair and huge dark eyes, Kali was attractive, and she knew it. She was not only beautiful; she was also dangerous, having spent years training as an accomplished martial artist. So she told us and she gave us no reason to doubt her. She had also played poker before. In fact, she was better at the game than Isabella.

  “I speak a little Russian too,” I said. “And apart from English, that’s about it.”

  “There you go,” Rachel said. “Most of us speak more than one language, and it looks like Asian languages are important to the mission. I wonder if they didn’t take all that into consideration when I wanted to join the Air force too.”

  “You’re too young,” Jacinda called out.

  She was lying on her bed doing calculations in a sketch pad. No one knew what she was trying to work out, and we never bothered to ask.

  “I was thinking about the intelligence section,” she said glaring at Jacinda.

  “You still have to be sixteen to join the military,” Jacinda said with a shrug. “The Air force never takes anyone younger than eighteen.”

  “How did you get in then?” Diah asked her.

  “I started as an officer cadet at age twelve,” she said gazing at her calculations with a smug smile on her face. “They selected me.”

  “I freaking hate her already,” Rachel muttered.

  “I heard that,” Jacinda called from her bed. “Tough cheese, because you are going to have to do whatever I tell you for at least one year.”

  Rachel groaned.

  “Jacinda, do you—” I began.

  “Commander, to you,” she said.

  “Do you know where they are sending us yet?” I continued.

  “No idea,” Jacinda replied. “It’ll be someplace where we need to wear pressure suits won’t it?”

  “You mean somewhere poisoned by radiation or chemical weapons?” Nako asked.

  We had already asked our instructors why we were training in spacesuits. They told you the suits included special protective qualities needed along the way and tools that could be lifesaving given the threats we will face. The answer satisfied us for a while. After all, we knew only the rich, space station crews, and the Earth Incorporated Space force went into space. We certainly did not fit with any of those groups.

  “We won’t be going near bombed reactors,” Rachel told her. “That would be a total waste of our language skills for a start since there wouldn’t be anyone alive for us to talk to.”

  “We won’t be going near bombed reactors,” Rachel told her. “That would be a total waste of our language skills for a start since there wouldn’t be anyone alive for us to talk to.”

  “You’re right,” Nako said, sounding anything but convinced.

  “It’s probably a good thing we don’t know,” I said.

  “There’s too much we are not being told,” Nako said to me.

  “I want to know what my family looks like,” Hana said quietly.

  Whenever we were told to form a line, it was Hana who stood next Jacinda now Isabella was gone. My nana would have called her a honey-blonde, and, she would have said the girl was solidly built in a healthy kind of way. Physically Hana was definitely the strong
est of us, and she was just as stubborn as Nako, but we knew that emotionally she had some stuff going on.

  “No, you don’t,” Jacinda hissed. “Remembering your family will only be a distraction.”

  “I want to know whether I hated them,” Hana snapped at Jacinda. “Maybe I left home—because I hated them.”

  “You didn’t leave home, and you didn’t hate them,” Sinead said.

  “How do you know?” Hana asked Sinead.

  I could see her eyes were tearing up.

  “Hey, let’s take time out, guys,” I suggested.

  They weren’t listening.

  “Because you’re a big sook, that’s why,” Sinead retorted.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Hana snapped.

  “Just that you’re a big sook,” Sinead said, edging Hana on.

  Jacinda had put down her work pad and was watching the two with interest.

  Hana got to her feet, her face white with anger.

  “Come here and say that, you piece of string,” she said menacingly to Sinead.

  “Piece of what?” Sinead laughed scornfully. “You don’t have a clue how to spar with words, do you?”

  “You heard me,” Hana told her. “Even wearing a spacesuit, you will blow away in the wind. One of us is going to be hauling your sorry ass over the dunes.”

  “We’re not going to the beach,” Jacinda snorted.

  “The Gobi Desert, then!” Hana shouted. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “If anyone here wants to know our weakest link, that’s her standing right in front of you,” Sinead cried out, looking around the room and stabbing a finger in Hana’s direction.

  “How about you two take this away from my bed,” I tell them.

  But it was too late. Hana lunged forward and toppled Sinead with a hard shove to the chest.

  Sinead quickly came to her senses, and with stunning speed leaped to her feet. She secured the statuesque blonde in a headlock and fell back to the floor taking Hana with her.

  Hana thrashed about like a crocodile but it was useless. Sinead sat upright with one leg out and the other curled beside her so that her victim was unable to topple her.

  “You bitch!” Hana screamed, “Let go of me.”

  “Say you give up,” Sinead said through clenched teeth. She tightened her arm so that the blood flow to Hana’s brain slowed and air no longer reached her lungs.

  Hana slapped the floor.

  “She’s had enough, Sinead,” Kali said looking on in alarm.

  Hana slapped the floor again, her eyes looking pleadingly around the room for intervention. A dribble of red trickled down her chin. She had bitten through her tongue.

  “Sinead,” I shouted. “She’s had enough.”

  Sinead looked up at me with blazing eyes. “I stop when I’ve had enough.”

  “You let her go, right now!” Jacinda called out tersely, and she tumbled off her bed to stand with her hands on her hips and eyes glowering over Sinead. “Let her go now or you have yourself a one-way ticket to the gulag.”

  Sinead released the girl and leaped to her feet, but the fight was over.

  “You bitch!” Hana sobbed as she gasped for air her face swollen and purple.

  Sinead remained unmoved. She sat down on her bed and rubbed her bruised chest, sullenly watching in silence as Diah walked Hana back to her bed.

  “Well, that was a distraction,” Rachel whispered as shortly after, the two of us lay in our beds surrounded by the inky blackness of the room.

  “Yes, they had better get this show on the road before we lose half the team,” I whispered back to her.

  “They couldn’t have picked a more incompatible bunch of teens if they tried,” she said and gave a dry chuckle.

  “They were just letting off steam,” I told her. “We are going to be a great team, you’ll see.”

  “You are beginning to sound like Jacinda.”

  “Why?”

  “All gung-ho, like she is.”

  “Well, we need to stay positive don’t we?”

  I heard Rachel sit up in her bed.

  “Hey, Atoma,” she whispered, and she sounded almost angry. “Don’t believe all the stories the professors tell us.”

  “They’ve barely told us a thing,” I replied in surprise.

  “That’s right, they haven’t told us much at all, but we are going to learn a lot more soon enough,” Rachel whispered. “Just you be prepared for a shock.”

  15

  Final Phase

  One morning, Grimwade told us we were moving into the final phase of training. There was to be no morning run. Instead, we found ourselves in a military fast-link shuttle heading to Wright-Patterson Air force base more than three hundred miles away in Ohio.

  They were not wasting time. The plane was in the air less than twelve minutes. Straight up and straight down.

  Upon our arrival, we were lined up under the dark starless sky in front of a long featureless hangar that sat between two others looking just like it. The minutes ticked by and we stood to attention, shaking as the chilly spring wind whipped at the drab cotton overalls we wore. By the time the three black limousines turned the corner at the end of the row of hangars, I had lost all feeling in my fingers and toes.

  The cars had darkened glass, and the uniforms leaping out were all military. Two officers strode to Grimwade the two men towering over the professor.

  After giving him a curt nod they turned their attention on us.

  “This is Major Concorde of Space force. He is liaising between the ESF and the mission team.” Grimwade said gesturing to the nearest uniform to him. “You will address him as Major Concorde.”

  “Major will do fine,” Major Concorde said gruffly.

  He was a slim, well-built man, blonde and blue-eyed, and perhaps striking in his uniform, but he was not an overly handsome man. His features were too bland to be memorable. The sort of man, who in any another occupation, would by his age have gone to fat, or otherwise alarmingly thin. Major Concorde was neither. In fact, he obviously kept himself at peak physical condition.

  He balanced on the balls of his feet with his hands behind his back as though he was readying himself to lift off the ground like some goddamn human rocket.

  “If you get the introductions finished promptly we can get started,” he said to the professor.

  Grimwade introduced Mission Commander Jacinda Moriarty, and she saluted the major and he saluted her back.

  “You lot get in the last two cars,” Major Concorde told us crisply. “Professor, you are in the front car with me.”

  “What are you waiting for?” Grimwade barked at us. “Let’s go!”

  16

  Beneath the Base

  The only cars traveled a few short minutes from the runway before we were surrounded on both sides of the street by ancient red brick warehouses. We turned into a driveway beside one of the buildings and stopped at a checkpoint. The windows slid down and a torch beam flashed across our faces. Then the car lurched forward again before it came to a sudden stop. There were thumps as clamps grabbed the cars. The elevator we were on descended at a rapid speed, the lights of the levels we past flashing by our windows. After driving off we traveled through two more checkpoints before we came to a stop.

  I squinted under in bright lights as I stepped out of the car. We were in an underground chamber that was cavernous. Easily high enough to fit a four-story building inside, and many times as wide again. And it was noisy. It was a hive of military uniforms walking to and fro, directing trucks carrying sleek metal cylinders, and driving cranes that hauled pieces of machinery onto platforms built into the walls. On the first level above the ground rows of people sat before consoles of flashing lights, quantum computers without a doubt. I recognized them at once having used them at school, but these were of a number and size I had never seen before.

  We pulled on the bright yellow vests we had been given. The word VIP was emblazoned on the front and back.

>   “The vests are more for the machines to identify you,” the officer with Major Concorde told us. “Don’t take them off unless we tell you.”

  He turned to Grimwade.

  “Anything you want to say before we get this show started, Professor?”

  Grimwade nodded to Major Concorde and turned to us.

  “Today, we introduce you to the means by which you will be delivered to your destination,” Professor Grimwade said rather pompously.

  “Excuse me, sir?” I said raising my hand above my head.

  I stabbed the air to get his attention like I might be in a classroom in front of the teacher.

  “What is it?” Major Concorde asked me.

  “Are we still on the base?”

  “We never left it,” he replied.

  And, just like that, we were no longer a scientific mission. We were Space force recruits.

  Grimwade glared at me, his mustache twitching in reaction to my interruption.

  “On our return to Chicago, you will focus on preparing for that journey. Each of you will be traveling there in your own capsule.”

  “Professor,” Rachel called out. “Are the capsules similar to the ones Space force uses in their holovid commercials?”

  “Yes, those advertisements were memorable,” he said.

  “Very similar,” Major Concorde said and added with raised eyebrows. “Almost exactly the same, in fact.”

  “Are you talking about a one-way journey?” Rachel asked in a worried voice.

  “Yes, I am,” Grimwade said. “The capsules will only be used the one time,”

  “I hope there’s going to be a few good-looking boys,” Sinead said, glancing around the group. “Sounds like we might be there a while.”

  Grimwade’s mustache twitched once more, but he chose not to reply.

  “Do we make our own way back to Chicago?” I asked him.

  “No, you won’t be able to do that,” Grimwade told me and as if to reassure himself, his mustache hadn’t moved, he patted it with his fingertips.