Noumenon. Marina Lostetter J.

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СКАЧАТЬ matter, protecting it in a bubble. And the drive could independently move that pocket in and out of normal space; in other words, it could dive and surface. But SD communications couldn’t work that way—there was no physical engine I could attach to an encoded electromagnetic signal. Instead, there was a part of my Enigma Machine that created a bubble of its own and forced a dive, and a twin Enigma Machine on Earth that pulled the communiqué to the surface and coaxed the bubble to pop.

      And the two machines had to be synced. The odds of randomly intercepting an SD packet were astronomical—pun intended. The Enigma Machine on the receiving end had to know which subdimension the information was traveling through, what trajectory it took through space, and how to unravel the “skin” that maintained the bubble once the packet was intercepted.

      “Not exactly a ham radio, is it?” I’d joked the first time a teacher had introduced me to the concept. Unamused, she’d gone into further detail about how difficult SD communication was, and how I should be honored to be one of only a handful of people trained to use the methodology.

      So, honored I was.

      The system was fast, yes, and complicated, yes, and a huge energy suck, sure. But despite its advanced nature, it could still only handle so much data at a time. And by so much, I mean not a lot. So once the message was transferred to my implants or a holoflex-sheet, it needed further decoding, and that’s where my job could truly get tricky.

      I smoothed the front of my clothes, making sure nothing bunched uncomfortably. My official on-duty uniform was a well-tailored, denim-blue jumpsuit. Not the most stylish of work-wear, but it distinguished me from the black of security officers, the vermillion of the engineers, the Italian-yellow of the emergency medical teams, the purple of the educational division—and everyone else who wasn’t in communications.

      The color coding had been Mother’s idea, though I heard Father was against it. Thought it was too much like gang paraphernalia or something.

      Well, if the botanists and the microbiologists ever start calling themselves the Sharks and the Jets, and go snapping in unison through the halls, we’ll know he was right.

      In the days previous I’d gathered my notes, made my summaries, and translated them into the special shorthand. Of course, five days in, there wasn’t much to report.

      People were working, doing their jobs well. Though, to me, the convoy still felt more like a clubhouse than a well-oiled machine. We were free, after all. This was our house—it was only fair we should make our own rules, rather than be confined to whatever our parents had set up.

      If it hadn’t been for Captain Mahler, I’m sure entropy would have taken over and pulled our presently functional feet out from under us. We wanted time off when we wanted it. We wanted to switch shifts whenever we felt like it. We wanted to set up bowling pins in the halls and use inappropriate items to knock them down.

      We just wanted to have a little fun. And despite the lesson we had learned the morning after our first party, our sense of responsibility was shaky at best. We didn’t know how to balance work and play—not yet. If the captain hadn’t had such a watchful eye the convoy might have ended up dead in the proverbial water.

      Big Brother was watching, though. With the help of I.C.C., he made sure we ate our vegetables and washed behind our ears. He knew, better than the rest of us, that no Mother and no Father shouldn’t mean a lack of order.

      So that’s where we were—but was I going to tell Earth all that? That they’d sent a wannabe frat house into space? And that their one hope for stability—after all the effort they’d put into that very concept—rested on a single man?

      Hell no.

      And, after all, it had only been five days. Surely it was just a phase.

      I was conscious of the dangers of the dynamic while wanting to be a part of it. I had no desire to follow the strict regimen that had been set up for us, but I also didn’t want to see the mission flounder and fail. It was a strange dichotomy of concepts that somehow lived harmoniously within me. I simultaneously supported and denied our collective rebelliousness.

      But I pushed all that from my mind as I tucked my holoflex-sheets under my arm and headed for my closet. I was to report the facts, just the facts, nothing more.

      The space was as cramped as I remembered it from our two years of isolation. We’d simulated everything during that time. I’d done this job before. It was nothing new, and yet … everything had changed.

      We’d left Earth behind. We were on our own. Truly.

      I wanted to leave the door open, as I’d always felt a little claustrophobic in the communications room, but the two nearest security guards kept peeking through the door—very distracting. So I shut myself in. And once again, I wished the room had a window. Luckily, it wouldn’t take me long to send the report.

      I connected the thin, plastic holoflex-sheets to the server and organized the message into SD packets. It shouldn’t have taken me more than ten minutes to get everything squared away.

      However, halfway through my upload the server connected automatically to my implants.

      [Message received. Sender: Earth Com Center 23, operator Saul Biterman]

      I was supposed to send the first message. Was something wrong? I scanned my instruments: there was no emergency indicator. Had we miscalculated the time dilation? Was I late?

      I was a little annoyed. I’d trained for this my entire life, how could I have messed it up already?

      The message downloaded in the next moment, and I transferred it to a blank holoflex-sheet I pulled from a desk drawer. I wanted to see it all at once, be able to manipulate it. Sure, there was no need to translate it holographically—I could translate it in my head while reading it—but I wanted to have a physical record in case it was something I needed to take to the captain.

      Turns out, it wasn’t something Mahler needed to see.

      It was short, and a bit confusing.

      It read simply, How are you?

      That was a strange thing for him to ask. I was about to tell him how we were—no need to be preemptive.

      But maybe he wanted an impression of our well-being, something besides a record of events and functions. So I whipped up one extra packet and uploaded it with the rest.

      We’re fine, thank you.

      I finished my upload, gathered my notes, and went about the rest of my day attending to my journalistic duties. But, benign as the question seemed, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

       How are you?

      Saul and I had worked closely, but never gotten personal. Like a grade schooler never really gets to know her teacher, I never learned much about Saul as an individual.

      Age wasn’t a barrier, neither was language. But there were other extenuating factors.

      For one thing, I didn’t meet him until the summer of my twentieth year. Everyone else had already met their specialists, and since I was one of the last to get my official training, I was both nervous and excited to receive him in the drawing room of my group СКАЧАТЬ