by Jack Vantage
Brandon smiled hopelessly.
“So, what we do in this period is write it all ourselves. That way I know we are intaking what we need for the data tests. Also, if there is anything you don’t understand, or anything you need me to explain, just ask. I will be talking as you are typing, giving you all an insight into the words you are reading.”
Lecodia smiled confidently at Miss Lowe as Dylan briskly looked at her again. Lecodia looked at him. She smiled.
Dylan smiled back. I hope she likes me, talks to me, stays with the period, and comes to the party.
Miss Lowe began typing, and the words scrolled across the screen-board behind her in big clear letters for all to read.
Chapter 5
Where Did It Go?
David Bell knew that a mystery was a mystery. That’s why it was called a mystery. But like a puzzle, it could be pieced back together. It could be demystified.
“Computer, play back the message one more time please.”
He sat at his desk in his office alone. The work force had retired for the night as dusk set in. Only his desk light was illuminated. The floor was lined with dozens of glass black desks, shadowed by the setting sun, which pierced in shards through the hundreds of paned windows on the eighty-fifth floor of the Neutrino building of Atomic City. A three-dimensional cubed carpet symmetrically covered the office floor.
On his opaque polytron monitor were blueprint design images of the interstellar star ship Resurrection. A voice frequency reader popped up at bottom screen, with the vocal pitch fluctuating with every word of the message.
An intellectual lady’s voice declared, “Resurrection reporting mission progress. All systems are check and fully operational. No malfunctions to report. Resurrection is one light year from destination, has decreased speed and stopped. Captain Duval is initiating stage one of approach. System indicates a successful stage one. Solar system detected. Image readers indicate possible habitat within planetary system. All readers concur with results. Galaxy M10976 reads, as pre-programmed, its size, power, and energy. Lieutenant Emerson has initiated matter readings of galaxy. I am running syst—” The voice cut out. Message Terminated moved across the monitor.
For two hundred years this message had been passed around, but still the mystery continued. Resurrection was the most advanced ship ever sent into space, and it became an enigma due to its baffling disappearance. Fifty people had tried, and failed, to work out the cause. Billions of Quazar credits were squandered when the ship never communicated after its last broadcast, setting back the space program for centuries. In the past two centuries, only two other similar missions had been funded, due to corporate lenders and political figures being frightened off by the possibility of a credit loss. And both missions remained unsuccessful as they travelled the universe scouting for planets.
For the last year David had spent hour after hour thinking about Resurrection. What happened? What, after the ship stated that it was in perfectly operational, erased it? Could a comet or asteroid have hit the ship?
But that was all but impossible. Resurrection was equipped with sensors that could detect any foreign bodies in its path, or on a trajectory to intersect its path. If there were anything wrong with those sensors the computer would have stated in the first part of the message. Most people who’d studied the message before David settled with the idea of the communicators malfunctioning. They believed the ship was still out there, unable to send any word of its whereabouts. But if that was true and the ship had landed on a new planet, the crew of scientists would have established a way of communicating by now. The message would have arrived, even with its long journey to Quazar.
Mysteries frustration tapped at David like a woodpecker on a tree. Funding for the space program would be doubled should he find the vessel. He felt every scientist’s hands pushing on his shoulders with plea, and he was determined to crack the riddle. He always did.
His job was with the astronomy division of Atomic City. He was handed the file on Resurrection due to his uncanny ability to find new stars, planets, and many other things such as asteroids, comets, and supernova blasts throughout the universe. The corporate funders recommended him.
Two days a week he was here in the Neutrino building, informing the scientific world of new advances, discoveries, and plans. The rest of the time he was at his observatory analyst centre where he controlled his space-based telescope, the Cat’s Eye.
“Come on, tell me something,” David murmured as he pushed away from his desk on his wheeled black padded office chair.
He covered his face with his hands, absorbing the frustration that swelled in his head, then removed them and stared at the computer from five feet away, desirous for an answer. He ran his fingers through his short grey hair. His forty-nine years of age had begun showing with a few wrinkles around his large eyes. His muscles had turned a little flimsy, but still his morale was as high as ever, if a little pressurised by the frustration of an impossible puzzle.
On the desk David’s communication glasses began sounding their digital ring, and the reflective lenses flashed indigo. He picked them up and put them on, then said, “Hello, Jerry. Please tell me the readings are in. Tell me our name is going on another galaxy.”
In the left lens an interface flickered on, and David watched a small video image of young Jerry appear and speak to him. He was at his desk at Cat’s Eye, with his short-boxed beard tickling the screen.
“Yes, we have another new galaxy, David, but I found something else. Something you’re not going to believe. Our system’s asteroid belt is gone! And as soon as I logged it the military communicated with me.”
David jolted upright in his chair. “What do you mean? What did they say?”
“They’re on their way to apprehend me. They are also on their way to get you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They told me not to communicate with anyone, but I wanted to warn you. I don’t think we’ve broken any laws. I’m using the personal quantum band, so they won’t see that we’re talking for a while.”
David said, “The conspiring, lying bastards are not stopping me from putting my name on my galaxy today!”
“What are you going to do? You can’t run.”
“Oh yes I can,” David replied, rising. “My guess is they’ll come from down town. I’m coming to you. I want to see my new baby galaxy today. Hey, did you get a fix on distance? I still think the initial trigonometric readings were right. We’re touching the edge of the universe.”
He reached over and switched his monitor off in the vacant office floor, then headed for the exit behind him, where the elevators waited. The room seemed different when nobody was around, which re-iterated how much time he’d spent on the case of Resurrection. His glasses tinted to shades.
Jerry was still connected in the top of the left lens. He said, “They’re being calculated as we speak. Twenty minutes,” Jerry replied.
“Do me a favour and get some iced tea on for me, the celebrating kind. You know I like a brew to celebrate a discovery. And think about that god damned belt. It’s not like losing a gadget. Check the computer readings and constellation maps history. See when it vanished.”
David exited the office and entered a room that held six elevator doors, all double, square, and silver. He hit the gold elevator button. The elevator arrived within seconds with a beep. He stepped into the spacious lift and leant on the gold handrail, looking at his reflection in the waist-high mirrored walls. “Jerry, we need some time off.”
He felt overworked and worn down from his current task, which was looking into a newly discovered galaxy. Lately his shifts had run into twenty-four-hours on a regular basis.
Jerry said, “We’ve earned it. Sir, are you sure you want to do this? I don’t think they mean us any harm.”
“I want to see that galaxy today.”
David’s black trousers, white shirt, and red dotted foil tie made him feel uncomfortable on the two days it was compu
lsory to wear them. He much preferred to wear the comfortable clothes that he chose when gazing at the heavens in his observatory. His life was one big study. He’d been looking into the unknown for what seemed like forever.
The elevator stopped and opened to reveal the large corporate lobby of the Neutrino building. The floor glared with white speckled marble. The front was a massive collection of glass that consisted of a thousand window panes, all with a forest green tint. The security port, which was positioned to David’s right, was walled with CCTV monitors. The seating areas were across the lobby and crafted from fine black leather.
David stepped from the elevator and walked under the ten dangling crystal chandeliers. He soaked in the corporate giant of a lobby.
Atomic City was a corporate paradise, a place where technology called home. More credit had moved through these halls than any other, and the leaders knew how to radiate it with their golden architectural semantics.
“Good evening, Derek,” David said as he passed the gold desk of the security station.
“‘Bye David,” Derek replied. His smart black security outfit was pressed to perfection. His clean brown hair was styled in an appropriate look.
As David walked, he could see his reflection in the polished marbled floor, and it humoured him. Quietly, he said, “Jerry, I hate the days I’m away from the observatory. This place is all too arrogant. You know we are just puppets to the financiers, slaves to the government. We’re like dealers at a casino and they’re playing roulette with the stars.”
“Interesting point,” Jerry replied.
“One day we’ll find a habitable planet and it will pour credit into the financier’s pockets like an endless waterfall. And we’ll get only a splash of credit.”
“Isn’t that the truth.”
David neared the exit, which folded open automatically, and stepped out into Atomic City plaza. It was an architectural sanctuary. The nine inner buildings of Atomic City curved in a circle around the central plaza, reaching high with square tinted exterior dressing. Each building was connected to the next via tubed bridges. It always appeared to David that they were huddled together, locking arms around the shoulders of the neighbouring building. The tops of the buildings angled slightly inward, as if they were gazing at the central plaza.
Twenty marble steps circled around the inner buildings and led down into the central plaza circle. Within the circle a deep red pattern wound in opposite directions, joining in the middle where the Atomic City moving sculpture stood thirty feet high.
A large ball represented an atom at the centre of the sculpture, with two massive rings swinging around on their axis to represent the orbital path of the electrons. At the base of the sculpture, Atomic City read across a gold engraved marble block.
Hundreds of workers entered and exited the glazed buildings. Sky-cabs lowered at the far left of the plaza, dropping and picking up scientists, corporate businessmen, and other visitors of the city between two of the super-skyscrapers. Even at dusk, the majority of buildings still held thousands of workers cashing in credit.
David noticed two Authoritarian officers jogging along the white slabs of the plaza with gamma guns in hand. They passed the sculpture twenty metres away.
“Shit, they’re here. Jerry, I need your help. If I clock myself into a taxi, they’ll read my chip and location. I need you to threaten the driver. I will pass you over to him and all you have got to do is tell him his family is dead if he doesn’t do what I tell him.”
“I can see a Quazar penitentiary in our future, David. Wouldn’t it be better to see what they want?”
“Just do as I say.”
David trotted down the steps and into the central plaza, where the sculpture swished the air. He moved towards the cab rank where a dozen businessmen and women queued their turn. An overhead digital sign stated the next arriving cab and promised one a minute. A yellow, bubble like sky-cab elevated into the air. Cab 108 read across its side. It moved up and out of sight.
David joined the queue with an irate fidget. He stood behind a young smart sophisticated business woman, who talked into her communicator. “High honey,” she said. “Am going for a drink with the girls from work, will be home in an hour or so.”
David heard the reply. “Okay, don’t be too late. Let me know what time to put dinner on.”
“Promise baby,” she said closing the polytron communicator.
“Long day?” David asked.
She turned around and faced. Her tied back dark hair, and long legs, oozed class under her knee length grey skirt and slim slick jacket.
“You could say that,” she replied.
“I bet the ladies fit. Is she? She’s got to be?” Jerry remarked from his glasses.
“Me to, hi my names David Bell,” he said extending his hand. She took and shook. “Look I really need to get in a cab pronto. Sorry to be rude and abrupt. You see my wife’s just gone into labour.”
He couldn’t believe he just used that excuse, especially when his wife desperately wanted to conceive. He would have barged the queue, but attention would have been drawn.
“Okay, okay. My god. You lucky man,” she replied.
“I would owe you a favour,” David continued.
She smiled at David. Another sky-cab lifted at the lines start and both shuffled forward with the queue.
“Certainly, you may. Hold on,” she said as she stepped from the queue and shouted with lungs of a bear. “Everyone this man’s wife’s going into labour. He needs to be quick. She needs him.”
“You lying dick,” Jerry said.
The ten people before him grumbled and parted, allowing him a path to the lowering hum of the sky-cab. Its yellow body always resembled to David like a beetle bubble.
“Thanks,” he told the woman as he dashed to the taxi.
“Go dad,” she replied.
“I can’t wait to watch you change a dipper for this one,” Jerry said.
The taxi stopped in the rank, and he opened the door up with a hiss. David hopped into sky-cab 255564 as the door automatically closed.
He looked forward and viewed the back of a black man’s head, his chauffer for today, who turned to David. His skin was dark chocolate, his eyes white, and his hair short and thick, which was matted like a collection of tiny fury marbles that were glued to his head.
“Where can I take you sir,” he said with enthusiasm, like he loved his job with confounding passion. His lips were large and held a pink quality to them.
“Bell observatory, science industrial quarter please,” David replied.
“Please fasten your seat restrictor’s sir,” he said, then pressed the credit distance reader which displayed on the back of the driver’s seat.
Twenty credits appeared on the small digital panel. David pulled two red straps over both shoulders and connected them in an x.
“So, you’re a scientist?” the driver asked as the cab began rising silently.
“That’s right, astronomer.”
“Sir if you could just click your credits.”
The cab was sandwiched by two super skyscrapers, which reflected the cab off their pristine glass windows. The driver tapped at his dashboard console, inputting his route and skyway-joining request. The console mapped skyway 1872 on his navigation screen that was inbuilt with the central dash board. The navigation system lined a route through spaghettis of sky-way paths.
He then switched his windscreen router on, which tinted it a pale orange colour. The windscreen router was a digital mask that revealed the skyways markings, signs, and all kind of necessary information.
The navigation system flashed ready for skyway joining as the cab continued rising.
“I would love to be an astronomer, would love to,” the driver said with an over-zealous voice.
“Nothing stopping you, we need as many eyes on the sky as possible.”
“I wish I did it in Intake, but all I did was pay no attention, damn story of my life,” he continued.
>
David peered from the passenger window and watched the cab rise above the buildings. A hundred metres above, awaited the fast-flowing skyway, that flowed like an endless stream through the air. David could see the blur of sky-mobile chassis as they moved with swift flow.
“How many stars you found, any with your name on them?” the driver asked.
“Loads, I’ve lost count.”
“That’s so cool, bet they’re like your babies?”
“Every one of them,” David replied as the screen in front of him flashed for a credit swipe.
“Sir I can’t join the sky-way if have not clicked credit!”
David peered from the passenger window again. The cab levelled with the fast-moving skyway and floated with patience. Through the front digital windscreen, the skyway drew with red digital lanes. They revealed the way like lights on a runway, artificially drawing the way. Tiny, red doted digital spheres drew the central lane lines, and blue spheres lined the external lanes of the skyway.
Exits folded off along the skyway’s length, with figures top right and left of the windscreen stating its speed and congestion level. David looked out at the sky-mobiles blurring past his passenger window. The cab hovered at the skyway’s edge, within its junction lane. The odd horn sounded.
“Jerry do as I say,” David said. Then he handed his glasses to the driver. “Put these on. There’s something you need to hear.”
The driver did as he was asked, and David watched him listen to whatever Jerry said.
He handed the glasses back, but David didn’t see him press the emergency call to the Authoritarians, as he slipped his glasses back on.