Spheria (11 page)

“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.

Min logged into her Pirate Bay account and downloaded a professional hacking tool. This tool allowed her to read that section of the drive over and over. Each read slightly shifted the drive’s head to the left. The first three passes produced all zeros, as expected. Then on the fourth pass, a few ones sneaked in. After a couple more passes, she got a chunk of data that was about an even amount of ones and zeros. When the next pass showed the exact same sequence, she knew she had retrieved the ghost of the wiped file.

She directed the program to restore the lost data file to her desktop. It appeared there, titled “Intern’s Log.” Min opened the file and began reading.

Chapter 12 - Return Journey

“It's ironic, but until you can free those final monsters within the jungle of yourself, your life, your soul is up for grabs.” - Rona Barrett

Le∙ma woke to find the camp deserted. Sa∙ma had left her at some point during the night, and she was on her own. She looked up at the Source and it shined a bright white color, perfect traveling season. She peered down into the darkness of the Rift once more. The depths made her wonder what had become of the shard. Then she noticed a yellow bubble slowly rising.
Had the shard indeed turned into a bubble? Or was it just a coincidence?
Sa∙ma’s knowledge always impressed her. Even so, there was still much about their world that she suspected even he didn’t understand. Or worse, that those who came before had made up to explain observed phenomena. She vowed to seek the truth when she became Master. Somehow.