Curious Sols (The Sol Principle Book 1) Page 5

  A terror ripped through her now. Ten point four, her left arm was useless, molten lava ahead...

  Stephanie’s ability to feel the world around her seemed to crash.

  “What?” she thought to herself. Looking around, her senses were still intact. In fact, she was still intact. It was her entire world that had stopped around her. She sat in her sled, which was motionless and hanging in midair. Slowly scanning her surroundings, nothing was moving. The steam stopped rising, the lava stopped flowing, everything was motionless.... except, what was that noise?

  A loud thundering boom seemed to be rising in volume, as the crater began to shake. Before she could scream, a large white missile shot past her and into the lava below. Following behind, someone was falling toward her, gliding down the crater while holding the reins of a parachute. Stephanie couldn't believe it.

  “Ashley?” she questioned in disbelief.

  Steering her parachute to the sled, Ashley hopped down on the hood right in front of her stepdaughter.

  “I'm just the cavalry, missy,” Ashley replied. “You are going to need better reinforcements than me when your father hears about this.”

  Missing the whole point, Stephanie unexpectedly gave her stepmother a firm hug. There might have even been a few tears rolling down the cheeks of the ice-princess.

  Ashley looked down into the lava below. Closing her eyes, focusing her thoughts, she uttered, “You are not real. Be gone.”

  The illumination of everything around them started to dim. Stephanie saw her stepmother shaking her head ever so slightly as she gave her a strange look. The world turned pitch black.

  Opening her eyes and looking around, Stephanie found herself safely tucked away in her coaster chair. She felt her face, it wasn't bleeding. Her skin, was still pale white, though not blistered. Even her left arm moved without pain.

  “Whoa,” was the only expression she had the energy left to manage. She wasn’t sure what had happened. As the pounding of her heart slowed, she came to one conclusion. If Ashley hadn’t intervened something terrible would have happened. She was happy to leave that result unanswered.

  *

  Chapter 5 Awkward Reunions

  Hearing the incoming call, Jonathon Quinn reluctantly stopped the quiz.

  “One moment, class, while I get this,” he interjected while walking over to his imaginary desk.

  Reaching out to the panel, he touched the beeping light and it stopped. In its place an image of his wife appeared. Before she could speak, John hit the privacy tab on the panel limiting the audio to those on the call.

  “John we have a bit of a problem,” Ashley started, then paused.

  “What's up?” John replied in a relaxed tone.

  Rolling her shoulders ever so slightly Ashley continued, “The computers in the lab are running a looped routine that I cannot stop. I'm afraid the loop will spread to other systems soon causing random system crashes.”

  “A loop?” John replied looking perplexed. “What happened? Can we shut it down?”

  Ashley moved back to the main computer control panel, and pressed a combination of illuminated spaces.

  “Still no luck. I'm afraid hacking into the computer from my neuroband may have thrown the lab systems into overload.”

  “What are you doing hacking into your own systems?” he replied looking confused, and slightly concerned. “And from your neuroband? How did you do that?”

  “It's ok now.” Ashley quickly diverted his line of questioning, “We can talk about that soon enough. Right now I need to get back to working on stopping this.”

  “Is there something I can do?” John inquired.

  “I've alerted the captain,” she said briskly. “She should be here any minute with Glennay. I'm not sure they can help… I might put a call into Dom. He might be able to think this through.”

  Jonathon flinched a bit, hearing that name, but not enough to notice.

  “Yeah, maybe.” he replied in neutral tone.

  “Take care of Jess for me, please John. Oh, and if you see Stephanie, hold off on talking to her until I can get out of this mess.”

  “Hold off on what?” John asked. “And why do I need to take care of Jessica? Just what is going on?”

  “Just stay cool and don't start getting into a rant until I can be there,” Ashley finished.

  “Okay, I guess,” he agreed, now even more confused. “Good luck and keep me posted.”

  The screen flashed and then went blank.

  “Sorry about that class,” he apologized, “let’s get back to our game. I think it’s time for our final question! Looking at the board it looks like Benjiro is our champion today. Are you ready for the final trivia question Benjiro?”

  #

  “Incoming call from the U.S.S. Columbus,” announced a vidcomm in the lab. “Dr. Ashley Quinn.”

  Looking up from his workstation, Dominic Andreou shifted his position and half-smiled.

  “So, she calls after all,” he whispered in low tones. “I'll take it in my study,” directed the man as he took off his white overcoat and wrapped it around the back of a lab chair. Moving at a slower than expected pace for a call on hold, he walked across the science lab, through a side door.

  “Lights, medium,” he stated walking into the study adjacent to the main lab of the H.S. Argo. Sitting down in his favorite chair, he slightly adjusted his shirt and tie. Then nodding his head approvingly he directed the computer, “Start the call.”

  “Dominic,” greeted Dr. Quinn. “Dom…” she reiterated as she smiled, “hello.”

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?” replied Dr. Andreou.

  “Dom, I need your help,” replied Ashley, as her smile faded and was replaced by concern. “My systems over here are running a loop sequence that I can't break. I'm afraid it’s going to spread system wide Dom.” Her voice sounded increasingly worried with each word.

  “A loop?” the man restated. “How in the world did you get locked into a loop, Ashley? We learned fifty ways to avoid such things back at the academy, or were you sleeping in class that day?”

  “Yeah, uh,” she hesitated, “long story. I certainly wasn't planning to loop. More importantly, I've tried every algorithm I can think of. Nothing seems to be unlocking the system. Can you help Dom, please?”

  “Of course, of course,” he assured her. “Well I can't walk over there and see what you have, regrettably,” he continued.

  “I can't risk the loop spreading to the Argo with a direct connection,” he pondered. “I'll set up an isolated workstation and we copy the loop over to it. I might be able to break the code from there.”

  Ashley quickly nodded her head in agreement, then paused. “Wait, the loop, ah, Dom it's running an experiment I'm not able to share. Can we come at this another way?”

  “I'm good Ashley,” he replied, “but I can't apply meta-mathematics to a loop code I can't read. I'm afraid I can't help you otherwise.”

  Tapping her hand repeatedly on her workstation, Ashley gritted her teeth and agreed. “Ok then, you are going to have to nuke this code after helping me, Dom. I'm pretty sure this falls under the ‘penalty of something bad will happen if you share this’ clause that I signed off on. So consider yourself deputized.”

  “Certainly,” he replied. “Let me initialize this system and then I’ll send you the port for a connection.” Dominic moved his chair over to a second workstation. Expertly tapping, he brought up a series of windows, rotating them and throwing them around on the virtual screen at a dizzying pace.

  “Access codes enabled. Port will be 5150,” he relayed to Ashley. “Transmit your loop when ready.”

  “Packaging the code and preparing for transmit,” she replied.

  A smaller separate window appeared on Dr. Andreou’s workstation. Working the larger windows with his left hand in large motions, he deftly flicked through the tiny directory with his right. A list of file names ran down the window as he thumbed through. Alternating his focu
s almost indiscriminately, the scientist stopped on a directory, tapped it twice and then continued once the download bar had reached full. Reaching a file named Neuroband, he almost brought attention to himself by the reaction on his face, but recovered and downloaded the directory.

  “There, I have it all,” Dominic confirmed. “Keep the comm link active and I’ll alert you when I find a stop,” he finished.

  “Ok,” Ashley paused, “and thanks Dom. I know it’s not easy…” she didn’t continue.

  Dominic maneuvered the workspace with a keen focus. It would take someone standing beside him to notice the cringe that struck him as Ashley broke off her sentence.

  Streams of equations ran parallel down the main window of his workstation as Dominic Andreou looked for anomalies.

  “Very impressive work, Dr. Quinn,” he sub-vocalized as he scanned the formulas. “I’d love to see the tech this makes.” Rubbing his eyes, he waved his hand across the screen scattering the windows like a boulder dropped in a stream.

  Walking away from the workstation, Dominic wrestled with his own thoughts.

  “What are you doing?” he questioned himself. “You are not really thinking of breaking this loop. Just let it run its course and that will be one less ship to worry about.”

  Clinching his fists he turned to a supply cabinet next to the workstation.

  “You’ll never see her again,” he thought to himself. “There’s time yet, you’ll find a way to get her off that ship.”

  Tracing a pattern across the security screen, Dominic unlocked the cabinet. Reaching in, he took a small rectangular case from a hidden compartment. Opening the case, the scientist pulled out a modified Ksync from inside. Then taking a deep breath, he walked back to the workstation and pressed the Ksync to the screen, attaching it. Once more, he brought several screens up on the display. With a touch of the device, however, the formulas racing across the screen slowed. Like a log jam in a raging river, the mathematical symbols spun and hooked together. Within seconds the stream of formulas had slowed to a near standstill.

  “There you are!” pointed the doctor excitedly. “You can’t hide from my cipher.” Tapping the screen over a symbol that spun in a circle at the center of the jam, the scientist drug it off to the side. He then circled the symbol with his finger leaving it in a prison of sorts.

  “That should do it, Ashley,” he uttered after re-opening the comm link. “I’ve isolated your troublemaker. Give me a moment to repackage this and I’ll send the solution back to you.”

  “I can’t thank you enough, Dominic,” replied Ashley in a sigh of relief.

  Looking down at his workstation, Dominic realized that, in his furor to break the code, he had left the door open to the files he'd copied. He had to quickly think of how he could close this door without anyone realizing it had been opened.

  “Ashley… Ashley I’m afraid there’s one bit of bad news,” the scientist started. “You’re going to have to reboot your systems after loading this code for it work. Otherwise you’ll risk letting this anomaly work its way back into the system. One more thing, you need to do this immediately. I can’t guarantee how long it will stay contained.”

  “Understood,” she replied.

  Uploading the code and reinitializing the system, Ashley quickly worked the screen with exquisite grace.

  Turning her chair quickly, she warned her ship’s captain. “We have to shut it all down and reboot. It’s not an option. Can you coordinate with operations? I’ve never done this live and I have no idea how far the code spilled into the ship’s systems… anything could happen.”

  “That’s not very reassuring, doctor,” Captain Sterling replied, “and this just as I was doing so well at cutting back on the spirits.”

  “Glennay, can you get the responder teams ready?” directed the captain to tech officer Mercedes.

  “Right away, Captain,” she affirmed.

  Ashley brought up the ship’s master override codes. She shook her head in disbelief of the situation. Hacking into her computer systems with the neuroband was a pretty amazing feat, in fact when this was all over she was going to have to figure out exactly how she did that. For now, the leap of faith that had protected her stepdaughter, was now putting everyone on board in danger. This had better work.

  Looking over at the captain and crossing her fingers with her left hand, she activated the reboot. One by one the ship’s systems rebooted. One by one, Ashley inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Two systems were left, orbital thrusters and internal power.

  “Orbital thrusters, reboot complete,” she commented as her voice held her last bits of tension. “No…” she uttered in disbelief as an error light replaced the reboot light on her screen under internal power. The patterns from the error codes seemed to hover in her eyes like a fading roadmap, as the entire room went black.

  Chapter 6 Space Ghost

  John stood in the darkness for a moment. His thoughts had been on how to transition the class from a review to the next lesson, but that was cut short.

  “Apparently, the loop didn’t get unlooped,” he thought to himself. Taking the Ksync from his belt, he held it in front of him and commanded, “Lantern light.”

  A nifty little gadget, the Ksync was short for Computer Synchronization. The business name was fairly self-explanatory of the device itself. The hand held unit was able to link with other workstations and maintain a current profile across systems.

  The device was made popular however by its functionality. It was nicked named the “Kitchen Sink” referring to the old adage “Everything but the 'Kitchen Sink' thrown in.” Many of the basic functions that you might need as a colonist were included in a Ksync: lantern, comm unit, emergency signal, and a self-defense charge, were just some of its more practical features. As John thought of it, the Ksync was a modern day Swiss Army Knife, and then some.

  A large diffused light spread outward from the Ksync, illuminating his office. The classroom that had been provided by the computer via neuroband had disappeared. Moving to his vidcomm panel, John tried activating ship communications. After several attempts, he uttered in disgust.

  Holding his Ksync up to his face he directed it to switch channels, “Sentinel band.”

  The device beeped indicating it had activated the direction.

  “Quinn to any active Sentinel, anyone reading me?” He hoped someone could receive his signal. The odds were next to non-existent, however, at least as long as the ship’s external power systems were functional. The energizers that power the magnetic shields around the ship are great for repelling micrometeoroids, but play havoc with handheld comm devices. The good news was no personal communications equaled a working spaceship on the outside, at least in theory.

  Moving to the office door, he switched his Ksync over to a directional light pointing toward the corridor. Instinctually, he stepped as though the door would automatically open. Much to his dismay, he smacked nose first into the unwavering door.

  “Ouch!” he yelped in pain. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Lights out and power out! This is going to be a treat.”

  Stepping to the side of the door, John opened the emergency door controls and pulled the manual door release. Nothing happened.

  “What?” he said in surprise. “C’mon, release. You know ya want to.” He seemed to be talking to the release lever as he repeatedly pulled it.

  “Somehow the doors have been locked, something must have triggered the emergency containment system as well,” he mused to himself.

  Jonathon shook his head and rubbed his hand over his face in frustration.

  “Ok, comm is out, Ksync is out, door is stuck.” He ran over the list of problems in his mind. “What do we have left?”

  Examining the ventilation opening he shook his head. “Well either they are making those pretty small these days, or I need to cut back on dessert tubes.”

  Rubbing his thumb and index finger over his temples, giving his mind a chance to think, John stopped as he t
ouched the neuroband around his forehead. He paused as an idea seemed to be gaining approval.

  “She should still have it on,” he stated to himself. “She’s always forgetting to take it off.”

  Going over to his desk, John sat down in his office chair. He put his Ksync down on his desk and leaned back in his chair a bit. A calm look settled on his face as he whispered something inaudibly under his breath. Concentrating, focusing his thoughts, he tried to bring up an image of his daughter Jessica. He traced a path from his office to their quarters, passing through imaginary doors before arriving at the home's entrance. Visualizing the interior, John walked through the front door and into the living room. He continued to move through his family’s quarters, now going to his daughter’s room.

  “Now, for the hard part,” he thought to himself. “Focus on Jessica, you were just speaking with her. Hear her voice, see what she wore, think of what she said. You can do this.”

  His Neuroband was the most advanced of its kind. He wore one of two updated versions, his wife and inventor of the device, wore the other. There had been many versions, ten alpha bands, ten beta bands, until this one proved itself. He would now try and do what three weeks of crash training aboard the U.S.S. Columbus had not perfected--projecting his thoughts to another.

  With computer assistance, entire rooms have been transmitted successfully to multiple people. Sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and with some success even a sense of touch had been convincingly conveyed. To do this without a computer, though, create original thought and send it to another, was mostly science fiction. It wouldn’t be for long though, not if John could help it.

  Three levels down and hundreds of feet away his daughter was alone and in the dark, likely trapped just as he was. He would not leave her there alone. This idea, harnessed to the power of a parent’s love, would crystallize his thoughts. Thoughts that were about to turn the impossible into the possible.

  #