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Horizon 2050

Edna’s Garden – Chapter 4

Edna's Garden - Chapter 3
Follow the story of Edna's Garden. An 8-year-old girl with a passion for nature will turn the world upside down with her data experiments. By Horizon 2050.

Enter Edna’s Garden and discover how an 8-year-old girl with a passion for nature will turn the world upside down with her data models

A story by Miquel Morales.

Jumping in just now? Check out all previous chapters of Edna’s Garden.

Edna’s Garden – Chapter 4

Once the bell that signalled the end of the school day rang, Edna waited for her classmates to leave the room while pretending to review some notes from what had been a seemingly never-ending lecture about early Internet era social networks. She didn’t have to wait for long; it had been a particularly boring one, and the other kids rushed out through the door. Boring not because of the topic –Edna found it fascinating that people back then would go around posting photos of their faces with dog ear filters on– it was more a problem with Mr. Barnum’s teaching methods. The aging history teacher had a correspondingly aging way of presenting information. He barely touched the holo-node at the centre of the classroom. Instead, he insisted on bringing from home one of those old screen projectors to illustrate his lectures.

It was so unpractical, being able to show only one image at a time on one of the classroom walls as opposed to the holo-node, which displayed a personalised, interactive set of screens for every single student. But Mr. Barnum loved his gadgets, and the school loved Mr. Barnum. 

When the last classmate had left, Edna opened her bag and took out her sister’s old wristband. The unassuming bracelet displayed a holographic menu when Edna touched it. She scrolled down the various items and made sure that everything was set. Perfect. She hid the bracelet under the sweater’s sleeve and started making her way out the school’s premises.  

It had been nice of her sister to let her borrow her old band. It was way clunkier than the latest model Dad had bought her for her birthday, but it would still do the trick. As an 8-year-old, Edna was not supposed to have a wristband. After early-21st century research had proven that too many screens could negatively affect children’s development, official guidelines had been put in place to limit tech use to the essentials for kids under 10.

It was also a great way for parents to control their kids, as almost nothing could be done these days without a wristband. All serious payments required one. It also stored official identification documents and worked as the main point of contact for services ranging from cars to file exchange. Underage kids carried instead a physical ID card with very limited capabilities. As limited as their parents wanted them to be, which, in Edna’s case, was completely.  

“Well, hello, young lady. How did the day unfold, learned much?”  

Peter the butler had been waiting for Edna just outside the school gates to escort her back to the apartment. Edna could tell in his eyes that he didn’t enjoy too much his prison guard role, but he was a man of principles who did what had to be done. Thankfully, that often included not telling her Dad and Bianca about Edna’s little adventures. Unfortunately, he would not be convinced this time around. Edna’s behaviour had “crossed a line,” as Bianca had said. 

“Just that old habits never die, Peter.” Edna strolled down the street without making eye contact. Peter was good at reading her face, and she was nervous about what she was about to do.  

“Well, if you are talking about your stubbornness, young lady, I can tell you that much is true.” 

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Central Park West was packed with school kids returning home. As they made their way down the avenue, Peter and Edna had to sort through the groups of frenetic children unleashing their wildest side after a full day indoors. Edna watched how one of the groups passed a ball above the park’s wall, one half on each side of it. She saw a red-headed woodpecker resting on one the still leafless branches of one of the trees right across the fence. A rather big male for the species, or so Edna thought.

She wondered what The Pond would look like right now. Surely the flower buds had started insinuating themselves in between the plant stems. It would be Spring soon, and the ducklings were probably just about to hatch. Edna thought of her favourite duck family, a curious group made up of an older matriarch and three younger males who she had to police more often than she probably would had liked. Maybe she would have to handle a few new additions in the coming weeks. 

“To be honest, Ms. Edna, I must say I am surprised of how well you have taken this whole being grounded scenario. At first, I thought you it would take you less than a day to run away or put up some sort of fit. But I must apologise for jumping to conclusions too quick. After all, you will soon be a grownup, and you are clearly becoming more responsible and focused. In fact, I…” 

Edna was gone. She had taken advantage of the crowds that formed at the traffic lights in Columbus Square and vanished as soon as Peter directed a confused look at a young couple dressed in matching neon-lit outfits. She was now descending into the subway station, feeling a wave of excitement and anticipation as she jumped down the stairs looking over the shoulder for any signs of the butler. With no pursuer in sight, Edna crossed the station’s hall and used her sister’s wristband to access the boarding area. She tried to remember what her sister had told her. Just hold it close to the screen on top of the turnstile, on the left-hand side.  

As strange as it sounded to people whose family was of more humble means, the subway was an alien place for someone like Edna. The only subways she had ever seen were those that appeared in holo-movies and shows. Peter often said how fine and efficient the subway was, a marvel compared to the rusty, rattling subway system that was held together with scotch tape until the late 2030s. But, as far as her memory went, Edna’s only ways of transportation had been the family’s car, taxi cabs and the occasional bicycle ride around the park. No wonder she was desperate to run among the trees and get her clothes dirty with mud. She had spent her entire life in a very fancy and expensive cage. But thankfully, that cage had a little garden in it called Central Park. Or at least until Bianca got her grounded.  

Edna got herself into the first train bound for downtown and looked at the screen displaying all the stops in the line. Chinatown: 7 stops. It shouldn’t take too long. Or maybe it would take that long; Edna had no idea of how much time it took the train to go between stops. But wait. She had a wristband of her own now. She manipulated the menu until she found the answer.  

Estimated arrival time: 10 minutes. 

To be continued…

Edna’s Garden.

Discover our previous story: Nadia – Chapter I

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Horizon 2050

Edna’s Garden – Chapter 2

Edna's Garden
Enter Edna's Garden Chapter 2. How an 8-year-old girl with a passion for nature turns the world upside down with her data experiments. By Horizon 2050.

Edna’s Garden: An 8-year-old girl with a passion for nature will turn the world upside down with her data experiments

Edna’s Garden, a story by Miquel Morales.

Jumping in just now? Check out all previous chapters.

Edna’s Garden – Chapter 2

The lift swooshed up the Manhattan building where Edna had been living for the eight years of her life. The elevator shaft looked much like a tree of glass growing along the exterior of the building, with a central vertical trunk and smaller shafts branching out to the sides connecting to each apartment. Almost all new elevators were built like this nowadays — historical architecture was one of the few last bastions against urban overdevelopment in a New York that simply had run out of place after the 2040s economic boom. Edna looked at the crowded city skyline with tired eyes. Delivery drones crossed the space in between buildings, avoiding each other by just a few millimetres. This place definitely needs more green.  

“Let’s hope we can sneak you through the service door and get you cleaned up without your parents seeing us, young lady,” said Peter with a long sigh.  

“My father, Peter. She is not my mom. Plus, I don’t care what happens with her stupid dinner.” Her stepmother was throwing a party this evening to showcase her horrible paintings. She had convinced Dad to invite a renowned art critic he had once met at a corporate event. Classic Bianca, to use others’ influence for her petty little projects of self-aggrandising.  

“You might not, but your father surely does. He’s got enough on his plate as it is with work to be mediating between the two of you. Plus, we are more than an hour late.”  

The elevator door opened with a beep and Edna and Peter found themselves in the storage room behind the kitchen. Animated chatting and clinking glasses could be heard coming from the living room at the opposite side of the building floor the apartment fully occupied.   

“Quick, let’s get you cleaned up and changed into more appropriate garments,” said Peter while pulling her towards one of the many bathrooms. A voice startled them right as he was opening the door for Edna to go in.  

“Playing with dirt again, huh, Ed?” Her older sister was standing in the hallway with her arms crossed. Edna and her sister generally liked each other, but puberty was taking a toll on the way her sister treated her. They no longer shared the afternoons after school exploring alien worlds in virtual reality or fantasising about moving to a small village in the Canadian mountains where bird sounds replaced car horns. They still, however, agreed on the fact that Bianca Salazar had been a terrible addition to the family and that she had to go. At least on that, they stuck together.  

“Peter, could you please help her with those shoes full of mud? I’ll go get her clean clothes.”

The party was, as per usual, a bit too much to say the least. Edna was trying to find a quiet corner of the living room in which she could remain unnoticed and wait for the whole thing to be over. Her sister would be of no help here – she was too busy with the friends she had invited over, one of whom, Edna thought, it was pretty obvious she liked. Edna could have invited Jahmil, her school buddy and a fellow admirer of the wonders of the natural world. But she had decided to spare him the pain.

One thing was to have him sit through one of her long-winded speeches in between classes, the other one was to have him join a party of NY socialites whose level of disregard for all things fun was only comparable to how easy it seemed for them to ignore the fact that they were surrounded by the grotesque paintings of an egomaniac they didn’t even like. Edna couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over so that she could go back to her computer model of the pond and implement the updates she had come up with that day during business class.  

At least the catering was good. Little pastries and cold canapés from Martinelli’s on 5th, her favourite café in town. Peter was busy carrying trays full of them up and down the room with his usual mix of warmth and sophistication. It almost pained her to think it had been Bianca who proposed getting the food for the showcasing from Martinelli’s. She had tried to sell it as a gesture to Edna and her sister, but Edna wasn’t buying it. Too nice of a gesture for Bianca Salazar.  

“And you must be Edna,” a man’s voice said from behind. A bespectacled man wearing a flat cap and a shinny blazer was filling his plate with tiny savoury croissants and way too many olives. Definitely the art critic. A blue glow on the surface of his glasses informed Edna that he was looking something up in his augmented reality display – a kind of multitasking very popular in those days. “Your father has told me a lot about you, you know? Too bad he wasn’t able to make it today.” Unsurprisingly, her father had got caught up with one of his board meetings. Something about an activist investor. Probably nothing to do with the kind of activists that fight to save entire Amazonian ecosystems and that Edna admired so much. “So, what do you think of the paintings?” He pointed at the nearest one with a sausage-stuffed croissant. 

Edna hesitated. “Eh, you know… the colour is kind of nice?” 

“Relax,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m only here as a favour to your dad. Even he knows it’s painful to look at these things. But it’s important for Bianca. And so, it is to him. You know, your dad’s a good man. Nothing to do with the suits you tend to meet at these corporate things. 

“Yeah, he’s cool,” she said quietly, wishing her father had as much time to spend with her as he apparently had to go around making friends with artistic types. 

“Take that one, for example,” he said pointing at a big square painting across the room. It was an undecipherable pastiche of colours and shapes. “What do you think that actually is?”  

Edna smiled. All things considered; she was starting to like the man.  

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“Hmmm. An eggplant fighting a chihuahua? No! Wait. Actually, I think it is a self-portrait of Bianca. See? You can recognise her silly hat and witch-like face. And that mouth that…” 

Too late. Edna felt the presence of Bianca, who had approached the couple in the hopes of squeezing some feedback out of the art critic. Despite her apparently perfect smile, Edna could tell in her eyes that she had perfectly heard what she had just said. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Back in her bedroom, Edna finished changing her clothes and sat at her desk. It was kind of comforting to be spared the rest of the evening. She wasn’t looking forward to the “honest chat” his dad would have with her when he got home later that day. Undoubtedly, Bianca would have told him how Edna had ruined her only chance at becoming a self-sufficient artist. As if she could have sold a single one of those paintings anyway. But at least she could go back to what mattered: the pond model.  

She started by inputting the new data and variables she had collected at the park that day and then went on to fix the code with the new approach she had come up with. It took her a while to put it all together, but her face was glowing with excitement when she was done. She hit the compile button. A message appeared: insufficient power. Darn it. There was only one thing left to do. After some tweaking, she managed to connect her computing station to the apartments main power network. According to Tim345 on Reddit, it was not something a certified electrician would advise anyone to do. But what the heck. Not that anyone in that house put too much care on her anyway.  

Edna pressed the compile button again. 

The power went out with a low hum. In the absolute darkness of her room, Edna could hear Bianca’s howl piercing through the walls. 

“Edna!!!”  

To be continued…

Read the next chapter of Edna’s Garden: Edna’s Garden – Chapter 3

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Horizon 2050

Nadia — Final Chapter

Nadia
The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London. Follow the chapter I of the story of Nadia on Mission Control Center.

The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London, comes to an end

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales.

—

Jumping in now? Catch up with previous chapters.

Final Chapter

Nadia got to the address her sister had mentioned way before noon. Not because she cared about punctuality or anything like that. She hadn’t been able to sleep after the call, and there was only so much walking around to be done in a small town like Coventry. Plus, she needed to survey the area before the meeting. If the events of the past few days have told her anything, that was to always be prepared for the worse. Her sister must have thought that was a safe place to hide from the kidnappers. Nadia wouldn’t be doing her any service if she got spotted out of pure recklessness.     

In any case, there she was, hiding behind some bushes like a sloppy burglar. That was, of course, assuming her sister meant 246 Reinford Lane, Coventry and not 246 Reinford Lane, London or some other city. Hopefully not.   

It was a small house, one of those narrow and tall townhouses with a small, elevated staircase that connects the front door with the street. The curtains were closed shut on all windows, so there was not much that Nadia could make out from across the street. She examined what seemed to be the door to the basement, a rusty door at the street level with no handle or windows. A side alley led to the back of the property.   

After making sure no one besides her was lurking behind a bush, Nadia walked across the street and went into the alley. It ended abruptly on a wooden fence crowned by overflowing vegetation. Nadia went back a few steps and made a run for it. After a couple failed attempts, she managed to push herself over the fence and fell in the middle of a jungle of a garden. Plants were sprouting from literally everywhere, to the point that it was hard to distinguish the flat stones that served as the floor. The house’s back wall was covered in vines. So were the windows.   

Nadia fought her way through the greenery all the way to what seemed to be the door into the house. She tore off the vines covering it and tried pushing the handle. To her surprise, the door opened with a tiny squeak. Shhh!   

A rancid smell hanged in the air. For all she could see in the pale light coming through the open door, she was in the basement she had seen earlier. A staircase led upstairs, probably to the rest of the house. Nadia stood still and listened for a while. No sounds were coming from upstairs. She started making her way up, slowly but steady, one step at a time. The wood cracked under her feet with every step, making her cringe. But Nadia hadn’t made it half the way up when a fluorescent light turned on behind her.   

“Welcome, sister.”  

Nadia gave a jump and turned around with a racing heart. There was her sister, sitting on a worn-out leather armchair by the door.   

“You really are that easy to predict, aren’t you?” The smirk on her sister’s face brought Nadia back to her childhood days and the not-so-nice version of her sister. She had changed so much over the past years. Nadia hadn’t seen that mocking smile in a long time. Something was off. “Classic Nadia, always one step ahead, or at least happily thinking so. Well, this time I was the one ahead, wasn’t I?”  

“Ahead of what? Seriously, can you tell me what’s going on with this whole thing? How did you free yourself? Where were they keeping you?”  

“Free myself? You really don’t get it, do you? It beats you to think someone could outsmart you or want you harm. It always has.”   

“Alright, you are freaking me out, siss,” said Nadia. “Spill it. What’s going on.”      

“Why don’t you take a seat?”  

“I’m fine.”  

“As you wish,” said her sister crossing one leg on top of the other and resting her back against the armchair. “Do you recognise this?” she said holding up a card. Nadia did recognise it right away. It was the invite card that Tom had given her to get into the party. It was hard to believe only two days had passed since then. And it felt like ages ago.  

“How did you get that?”  

“Oh, it’s easy. I made it myself. You see, there’s just so much you can squeeze into such a thin material these days. Recording the data was the easy part, I just needed you to have the card with you while you were in the holovisor cabin.”  

“So Tom…”  

“Yep. He was acting on my behalf. Don’t blame him. Let’s just say he wasn’t too keen on me letting the police know about his boyfriend’s little magic tricks with his taxes. A pity he decided to make it up to you and ended up shot for it.”  

Nadia’s blood was boiling, her head spinning between confusion and sheer disbelief.   

“But why…”  

“Because it needed to be done. You had it coming all along. Since we were kids, I’ve had to deal with your oh-so-perfect aura. You know, it wasn’t that fun seeing everybody praise every little step you took while I failed at every major goal I set out to achieve. You were the one who was good with numbers, the one that made it into the good schools. Don’t you get it? I wanted to be you, have your career, your life, not have to depend on a miserable admin salary. Well, now it’s my turn.   

As much as it hurt, Nadia wasn’t entirely surprised by her sister’s revelations. She had exhibited that kind of attitude for most of their childhood. But Nadia thought they had left those years behind, grown into adults who got along just fine. Heck, she thought they had even become friendly to a certain degree. Her birthday gift sort of sealed that conception. Her sister, reaching back to one of the few things they had in common growing up: Ziza.  

She understood all of a sudden.   

“EVE”  

“Exactly. See? You are not that stupid after all. It wasn’t too complicated to install a backdoor into the AI before giving it to you. I must admit I had quite some fun telling you what to do.”  

“But everything that EVE, I mean that you told me to do was petty stuff. You couldn’t have retrieved the Duplo data through that.”  

“Agreed. But it was enough to open little wholes within the system, right where I needed them, so that I could start transferring information to the card. Worked pretty well.”     

Nadia felt so stupid. It was a very simple trick in reality. One of the world’s most protected systems, breached through carelessness and personal deceit. The wailing sound of sirens could be heard approaching in the distance.   

“I took the liberty of calling some friends,” said her sister. “They should be here any minute.”  

“What did you do with the data?”  

“Why, sell it, of course. I am now what they technically call filthy rich.”  

“I’ll tell them everything.” The sirens grew louder and louder.  

“Good luck making them believe this crazy story,” said her sister with a chuckle. “Goodbye siss, enjoy your prison cell. It will be your home for many years.”  

With that, her sister stood up and walk out into the garden. Nadia heard a crashing boom as the special operations team busted through the house’s main door.   

The End.

Discover another story: Edna’s Garden – Chapter 1

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Horizon 2050

Nadia — Chapter V

Nadia
The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London. Follow the chapter I of the story of Nadia on Mission Control Center.

Follow the story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales.

—

Jumping in now? Catch up with previous chapters.

Chapter V

“You know, it’s not the first time I deal with the likes of you. Nor it will be the last, for that matter.”

There is something unsettling about empty houses. Especially when they aren’t yours. Everything in the living room looked tidy and ready to be used, with only a thin layer of dust betraying how abandoned the place was.

As Tom had suggested, Nadia had made it out of the city under the cover of darkness. The paycard he had left her at the apartment had been useful. Tom had left her a burner phone as well. Seriously, though. What on Earth is going on? She had been played by this EVE. But how?

Nadia had gotten herself a headscarf and a cheap regular-speed train ticket to Coventry, hoping her friend would be there and willing to let her lay low for a while. Tina was her name. Her family had a big country house surrounded by fields of barley, which they mainly used in the Summer months. Nadia had been invited for a barbecue a few times with other people from college. She had met Tina in a physics class.  

Well, it wasn’t Summer, and there was no one in sight. But it was too late to go back to London, and she couldn’t risk staying at a hotel or something like that. RayStar had a big reach, and every modern establishment had AI-enabled security cameras these days. There was probably already an arrest order out there. She couldn’t risk any of her biometrics being picked up by the system.

Thankfully, Nadia was able to find a half-open window in the back of the house. Well, more like she had half-opened the window. Ooops. Anyway, she doubted they would mind at all. They had too much money in any case.

After hunting for snacks in the kitchen — cashews would do — Nadia did a full tour around the house and decided to settle down in the downstairs living room. It was nice and cosy, and the big windows would allow the upcoming morning light to wake her up early. She needed to devise a plan and get going. Staying for more than a day in that house would be too dangerous. But first, some rest.

She threw herself on a comfy couch and hugged a hand-knitted pillow with a big smile. Two seconds later she was falling into a deep slumber, her dreaming brain conjuring up old memories.    

Nadia woke up in a fright, her face covered in cold sweat from one of those nightmares only the subconscious remembers. IT was still dark. A hellish sound was coming out of her backpack. The phone. She picked it up. Unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Hey. It’s me.” Her sister.

“What the… Where are you, what’s going on?”

“246 Reinford Lane. Meet me there at noon.”

“What?”

Nadia threw the phone across the room in anger. The call had dropped. 

To be continued…

Read the next chapter: Nadia — Final Chapter

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Nadia — Chapter IV

Nadia
The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London. Follow the chapter I of the story of Nadia on Mission Control Center.

Follow the story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales.

—

Jumping in now? Catch up with previous chapters.

Chapter IV

“You know, it’s not the first time I deal with the likes of you. Nor it will be the last, for that matter.”

The woman had a distinctive voice. Coarse, yet sharp as a whistle. A slight lisp and the way she pronounced the ‘r’ betrayed her as a non-native English speaker. Eastern Europe, maybe? Hard to tell.   

“Scoundrels. Corporate leeches who would rather put their energy to nefarious use than do their actual job. Tell me: what was it, how did they get to you? Money? It’s usually money. Perhaps the promise of a shiny new job?”

Nadia tried to keep a steady face despite the woman’s determined scrutiny. A plain metallic table separated the two of them in the middle of an otherwise empty room. Exactly how one would imagine an interrogation room to look like.

“Excuse me, where exactly are we?” It had been a relatively short ride to whatever that place was, but the back of the van they had put her in had no windows. In any case, they couldn’t have gotten further than a few blocks. Somehow, the secrecy of it all made Nadia think it had less to do with the actual police and more with someone else’s particular idea of justice. Ugh, so stupid. If only she had made it for the elevator a couple of seconds earlier, the policeman’s hand wouldn’t have been able to stop the doors from closing. Guess no one is naturally prepared to run from the police at a moment’s notice.  

“Ah, she speaks!”

“I do!” said Nadia with a mocking smile. “And I can tell you right away that I don’t have the foggiest idea of what you are talking about.”

“Funny, because your friend said quite the opposite.”

“My friend?”

The woman pulled up some information on her bracelet’s screen.

“Mr… Tom Schultz. Ah, chatty fella.” Wait, how was Tom involved in any of this? “We know you stole the RayStar duplos, so let’s go straight to the point, please.”

“What?” It was impossible to hide her surprise this time around. “I did not do such… Wait. Are you even police?” Definitely not. This has RayStar written all over it.

“Who is paying you?” The woman was clearly starting to lose her temper.

The door opened and a man in a suit walked in. He leaned on to whisper something in the interrogator’s ear.

“We’re not done here,” said the woman as she reluctantly stood up and followed the man out of the room. The door locked with a beep.

Nadia finally let her guard down and allowed her body to show how nervous she really was, her right foot going up and down in an endless loop. She wished they hadn’t taken her earpiece. She could’ve used Ziza’s help with going through the events of these recent days. The duplos. But EVE had not gotten even remotely close to that data. She couldn’t have the way the system was designed. Especially not with that useless hidden attachment strategy. Plus, EVE’s target had always been the proprietary security algorithms of Nadia’s company. Or at least Nadia had assumed so, given her interest in getting close to the quantum encryption core systems. No, they must have made a mistake. Nadia hadn’t messed around with the duplo dataflows at all. Someone else had to be behind all this. Or had she missed something? She would just tell them about EVE, the attachments, the kidnapping of her sister… The door opened again. It was…

“Tom?! What on Earth…”

“Nadia, listen. There is no time.” He was all sweaty and dishevelled, his eyes full of fear behind the colourful glasses. “They know everything, they figured it all out. I’m so sorry. They had Hao’s file, and they said they would…”

“Tom!” Nadia grabbed him by the shirt and tried to shake him into making some sense. “What is going on? What are you doing here, and what did you do?”    

 “I… There is no time! They will be back any second.” He took her by the arm and the two ushered into a dimly lit hallway with concrete walls. “You need to get out of the city. Didn’t you have a friend up in Coventry? “

“I do. But my sister…” They were now running through a maze of corridors across what seemed like the basement of a large building.

“Your sister is fine, don’t worry.”

“Wait, how do you…”

“She’s fine Nadia! You need to worry about yourself right now.” Voices and steps could be heard some distance behind them. The guards were in pursuit. And getting close.

“Where is my sister?” They reached a fire escape door and Tom cracked it open, prompting the alarm to go off. The light of day filtered in, momentarily blinding Nadia.

“Remember the party the other day? Wait until nightfall and head there. You will understand everything once I’ve also left you an untraceable paycard. You shouldn’t use any of your accounts until I contact you. Not until we clear our name.”

“Tom – where is my sister!”

“Where she has been all this time. At her place.”

“What!”

“Trust me Nadia, I’ve got a plan.” He reached inside his shirt’s chest pocket and took out Nadia’s earpiece. He handed it to her and pushed her towards the door. “Now go! I’ll keep them for as long as I can.”

Flooded with questions, Nadia rushed out into a quiet back alley and started running without looking back. A shot could be heard in the distance.

To be continued…

Read the next chapter: Nadia — Chapter V

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Horizon 2050

Nadia – Chapter I

Nadia's Story
The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London. Follow the chapter I of the story of Nadia on Mission Control Center.

Follow the story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales.

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Discover our last story: Edna’s Garden

London — October 23rd, 2050.

Nadia’s eyes were red after hours with the holovisor on. The newer models came with ocular moisturizing tech, but not all companies were eager to take on the extra cost just for the visual well-being of their employees. At least not yet. Her friend Sudi had one of those fancy rigs at the office. Apparently, you didn’t even need to use your hands to manipulate data sets and subroutines. A simple mental order would get the job done. Nadia thought for a second of how lazy humans had become. It was hard to imagine how, just thirty years ago, people like her had to rely on mechanical input devices and raw code to do their jobs.    

A pulsating glow on the bottom right corner of her field of vision brought her back from the history tour. The alert was accompanied by a low-pitched beeping sound. She veered right with a gesture of the hand and pulled the message window closer to her.

“Unusual log entry detected,” said the virtual operator in a quirky and piercing male voice.

Nadia had recently configured her AI to sound like Saneer Ziza, her and her sister’s favourite comedy actor. She had to give it to her sister — for the first time in years, she had come up with a pretty thoughtful birthday gift. Perhaps age was starting to weigh on her and she was finally letting some barriers down. In any case, Nadia had been enjoying the company of Ziza’s humour while scouting the network for potential breaches. It made everything sound quite funny, actually. Even that alert.  

“Give me a full report,” requested Nadia. Like anyone who deserved to call themselves a data integrity expert, she knew better than to ignore odd entries in the system’s registry of activity. It was one of the thousands of parameters she had trained Ziza to monitor.

“Sorry, Nadia. The event log no longer shows any abnormalities.”

Weird. “What do you mean by ‘no longer’? ” she asked, bothered.

“I have reviewed the records 43,901 times, and there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary here.”

“Why would you alert me of an unusual entry, then?

“Sorry, Nadia. I cannot answer that question without an irregularity to make reference to.”

“But you just said ‘no longer’, which means you have memory of the irregularity being there in the first place.”

“I was merely referencing my previous statement.”

Nadia sighed and rolled her eyes — not a great idea, dry as they were. These annoying bugs had become more common since the last system update. She couldn’t wait for the next patch.

“Flag this over to maintenance, would you?”

She took the headset off and threw herself on the sofa. The four walls of her studio felt somewhat oppressing after the vastness of the digital world. Stretching arms and legs, she told Ziza to put on some music and got herself lost in thought. Tomorrow was an office day. Plus, she had that new business meeting first thing in the morning. It would be a big deal if they signed this client. Sunset filtered through the blinds, projecting red and orange stripes on the opposing wall.

Nadia took a long sip of coffee and let her gaze go from one person to the other around the conference table. A strange bunch. Even in their formal business attires, she could tell how different they were from one another. Two men and two women, their ages ranging from the early thirties to the mid-fifties. She tried to come up with a background story for each one of them as Tom from sales walked them through the proposal. Raindrops kept hitting the glass wall behind them. It was an unusually foggy autumn day. Nadia could barely see the building across the street.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we’ll solve your problem. That’s if you decide to move forward with the plan, of course,” said Tom with a polite smile that Nadia knew too well. “Quantum cryptography has come a long way, and we’ve been there since the beginning. Others will promise they can do it too, but our unique encryption system is the only way to fully guarantee that your customer’s data stays secure throughout all transactions.”

RayStar was one of those brand names all professionals know. They were in — well — everything. Financial services, insurance, enterprise software. Anything your average business would need. But recently they had started focusing on the consumer market, using their machine learning expertise and their access to most of the world’s data to develop a new kind of personal AI assistant: Duplo.

The premise was pretty straightforward. Who better to help you manage your everyday tasks than an exact copy of yourself? Somehow, RayStar had managed to aggregate all your data and create an AI that thought and acted just like you do. Of course, your Duplo wasn’t perfect. But it was way more effective than any other AI assistant out there. Media hype was strong.

With the product’s official release scheduled for next month, RayStar was looking to find a security partner that could ensure the protection of user data. AI chips had improved a lot in terms of security, and most AIs were able to run locally on the user’s device or network. But Duplo was simply too complex. A central quantum computer was required to process all the assistant’s responses, and that was a major liability considering how sensitive personal data was. The chances for someone to intercept the information along the way were simply too high. That’s where Nadia’s firm came in.

“Forgive me, but I fail to understand how this, hmm, binding is the only way to protect the data 100%,” said one of the RayStar executives. Clearly more of a businessman than a technical type.

“Ray Goldstein, VP of Compliance,” whispered Ziza’s voice through the earpiece Nadia had on. The exec was talking about the process by which Nadia’s company would ensure the encryption keys remained confidential. RayStar’s CIO, a middle-aged woman with piercing eyes, looked at her colleague with impatience, probably hoping to wrap that up quickly so that she could move onto the next endless meeting of the day. Tom was looking at Nadia, silently begging her to step in.

“It’s entanglement, actually, sir,” said Nadia. “Although binding works as a concept as well,” she added with a smile. “In very basic terms, we encrypt the data by generating two identical sets of random numbers — or ‘keys’ — that we then send to your central system. Your supercomputer can only read and process the data by first using that key to decrypt it, so that…”

“See. That’s exactly what I am saying,” said the VP. “We are trying to prevent someone from accessing the data during transactions by sending a key, the password. But what’s to prevent them from intercepting that key as well?” Nadia could now clearly hear the CIO’s fingers tapping nervously on the table.

“That’s precisely why our real-time entanglement system is the only way the secure your transactions, Mr Goldstein,” explained Nadia. “It all comes down to quantum theory. Sub-atomic particles. Quantum mechanics tells us that, when we generate a password, the value of that password will be altered once we look at it. Meanwhile, the property of entanglement dictates that two entangled keys will be tied across time and space, so that whatever happens to one affects the other.”

“I see,” said the VP, clearly not seeing it at all.

“Think of it as a pair of twins, if you will,” said Nadia. “It is said that twins can feel it whenever something happens to their other half, even if they are thousands of miles apart. Well, here this is actually true. If someone was eavesdropping and intercepted one of the keys, we would be able to detect it. Something would feel off.”

“Oh, I see. Interesting. I actually have a twin, you know?”

To be continued…

Read the next chapter: Nadia – Chapter II

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