by Dan Haronian
A click echoed through the cellblock in the middle of the night. Suddenly every cell door opened. I was ready and waiting. I ducked out of my cell and moved into the hallway. As I passed occupied cells I woke the other prisoners. Some of them had already heard the sound of the doors opening and were on their feet quickly. Others raised their heads and gaped at me, stunned.
"Co-Co-Come on. Let’s go," I whispered. "The-The-There are thirty of us and the-the-there is only one gu-gu-guard. Co-Co-Come on!" I waived for them to follow.
Despite my stutter they eventually understood. A few moments later they were all trailing behind me and smiling at each other. I led them to the door separating the detention cells and the guard station. One of them opened the door and another jumped on the sleepy guard. He held his arms while another blocked his mouth. I pulled the gun from his belt.
"P-P-Put him in the first c-c-cell," I said walking to the terminal. I opened the main gate and they started to move quietly through and out into the street. I went back to the cell and asked the guard to undress. He hesitated for a moment but I pointed the gun at him through the bars and he got the message. A few moments later, dressed in the guard’s uniforms, I walked back to the detention center’s entrance. As I passed I picked up the guard’s hat that was hanging on the wall and settled it on my head. I was still able to make out the other inmates slipping off down the street in their glowing prison uniforms.
I went to the staircase and climbed to the third floor. I stopped at a big glass door at the entrance to the third floor. Naan's striped flag was inscribed on it from top to bottom. To the left of the door was an identification device. My pounding heart increased its pace even more. So far everything had worked according to my plan but success depended on getting through this door. I hoped my luck wouldn’t run out. I placed my palm on the reading surface and a little lamp lit up on the identification pad. Tiny needles pierced my skin in random places and sampled my blood. It took only a few seconds for it to sequence my DNA and identify me.
"Welcome Ambassador Naan," came a voice from a small speaker.
There was a click and I pushed the door open and went through. I walked silently along the corridor scanning the rooms and pulling on plastic gloves. I stopped outside room 333. The sign on the door read Archive. I pushed it slowly open and went inside. Light came from an inner room and I could see someone moving around inside. I quickly sat down at one of the terminals in the outer room. I wondered who would be there this late but I didn’t have time to waste. I hooked up the neck sensor and started surfing. In a few minutes I reached Seragon’s information circle, and seconds later I was at the entrance to Shor. The network around me was on high alert and I was forced to wait before opening the door. When I saw an opportunity I quickly made the special neck twist that would allow me access to Shor. Nothing happened. I tried again but the entrance was not there. I took a deep breath. The location of this entrance was inscribed in my mind. There was no way I’d ended up in the wrong location. I adjusted the sensor on my neck, changed its settings, and tried again. The entrance was still not there. Fear flooded into me. I’d been able to break in only a few days before. It was the first time in my life I’d done it, but the door had been there. What had changed?
Footsteps approached from the inner room. I ducked behind the table. When the sound of the steps came closer I peeked out and saw an old man leaving the inner room. His legs were locked at their knees. He turned out the light and shuffled to the entrance.
I pulled the screen over to the edge of the table after he left. I knelt on the floor and tried again to enter Shor. I became more concerned with every failed attempt. Had they changed the location of the door after my last break in? Had they changed the key? Neither of those explanations made any sense. If they were going to do that, they would’ve done it thirty years before when my father broke in.
While I tried to decide if I should abandon my attempt and escape while I still could, a string of Naanite letters appeared on the screen. I panicked. The letters had no meaning. I was about to remove the sensor and run when suddenly the letters started to move around on the screen. It was as if they were looking for their correct positions. I watched in fascination as they arranged themselves into a familiar sentence:
To Naan came three brothers of a mother one of them is the line of the chosen.
I stared at the screen in stunned disbelief. Although I’d studied the eighth Book for only a few hours, I would never forget this sentence. It was one of the main arguments I’d flung against my father when I accused him of avoiding his destiny. The pounding from my heart began to move into my head. Suddenly the letters melted and disappeared. I wondered what I should do. The logical thing was to stand up and run. If no one discovered my intrusion maybe I could try again elsewhere. But this sentence was from the eighth book. No one but my father knew about.
I tightened the sensor on my neck and tried the entrance again. The letters appeared again:
To Naan came three brothers of a mother one, of them is the line of the chosen.
Then I noticed the odd division of the sentence. The new meaning of the passage shocked me.
"B-B-Brothers of a mother o-o-one," I mumbled.
"Of them is th-th-the line of the ch-ch-chosen," I whispered.
The sentence disappeared. The screen again went black and I gazed at the screen completely shocked. Then new scrambled letters appeared on the screen. There were fewer this time. They moved around on the screen until they formed a question:
Who is the chosen?
I couldn't believe this was happening in Naan's Embassy of all places, and in the middle of the night. The letters started to fade as if someone was trying to tell me the time to answer was limited. I hesitated. "R-R-Raban," I said. "Raban," I said again and the screen went black. For a moment I wondered if Naan was somehow behind this. I imagined that Naan had caught my father and tortured him to squeeze out all of his knowledge of the Books and Shor so he could set this trap for me.
Suddenly the screen filled with countless colors. Without any surfing I was pushed into Shor and I was forced to focus on my mission. I fed in the information about the Desertians and made my request as I’d done before. The answer came back immediately, as if it had been waiting for me there the whole time.
I backed out of Shor quickly. Countless questions popped up in my head and completely confused my retreat. In any case I had not intended to make a graceful and smooth withdrawal. I easily satisfied that requirement. It was noisy and confused, as if I were a drunken man trying to get out of a bar.
In moments I was back in the Mampas information circle. I thought about all the diversions I should have scattered to make it look as if I was making an effort to hide my tracks. It was too late to worry about it now however. I coded the information added in a conversion equation and hid the answer Shor had given me in Thesh’s database. I named the file “A Gift From Naan.” Next I broke into the production order system for the Chemical Labs of Mampas. I placed a rush order in Naan’s name to create the compounds.
Just as I disconnected from the network the door opened and the old man returned. I watched him dragging his legs across the room toward the inner door until he suddenly noticed the glow of the monitor I’d been using and stopped. I was still hidden from him by the table. He mumbled something and then started to drag himself toward me. I leaned into the light and my face was gradually revealed to him.
"Hey," he said in panic when he saw me. "What are you doing here?"
"I-I-I am a ne-ne-network technician," I said rising from the floor. "I got your e-e-emergency call."
That man’s gaze was locked onto my face. Probably my scars intrigued him.
"Called?" He said after pulled himself together. "We haven’t called anyone. Why are you here in the middle of the night? How did you get in? What are you doing down there?"
"This te-te-terminal had a fault in the co-co-communications port," I said pulling out the sensor. "But it lo-lo-lo
oks like everything is fine now." I looked around me innocently. "Ma-Ma-Maybe I have the w-w-wrong room. This is 304, right?"
"No," he said completely hypnotized. "This is 333. How did you get in?" He asked and wrinkles appeared on his forehead. "Hey," he said pointing to my uniform. "You’re a prison guard. You’re no technician!"
I walked past him and ran out the door.
"Stop," he called behind me.
Seconds later I was in the staircase. There was a lot of noise coming from the front of the building when I reached the entrance level. I kept going down two more flights of stairs and stopped at a locked door. I aimed the gun at the lock and fired into the mechanism then pushed the door open with my arm. Only complete darkness waited on the other side. I stepped forward running a hand down the wall to feel my way along.
I knew the tunnel connected the building with the government complex on the other side of the Government Circle. I tripped over a block protruding from the wall, and I fell over something I couldn’t recognize on the floor. I rose and continued to move forward until I reached the end of the tunnel. The door was shaky. I hit it several times with my shoulder and the lock tore through the frame. It swung wide and I climbed the stairs beyond it. Another door led me into the entrance hall of the government building. I brushed off my uniform and pulled the hat low on my head to cover my face. After pulling off the gloves, and putting them in my pocket, I walked into the hall.
No one gave me a second glance as I walked through the entrance door and out into the night. All of the security guards were watching the chaos on the other side of the circle. Dozens of policeman and prison guards were frantically trying to capture and return all of the escaped prisoners to their cells.
I walked along the sidewalk, and went down the stairs leading to the main street, ducking into an alley. I pulled a brown bag from the dumpster where I’d left it before turning myself in. I took out a shirt and pants, then changed out of the uniform I’d stolen and put it in the bag. I added the hat, and then shoved the bag back into the dumpster. Calmly I walked out of the alley and into the night.
Neither my plan nor the old man who’d disrupted it bothered me now. The grammar games on the screen, and the answer I’d been lead to, were another matter. They had eventually gotten me into Shor, but how could I be the chosen? How could I come to rule Mampas? I stopped at the corner to catch my breath. I wasn't physically tired but I’d survived so many horrors and been fleeing for my life for so long, that the combination of these events and this revelation from the eighth book simply took my breath away.
The things that had happened inside Shor were odd as well. It was as if the information about the molecule had been waiting for me. My escape had been too easy. Although I‘d make no effort to cover my tracks nothing had chased me and there were no alarms.
It suddenly occurred me that maybe it was my father. In my mind I saw him sitting in the shuttle tracking my movements in the network and laughing. It would be just like him to play with me in this way. It would be his way of showing me what a fool I was for not listening to him and jumping to my own conclusions regarding the eighth book. It was the only explanation that fit the facts. It must have been him. It must be his way of telling me that he knew I was alive and that I was the chosen.
I arrived at the hotel just before dawn. I was completely exhausted. The door was locked. I knocked on it several times but May-Thor didn't answer. I waited wondering if she simply wasn’t answering, or if she’d she left. My eyes were more tired than my brain. I needed to sleep, if for no other reason than to escape my thoughts. I walked to the control panel beside the elevators and surfed into the hotel control system. It took only seconds to open the door. Su-Thor wasn't there. I walked to the window and closed the curtains, before falling onto the bed. As sleep closed in on me I wondered if her absence had only delayed the confrontation with her, or if she was truly gone.
I woke up to the sound of the curtains moving and was blinded by a bright light. I quickly rose. May-Thor stood by the window, her arms crossed. I covered my eyes and tried to focus on her face. The fact that she was alone was a good sign, although her body language told me she was upset. I let my head fall back onto the pillow, shut my eyes tight for a few seconds, and then opened them again and rose unsteadily to my feet.
"Everything needs to be done your way," she said.
I rubbed my eyes carefully. "It do-do-doesn't matter anymore. It's done."
She started to tap her fingers on the window frame. "Did you get in?"
"Into the go-go-government bu-bu-building you mean?" I said. She didn't answer so I continued, "I did it from the embassy instead."
She nodded. "But you were in jail!" she said.
"Yes," I said surprised. "How di-di-did you know?"
She chuckled, shook her head, and looked outside again. "There's an article in the network about how the cells at the detention center suddenly opened in the middle of the night."
"Th-Th-That was my way in."
"And? Did you do what you said you would do?"
I nodded, and the events of the night came back to me. "I t-t-transferred the in-in-information to Thesh as a present from Na-Na-Naan."
"This is crazy," she said shaking her head.
"We’ve talked about this."
"You talked," she immediately said. "I was looking for you all night!"
"You were wo-wo-worried about me?"
"I was worried about what you might do. I'm tangled up in all of this so I needed to be there when things started to happen."
"I di-di-didn’t want to in-in-involve you in this part."
"I'm already in over my head," she almost yelled. "I'm an accomplice to your madness, to your plunging a knife into the lives of my people, causing them to slowly bleed to death."
"I di-di-didn't stab a knife into a-a-anything. At most I pu-pu-pulled one out."
I let my head fall onto the pillow. "Why do we f-f-fight every time we s-s-speak to one another?"
"Why do we fight?! Because every time we talk you bring up something new. Something we’ve never discussed!"
"I have only go-go-good intentions," I said. "And be-be-besides, the ha-ha-hardest part is behind us. Now the demons will start dancing to our tune."
Essy Dores burst into Thesh's office. The president had just emerged from the shower and turned away still buttoning the upper button of his shirt.
"You have an urgent message from Seragon," she said.
"Seragon?"
She nodded. "Something bad has happened."
He looked at his watch. "A new message?” he asked hesitantly.
She nodded again and he walked over to his desk. His entire day had been devoted to the event in the desert, and it appeared it wasn’t over yet He’d already met with Itgass several times that day, and in between he’d spoken to Silor over the secure line. So far the only conclusion from this discussion was that this villain of a scrambler had escaped once again.
He ran a hand through his wet hair and sat down to read the message on the screen:
The government of Seragon has sent a delegation to investigate information scrambling in their network and theft of information by the Mampasian government. The delegation will arrive on Mampas in two days aboard shuttle 791959. We demand proof that the information was erased, and that the government of Mampas turns over the perpetrators to the delegation.
"When did this arrive?"
"Just now, sir."
"What are they talking about? How can they think the Mampasian government did this?!"
Thesh read the message again quietly. "It's him," he said to himself. "It has to be him."
Essy saw his face fall. It was the second time she’d received a message from Seragon and like the previous one the text was clear and uncompromising. It reflected Seragon’s character. Everyone knew of its power, and it’s impatient nature. The look on Thesh's face confirmed it.
"Call Itgass," he said pulling his hair back once again.
&
nbsp; "You want me to get him on the line?" she said.
"No, I want to see him here. Now" he said angrily.
"Yes sir," she said and rushed outside.
Itgass walked into the office half an hour later. The message on Thesh's screen was now also on the large screen on the wall to his right. Thesh pointed at the screen as Itgass walked in. "Do you know what they're talking about? Do you know what they mean when they say that a delegation from Seragon will be here in two days because of information we stole from them? We, as in the Mampasian government!" he said emphatically.
"It takes more than two days to fly from Seragon," said Itgass.
"That's not the point. They have many outposts in the galaxy. Some of them are nearby."
"When did this message arrive?"
"Just now," said Thesh impatiently.
Itgass read the message again. "Maybe it's scrambled, sir."
"I'm assuming it's not."
"Then I don't know sir."
"Assuming this information is not scrambled, I assume you plan to resign from your position."
"Sir."
"You're the Minister of Defense and if Seragon feels the need to send a delegation here then something terrible has happened in your department."
"Nothing has happening in my department sir. If it's not scrambled then, it's some kind of mistake. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of this soon."
"Something tells me it won't be that simple. The last time we had a scrambling incident of this kind was thirty years ago. And now it happened twice within few days."