A Way Out

There is something very interesting here, Ryan thought.

"Hey," Angela tried to touch Ryan's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Ryan was a little surprised when the girl touched him and made the ten-inch C-Pad almost fall out of his hand. Likewise Angela herself, almost screamed because she was surprised by Ryan's reaction.

"You…" Angela exhaled repeatedly as she stroked her chest. "You scared the hell of me!"

"Oh, God, sorry…" Ryan frowned, hiding his laugh. "Sorry."

"It doesn't matter. Not a big deal."

"But thank you, beautiful. You are a genius!"

"Huh?" Angela scratched her head, confusing. "Me? Genius? What do you mean?"

"No, aah… I mean," Ryan sat back down on the floor and fiddled with the laptop in front of him, as well as the seven-inch C-Pad on the right. As if he is in a hurry to do something urgent right then and there. "I just…"

Angela frowned as she looked at the man on the floor. Well, she thought, it seemed Ryan wasn't in the mood to be bothered for now. So Angela chose to leave the room.

"Alright, Ryan," Angela said as she turned around. "I will leave you alone. When you're done with all this, come to the dining room. Your friends are having lunch in there."

"Thanks, Miss Genius," Ryan said without looking away from his laptop. "I'll be there soon after finishing this one."

"Bye."

"Bye," Ryan raised a hand.

After Angela left the room, Ryan looked even more excited with his laptop and seven-inch C-Pad. A pretty beautiful curved line formed at the corner of the man's lips, as if to confirm one thing he would be able to achieve.

"You set me up huh, Aios?" Ryan smiled wider, his eyes sparkling. "What a tough girl!"

Ryan found one very good solution, a way to solve his problem with Aios's complicated brain system. The way that suddenly flashed in his head, he had never tried before.

All happened because of the presence of that girl earlier. At least, it was the girl who made his thumb bleed.

When looking at his bloody thumb earlier, Ryan found something unique. Blood seeped slowly, covering every curve and every fine line on his fingerprints. This made Ryan realize and thought of one thing, one way to penetrate Aios.

And that means, intentionally or not, Angela has helped Ryan find a way out of the existing problems.

"Let's run this simulation," Ryan chuckled to himself.

Click!

Ryan even pressed the enter button on the laptop with such enthusiasm that the button made a pretty loud sound.

"Let's see!"

Ryan put the laptop back on the floor while the simulation of penetrating Aios was taking place on the laptop screen itself.

He reached for the seven-inch C-Pad on the floor to his right. With great enthusiasm, as if he had just received a boost of energy, Ryan fiddled with the C-Pad.

He activated the virtual screen, enlarging the dimensions of the imaginative screen, turning one floating folder into dozens of smaller folders. Dozens of folders turned into cubes, then split into hundreds of smaller cubes. And the cubes rotate at a central point, over time, the small cubes form a bluish ball.

Ryan's hands didn't stop working, so agile as if they had eyes and brains in each finger. Sometimes he fiddled with the laptop keyboard on the floor, other times he fiddled with the virtual screen floating above his thigh.

And sometimes, his hands do two things at the same time. The five fingers of the left hand fiddled with the laptop keyboard, and the five fingers of the right hand operated the virtual screen emitted by the C-Pad on his thigh.

Ryan puts the seven-inch C-Pad back on the floor, the screen imaginatively showing a floating circular pattern representing the Aios, with a blue sphere swirling at a moderate speed. The blue sphere was similar to the blue sphere that was between the two pillars in the center of the room itself.

After that, Ryan waited for the simulation he was running to finish. He again moved his neck, body, waist, and hands along with the ten fingers. Crackling sounds were heard successively, releasing all existing rigidity. He let out a long sigh of relief.

Again he reached for the bottle of drink on the floor and downed the alkaloids drink until it was finished.

"Give it up Aios," Ryan muttered with a big smile. "Or all of us on this ship will meet a tragic death."

*

In the cockpit, Captains Dharma and Hyker oversee the movement of Federation ships, especially the SoF carrier. If those ships out there were going to one planet—wherever that might be—they would all be following where the SoF carrier went. Including, ships belonging to gangsters, as well as ships that are not bound by any form of regulation from the Federation, one example is SARO.

Quinn, Oryza, and Pical oversee all aircraft systems through the large screen on the dashboard in front of each of them.

"Cap," Oryza realized something had happened to the SoF carrier. "They stopped."

"They stopped?" repeated the captain.

"The SoF carrier stopped moving."

"I guess so," Hyker said.

Captain Dharma reached for binoculars that were on the chair, to Hyker's right. He used the binoculars to confirm Oryza's words.

For a few seconds, the captain watched the ships out there with binoculars in hand, especially the carrier SoF.

"Right," Captain Dharma muttered half inaudibly. "They stopped."

"What's going on there?" Quinn looks a little worried.

"Well," answered Dharma. "We don't know about that yet."

"Even though they are still far from Mars," said Oryza.

At that time Oryza was operating a simulation on the screen in front of her, her two hands dexterously checking the paths and stopping points of the ships out there in the schematic drawing on the surface of the screen.

"Well," said the girl again, "if they are going to the Red Planet, of course."

"No," Hyker rose from his chair, standing to the captain's left, watching the situation outside. "I don't think anything happened. They might just want to take a break."

TO BE CONTINUED ...