Version Innocent

by Pete Molina

  ***

  Terra made her way back down the lift tube to the floor just below the Ambassador's offices. She exited the tube and walked down the short hallway. The office was set aside for her family, but had rarely been used by anyone but her.

  Terra didn't care too much for the rest of her family. They were leeches. Only the fact that they were limited in the amount of money the could use each year by the trust stopped them from squandering the whole fortune. A few of Terra's cousins were okay, though; they worked as civil servants, and held corporate offices like Terra. They felt a since of duty to the UMG despite the fact that they didn't need to do anything. To each of these cousins Terra had allocated one percent of the Gates family shares to vote as they saw fit.

  In Terra's absence, no one had been able to vote the shares that she controlled, and so the Stoneman family had been able to take some measure of control of the UMG using their shares and political alliances, and probably with a massive media campaign to swing the small share holder’s votes. And now Ariel was the president. It didn't sit well with Terra at all. She was pondering this turn of events as she entered her office at the Embassy.

  I wonder how much damage Ariel has done so far, Terra thought as she moved through the office towards her terminal. Probably not more than my other version did before the hiatus. I still can't believe that. What ever Storm has done, I hope it's worth all this, but if my other version went along it must be worth it, I can't see myself helping him for anything less than something miraculous. It probably won't be long before I start to hear from Ariel.

  Terra sat down at her terminal. The terminal was tied in to the computing system for the UMG Embassy, which was linked to the UMG main system by a time delayed quantum encryption system. It was unbreakable as far as anyone was concerned. If anyone broke the encryption, both sides would know it immediately as only one party could decrypt any packet with the quantum key.

  It was unbearably slow to access the system from here. Any request for data not stored locally could take almost an hour to arrive back at the Embassy. This was the main reason that Mars was not considered a major power in the solar system. They were too far out of the Earth's datasphere to play a role that was real time. As long as the restoration technology remained controlled by the US, the solar system would stay in this Earth-centric paradigm and the rest of the solar system would play a minor role, despite the large disparity in resource availability.

  The resources were what prompted people to move out and colonize the solar system in the first place. And for a while the returns on those investments were spectacular. But in the long run it hadn't mattered that much because most power was information and when you had a time lag of more than half an hour it was difficult to do much with the Earth's datsphere, to participate in large discussions and help make decisions in a society where things moved at instantaneous rates around the Earth's globe.

  Then Nanotechnology had stepped in, providing almost perfect recycling of resources already on Earth and unlocking technology that didn't require much more than carbon which was plentiful on Earth. It was ironic that the technology that had made space truly accessible had also made the Earth nearly independent of its material resource needs, practically eliminating the necessity of bringing material from space.

  Of course, Earth still needed material to build anything in orbit. Economics of space launches hadn't changed so much that it was more cost effective to boost the material from the surface than to get it from resources already in space, but the material needs there were relatively small. Information was the real resource, and Earth and its orbiting colonies were the ones that controlled most of it. Terra logged on to the system and requested her personal files for the last eight years. She wanted to know what her other version had been up to. While she was waiting for the files to show up, she accessed the local system to find out everything about this virus attack that she could. Mostly what was available were news reports of the incident.

  Apparently Jeff Hughes had been implicated of being in on the attack, mostly because of his relationship with Storm, but it had later been released that he had been cleared of the charges as his crèche brother had used him, in a unimaginable violation of inner crèche trust. Terra also noticed that there was a lot of anti-Newbie sentiment surfacing again. It always did when a Newbie did something to upset the system or got too far out of line.

  There were also the accusations of murder against Sam. Three thousand lost, permanently and they were the people from Second Chance, those that had been instrumental in developing the restoration technology. Damon Harding assured the public that the technology was safe and that the ability to rebuild and maintain the technology after this loss was preserved. He also condemned Storm for his actions to try and bring down the restoration establishment by murdering all those involved. Harding said he had increased security to protect the technology from any other attempted attack by Storm or other anti-restoration faction.

  Just like Harding to use the situation to consolidate more control over the technology, I wonder what repercussions that will have on Mars...nothing good I'm sure. I can't believe that Sam would resort to murder though. I can see wiping files of the living, they could always get another backup, but the ability and willingness to murder wasn’t something Sam had in his character.

  Terra then reviewed the articles on Jeff Hughes resignation. Apparently he felt responsible despite the fact that he didn't know anything about the virus beforehand. Sam had used him too, but Terra wondered if Jeff did know something. She was supposed to meet with Stacey, who was Sam's crèche sister, but also Jeff's crèche sister. That crèche seemed to be central to these recent events, and Terra knew that crèches tended to be very close. What does Jeff know? Would he help me find out what's going on? Terra considered contacting Jeff. But she would need some excuse to contact him.

  The terminal spit out a reply to her request for her personal files. Terra stared at the message. There were no files more recent then eight years in her personal database. Those records had been purged just before her other version had gone on hiatus. She was shocked again, she didn't think she'd ever do that either. Her other version had burned all the bridges between the 262.3 version and the present. Why? Terra opened her email account and was greeted by over a hundred thousand messages. She turned on some of her auto filters to weed through the junk and the mail that informed her of irrelevant requests of the past. She then filtered out everything that wasn't a personal communication, sorted them through her priority list and came up with a few hundred messages. This she could manage.

  She scanned through the list until one message caught her eye. It had her own address as sender, and the message was sent just before her other version had gone on hiatus. She opened it and it contained just one sentence. “Reminder to self to re-read The Secret Garden when I am next restored. Haven't visited in some time.” That was it.

  When she was very young, The Secret Garden had been one of her favorite books. Her grandfather had read it to her for the first time before she was old enough to read herself. She realized instantly that her other version had meant this email to be a direct communication to her. Many people sent reminders to themselves of things to do when they were restored; this wasn't any different. Most people who did any research on her would know of her love for that book. But what no one would know was that Terra had her own secret garden, and the email was telling her to revisit it. Terra smiled. Something was going on and her other version had left her some further message in the garden that she could see as soon as she returned to her family dome on Mars.

  When her grandfather had commissioned the building of the Gates family dome, he had secretly built in several secret passages and rooms. The plans for the dome were on file but they had been altered to hide these places. The secret garden, was a space designed to grow plants, and for decades her grandfather had imported species from Earth and turned the secr
et space into a garden. The walls were covered with wallpaper displays that showed an Earth landscapes to make the space seem much larger than it was. It was where her grandfather had done his thinking and it had been a gift to her before he died. He told her it was her secret garden.

  The whole garden was automated on an independent system, and presumably it should still be in good shape even after several years of having no one to monitor it. Sometimes it made Terra sad when she went there, it reminded her of her grandfather so much. She knew that he had gone there to remind him of an Earth he could never visit again. It was the only place she knew of that she could leave herself a message in complete secrecy. Terra hoped that it would bring her the answers she needed.

  But before she could return to Mars, she needed to find out about Jeff Hughes and his crèche. Plato, can you run a search on Jeff Hughes, find out if he does anything that could give me a semi-legitimate excuse to pay him a visit.

  Certainly, Plato replied. Plato, while on earth, could access the entire Earth datasphere, but it couldn't access the UMG data system from the embassy. All the computing systems of the embassy were hard lined. There was no wireless transmission of any kind. It kept out the hackers, and governments that might want to know what the UMG was up to.

  I have discovered that Jeff Hughes is on the roster for an organization called, Just Human, Plato responded after a few seconds.

  That's the group that is trying to foster brotherhood between Newbies and Primers. Terra thought. Plato, how can I use this to see him?

  He is part of a local chapter at the Children's City of Denver, and is listed as a member who will give tours to interested people and try to help Primers understand the Newbies.

  Is he the only one listed that does that? She asked.

  No, there are several others.

  Can you put in a request for me with the organization to have Jeff Hughes take me on a tour. Make sure you mention me by name and mention the UMG.

  Affirmative. I have submitted the request.

  Good, Terra thought. He must have joined that group for political reason. It would have helped his case for becoming director of the restoration division. Unless he really believes it, and that would be interesting too.

  It took two hours for Terra to receive a reply from the Just Human chapter in Denver. They said they would be honored to show her around Denver and that Jeff Hughes had agreed to the tour and would meet her at the zip train terminal. She only needed to send him a message to let him know when the best time would be.

  This tour would be good, Terra decided. She would get to meet and talk with Jeff Hughes, and also learn more about the Newbies in their city. Hopefully, that would give her more insight into Sam. Terra sent a message to Jeff asking to meet in two days. She still had some research to do, and she wanted to find out as much as she could about what had been going on in the last eight years, both on Mars and on Earth.