Chapter 86

Time: Thursday, May 14, 2019 5:14 PM

Aggie was totally focused, Aggie was on her game, Aggie was in THE ZONE. Ashley was currently working as her teammate and calling out the codes, and Aggie was speed jumping through the ring-pair list. She was averaging under 30 seconds per pair, and there were many pairs that she double jumped in 24 seconds, the theoretical minimum. When the pair of codes shared the same first-tumbler or second-tumbler setting, Aggie could consistently eliminate the pair with minimum time.

“G-6.”

0 to 3 seconds: Door opening in zone 1 (the top of the pyramid). Ashley would have already called out the x for the new (x, y) pair of tumbler settings, and usually getting to the new x involved a small increment on the second tumbler. Aggie would set and push the close button before the door fully opened, saying the word “go” as she pushed.

“Go.”

3 to 6 seconds: With the door closing and the tumblers locked at x, Ashley would speak the y code of the current (x, y) pair after hearing Aggie say go.

“R-9.”

6 to 9 seconds: With the door opening at destination x, Aggie would spin the two freed tumblers to code y and push the close button.

9 to 12 seconds: With the door closing, Aggie would take a breath and rest.

12 to 15 seconds: With the door opening back at zone 1, Aggie would push the close button and jump the y code a second time, saying the word go again.

“Go.’

15 to 18 seconds: With the door closing, Aggie would take another breath as Ashley repeated the x code.

“G-6.”

18 to 21 seconds: With the door opening at destination y, Aggie would reset the tumblers to code x and say go as she pushed the close button.

“Go.”

21 to 24 seconds: With the door closing, tumblers locked and the carriage about to jump to zone 1, Ashley would speak the x code of the next (x, y) pair.

“G-7.”

“ ... Go.”

“S-19.”

“ ... Go.”

“G-7.”

“ ... Go.”

“And stop,” said Ashley.

Aggie blinked. “And stop?”

“Well, I guess you can set the tumblers to G-10 if you want, but don’t jump. Fatima asked that you take a mini-break after a hundred pairs, and the way she said it, it sounded like an order.”

“She said that? I...” Aggie took a deep breath and sighed. “I think that’s probably a good idea. My throat’s a little dry.” Aggie stretched her arms and twisted her hips back and forth before taking a big swallow out of her canteen. Then she looked at the time on her Leophone and amused herself by bringing up the display of the J1 table. “Wow, you’re right, a hundred pairs. Look at all the green rows. Progress is being made.”

“I’ll say. You did the last five pairs in two minutes flat. Aren’t your fingers getting tired?”

Aggie took another swallow. “A little stiff maybe. I’ll be okay.”

“Hungry? Maybe you should eat something.”

Aggie thought about the suggestion for a moment and then rejected it. “I didn’t have much of a lunch, just a snack bar, but I just don’t feel hungry.” She turned and stared out the door of the carriage and through the transparent walls at the top of the pyramid. “It just feels like the dead of night. It feels as if I should be asleep.”

Ashley countered, “Ten weeks ago all of us were eating our dinners at night.”

“Yeah, I know. But I still don’t feel hungry now. I think the snow has stopped by the way, it’s a little hard to tell. The carriage is lit and it’s still dark outside.”

“Want to walk around the carriage, stretch your legs?”

Aggie took a third big swallow on her canteen and then returned it to her backpack, doing some deep knee bends for a while but deciding not to leave the carriage. She finally replied to Ashley. “I want to get back to jumping. I have this vague feeling about a closing window of opportunity.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t explain it, Ashley. It’s just a hunch. I have the ability to get out of here now and the hairs on the back of my neck are up. My window to leave is open now, but what if it closes? Maybe it’s just the silence here, I don’t know.” Aggie took a final stretch, standing on tip-toes and trying to reach as high with her fingertips as she could. Then she waved her arms back and forth several times and asked, “All set to continue?”

“Wow, that was a really short break. Your sure?”

Aggie turned back to face the tumblers and answered by saying, “Pressing G-10.”

Time: Thursday May 14, 2019 6 PM

“And stop.”

“Huh? Again?”

“You’ve completed two hundred pairs Aggie.” Ashley waited for a response. The line remained silent.

“You can click right tumbler for O-14 if you want.” Ashley leaned back in her chair at the Hilton and sighed. Aggie was one determined speed demon with this job. Her last pair had been particularly easy, O-11, O-3, but it almost didn’t matter anymore. Aggie was nailing everything and had searched the last hundred pairs in less than forty-two minutes.

There was still no response on the line, and it wasn’t like Aggie to pout. “Hey Aggie, you okay?” Still no response. Ashley felt a spasm of worry and she waved her arms to the other people in the room that there might be a problem.

And then a hoarse voice came from the network. “My God, it’s dawn now.” And then an incredulous whisper, “Where am I?!”

Twenty minutes later...

“Try it again, Aggie,” Akiko said from her console at the Hilton.

“I’m getting green board for video!” replied Aggie in an exciting tone of voice and she stared at a diagnostic menu on her Leophone. Connected to her phone was a somewhat bulky video camera with a large telephoto lens. Aggie had originally objected to carrying it, but now she was very glad she was overruled. “Are you receiving me?”

“Yes!” replied Akiko. “The high bandwidth channel is working. Resolution is excellent.”

“Marvelous! I’ll take a walking tour around the perimeter of the carriage. You’ll get a panoramic view.” Aggie slowed walked the four-meter lengths of each side of her hexagonal room. The views outside were nothing less than spectacular.

Her great pyramid was situated at the saddle point of a stunning mountain landscape. To the east and west, great snow-covered mountains rose more than three thousand meters above her head. To the north of the eastern range, a great and familiar orange-looking sun was cresting the horizon. And further north as well as south, the ground sloped down and down and down. It seemed to go on forever, and Aggie thought she could see several distinct ecosystems.

It was the northern slope that definitely had the more gentle incline, and Aggie guessed the snow fields ran for five kilometers before changing into high meadows. Much further down the meadows transformed into forest, and Aggie could see sparkling orange sunlight reflecting from the rivers formed by the massive snow fields of the high mountains. The forests extended as far as the eye could see, all the way to the northern horizon.

And to the south, the direction the storm had blown in from last night, the view was profoundly distinct. It was a land of shadows, shielded from the northern sun by the great mountains. The southern slopes were steeper yet the snowfields were far more extensive. Even the vegetation of the great southern forests looked different, more purplish perhaps, though it was difficult to be sure. The northern forests were approaching their summer and bursting with colors and blue flowing rivers. By comparison, the southern forests seemed to be bedding down for a short winter’s sleep.

“It’s Africa, isn’t it?” whispered Aggie as she walked. She was referring to the largest continent on their planet, a great equatorial continent that completely circumnavigated the globe. “I’m either here for real or this is one hell of a simulation!”

“It’s hard to imagine a simulation with this kind of detail,” commented Lynn from Manhattan. Akiko was duplicating the video feed on her library console.

“It’s not a simulation,” Mark commented from the Red Mall library. “I’ve just found the hexagon in the satellite image database.”

“So fast?” asked Fatima from the Hilton. “You just started a few minutes ago.”

“I knew exactly where look. Aggie, as close as I can measure and that’s within a few meters, the top of your pyramid lies directly on this planet’s equator. You’re also exactly 180-degrees opposite longitude from Hex Hall.”

Aggie started to laugh nervously. “I knew it!” She forced herself to calm down. “How high am I?”

“One second and I’ll let you know,” Mark replied. “I can pick that up in the radar files ... Okay, here we are. The base of your pyramid is very close to 5000 meters exactly, so add about another four meters times thirty-six for where you are now.”

“Wow,” whispered Aggie. “Is it breathable outside?”

“Oh yeah. It would be a bit of a shock if you’re not used to it though. Sea level pressure here is almost exactly Earth’s value, and the air here is slightly richer in oxygen, a few tenths of a percent...” Mark typed rapidly for a moment. “The two peaks to your east and west are both above 8,000 meters. That would be a severe environment for breathing. Believe it or not Aggie, your pyramid is one of the lowest spots on the equator. It’s rare for the ridgeline to dip much below six thousand meters.”

“Mark,” interjected Fatima, “I thought you searched this planet for large buildings.”

“I did! And I failed to find this. What can I say? I coded my search parameters to look for images with long linear walls. This pyramid, it looks like a big pile of kid building blocks on the imagery. There are no straight lines longer than four meters. The way I wrote my code, it didn’t recognize what I was looking at.”