“Yeah, well get off your high horse, sonny boy. I have a plan.”
At that, I grinned. “A certified, grade-A Rozen Plan?”
“Exactly.”
She smiled back. Not a grin, not a grimace, but something tender that reached up into her eyes. Suddenly I just wanted her to hold me and make everything all right—like a mother does. I was confused, but beyond caring. She could have kissed me then, not a chaste kiss from a treasured aunt, but full on the lips and I would have been her lover. She could have hobbled me, and I’d have been her pack animal and carried the lifelong burden of grief she’d collected.
“Listen, Dana, listen carefully. This is important. Shit is going to hit the fan. You’re going to need help. I could tell you what to do, but you’ll learn better by figuring it out. So, I have two more assignments for you and then your schooling with me will be complete. You ace this, and there’s no stopping you.”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “What assignments?” I asked.
“A puzzle and a treasure hunt.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, but my curiosity was piqued. We were Eva and Dana again, the co-conspirators. Mentor and pupil. Hero and sidekick. Friends.
“Follow me,” was all she said.
We walked out of the conference room and down six flights of stairs to NMech’s street-level atrium. The wide-open area featured trees growing inside, nourished by full-spectrum lighting that radiated from the brightwalls. The area was littered with sofas, comfortable chairs, and small tables that created sitting groups or spots where someone could rest quietly for a few minutes in some semblance of solitude. Sound strips were built into the floors and walls for private conversations, or so that a person could play music without disturbing others. It was a favorite place for scientists to think, and for workplace romances to flourish—an NMech hotspot for productivity, of one sort or another.
At the far side of the atrium, Eva paused in front of a blank wall and palmed a spot on the wall that was indistinguishable from any other spot. The wall opened inward and led to a set of stairs. When we entered, the brightwalls illuminated automatically and we walked down to a basement and then a sub-basement.
“Wow! This is like in the old, old movies.” I was swept up in the spirit of adventure. “We should program the room to look gothic.”
“Right.”
She touched the brightwall and it illuminated in a nondescript gray, casting a pallid blanket over the room we’d entered. Hardly gothic.
In the corner of the room was a smaller room, maybe six feet by eight feet. The door opened to reveal a small table which held several items: a rolled-up dataslate, a set of old-fashioned wrenches, a pencil, a large, circular magnet, some abrasive cloth, and a square box with a button on it.
“Go on in,” she said, gesturing for me to enter first. “Here’s your first test,” she said. “You have one hour to get out of this cell and not a second more. You get one try only. You can use any one of these items,” she said, gesturing to the table. “But here’s the catch. You may touch only one of these items. You must use whatever item you’ve touched in some way. And you get only one try to escape. Let’s see how much you’ve learned.”
She asked, “Any questions?” When I hesitated, she said, “Good, because I wouldn’t have answered anyway. You’re going solo. Give me your datasleeve. Come up to my office within the hour and you’ll get it back,” she said, and walked away without a backward glance.
After I had handed over my datasleeve, she slammed the door shut. I whirled around, confused. I felt a tiny vibration in my feet when the door slammed home and a thrill of fear. What if she did cause Rockford and I’d just placed myself in a cage?
My cell had carbon shielding around the perimeter, and a carbon floor and ceiling. It could be harder than diamonds or as brittle as graphite. Maybe I could kick the door open or just break down one of the walls. But Eva had said that there was one way out and that I was only permitted one try.
I started by inspecting the locking mechanism on the door. I couldn’t see anything besides an old-fashioned doorknob. No visible biometrics sensors, no old-fashioned combination keypad. I reached to check how sturdy it was, but pulled my hand back. One try.
I turned to the small table. The dataslate was rolled up. Could I use it to reprogram the door? If it worked, I could. Maybe. But I couldn’t tell if it was operational. Heck, I couldn’t even tell if it was real. If only I could lift it up and examine it.
The pencil was an ordinary #2, made from old-fashioned wood. I could use it to write the Great American Novel but I had maybe 55 minutes left. Not even enough time for a short story, let alone a novel. I doubted I could create a decent three-line haiku poem in that time. But I could use it to poke at the dataslate and see if that works. Would that be within the rules?
I looked at the doorknob again and ruled out the wrenches. The magnet might work if the doorknob were metal. No dice. The locking assembly appeared to be a non-magnetic material. I couldn’t think of any appropriate use for the abrasive cloth. I couldn’t file my way out in an hour.
That left the square box with the round button on it. I looked at the device. Nothing on the outside of the box gave me any kind of a clue as to what was inside of the box, nor could I intuit anything about the doorknob and doorjamb. Was this Eva’s sense of humor?
I wondered how much time I had. With my datasleeve gone, I was cut off from the rest of the world. My pockets were as empty as my inventory of solutions for escaping from this coop. I didn’t think a lot of time had elapsed, but in the isolation of a very small room, it was hard to estimate the passage of time.
If I could solve this problem, Eva and I could continue to collaborate. I had to try.
“When you want to hide something, put it in plain sight” was a maxim that Eva had drilled into me over and over. So, I looked around my little cage for something obvious. Eva, for all of her eccentricities, would never give me a test I couldn’t pass, and she always kept her word to me. But would anyone find me if Eva went mad and forgot about this room?
Time was running out. My hands were sweating and my mouth was dry. I had an itch on my back that was driving me crazy. I could think only of the itch. If it were not for her instructions, I’d grab the pencil and use it to scratch my back.
Then I saw the answer. I smiled. An elegant solution, simple and economical, like her software coding. I picked up the pencil. It reached the itchy spot on my back and I scratched. That felt good. I stuck the pencil behind my ear and walked over to the door. I grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and walked out of an unlocked cell.
Five minutes later, I walked into Eva’s work area, whistling a happy tune. She looked up and grinned for a second and then pointed me to a chair. She tossed my datasleeve back to me.
“You put some nice security on this,” she said. “I couldn’t jack it, at least not here and not in the time it took you to stumble out.”
“I made a few modifications,” I said, trying for nonchalance. “What’s next?”
“You solved the riddle. Remember, when you face an impossible challenge, your first move should be to look for the easiest solution. That’ll probably be right.”
“Now I have a self-study project for you. To finish this last assignment, you’ll need to use every bit of the chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science, and physics that you’ve learned.” She got up from her chair and walked around her desk. Perched on the edge, she was about as tall as I was, seated.
“Fact is, it’s time for you to fly solo. Take on a role at NMech. So here’s what you have to do. Here is a list of 34 senior researchers at NMech, 26 department heads and 18 executives.” She held up her arm in a transmit gesture and my sleeve pinged receipt of a file. “Your job is to jack every single one of them. Learn the chemistry or physics or materials science of each one of them by ghosting through their pillars. Learn how they manage their departments by observation and by jacking their diaries. Then link to me and we can carry on our conversations again.”