Dispatches from Sector 36

[ionelv]

Today I found that one of my relatives, Vlad, recently finished writing a sci-fi novel and that he published its prologue on substack a few days ago. It has a nice hook. I am looking forward to reading more of it. Excerpt from the prologue:

He kept busy. Talked to colleagues, brainstormed, found passwords on desk notes, tried them out. And finally, revelation. World-turns-upside-down, everything-makes-sense now revelation. Not what he was looking for, not what he was expecting, but oh my God what a revelation! An explanation for everything! Changing everything! The world must know! But he can’t speak.

He’s on a research outpost, effectively under martial law, surrounded by military personnel, overseen by an Omega class AI who is most certainly “in” on it. If he yells what he learned into the ether, it would go nowhere. They would know. They have the capabilities to intercept and filter him out.

He has a plan though. This plan was worked out months in advance. When you can’t trust your encryption, when hyperintelligence helps develop your algorithms and promises you it’s uncrackable but you don’t take its word for it, when you can’t out-math it, you need to go back to basics. Primitive cryptography. Your signal can’t contain valuable data, it will be intercepted, read, used against you. You need the human connection. Your signal is just a codeword. It means only “I have something to tell you, let’s meet up.” All pre-arranged.

Yesterday he sent a message to his friend, complaining about his shoulder. He injured it playing sports a couple of decades ago, and it tends to flare up from time to time. All on medical record. Nothing to see here.

The message means “Pick me up from Verdant, I have vital information.” His friend is a Spark contact; he won’t be the one picking him up. He will just relay the message, get help, get him out of the sector. No decryption could tease the meaning from the payload. The Doctor will deliver the secret, in person, to someone who can make best use of it. If he survives. If they don’t nab him before he leaves the system.