The man went right to business, and spoke in a quiet voice. “You our offer from last time with us met evidently have reconsidered.”
“I yes have.”
“You what we for asked now have?”
“I yes do.”
The man seemed anxious all of a sudden, and had barely been able to remain composed. “You on the table it can place, I so can have a look?”
Hagan Hiedalli turned her head in both directions to look around with her single eye, and then placed a small clear domed object on the table. It looked like certain Earth gift store novelties that were filled with water that turn into snowy scenes when you shook them up. Inside this object on the table a replica of the planet Pripica could be seen all covered in blue, brown, and white swirls of clouds that rotated inside the object with unbelievably intricate details. It had been a gift that Captain Mynervood gave her from the planet Pripica itself, and it had been the quanta-nanocoded handy work of the skillful and creative Pripicans. The underground wanted to study the cutting edge quanta-nanocode, which the planet replica slowly revolving in the tiny object had actually been made out of. The planet looked like an exact replica of the actual planet that orbited in clouds swirling weather patterns within the tiny knickknack. The tiny planet replica could be zoomed in on and explored with quanta-nanocode technology built into the device. The quanta-nanocode technology also allowed views to be projected in the surrounding room as vividly realistic holograms, but they dared not use that function in that public diner. The gatekeeper’s skin-cloth wrapped snout lay on the table as he leaned his eye in for a closer look.
The object had been constructed with an experimental precursor version of a form of quantum bit programming that would come to be known as quanta-optic-nanocode. Quanta-optic-nanocode had been the evolution of quanta-nanocode, which the Pripicans invented to create microscopic programs with sub-atomic processors that revolutionized all technologies up to artificial intelligence. Quanta-optic-nanocode eventually allowed the microscopic programs to project hologram bodies that could imitate solidity. A few of the artificially intelligent quanta-nanocode beings of the time of this story eventually evolved into quanta-optic-nanocode beings.
Hagan nervously snatched the object back and returned it to her skin-cloth pouch, which she carried at her side as a purse. The man composed himself like someone who had just seen God. “I with me what you want don’t have. We should go, and I you where you to go want will take.”
They got up, and Hagan drove the man down some familiar streets that she had actually gone down before. There just had been no other way to find the underground except through the keeper of the gate. They actually didn’t go to the same location as last time since the underground moved around constantly to avoid the Negolim authorities who were in constant pursuit. The Nephricans chased each other around like this in the daily drama of a society struggling between those that had and those that had not, which on Nephrica had become the extreme evolutionary split of the species between newly evolved Eagolim, and the more mortal and fleeting Negolim. Hagan had been taken to another Nephrican who looked a lot more neatly adorned in his skin cloth. The well attired Nephrican lived in an apartment that they finally arrived at.
He had been thrilled to be meeting with Hagan Hiedalli again, who had been one of the famous wives of the legendary Captain Mynervood. “Mrs. Hiedalli please welcome down sit.”
The better-dressed man looked as anxious as the gatekeeper to see the quanta-nanocode object. To Hagan it just had sentimental value. There were simple controls on the base of the object that allowed the user to zoom in on the planet, which when zooming displayed itself on the clear outside dome that incased the planet. Hagan had zoomed in only a couple of times with very little interest in the Pripican culture, which the Nephricans failed to conquer way back in the days of the Great Galactic War. She just had not been interested in other planets, or space travel, and she wanted to die a Negolim.
The underground contact that she met with zoomed in on Pripica for a long time, and he projected several hologram views into the room. They were all in awe of the beauty of Pripican culture projecting above them in the room, and how well tended the still abundant nature of the planet remained. The object allowed them to maneuver through panoramic hologram views of dense forests and cities. There could even be seen little quanta-nanocode Pripicans in the cities that lived genuine Pripican lives on the microscopic surface. They were all programmed with lives that included everything from birth to death. “It for information about Pripica for knowledge of quanta-nanocode is as valuable.”
He eventually zoomed away from the glorious stone architecture of the Pripican cities, which made whole areas of continents look like monolithic structures that were carved out of whole mountain ranges because on Pripica they were. The planet Pripica had been extremely rocky, and the Pripicans did indeed carve their cities out of it. These elegant structures of solid rock would endure on the planet Pripica for hundreds of millions of Earth years.
The well-dressed member of the underground looked at Hagan with some admiration before getting up to fiddle with a cabinet in the corner. It had been a combination code he entered, which opened a safe. He took out an object, and then closed the cabinet safe.
He returned to the stool-like chair that Nephricans sat on with their three legs. He placed the object on the table before Hagan and said, “You this artificially intelligent quanta-nanocoded device to the operation of the Agents of Ea across the street from your home will require to explore. It the evidence you need will gather. It in a Pripican dialect, which difficult to understand can be talks.”
He opened the device up like a miniature laptop computer, or actually it looked more like an Earth cell phone except a bit bigger, and then he faced it on the table towards Hagan. A miniature animation appeared on the tiny screen that looked like a mythological centaur from Earth mythos. It had been furry all over with a goat-like Pripican face that spoke. “Hello Mrs. Hagan Hiedalli. My name is Beatarkameed, and I’ve been told about your problems with the Agents of Ea. I am here to assist you. My actual microscopic sub-atomically programmed form can be your invisible eyes, ears, and digital hands where you can’t go yourself.” Hagan just stared at the centaur-like animation with her mouth drooped open at the end of her snout as if she couldn’t understand a word the Pripican program said.
Hagan Hiedalli had been given the little quanta-nanocoded helper in exchange for her quanta-nanocoded trinket from a husband that never had been home. She did still care for the Captain and forced herself to understand the tragedy that took her Eagolim husband away for her whole Negolim lifetime. The member of the Nephrican underground who gave her the device warned her that they had already done some spying for her. They had learned that the Agents of Ea operation across her street had been actually financed by a still unidentified Eagolim benefactor who had a lot of wealth and influence. It wasn’t just typical Negolim mischief that watched her home from afar. He also told her that the operation went back for the entire lifetime of her son Adma. She had been told that most of the servants that had been working for her over the years were agents in this operation. That instantly shed a new light on the abrupt departure of her last housecleaner who quit right before the long awaited arrival of her husband Captain Mynervood.
*
Hagan evidently became more accustomed to the way the quanta-nanocoded device talked to her on the way home. That had been when she began to appreciate the nuances of quanta-nanocoded artificial intelligence. It made Nephrican attempts at it with regular computer code seem like just clumsy, sluggish, and simple programs with no real intelligence. Beatarkameed had been an eloquent and intelligent being that had already lived longer than Hagan by more than a hundred years. She opened the little cell-phone-like device at her kitchen table after arriving back from the mega-city next to the planet’s main spaceport.
“I much time before my husband’s next space flight takes off don’t have. What the Agents of Ea to my son be
fore they planet leave to have done have know.”
Deep within the cell-phone-like device with the animated Pripican character on its screen was a whole continent inhabited by a collection of quanta-nanocoded programs, where there lives a complex collection of proton and neutron molecules that were glowing with constant photon emissions and virtual particle exchanges, which had been named Beatarkameed. Beatarkameed stood before a microscopic view screen that showed an image of Hagan Hiedalli at the kitchen table looking at it. Its molecules were quantum synchronized to the complex device laying on Hagan’s table, and could also remain here while actually flying away from the device like an invisible molecule in the air that embodied a spirit of artificial intelligence. “I’m on my way Mrs. Hiedalli. You can track my progress, observe what I’m seeing, and give me instructions from where you are at. Just speak and I’ll be able to hear you.”
After the Pripican animation told that to her it disappeared, being replaced on the screen by a view of the house across the street zooming in to a crack in the front door to then became like the scene of a fast-motion planetary re-entry.
Inside the house Hagan could see on the view screen that the Negolim Agents of Ea were still there in front of view screens that showed her son Adma at the spaceport. They were not even really paying any attention to her from there across the street. The Negolim Agents of Ea had some kind of microscopic cameras flying around that were watching her son.
“What they with my son doing?”
The device on the table talked to her in a Pripican dialect. “Looks like they are still keeping your son under close surveillance. They are geo-tracking him, video observing him, and doing something else to him with additional controls I am still analyzing.”
The Beatarkameed view zoomed way into the cracks of the equipment in the room, and then turned into a strange show of light and kaleidoscopic imagery.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Hiedalli! I’m copying and analyzing these devices right now to compile your data and evidence. I think they are manipulating your son Adma somehow with these devices. I’ll transfer the video / audio data that they are compiling right now on your son to the screen you are watching while I do this.”
Then the image on the quanta-nanocoded device screen that Hiedalli watched became her son Adma in the spaceport lobby with his humanoid half-brother Ulusu and the Nephrican Primary Assistant Tyallor. Hagan could see with relief that her son looked happier than ever. He would finally be with others like him, free of his hologram disguise.
Adma spoke to his half-brother. “So you my father after all these years must know really well?”
Ulusu spoke with pride of his father. “My brother I indeed Captain Mynervood do know. He the bravest most compassionate leader I ever have served is.”
Hagan Hiedalli sat at her kitchen table watching her mutant son speaking with another of her husband’s mutant offspring. She became intrigued while listening to Ulusu describe her husband. Her single eye began to sob with tears of what could have been.
Captain Mynervood had been away from Ea for 42 mans because of delays on his way back from the failed fusion drive experiment. The initial mission had been a 3.12 oman (4 light-year) journey to the star Paz and a 3.12 oman journey back. At that time the Nephricans were obsessed with a fear that Pripicans would reach the star Paz first, which they knew had a habitable zone planet. That should have only taken 19.9 Nephrican years, which already had been an excruciating amount of time away from a mother with a newly born child. Unfortunately the ship engine blew up 4 years into the journey.
The ship obtained the fusion, but then had been unable to contain the obtained fusion core for some strange reason. The initial explosion killed two of the crew. The heroic efforts of the other 5 crew members that died, along with instructions from the Captain created a protective cradle around the fusion core while the Captain and Strek turned the ship around to skillfully use the fusion core energy to bring the ship to a halt. By the time the core finally had been sent on its way from the wrecked spacecraft the radiation from the explosion had already sealed the fate of the other 5-crew members. Ulusu informed Adma that one of those 5 that died had been another half-brother of Adma named Spocht.
Pripicans eventually rescued the marooned and desperate mission, which at the time had been almost out of food to eat. The Pripican mission that responded to the distress signal had already been on the way to Paz and had spent much to come to a stop and assist. Nephrican skeptics point out that the accelerating Pripican ship could not have received the Nephrican distress signal. What had been left of Captain Mynervood and his crew continued with the Pripicans to Paz and back. After that they spent at least a year on Poa waiting for a flight to Holdus. Historically this chronicled how the Pripicans reached Paz before the Nephricans, even though Captain Mynervood had also been on that trip with his rescued crew.
Eventually Captain Mynervood finally caught a flight back to Ea. His child had grown up, and Hagan had grown bitter. She cried tears of forgiveness while listening to Ulusu’s explanation of what had happened. Before that she knew all this from news reports to the point of not even wanting to hear the explanation from her long lost husband the night before. Now he went on his next mission, and she would probably be dead before he, or her son ever came back.
Beatarkameed continued to download evidence while Hagan gathered what she needed to know by watching the audio / video surveillance being recorded of her son that continued on the tiny screen of a device on her kitchen table.
While Hagan continued to view the show, Geben Lockfreedow appeared on the communication device screen in the corner of the lobby where Adma and his new friends were lounging, and which Negolim spies were filming. “I to the star port authority before our mission this afternoon to takes off need go. The Captain where I am let know.”
Then Hagan heard a voice speak that had not been anybody in the video that she had been watching. It turned out to be the voice of one of the Negolim spies across the street talking. “Adma up have get and volume of that message increase!”
Suddenly Adma got up while microscopic cameras followed him to the communication screen on the wall of the lounge. He turned the volume up while Lockfreedow continued. “I’m this star port still at. The fusion program, which us in space with brethren lost left stranded going to make give.”
Adma acknowledged Lockfreedow’s message before he went on his way ending the transmission. It occurred to Hagan that these Negolim Agents of Ea across the street were controlling Adma like a robot. She became suddenly horrified with the realization that her mutant son that had been raised his whole life in hologram disguises had actually been skillfully groomed, and implanted with hypnotic mind control devices during his life. She realized this had been going on his whole life beyond her awareness, yet always there all around her. There were various servants, house cleaners, and occasional tutors she had been persuaded to hire. She had to get this information to her husband Captain Mynervood before they took off for the star Holdus this afternoon with a robotically controlled Manchurian candidate on board.
*
Admiral Mull had been lounging in his office when Hagan Hiedalli had been transferred to his communication device. He had been more than happy to accept the call from an old friend.
“Admiral Mull I’m you to bother sorry, but I to my husband Captain Mynervood to directly speak must be transferred.”
The Admiral’s eye widened with surprise. “Mrs. Hiedalli I that call certainly can arrange. I what this is regarding can ask?”
“My husband in danger a member of his crew by.”
The Admiral became noticeably concerned. “This urgent enough certainly sounds. Me you on hold while I arrange let. Of The Beyonder the boarding has already began, and he to up there be busy is going.”
The Admiral hesitated in deep thought after putting Hagan on hold. Then he got up to leave the room. That had been when he ran into Lockfreedow in the hallway outside his office. Lockfreedow had still n
ot got on board The Beyonder where he figured the Primary Assistant of the ship probably should be right now.
Lockfreedow stopped the Admiral by standing at attention and raising a tentacle. “Admiral Mull sir your audience requesting!”
“Geben Lockfreedow yes. You The Beyonder should be boarding. I for you what can do?”
Lockfreedow had been putting up with unexpected administrative run-a-round way longer than planned before deciding out of desperation to go over their heads to the Admiral of the spaceport who he personally knew very well.
“Sir I’m the records for the last failed fusion experiment to me released trying to have, but the administration me won’t authorize.”
“That no problem Lockfreedow at all is. I a copy of those records happen to have. I’ll more than happy them to you to release be. With me come, and I’ll you on the next transport to The Beyonder with the records you seek get.”
The Admiral walked down the hallway with Lockfreedow. He seemed to have forgotten about the call from Hagan Hiedalli that still lingered on hold in his office as he took Lockfreedow to the records that Lockfreedow wanted to examine while they spent the next two Earth years in space traveling to the star Holdus in the ship called The Beyonder.
*
Hagan Hiedalli had been left on hold waiting for Admiral Mull to connect her to her husband who soon would blast into space while hyper-accelerating to more than half the speed of light. She had made several other attempts to reach her husband, and warn him that her son had been under the hypnotic mind-control of an evil plot against him. She sat in front of a television screen on the wall while holding the quanta-nanocoded device that had been the physical form of Beatarkameed. It seemed that all intelligent advanced societies with large populations always evolved something like television. She watched the news reporting on The Beyonder being boarded, now in progress.
The news reported on many first time Negolim passengers who had saved their money for years in order to travel more than ½ the speed of light to another star. Most Negolim wanted to take this expensive trip in order to exponentially extend their life expectancy, and thus become an Eagolim. That had been an unexpected evolutionary side-effect of traveling so close to the speed of light. At this time in the second age of Magphoreus, the Eagolim were the new galactic form of their species that were just beginning to replace the older terrestrial form. Some Negolim would save money their whole lives in order to send their children to the stars so they could undergo this evolution, and carry on the Nephrican family names for millennia.