3. The Good News

Alerts were following one after the other on her com, “Reach home now”, “Turn left now”, she ignored the second one “You are going the wrong way”, the deep male voice of her City-Guide sang into her com.

“O Yeah? But you don’t know this City like I do”, Lini almost squeaked back, but not taking her eyes off the rectangular passageway as she shot through it.

“Proximity warning, Ten centimeters”, this time it was her glider, its smooth female programmed to warn its riders of 'unsafe practices', but Lini just ignored it, swerving and whizzing past the much slower cars in the passage, her hands nimble on the round handles at the two ends of the steer console. She turned the console sharply, - and again, with amazing agility, and the glider followed loyally, zigzagging through the traffic, - then suddenly she took a hard left, and found herself through a rather empty and narrow round tunnel. No slow irksome cars up this glider ally, just a lone glider ahead of her, which she quickly overtook, and then she really gunned her bike. Her short hair flew wild in her face and in her eyes, but she chose not to raise the visor further up. She liked the wind in her hair, the thrill of the speed.

“You are going too fast, Lini”, more Alerts, “Please relax and slow down, there is a sharp left curve ahead”, the smooth voice of the glider advised again, and which Lini ignored yet again. Lini knew this stretch well, and kept up her speed, the glider slid up the round tunnel side as she gunned it even further through the bend.
“Cool”, she breathed out as the curve ended and the bike came down off the side and straightened, still doing 85 Km/Hr. The brighter lit end of the round glider tunnel was now visible ahead.

“You are approaching a residential passage, please slow down to 30 Kilometers per hour”, she just smiled, the alert sounded again - “You are approaching a controlled passage, your vehicle speed must be less than 30, or you vehicle WILL be subjected to external deceleration by CT Control”, this time it was a different, much deeper male voice in her audio com - City Traffic Control.

She braked just before she knew the CTC would slow her down ‘externally’, more to keep it off her record than any thing else. The glider descended off the tunnel outlet into another passageway, very different from the previous one, for it was nolonger the usual conduit passageway, and it was top open, and you could see a few of the distant twinkling cities
in the black space above. This was a proper road, very much wider with a glistening deep blue surface instead of the dull gray of the business district where Bubba's 'Café on the Edge' was. There were clusters of well lit shops every few hundred meters, and there were lots of people on the pavements on either side. She let the glider slide on for a while, slowly and silently on this road, till she got to the entrence of her home block. She turned into a flat rectangular softly lit transparent ally-duct, and you could see quaint green lawns and houses on either side. Lini was soon gliding past Tobins house, she glanced at his window, he was not there. She hurried on ahead, then turned sharply through a curved hourglass shaped opening on the side of the ally wall and she was home. She yanked the console free from the command pad, jumped out of the still moving glider, and let it slide on its own to a stop on the front lawn. She ran inside her house, shoving the console behind her into her belt .
Her mother was in the bath, lucky, Lini thought and ran to the lift. But without stopping to bring it up, let herself drop through the low gravity chute beside the lift, and swiftly 'float-jumped' down into her room.

“Lin sweetie”, her mom called out from within the bathroom, “is that you”. She obviously hadn’t seen the house log yet, or her glider records, she was so easy.

“Yeah mom”, Lini cried back, “I was with Tobin, working on my project”, then whispered as loud as she dared into her com, “Toby, toby”, no answer. “Tobin Ramark, answer you jerk” - still no answer. “Darn, where is that boy when you need him?”.

Too loud

“Maybe he is sleeping”, she startled at the softly spoken words behind her. Lini swung round,
she knew who the voice was.

“DAD”, she cried and ran into his wide open arms.

"Unlike you, most kids fall asleep by the eighteenth hour", he continued, smiling widely.

“How come you are back so early, I thought you weren’t supposed to come back up until next week”

“Yeah. But I had to come back to see my little Linikin. When I decide I have to be with my Linker Blinker, no one dare stop me”, he smiled even wider, hugging her warmly.
The hug lasted only a short time though.

“Dad, I am nearly 13, not a baby”, pushing herself out of the embrace suddenly. Then after a pause said-

“Let me see, you did some thing wrong, and the government fired you again”, Lini paused thinking, her eyes squinting, “wait a minute, then you wouldn’t be so happy, something else is up” Lini paused peering into her fathers eyes.

“Well I have good news for you, very good news…”, her dad beamed back at her.

“Corl?”, it was Amia’s surprised voice coming from above through the low gravity chute, “it that you?”

They waited till the lift went up and came down again with her.

The two grinned at each other, thinking the same thing.
“She is too old to float-jump down like us normal people”, Corl said looking down fondly at her daughter, his eyes twinkling.

“Corl!?”, Amia echoed again, a little out of breadth, this time a hint of concern in her in her voice along with the surprise. “Is everything alright?”, Amia said, still in the half open elevator tube, her face still not visible as she descended.

“Better than alright”, he announced, eyes gleaming.

Amia emerged and the two joined in a tight embrace, the sudden passion unmistakable between them. The kiss was bound to follow; she had really missed him these last few months.

“Hello, MY room”, Lini cried disgusted, then arms in the air helplessly, they were always hugging and kissing way too much. “Arghh”, She had to look the other way. “Oh come on, enough already”, but it was of no use, they were making up for lost time.

“Hmm, Now I remember why I married you”, Amia cooed softly.
“Gross”, Lini protested
“We’re done, you can turn back now”
“Are you sure?” Lini wasn’t sure at all.

“Ok now, brace yourself ladies, for you are now looking at the new Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, at Pikona Minning corp.”, he paused in expectation, but the jubilant response never came.

“Yeaaa”, came Lini’s delayed sarcasm. He was the best Dad possible, but he just found the most boring jobs in NU, and in the dullest cities in all of Noesis.
He looked at Lini’s blank face then his wife’s more confused one.
“Well I haven’t taken the post yet, I just got the acceptance, had to talk to you first, of course”
“Are you sure you haven’t said yes already”, Amia’s voice was low and serious “do you still have your old job, or have you resigned already”.
“O come on, what do you take me for, I am not that stupid…”
“If I remember correctly, that is exactly what you did last time”, Lini almost sang in, then rambled on in her usual rapid style, “and then we had to move to this horrible city, can you imagine, not one decent place for kids to hangout, no Travel clubs, no Game Zones, no race circuits …”
“Ok, Ok I got it, that was a mistake perhaps, but this will make up for all that and I promise you, a lot more. This - is all our dreams come true”

Amia was about to speak but Lini didn’t give her the chance, “But how Dad, last I heard Planet Pikona was about 23 light years from NZero, I learn things in school you know”. She was almost shouting, then added lower but with definite resolve- “I am NOT going there"
“Relax, and let me complete one sentence will you”, Corl was unflustered, “Kids cant go on Planets as large as Pikona any way, have you learnt that in school?, the gravity will kill you, you will be crawling on the ground like a worm with those spindly legs of yours”, he was clearly having fun, he knew her mood would soon change. “But as I was saying, if I take this job we will be stationed on” he paused, he had the complete attention of two women he loved the most -

“Opal City, Modern”, he finished emphatically.

“Eeeeeek” came the instant screech that rang out through the open window, Lini sprang up from the bed, like a frog, straight at him, flinging arms and legs around him like a chimp climbing a tree, and nearly taking her father down. Her arms hooked on to his neck like she often used to when younger, and pulled herself up, hugging and kissing him madly.

“Opal Mod!?”, it was Amia’s turn now, surprise and disbelief clear in her voice, “as in Opal Mod, Cluster seven ?”

“Yeah baby, Opal Mordern, smack in the heart of cluster seven!”

Opal Modern, or Opal Mod as more often called by sevenites, was the one of the largest Mega Space City in Noesis, a truly modern metropolis in the heart of Noesis Universalis. It was known as the business capital of cluster seven, but it was also equally well known as the preferred residence for some of the richest and most influential people in Noesis. Space Ball player Din Corva lived there, as did the great explorer and scientist and High Phil awardee Dr Jill Bonisti, and many others. Anybody who was somebody had a place there.

But more importantly for the Sunoes Family, Opal Mod was near Silnosa Poli, the largest and most populous city in cluster seven, and birth place and home city of Amia Sunoes, and still home to Amia’s mother and Lini’s beloved Grandma.

“Well this is good news, …”, Amia started to say.

“This is great news”, Lini sprang back onto her bed, again nearly toppling her father, “Finally he does something right”.

Corlin looked at her amused, for a moment, she sounded uncannily like her grandmother, but Lini was too busy to notice. She was bouncing up and down on the soft polymer bed shouting “We’re going to Opal City, we’re going to Opal City”

“There is more”, Corlin was enjoying himself now thoroughly.

Lini’s put her jumping on pause, Amia looked at him intensely too, he had the two women's attention easily this time

“It pay’s a cool 3 mil a year, plus a 500 Square meter class one private home range with a mansion and its own pool, in a place called ‘Green Orb’, I have been informed its one of the poshest places in the whole of NU”.
It was Amia who exulted this time,
“Green Orb?”, her eye brows raised in pleasant surprise, “Why that is about the classiest place on Opal City, in the whole of Noeverse, and the most expensive”, her cluster seven accent suddenly back in her voice. Amia couldn't stop herself from smiling.

“Lini’s cries now changed to “We’re going to Greenorb, we’re going to greenorb”, she had no idea where or what ‘Greenorb’ was but it sounded nice, anything on Opal City Modern sounded nice.

“Nicest place in NU, but living is very costly up their, one single cubic meter costs well above a hundred thousand Rols, and you have to be a billionaire to get into one of their clubs, or even afford to eat in a restaurant”.

“Relax, most of our expenses will be paid for by Pikona Minning, and I am quite sure it has its own club, a company the size of Pikona- got to have its own club. As for your fine dinning- I think we could afford that with the 3 million Rols a year, that’s two hundred grand a month, minus taxes.”.

"Three mil is a lot of money", Amia's voice seemed to drift a bit, she was already imagining her grand life there in Green Orb's elegant luxury.

They embraced spontaneously. He knew she was happy, she was born in Silnosa Poli, another great metropolis in ‘space-heaven-cluster-seven’, she was going back home.

“So, do I say yes?”, he asked, but he knew the answer already.

“Yes, you surely may say yes”, Amia smiled back softly, that adoring look in her eye he loved so much. And Lini went “Yes – Yes – Yes” each time she soared up high above her bed.

They were hugging and kissing again, but this time Lini didn’t mind, she was too busy bobbing up and down screaming “we’re off to Opal City”.

2. Hydroki Reconnaissance

Three million Kilometers away from the Noetic Zero , a small lightless space probe shot away from the Noetic System at 200x light speed, small enough and with just enough speed to avoid detection by the millions of Sentry Buoys that surrounded NU. The small black probe had a thin hollow carbonite shell, half meter wide but with a mass of less than 20 grams, for is was built as much for speed as for stealth. Its super light weight allowed it to not trigger the Minute Gravity Detectors (MGDs) that were part of the Array of Sentry Buoys that constantly kept guard all around Noesis Universalis. The MGDs arrays had been placed all around NU as far away as possible, an early warning system, to warn against fast incoming projectiles. They were designed and installed in the late 4000s nearly a thousand years ago and many had argued that they were in need of an upgrade. Yet most had felt that, given the rather rare occurrences of detection, that such an expensive exercise was not really warranted

The passive un-powered probe kept on its pre programmed journey for 5 hours, till it reached a safe distance of a tenth of a light year from NZ. The outer shell of the probe split into sections and started coming apart, separating slowly from the probe, revealing the smaller cylindrical core, with one end convex, to serve as a short distance wide angle antenna. A second later it transmitted two short Gravitonic pulses that spread out in a wide cone, directed away from NU. Almost instantly a High Gain Gravity Perturbation Antenna (HG-GPA) registered the pulses, noting their strengths, direction and speed.
The vibrator ring awoke the lone Hydrok on duty with a sudden start. In spite of his three month long hibernation, he lost no time trying to figure out what was up. As was characteristic of the Hydruk species, he swung into action like a robot. He started breathing in much faster, necessary to revitalize his body, the pure nitrogen air of the capsule making a swishing sound as it got sucked in from his small slits at the top, not that he would hear it. His two arms had no joints in them, and seemed very inadequate for anything, but the three long fingers at each arms end– really tentacles, gave him surprising dexterity. He immediately checked a panel that constantly showed the data from the GP Antenna, even as he exhaled into the recycling tube attached to his air outlet at the bottom of his thick round tube like body. His bony tentacles flipped and tapped on panels and switches mechanically, he was well trained. He copied the data carefully duplicating into several devices, then pressed a series of buttons on a display panel and the small space capsule that had been his home for the last fifteen years buzzed into life, accelerating quickly to position itself into the path of the source of the pulses, the approaching spy probe. Then he waited, so still his body seemed frozen rigid in the Zero Gravity, his breathing slowing down to near hibernation levels again. An hour went by, then a rectangle started flashing on the same panel, a low frequency of infra red that only Hydroks could see. He seemed to wake up again, his long bony fingers rapidly flipping over touch screens, then again went still. A larger panel on the side now showed the position of the fast advancing probe. A particular entry in the Hydroki script kept changing constantly, indicating the fast closing distance of the probe from the mini Hydroki reconnaissance capsule.
The probe was traveling too fast to stop or capture, so he had to do it as it past by at its blistering 200x light speed, and while it was still in range- about eighteen million Kilometers. That gave him just two minutes, one as the probe approached, and another minute as it receded from his little station. After that it would be lost to the vast empty space for ever. But he had trained for this a hundred times, and automatically conducted the routine, checking panels, flipping switches and touch screen buttons. The spy probe was suddenly with in range, and it was the duty of the lone Hydroki to retrieve the data it carried. Its narrow Tera Hertz transmitter powered up as it received the start command signal from the Hydroki station. It was ready to complete its mission’s lone objective.

Success.

The probe flashed past his capsule at a safe distance, and he repeated the data retrieval process again, they matched perfectly. He swished in Nitrogen again, - then pressed a small round button on a concave display in front of him. Out slid a shiny little button from a slot to his side, which he caught neatly in his three long bony fingers, as it floated out in the Zero Gravity.
He got out of the harness in which he had hung and slept for the last three months, his two un-jointed arms and long fingers expertly and swiftly guided his soft lower trunk within the narrow cramped capsule, emerging from a port into a slightly wider and longer compartment. This was the only other room in his lonely outpost, and housed the one major equipment in the mini space pod – a modified long distance small particle shifter. He floated to a panel on the side of the meter long black cubical device and placed the small shiny data pellet on a pad inside a transparent cylinder, closing the lid back. Again flipped a few switches, and soon the data was encoded into a series of quarks and anti-quarks of varied flavors and charges, and then transmitted as a steady stream, on its way, to the nearest relay station 50 light years away, and onward. His job done, the Hydrok switched back all his equipment, His work was done for now. The next data probe may not come for months, or years, or it could come in an hour. With nothing to so till then he went back to his harness, to hibernate and save energy and Nitrogen, his mission was not yet over, in fact, it had to last as long as possible. He checked the thin dull grey ring that went around his trunk where it narrowed slightly, you could call it his waist, or neck if you like. It was the vibrator that would awaken him when the next probe pinged, indicating its arrival. Satisfied, he settled down into his harness, body upright, his arms folded down against his trunk, his breathing slowed down to near zero, he was ready to fall back into sleep, like he had done many times before.

1. Mitna City – On the edge of Noesis

       The million lights floated like a never
ending light show all around Lini. This was her favorite
place in the whole of this city. The large round 180
degree viewing window of the café let you see nearly all
the space cities that made up the 15th cluster
of Noesis Universalis.

Large and small, in myriads of shapes and sizes,
some with blue rings around them, others without,
some brighter, others just faint specks in the
distance, countless space cities, industrial stations,
farm stations,and many others- all forming a
magnificent tapestry of tiny colored lights in space,
as if woven into a fine invisible black mesh
all around her. Lini gazed on forever,
captivated by the limpid tranquility of the many
scintillating lights of Noesis Universalis.



"You can see almost the whole of Noesis from here" the
soft voice was Bubby, the owner of ‘Café on the Edge’,
“not just the space cities of cluster 15, but most of
the other clusters as well, - see that fuzzy
white blob over there, that’s Noesis One, and that one
is the Paradise cluster, where I wanna go in a few years,
just as soon as I have enough”. He smiled a big ear to
ear smile, and slid a cool glass of ‘purple sun’ down the
counter towards her.

“On the house”

Lini reached out at the softly glowing purple drink, but
instead of sipping at her favorite drink, went right back
to her incessant city gazing-

“Bubs, where is Silnosa City?”, Lini paused, “how far is it
from here?”

“Well, Silnosa Poli, I think is in cluster 7”, Bubba pointed
with a finger on the nano logic enabled window and a
translucent marker showed up on its surface, “So it must be
at least 300 thousand kilometers from here. It should take
about 5 or 6 hours to get  there by  Transcity, unless its
has got a Shifter port near by, then it would take much less.
It will be just a speck without magnification, want me to  …”

“Have you ever traveled by a shift port Bubba?”, Lini interrupted
Bubba, “how is it like,-  to just  ‘be’ at the new place instantly,
just like that? Isn’t that a bit unsettling?”

Bubba was a bit disappointed; he really wanted to show off the new
Nanoware Logic he had installed in his window.

“Not at all, why would it be unsettling, it’s just like walking in
and out of a small room, and besides there are five shifter
companies now with Transinta entering the shifting business too,
shift porting is sure to get cheaper soon.  I think one day
shifting will be as ordinary as Transcity. I heard they will soon
be building a common port here in Fifteen…”

“So you’ve traveled by Shift ports then”, Lini interrupted again

“Yes I have”, Bubby announced proudly, "my son Danny is a
Civil Admin in New Barco, cluster 8, and sends me travel credits
every year. Me and my wife went to see the Palukea Belt a couple
of years back. Magnificent place, never seen any thing like it
in my whole life. Nature is truly grand, it is, and so colorful
too. You should get your dad to take you there some day. Totally
worth the 2000 Rols.”

Lini drifted back to her gazing, the view was truly amazing,
especially for a 12 year old, and missed the alerts in her com
entirely.

“Hello HELLO” her com buzzed behind her ear. Finally Lini broke
out of the spell, “Hello, Oh hi Topin, What’s up”, it was her
old friend and classmate.

“As per your prior request, your Mom’s car just went past my
house, so you have about 5 minutes to get home”, Tobin was
trying hard to make his voice sound as deep as he could.

“Oh my gosh”, Lini muttered as she eyed the small translucent monitor
in the corner of her vision, “its nearly 20, moms gonna kill me”,
she raced to her brand new city glider, “Bye Bubba”, she punched
thin deft fingers at the thin curved console she took out of her
pocket and the machine whirred even as she jumped, twirling in the
air to plant herself onto the seat, shoving the console on the
steer pad.

“Thanks for the drink”.

“Bye sweets, ride carefully”, but she was way past Bubba’s
audible range and already picking up speed to hear his reply,
his voice trailed away knowing she was probably already half way
across Mitna by then, riding at breakneck speed.

“Ahh, Kids”, he grumbled at the other lone customer in the café,
but there was no disdain in his voice, in fact he had grown quite
fond of this scrawny little kid over the years, in spite of her
rather unpredictable impulsiveness's. His mind went back to when
his own daughter Mimi was still at home, he missed her dearly,
more than he missed Danny, his son.
Mimi- his sweet little munchkin, had all grown up suddenly, and
now gone to study Noesis history at the Canten University just
last year, three clusters away on Alca, the education city.
He missed her dearly.

Post 1 ends.
To be continued in the next post