FRACTAL

by Tony Ortiz

  Charlie sat there, contemplating quietly. Took a pull, exhaled and said; “Miguel’s never reversed an impenetrable before. You really think he will now?”

  Maybe he doesn’t have to. I’m not proposing a full scale operation here. Look, the impenetrable’s are accessible to all of us to practice on right?

  Yea but they’re contained within the simulation. Changes there won’t impact reality unless you actually skip back.

  If it's an impenetrable and it really can’t be undone, what’s the difference? We’ll try it in the simulation first, of course. Then if it works there, I’ll skip back and you monitor me. We don’t need more than that just to forward a phone call. The outcome we’re aiming for is still the same so as long as we don't memorably interact with extra people we won’t have to worry about any additional ripples either, right? What do you think?

  Fuck it man, I’m in. If it works we just saved 49 lives. Who can be mad at that?

  Nobody in their right mind, I responded.

  If shit goes wrong though, said Charlie, we’ll probably be suspended from skipping for a while. Are you ready to take that risk on?

  I sat with that for a minute before responding. I had a good thing going here. Should I jeopardize that? I mean, things just started to gel for me, I contemplated. Then I said; “Yea man, it’s for the greater good. To me that makes it worth it, regardless of anything else.”

  We successfully ran the simulation two nights later and I was ready to skip back on the third night. The idea was simple. I’d skip back and get close enough to the Ministers office in Chile, to access a loose WiFi signal. With that I’ll be able to connect to their network, obtain the Minister’s personal line, which we’re assuming he’ll keep open for the President of Chile, even while he’s on vacation. Then, when the Arizona call comes in the office, i’ll reroute it directly to the Minister’s personal line instead.

  It wasn’t as effortless as I thought it would be though. I thought I’d be able to hang out at a nearby cafe, comb the airways for his buildings WiFi and work my way in that way. No such luck. They were still largely landline based. We used that third night to stake out the Minister’s office. Charlie did some research and found the original building plans that I could use on the fourth night to locate a point of access for us. I blended into a tour group that was there, to get an in-person lay of the land.

  “Vengan por aquí señoras y señores.” Right this way ladies and gentlemen, the guide said in Spanish. “Before heading to the site of the mine and setting up a satellite office, Minister Golborne along with the top officials and engineers, drafted their rescue strategies right here in this room.”

  I walked away nonchalantly when the guards weren’t paying attention to the group. I made like I was going to the bathroom, walked passed it and made the left that the blueprints we looked over indicated was the right way to the control room. I approached a door that said: ‘Solamente Personal Autorizado’. I looked both ways, and walked in. I made a bee line towards where the phone lines came in from the outside. Claro was the phone company they were hooked up to. They're mainly landline, and rent mobile space from Virgin, which is a plus for what we need to get done. Virgin’s VOIP setup should be a cake walk to get into. Then we could find the Ministers private line and reroute the Arizona call to it.

  I took a couple pictures of their setup, the generator and access points, and made my way back to that long corridor. Right when I closed the door behind me a guard that was wondering what I was doing there said: “Señor, andas perdido? ¿Que haces aqui? I acted as if I was searching for the bathroom: “Si, no puedo encontrar los baños. Este edificio es como in laberinto, no?” He responded in agreement and in a friendlier manner as he seemed to determine I wasn't a threat: “Asi es, yo todavia me pierdo a veces.” He led me to the bathrooms, I thanked him, walked in, ran the sink water, looked in the mirror, closed my eyes and dozed off into reality.

  Back at baseline Charlie and I got away from daily work as much as possible, to discuss the final stage and implementation of the plan.

  Ok, I did the research using the photos you brought back. Their system is so outdated that it's like it was setup during the dial-up and free AOL cd-rom era.

  Tell me about it. It felt like I was in a museum of telecommunication relics.

  I think the research was harder than actually hacking them is going to be. I had to do some deep digital time traveling just to find a way in dude. But here's what I see. We can outfit their setup with a compatible wifi signaler. Here's the instructions for that. - You basically just have to clip the pocket sized device onto any outgoing signal wire, adjust the frequency and you're good to go. Then you'll be able to log on to a laptop near the building, tap into the signal, and reroute the call to the Ministers direct line as soon as it comes in.

  Was his direct line a hard number to find? I asked.

  It was the first number in the buildings backup directory list, Charlie responded as he laughed. So what do you think?

  I think we’re about to save 49 lives, I responded.

  Think we’ll be able to go back this week?

  I say we go tomorrow night. I'll memorize the number and back it up on my phone. You just figure out where I need to go to get that Wifi signaler.

  Stage one of the implementation went smoothly. Charlie found that Chile’s national mail service was fairly reliable, but we couldn’t take any unnecessary timing risks so he sent it via FedEx. He had the device shipped in my name to an empty home in the neighborhood. I retrieved it without a problem.

  I was able to access the control room at the Ministers’ office even more easily than last time since I knew exactly where I was going. Setting up the device was as seamless as Charlie laid it out to be in the instructions. I was in, out and at the café across the street testing the connection on my laptop within 15 minutes. We were good to go and ready to reroute the call the next day, so I exited via the café restroom.

  Stage two didn't go as smoothly. We came to find out that the day of the Arizona call, the control room was taken offline. At first we thought someone had discovered our wifi signaler but it turns out that the system was just under routine maintenance by Claro.

  More importantly, we found the source of the issue. The underlying reason why we were unable to use the option of accessing and rerouting the call to the Minister in the first place. Could it really be this practical though? Something that we deemed an impenetrable before, was really the result of the phones being physically offline. I felt insulted by the possibility. What else have we mislabeled? Weeks worth of back and forth that led to a failed mission, took Charlie and I a couple days worth of skipping to correct.

  We were able to get things back on track by switching the dates on Claro’s work order. We delayed their maintenance from happening by a week. This allowed our initial plan to work out flawlessly. I was sitting at the café about half hour before the Arizona call, testing the connection and rerouting capabilities. The call came in at 9:37am on the second day after the collapse in Bisbee. I recognized the 520 area code, intercepted it and rerouted to the Ministers direct line. It worked like a charm. The Arizona officials just thought they called the Ministers office as dialed, and the Minister thought that his office forwarded the call due to the severity of the issue. None were the wiser. They were able to implement the Ministers strategy even faster than before, because they didn't have to factor in the several days of the pick & shovel approach that did more harm than good. Back at baseline, Charlie and I watched it play out. By day 5, all 49 miners were out. Alive and well.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Charlie and I were ecstatic. The rest of the team, not so much. Jake was the first to notice the difference while randomly going through an archived newsfeed. We were going to discuss it all with the team, but wanted a day or two to go over the data and what we found out about the impenetrable aka the Claro maintenance appointment. But Jake caught us off guard and approached us about it almost immediately.
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  You guys ever hear the one about 49 zombie miners? Jake asked sarcastically. Care to tell me what's going on and what happened here?

  Charlie started explaining; Jake, we found a way to save them. Hector found a way. And it worked. It wasn't an impenetrable after all.

  Hector found a way, huh? He asked while looking at me suspiciously.

  Listen Jake, I didn't mean to overstep and we ran everything through the simulator beforehand. It worked there and we decided it was simple enough of a task not to have to burden the team with skipping back a 7th or 8th time.

  Guys, I can appreciate the initiative and what you did. But there's a protocol in place, that by the way, our whole movement is built upon. Our team culture isn't about individual efforts like this, and honestly won't be able to sustain it. Everything we’ve worked towards, everything we’ve built together would be for naught if everyone just started doing their own thing. You should know better Charlie.

  We both nodded in agreement.

  We should've told you, I said.

  No, not me. You should have followed the proper procedure and submitted it to the team, like any other skip mission. This way we could collectively decide. That cohesion is what makes this work now and what will be the cornerstone that allows us to continue doing good work in the future.

  You're right, said Charlie.

  I know I'm right. You don't have to tell me that. I'm going to submit the anomaly report to Miguel, because that's the proper procedure here. I just came over to give you guys a heads up before-hand so that you could maybe get your story together.

  Neither one of us, including Jake based on his demeanor, wanted that. But we all understood that he had to do what he had to do, and so did we. Regardless, we were going to present everything we learned to the team, but now we just had to speed up the timeline of doing so. Within the hour Jake, Charlie and myself go by Miguel’s station.

  What is this? He asked Jake as if Charlie and I weren't standing there with him.

  The guys apparently found a way to get an impenetrable done, responded Jake.

  Miguel shifted his attention to us now.

  Are you two insane? He asked. There's a process in place to prevent this type of bullshit from happening. All you're supposed to do, what we’re all supposed to do, is follow it. Period.

  There’s a procedure in place to prevent successful missions? I asked.

  No wiseass, a procedure in place to avoid the catastrophic consequences that can arise from cowboys doing cowboy shit with complete disregard for the ripple effects that could impact the very team they think they're representing.

  Jake chimed in while Charlie and I had our proverbial tails between our legs in an attempt to soften the blow and said: “In all fairness Miguel, they did run things through the simulator first and smoothed out all potential ripples beforehand.”

  At least you guys showed some sense then, responded Miguel. But you know what that also tells me? He asked while looking at Jake; you need to pay closer attention to your simulator. Listen Charlie, I know you were close to this thing but you can't be driven by emotions. We can't have this happen again guys. Next time you have an idea like this, just bring it up to the team, the proper way. Are we all in agreement here? Are we cool?

  We all nodded and agreed.

  Alright then, thanks, said Miguel. Jake stay behind for a bit.

  Charlie and I walked away.

  We saved 49 lives bro, there's no way I'm not feeling proud about that, he told me.

  Yup, I'm with you. We should bring up the Claro maintenance thing at our next meeting though. We’ll do it the right way. Maybe we’ll get some more team support behind it, I said. At the very least it'll put them onto a different perspective to use next time around.

  Yea I'm with you on that, Charlie said. I'll add it to the next available agenda.

  The next available slot in the weekly meeting agenda was a little over two weeks away. This gave us more than enough time to work on our presentation for the team, and we did. We made it as concise as possible. We extracted snapshots from our live feed with side by side comparisons on how things were prior, by using the simulator. This would allow them to see the clear distinction between when we discovered the Claro maintenance that made us previously label the mission as an impenetrable, juxtaposed with the aftermath of when we switched the maintenance date and completed the mission successfully. How could they not be on our side after seeing all this? That's where our heads were at with the situation. But we soon found that to be a combination of naive and wishful thinking.

  The meeting came and went in the blink of an eye. Miguel has autonomy over the agenda for purposes of moving things along if there are ever unhelpful disagreements that are detrimental to our ability to move something along. This time though, it seemed like he just didn't want to hear it.

  Alright guys, break it down for us, Jake said while we were all in attendance.

  We may need to redefine impenetrable’s, Charlie started off.

  If this proves to not be a one-off occurrence, we may want to consider taking a fresh look at previously labeled impenetrable’s, I said.

  What do you mean? Asked Laura.

  We found a way to make the Arizona-Chile mission work, and a way to prevent the mine from completely collapsing on the 49 miners, I responded.

  We were able to pin point the reason for it not working before, to one incident, said Charlie. When we initially skipped back we kept trying to prevent the Ministers vacation from happening, when we should have been working towards facilitating the connection, once the vacation did happen. Hector and I were able to reroute the initial Arizona call directly to the Ministers private cell phone line. Here, we printed out full details of the mission for you guys.

  This passed simulation tests? Asked Brooke.

  It did, responded Charlie.

  So can we reattempt this mission? Laura said as she looked over at Miguel.

  No, we can’t actually, said Miguel. Go ahead cowboys ... finish up.

  We took what we learned from the simulation and skipped back ourselves, I told the team.

  What?! Laura said. You went back without us? Are you nuts?

  It worked didn’t it? Said Charlie. We should be happy about that. I mean, it’s the outcome we originally wanted.

  That’s great and all but that’s not the point, Laura said. What if it went wrong and you rippled people out of existence? Did you guys consider that? Or what if something happened to one of you while back there?

  If saving 49 lives is not the highlighted point to what we’ve been discussing here, then we all need to reevaluate what the hell we’re doing, Charlie responded.

  Guys listen, I said. We knew it to be an impenetrable. So on the one hand, we weren’t going to bother any of you with it again by taking you away from other projects, and the simulation worked smoothly with just one person skipping back. We also figured that if it’s an impenetrable, it shouldn’t really work anyways. The important takeaway here is that it wasn’t an impenetrable after all. Secondly, we should ask ourselves; what if there are more impenetrable’s just like this one?

  Alright, I’ve heard enough. Is there another topic today? Asked Miguel.

  What? I responded, why? We’re not done.

  Yes you are. He said sternly. We’re not bogging down the team with your cowboy shit. I'm not taking them away from their consistent hard work that actually bares fruit, so that we can all chase your theory based on this one-off scenario that happened to come true. That is not going to happen. That’s not how we do things here. You know the right process. We carefully look over and review everyone’s submissions and prioritize them as evenly as possible. We have to protect the integrity of the process and not allow for any one member to skew or bias that.