NAAN (The Rabanians Book 1) (2 page)

After the events in the workshop, Daio was able to get his hands on several low level yellow boxes and improve their performance. His surfing capabilities improved dramatically.

Daio’s decision to keep our small family together was a turning point in the history of the galaxy. Its full weight can only be appreciated on that scale. I have no doubt there were times in later years that Daio wished he had dropped me off in one of the orphan houses and washed his hands of me, but he didn't. He was the reason I received an education, and not just any education. It matched my capabilities more perfectly than anyone else in the whole of Seragon.

Desperate for fast money Daio started asking around about selling one of the yellow boxes he’d improved.  That was how he met Revsheka.

Mr. Revsheka owned an electronics repair shop. It was one of the many scattered across the suburbs of Seragon City. The store was a large space with a long counter separating the customers from shelves loaded with cards, acceleration boxes, and other terminal parts. Behind the shelves were a small office and a workshop. In the shop Revsheka’s occasional workers disassembled old hardware and reassembled working units. It was possible to find all sorts of illegal additions in the store if you knew how to ask.

Mr. Revsheka was a chubby man. His bald head and curled down lips gave him a tough-looking appearance. He was well known in some communities for the unique boxes he assembled. Daio heard about Mr. Revsheka by accident and thought he might buy one of the upgraded yellow boxes. 

His first time in the shop he hadn’t known about the secret language of the black market deals done within. Lucky for him there weren't many customers in the store. Daio told us about that frightening first meeting. Mr. Revsheka swooped down on him from the other side of the counter as if he were plucking a fish from the water. He grabbed Daio by his shirtfront and pulled him along the counter all the way to the passage at the end. He then dragged him into the office and ripped off his clothes. When he was satisfied he was not carrying a recorder, he went through Daio's backpack. He stopped when he found the yellow box.

At first Mr. Revsheka threatened to hand Daio over to the yellow police, but the terrified look on Daio's face, and his curiosity to know how good the yellow box really was, stopped him. He hooked it up to a terminal and quickly checked its capabilities. The performance statistics were so good that he started to think it was a trap all over again. He became threatening, and accused Daio of trying to set him up.  My brother pleaded with him. He told Revsheka he was new to the area. He told him that he was supporting his two younger brothers, and explained how badly he needed the money. He tried to make Revsheka understand that he just didn't know how things were done in Seragon and he hadn’t meant any harm.

Finally Mr. Revsheka was convinced. Maybe it was Daio’s pale and frightened face or perhaps it was the fat man’s greedy desire to profit from my brother’s skills. Maybe it was both. He told Daio to take his box and get the hell out of there, but to come back the next day if he really was looking for a job. When Daio got home that day he was as pale as a carbohydrate cube.

“Can you disassemble these terminals to the card level?” asked Mr. Revsheka the next day, pointing to a pile of terminals in the workshop.

“No problem,” answered Daio, his hands on his hips. “I can also test the cards to see if they are worth anything.”

“We’ll see,” said Revsheka. “I pay for services rendered on a daily basis and reserve the right to fire anyone I want whenever I want.”

Daio nodded. He thought about telling Mr. Revsheka his wasn’t the only junkyard around, and that he had no intention of working for him permanently, but he needed the job. He decided that it would be best not to test his boss’s patience on the first day. 

  Before long the terminals were disassembled and the cards had all been checked. Daio could tell Mr. Revsheka was pleased even though his face gave no clue. 

One morning, a few weeks later, an angry customer rushed into the store and placed a large box on the counter.

“I want my money back,” he said loudly.

Mr. Revsheka gave him a quick look and then gazed around at the other customers in the store.

“This acceleration box does nothing,” continued the customer loudly.

Revsheka realized he was intentionally trying to make a scene so as to discourage the other customers. He walked towards him calmly. “Are you sure you are using it properly?”

“Are you saying I don't know how to surf?”

“I don't know you. How could I know how capable you are?  I think either you don't know how to use this accelerator or your surfing capabilities are, how should I say it politely, limited. Acceleration takes something that moves and increases its speed. If you are not moving there is no acceleration. Zero times any number is still zero.”

“Are you saying I am zero?”

“No. I am saying that before complaining, you should at least make sure you are capable of using the equipment.”

“What is there to know?” growled the man.

Revsheka looked at him and smiled. He could not give a better answer than the man’s own words. Behind the complainer he noticed another customer begin to smile.

“People like you give this profession a bad name,” said Revsheka. He placed his hands on the box and pushed it towards the man.

“I want my money back,” said the man.

“And I say it is not my fault that you did not bother to learn how to use your equipment,” answered Revsheka.

The man gave him an angry look. “I can make a lot of trouble for you.”

Revsheka looked at him and smiled, ”You are a fool, but I don't think you are that much of a fool.”

The man stared at Revsheka. The shop owner gave him an icy look in return.

“I can improve the performances of the box,” Daio interrupted.

Mr. Revsheka and the man both looked at him.

“It won't matter how it performs if he doesn’t know how to use it,” scolded Revsheka.

“I can set it up so that by the end of the week your surfing performance will improve dramatically.”

Mr. Revsheka turned his head back to the customer reluctantly.

“And how much will this cost?” asked the man.

“For a good customer like you I’ll do it for free,” said Daio, then immediately looked at Revsheka hoping he hadn't gone too far.

The man looked back at Revsheka and then slowly pushed the box to the left towards Daio.

“It won't take long,” said Daio still looking at Revsheka for approval.

Revsheka nodded slightly and Daio took the box into the workshop.

He returned it to the counter a short while later. “That should do it. Let's talk again in few days,” said Daio as the man came forward to collect his box.

“You can count on it,” the man replied, then took the box and left the shop.

That moment was the beginning of a new career for Daio. The angry customer was pleased and word got around that Daio could turn any novice surfer into a fearful scrambler in days. Two months later Daio launched a new service for upgrading accelerators. At first he collaborated with Mr. Revsheka, who channeled customers to him, but after a while he didn't need him anymore.

I was eleven then. A few months later we moved into a larger house that was closer to the city. It became our center of operations. Daio and Dug were doing most of the work, but as time passed I joined the business as well. At first I built boxes based on their designs, but I learned fast and soon I was in charge of the in-house workshop.

Most of our accelerators were custom jobs, but as I gathered more knowledge I began to think independently. Before long, in addition to the custom made boxes, I started building some based on my own ideas.

A major part of my time was spent on network testing the performances of our boxes. I loved this part of the job. I often found myself wandering the network looking for strange, remote planets. Sometimes I set little scrambling traps just to pass the time. While waiting for someone to fall into one of them I watched movies about those far off planets. I was fascinated by their wild nature. I didn't know if the movies were accurate, the network was scrambled to a point where everything could be faked, but at the time this didn't bother me. I never would have expected the role nature would eventually play in my life.

  Looking back on this period of my life, my mental capabilities were like a little chick still inside the shell passively drawing nourishment from its surroundings. I was slowly integrating myself into the family business. Just being around the workshop however was a catalyst for my talents. It was like someone suddenly injecting a genetically engineered super food into the shell. My brain began to take on many aspects of the accelerators I was building. As time passed my capabilities grew rapidly until my mind was a hundred times more powerful than any available accelerator.

I didn't know this was happening. I was an introverted child. I kept my work to myself, hidden even from my brothers. They saw the yellow boxes I made and hooked up to my terminal, and they knew I was trying new things, but they had no idea how far I was taking things. They had warned me about the risks of getting caught, but they never suspected what was really going on. When I no longer needed the yellow boxes they assumed it had simply been a phase of my development. They thought that I had just given it up.

I don't know why I never told them that I was doing everything in my head. I knew my capabilities were not normal, but I guess I misjudged how unusual I was. At first, when my brothers were exposed to my capabilities accidently, they thought my skills were only a coincidence. To them I was a child whose scribbling accidently ends up looking like something more.

One day Daio saw me making a very fast neck movement that he thought was impossible. Neck movement is not typical with neck sensors. These sensors are built to sense throat vibrations or silent vocal vibrations. These vibrations are translated to commands that are transmitted to the network. I guess the neck movement added a small change to the pitch of the vibration. He smiled at me and asked me to repeat it. When I repeated the surfing move three times, and on the fourth time I added a little twist that decelerated the surfing abruptly, his smile faded away into disbelief. I could tell that he was shocked, but he didn’t say anything. He never had time to digest what exactly had happened. A few days later the storm swept over us and we were pulled into the maelstrom.

The Governor of Bull, in the Kirpa system, escaped his planet just ahead of a coup attempt. He fled to the tiny planet of Korma at the far end of the planetary system. He disappeared for a few weeks and allowed his troops to regain control. When he tried to return and again take up his office, the citizens of Bull were shocked by the news of his death. 

His funeral was broadcast on every news network. His wife was shown wiping away a tear as his young daughter looked around in confusion. Supporters who’d fled with him after the coup were in attendance. The videos were taken from several directions by multiple, independent cameras.

It all looked very authentic but it wasn’t. The Governor was alive and well. There was no funereal for his family to take part in.

When the news arrived on Korma the Governor set up a press conference to prove he was alive. The scrambled scenes from the funeral were so real that most people were convinced it was the press conference that was faked. The whole situation was only another example of how far information scrambling had twisted reality.

Even the story of Bull’s Governor was relatively tame. Except for his injured pride, no one was hurt. There were many bloody incidents of information scrambling as well. Without living witnesses the only knowledge of them was indirect. They became legends, told on dark nights around campfires.

One of the legends told of the Planet Ziltan where all life was wiped out in a single day. It was said that it started out as a simple extortion attempt that had gone wrong. In the confusion, control over the entire nuclear power infrastructure was lost. The prevailing view was that the control protocols for one of the stations were scrambled and somehow this spread through the
network to the others
. No one was left to tell the tale of what exactly happened there but few doubted the cause of such total annihilation.