A draft chapter from my upcoming first novel Ragnarok Conspiracy. Note that this is still a work in progress and an unedited draft. All feedback is highly welcomed. Ragnarok Conspiracy is meant to become a brainy speculative post-cryptocolyptical work of fiction.
Part one of Ragnarok Conspiracy is written as a collection of flash fiction installments against a common backdrop, revealing little fragments of the geopolitical developments in the not so distance future.
If you havn't read the previous chapters yet, here is an index with all chapters I've posted on Steemit so far.
Enjoy and let me know what you think.
From "Ragnarok Concpiracy" Part-1, Chapter 7
Wietse
Southeast Pacific, September 30, 2036
Wietse could not believe what he was seeing in front of him. Hovering just four centimeters above his working desk was this small silvery sphere. Theory was one thing, but seeing that theory manifest right before his eyes was something very different.
Quickly Wietse glanced around to see if there weren't any guards around to witness the unexpectedly eye-catching result of his experiment. While all his captors had really been interested in had been Wietse's continued work on quantum-slicing , ever since Wietse's little trick with his night-guard's laptop, a few years back, the new, more military type, guards his captors had employed to guard him in his relocated lab, slash luxury prison had been way more observant and on their toes, compare to the old crew. Something that was to be expected, given the fallout caused by his attempt to expose his captors to the world and bring them to justice. There had been a moment when Wietse thought his captors were going to end his life over the laptop incident. But no! They needed him desperately enough to tolerate Wietse's mischief for the moment, despite the enormous consequences for PUPR and for the world that had come from it.
They needed Wietse to find another revolutionary quantum-slicing algorithm. Not for public key cryptography this time, but for PRN-coded radio transmissions used by the opposing armies. Their only chance at procuring this coveted algorithm was Wietse and both Wietse and the PUPR supervisory board knew that.
Funny how the very incident that could very well have gotten Wietse killed, had created a huge problem that they now needed Wietse to stay alive for. Ultra low power spread spectrum transmissions used by the different factions aligned against PUPR, used long, unguessable pseudo random sequences. Finding these sequences wouldn't be much of a problem if the signals these sequences were being applied on hadn't been so ultra-low in power, that even detecting the presence of a transmission without a synchronized receiver would be impossible even at a few centimeter distance from the transmitting radio. And the only way a receiver could ever hope to synchronize with the sender would be knowledge of the full PRN sequence that they were trying to find. Again, Wietse needed to find a quantum solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem, and Wietse had been making progress on that. His progress had been just enough to keep his captors from growing inpatient, giving Wietse some time in which to work on his private little pet project.
In secret, Wietse had been working hard on the use of his quantum entanglement trinity for the theoretical concept of M-brane folding.
The glimmering little silvery sphere was about two centimeters diameter. Much larger than Wietse had anticipated. And why was it silvery? Until now, M-branes had been a purely theoretical concept. No one really knew how big an M-brane would be, and apart from Wietse, no one had even contemplated the practical possibility or possible implications of folding an M-brane.
Wow! 21.3 millimeters in diameter, who would have thought a folded M-brane would be this huge.
As Wietse stared at the small sphere again hovering over the right front corner of his working desk, he suddenly noticed something was off. While the sphere looked just like a sphere shaped mirror, something wasn't quite right with the reflection.
What the … ?
As Wietse moved his face closer to the sphere, instead of seeing his own reflection come closer, all he saw was the reflection of gis desk and the door behind him, but not of himself.
Wietse moved away from the sphere in confusion, accidentally knocking over his plastic cup of warm cocoa. Ah, damn! Ah, never mind.
Wietse moved closer to the sphere again. Where was his reflection? It was almost as if Wietse had been a vampire from one of those old vampire movies. Wietse took a large magnifying glass out of his desk's drawer and started to look closer at the sphere.
Then the sound of the doorknob turning. Wietse quickly placed an upside down cardboard box over the hovering sphere in order to obscure it from sight, just in time before his guard entered the room.
Ah, Martins, good you are here. Go and grab me some paper towels and a new cup of hot cocoa, will you? I just accidentally pushed over my cup.
I am not your bleeding assistant, professor. I am here only to guard you. To keep you from escaping and to keep you from causing problems. I am not here to serve you, trouble making old fool!
Please, Martins, help me out here. You wouldn't want to be responsible for stalling my progress now, would you Martins.
As Martins threw an angry look at Wietse, he walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind himself. Wietse quickly picked up his magnifying glass again and lifted the cardboard box.
What?
As Wietse saw a small puddle of a brown substance directly under the sphere, a state of confusion came over Wietse. Wietse checked the inside of the cardboard box, but it was completely clean. Then Wietse looked at the sphere through his magnifying glass. The bottom one and a half millimeter part of the sphere that had been as silvery as the rest of the sphere now had a dark brown color. Then a drop of a brown liquid started forming underneath the small sphere. The drop came loose from the sphere and dropped smack in the middle of the small puddle on Wietse's desk. Wietse quickly put the cardboard box back on top of the sphere and quickly went to his console to abort his experiment.
Whatever could this be?This didn't make any sense. Some kind of brown quantum ooze leaking out of the bent M-brane? The very idea was just too ridiculous to consider, but it was straight before him. Nonsense Wietse, Nonsense.
Wietse picked up the cardboard box again. The sphere was gone as expected, but the brown ooze was still there. Wietse picked up his magnifying glass again and as he looked closer at the brown substance. Martins walked in without knocking.
Talk about crazy scientist! Think you are going to reach a quantum-slicing breakthrough by looking at a puddle of cocoa?
Cocoa? Wietse looked at the brown puddle again. Cocoa? Could it be?
Then Wietse looked at the other side of the table. In the middle of the puddle of spilled cocoa on the left side of his desk, there was an eye shaped section where there table was mysteriously clean. There was no cocoa at that spot, just the light grey table surface.
Could it be?
As Martins looked at Wietse looking back and forth at the two cocoa stains, he shook his head. I told them guys you might have lost your marbles, but now I'm completely sure of that.
Please, Martins, just give me those paper towels.
Wietse took a stack of four paper towels, spread them out like a Chinese fan and quickly wiped up the larger of the two puddles. As he realized Martins was staring at him, he reluctantly took a fifth towel and cleaned up the smaller of the puddles that had been directly underneath the silvery sphere.
Oh, my. Need to throw these away, but I need to know. Hmm, this could be really dangerous. Do I dare?
Wietse looked at the brown stain on the last paper towel he just used, closed his eyes and quickly but shortly inhaled in order to smell if this indeed was cocoa. If it wasn't, it could be anything and smelling it might kill him, but Wietse had to know. As the smell of cocoa filled his nostrils, Wietse sighed. 'It´s cocoa!'.
Well, duh! Martins exclaimed. What else did you expect?
Please give me my cacao now Martins. I need to think.