The others were still seeing what Ani was seeing. The holes were as present in the air as they were in the solid dirt particle that they had just examined. Junco broke the short silence. “And you are sure that it is not meant to be like this – that these tunnels are not part of the program?”
“I wrote the program.” Ani reminded him. Besides there is nothing in the code that could lead to these tunnels – these gaps in the scenario.”
The significance of what Ani was saying was hitting home. “You mean that Rubidium Beach is disappearing?” said Scoter.
“This part of it appears to be. Lets look at a couple more places before we jump to any conclusions though.”
Junco assumed that Ani was going to examine other regions from here but he was wrong. Ani wanted to see the different areas in person. He claimed that remote viewing was great up to a point but it wasn't the same as getting close up and personal. Junco struggled to comprehend the difference – after all, Rubidium Beach was a virtual construct to start with. He was beginning to realize that Ani went with his gut more often than Ani would like to admit.
Ani led the group inland, away from where the storms were impacting and looked for the microscopic tunnels within the fabric of the landscape. No tunnels this time. Everything was as it should be. “Well, that gives us a working hypothesis at least.” Said Ani.
Junco interjected. “That the storms are causing the tunnels – the breakdown?”
“Close.” said Ani. “but that is assuming too much. We can reasonably assume that there is a connection but it is far to early to attribute causation, especially in a specific direction.”
“Now for those of us that aren't fluent in science” requested Scoter.
Ani smiled. “The tunnels and the storms occur in the same places, so it is a fair bet that they are connected. But it is possible that the tunnels may be causing the storms or that the two things are connected by something else altogether.”
“My money is on something else altogether.” said Teal.
“I agree.” replied Ani. “And that terrifies me.”
The four of them took the transporter to the beach stopping once about halfway to collect more data. The halfway point, about a mile and half back from the coast had significantly more and bigger tunnels than the transition zone. When combined with the measurements taken on the mirrored beach, the evidence was fairly conclusive. The stronger the storm the more damage to the fabric of Rubidium Beach.
“I just want to get one more set of measurements before we call it a day.” Ani said.
“Not a problem.” replied Junco. “Where do you have in mind?”
“Follow me.” said Ani as he walked towards the great metallic sea. He then removed his shoes and walked into the gray viscous liquid.
“You have got to be kidding.” Scoter exclaimed. “That stuff is completely toxic and you are going in without a skin-suit?”
“A quick visit to the body repair shop will take care of any new irritations or cancers so no problem.” Ani continued. “Saying that, there are things I'd rather be doing at the moment.”
Even while Scoter was objecting he was removing his flip-flops and the others were following suit.
This was the first time that Junco had been in the metal sea and he wasn't enjoying the experience. The liquid was heavy and slow. It made his skin crawl. He certainly couldn't understand why Teal would want to spend time in it. Ani had stopped waist deep and waited for the others to catch up. Once they did he looked down at the sea and started transmitting to the others.
“Much bigger gaps.” said Teal.
“And a whole lot more.” added Junco.
Ani then looked up at the red sky. “More and bigger here too.” he went on. “Pretty much what I was expecting.” and started to walk back towards the shoreline. The others followed.
4. BACK TO THE JUPITER MOON
After a quick visit to the body shop they headed next door to the Jupiter Moon. It wasn't until the third round of drinks was in front of them that the conversation really began to flow.
“Something I really don't understand Ani.” said Scoter. “How did you not know about the storms? You know everything and more about this place. Not only that, you seem to know it in real time and not after the fact.”
“I know, and in a way that worries me more than the tunnels. I can repair those easily. If someone or something is managing to block me from seeing Rubidium Beach's underlying program along with the visual layer, we have big problems.”
“What about your friends the Mechanik – I thought they repaired all of the different virtual realities including this one?” Scoter continued with his questioning.
Junco's mind drifted. The Mechanik collective was the thing that had drawn the four of them together. The Mechanik did not cause their paths to cross but it was the reason for their paths to cross. The collective did not like to mess around in human affairs. They were the technicians of the Levels. All the thousands of different virtual reality Levels were silently monitored, analyzed and tested by the Mechanik to make sure that the coding and programing worked seamlessly and invisibly. Very few people outside of the collective even knew of their existence let alone their purpose.
Ani's voice ended Junco's reverie. “Don't forget that I am still a part of the Mechanik. As to repairs for Rubidium Beach the Mechanik collective trusts me to do my own thing.”
Junco's curiosity was now piqued. “That must take up a lot of your time – the amount of code needed to hold Rubidium Beach together must be massive.”
“It is ongoing, I am always running repairs, coding and testing improvements or doing other housekeeping type tasks.” Ani replied.
Teal entered the conversation.. “We know that you absent yourself for a few seconds here and there to attend to repairs and related stuff. What I don't get is how you can keep this whole place running this well in just those few seconds.”
“Are you sitting comfortably?” asked Ani of the others. “This may take some time.” He was wearing an inside joke sort of smile. The others all nodded their assent and another round of drinks was ordered.
5. THE WHITE ROOM – A DEMONSTRATION
“When I go off on one of my 'jaunts,' as Teal calls them, I am not just sitting here, interfacing with Rubidium Beach and running repair algorithms. Of course I could not do what was needed in that time-frame.” He continued, “as I've explained before Rubidium Beach was originally intended as a platform to develop more sophisticated virtual realities than could be developed from Level Zero. So originally this scenario was all about the base code and how useful it was to developers. It was only when people actually wanted to start living here that the whole thing got a lot more complicated and all but impossible to maintain.
Well, that gave me an interesting problem and a perfect solution at the same time. Something that rarely happens in life. All I had to do was take advantage of the Beach's superior development platform to build another Level, but a Level with a difference.”
Junco got the impression that Ani was enjoying the telling of this tale but he was getting impatient. Junco wanted the headline not the buildup. “Is this going anywhere?”
“Shush, I am enjoying the tale even if you are not – carry on Ani and don't take any notice of the sulky one.” said Teal. She really did look like she was enjoying Ani's story. Junco pretended to be deeply wounded.
“As I was saying.” Ani continued. “I built a new virtual layer, and yes I am proud of it. It was an elegant solution contained within the initial problem.”
Junco noticed the light go on in Teal's eyes. He was fairly sure that she knew where this was going.
Ani continued. “Actually, before I say any more I am going to show you something.” He then set up the virtual private connection so that the others could see what he saw. He then pointed at the digital clock behind the bar and told the others to note the time. This they did.
The Jupiter Moon interior blinked out and whiteness blinked i
n. The four found themselves seated on white chairs at a white table in a completely white room that had no door. The whiteness was not hard on the eyes though and not particularly cold. It was completely neutral in every respect. Ani was smiling and his inner showman was obviously enjoying the puzzled looks on the faces of the others. On the wall opposite teal was a clock. The numerals and hands on the clock were the only thing in the room that was not white.
“So what happens now?” said Scoter.”
“We wait.” replied Ani
Junco asked. “How long?”
“Five minutes or so should do it.”
For the next seven minutes the group discussed the earlier tunnel-viewing field trip and what it might mean. Ani kept his thoughts to himself on the subject but it was obvious that he was, if anything, even more worried than he was initially.
“Time to go back.” said Ani. The whiteness blinked out and the Jupiter Moon blinked back in.”Look at the clock behind the bar.”
“It's stopped – so what?” said Junco. Scoter was now smiling. This Junco suspected, meant that he was the only one in the room not in on the joke. He didn't care much for that.
It was Teal who decided to put Junco out of his misery. “Time runs slower in Ani's White Room.” Junco smacked his forehead.
Ani explained in more detail. “Time runs at around one thousandths of the speed that it does here. That means that if I return back here after being gone for one minute I have experienced one thousand minutes or around sixteen and a half hours.”
Junco let this sink in for a while before speaking. “So that means that if we say, spend an hour in here drinking and chatting and you go on your usual 'jaunts' of around thirty seconds every five minutes or so...”
“One hundred hours.” Interjected Teal before Junco could do the first part of the math. He did not show his irritation.
“That's right.” said Ani. “To put it another way, you have known me for two months of your time while I have known you for several years of mine.
Scoter made a connection. “Ani, does the fact that time runs so differently on Rubidium Beach and in the White Room have something to do with the fact that time seems a little flaky here. You know – how sometimes when we go to another Level for a few hours, months or years seem to pass here?”
“Spot on.” Ani answered. “It is a problem that I have been trying to solve for years. There is some type of a memory leak between the Beach and the White Room that causes time to be erratic. I have been trying to solve the problem since day one without any luck. Obviously I cannot take the White Room off line as I would then have no way of doing the required running repairs on Rubidium Beach.”
6. THE JUPITER MOON – AN EXPLOSION
Discussion about the 'White Room' and the ins and outs of time manipulation continued for the next hour or so. Teal was fascinated by the whole subject as time was a huge part of astrophysics, one of her academic specialties. Scoter and Junco understood most of the conversation but there were occasions when Ani's and Teal's levels of abstraction went too deep. At one point Ani produced a scrap of paper from somewhere and started scribbling equations that Teal seemed to understand instantly. Junco didn't even recognize the symbols, let alone the formula that they were a part of.
The group were about to call it a day when the doors of the Jupiter Moon exploded inward. Junco could no longer hear anything. The others' mouths were moving but no sound was forthcoming. Smoke was thickening and soon the others were reduced to shadows and the rest of the room all but disappeared. The whole place was vibrating, Junco found himself wondering what a virtual reality earthquake would feel like. Surely this was pretty close. After what seemed like minutes but was probably seconds, the smoke began to slowly clear. His hearing, or at least a tiny part of it was beginning to return. He also realized that he was now sitting on the floor. The vibrations continued, and the glasses continued to fall off the shelves and bounce and break on the floor. Every chair in the room was now on its side. One of the two front doors had found a resting place twenty yards back from its original position. The other door was hanging at a crazy angle, secured by one hinge and that didn't look like it was going to hold for long. The vibrations stopped.
Scoter was slowly emerging from under a pile of dust and rubble with a 'what the hell was that' look on his face. Ani was upright at the bar looking surprisingly composed considering what had just happened.
“Where is Teal?” Junco had no idea whether he was yelling or whispering. His hearing had partially returned but a painful ringing in both of his ears was making it all but impossible to fine tune his own volume.
“No idea, we'd better get searching.” replied Scoter.
With that the three of them started searching through upturned tables, rubble and assorted late twentieth century bar paraphernalia. After several minutes of searching Teal's voice cracked the eerie silence. “Hey guys. What happened?” She was in the back room. The one they used when the bar was too busy for comfortable discussion.
Junco lightly stepped over and around the rubble and entered the backroom. Teal was sitting on the floor, back to the door. “Are you Okay?” by the time he had finished the question Scoter and Ani were standing behind him. The room had suffered little damage. A couple of gaudy ornaments including an iridescent Newton's Cradle were smashed on the floor but other than that, Ani's ode to twenty fifth century bad taste had survived remarkably intact.
“I'm fine I think.” Teal responded. “What happened?”
“A big explosion, flying furniture and other stuff, lots of vibration – Anyone got anything to add?” asked Junco.
“Sums up my experience.” Said Scoter. Ani nodded his agreement with the others.
“In other words.” continued Junco. “We don't really know anything.”
“Explosion – What explosion?” Teal was nonplussed.
“Wow.” Said Junco. “You know even less than we do.”
“Teal.” This time it was Ani who spoke. “Tell us what you remember please.”
“Okay. It won't take long believe me.” said Teal
“That's fine, just exactly what you remember though.”
Teal thought for a second. “We were sitting at the bar counter then I was on my own in this room. See, told you it wouldn't take long.”
“What I don't get at all is how you came to be in this room behind a closed door.” said Junco.
“That is the part that worries me.” agreed Ani. “I don't think that you ending up in here is random, I think the explosion may have just been for cover.” Ani was obviously working up a theory.
Junco pressed Ani for his thoughts. “Come on Ani, spill the beans, what is that oversized brain of yours working on now.”
“Nothing spectacular. I just think that recent events have to be related. When strange, apparently random stuff happens, it is rarely random. In other words, all of this will have the same underlying cause.”
“All of what.” asked Scoter.
“The storms, the holes, or rather tunnels and now an explosion and Teal's memory gap. This is not coincidence.”
“Any idea what the underlying cause might be?” Teal asked.
“No but I am sure of one thing. There is intent. Someone or something is executing a plan and I have to find out who and try to stop them.”
“So you don't think that there is any chance that this will all go away?” Teal again.
“Very little. This is not the work of a bored hacker or troll. Whoever is behind this has financial and skill based resources that go way beyond my own,” said Ani.
Junco did a very quick mental inventory of Ani's resources that he knew about. The idea that someone may have lots more scared him. The others were having similar thoughts judging by their concerned expressions.
7. THE MECHANIK – A DISCUSSION
Scoter said, “the only group that would have the resources to do these things are the Mechanik.”
“Unless there is a new player in town th
at we don't know about,” Junco replied.
“Unlikely,” said Ani. ”Sure, there are individuals here that can pull interesting stunts in the hacking department, but no one can make me blind to the Rubidium Beach program for long enough to literally poke holes in it. At least not now that Vireo has been dealt with.”
“And Vireo was your creation anyway,” said Scoter.
Ani half smiled. “Thanks for that – didn't really need the reminder.”
Scoter continued the conversation. “Again, we come back to the Mechanik.”
“Occam and his razor would seem to agree with you,” said Ani. “Any other conclusion would require huge leaps and massive assumptions. We know that the Mechanik have the wherewithal to pull this off it is the motive that completely eludes me.”
“Have you been in touch with them much recently?” asked Teal.
Ani looked thoughtful. “Now you mention it, no. In normal times, when I am not living on their Level, I am in touch every day just to compare notes and catch up on important matters. I haven't heard from them for three days now.”
“So we have to assume that, for whatever reason, you are currently out of the loop.” said Teal.
“That is very easily tested,” said Ani. “Hold tight, I'll be back in a second.” His eyes glazed over momentarily then he was returned.
“Well?” said Teal. “I take it that you just jumped up to the Mechanik's Level. Was anyone at home?”
“Oh, they were at home alright. They just weren't answering the door.”
“So what does that mean – are you no longer a part of the collective?” asked Junco.
“Don't know,” was Ani's response. “We can be pretty sure of one thing, though. The Mechanik is definitely involved.”
8. LEVEL MINUS ONE – TEAL AND JUNCO
Teal addressed the other three. “Look, I don't know about you guys but I am exhausted. I need to drop down to my apartment. I need a few hours on Minus Zero to rest up and take care of the usual.”
The Rubidium Beach Series - Episodes 1 Through 4: Cyberpunk/Dystopian Science Fiction Page 9