{"id":580,"date":"2020-06-04T09:56:33","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T08:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/51.75.254.207\/Club-Freelance\/?p=580"},"modified":"2021-08-31T10:28:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T09:28:14","slug":"nadia-chapter-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/?p=580","title":{"rendered":"Nadia – Chapter II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow the story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London<\/em><\/h2>\n

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

—<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Jumping in now? Catch up with\u00a0previous chapters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Chapter II<\/em><\/h2>\n
<\/div>\n

\u201cYou did great today, Nadia.\u201d
\nZiza seemed quite enthusiastic. Perhaps too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess? I just hope
\nthis goes through. Could really use the commission this month,\u201d said Nadia as
\nshe entered the elevator. A few weeks ago, she had timed how long it took for
\nthe lift to reach the ground floor. Fifty-eight floors in barely thirty
\nseconds. Now that was fast. <\/p>\n

In the streets, the
\nmorning fog had turned into evening fog. Waves of commuters struggled against
\nthe tide to find their way home. Nadia avoided the constant stream of electric
\nscooters and made her way down the street and into the subway station. As
\nalways, the train car was packed. Nadia tried to maintain the balance without
\ntouching anything or anyone. It was like surfing, but cheaper. As programmed,
\nZiza went on to cover the news of the day. Apparently two members of the same
\nfamily won the Mars shuttle lottery. What were the odds? <\/p>\n

\u201cIncoming message,\u201d said
\nZiza halfway through the report.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cShoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a message from
\nTom. Short and sweet, as he liked to say \u2013 Get some sleep. We start first
\nthing tomorrow. <\/em><\/p>\n

Nadia was ecstatic. She
\ndecided to stop by the bakery right beneath her apartment and get a big box of pastries
\nto bring with her to the office the next day. She fought the urge to grab one
\nof them as during the way up. They were freshly baked, and the warmth of the
\nbox felt nice on her cold hands.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as she reached the
\ntop of the stairs, Nadia saw that the door to her apartment was half open. She
\nrushed down the hall, expecting to find everything upside down like it happened
\nwhen burglars entered her parents\u2019 house last year. To her surprise, everything
\nwas exactly like she had left it that morning. Well, everything but a small envelope
\nthat was resting in the middle of the living room floor. <\/p>\n

Nadia opened it and found an old thumb drive. She remembered her Computer History teacher telling them about these early 21st-century storage devices. To think that people would carry those around all the time… And only for a few GBs worth of storage. <\/p>\n

Intrigued, Nadia closed
\nthe apartment\u2019s door and examined the drive. Maurice at the office was good at these
\nthings. He had all sorts of gadgets and spare parts, but Nadia couldn\u2019t wait
\nuntil tomorrow. Should she call the police? Nah. Nothing got stolen, and it was
\nnot worth all that time and paperwork. Wait<\/em>…<\/p>\n

She took the old laptop
\nthat her dad had given her to decorate her new flat. It had belonged to her
\ngrandfather, apparently. It took her a while, but she finally managed to detach
\none of the laptop\u2019s USB ports and connect it to her home computer. She inserted
\nthe thumb drive. With a sudden bang, a power surge left the room in the dark. Of
\ncourse. <\/p>\n

\u201cZiza, status report.
\nWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, Nadia.\u201d But to
\nher surprise, it wasn\u2019t Ziza\u2019s voice. It was that of a young woman. <\/p>\n

\u201cWho… who are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can call me EVE.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cI keep telling you:
\nthere\u2019s something weird about this guy. It\u2019s as if… Hey \u2013 Nadia. For real?\u201d
\nTom\u2019s hand was suddenly going up and down in front of her face. <\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, what?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadia came back to her
\nsurroundings and tried to recall anything of her colleague\u2019s speech. Not a
\nchance. She swallowed the rice in her mouth and smiled at Tom. He was sitting
\non the opposite side of the cafeteria table. His bald head and shaven face
\ncontrasted with the overly sized red glasses he was wearing. He had a different
\ncolour for every day of the week. Or so Nadia liked to think. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNever mind, don\u2019t bother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, Tom. I\u2019m sorry. I
\nknow I\u2019ve been a bit off these past few days,\u201d said Nadia. The dining hall was
\nrather empty that day. Perhaps one of the office floors was having a birthday
\ncelebration or something. Hmmm — pizza.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeriously, it was
\nnothing,\u201d said Tom. \u201cBut Nadia; I\u2019m a little worried about you. Ever since we
\nsigned on RayStar you have been acting all down and so not like you. I thought
\nthat this is what you wanted, to work on a big account, you know \u2013 have an
\nimpact.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBy quietly shielding a
\nmajor corporation from dozens of cyberattacks every day? Yeah, right. Big game
\nchanger over here. Hey, I\u2019m going to save the world!\u201d Nadia had raised her voice
\nand was now speaking to the whole room, her arms held high above her in a
\ngesture of victory. <\/p>\n

A few heads turned, shook
\nin disbelief and then went back to their plates. Tom sighed and got up. <\/p>\n

\u201cPlay tough if you want. Sarcasm won\u2019t hide whatever is wrong. Especially not from you.\u201d Tom reached for the interior pocket of his bright blue blazer and took out a black plastic card. \u201cThere\u2019s this place in Shoreditch. A friend of Hao is throwing a party there tomorrow night. Drop by, would you? You could use a break. Use this to get in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom left the card on the table and walked off, adjusting his glasses with the index finger. Ugh. That had been hard. She loved Tom. He and his boyfriend were just so nice to her. When was the last time she had seen Hao anyway? Nadia picked up the card and flipped it. There were some words carved into the plastic: The Blue Dragon<\/em>. 4 Chance St, Shoreditch, London.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLet me guess; I am not
\nallowed to go,\u201d said Nadia to the silent partner in her ear. <\/p>\n

\u201cI did not say that,\u201d
\nresponded the female voice. Nadia felt the frustration mounting up and took a
\nlong, deep breath. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I can barely talk to anyone, but I\u2019m allowed to go to a party?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven I have feelings, Nadia,\u201d said EVE laughing. \u201cYou have been so good these past weeks. Plus, we don\u2019t want them to get suspicious. I sensed distress in your friend\u2019s voice. Well-intended, nosey people can cause a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, aren\u2019t you nice?\u201d Nadia did nothing to disguise her disdain. She didn\u2019t even know who she was talking to — an AI or a real person. Nadia grabbed her bag and started making her way back to the holovisor room. <\/p>\n

\u201cOh, and Nadia. Don\u2019t say
\nanything you might regret at the party. We wouldn\u2019t want your sister to get hurt,
\nwould we?\u201d<\/p>\n

A chill went down Nadia\u2019s
\nspine as she rested her chin on the biometric scan that guarded the RayStar
\nproject holovisors. The doors opened with a soft beep. Nadia walked in. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the next chapter: Nadia \u2013 Chapter III<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Join<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Need tips on how to find a job in IT? Check out our\u00a0IT job hunting guide.<\/a> <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London. Follow the chapter I of the story of Nadia on Mission Control Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[47,273,189,112,75,274],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horizon-2050","tag-cybersecurity","tag-h250","tag-nadia","tag-quantum-computing","tag-sci-fi","tag-short-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3958,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/3958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-uk.mindquest.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}