Lisa had undergone a heart-breaking divorce three years ago and buried herself in her work as many other heart-broken people before her had done. She had worked hard, documented several new discoveries in Central American archeology. But the years without closeness had taken its toll. She and her ex-husband had no children together and as the divorce went on she had thanked her lucky star for that. Now afterwards, she realized more and more how much she missed that she did not have children yet.
She chuckled. It had been so long ago. She had met Tim two months ago and the spark between them had been like fireworks. She had lost her breath when she saw him. He had been introduced to her during a mingle at the Swedish Embassy in Costa Rica, but during the first twenty seconds when he talked to her, she had lost herself in his voice.
It was soft but not too weak. Warm but not too hot. It had gone straight into her interior and touched something that no man had previously touched. After that night, they had slipped away together without anyone noticing it, and they had made love on the embassy roof under the moonlight. She blushed when she thought about it. Imagine if her sister had found out. The wholesome Lisa meets a man for a first time at a party and goes up to the roof to have sex the same evening.
“What are you giggling about?”
Tim's warm eyes studied her.
She blinked away a tear of joy, and stroked his cheek.
“Nothing, good looking. Thought about when we met. On the roof. You know, it was actually the first time I've done something like that. You should not believe you're with a loose woman.”
He rolled playfully with his eyes and crossed his arms.
“I'm glad you brought it up. I've thought a lot about what happened that night. I was actually completely surprised that you were so forward. One could almost say that you caught me off guard.”
Her eyes wandered over his face. High cheekbones, bright blue eyes and a dark fuzzy hair who had its own life every morning they woke up together. She pinched him lightly on the cheek.
“You cannot take advantage of a willing, you know. And when we lay there on the roof, you actually seemed quite willing.”
She bent forward and kissed him softly on the lips. He opened his arms and held her tightly while they kissed in front of the darkness.
A voice cleared his throat. It was Lars, their trainee, he was on loan from the embassy and she had been told to return him in mint condition. Embarrassed, Lisa and Tim let go of each other, grabbed their equipment, lit their headlights and with a smile on their lips began the gentle walk into the opening.
Lisa led the way, Tim was in the middle and Lars went last and kept an eye on the rope that trailed them deeper and deeper into the cave did not break. Slowly they moved forward into the dark.
*
Tabula Rasa, Madagascar.
2048-12-27
The electronic buzz from the computers penetrated Elisabeth Snow's head. She thought she heard something, glanced over her shoulder, but nobody was there. She blinked a couple of times as she let her eyes glide across the room. Her shawl had slipped off the chair she was sitting on and she bent down, picked it up and laid it on the desk.
Her breathing was fast and she was alone in the computer lab, which was located in the western part of Cibus. The walls were filled with screens and in the middle of the room the advanced control computers were set up. The weak buzzing from the computers and the heat from them were like a physical presence. The air in the room smelled stuffy although the ventilation was on.
A large, soft rounded screen on the wall showed a live news broadcast from Hong Kong. The report was about the recent riots that had broken out in both Hong Kong and Macau the last few days and grew daily. The riots were a reaction to that China finally decided to recapture both areas, and although everyone knew that it would happen, everyone seemed to be surprised. She shook her head. That they never could learn.
Elisabeth's reddish hair was in a ponytail, she was wearing a thin sweater, and her white lab coat was unbuttoned. But it was not the heat in the room that made her sweat, it was what she was doing that made her heart pound in her chest and the sweat trickle down her forehead. She leaned towards the screen.
She had to hurry; she did not have much time. She would only get one chance. It was now or never, and she took a new hologram cube from its packaging, tore of the transparent protective paper, loaded the small holocube in the computer, typed a few commands on the keyboard and prayed a silent prayer. It must succeed, it must. She pressed "Enter" and the copying of what she wanted to have, started.
A dialog box appeared on the screen and the status bar began to grow from left to right. Her pulse was pounding so hard in her ears that she almost could not focus. She wobbled and grabbed the edge of the table while she forced herself to take a few deep breaths. After a few seconds she regained control. She opened her eyes. The screen showed the meter indicating how complete the copying was, barely twenty-five percent. It moved nerve-rackingly slow.
Thirty percent.
Thirty-five.
The indicator teased her by seeming being frozen. The electronic sound seemed to be gaining strength and she cursed to herself.
Elisabeth had come to Tabula Rasa just over three years ago and was initially convinced that she had made the right choice. She was smart, highly educated and had a burning desire to put her mark on the world and she would make her a name in the astronomy world.
That was her passion. Ever since she was young, she thought that space had been infinitely exciting and she had seen the opportunity to work in that area at Tabula Rasa. It was where the future would be created. It was where they had the resources and that was where the limits of humanity would be pushed and moved forward and she wanted to be part of it. It had seemed like that for the first few years anyway. After that, she had discovered more and more sides of Tabula Rasa that she could not come to terms with, as their control need and their focus on profit and to satisfy the stock markets.
All mega complexes were listed on the global stock markets and they were all driven by profit. Discoveries made in the mega-complexes were patented and used as weapons in the eternal struggle for profit. But the crucial step had come the previous week when the amazing discovery had been made. It was a discovery that in Elisabeth's eyes belonged to the whole world for the simple reason that the discovery would affect all people on earth. It was not something that could be patented and used to generate profits. Her sense of justice was too strong to ignore and she had many nocturnal hours anguishing how she would act.
But she had realized that John Vendrick III had no intention of sharing anything with anyone. What they had discovered would be held within Tabula Rasa, whatever the cost. A couple of her colleagues who had argued that the United Nations would be invited and informed of the discovery had been brutally silenced.
After a couple of days, both of them had inexplicably disappeared and she had not seen them again. It was three days ago. The explanation she had received was that they were posted on assignments but she knew better. She was convinced that they had been murdered. Now she was convinced that she had to do everything to find a way out of Tabula Rasa and bring enough information about the discovery to convince the outside world. Her eyes focused again on the indicator on the screen that seemed to mock her with its slowness.
There was not much time, they were never alone for a long time. Normally they were always three in the control room but today they had both had acute stomach ache because of Elizabeth's imperceptible help. She had sneaked a laxative with her and managed to slip a few drops in her colleague's coffee.
Sixty-seven percent.
Sixty-nine.
A sound outside the room made her look up and she stared at the gray metal door, fear pounded in her stomach and she felt nauseated. The indicator was moving in slow motion, stopped short of seventy-four percent and then continued. She waited for the door to open. The seconds crawled by, but nothing happened. After a further minute, the indicat
or showed that copying was almost complete. She looked over at another screen next to her and dialed her father's number.
“Dad, are you there?” a couple of seconds passed before Richard Snow replied.
“Hello Elisabeth. Yes, I'm here.” Her father's voice had a special sound that Elisabeth always found comforting. His face was hovering just in front of the hologram screen.
“Are you at home?”
“No, I'm down at the power stations in Primus. Is everything ok?” Richard's hologram flickered. There were often disturbances on the signals from the lower regions where her father worked. She had not told her father that she planned to escape from Tabula Rasa, she still hesitated.
“No.”
“No? What's wrong?” His voice at once concerned.
“There is something that came up at work and I don’t know how to handle it.” She had not said anything to her father when she was not sure what she would do, but now she had to include him.
“Sounds serious. Is there something I can do?”
“Yes I think so. I need a favor.” She spoke quickly.
“Tell me, and I'll do it. You know that.”
“Thanks. You're a rock. I will send you a holocube with data. A level four cube.”
He hesitated.
“Level four? Why should it have so much space?”
“I wish I had something bigger. Level four is not nearly enough. But that's all I have here. I'll figure out how to do with the rest. What I send to you is big enough. Bigger than I thought.”
“Ok, wait. I'll run in and see if we have any level four in the office. Two seconds.” His voice disappeared.
She waited.
“Okay, I’m back. I have one. Stina had forgotten to return what we had borrowed from the archive.”
“Ok, upload it and I'll send you the data.”
He was silent for a few seconds.
“Okay, ready. Go for it.”
“I'm sending it to you now. Do you see it?”
A further couple of seconds passed.
“Yes, I see. What is it?”
“It's from Atlas, the Tabula rasa satellite that ...” her voice was tense by the press.
“But I mean what kind of data is it? Why do you send it to me?” he interrupted.
“I do not know where else I'll send it.”
“What should I do with it?” His voice sounded worried.
“Put it away and do nothing with it for now. It's my insurance.”
“What do you mean ´insurance`?” More worry crept into his voice.
“It’s a suspicion I have. To be on the safe side. If in case something should happen to me so, send it to CNN.”
“Now I'm actually a little worried. What do you mean that something would happen to you? Are you in trouble?”
“Oh no” she lied, “as I said; it's a little insurance just in case.”
* * *
Computer technician Djing Shin were two levels below Elisabeth in a hermetically sealed room and carefully studied the computer screens in front of him. The sharp light from the screens gave him a pasty look and he lifted the colorful plastic cup, took another sip of his home-made mixture of Coca-Cola and caffeine tablets.
Two computer screens and a hologram screen were set in a semi-circle with Djing in the middle like a conductor. On one screen, the security system for the data processing department that showed all in and outgoing data traffic from the department. The usually even flow that the department used to generate had begun to change five minutes ago. On the hologram screen he followed the broadcasting of American football and the small holograms of football players was floating a few centimeters in front of the screen.
A quarter to eight, however, a step increase in data traffic had been recorded and after a minute the first warning had come and Djing had put everything aside. He was on call over the weekend. Usually there was not much to do at these times and he had been expecting a calm and beautiful evening with one eye on the computer lab's monitoring screen and looking forward to calling his girlfriend in Bombay. They had gotten engaged and would marry next year. His calm, however, had unexpectedly been torn apart by the warning signal.
Djing let his eyes slide across the screens. They showed a steady increase in outgoing traffic flowing faster from the lab. The information poured out of the labs data cable and Djing`s fingers flew over the keyboard. He worked quickly, tried to isolate the event and understand what was happening. Maybe it was a hacker attack? It happened on a regular basis. Tabula Rasa cyber defense was among the most effective in the world, but sometimes it happened that someone managed to get through the firewalls and the other defense mechanisms they had in place.
Djing flashed his teeth in a wild smile. He studied the screens and after a few minutes he could rule out an attack. It seemed like the data did not come from the outside but instead of inside the lab. Uncomprehendingly he shook his head. What did it mean? He knew he should contact his boss but she was always edgy these days, he hesitated. Drummed his fingers on the desk. If he were to sound alarm and it turned out that there was nothing he would regret it. Perhaps his permission to travel to Bombay to marry would be delayed. Or maybe his future wife would not get a residence permit to Tabula Rasa. He hesitated.
* * *
Elisabeth tapped her finger against the screen and tried to force the stubborn indicator to move faster.
“Have you got everything?” she said quickly to her father. Richard replied.
“Not yet. There are ninety percent on the screen. What should I do when it's ready?”
She was silent for a while.
“Hide it at your house and pack a bag for you and Marina. I'm going home and get some things then I'll come to your place around midnight and tell you everything.”
* * *
Richard worked quickly. Holocubes could keep a vast amount of data, but he saw that the copied information filled the entire cube. He lifted it and held it against the light. The faint blue shine from it gave his hand a ghostly look. The cube was small, barely three cubic centimeters, and weighed basically nothing. Richard looked at Elisabeth's hologram and said that he was done.
“Ok, good. I will come when I'm done here.” Elisabeth replied quickly.
“Ok sounds good. It was quite a bit of data you sent. What do you mean with I should pack a bag?”
“Yes, pack the most necessary for you and Marina” She hesitated, “We have to escape.”
Richard was silent for a long while.
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try”
She hesitated.
“We've discovered something. Something that will change everything” she paused, unsure how she would continue, “just over a week ago, a sphere was discovered that came up from within the moon.”
Richard heard what she said but did not fully register what it meant.
“What?”
“I do not know how to say it, but it seems we have discovered that we are not alone in the universe. The sphere came up from the surface and placed itself in orbit around the moon. Tabula Rasa already had a space station in place and they have already managed to establish contact with the sphere and all the data that the space station have collected, they have begun to send down to our analysis central for investigation.”
Richard hesitated.
“That sounds incredible. But I haven’t heard on the news that something had been discovered? Why haven’t NASA or ESA said anything?”
She nodded slowly.
“No, that's precisely the problem. I do not know if any of the other global space authorities have discovered the sphere yet, but it just has to be a matter of time before it is discovered by someone else. Tabula Rasa seems to be doing everything for now that nobody should discover anything. They want to keep the sphere and the communication secret as long as possible to get as much head start as they can.”
Richard mulled over what Elisabeth said.
>
“And what you've sent to me, is it all the information about this so-called sphere they've managed to gather?”
Elisabeth grimaced lightly and shook her head.
“The holocube I sent to you?”
“Yes?”
“It's a fraction of all of it.”
* * *
Straight under Elisabeth, Djing was sweating profusely. This was going straight to hell. This was nothing he was prepared for. He had not received any training how he should handle this type of event. Djing was quick and smart but he was also afraid of doing something wrong and wanted instructions before he would do anything. His pulse in his head pounded hard and his stomach tied itself into a hard knot.
The amount of data that had left the lab was too big for something not to be wrong. Djing made up his mind. He had to do something. If he did not sound the alarm and it turned out they had an intrusion and valuable data had been stolen, he would be held accountable. But he had not heard that there would be any particular threat now. He swallowed hard and lifted the handset and dialed the speed dial to his boss. After a couple of signals, a hard women's voice responded.
“Yes?” The female voice sounded annoyed.
“It's Djing. At sub central K.”
“Yes?”
“There is something going on in lab fifteen. The data traffic has increased exponentially in the last three minutes. Now the level is at eighteen hundred gigabytes per minute and it is growing every minute.”
Tabula Rasa Page 6
