SWNOVELS Chapter Dutch Plus One
Dutch Plus One
Block 7,925,341
“Hey, man! It’s great to see you!”
Fabian stands up to greet Jim as he approaches.
“Yeah, man. You too! And I guess Laura, too?” He says with a smile as he and Fabian shake hands. Jim turns to Laura and bends down to hug her as he sits at the table.
“Hey Jim, it’s good to see you again as well. I hear you’re the real cowboy?”
“Well, that sounds about right.”
“Come on, man, sit down.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Jim and Fabian sit down.
“Well, you two are quite the couple from what I hear, and I never hear from Fabian anymore, so I know he’s distracted.”
Since the tour to the northeast of El Salvador, Fabian and Laura have spent more time together. They grab at least one meal together each day of the weekend and, time permitting, grab lunch during the week.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Laura adds. “He’s a real gentleman, and he’s pretty smart. So those are two big check marks in my book.”
“What about his body,” Jim smirks.
“Well, from what I’ve seen, it’s not bad.” She flashes a smile to Fabian.
“Well, let’s eat something; I’m starving.”
“Fabian, have you guys seen any more activity out of SO-Land?”
“Well, Jim, we saw a flurry of activity after those first couple of days. I may have told you, but we saw some activity between the initial location and a city in SO-Land called Wuhan. At least that’s what it was called last century.”
“Yeah, that’s the city with the whole virus thing, right?”
“Yep!”
“Anyway, we think it’s an individual, and get this; the synching is probably coming from a freedom capsule that got swept off a drone recovery ship. Satoshi Smith did a lot of digging and found a little information. Otherwise, we would be stumped about how something with that timestamp could be synching. We still haven’t figured out how something from the ocean got to central China. Unless, of course, someone found it and then took it to the area around Wuhan. It’s just odd behavior, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I understand. So what do you think is the next step?”
“Well, I’m not sure we can do anything until we see activity again.”
“Fabian, if I may,” Laura interrupts, “I think, based on my knowledge of SO-Land, we have to treat this as a potential asylum seeker.”
“How, so?”
“Well, let’s think about the original purpose of the freedom capsule or hope capsule. It means one thing to us on this side, but it will mean something else to someone on that side. The problem is there’s been so much time since anyone on that side attempted to come over here. Given how their AI was being developed, I’m sure there is no memory of that history for SO-Landers. Information is controlled there and has been for nearly a hundred years. No one there even knows we exist. So if they find something like that, they aren’t going to know where it came from or from whom.”
“All valid points,” Fabian says.
Jim adds, “Well, they’ve figured out how to connect it to something and get it to work. At this point, they’ve either lost interest, hit a roadblock, or it’s been confiscated and destroyed. If they’ve lost interest or it’s been confiscated, there’s not much more we can do. If they’ve hit a roadblock, we must wait until they overcome it.”
“Great points, Jim.”
“My money is on hitting a roadblock based on what you’ve said. Whoever found it seems to be smart enough to get it connected. If it had been confiscated, we would not have seen intermittent activity. It would be more like, it’s on, it’s confiscated, and it’s done. The intermittent nature of it seems to me that someone is tinkering.”
Laura interrupts, “If that’s the case, then we should be ready and figure out how to communicate with them.”
“Yeah, all great points. Before we get too deep, I’m famished, so let’s order.”
Fabian looks at Laura, “Dear, what do you think you want?”
“Dear?” Jim mimics, “I guess this is getting serious.”
Fabian and Laura smile at each other.
They order each order lunch, coffee, and some water.
“Laura, that’s a perfect point about communicating with them. What are the chances they know any language other than Chinese or Russian?”
“I would say slim to none. If the Supreme Order wanted to create an isolated society, then there couldn’t be any outside languages for them to be aware of. My experience with SO-Land says that, at least in this part of SO-Land, they would be speaking Chinese. It could be Russian, but I think it highly unlikely.”
“They could be bilingual,” Jim adds.
“True, but my focus would be Chinese,” Laura says.
“So we can assume they are tinkering because they hit a roadblock. Once the activity resumes, we can at least attempt communication via transactions in the blockchain, and we should code those for Chinese.”
“Yes, I think that sounds correct,” Laura says.
“Fabian, the other variable we haven’t accounted for is the time to synch fully. Based on the first activity’s progress, it seemed like it would take years to synch fully. Is it possible computing power is that far behind?”
“It’s possible, but given the sophistication of our AI, we must assume that their AI is about as good. I mean, they were essentially deployed at the same time. So the learning algorithm should have kept pace. They may also be working on synching with a computer system or AI network that can process much quicker.”
“Jim, can I ask you and Laura to develop a preliminary plan when and if we make contact? If it’s an asylum seeker, we should do all we can to get them here.”
“Sure, but you and Laura seem to spend so much time together. So why not just spend some of that time on this?” Jim adds as he smiles.
“Well, we’ve made it a rule when we are together, alone,” Laura stresses the word alone, “that we don’t talk shop, this current project, or our work. It’s kinda a buzz kill.”
“Dear, I want to talk about your beautiful red hair and blue eyes...” Fabian begins, “Ouch! What was that?” Laura kicks him under the table and then smiles at him.
“All right, I see how it is. Sure, I can schedule some time to formulate a plan with Laura.”