The Fourth World Read online

  But soon Fintan began to see the pattern, and deduce the algorithm the programmer used to decide the color rules. It was complex and multidimensional, sometimes depending on which previous tile had been flipped, sometimes based on its color, sometimes based on how long Fintan took (in moves as well as seconds) in flipping it.

  He could see where it would be easy to get frustrated by its randomness, but once he began to figure it out, Fintan was able to start clearing the board quickly. The more he cleared, the easier it got.

  Finally, he finished the board, exhausted. He looked at the game clock. It had taken nearly two hours.

  Smith was eyeing him closely.

  “That was fun,” said Fintan.

  More, similar tests followed, all being bizarre games, but, Fintan discovered that if he didn’t get frustrated, and focused on the task at hand, he could quickly find the solution. Some involved him needing to interact physically with the games console, lifting and twisting bizarre controls to navigate a ball through a maze. Others involved a sensory overload as they forced him to wear a headset that projected virtual screens.

  After several exhausting (but exhilarating) hours Fintan finished all the games. Mister Smith was waiting for him in front of a large black door.

  Fintan was feeling a little cocky, “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “That was a question Mister Reilly,” was the only response.

  One of the techs handed Smith a sheet. Fintan saw many tick marks on it, and his name at the top. Fintan figured this was a good sign.

  Smith spoke again “For the final test, you will go through this door, and you will continue down the corridor on the other side. At the end, there is a hatch. Enter it, and you will find a small room. You will see a headset. Put it on, and I will use it to direct you what to do next.”

  Fintan nodded, and opened the door.

  Chapter 4: Flight Simulator

  They’re getting closer aren’t they?

  Are they?

  That’s why you’re taking these risks.

  Maybe.

  A long black corridor lay in front of Fintan. He followed it as directed, turning several times. It was a long walk, taking him perhaps fifteen minutes. At several points along the way, the corridor led through hatches, which Fintan struggled to open.

  At the end, as promised was a small room. It had painted foot impressions on the floor, and a thin metal rail behind them, which was about four feet tall. It made Fintan think of a bar stool, but without a seat. It was clear that he was to stand where marked, and the metal rail was something that he could lean back against, but not sit on.

  Hanging on the rail was a headset. It looked like an oversized pair of skiing sunglasses, with angular rims around the lenses. Tiny speakers locked down over his ears and a small boom microphone extended from one side.

  On either side of where he would stand were two raised columns, with polished black surfaces that angled towards him.

  Fintan stood on the footprints and leaned back slightly against the rail. It was strangely comfortable, and although tired, he felt relaxed. In this position he could rest his hands on the tops of the columns comfortably.

  Investigating his headset, he felt a small button on the left side. He pressed it and the headset came to life.

  A virtual display overlaid his field of vision. Now, instead of plain walls, he could see a star field, and as he moved his head around, the gray curve of the moon came into view. He could also see the two black columns, but, through the headset they were lit up with many and varied controls.

  To Fintan it felt like he was floating in space. His heart fluttered. This was awe-inspiring technology.

  Mister Smith’s voice spoke through the headpiece. He coached Fintan in how to activate the console under his left hand. This console gave different views from inside or outside his ship. The console on his right hand controlled the ship, but the method of piloting was unfamiliar.

  “You are the pilot,” said Mister Smith, “but you don’t fly the ship like you see them do it in the movies. It is all about programming the right course, and telling the ship to go there. It will do the rest.”

  On the right hand console he found a trackball and experimented with it. He quickly learned that he could use it to ‘draw’ where he wanted the ship to go on his display.

  “Moving in space isn’t like moving on the ground,” said Mister Smith. “When you’re in deep space, if you push the ship in a certain direction, it will keep going in that direction until either you, or something else pushes in the opposite direction.”

  “So, to stop the ship moving, I push the ship in a direction opposite to its current movement, right?”

  “You got it.” Smith paused. “Just remember that gravity can also take effect if you are near something big, like the Earth or the Moon. Think about what happens when you throw something. It starts moving in the direction you threw it in, but soon falls away towards the ground. The same will happen here, so you must take gravity into account. Think about throwing – the harder you throw, the more time it takes before gravity pulls the ball down.”

  “Ok” said Fintan. “I have to understand the best trajectory with limited fuel. Anything else?”

  “Well, there’s the effect of other forces, inertia and the like, but wait until you learn about them in school. Not to mention the funny math when you have to consider the changing mass of your ship when you use fuel to move it.”

  Fintan figured that if a smile had sound, then he could hear Smith smiling. He was a different man now. It seemed that Fintan had passed Smith’s personal test, and he hoped he could do as well with this simulation.

  After playing with the controls and moving the spaceship around a little, and after crashing several times into the surface of the moon, he started to get the knack, and picked arbitrary targets and locations. With practice it did get easier, but Fintan was beginning to realize that while it might be easy to do the basics, it would be a lot harder to master flying the ship.

  The screen went blank and Mister Smith spoke up again.

  “Are you ready for the test now?”

  “Yes” he replied.

  The screen came on again, and it was a much more detailed and realistic star field than that Fintan had seen earlier. The ship was still in a parking orbit above the moon.

  “You will run through several scenarios. The first involves a rescue mission; your monitor contains the details. Please get to this location in less than three minutes.”

  Some coordinates popped up on the screen. Fintan instantly recognized them as being on exactly the opposite side of the moon from his current location. He could reach it easily, but slowly, by following the parking orbit. For speed, he would have to spend fuel to climb away from the moon, and then dive back towards it as he moved around the moon towards his target. Using the trackball he drew a curve that took the ship into a high orbit, and then dived back down. He activated it, and the ship began to move.

  The clock was ticking down faster than he would have liked, but he felt confident that he’d make it.

  But when his ship approached the top of the curve it was beginning to slow down, pulled back by the gravity of the moon. If Fintan added thrust, it would change his course, and he may not have time to readjust.

  With only thirty seconds left he reached the summit of the curve, and like a rollercoaster the ship turned around and tore downhill towards its destination.

  Just in time, he arrived at his goal. Fintan breathed a sigh of relief. One down.

  Scenario after scenario followed each one progressively more difficult than the last. Sometimes he had to reach multiple destinations against the clock, sometimes with little fuel or a damaged spacecraft. Sometimes he had multiple points of reference to deal with as he was between Earth and the Moon, and had to figure out which one gave the coordinates of the location to reach.

  For the final test, Fintan had to catch two drifting objects and put them into a parking o
rbit around the Earth. He had to do it with little fuel, so he would need to be perfect. There wasn’t enough fuel to do each separately, so he needed to come up with a way to tow the two of them together.

  In the end the solution was deceptively simple. He played snooker with them. Using about half his fuel in one shot, Fintan put the ship on a trajectory that would strike the first one towards the second, hitting it, placing them both in a parking orbit around the Earth. The simulator made it easy for him to project this and tweak it until it was perfect. The ship would recoil from the first impact and drop into a wild orbit, but, it wouldn’t take much to adjust. He hoped.

  The course laid in, Fintan changed from projection to real mode. He watched as the ship shot around the moon and approached the first object.

  And then it seemed all hell broke loose. He could see from the monitor that his ship had collided with the first object and sent it earthward, but, the impact had damaged his ship. Parts of the simulator were shutting down, and some of the controls were not responding. He could see that his ship was falling towards the moon in a rapidly tightening spiral.

  The projector was broken, so he would have to set a course manually. Fintan calmed himself by breathing deeply, fighting the urge to scream. This was just a simulation.

  “Be calm and you’ll be fine,” he whispered.

  And then he saw it: The way out.

  In a moment of perfect clarity he guessed a direction and thrust that would get him out of this spin, and send him Earthward. It would be the ideal time to perform this thrust in a little over a minute. Only a few seconds later the ship would crash into the moon, so the timing would have to be perfect.

  He started a countdown from ten in his head. At five most of his screen panels were gone. At three, the whole room began to vibrate.

  At zero, he punched the actual mode, and the vibration worsened for a few moments before subsiding and finally stopping. Most of the viewport was out now – huge parts of the sky showed instead as white hexagonal cells – the underlying computer monitors.

  After a few moments Mister Smith’s voice came through the headset again.

  “Thank you Mister Reilly,” he said. “You’ll find a small ante-room at the back of this chamber. You can take your headset off and go there to rest while we calculate your scores. I’ll be in to get you in less than an hour.”

  The ante-room contained a small bed. Fintan lay down on it, exhausted from the day. Within seconds he was sound asleep.

  *

  He was woken by Mister Smith, placing his hand gently on Fintan’s shoulder. He was smiling.

  “Congratulations,” he said, “you passed”

  Fintan was speechless. A smile crept across his face.

  “You are welcome to attend our school. However, you must understand something. You cannot tell anyone, ever, what the school is, or what you are studying there. You must agree to secrecy. You must not even tell your family.”

  Fintan nodded.

  “There’s one more thing,” he said, pulling out the paper that Fintan’s father had signed earlier. “The choice is yours now. Nobody else can legally tell you what you can and cannot do with respect to this school. If you say ‘no’, you can go home and nobody will know the better. If you say ‘yes’ and sign this paper, then you are agreeing to attend, agreeing to secrecy, and agreeing to extreme punishment should you break this secrecy. You will be given a believable cover story of a normal school that you can tell your parents and friends, but they must never know the truth. Is that clear?”

  Fintan nodded affirmation.

  “So, Mister Reilly, will you join us?”

  Without hesitation, Fintan signed the paper.

  “Good,” he said, “you will of course need to go home and pack. Term starts in two weeks. This is the greatest decision you have ever made, as you will see in time.”

  He clapped Fintan on the back and led him to the exit.

  “The simulator,” said Fintan, “that’s the most amazing technology I’ve ever seen. Will we be using equipment like that again?”

  “Oh yes” answered Smith. “That’s one of the core parts of the curriculum.”

  “It’s amazing,” repeated Fintan, “it felt like I was really in space, piloting a space ship.”

  “Ah” said Mister Smith. “That’s because you were.”

  Chapter 5: Ayako

  So he passed the unpassable test. I bet you didn’t expect that?

  He has a high ceiling, that’s for sure.

  He almost died.

  But he didn’t did he?

  That’s not the point.

  Oh, but it is.

  Father went home earlier, so Mister Smith had organized transport for Fintan. A nondescript car picked him up at the office and took him home. His body was tired, so he was happy not to worry about trying to catch a train and call his parents for a pickup.

  As he arrived at his doorstep, butterflies were dancing in his stomach. There’s no way that his family were going to swallow the cover story. But it didn’t matter – Father had signed him over to the state, and regardless of what they accepted, his parents had no choice but to let him go.

  Father and Mother were waiting in the living room. Dermot was still out with friends.

  “I passed,” said Fintan.

  Father smiled and clapped Fintan on the shoulder. It felt unusually good. Mother cried.

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she said. “You can stay here with us.”

  Father shot her a dirty look.

  Fintan raised his hand before they could start bickering.

  “It’s for the best,” he said. “I’m going.”

  They both fell silent. Mother nodded. “I know, but I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” said Fintan, surprising himself in realizing that he meant it, “but I’ll be back for Christmas and for the summer.”

  Mother nodded. Father looked thoughtful.

  *

  There wasn’t much to prepare, as Fintan’s instructions had been for him to bring as little as possible. However, Mother had to trot him around her extended family showing off the brochures and exclaiming how proud Fintan had made her, Father had to introduce Fintan to all his drinking buddies, an endless cycle of pointless socializing.

  However, the time went quickly and for that, Fintan was grateful.

  On his last night, his family hosted a dinner in his honor, and for once Fintan felt like he was part of a family. Father was sober, talkative and funny. Mother was genuine and warm in her admiration for Fintan, and Dermot had gotten over his early jealousy, even mumbling a heartfelt congratulations.

  What stopped Fintan from crying and tearing up his school papers was the memory of being in space, and the likelihood of going back. Excitement welled up in his chest, tempering his sadness at leaving home.

  *

  The day came. After melodramatic goodbyes at the train station, Fintan made his way to the ministry building, alone, as told. A black car was waiting for him there. It whisked him to the airport where, before he knew exactly what was happening, he boarded a flight for New York.

  New York thought Fintan, stunned. But it wasn’t to be his final destination. He got off the plane and changed to another, headed towards Las Vegas, walking through a disappointingly scruffy terminal. Once on this plane, dead tired, Fintan fell asleep and didn’t wake until it landed.

  At the gate, a normal looking man wearing a normal looking suit met and greeted him. The man didn’t say much, just small talk as he led Fintan through the terminal. While most passengers went to baggage claim, the man took Fintan in the opposite direction.

  “We’ll take care of your bags, don’t worry,” he said, in response to Fintan’s unspoken comment.

  Confused, Fintan followed the man, who led him through the maze of passengers and tourists, through the business lounge areas to a nondescript office with a woman sitting behind a desk.

  The man flas
hed his security card at her. She inspected it closely, and a door opened in the wall behind her. Fintan didn’t know how she did it – there was no visible button or other control.

  The door led to a large open area, which was clearly another terminal, much smaller than the main one, but looking unlike a typical airport terminal. There were no shops, no bars or other amenities. The people didn’t have the look of tourists, and looked more like commuters. Many were in military uniform.

  Scattered around, were a bewildered-looking children, guided by escorts like his own. Fintan guessed that he looked just like they did.

  The man guided Fintan to a gate, and bade his good-bye. And just like that, Fintan was on another plane. This time with no idea where he was going. There were no announcements or signage that might give him a clue.

  He took a window seat in an empty row about halfway back. He had no ticket, so he figured that it was fine to take any seat.

  The plane began to fill up, but there was little conversation. Sometimes people would pass Fintan’s row, see him sitting there, and getting a knowing look on their face would walk on by, leaving him alone. Fintan assumed they didn’t want a newcomer questioning them.

  A girl about his age got onto the plane, which was now almost full. She walked down the aisle, looking left and right for an empty seat. She was short, so she couldn’t see over the seat tops too well. She reached Fintan’s row and looked at the two empty seats beside him. After a moments calculation she took the aisle seat without a word, sitting primly with her hands on her lap.

  She had the classic Asian look with thick, silky black hair that flowed to her shoulders. As she turned her head, the way her hair moved was enticing. How it could be so thick, so black, and so shiny but just fall in place was mesmerizing to Fintan. People in Fintan’s town commonly joked about Asian’s having ‘yellow’ skin, which sounded unattractive to Fintan, but hers was bright and clear and had a healthy glow.