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Part IV
27
Reset
Isle of Pines, Pacific Ocean, September 7 2047
Wietse’s hands were shaking as he operated his cellphone, or rather what had once been a cellphone a very very long time ago.
The ancient device dated back all the way to the late 2010s. Wietse and it had a long history together indeed. Wietse had managed to acquire this device through the fortunate recklessness of one of his guards who had accidentally dropped it while using Wietse’s private lavatory; a toilet visit that was the fortunate and unplanned side effect of Wietse’s adopted habit of playing pranks on his guards in order to give himself something of a comforting notion that there were still some parts of his life that his captors did not control.
The cell phone had long lost its original purpose. The old telecommunication networks had long been dismantled but even before they were, Wietse’s luxury private prison had been located in a part of the Pacific that had been off-grid to the extent that the telecommunication functionality of the cell phone was about as useful in the 2010s and 2020s as it would have been in the 1810s and 1820s.
It felt strange to be back in the Pacific region even if the Isle of Pines had been a long way away from the Pacific island where Wietse had spent so many decades as a prisoner of one of the most ruthless organizations that humanity had ever seen. An organization that, he knew, his work had had a big hand in shaping.
Here though was a strategic location at the moment at the outer border of the former New Ottoman Free Trade Alliance just a few hundred kilometres away from the territory still controlled by governments with historically strong ties to his captors, the former Pacific Union for Patents & Royalties, who were referred to though by the rest of the world as The Quants Officially PUPR had been disbanded, but Wietse knew better than to be fooled by official accounts of anything where PUPR was concerned. Wietse himself had been declared dead in the 1990s, officially, due to their treasury.
Wietse had spent decades extending and enhancing this device, this cell phone, to the best of his abilities within the constraints of his incarceration. The Quants had had zero respect for privacy, and between his guards and the camera systems, there had been little room for Wietse to work in secret on his device. Little to no room for plotting his escape.
Today the old cellphone had become a hideously ugly contraption, looking even more ancient than its age alone could be attributed for. A thick half transparent green foil held together the pieces of the cracked screen and gave the device its faint green glow when observed from a less than almost completely straight angle. The foiled up green screen was all that remained visible from the original device that as a whole most resembled a brick wrapped in duct tape. Below the screen was a small duct-tape-less area exposing a tiny piece of green PCB board containing a tiny pin-operated reset-style button and a small array of dip switches that together had been Wietse’s only method of data input from the moment the screen had stopped acting as the touch-sensitive input that it had originally been designed to be, up until a few weeks after his escape, when he had managed to integrate some slightly more modern input technology.
No one could possibly guess the tech Wietse had created here held the power it did. No one but Wietse knew to even consider that this technology could be theoretically possible. Not even the Quants.
'The Quants', it was a horrific injustice that his captors were commonly referred to as Quants. They had stolen half a century from him. Half a century all because of quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement was supposed to make the world a better place. Instead, these Quants had taken Wietse away from all he loved. His wife, his young son and his lab. A lab where Wietse had been pioneering quantum computing as far back as the early 1990s.
These Quants had forced him to participate in the total corruption of his life's work. Quantum Slicing had been all that they had cared about. Slicing effortlessly and in real-time through even the strongest public key based encryption. Quantum entanglement was so much more than just a powerful tool for industrial espionage. So much more than the tool for world domination that his captors had recognized it to be. As far as PUPR was concerned Wietse had escaped with a high-tech reset button. A very important reset button, yes, but just a reset button.
Wietse knew PUPR wanted their reset button back. But now, others were after him as well. New Zion spies had lived up to their almost mythical reputation. New Zion had done what PUPR so far had not managed. Despite Wietse’s careful efforts to be untraceable, to remain off the grid, New Zion had tracked him down and apparently, they were after the reset button as well; or after him and his knowledge. They would have captured him if it wasn’t for ……
Wietse took hold of his left hand with his right hand in order to stop the shaking.
The worn down cracked screen of the taped up ancient phone showed a picture of a young boy, or rather a picture of an old wallet holding a small picture of a young boy.
"Dear Duncan," Wietse whispered.
Duncan should be an old man now himself. Every day since his guards had started mocking him with tabloid photos of his wife remarrying, thoughts about his son had remained to torment him and make his captivity close to unbearable for many many long years. As far as the world was concerned, and as far as his wife and son were concerned also, Wietse had died in a lab explosion.
Inge had moved on and Wietse could not blame her for that. Yes, it had been a hard pill to swallow at first that she had moved on to marry some pompous high profile baron. An event that had made the local tabloids.
The guards had found it horribly funny that Wietse’s “widow” had married a Baron and in their twisted sense of humor, they had found it funny to confront Wietse with his own death by leaving copies of these tabloids in any place that Wietse used to frequent. Yes, Inge had moved on, and who could blame her for that? His death had been staged so flawlessly by his captors. It had not been easy, no, but Wietse had been over Inge for decades now.
"My little champion" Wietse murmured as he laid down his device and stared at the holographic projection of the face of a woman. There was no doubt left in Wietse at this point. The resemblance was too big to attribute to chance.
"Godverdomme Wietse, je bent opa!" Wietse exclaimed in his native Dutch tongue realizing this grown woman was, in fact, his granddaughter.
Then, an indescribable anger started forming within him. His granddaughter kidnapped, abducted! After half a century of captivity, Wietse wasn’t going to allow that to happen to his little champion’s daughter. Not with the full power of the quantum trinity at his disposal.
Whoever it was who had kidnapped his granddaughter; abducted her in this eight-legged air-vehicle, they were about to feel Wietse’s wrath. Feel the wrath of an angry grandfather wielding the full and unattenuated power of the quantum trinity.
With the New Zion operative, Wietse had been 'acting' tough, acting that he was tough and hard. Wietse had been acting that he was confident when in fact he had been startled by the unintended accident that had snapped off the operative’s leg.
But now? Now that he knew. Now that he fully understood the weaponization potential of his quantum trinity. This understanding combined with the realization that his granddaughter had now been abducted came together in a massive change. Wietse had been the mouse. He had been that mouse for the last few years since he had escaped PUPR. Trying to avoid the cat from devouring him.
But things had changed now. Now he was no longer the mouse! Wietse’s transformation of mind was almost terrifying as Wietse realized he wasn’t afraid anymore to release the full power of the trinity. Not if doing so would mean stopping his granddaughter from suffering his own fate.
No longer the mouse. Not even the cat! No! With the technology Wietse knew was at his fingertips, technology many centuries ahead of anything any of the Earth factions or Mars-One could throw at him, no 'cat' would be a match for Wietse at this point. Not with the power of gods at his fingertips.
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