SWNOVELS Chapter Unraveling
Unraveling
Block 7,928,116
“Mr. Tan, Mr. Tan!” Min comes up the stairs. Han has spent another night at his office.
The office is lit with the first light of day.
At the top of the stairs, Min asks, “May I come in?”
“Yes, of course,” Han says, “I was awake just lying here.”
Han gets up off the couch. He’s wearing the same clothes Min helped him get in yesterday. His hair is messy again.
“AI, lights!” Han commands.
Min sees Han. His eyes are red, and his eyelids are puffy—a combination of lack of sleep and crying.
“Mr. Tan, are you ok?”
“Yes, I’m Ok. I’m feeling a little better right now. What’s going on?”
“Well, based on your suggestion, we reversed the order of our analysis. Han AI found anomalous text in the blocks. We went back nearly one hundred thousand blocks and didn’t see any of what we found. This has repeated in every block since yesterday.”
She holds up her console and shows him a sequence of numbers: 6e6968616f2c20776f6d656e206ce1697aec207aec79f3752071fa6e64616f.
“We had Han AI run this through its network. It appears to be Hex code. So we had AI convert the hex code and got this.”
She slides her finger across the console: nǐhǎo, wǒ men láizì zìyóu qúndǎo.
“From here, we could fully translate it into Chinese, which is redundant but intelligent, as you suggested.”
She points again at the console: 你好，我们来自自由群岛.
“Hmm, anything else?”
“Yes. This.”
She scrolls through three slides:
73616e207469616e68f2752c206cec6e6720796967e8207869616f7869
sān tiānhòu, lìng yīgè xiāoxi
三天后，另一个消息
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s all we have right now. Those two sequences repeat alternately for nearly one hundred and forty blocks about the time we completed our synchronization.”
“AI, off!”
“Min, do you realize what this means?”
“Yes!” She smiles at him.
“Ok, I will head home and get some rest. This is a priority for me right now. Please notify me when the next message or sequence comes in.”
“Yes, sir.”
Han gathers his satchel, notebook, pencil, and clothes and heads for the elevator. He decided to take the AAPD home today. So he will get home quicker and avoid any issues this time of day with other AVs. He feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders, but he has no idea what awaits him back home: his safe place and place of peace.
The AAPD lifts off. The sun is still low in the sky. Han thinks of nothing but his family on his way home. Descending, Han can see the many, many flowers and flower arrangements that have been left in the entryway to the home. The candles are still burning.
He enters his home and finds the home as Huifen would have left it. It was spotless, and everything had been put away. He walks into each of the children’s rooms, sits on their beds, and cries.
Finally, he goes into his bedroom. He can still smell Huifen. He sits on the bed and sobs and eventually falls asleep.
Han awakens the following day. It’s well past the time he would have usually gotten up. He lays awake in bed and stares at the ceiling. He then gets up, walks into the bathroom, removes his clothes, drops them where he stands, and gets into the shower. The shower is at the correct temperature; he feels angry. He knows AI will control everything in his environment to soothe the pain. A pain that can’t be helped. He lets the water run over him.
Han finally finishes and decides to get dressed. He thinks he should eat, but he’s not hungry. He would spend time with Huifen or the kids on any regular day. He decides to go out into the garden. It’s a bit chilly, but he chooses to forgo a jacket. He walks around the park and takes time to meditate. He doesn’t have the energy to do tai chi, so he walks and meditates.
At about noon, he walks back into the house. He sees an alert from AI that he has received a call from Arman at EMC.
“Damn.” He thinks.
“AI, call Arman EMC!”
“Hello?”
“This is Han Tan; you called?”
“Yes, I did. I’m calling to get an update on the update issue and the power consumption.”
“I’ve already told you that we are monitoring the situation, and we will advise when we are done.”
“And I’m telling you that I want a status update. Do you understand who I am and what I do? I have the power to take care of you.”
“What do you mean take care of me? Like, get rid of me? And then what will become of the precious SO-Land network without Han Tech.”
“Do you think you are that indispensable?”
There’s silence.
Han quickly thinks that this might be some cruel twist of fate, that his role at Han Tech was not essential but his part to be at peace with the system. “Was it all a facade?” He thinks.
“Of course not! I serve SO-Land and will continue to do so. This latest update is critical to the future protection of the SO-Land AI network.”
“It better be! I want regular updates.”
The call goes silent.
“What a total ass hole.” Han thinks to himself. “I’m old enough to be his father. Damn!”
Han decides to eat something. He chooses his staple of rice and fish with black tea. Next, he decides to review his sketches in the notebook and turns to the page with the dome-shaped structure and a crescent moon that he saw outside of Mehran. He reflects on what he saw and how he saw it. “My glasses should have enhanced my vision through that smoke and sand. Why didn’t they?” He continues to think about the image and can’t understand what it could be. “If there is another land beyond our borders, is that part of that culture? It’s not a natural structure.” Then he recalls his time at Ben Jianao. Not just this past time, but every time he’s been. “Why is there a distant void on the horizon in a particular spot? Not that I was looking, but I never see anything like that on the ocean in Hong Kong.”
“AI, call Min!”
“Hello?”
“Min, how are things looking?”
“Fine, sir. There have been no changes in messaging. I would expect tomorrow morning we will see something new.”
“Ok, that’s what I remember you saying. I’d like you to come to dinner tomorrow at the house. Please bring the newest findings. I need to show you how the garden has changed over the past several weeks.”
Min understands and smiles as she replies, “Yes, of course.”
Block 7,928,476
Han has ordered some sushi tonight for dinner. A nice treat that he and Huifen would enjoy at times when they would go out on their date nights. He thinks it would be nice to have a memory like that tonight as he thinks about his next steps.
Min arrives by AV.
Han approaches the door and opens it as she walks up.
“Hello, Mr. Tan!” Min seems genuinely happy to see Han.
“Hi, Min. Thanks for coming. Come on in.”
“Of course. Thank you for the invitation. I brought our new findings.:
“Han widens his eyes and looks all around.”
Min mouths, “Yes, I know.”
“Great, let’s have dinner, and I can show you the garden.”
Han and Min sit down for dinner. Han sits at the head of the table, and Min to his right.
“Wow, I haven’t had sushi in a long time. This looks wonderful.”
“Great, I hope you enjoy it. Huifen and I would enjoy this on our date night away from the children.”
“Oh, Mr. Tan. You shouldn’t have...”
“No, no. I wanted a nice memory tonight.”
Min smiles and lightly touches his arm.
“You look like you are feeling a lot better.”
“Thank you. I feel better. I’ve gotten some sleep and gotten some food.” He slaps his belly. “But I feel invigorated by our new project. It’s helping sustain me.” Han pauses and manages a slight chuckle. “Min, you know how important you are to the company.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I was thinking about what happened to my family. You can never be sure. So I want you to know that if something should happen to me...”
“Mr. Tan! Please, stop talking like that.”
“Min, listen. I’m old enough to be your father. If I were your father, I would be saying this. You are a very bright young lady. You deserve everything I’m about to say. You know I wasn’t much older than you when I created Han Tech. There aren’t opportunities to create new and innovative products these days. AI has evolved to the point where we become the ones that do what it wants. It’s provided a safe, comfortable life for billions of people in SO-Land. Millions of our citizens, and you’ve seen them, are just content with just living. They are provided with what they need, and they are happy. But you know there are people,” Han points at Min and himself, “like you and me. People who are smart and we think and we tinker, and we fix. You deserve to be at the helm of Han Tech if something should happen to me.”
Min looks down at the table.
“You have too much talent to be wasted. My family is gone. I can’t leave my company to anyone else. I can’t raise my children to take this company. It should be you.”
“Mr. Tan, I don’t know what to say.”
“Min, it’s ok. I know that you know this is right. You’ve already thought of ideas I can’t even imagine.” Look at me. She looks at Han, and he mouths, “You MUST stay ahead of AI.”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes, I do.”
“Ok, now let me show you the garden. Bring your new findings.”
Han and Min walk to the door. Han turns to his office to retrieve his notebook, and they exit to go out to the garden. Han guides Min over to the bench, and they place their materials down on the court. Han puts his hands behind him, interlocks his fingers, and begins walking along the path. Min walks beside him.
“Min, being at the helm of Han Tech will afford you and your family unprecedented privileges in SO-Land. Look at my house.” He waves his hand around him. “It doesn’t look that much different than anyone else in my Circle. You’ve seen how I dress. There are no special places to shop. We all have the same things. But I can buy more clothes. We, I mean, I can go to restaurants more often, but here in my Circle, they are all the same. But I do have access. I can access SO-Land AI. I have access to better AVs and AAPDs, but my life is no different from anyone else. What makes me different is that I can tinker. I can think about how to make something different. And I want you to have that. And I want to give you access to that.”
Han points to the bench. “Let’s sit and talk about what we have.”
“Yes, of course!”
Han and Min sit down.
“Show me what we have.”
“Well, we got the following messages today.”
Min points to her console:
6475ec79fa207368ec2074ed6e677a68692074f36e6762f9
She scrolls to the next screen:
duìyú shì tíngzhǐ tóngbù
And then the next:
对于是停止同步
“That was the first one, and the second one was this.”
6475ec79fa206de969796f75206aec78f92074f36e6762f92064652071
ed6e676b75e06e67
Scrolling:
duìyú méiyǒu jìxù tóngbù de qíngkuàng
Again:
对于没有继续同步的情况
“Hmm, See, we have someone on the other side who’s a thinker.” Han smiles. “Is that our message for today?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, well, I need to show you something. You know about my notebook?”
“Yes, I remember.”
Han flips the page to the picture of the domed structure.
Min points at it and asks, “What is that?”
“During our node updates and validation, I saw this in Mehran on the western frontier. I’ve never seen it before. And honestly, I don’t know if there was a break in the Shamal, and the smoke cleared, and I saw it briefly. The strange thing is that when I put my glasses on, they didn’t enhance my vision. Things actually got a little blurry.”
Min picks up the notebook and pulls it closer to inspect it.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it for months. But it doesn’t look natural. So given what we know now with this code. I would say it’s man-made. I’ve also seen an anomalous thing like this off the coast of Ben Jianao. I wouldn’t think much about one, but two is a pattern. So if I want to get to the other side, it must be through Mehran.”