First 10 pages - A World Uncertain

[aleloop]

The AEntropic - Book 1 A World Uncertain. Alejandra Leibovich

Chapter 1

 

“Sir!”

The intercom rumbled in my ear.

“More life Sir; it’s time.” The voice announced.

“Thanks,” I growled.

Just wonderful. Another day I woke up at the crack of dawn, irritated already. There would be an actual sunrise if the sands outside stopped sticking to my dome.

Two suns and two moons, and we can’t even see them. Some days I feel I have to create everything if I wish to have it. I gotta invent something that can repel the wind and sand. We could see the sky if the sands weren’t on my dome.

 

I wanted to stay in bed. I opened the night table drawer and grabbed my Anger Tracker. Who’s idea was to track my anger, mine? I guessed so. 

 

What was I thinking? I marked a seven in the one-to-five anger level. Then I looked at my trends. Is my anger the only thing off the charts right now?

 

I marked Yes, in the “Am I aware I’m angry” column… 

 

I marked No, in the “Can I stand myself” column…

 

I marked No, in the “Is this helpful to me” column.

 

I wrote Upgrade engineers in the “What are you angry about” column…

 

In the “What am I grateful for line,” I filled out that I’m grateful I’m THE Creator here. I’m thankful that I create everything. I’m grateful I give a crap about everything and get the stuff done. The anger tracker then proceeded to autocorrect every single of my words, and then no sentence made sense anymore.

Who put the autocorrect function on the anger tracker?! Not me.

Then, I changed my anger level to a thirteen.

 

And there you have it. The life of me. The Creator. I have a great idea after getting angry. I have a great idea to make. I have yet to get off the bed. But! But what do I have to deal with right instead of making my brilliant idea so we can have sunlight? The engineers. They need to figure out how to get more power for my upgrade generator. And what do they do all day? Fix any other damn problem that is not getting more power to my upgrade generator. Because why getting only THE most important upgrade accomplished would be their priority?

 

I clicked on the yearly view. My anger level had been off the charts. It made me wonder if I was developing a relationship with my anger. Can one become addicted to being angry? I should name my rage. It’s been my major company this year, from what I could see.

 

I started thinking, what have I actually been angry about? So I looked at random dates.

 

Two and a half months ago, my anger level was seven. Angry at? Kellen Nirdut, Upgrade Lab engineer.

 

Five months ago, my anger level was nine. Angry at? Kellen Nirdut, Upgrade Lab engineer.

 

Ten months ago, my anger level was six. Angry at? Kellen Nirdut, Upgrade Lab engineer.  

 

I was about to change my anger level to 16 when I thought the higher achiever I become, the more I create. The more I create, the more self-conscious I become. I don’t remember being this self-conscious before The Big Mistake.

 

The damn Big Mistake… and that was years ago. Why did I have to remember it? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Again. Yes, I did it. Yes, I own it. I made the Big Mistake. Our life is extraordinary because of it. It’s the price we have to pay. We can’t seem to get it together to see the freaking suns every morning. Still, we have a safe life with minimal changes, almost zero percent uncertainty, and nearly no percentages of the unknown. In this city, nobody experiences incertitude. Nobody knows what it is like to not know your own future. None of them know how it is to live every-single-fucking-day-of-your-life with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next.

Every single day. And yet they complain. Everyone complains. It’s like their sport. They are competing for who complains most. For who is better at complaining? It’s so easy to complain: I’m going to get traumatized.

There was a glitch this morning… I had to experience an unexpected change…

I lived my entire life surrounded by uncertainty. Years! And yet, here they are living a wonderful predictable, easy to live, zero risk, zero discomfort, zero unwelcome surprises, completely thought out, perfectly controlled life and yet, still they are not happy. Well, some of them are thrilled. At least that. I paid the price of living in total uncertainty, not knowing what was going to happen next, ever. I don’t give them a life like those underground animals.

 

I know what I should do. I should send some citizens of the majestic City of Tracks down underground to experience real uncertainty. Let’s see what happens when they have to make their own decisions. Without their precious life-track screens showing them their future. When they have to make a decision not knowing the consequences. Let’s see what happens when they have to make thousands of daily choices, all by themselves, not knowing their immediate future. With no team behind them to keep them safe. Decision after decision after decision with no idea of what will happen next. Oh, wait a minute! I should not forget. They would have to decide in uncertainty. They will not know the outcome of their decision. At the same time, they will constantly be changing, and everything will constantly be changing around them.

 

I should create a contest, and we show the winner on the big screens through that experience. That’s another freaking brilliant idea. In a jump, I got up. I grabbed my uniform and put it on.

I wanted to show the group some of the savage life underground. Oh yes! Another great idea! One day, I should turn off the entire grid of life-tracks. I could tell them the excuse that we have a big glitch. I would sit on the balcony and eat popcorn. After that, it would be all joy watching the citizens experiencing the unknown. No track to show them their future. They would experience FREEDOM. They wouldn’t know what to do. They cannot see that with freedom comes uncertainty. And… they would be full of uncertainty. They would live in a world uncertain. Just like I had to do. After turning back on the grid, we would get nice happiness levels.

 

I delighted myself with those thoughts. And even though they were grim, they made me less angry. I was actually feeling better. Still fucking jaded, but better.

 

I hadn’t recalled my life before The Big Mistake in a long time. I could visit them there. They have been insisting we meet. That life… seems like three lifetimes ago. Who knew I would actually miss brother Ryro after all? I wonder if he is still alive down there with those savages.

 

I picked up my ideas notebook. New page. Create something to repel aentropic wind and sands. Purpose: to see the sky. Project timing: When I can find an engineer that takes ownership of the idea and gives a shit enough to get it done. New page. Create a show for the screens where a citizen experiences the unknown and everyone watches. Purpose: show them how good they have it. Timing: get an engineer to see the outcome probabilities of citizens watching someone living with uncertainty and then re-evaluate the consequences.

 

“Sir, they are ready for you.” The intercom barked again. 

“I’ll be right there, thank you!” A leader shouldn’t show anger when it’s unnecessary. Anger makes people afraid. Fearful people hide things from you. A leader should know what’s happening during his reign.

 

I put down my idea notebook. But took my anger tracker. When I opened the door, there he was, Sigeler, ready for me with a delicious smoothie. 

“More life, Sir. Today, we have a busy day.”

Sigeler is one of the few citizens we have, that doesn’t seem to experience any discomfort when he is not attached to a life-track. That’s why I made him my right hand. We started walking.

“Tell me.”

Sigeler looked at the schedule.

“We go to the Upgrade lab now, Sir. Nirdut says he made progress.”

“Let’s see if it’s true,” I said. That sounded jaded. I wondered if you ever get “un-jaded.” Can a leader, a doer, a getting-shit-done, an actual Creator ever get un-jaded? Fuck, I didn’t bring my idea book to write it down.

 

“Sir? Are you with me?” Then, finally, Sigeler realized I wasn’t listening.

“This is your best smoothie yet. It’s SO good. Don’t take this the wrong way. Your abilities are best used for high-level management, as my right hand. Energic-Gravitons should be the only ones making smoothies. The mix of changing polarity in the fruits and your ability to bind the food molecules together is a winner.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Sig, please send a note to the Track Design team to match together more Energic and Graviton citizens.”

“Noted, Sir. Thank you, Sir. Should I proceed with the schedule for the morning?”

“Yes, please.”

“After visiting the upgrade lab, you will meet with the new arboretum manager. Her name is Kekei Dorajon Lasak Aliar. There is something serious happening to our trees, Sir.”

“Dorajon Lasak Aliar, you said?” I asked. I knew those names very well. 

“Yes, she wants to update you on the progress on the trees issue. Unfortunately, something is wrong with the trees, Sir.”

“All right.”

 

Sir, I will update your speech for the Upgrade Status Report speech. You will be glad to know we have been hyping the address and predict a ninety percent watching expectancy, said Sigeler with a big smile.

“Thanks.” 

“This way, Sir, they are fixing a glitch ahead of here.”

We kept walking through an intricate hallway of my well-oiled machine. Every day I see the inner workings of the life-tracks grid, and I’m amazed at what I built. Every single part fits perfectly with the ones next to it. Everything fits perfectly together and makes it work. If I add that to my gratefulness for today. It may give me a better score overall. I can only get it at 2.3 so far.

 

We turned the corner and got to the Upgrade Lab’s doors. Every time the sign “Proceed With Caution. No Life-Tracks Systems of Any Kind in This Lab” shocks me. Everyone in the inner workings of the city should not need signs.

The Lab’s guards saw me and got upright.

“More life, Sir!” they said in unison.

“Thank you so much for all your hard work,” I answered. I was surprised by how well I was doing. Finally, we got inside the Lab. 

“The engineers seem happy. That’s a first.”

“Yes, Sir, they are. Everyone is expectant to give you good news for the Upgrade, Sir.” Noted Sig.

When I saw Kellen Nirdut, all my calm, stable state disappeared. 

“More life, everyone!” I said.

“More life, Sir,” Engineer Pankam and Nirdut greeted me.

“We have good news, Sir.”

“Let’s see it!” I walked over to the beautifully clean and shiny new machinery. I saw my reflection in the big tank, and I looked tired. If “I” think I look tired, they probably think I look tired and stressed or angry. Do they have any empathy for me? They only feel fear.

 

“Go ahead,” I smiled, looking at engineer Kellen in the eyes. That motherfucker is the reason my anger numbers are off the charts. I made sure my smile seemed sincere. He may have had a breakthrough. I made eye contact with Pankam, too. He’s silent, but I’ve seen him work. He’s good. 

 

Engineer Kellen pointed at a recent addition to the power source he invented. A small box with a lot of cables coming into it. Those look like too many wires.

“Sir, this fresh addition to the transformer will be the key to performing the upgrade. This is an energy augmentation chamber.”

“How does it work?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“I subdivided aentropic flow into smaller intervals through these inputs,” Kellen pointed at the wires going into the box.

“It enhanced each flow pathway with a cloning node. Each aentropic atom gets cloned here and immediately flows out to avoid overflow.” Said Pankam.

 

“How did you solve random aentropic multiplication?” I asked. I knew it would fail because of the aentropy itself. But, it a-l-w-a-y-s wants to be more. To grow. To change.

“This tracker counts multiplications. If it counts more than one multiplication per atom, the machine stops,” said Kellen, pointing to a counter on the box.

“What happens after that?”

“It turns itself back up and continues, Sir.”

“How much output does it get to?” I asked.

“So far, with this size augmentation chamber, it almost doubles, Sir.”

 

“Is that enough power?” I knew the answer, so I asked.

“Not yet, Sir. If this works, we will multiply augmentation chambers, and that amount of power could get us the power for your Upgrade, Sir.”

 

And there it was, the fucking lack of responsibility of these engineers. It came right out of his mouth. And he didn’t even blink. This guy needs to realize his lack of personal responsibility for this upgrade. 

I looked at Sigeler. He missed the lack of responsibility. Pankam didn’t notice what Kellen Nurdit just had said, either. My anger level was again on the fucking rise.

 

“Kellen,” I drawled. Pacing myself to not explode. “Did you just realize you mentioned the upgrade as MY upgrade… and not OUR upgrade?”

Kellen started perspiring. Pankam’s irises opened. Sigeler looked at me. Sig knew what was about to happen. Pankam thought a spanking was coming for his friend.

 

Kellen almost crying… “No… Sir, I apologize; I didn’t realize I said your upgrade. It’s our upgrade. I know that. We must accomplish this upgrade to be safe from glitches, Sir.”

 

I let it go. My wrist alarm kept vibrating. Who the fuck designed this alarm? I’m supposed to be calming down! This thing shoudl stop shaking. It’s annoying me even more. 

“Let’s see it working, shall we?”

Kellen smiled, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and signaled Pankam to turn a big triangular switch on at the console. Kellen waited for the system to start up fully to turn on the purple round switch at the augmentation chamber controls. Lots of fresh energy overflowed the transformer, getting it to twenty-six percent. That was a joke. It is better than the thirteen percent we were at a few weeks ago.

 

“Sir, we could also do another thing to speed up when we can upgrade.”

“Let’s hear,” I said. I was curious about the other idea.

“Sir, we could use this new technology in our current grid, and that would eliminate, to my calculations… sixty-nine percent of glitches, Sir.”

“Yeah, but not the one hundred percent our citizens are expecting—”

“No, not one hundred, Sir.”

 

And then… it happened… aentropy showed up. Aentropy is the energy of change. Our Chief enemy showed up. This is the thing. It’s the thing that no one else in this freaking city seems to understand other than ME. The freaking multiplication went up. Aentropy wants more ways to be. More life. Wants to live more. Each atom multiplies into more atoms. There was more and more aenergy. Until smoke came out of the output of the stupid augmentation chamber. But there was a problem. Aentropic smoke is not pretty. It’s deadly. Of course, the chamber safety mechanism did not work.

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Kellen screamed.

Pankam turned it off immediately. But it’s aentropy. The flow doesn’t shut off by switching it off. The aenergy kept flowing to the augmentation chamber. It built up. The chamber popped open, smoking and sending an expanding ball of aenergy right into MY new transformer. 

The beautiful new transformer that I put my heart and soul into designing so that it has three hundred percent output from the current one turned into flames. The explosion was expansive. The shield worked. Kellen putting up protection around himself saved him. Just like the outside sands and wind do when anyone steps outside. Just like what happened in the fucking Big Mistake. One miss-calculation, and you disintegrate. One fucking Big Mistake.

 

Pankam was still alive behind the controls shield. I got in front of Sigeler to shield him. He had made himself into a ball and was primarily intact thanks to his half-energic shielding and my protection. Unfortunately, I couldn’t cover every single part of his body, and he had a few burns on his head, hands, and legs. But not too bad. I helped him get up and sent him to the closest infirmary.

“If you see a thermal, get them to cool you down immediately!” He walked to the door, but she stood there watching. He wanted to see what had happened. Sigeler wasn’t so severely burned to leave right away.

 

My wrist alarm was vibrating so hard my arm was vibrating. I need to find out who the fuck designed this stupid wrist alarm and fire them. I stopped it without lifting my sleeve. Kellen slowly stood up. His hair was fully standing up as if it were wires with aenergy flowing through them. He was clearly in shock, looking at the disaster in front of him. Pankam was silent, still under cover. 

From what I saw, the controls backing was black. The overcrowded snake of cables was gone. The augmentation box was gone. My transformer was dark black. Dead. All burned. Destroyed after a growing ball of aenergy hit it. It was all gone.

Every time I see this kind of destruction, I am reminded of my fundamental mistake. I know I made it. Even though everyone believes it was Ryro’s fault. It wasn’t. It was my fault. I have to live knowing all by myself. It’s my guilt. I have to keep paying the price for it. Every day. Each hour. Every single minute. And nothing that I do. Creating this amazingly marvelous city where no one has to experience the painful reality of making a mistake seems enough.

 

Then… I took out of my pocket my anger tracker notebook.

I walked over to Kellen. “You see this? You see this?” I got closer to him.

“THIS is my anger tracker… Why did I have to invent an anger tracker?” I paused for extra drama. “Because of you. Open it! Look at any page.”

I started a rant, holding the notebook next to my face. “What am I angry at here?… YOU.”

I turned to another page. “What am I angry at here? YOU.”

I turned to another page. “What am I angry at here? YOU!”

“Here? Here? Also, here? I keep turning the pages and repeating. I’m angry at you, every single day. Why? Because I can’t upgrade these people without enough fucking power to turn on my upgrading new transformer. I can’t even turn it on.” I said. I stopped myself there. But then more anger overcame me. “Do you know what I thought today?”

Kellen Nurdit nodded no.

“I might have developed a relationship with my anger. I thought I needed to be angry, to be creative. Record after record after record on my anger tracker. The name I’m angry at every-single-time is YOU. Nobody else. I’m not angry at me. I’m not angry with other people. It’s anger at you.” I said. I took a long breath.

 “I just realized that getting rid of this anger is getting rid of YOU. You. Out. At once. I fire you! Get out of MY Lab… please.”

I looked at Pankam. He looked down when our eyes crossed. Sigeler was still at the door, watching.

Kellen started walking to the door. Tears rolling down his chicks like they were running away from him.

I was so angry I actually did not care. I made a grown engineer cry. Pulling off a splinter is always painful. Yet, it has to be done.

 

Pankam and Sig were quiet. Until Sig said, “Sir, this will obviously delay the upgrade. Besides replacing, rebuilding, rethinking, re… I don’t know what, Sir, we need to choose and bring up to date a new engineer. I’ll get right on it.”

 

This is the price for incompetence. My incompetence in not firing Kellen sooner. I was too slow. I apologize.

 

“Sir, I will update your speech right now. I can reschedule the meeting about the trees with the Arborium people. You should cool down before the address.”

“Please, reschedule for this afternoon or tomorrow.”

Sigeler left the room. I looked at Pankam.

“Don’t screw up,” I said, leaving the lab.

 

I walked to my small private lab next door. No one would be there. I needed some time alone to recover from this. I sat down next to the beautiful window. What a breathtaking view from over here. I took a breath. That was difficult. I realized why the stress alarm kept making the alarm go off. My arm was being called. I was being called. My left hand was floating in pieces around me.

I keep being called from the outside. The deadly outside. Maybe death is calling me? I stood there looking at the floating molecules. They want to go somewhere outside the dome.

I was so emotionally screwed up that I let my molecules go. I closed my eyes and let myself dissipate into quanta.