It's My Party

"We were kissing goodnight," Mark confessed. "Aggie was aroused. I was too. Aggie is very open about such things."

"Yes, I know. I see it sometimes in how she flirts with you in public. I'm not trying to criticize, but boy, if you're ever caught having sex out in the open, I bet it'll be with Aggie."

Mark chuckled. "No bet! Well, anyway, she was in my arms, and suddenly…" Mark took a deep breath. "The moment transformed. Suddenly I wanted her so badly. All the desires seemed to fuse, desires to couple with her and to care for her and to possess her. And…"

"And?"

"And Aggie finished her boost less than a week ago! I could still take advantage of her if we got carried away with sexual passion! She thinks I'm just being shy, and maybe that's part of it, but I also so much don't want to pull things from her before she decides to offer them."

"Ah…" said Fatima as her only reply. They spent a long leisurely time petting each other in silence, occasionally giving each other back rubs but mostly caresses. Their hands wandered around each other's bodies, going almost everywhere but avoiding direct contact with the genital areas. Fatima gave a deep sigh. "Your body is so beautiful Mark."

Mark gave a snort in reply. "I remember the first night I met you."

"Yes. I was thinking of that too. And that was the memory I targeted in your mind."

"I remember waking up that morning and thinking what pretty chestnut hair you have. And also with a headscarf, how pretty you were, either way… Fatima?"

"Hmm?"

"The moment Earth was destroyed, we were all huddled together in a ball…"

"Yes. I'll never forget."

"I grabbed someone's foot. It was your foot, wasn't it?"

"Yes, my foot." Fatima turned and began kissing Mark's foot, similar to the way he had been kissing hers. "My love… Mark?"

"Yeah?"

"I know Hannah and Emily want to have a marriage ceremony with you soon."

Mark paused. "That's almost true. A part of them wants to wait until Jada is free from Wobanakik. Jada keeps telling them not to wait for her. They're still talking about it."

"Ah… Yes… Anyway…" Fatima took a deep breath. "Mark, can I join them?"

Mark's sleepy eyes popped open. He turned and lay face to face with Fatima, trying to sense if she wanted to link. But Fatima wanted to remain in normal time, so Mark avoided direct eye contact. "I feel so happy," Mark whispered, "so incredibly fortunate."

Fatima giggled. "Wow, that was easy! I never thought I'd propose to a man. I don't know what I would have done if you said no."

Mark grinned. "Thrown me out of this bed I guess."

"Oh, I'm still going to do that, but maybe not quite yet. It's okay with you, isn't it? I'd like to wait for a night after our wedding before I give you my virginity."

Mark answered by embracing her. They shared a long, intimate kiss. With the room filled with the coolness and smells of the early spring, they caressed each other's bodies until they both drifted off into a light sleep.

An hour later.

Time: Thursday, May 14, 2019 1:03 PM

A hand was caressing Fatima's head. Fatima opened her eyes and saw her dear friend Husna smiling at her, her eyes sparkling with amusement. Fatima blinked. Before falling completely sleep, Mark had opened her bathrobe and exposed her breasts. He now had a warm hand cupped around her tit, and a fat brown nipple was poking out from the circle Mark's hand was making with its thumb and forefinger.

Fatima linked with Husna. "It's not quite how it looks! We did not have sex, and we're engaged now!"

"Congratulations! I wasn't judging you Fatima. The others are in the next room. We have good news! Hilton network control is starting to pick up a synchronization wave from Aggie's Leophone. It's trying to lock back into our network."

Fatima's eyes went wide and she broke the mental link. She turned to her lover and began to shake him. "Hey Mark!"

Five minutes later.

It was such a fine day that after Mark and Fatima got dressed, their entire group of seven gathered in a circle on a huge picnic blanket just outside the house. In the center of the circle was Paige's Leophone on speakerphone. Akiko and Emily were giving them an update from the Hilton.

"And it's trying again now." said Akiko. "This is very encouraging. Reset attempts are now occurring every thirty seconds."

"Will it succeed?" asked Fatima.

There was a pause. "Not this time," Akiko replied. "But soon I hope. It's an adaptive process. It learns a little each time it fails. Hey Lynn! Want to know something? I'm guessing the phone is having problems linking because of the modifications you did at system reset."

"Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Thank God I didn't go further." Lynn was commenting from Wobanakik. She was sitting in the room her teammates would jokingly call the Manhattan Public Library, and under Akiko's guidance, Emily had duplicated several diagnostic feeds to Lynn's console

Fatima asked, "Will one of you please explain what you're talking about?"

"Lynn?" Akiko asked.

"Yeah, okay. Hi Fatima. During our April 1st reset, I had the opportunity to shift the handshaking protocols on our network. The shift gives us extra protection, a warning buffer if another node tries to listen in on our communications. At the time, I didn't want the library consoles at Black Mall to be able to eavesdrop on us."

"Oh yes, I remember the discussions now. You had my approval to make the change. But you're saying these changes have now locked out Aggie's phone?"

Lynn sounded both contrite and exasperated in her reply. "It really shouldn't have. Her phone ID is already registered on our net. But somehow I think that's what happened… Wait a minute!" Lynn sat back in her chair and thought for a moment. Then she added, "You know folks, this is a little strange. I don't think Aggie's Leophone has the ability to do the kind of probing we're seeing here."

There was a pause, and then Akiko spoke up. "That's a good point Lynn. It's not the Leophone directly. It must be from a new subnet above the Leophone. That is strange."

"Huh?" asked Fatima.

Lynn replied. "So far all our Leophones have been on the same subnet, anywhere on the surface, in the malls, here in Wobanakik, where you are in the Bee Park, all the Leophones are on one subnet. The elevator and library consoles are our second subnet. But Aggie's phone now, I think it's linked to a third subnet, and her subnet is now trying to synch with our subnets."

Fatima thought for a moment. "Can you put our subnets back the way they were?"

"Uh…" Lynn thought for a moment and then replied sheepishly, "Not until another system reset. We would have to wait another 477 days."

"Shit!"

"But it's not that bad Fatima," Akiko said as she broke into the conversation. "The new subnet is now quite active with ours. They're probing each other. Aggie's subnet already has the right keys from her phone. It just has to insert the keys into our net in the proper way. Expect the two nets to synch in… well, maybe ten minutes."

The actual time was closer to seven. The triumphant voice of Aggie burst out of the network. "Yes! I'm registering a link! Can someone confirm?!"

There was a brief round of cheers and expressions of affection, and then everyone settled back to listen to Aggie report.

Chapter 81.


Top view of a transfer room in the hexagonal pyramid, showing the central 3-m x 4-m carriage footprint enclosed in the 40+ sq. meter hexagonal room.

Chapter 82.

Time: Thursday, May 14, 2019 12:54 PM

"First off," Aggie reported, "I'm physically okay. I have all my gear and my two Leophones were the only things I had problems with." There was a short pause. "Akiko, is this right? My second phone is saying it's still not active?"

"It's a network issue," came Akiko's reply from the Hilton. "It should self-correct soon."

"Oh. Okay. Let me go on. I haven't met anybody yet. I'm in a building. I think it's a huge hexagonal pyramid. It boggles the imagination. Emily, Kiyoko, Suvarna, do you remember an elevator training lesson describing a broken-ring carriage-zone? That's what I think I'm in now."

Akiko was absolutely astonished when Emily sitting by her side started to guffaw loudly. "That monstrosity?!" Emily yelled between laughs. "I thought that lesson was a joke!"

Suvarna spoke up. "I don't remember that lesson at all." Emily's laughter was contagious. Suvarna paused and added in a deadpan voice, "It must have passed by while I was taking one of my afternoon naps."

Kiyoko was sitting across from Fatima on the picnic blanket, and she saw a look of utter incredulity on her leader's face at how this conversation was progressing. Kiyoko decided to speak. "For those of you who don't realize it, Suvarna's last comment was a joke. I helped her study. Suvarna was an extremely diligent student. Regarding the missing lesson, Emily and I have compared some notes on our employment trainings. They were not identical. I have no memory of a broken-ring carriage-zone lesson either."

"Aggie," Emily asked, "what's the color code for the transfer rooms? Tan and purple? And what's the prime number?"

"Light tan floors and a creamy light purple carriage, just as the lesson described. And there are two tumblers in each carriage. The left dial has twenty-four positions and the right dial twenty-eight. See what I mean Emily? The tumblers are correct for it too."

Emily worked and got her laughter under control. "Yeah, it all fits. So the total number of carriages is 24 x 28 + 1 equals… 673. Yep, that's a prime number. Aggie, I really do apologize for laughing. I'm truly sorry you're stuck in this insanity. You have the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack search to do before getting out of there."

Aggie sigh was heavy enough for all to hear. "Yeah, it'll take a while. Thank God the rings are prime! It won't be too bad. Wish me luck."

Fatima took a second to compose herself before speaking. She was feeling completely bewildered. "Aggie, before I ask you what the heck you two are talking about, are you in a safe location?"

"Apologies Fatima. I will explain myself. And yeah, I'm safe enough I guess. I'm sitting in a lounge room on the twelfth level in one of the perimeter rooms. I'll explain what that means in a moment. The exterior walls of perimeter rooms have transparent walls and ceilings. I don't see any controls to change that. Outside there's a blowing snowstorm and it's a dark night."

At the Manhattan Public Library, Abit turned around and looked at the butter yellow linear sunlight brightly illuminating their core hexagonal atrium. "That's interesting," she said over the bridge. "This is Abit speaking. Both of the artificial environments we've found so far have their daily cycle synchronized with the surface. Aggie, we're just past midday here at Wobanakik."

"Yes I know, and it's the black night of a snowstorm in my environment. If I am still in synch with the surface time zone, perhaps my enclosure is simulating a polar latitude where there's still midnight sun. Mark, is there a spot on the planet that has 24-hour darkness now?"

Mark answered as he sat by Fatima's side. "Sure. Except for the equinox days, that's always the case. Emily, do you have access to my geo-solar graphics package?"

"I'm curious too… pulling it up now. For today, everything below 52 degrees southern latitude is beyond the reach of the sun. But Aggie, we're making too many assumptions here. Let's wait twenty-four hours before deciding you're in a simulation without sunlight."

"Yeah, okay. Let me get back to describing what this building is like. I entered at the top floor which I'm calling floor one, and I count up as I move down. You'll see why in a minute. The entire top floor was one square hexagonal room."

Kiyoko asked hesitantly, "Uh, a square hexagonal room?"

Aggie chuckled. "Yeah, that probably didn't make much sense, did it? The room has a hexagonal footprint but the walls are squares, four meters by four meters. Each room in this great building is a hexagon with four-meter sides and a four-meter high ceiling, that's what I'm guessing anyway. Each room is a fair amount of space, a generous size for a bedroom and I've found several. They're a bit larger than the bedrooms at the home complex. The six walls make the rooms interesting to be in."

She chuckled again. "I really have to back up. The trapdoor has the standard three-meter by four-meter carriage of an elevator. When I got here, the carriage opened a three-meter side and I walked into the room opposite one of the six walls. The ceiling and all the walls were transparent. The elevator was in the geometric center of the room. The carriage was completely bare when I exited, and the room I entered was also bare. There was nothing but the elevator carriage in it. I noticed a small numeric display in the arch of the elevator door. It read 1:1. I reopened the carriage and that's when I saw the tumblers. Thank God! Without the tumblers, the room would have been my mausoleum, at least until the servos came out. I now think of the room as sort of an observation bubble."

"And it's at the top of the pyramid you mentioned?" Emily asked.

"Exactly. There are air vents on the floor and the usual servo access ports but no physical way for me to leave except through the carriage. I looked through all the windows. Below my hexagon on the next floor down were seven additional hexagons. They looked the same size as my room. One was directly below me, that one I assumed, and six hexagons forming a collar around the hexagon below me. Those were the six hexagons I could see by looking out the windows. You get the idea?"

"Could you see more of the pyramid too?" asked Oona.

"Hi Oona. No, I didn't have the visual angle for it. I'd have to be standing at the edge of a perimeter room on Floor-2 to see the collar rooms of Floor-3."

Besides the excitement in Aggie's voice, Fatima thought she also heard considerable nervousness, and Fatima decided she had pressed Aggie a little too fiercely with her earlier language. She commented out loud, "You're giving us an excellent description Aggie."

"Thanks! I'll do my best to keep this conversation serious Fatima, even though it does have an amusing aspect to it. This setup is so… so ridiculous!"

Aggie took a deep breath and continued. "At the top entrance room, I looked down through the transparent ceilings of the six hexagons. One of the rooms was a transfer room. I could see the carriage quite clearly. The other five rooms made a nice living area, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bath, a gym, and a lounge room. There were no doors visible. I strongly suspect all six collar rooms connect to the room they surround."

"Fatima," Emily added, "In a carriage-zone, you can only move from one zone to another through a carriage. The zones are defined to be otherwise isolated from each other." She paused and asked quietly, "How many floors Aggie?"

"I got very lucky and actually saw the answer on my 20th jump. From my previous jumps I decided that the first number on the elevator arch represents the floor number, and the second number is the zone number of the carriage. All my observations indicate that the zones are simply numbered from the top of the pyramid on down. And on my 20th jump, the code on the elevator arch read 36:647. I could see I was adjacent to a perimeter room. So I hiked over and could not see another collar further down, and that fits with the high carriage number. Thirty-six floors total Emily! Do you see the size of this place?"

"Yeah, I think so," her friend replied. "I'm doing the numbers now." There was a very short pause. "On average, you'll have about seventy rooms per zone."

"What?" asked Fatima in a whisper. She was struggling to keep her exasperation out of her voice.

"Aggie, do you want me to explain for a bit?" asked Emily.

"Sure. Thanks. Maybe we can both explain."

"Great idea. Everybody, a carriage-zone is exactly what it sounds like, and in Aggie's case it's build around the prime number 673. Imagine 673 elevators where for each elevator, you can enter a code to jump to each of the remaining 672 elevators. That's what Aggie's two tumblers are allowing her to do, 24 x 28 = 672 permutations."

"Let me describe this building," said Aggie. "I'm in a hexagonal pyramid of 36 floors. Each floor has its number of rooms equal to the number of rooms in the floor above it plus an additional collar of hexagons surrounding it. The formula is that the number of rooms on floor n + 1 equals the number of rooms on floor n plus a new collar of six n, and the top floor, floor 1, has one room. Get it? Floor 2 has 1 plus a collar of 6 equals 7 rooms, floor 3 has 7 plus a collar of 6 x 2 = 19 rooms, floor 4 has 19 plus a collar of 6 x 3 = 37 rooms, and so on."

"There's also an interesting cubic relationship to the total number of rooms," added Emily. "The first two floors have a total of 8 rooms, the first three floors a total of 27, the first four floors a total of 64, and 36 floors means the entire pyramid has a total of 36 x 36 x 36 rooms. Wow!"

"I know what that number is," commented Madison from the underground entrance rooms. "It's six to the sixth, 46,656. That's the number of meters in the length of Wobanakik, as near as our lasers can measure it. The builders of this place sure did like to play with the number six."

"Aggie," asked Fatima, "This is all very interesting, but how do you get out?"

"Well, the lesson described there would be one trapdoor entrance and one broken-ring exit. In one and only one elevator, one of the transport codes will take me out of the carriage-zone."

"Out to where?" asked Fatima.

"To tell you the truth, the lesson didn't say. But I'm pretty sure it would take me out of this pyramid."

"I'm trying to understand this," said Fatima. She paused for a moment and then shuddered. "My gosh Emily! How could you be so callous?! How could you possibly laugh at Aggie's fate?! One combination of code and elevator, 672 times 673 possibilities! It will take her a lifetime to escape!"

Emily felt mortified. "No, it's not that bad. What do you think Aggie? Three weeks as an expectation time for finding your way out?"

"Wow, you think that fast? I was guessing six weeks for an average time, twelve if I'm unlucky, and today if I hit the jackpot."

"Ah," replied Emily. "I think you're forgetting a nice factor of two that works in your favor."

"Really? Great. Emily, before you tell me, do you want to explain the broken-ring system to everyone?"

"Gladly. Everyone, remember the tumblers Aggie described, 24 x 28 positions? That's 672 possible codes. But a tumbler code does not specify a fixed destination. It's the combination of the origination carriage ID with the tumbler code that determines the destination carriage. I'll give you an example. Pick tumbler code 300. From any originating elevator, keep that tumbler code constant and jump 672 times. In your journey you will reach all the other 672 destination elevators. And the opposite is true too. All tumbler codes from the same origination elevator will reach all 672 destinations."

A light dawned in Madison's mind. "And if you jump the same tumbler code 673 times, you get back to where you started?"

"Very good Maddy. And that's the beauty of the system and why it's not a lifetime of work for Aggie to escape. It's also critical that the total number of carriages is a prime number. Imagine a circular ring of n elevators, where n is a prime number, and you can travel the ring clockwise in jumps of one node, two nodes, etc., all the way up to n – 1 nodes per jump. Because n is a prime number, the jumps never collide. You'll never have two elevators using the same code to get to the same destination. That's true because the tumbler code represents the step size of your jump along the ring."