Spheria

  Chuckles all around. Then the room fell silent.

  “Lee?” asked Max.

  The thin Asian man feigned waking up. “Oh, yeah, who? What? Right.” He shook his head then turned to Min. “Nice to meet you Min. My name is Lee Chang and I am the software architect on this project – the glue that holds it all together. Before this, I worked at Raytheon designing missile guidance systems. The work and mathematics were complex and challenging, but not at all creative. I am pleased Max took a chance and brought me in. Like Max, I don’t have any hobbies. I am either here working or at home sleeping. I love coding, and I help Abina give behaviors and actions to the creatures she creates.”

  Lee fell silent and looked around the room. Max finished with, “Short and sweet.”

  Min jumped in without prompting, “Thank you all. This was most helpful and you sound like a great bunch of people to work with. I’m looking forward to my internship here.”

  “In case you don’t know,” said Max, “one of Frankie’s professors gave Min glowing remarks, which is one of the reasons we selected her.”

  “Yeah,” said Min. “I’m also a student at CCSU but am taking a semester off to get some work experience and to build my resume. This seems like an amazing opportunity and I’m thrilled to be able to join this project. After my interview, I did some research, and it’s the coolest thing I've ever seen. As I said a little while ago, I was born in Vietnam, and my parents emigrated here when I was three years old. They ran a motel in Arkansas until I was eight and had saved enough money to get a loan for their own motel. They ended up buying one in Newington, Connecticut, after a long national search. It’s not the best area, but they’ve done well. So I’m going to school now for Data Analytics. I’m actually still a Vietnamese citizen. When I turned eighteen I kept it that way so that I could someday return to my homeland and try to make some positive changes there. I've got a permanent work visa, however, and consider myself to be completely American.”

  “Thank you, Min, we’re happy to have you on board,” said Max.

  “Yes we are,” said Dana.

  “Hear, hear,” said Frankie, raising his coffee mug. Most of the others made the same gesture.

  Max closed with, “Sorry that went so long, everyone. I hope we old-timers even learned a thing or two about each other. I’ll make the rest of the meeting quick. Does anyone have any significant progress to report? If it doesn’t affect anyone, let’s save it for next week.”

  “I do,” said Lee.

  “Go,” said Max.

  “Really quick. I added some code to auto recycle blue Qubes. When a Polyan dies and if the associated Qube is over 50 percent blue, the system will assign it to another Polyan. This will remove the need to manually monitor and reset them on the panels all the time. We only have to deal with the red ones that we decide we want to destroy.”

  “Awesome. That’ll save me a ton of time,” said Desmond.

  “How fast does the recycle happen?” asked Jean.

  “There is a slight delay before the restart sequence occurs. But it all completes within ninety seconds.”

  “Thanks. We won’t have to go into the server room every day then,” finished Max.

  Chapter 10 - The Fertile Field

  “Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.” - Christopher Columbus

  When Sa∙ma was young, he worked quicker than most his age. When he finished his daily routine, he liked to explore outside the Colony in his extra time. He never crossed the mountains, not yet having the knowledge to do so. But he’d venture farther each time, making mental maps of the region. It was a skill he was good at and was one of the reasons he was later selected to become a Lumen Seeker.

  One day, when he was farther than ever before, he came upon a land formation that looked unnatural. It seemed like a hill that had been cut to have vertical sides. As he investigated it, he found an opening in one side, and, being brash, entered. Inside, in the center of a hexagonal room, lay a glowing yellow crystal. Seated beside it was an old and feeble Polyan who Sa∙ma did not recognize.

  “Come and sit,” said the Polyan, “I've been expecting you.”

  Sa∙ma did as he was told, choosing a spot on the other side of the yellow crystal. “Who are you and why were you expecting me?”

  “This dwelling you are in is called the ‘Lumen Grotto.’ It’s a resting place of sorts. As you know, it’s quite a distance from the Colony. Normally, Polyans are much too insecure to venture this far. Only the excessively confident actually do so, and those are bound to eventually find me. When you do, you pass the first test.”

  The old Polyan fell silent and just stared at the yellow crystal. Sa∙ma pondered the word ‘test’ and debated how to respond. Who is this crazy one, and how could he possibly have been expecting me, and why would there be a test, and do I even care? Somehow, he didn’t exactly know why, but he felt that how he responded would affect the rest of his life.

  “I came seeking you,” he said.

  The older Polyan looked up at him and paused for a long while. Then asked, “How do you seek that which do you not know exists?”

  “Many things exist which I don’t yet know. The reason I'm here is I’m seeking to learn about things, discover things, that I didn’t know yesterday. That’s why I sit before you. That’s why I found you.” The age of the Polyan before him was apparent, so he added, “I seek knowledge” for good measure.

  “Then you've found some. A Lumenary firstly seeks knowledge, for only through knowledge can you then find solutions.”

  Sa∙ma stared hard at the old Polyan. “Lumenary you say? Go∙ma is our Lumen Master, and we don’t have a Lumen Seeker yet under him. So who are you?”

  “It’s a misconception that a Lumen Seeker is promoted to Lumen Master only when the previous one is dead. That’d make the transition abrupt and unplanned. We don’t like to leave such matters to chance. Therefore, as the Lumen Master gets old, he goes into seclusion and a Lumen Seeker takes his place. This isn't known to the Colony. Thus, you share the incorrect belief that the previous Master has died. I was the Master before Go∙ma. I trained him. He was my Seeker. When my master died, I took his place here as Lumen Elder, and Go∙ma became your current Master. In this way, we always have a backup in case the current Lumen Master meets an untimely death.

  “Additionally, since Go∙ma is in such high demand, he won’t have the time to give you complete instruction. I will fill in the gaps. He’ll focus on acclimating you to the ways of nature and the world. I’ll give you the history and lore of our people.”

  “Wait, does this mean I'm a Lumen Seeker?”

  “It does should this be the path you desire.”

  “It’s been my dream since I first learned of this way, and my hope that it would someday open for me.”

  “Then that day is today. I’ll inform Go∙ma that he has a new apprentice. My name is Do∙ma, and we can begin your training now.”

  #

  And so it was that Sa∙ma visited Do∙ma every chance he could. He was taught how they used to have much greater freedom to wander this side of the world sphere. That was until the mountains grew thicker and the rivers widened. And there were far fewer Polyans, so moving from place to place was much easier. But the changing landscape forced them to form the Colony and build hives, giving them a central dwelling space to congregate for safety.

  He learned that they used to only gather green crystals from the ground, digging under plants. Then they discovered how to bring down beasts by working as a team. And the energy of a single one could replenish many of them at once.

  He also learned many tales and legends from the distant past. One, in particular, was a place called the Fertile Field. It was said to be a circular shaped clearing with violet crystals sticking out of the ground. These replenished themselves as if they grew there or rose up from some distant buried treasure trove. This mysterious place
could provide an almost endless supply of energy for free. But that’s why it was a legend, because such a place would never exist. Or could it?

  That was what Sa∙ma now intended to find out. Having seen the strange violet spot yesterday from the top of the mountain, he could only hope that this one legend could be true. So he rose and left the Rift before Le∙ma awoke, as was the tradition. She was on her own from this point forward. Either she made it out alive, or she failed to become his successor. This was how the process worked from one Lumenary to another, generation after generation. It was just the way it had always been. The trials in the proving ground determined if you were worthy of receiving the responsibilities ahead.

  He retraced the trail for a while, heading back to the red river that they’d crossed. At the bank, he veered to the right. The vegetation was thicker this way, and there was no natural path to follow. His pace slowed as he picked his way around obstacle after obstacle. This would be enough to make most lose their sense of direction, but after years of practice, he was able to keep a mental map. He made gradual progress toward his destination. After quite some distance, the plants thinned and Sa∙ma stepped into a large clearing. In the center, forming a rough circle, were twenty large violet crystals protruding from the ground. He stood there in shock. He’d actually found the Fertile Field. The legend was real!

  Then something else caught his eye. Something he hadn’t seen at first, as if it had just materialized. Standing in the center of the circle, towering above him, stood a seven-legged Polyan with a red core.

  Chapter 11 - Min's Assignment

  “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.” - Rene Magritte

  Min hung her wool jacket on the lobby coat rack and sat down at the reception desk. She paused for a moment, allowing the warmth of her Starbucks coffee to soak into her hands. It was still far too hot to drink. She moved the mouse and the computer lit up, prompting her to log in. She entered her username and password. As the authentication icon spun, she removed the cover to her coffee and began to blow on it.

  As soon as the computer desktop appeared, an instant message popped up from Max: “See me please.”

  “Sure thing,” she typed. “Where?”

  “In my office.”

  #

  Min entered Max’s office but stopped just inside the doorway.

  Max looked up, smiled at her, and said, “Just a moment, I need to get the files for you.” He inserted a memory card into his computer and started clicking his mouse.

  Min looked at the chairs but instead of sitting decided to browse Max’s selection of books. The bottom three shelves contained dull looking textbooks. They were categorized into physics, astronomy, anthropology, and programming. The fifth shelf held more eclectic selections such as In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat by Jon Gribbin, Chaos by James Gleick, and The God Particle by Leon Lederman. Min picked up one that looked fairly worn and started flipping through it. No pictures.

  “Ah,” said Max, “you found my favorite!”

  She looked again at the cover. It was an unassuming blue. To one side was a small photo of Earth with an asterisk next to it. Large lettering gave the author’s name: Bill Bryson. In small white lettering at the bottom, the meaning of the asterisk read, “A Short History of Nearly Everything.”

  “Amazing book. I read it at least once a year. I really wish Bryson would do a second addition that has a chapter on subatomic particles and quantum physics. History is always being created. We are creating history here, incredible history.” Max motioned for Min to sit.

  She placed the book back and noticed that the top shelf was apparently reserved for knickknacks: a crystal scarab, an R2D2 model, one of those things with the hanging balls that bounce from side to side, and an assortment of Smurf figures. The smart looking Smurf with glasses was on a stand in the middle, more prominent even than the old guy with the red hat.

  Min turned and sat in the guest chair, facing Max.

  “So I hired you because you had strong statistical experience on your resume,” said Max, “something that we never have enough of. One thing about this project is it generates massive amounts of data. And I prefer that my senior scientists work on other problems than looking for trends. So your task is to run a first pass and find any significant correlations.” He handed her the flash drive.

  “What’s this, data?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Longitudinal data for population size, caste ratios, settlement density, and ethical alignment.”

  “Alignment?”

  “Yes. Remember when you interviewed and I gave you a tour of the server room? I showed you how the colors of the Qubes change based on the characteristics of each Polyan. If we directly measure the values of each qubit, it’d collapse their quantum field, thus removing the ability for the Polyan to make a non-predefined decision. We don’t want that to happen. We only want it to collapse when the actual Polyan is making a choice. Instead, color is a convenient shortcut for alignment: their tendency toward good or bad. So we end up with a value from -3 to +3. It’s certainly enough data to find trends.”

  “I get it. Why red and blue? Is that based on Star Wars lightsabers?”

  “One would think. It’s actually just how it worked out. Dumb luck I guess. It simplifies things that it matches our pop culture interpretation of colors.”

  Min studied the flash drive as if she could see the data inside its steel exterior. “So what software should I use?”

  “You know MatLab?”

  “Yes.”

  “That should be installed on Olivia’s, I mean, your machine.” He blushed at his inadvertent use of the former intern’s name. He didn’t want Min knowing about her predecessor. “But if you need something else, let me know. We get an excellent academic discount on almost any software.”

  Min paused a second, apparently curious about Max’s odd expression. Then she said, “I'm more familiar with SPSS, but I've wanted an excuse to dig into MatLab, so this is as good as any. After all, interning is meant to be a learning experience, right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” said Max. “Let me know if you need anything else.” He stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his chair. Min stood as well, albeit more gracefully.

  “And Min…” Max smiled at her. “Good to have you on board.”

  #

  Min returned to her computer. She inserted the flash drive and began copying the data file to her local storage. A progress bar appeared but didn’t seem to move. She frowned and looked at the file size: 400GB.

  “Jeez,” she whispered to herself, “That’s huge!”

  She sat back and watched the green bar creep across the screen. She pondered how many hours of her life she’d lost watching progress bars. It was a disturbing thought. As she waited, her mind began to drift. She remembered Max’s little slip-up about Olivia, who used to be the owner of this computer. She was aware of the intern’s suicide from a story the local news media had run. It wasn’t difficult to connect that with the job opening she now filled. This only bolstered her curiosity.

  She opened the hard drive and navigated to the Users folder. Then she dug into the folder named “oholland,” the username for Olivia Holland. It had the typical assortment of subfolders: Downloads, Desktop, Documents, etc. She looked inside the Documents folder and it was empty. Suspicious.

  She looked in the Trash folder, and it was also empty.

  Someone had cleaned out Olivia’s file history.

  This piqued Min’s curiosity. It was either standard practice – something she doubted – or it was deliberate. Using her hacker skills, she downloaded an undelete program and ran a scan of the hard drive. Hundreds of files appeared that used to be in Olivia’s Documents folder. Most were statistical data sets like the one Max had given her, but some were word documents. She immediately canceled the flash drive progress bar, not to risk overwriting any more hidden files. She then made the program restore all of the
deleted documents, and it chugged along.

  She scanned the files, which were all disorganized, and many had garbled file names. She sorted by type and then focused on the text documents. Most were status reports or analysis results. She read a few and they were, for the most part, formulaic and routine, with no abnormal findings. She knew she had a lot of these kinds of results in store for her, as well. Statistics wasn’t always fun and games.

  After about a half hour of scanning, nothing of any interest or value was found. So she gave up. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder why Olivia’s folder was deleted, but her entire user directory was not. It seemed amateurish.

  She decided just for good measure to do a scan of wiped data. When a file is deleted from a hard drive, it’s marked as hidden in a special table. The file doesn’t show up anymore, but the data is still present. That’s how the program she used was able to undelete the files. So, if someone wants to permanently remove a file, they need to wipe it by replacing the data where the file used to be with a bunch of zeros. Then the data is gone and can’t be recovered. The problem with this technique, however, is it leaves detectable traces. Only a new hard drive would have continuous stretches of nothing.

  Part of the program she’d downloaded contained a bit editor. This allowed her to see the actual ones and zeros stored on the drive. She used it to scan the area where Olivia’s documents resided. There, like a homing beacon, was a single sequence of zeros.

  To the amateur-level hacker, the data that used to be there would be irretrievable. But to a more seasoned professional and to the FBI, that’s not the case. In reality, the positioning of the write head of a hard drive isn't 100 percent consistent. As it writes, it may be a little to the left or a little to the right of where it was last time. This doesn’t affect data retrieval, because when it reads, it looks at a center slice, which will always be correct. It’s the edges that can get fuzzy, but the read head doesn’t normally go near those.