Xn

by Clint Townsend

  “Then you tell me where he is!” Cain roared. “‘Cause he sure as the devil isn’t up here!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir,” the flustered Aerie deck officer repeated, “We don’t know where Dr. White went. No one has visually laid eyes on him, nobody’s physically had a run in with….”

  “For three hours? In three hours’ time none of you have located Dr. White? One individual?”

  “We’re doing our best, sir. There’s been such an influx of….”

  “Have you checked the video records?” Cain rudely and impatiently interrupted.

  “Sir, we have no surveillance camera videos to review, as me and my staff were given a specific directive, issued by you, Dr. White, and Riggs Woodburn, that all SUBOS surveillance systems, including those of the Aerie, CARBEL, Halos, and Clouds were to be deactivated until further notice.”

  In their haste to deliver the quadracles of nuclear missiles to the Clouds and depopulate the Arenas, Arks, and Eden, the three men decided it best that the video surveillance systems be temporarily shut down. The lack of recorded visual confirmation of armed atomic weapons would provide Cain with a certain level of deniability of their existence.

  “Have you interviewed the load master on duty yet? Did you check the CARBEL manifests?” Dr. Wyczthack snapped.

  “Yes, sir,” the man answered as Riggs floated through the portal into Cain’s private chambers on Cloud Nine. “He said he and Dr. White had a conversation regarding an inhabitant from Arena Four. Something about a transponder in the clone’s helmet and RFID chip not being recognized by the POG.”

  Riggs and Dr. Wyczthack looked at each other in wide-eyed amazement.

  “Are you sure about that?” Cain excitedly asked, giving Riggs a wink and thumbs-up.

  “Yes, sir. He informed me that the individual, even though departing from Arena Four, wore the uniform of an inhabitant from Arena One. In addition, he said the clone’s EVA suit was missing the nameplates on the chest and helmet.”

  “Armada!” Riggs joyously whispered, shaking his fist.

  “Tell me, what did he do with the clone? Where did he take him?” Cain asked.

  “He told me that while he extended an offer to personally escort the subject to the nursery, Dr. White politely refused and insisted on delivering the clone to you on the Cloud, adding that you’d probably want to interrogate him yourself.”

  Cain and Riggs glanced at one another, confused.

  “So, is the load master saying that Dr. White and the clone made the ascension together? Just the two of them?” Riggs inquired as he hovered next to Cain.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then they’re on one of the Clouds,” Dr. Wyczthack surmised. “You’ve checked all access points for Dr. White’s identification credentials, yes?”

  “Yes, sir. SUBOS elevators, Eden, the Arks, both Nurseries, Arenas, the Aerie cafeteria, and emergency room … he’s nowhere to be found.”

  “Keep looking,” Cain demanded and disconnected the call.

  “This is all of Armada’s doing!” he then hissed, pushing away from his seat.

  “How’s that?” Riggs asked.

  “C’mon! Don’t you get it? He’s toying with us! Armada’s devised a means of avoiding the retinal scanners and disabling his RFID chip. He knew we weren’t recording the lifts because of the missile quadracles. Armada’s up here somewhere on one of the Clouds, and he’s got Alan and the hard drives with him.”

  “Why would Armada risk escape from the Arena, only to turn around and go to a different station … with a hostage?”

  “Are you blind or just stupid?” Dr. Wyczthack fumed, brushing past Riggs into the Cloud Nine communication center. “It’s a delay tactic! He’s trying to stall us! By holding onto Alan and the hard drives, Armada thinks he’s buying himself some time and will derail our plans.”

  “Can he?” Riggs asked, floating close behind.

  “No. Is it an inconvenience? Yes. But we still have the capability of arming and firing the missiles remotely.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  The two men clung to the computer consoles as Dr. Wyczthack contemplated his next move.

  “Take a break from preparing the Clouds and split up the EVA trainers into several groups. Let the boys from Pantex handle the missiles; just get the quadracles to the Island and let them do the rest. You, in the meanwhile, will inspect every inch on all ten Clouds. We’ll flush ‘em out!”

  ***

  “Baby, I hate to tell you, but … this is going to be darn near impossible to monitor,” Chloe lamented, shaking her head. “There’s too many of ‘em arriving at one time to track where they’re being taken.”

  Armada reclined in his chair, drew in a deep breath, and rubbed his eyes.

  “I’m keeping a watch on the BASKET folders, and they’re being accessed too quickly for me to maintain any….”

  “All right!” Armada grumbled, interrupting her. “Where are they arriving?”

  “Vegas International, Edwards, Nellis, Homey, LAX … everywhere. A few have even flown in here direct and are at the hangars as we speak.”

  “When you say ‘too many’ are arriving at one time, what kinda numbers are we talking about?”

  Chloe backed out of a folder and gave a brief skimming of the parent file.

  “So far? I don’t know … twelve hundred, maybe thirteen.”

  “Man! They’re getting here sooner than I thought.”

  Armada allowed his arms to dangle as he stared up at the ceiling.

  “Baby, c’mon. Tell me how you wanna handle this. You and I can’t possibly keep an eye on every single one of ‘em. It’s not realistic.”

  She turned away from her husband and resumed monitoring the subfolders of BASKET.

  “Ten more … there’s five … here’s another ten or so. I’m telling you, Engenechem is everywhere! Cain’s got his people at….”

  “Okay! New game plan!” Armada declared.

  He suddenly jumped up out of his chair and began sliding his palms back and forth together.

  “Tell me what you think. We stop with monitoring who’s arriving where and when and focus instead on the SUBOS. It doesn’t matter if they get here all at once or one at a time. What does matter … is how they ascend to the Aerie and beyond.”

  Chloe swiveled from side to side as she listened.

  “Elevators,” she then stated, rising from her seat.

  She approached Armada and offered a congratulatory kiss on his cheek.

  “Think about it … there’s no room for ‘em at the visitor’s center. Right? They gotta go up,” Armada announced and poured himself a glass of wine. “Thirty thousand people stuck on the ground floor should make for an interesting conversation.”

  “Oh … my … gosh! Wouldn’t that just be delicious?” she asked and reached for the bag of ground coffee. “I’d absolutely love to see the faces of Wycz and White when they realize their Guinea pigs can’t move. Baby, that’s purely diabolical! It’s perfect!”

  “Now all we need to do is disable the elevator systems. That should give me more time to work on PIN CUSHION.”

  Chloe emptied a bottle of water into the reservoir of the coffee machine while Armada sipped his wine. As the freshly brewed coffee started dripping into the pot, Chloe commented, “With the access authorization codes you created for Euclid, I thought he would have been here by now, or at least attempted to contact us. It’s been several hours. I sure hope nothing’s happened to him.”

  CHAPTER 40

  WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

  “And you’re expecting me to do what?” Dr. Wyczthack queried. “Are you aware that I’m presently on Cloud Nine?”

  “No, sir, I wasn’t informed of…,” the man nervously attempted to reply.

  “I’m on Cloud Nine!” Cain blasted. “And I’m to remain on Cloud Nine for an extended period of time to conduct a series of long-term projects and experiments. Furthermore, I don’t
understand why you elected to contact me about a malfunctioning elevator.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Wyczthack. I apologize for not explaining myself correctly,” the technician humbly offered. “It’s not just one elevator we’re having troubles with, it’s the entire system. None of them are operating properly. The cabs don’t go to the desired floors, doors are opening in midtransit, they’re stopping in between floors, the alarms go off without warning, we can’t even….”

  “Okay!” Cain shouted, strapping himself into his chair. “Have you been in contact with IT Services yet? Or SUBOS Power Management Services? They’re the ones to be communicating with, not me. I’m nearly thirty miles above you.”

  “Yes, sir, we’ve been working with them, but every time we get connected to one of….”

  The conversation came to a sudden halt when Cain’s ears were painfully pierced by a digital, high-pitched buzz. He slapped angrily at his keyboard to disconnect the call. A few seconds later, his computer screen showed multiple phone lines ringing simultaneously. Each time Cain acknowledged one of the blinking red lights, his ears were immediately bombarded with agonizing ring tones of various frequencies.

  “Augh!” he shrieked and muted the computer speaker.

  “Armada!” he lowly growled.

  Dr. Wyczthack placed the computer keyboard on his lap and opened the CYCLOPS program. He selected the POG affiliated with Cloud Nine and entered the transponder number for Riggs’ helmet.

  “Woodburn,” Riggs flatly stated.

  “Where are you?” Cain rudely asked. “Have you found them?”

  “Cloud Eight, sir. And no, we’ve yet to locate Armada and Dr. White.”

  As Riggs was speaking, Cain opened the surveillance camera system for Cloud Eight.

  “Where on Eight?”

  “I’m near the air filtration compartment.”

  “Stay there,” Cain demanded.

  Riggs clutched at the portal frame separating the oxygen purifiers from the transit corridor and waited.

  “Look above you,” he then heard Cain say.

  Riggs spun his body backwards until he looked squarely at the tiny video camera.

  “It’s imperative that you find them, now!” Cain growled, looking at Riggs through the video surveillance camera.

  “Sir, we’re moving as expeditiously as possible.”

  “Well, it’s not fast enough!”

  “Dr. Wyczthack, we’ve already cleared Clouds Five, Six, and Seven, and are about to complete our sweep of Cloud Eight. There’s a hundred fifty of us and only four Clouds remaining. We’ll have this….”

  “You don’t understand, Woodburn. Nothing happens until you apprehend Armada! He’s now screwing with the elevators! Whichever Cloud they’re on, he’s hacked our Master Server remotely! The inhabitants are arriving in droves, and we can’t populate the Clouds with the lift systems out of commission! Find them! D’you hear me, Riggs? Find them!”

  ***

  “You gotta be kidding me!” Armada remarked and repeatedly bonked his forehead on the table.

  “Kidding about what, baby?” Chloe inquired from the comfort of their bed.

  “Forget it! Game over!” he sarcastically blurted out, rising quickly. “This is impossible!”

  “What? Talk to me.”

  She watched as he grabbed a fresh bottle of wine from the counter. It was more than obvious that he’d encountered an obstacle of great importance and significance.

  “When I was in the process of acquiring my first certification,” he began, searching for their corkscrew, “I had an instructor, Reese Williams. He was a theoretical physicist and mathematician.”

  Chloe snapped her fingers at her husband and thumbed him toward the bathroom.

  “One day we were discussing stuff like artificial intelligence, automated reasoning … codes, sequencing, deterministic and randomized algorithms, encryption…,” he continued after emerging from the bathroom and locating the wine opener, “and the conversation turned to the Enigma machine, cyphers, and….”

  “Enigma…,” Chloe said, “the World War II Nazi Enigma machine. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Wasn’t it Alan Turing that broke the German’s codes?”

  “Right again.”

  Armada extracted the cork, filled his glass to the rim, and immediately guzzled more than half.

  “All right. So we’re sitting there and Reese gets this weird look on his face. He then asks for my opinion on an idea of his. A professor of Theoretical Mathematics at the Planck Institute is asking me … his pupil … to help him with his project.”

  Armada leaned against the countertop, shook his head, and gulped down more wine.

  “So what was his project, Einstein?”

  “He called it transitional encryption.”

  “What?”

  “Transitional….”

  “I heard that. What is it?”

  “If we use the Enigma machine as a reference point,” he started to say while refilling his glass, “to decode the German’s messages, the Allies would have had to know the rotor order and positioning of an Enigma … to decode the rotor positioning and order of another Enigma machine to decode a message.”

  “In essence then, one has to crack a code to crack a code to learn what’s being said. Double redundancy. Right?”

  “Right. And upon close examination of PIN CUSHION, it appears that Cain and Engenechem put Reese’s idea to good use.”

  “It’s that tough?”

  “Are you kidding? Transitional encryption makes the Enigma machine look like … like a game of tic-tac-toe.”

  “Wow! How does it work?”

  “For PIN CUSHION, Wyczthack and White would have already determined their targets, the elevation for warhead detonation, location and position of the Clouds, and so on. Whenever they’re ready to arm and fire the missiles, they’ll have to enter an access or authorization code or password in order to gain access to the system to enter an access or authorization code to launch.”

  Chloe bit the inside of her lip as Armada further detailed the inner workings of the security program.

  “The engineers probably registered two pass codes for each missile. Wycz and White know ‘em, maybe even Riggs. But it’s the most important player that knows the two pass codes: the missiles. They know, they acknowledge, grant access, or deny access. Get it?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” she answered, nodding in agreement.

  “So if I’m trying to hack the missile’s programming and I enter an incorrect character, or if I take too long to enter the entire code … the missile’s self-defense protocol will automatically create a brand-new access code.”

  “Which means you have to start all over.”

  Armada blankly stared at her, nodding.

  “Isn’t there another way to….”

  “Yes, Chloe!” he snarkily snapped. “If I simply knew who did the programming and which servers and hard drives were used to store the data, then yeah, I guess there’d be a different method of neutralizing a thousand nuclear missiles!”

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Don’t take it out on me! I’m just asking a question to….”

  Armada cupped his hands to his face.

  Chloe helplessly watched as the toll of psychological stress consumed her husband. Without warning, he collapsed to his knees, curled in on himself, and began weeping.

  “Oh, baby,” she sweetly purred and clumsily scooted to the edge of the mattress.

  She gently lowered her hips to the floor and crawled up beside him. Chloe adoringly laid across his back and placed her cheek between his shoulders at the base of his neck. Armada shook and twitched as grief, frustration, and anger seared his heart.

  “I can’t stop it,” he muttered lowly.

  “What baby?”

  “I said I can’t stop it!” he bellowed, rising up. “I can’t stop Cain! There, I said it! He wins! Nothing I’ve thought of works, Chloe! Wyczthack, White, Engenechem … they g
ot us trapped! We’re all trapped! And there’s not one thing I can do about it!”

  Like a deer looking into a set of headlights, Chloe stared at her husband in shocked confusion.

  “Can you hear me?” she boldly called out and closed her eyes. “Can you see me? Us? Can you see us? Do you see him?”

  She turned her head upwards and peered up at the textured ceiling.

  “Help him!” she angrily demanded. “He’s been working day and night to stop Cain, and … and he’s….”

  Armada draped his left arm over her shoulder as she struggled to put her feelings into words.

  “Why show me and Armada where to go, why say ‘eat this, don’t drink that,’ why place life in my womb, and why alert us of our impending extinction … if you just plan on abandoning….”

  Her words were cut short by a flickering of their bedroom lights and loss of video feeds to the tablet monitors.

  “Uh…,” Armada sheepishly moaned, drawing Chloe closer to his side.

  The bulbs in the lamps experienced a power surge and glowed brilliantly as the fifty computers began shutting down, randomly, one by one. When the last monitor ceased functioning, the table and floor lamps started going dim. Within seconds, the couple was sitting in complete and total darkness.

  “What was that?” Chloe asked and blindly encircled her husband’s midsection.

  Before Armada had an opportunity to reply, a blazingly bright light seeped into the room via the gap at the bottom of the door.

  The orb entered their domain, passing from the corridor through the door as if it were standing wide open.

  “Fear not, children,” a man’s voice reassuringly stated while floating past the bathroom and closet.

  Armada and Chloe felt a wave of calm and peace envelope them, as if being wrapped in a thick, warm blanket.

  They noticed that the vaporous mirage was altering its shape while it spoke.

  “He has heard your cries and has not forsaken you,” the voice confidently announced.

  The ethereal cloud settled directly in front of Armada and Chloe, bathing them in pure white energy. Upon entering their bedroom, the apparition was a round, hazy mass of swirling colors, comparable to the size of a basketball. But now the mesmerized duo were focused on the definite, specific outline of a man with long hair, measuring more than six feet in height, levitating a few inches above the floor.