The Cube by Melissa Faye

Author:Melissa Faye [Faye, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melissa Faye
Published: 2018-09-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

I pedaled as fast as I could to the dorms. The air was cooler now, and I was relieved to have a clear next step. If the traveler had three robotic beetles, I was certain they were related somehow. Maybe I could use this one to track the missing one.

The A/C unit in the suite was turned up as high as it could go, and I welcomed the cold as I tucked my bike to the side of the main room. Honey sat on the couch texting on her phone.

“Where have you been?” she exclaimed, tossing her phone aside as it kept buzzing. “You missed it! It was insane! How do those television executives allow such garbage to be on the air. Though I guess if they said no, then we wouldn’t have been able to see it. It was so great, June, I –“

I only met Honey a week before, but it didn’t take more than a day for us to become best friends. That’s what she said, at least, and I liked the sound of it. I never had a best friend before. So I felt like a jerk walking right past her to our room.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I called back to her. “I know I missed it! Just gotta do something!”

I pulled out my laptop. It was more advanced than anything else I had made or upgraded. It ran faster than computers would for at least fifty years and could process loads of information in seconds. I closed and locked the door to our bedroom, calling out more apologies to Honey.

Leslie Leslie always knew what she was talking about. A robot like this could be hacked. If I could get into its programming, I could track down the missing bug. I flipped my laptop open and began typing away.

The beetle was giving off some sort of signal into the air, and a program I wrote years ago plucked it out of space and threw it on my screen. There weren’t even any security programs on the beetle to keep someone from looking at its system. Travelers always underestimated us.

The beetle’s code was written in a language I’d never seen before. No surprise. Computer programming languages shifted in popularity all the time. Luckily, most languages were based on one of a few logical patterns. I stared at the code, imagining the letters and numbers shifting around in space. At least the traveler wasn’t from a time beyond our current alphanumerical system.

It was another one of my secrets. Programming came naturally to me, like reading a book. So did circuitry, robotics, mechanics, and most types of engineering. The travelers’ technology might seem daunting every at first, but once I pulled it apart, I figured it out fast. Ridge always wanted an explanation, but I had none. Like with my shimmering chronogram traces, I didn’t know why I was the way I was. I read technology like drivers read a traffic light.

After only a few moments, the program mechanism fell into place in my mind.

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