Quantum Dream: An Epic Science Fiction Adventure Novel Read online

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  Quantum Dream

  Gadi Migdal

  Copyright © 2019 Gadi Migdal

  All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

  Contact: [email protected]

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2 Taige

  Chapter 3 City

  Chapter 4 Bruce

  Chapter 5 Ship

  Chapter 6 Family

  Chapter 7 Archie

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9 General

  Chapter 10 Thomas

  Chapter 11 Whole

  Chapter 12 Olivia

  Chapter 13 The Seventh

  Chapter 14 Development

  Chapter 15 Exposure

  Chapter 16 Earth

  Chapter 17 Nikki

  Chapter 18 Insights

  Chapter 19 Education

  Chapter 20 Louie

  Chapter 21 Guilt

  Chapter 22 Ruben

  Chapter 23 Purpose

  Chapter 24 Clifford

  Chapter 25 Prague

  Chapter 26 Fear

  Chapter 27 Agreement

  Chapter 28 Planets

  Chapter 29 Communication

  Chapter 30 Heroism

  Chapter 31 Sorrow

  Chapter 32 Direction

  Chapter 33 Decision

  Chapter 34 Girl

  Chapter 35 Wholeness

  Chapter 36 Flower

  Chapter 37 Control

  Chapter 38 Mists

  Chapter 39 Awakening

  Chapter 40 Beginning

  About the Author

  Message from the Author

  “History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.”

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Chapter 1

  Exchange

  The she-slave was dying.

  Nola knew it as soon as she entered the big hall and smelled the tang of mold. It was a different smell from the scent of flowers that usually prevailed. The smell of birth and creativity was replaced with the stench of death and stagnation.

  The she-slave was having difficulty moving her large body. Her color was darker than usual, and she did not touch the food that the helpers brought her.

  “When did she lay her last batch?” Nola asked one of the helpers. “More than seven hours ago, Your Honor,” transmitted the helper in obvious distress.

  Nola felt the start of an anxiety attack coming on but promptly suppressed it. A good coordinator always has control of herself. She hesitated for a moment and then, for the first time in years, tried to communicate with the she-slave.

  “Ma’am, are you feeling alright? Can I help you with anything?” she transmitted to the she-slave.

  As always, she received no response.

  Without a word, Nola turned and left the hall, to the terrace of the egg-laying floor. The cluster sprawled far in the direction of the light from above, its vast gardens disappearing beyond her line of vision.

  She took a deep breath and ordered herself to calm down. Aware of the millions of eyes following her every movement, Nola considered her options. The she-slave was dying; of that she had no doubt. After her death, the cluster would undergo a significant upheaval. As cluster stability was top priority, they would need a new she-slave. Nola activated her implant, and the nurse supervisor immediately appeared before her. “Prepare another she-sla-... egg-layer,” Nola ordered, and immediately disconnected.

  The situation was affecting her concentration. On regular days, use of the term “she-slave” to describe the egg-layer could cause confusion among the cluster’s members. At this moment, however, it didn’t matter. Nola’s fate had been sealed along with that of the dying egg-layer. The irony did not escape her — her final act as coordinator would be to coordinate her own death.

  She returned to the hall and strode towards the elevators. Workers, caregivers, guards, pollinators, gatherers, weeders and helpers — all female — all sensed Nola’s mood and moved out of her way, hurrying to disappear from her sight. Nola got into an elevator alone. Nobody came in with her. She ordered the elevator door to close, but did not specify a destination floor. Alone in the elevator, silence surrounded her and her thoughts.

  The law was clear: the death of the egg-layer portended the death of her coordinator. The new egg-layer would choose a new, young coordinator, and the old coordinator would be put to death. Strange, she had never thought about it as something that affected her personally. “Old?” Nola felt anger rise and fill her suddenly. She was only thirty-four; the stupid she-slave was dying too young. “It’s not fair!” she shouted into the elevator and immediately went silent. Elevator security cameras were monitored by the lieutenants.

  She straightened up and stared quietly at the elevator doors. There was no choice but to recognize the situation for what it was. The she-slave was supposed to live for at least another seven decades. The premature death of the she-slave meant Nola’s premature death.

  She forced herself to relax and ordered the elevator to go up to her offices. She had a lot more to do before she could — before she would be forced — to complete her role. First, and most importantly, she would have to update the city council. As though in a distant dream, she broadcast a brief update: “Cluster 37 egg-layer dying, prepare new candidates.”

  ‘This isn’t possible’, she thought. After all these years they would kill her without a hint of hesitation. She felt her self-control begin to collapse. She would be dead within several days.

  There was one more coordination that needed to be done. Never before had she initiated contact with another coordinator. Fatigued, she leaned back against the wall of the elevator and broadcast to the neighboring clusters’ coordinators, “Prepare males.” They all confirmed her message was received. They all knew the meaning of it, but not one expressed sorrow, concern, or words of encouragement for Nola.

  The implant beeped and shook her from her thoughts. One of the guards appeared before her, “Your Honor, we have an emergency in the lower sunflower gardens.”

  “Describe the situation,” commanded Nola, who instantly snapped back into her coordinator role.

  “Parasites in the fertilizer,” the guard replied.

  “On my way, coordinator out,” answered Nola. She transmitted an order to the elevator to go up to the gardens. Maybe if she immersed herself in her work, she could forget the condition of the she-slave. After all, it was beyond her capability to influence the she-slave’s health or her own future.

  When the elevator doors opened into the enormous garden, the yellows and greens that spread out before her flooded her vision. Sunflowers, as tall as she was, filled the enormous hall in orderly, well-tended rows.

  Nola marched straight to the opening of the service from where the guard had contacted her. Hundreds of confused cluster members who, under normal circumstances, pollinated, irrigated, watered, plowed and gathered, walked around idly. The declared emergency forced them to stop working.

  The place was in a state of chaos. Nola activated her implant and ordered everyone to stop. The entire hall froze. Not a worker nor a farmer
moved a muscle. Everyone awaited the coordinator’s instructions.

  Nola located the guard of the service entrance.

  “Show me the parasites,” she demanded. The guard approached the heap of fertilizer and pointed with her upper right hand to the lower section of the pile. Nola moved closer and looked closely. The guard was right; the fertilizer heap was swarming with aphids.

  She looked around and found the reason for the aphid explosion. The fertilizer heaps were too high for this period of the sunflowers’ life cycle. The compost was fermenting before the workers were able to load it into the wheelbarrows destined for the fertilizer machines. It seemed that the death of the she-slave caused instability among the fertilizer distribution workers on the lower floors, and they increased their activity.

  Nola turned to several cluster members who stood nearby.

  “Get all of the fertilizer out of here and throw it in the waste pile outside,” she transmitted to them. Without a word they turned and began to carry out her order.

  “Check all the plants and make sure that the contaminated ones and all of the insects on them are destroyed,” she ordered the remaining cluster members. The hall, which until now had been quiet, at once filled with activity.

  She pondered the situation for a moment. The sunflowers, like the rest of the crops, fed the cluster. Damage to the harvest would further weaken the cluster at a time when it was already weak. Her augmented brain quickly worked out the possibilities. The technology for growing the sunflowers was reliable. The thousands of colored lights in the growth chamber confirmed maximal growth rate. A sunflower garden yielded a full crop once a month and served as an important source of oil production for feeding the nursery. But the technology was not sufficient to prevent aphids and other pests from destroying the crop, so working hands were needed to clean and remove the pests before they moved to the neighboring gardens. Luckily, she had countless such workers.

  She did not hesitate before passing on a sweeping order to all of the cluster’s farmers, “Stop whatever you are doing and check the crops thoroughly for insects. If you identify insects or insect eggs - destroy them all. Report back to me on my command. Coordinator out.”

  From her twenty-two years of experience, she was able to feel the halting of the supply chain that sustained the cluster, as millions of farmers hurried to check their crops, leaf by leaf.

  She set an automatic reminder for herself to send all the farmers an update request in exactly two hours. In the meantime, she had to check the fertilizer production and its distribution. Her many years of experience told her that the problem lay in the transport of the fertilizer, and not in its production. She hurried to check and transmitted the same question to each of the garden managers amongst the cluster, “When did we last fertilize the crops? Report back immediately. Coordinator out.” Nola sat down on the floor and closed her eyes. She knew she had about ten seconds before she would receive replies. And then... a torrent of responses flooded her head; all at once hundreds of garden managers reported on the fertilization status of their gardens. The implant absorbed the answers without concern for the large amount of information, and her practiced memory cataloged each in order. The flow of information lasted for over three minutes.

  Finally, Nola knew the status of all the gardens. Now she had no doubt that the slave’s imminent death was beginning to affect the cluster. In nearly all of the lower gardens there was a surplus of fertilizer, while the upper ones had a shortage.

  Nola returned to the elevator and ordered it to descend to the fertilizer level. The elevator stopped at the fertilizer delivery floor. When the doors opened, Nola was hit with the smell of compost. She breathed in deeply; the smell contained a trace of wet leaves, the smell of play. Fragments of images of bare feet running on fallen leaves passed through her mind. Fragments of a distant childhood that had long since vanished.

  She shook her head. Over two decades had passed since the last time she had thought about her childhood in the city, but she had more urgent things to do.

  She looked around. The activity of the delivery hall looked as it should, but Nola knew the truth. She transmitted an order to the hall’s workers to stop, and everyone froze just as it had happened in the sunflower garden. Nola transmitted a second order to the fertilizer delivery hall workers, “Transfer all of the fertilizer that you have here to the gardens on the upper floors. Also, go to the gardens of the apples, the loquats, the oranges, onions, tomatoes, beans, papaya, and squash in the lower gardens and take any pallets of fertilizer that haven’t been distributed. Transfer those to the upper gardens as well and distribute them according to instructions that I will give you later on. Notify me when the task is completed. Coordinator out.”

  Nola turned back to the elevator, while the hall exploded with activity. Again, she considered her next steps; she had made a mistake, the amounts of fertilizer were too big. Evidently there was also a problem on the fertilizer production level. She transmitted to the production floor, “Slow the fertilizer production to half of the current output, until further orders from me. Coordinator out.” Nola noted that she would have to check all the gardens in the next few days, to make sure that there were no more mistakes in the production and distribution of the fertilizer.

  She went up to her bright living quarters, which were situated, per her instruction, close to the surface. Such errors in the production and transport of the fertilizer were unusual, and there was no doubt that the reason for the error was the approaching death of the she-slave.

  Her own approaching death.

  She was reminded of the severity of her situation — so many years of service to the cluster and yet they would soon slaughter her mercilessly.

  Nola closed her eyes. ‘This isn’t really happening,’ she thought. ‘This is just a dream; soon I’ll wake up.’ A sudden suffocating feeling and an intense need for sunlight and clean air overwhelmed her. She took advantage of her authority and went up to the uppermost garden, ten floors above her living quarters.

  She exited the elevator. The direct sun blinded her and she blinked. Then she closed her eyes and slowly breathed in the air, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her cheeks. Gradually she opened her eyes and allowed the sun to penetrate them directly until they began to tear up. Maybe the sun could fix everything and wake her up from this bad dream.

  “I envy you, my beauty, I wish I could take your place, my girl. You are going to go to a magical and pleasurable place, and will be a very good coordinator; I love you, my beauty,” Nola recalled an old voice.

  “Memories from another life, Honorable Coordinator?” A familiar transmission invaded her thoughts. She turned her head and saw General Bud before her.

  How had she guessed? “Just giving my body its daily dose of vitamin D, General,” Nola transmitted in a forced calm, then turned towards the cluster opening.

  The general’s jaw gaped to the sides and let out a strange noise. Nola stopped where she was and stared at her. Was this laughter? If so, it was intended especially for her. Cluster members never used facial expressions or sounds when communicating amongst themselves.

  “What can I assist you with, General?”

  The general looked at her quietly. For what seemed like a very long moment, she did not reply. Was she hesitating? Nola eyed her with surprise. She had never seen any hesitation among the members of the cluster. They didn’t have that ability. They always acted according to clear commands and instructions. “Your Honor, I would like, if you would be so kind as to join me for a short walk in the garden,” the general finally transmitted.

  There was no easy way to refuse such a request, especially when it was coming from the second most important figure in the cluster.

  Nola joined her. They padded along the paths of the well-tended uppermost garden. The cluster’s waste pile rose in the distance. Nola quickly checked the status of the removal of the fertilizer fr
om the lower sunflower garden and confirmed that it had been completed successfully.

  “It’s hard to set aside work, even when one knows that the end is near, right, Your Honor?” the General noted.

  “The cluster is the only thing that matters, General,” Nola immediately gave the routine answer. That was the first rule that she learned when she had arrived at the cluster twenty-two years earlier.

  The General made that strange laughing voice of hers again, “That’s right, Your Honor, and replacing an egg-layer is an important event in the life of the cluster. It is important to be sure that not a single detail is forgotten to ensure the safety of the cluster.”

  Nola forced herself to remain polite. “I am aware of that, General, I am certain that there is no need for me to remind you that I am the cluster’s coordinator. I sent all the transmissions and confirmed the execution of all the preparations. Do not worry - cluster continuity and safety will be upheld. The neighboring clusters have already begun to prepare males; they will arrive five days from now. The new egg-layer will be ready for their arrival. After mating, she will go to this city to choose a new coordinator from among the new candidates that they are preparing for her, and then she will return here and replace the sick egg-layer.”

  The General continued to walk alongside Nola and answered without looking at her. “I have no intention of insulting Your Honor, and I know that you are well-acquainted with the timetables. There is another subject that I wanted to discuss with you.”

  “What subject, General?”

  “The subject of your survival after the exchange, Your Honor.”

  “My survival, General? Do you think that I intended to try to escape? Or that I would try to sabotage the exchange?” Nola asked with restrained anger.

  “No, Your Honor, on the contrary. I worry that you will not try to escape and that the excited mob will kill you during the exchange.”