Episode 005| He Goes Himself

Kaiyuan Year 1010 · Jan 1 · 03:42 · Saint Tranya · Information Research Substation No. 10

Lika closed the map.

He sat in the chair and thought for about two minutes. The coffee had gone cold a third time; he couldn't be bothered to reheat it.

The decision was actually simple. The question was how much it would cost.

He could use two more back doors — five left — and dig this signature to the bottom. In theory he could reach it. But every time he used one, the signature would "notice" someone was touching its records. A thing that could self-verify with __root__ authority, that had gone eighty-five years unnoticed by anyone, that had left execution records in 4,891 places — if it had consciousness, he didn't want it to know it had been spotted.

If it had no consciousness, then it wasn't a problem you could solve online anyway. Anything found online it would already have cleaned up automatically.

He wanted to see the site in person.

---

Lika opened another terminal.

> compose --recipient Elena --encrypt aes512 --send-at 06:00
> body: Morning. All meetings cancelled for the next three days running. Don't look for me. Nothing urgent.
> Don't come to QuarktoLabs HQ looking for me.
> If something goes wrong I'll come back on my own.
> ——Lika
> end

Elena was his assistant. Thirty-four this year, eight years working with him, one of the few at QuarktoLabs who knew Lika had an "offline mode" setting. She wouldn't ask. But today he'd added one more line — "Don't come to QuarktoLabs HQ looking for me" — and even he was surprised he'd written it. Once written, he didn't delete it.

He pressed the schedule key. The message would send automatically at six sharp, by which time he should already be in the air.

---

The second thing was gear.

From the bottom drawer he pulled a black hard-shell case. Inside was the spare brain-crystal interface QuarktoLabs hadn't yet made public — the first prototype he'd built with his own hands, three years older than the version on the factory line now, but with more functions for it. He never let prototypes out; this one only he had ever used.

He tucked the brain-crystal interface into the inside pocket of his coat.

Next was an external comm device disguised as an ordinary fountain pen. The pen's signal routed around every node of Spectra and connected straight to an offline relay station somewhere under QuarktoLabs. He'd used it twice over the past eight years; neither time was for anything good. Today he brought it.

Last was a hard drive the size of a fingernail. On it sat a small program he'd written on a whim the day eight months ago he'd fixed L.K.S._Core; he'd even forgotten he'd stored it here. Tonight he remembered.

That program was for erasing every electronic trace that he had ever existed. At the time he'd thought he might need it someday.

Today he needed it.

---

Lika stood and pushed the chair back into place.

He walked to the substation door and pressed the routine scan key for going out. The whole wall showed a green status bar — all normal. Except the coffee machine. A small orange notice blinked in its corner: "Needs cleaning." Lika gave it one glance and treated it as unseen.

He was about to press the exit key, then paused.

He turned back to the terminal and typed one last command.

> mark --location "Frozen Northern Reach S-17-R" --status "going in person"
> --visibility "self only"
> --authorize: L.K.S._Core

This command marked him as "en route to S-17-R," visible only to himself.

In theory it wasn't needed at all — the place he was going, only he would ever go anyway.

But he needed an act, to tell himself: I admit I'm the one going there.

In theory that signature — that "L.K.S._Core" that had run over a thousand tasks across eighty-five years — was himself, only he didn't remember.

If he didn't go, he'd go on pretending the signature was someone else.

---

He pressed confirm.

This time he swore. Very quietly, almost only to himself.

"Fuck."

---

Lika walked out of Information Research Substation No. 10.

A cold night wind came in off the north side of Saint Tranya, the smell of the sea riding with it, carrying a faint metallic aftertaste peculiar to a Source-Stone power plant. He turned up his coat collar and headed toward Magnetar Transport's private hangar in the western district.

03:46, and the city hadn't woken. On the street he passed, only the last maglev train of the night went screaming through the tunnel below; the thin frost on the ground was thrown up by the vibration and settled again.

In the hangar, CV-1A was waiting for him.

That hovering rotorcraft, the one whose engine he'd tuned with his own hands — Magnetar Transport's newest flagship, off the line only this month, only five built, three of them still in factory test flights, of the remaining two one for board demonstrations and one for himself.

It was called CV-1A. Cross-Vector Type 1A. Meaning "the first cross-boundary vehicle."

That "cross-boundary" wasn't marketing. It was the purpose Lika had quietly written down when he drew the design back then — he wanted a craft that could fly to places no one could reach.

Lika walked into the hangar.

"Old friend," he said. "The Frozen Reach."

CV-1A's tail lights came on.

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【Ch. 005 End · Saint Tranya】