Clone Earth : MELVIN
Distractions and Messages

Ari wasn’t delusional enough to believe it would save her life. Technology guru doesn’t translate to fortune teller. But the fact she wasn’t suddenly starving piqued her interest and perhaps she thought that if she had a problem she could solve, maybe she’d gain the boost she needed to solve her life and death situation.

“First thing after powering up, I’ll program an instant SOS message on a continuous cycle. That’s all I have to worry about first.” As long as she had power that message would try to connect or at the very least, when she was found, it would show she’d done everything she could before dying.

The cool plastic felt sticky against her sweaty palms. She pressed the power switch and the bright pierced her vision. Squinting, her eyes struggled to adjust. The battery light flickered in the top corner.

Plenty of time to do something.

She quickly formatted a brief SOS message, typed in the sequence that would loop the meager signal. The same red Error symbol flashed with each failed connection. A fist in Ari’s chest tightened but she’d done what she could with the slightly modified personal.

Lifting the drive from the safety of her pocked she plugged it in and quickly set to work pealing the layers of codes, deleting them entirely since there was no use putting them back in place. There was no one to hide the files from.

Finally revealing the original file Ari opened the first of the encryption questions. The pattern began the same as previous challenges. Catered to Ari, by ZIG, through a scavenger hunt of code. The first firewall had a similar structure to the OPC which she’d conquered for Zeniado-Tobec just a few days ago. This linked to ZIG’s conspiracy obsession that OPC’s were faulty and could cause heavy damage to any Clone Earth stupid enough to use them.

Which was all of them.

Ari breezed through to another layer, instantly she felt the code was meant to insult her historical intelligence. Using an ancient form of LeetSpeak she opened a new file. A Human-History book copy writ before Ari was born. However this book had pages full of redacted information.

Page after page digitally blacked out.

The untouched pages were as Ari remembered learning in primary school. Detailed steps about the structure of each of the four Clone Earths, how they came to be, how they were populated, where they were located, etc. Ari sighed, she knew that the encryption key she needed to break the next firewall was behind the digitally erased words.

About two years ago ZIG had sent her a similar program that analyzed patterns and shapes of illegible markings. This program would spit out probable results of letters basked on width, height and length of words. Merging the programs was quick but as it ran Ari’s eyes drifted up to the icons in the top right.

Red Errors continued to flash but also the battery had drastically depleted. She suspected she might not have enough power to continue running two programs at once.

The program flashed blue, collecting several significant collections of constants and vowels.

Corrupted

Cloned Materials

Restricted Space

Military Siege

Kelandrai

UV439-SEC2004100-RST:7732-0007182

“Theirs no such Clone Earth…” She muttered, but something inside her chest told her that she was wrong and also she didn’t know ZIG to make up any details. As far out as his conspiracies could get, there was always data to back him.

She bang with the Clone Earth name. It opened a small layer. Then began inputing each detail about the unique planet until there was only one left. Unsure about the long string of code Ari typed it in and hit enter.

Instantaneously the under broke into three section shrinking into a map of the known human universe. The three section spiraled past Clone Earth, Lorraine, then Zayan, Melvin, and Caiprie, triangulating in a place far past the military restricted flight space. It flashed twice and the lock lifted on ZIGs file.

Ari’s eyes widened as her screen was overtaken by a data burst of code. Blocks of information were visually being compressed onto her hard drive.

“ZIG what did you make?” She wondered aloud, then quickly sighed, “Too bad I don’t have time to figure out what it all means.”

As the download continued a square blue rectangle appeared on the left side of her screen. Flashing twice Ari’s heart jumped into her throat. Blue screens are never a good sign. Did ZIG input a final virus to mess with her?

The internal cooling source of her communicator hummed into high speed. And an instant later the connection icon turned green.

Connected.

Message Sent.

A feeling resembling electricity rippled across Ari’s body. Was she actually seeing this? Had her luck finally change? She rolled onto her knees, griped the contraption as she swallowed hard. Her message was sent. But to who? How? She moved her hand to begin probing for answers or even better, results, when the words scrolled across the bottom of the blue screen:

ZIG: GOTCHA!

The screen gave a short flash of white light, then changed black and took the one shuttle light above her head with it. With the palm of her hand, Ari slapped the side of her communicator as if to jar something loose.

Nothing.

She switched palms and slapped straight down on the screen itself.

Again nothing.

She waved her hand in front of her face. Through the darkness she could see the faint movement of her appendage, which continued to fuel that feeling of dread which seeped from her chest. That little power she had running her life support was now as dead as the contraption in her hands.

Ari curled into a ball, pressing the cold screen into her forehead. Dark and alone the she calculated that she had an hour before the air in cabin would be saturated with her own carbon dioxide. At that point she might fall asleep and never wake up but no, she knew better. First, the temperature would rapidly drop and she freeze to death.

Teeth already chattering, Ari tried focusing on those final words. “Gotcha? Got what?” She asked aloud, but nothing came in return. Could ZIG have actually messaged her in realtime, or was that message embedded into the final steps of the program? It seemed too coincidental for ZIG to be messaging in real time. A ship would have to be close enough to accept a message, and then it would have to relay that message to ZIG and only then would ZIG be able to message back. Though the process had always felt instantaneous, Ari knew the steps that had to happen in order to cover the amount of space between herself and wherever ZIG was based.

Not that it mattered. One momentary connection with a passing ship still required them to follow the signal to her and be equipped with the suits get to her. There were very few ships that could do that.

Tears slipped from her eyelashes puddling onto her hands when the shuttle shuttered. Ari held her breath as she listened to the sounds of a docking port latching onto her ship.

She was in the middle of no where, who could do that?

CHAPTER END

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