Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven

by Dennis Chamberland

  The sphere and adjoining passages were busy with people walking, and alongside them moved various small electric powered carts that were able to seat a single driver, to some larger units that held four passengers. Individuals moved up along the interior of the sphere inside four clear-tube elevators that emptied on long, open walkways suspended and radiating at all levels from the transparent elevators to the crosswalks and embedded structures of the dome like so many tenuous webs. Pacifica was literally alive with light, activity and an unspoken purpose.

  Seven could not take his eyes off of Pacifica . It was extraordinary and magnificent, designed for a protected core of humanity to live in for years or centuries. The best and brightest architects, engineers and scientists had poured out the fullest wealth of all human knowledge into its design and construction and it was immediately obvious that nothing was spared to make it the very finest, most well designed and single most engaging architectural engineering marvel of all of human history.

  “… there are just no words to describe this,” Conlin whispered beside him. Seven looked to Conlin’s face whose expression must have mirrored his own with wide eyed wonder.

  “I thought Middlearth was magnificent, but it was nothing like this,” Seven gasped to Serea.

  “I’ll take that as a complement,” she said with a sly grin. “Middlearth was father’s idea. Pacifica is my improvement.”

  Seven laughed, looking back at her in awestruck wonder as he replied, “I guess you can call this the woman’s special touch!

  “The displacement… it must be…” he added, his eyes shifting back to its cavernous interior as his quick mind engaged in multiple calculations.

  “The dome alone displaces over 375,000 tons of seawater,” Spencer responded from behind them. “But the sphere, as large as it appears, represents just fifty percent of the total volume of Pacifica . All of Pacifica ’s volume combined displaces 750,000 tons, making it, by far, the largest human structure ever built in the oceans. By comparison, Pacifica displaces as much volume as eight aircraft carriers, a dozen cruise ships or over one hundred submarines.”

  Seven just shook his head in open-mouthed wonder as his eyes scanned the voluminous, aesthetically stunning interior of Pacifica .

  “Excuse me, please,” said a nasally voice from behind them.

  Seven, Serea and Conlin turned to face a tiny woman as Spencer walked away.

  “Edgar! It’s so good to see you!” Serea said sincerely with a brilliant smile.

  Edgar just returned a severe stare. She was all of four feet ten inches tall, sporting a drastically short, jet black haircut and was dressed in light green coveralls, clutching a clipboard in her right hand and a mechanical pencil in her left. She stared at them with an unbroken, stern expression.

  “Yes,” Edgar said, eyeing Seven and Conlin alternately with an acidic gaze. “It is good to see you as well,” she returned laconically and insincerely, with a monotonously high pitched, nasal voice.

  “Aaron and Sean, I’d like to introduce you to my Special Assistant, Edgar Allen. Edgar, this is my husband, Aaron Seven, and this is Sean Conlin, one of Pacifica ’s Chief Administrators.”

  Edgar just returned their stares and said nothing for a long, pensive moment. Finally she replied, “Of course, I’ve heard of you.”

  Seven’s eyes snapped up and beyond Edgar to Spencer who was watching them intently from a distance and smiling maliciously as a young, thin man made his approach toward them with apparent trepidation.

  “Dr. Seven, I’m Lake Hollingsworth ,” he said softly, his eyes betraying his extreme discomfort at the meeting. “But the folks around here just call me Twink.”

  Seven reached out his hand and received Twink’s weak, sweaty, cold handshake. The young man was of small stature, thin with straight, shoulder length blond hair and striking, even piercing, crystal blue eyes. His face was fair, his eyebrows set in an aquiline loop over his arresting eyes which made him appear perpetually contented, even though he was obviously deeply affected by something at that moment. His appearance, speech and mannerisms were strongly effeminate.

  “I’m supposed to be your Special Assistant, Dr. Seven,” Twink said again weakly, his eyes cast at Seven’s feet. “That’s what Commander Spencer said, anyway…”

  “But Lake, you’re not assigned to….” Serea interrupted.

  “May I have a word, please?” Conlin broke into Serea’s question, motioning to Seven and Serea to step aside with him for a private meeting.

  “What’s going on here, Sean?” Serea asked Conlin angrily in a low voice. “I specifically assigned Lake to Spencer! And why is Vance standing with Spencer? He’s supposed to be assigned to Aaron.”

  Seven followed Conlin’s eyes as he glanced over to Spencer and the vigorously handsome man standing beside him who looked toward them, arms folded, obviously smirking.

  Conlin looked back to Serea and sighed deeply with some obvious frustration.

  “I’m afraid I’m more than just a little confused here, folks,” Seven said with exasperation.

  “And you‘re joined by your wife,” Serea said, glaring at Conlin. “Look, Sean, I made these personnel assignments here personally, based on countless hours of interviews, psychological profiling and you name it. No one, but no one except Aaron and my father has the authority to change my assignments. And why are they calling Lake, ‘Twink’? How much of this have you known and why wasn’t I informed?”

  “Ok, it gets even more complicated,” Conlin began. “The way I understand it from my source here, Frank hated Hollingsworth from the get-go. He claimed he was, and these are his words, ‘a useless little fag, not worth a bucket of whale crap,’ etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. He refused to have him around, much less act as his own Personal Assistant. So Spencer fired him and snapped up golden boy over there, Vance Armstrong, the individual you assigned to Aaron to be his SA. According to my sources, Frank said Seven ‘…can have the little fag and he was going to take the man who could actually do the job’. The reason everyone now calls Lake ‘Twink’ is because Frank began calling him that and eventually the entire colony caught on. Frank rejected him, humiliated him, and made him the butt of the colony joke mill.”

  “This is outrageous!” Serea said in red-faced, righteous anger, her voice rising in resentment. “I want Frank off this colony immediately, and I fully expect both of you to back me up on this.”

  “Wait, wait,” Seven said insistently, raising his right hand. “Just a moment. I need to sort this all out.” He stole a glance at Edgar. “Let’s just start with Edgar Allen Poe over there, why don’t we.”

  “Not Poe!” Serea exclaimed with exasperation. “Just Edgar Allen.”

  “How did she end up with a man’s name and how did she end up here?” Seven asked.

  “Don’t ask me about her name, ask her mother,” Serea snapped.

  “And you chose her to be your own personal SA?” Seven asked, out of curiosity.

  “Yes. Why?” Serea responded defensively, obviously challenged.

  Seven looked at Edgar then back to Serea just shaking his head. The entire scene was not making any sense.

  “Well, I can tell you that Edgar’s genius is totally off the charts,” Serea snapped. “She finished Vassar magna cum laude in two years, has a phenomenal memory and is an extraordinary details person with a world class intellect. She speaks seventeen languages fluently and can read lips and minds. She can handle my schedule better than I can and there’s nothing, nothing, in this colony that she doesn’t know about in detail, usually before it happens.”

  “How did you end up matching Twink over there with Frank, of all people?” Conlin asked out of his own burning curiosity.

  “I matched strengths with weaknesses. Frank is a rigid perfectionist, details man, and Lake is a fluid, creative whiz kid. They needed one another’s strengths.”

  “And why me with him?” Seven asked, casting his eyes over to the chiseled, arrogant individual standing besi
de Spencer, still sharing his new boss’ smirk.

  “Because you are fluid and creative, Aaron. And he’s mister rigidly perfect. Because he’s never, ever screwed up a single time in his entire life. Because he was mister honor man in his Annapolis Naval Academy class. Because he was the perfect officer with the perfect no-blemishes record. Because he protects his reputation like a crystal vase. He doesn’t even have a traffic ticket! I felt like you both needed each other – that your strengths could offset your weaknesses together.” Serea completed her tirade with a red face.

  “I see,” Seven responded. “It’s fine logic, it really is, my dear,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. “But piecing this whole rather uncommon puzzle together, I take it then that my friend, the Twink, must not have such a clean background?”

  “What do you mean?” Serea asked, clearly defensive.

  “Serea, tell me, don’t hold back,” Seven responded, folding his arms. “You know it’ll all come out eventually.”

  Serea shook her head in annoyance. “This is totally confidential, and I don’t have the right to discuss it with anyone,” she responded in a whisper.

  Seven and Conlin just stood together and stared back at her.

  “Okay, alright. His given name is Howard Jordan. He was a brilliant student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute two years ago. During the last semester of his senior year, he was carrying a perfect 4.0 grade point average. During finals week, he stayed out too late at a party and slept past his final exam in one of his computer modeling classes. His instructor denied him the opportunity to retake the exam and flunked him, forcing him to delay his graduation one semester until he could make up the course. Because of that, he lost a six figure, once in a lifetime job opportunity. To say the least, Lake, or Howard, was a little annoyed at heir professor. So he erased him.”

  “What?” Conlin inquired.

  “He erased him, you know, rubbed him out,” Serea replied.

  “He killed him?” Conlin asked with total astonishment.

  “No! Erase is geek-speak for erasing computer files. But our boy Lake is so talented, he really erased him: no records of his existence could be found anywhere – all financial records, all academic records, all birth records and all medical records, just gone, overnight. He totally ceased to exist as a person. And Lake was so clever, that the minute new records were reestablished, they were erased again. No system could ever maintain a record of his existence anywhere. He couldn’t have a bank account, no credit cards, no telephone, computers – he was a real, honest to goodness non-person. The government finally had to move him into the federal witness protection program and totally change his identity before he could get his life back.”

  “Then why didn’t our boy Lake here go to jail?” Conlin asked.

  “They never knew it was him! They had no evidence of his link to the crime and could prove nothing, even though he was their prime suspect all along. And that became his problem. It emboldened him. Using whatever ingenious system he developed to cloak his presence on the web, he then changed every student’s grade in Differential Equations to an A in the top 15 universities in the country. The totally amazing thing about that accomplishment was that he hacked through 15 completely different firewalls on 15 dissimilar systems, hacked into the grade records in 15 totally disparate record keeping structures, changed the grades in a single category of academics, and did it in a sole evening without leaving a trace he had come or gone through their systems. The achievement was so fantastic that the FBI classified the act as ‘strategically significant.’ But they still couldn’t pin it on Lake – they didn’t have a single iota of evidence.”

  “So how did they catch him?” Seven asked, stealing a glance over his shoulder at the diminutive, sad face lad standing nearby.

  “They didn’t – but I did,” Serea responded with a flat smile.

  Seven smiled and shook his head. “No surprise there.”

  “As soon as I found out about his crime,” Serea continued, “I knew we needed his rare genius. I researched his background and when I found out that he was merely a clever schoolboy, I was determined to crack his system and pin him down, make him confess.”

  “How did you finally do it?” Conlin asked, obviously spellbound with the extent of the unfolding sleuth.

  “I invited him to Stonebrooke, and then I simply asked him if he did it, and he said yes,” Serea responded immediately.

  “What? He confessed? Just like that?” Conlin replied with a gasping laugh.

  “Well, he confessed to me,” Serea replied, “in ironclad confidence, of course.”

  “Oh yeah, now we see,” Seven replied with a laugh, eyeing the awesomely beautiful face of his wife for whom Hitler would have converted to a altar boy, no questions asked. “And then you swapped the simple truth for this magic Pacifica moment…” Seven concluded.

  “Exactly,” she responded. “Then he erased himself to get the FBI off his case. We changed his name to Lake Hollingsworth , moved him to Stonebrooke, hid him out, and then transferred him here. Dad just loves the kid.”

  “Do Frank and golden boy know any of this?” Seven asked, barely able to speak through his growing laughter.

  “No way! Are you kidding?” Serea responded. “No one knows any of this!”

  “How about Edgar over there?” Seven asked. “Does she suspect?”

  Serea gave a short laugh. “Please. Edgar doesn’t count as a ‘no one’. She knows everything, trust me, and I didn’t tell her a thing.”

  “This whole set up is just weird, Serea,” Conlin interjected, his eyes sweeping the field of wildly unusual personalities surrounding him. “I’m getting the scary feeling I’m the only normal one here.”

  “No Sean, if you were normal you definitely wouldn’t be here,” Serea intoned in total seriousness.

  “You said before that only your father or I could change your assignments?” Seven asked.

  “Yes,” Serea replied.

  “Excuse me,” Seven said, turning toward the young man. “Come over here for a second, will you?”

  As Hollingsworth approached, Seven walked out of range of anyone else’s hearing toward a railing overlooking the vast interior dome of Pacifica . Leaning up against it, he motioned the young man to stand beside him.

  “I know you’re going to let me go,” Hollingsworth said in a quiet voice with all the morbid foreboding of Eyore. “I know that because I wasn’t picked to be your assistant and we’re not properly matched. I’ve been briefed by Miss Desant - er, Mrs. Seven, excuse me - that we were all matched by profiling, so I do understand. You don’t need to feel bad about it; it’s okay.”

  “The first problem I have with you, young man, is knowing exactly what to call you,” Seven began. “What’s your name, for real?”

  He looked uncomfortable, then responded, “Howard Jordan, sir, but I go by Twink around here.”

  “What do you want to be called? Howard?”

  “Twink’s ok with me. It’s what the entire colony knows me by now.”

  “Ok, here’s the deal,” Seven responded. “You get to choose; no one else. These other people around here, they don’t. You get to choose. You tell me what you want to be called, and that’s what you’re called. And if anyone argues with me or you, they get to go swimming – outside. So tell me, young sir, what name you choose.”

  “I choose Twink,” he said with a sly smile.

  “Why?” Seven asked, now curious.

  “Because I’ve learned that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” he responded weakly.

  Seven laughed. “Okay then, Twink, so be it. But if you ever change your mind, tell me, and we’ll go back to Howard or Lake or whatever you decide.”

  Twink’s eyes shifted down to the ground. “Thanks, Dr. Seven; I really mean that. All you and Serea have done for me is just incredible. So if you would just assign me to the computer staff, then I can finally get out from under all the elephants and go and produce
something useful.”

  “There’s only one problem with that, Twink,” Seven replied, draping his arm around Twink and pulling him closer.

  Twink just looked surprised and did not speak.

  “Then I would be without a Personal Assistant.”

  “I don’t get it,” Twink replied.

  “I’m offering you the job. Serea says you are fluidly creative. That makes us something of a dangerous pair, don’t you think?”

  Twink smiled broadly for the first time and looked back to Seven. “Yeah, I guess it does!”

  Seven laughed and held out his hand. “Partners?”

  “Yes, sir!” Twink responded and shook Seven’s hand with a firm grip.

  “Now, since I’m the boss, I get to order you around. Is that the way you see it?” Seven asked his new PA.

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir,” he responded.

  “See those fine gentlemen over there?” Seven said, nodding toward Spencer and Vance Armstrong standing side by side, no longer smiling but now examining them from a distance with more than just simple curiosity. “Well, the first agreement we have together is that you watch my back and I’ll watch yours.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself on that issue. And you don’t have to worry, Dr. Seven, I’m your man,” Twink responded, staring back at his former tormentors.

  The pair walked over to where Serea and Conlin were standing. “Meet my new SA, dear: Twink Whatever.”

  “I knew the moment I saw you two standing over there together that I’d made a mistake,” Serea confessed. “You guys really will make a dangerous pair.”

  “Huh?” Seven said. “How did you know? You couldn’t possibly have heard…”