Qubit's Incubator

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition April 2020

1. Oxana’s Pit

2. The Last Mission of the Seventh Cavalry

3. Raji Book One: Octavia Pompeii

4. Raji Book Two: The Academy

5. Raji Book Three: Dire Kawa

6. Raji Book Four: The House of the West Wind

7. Hannibal’s Elephant Girl

8. Cian

9. Ariion XXIII

10. The Last Seat on the Hindenburg

11. Dragonfly vs Monarch: Book One

12. Dragonfly vs Monarch: Book One

13. The Sea of Tranquility 2.0 Book One: Exploration

14. The Sea of Tranquility 2.0 Book Two: Invasion

15. The Sea of Tranquility 2.0 Book Three

16. The Sea of Tranquility 2.0 Book Four

17. Sea of Sorrows, Book Two of The Rod of God

18. Do Not Resuscitate

19. Hannibal’s Elephant Girl, Book Two

20. The Rod of God, Book One

21. Henry IX

Coming Soon

22. Dragonfly vs Monarch: Book Three

23. The Journey to Valdacia

24. Still Waters Run Deep

25. Ms Machiavelli

26. Ariion XXIX

27. The Last Mission of the Seventh Cavalry Book 2

28. Hannibal’s Elephant Girl, Book Three

See the end of this book for details about the others

Chapter One

West Chelsea, New York City

Tuesday morning, 10 a.m.

“Thank you for the opportunity.”

Catalina took the offered straight-back oak chair. She watched the man behind the desk as he read her CV.

Thirtyish, confident, well-dressed. I wonder if he’s the owner or manager?

She adjusted her short blue skirt, then rested her tightly clasped hands on the iPad in her lap.

Victor Templeton was clean-shaven, with a little gray sprinkled throughout his sun-bitten hair. His face looked weathered, tired. He watched Catalina for a moment, but her steady gaze didn’t waver. He wrote the number “7” on his notepad.

“Whatcha got…” he glanced at her CV, “Miss Catalina Saylor?”

Catalina’s hand shot to the right side of her thigh, where she patted her skirt.

They’re gone! She panicked. How could I lose them?

Her heart raced. Jerking her hand one way then another, she finally felt a familiar object, then the second one.

There you are. Thank God!

The concealed pocket held her treasures. All her skirts and dresses had pockets hidden within the folds of cloth. She never wore pants or shorts. Without her talisman, she would be lost.

“Sound imaging for the blind,” she said in answer to his question.

Victor spun a yellow pencil on his desk. “Hmm…like a bat’s echolocation?”

Catalina’s breathing returned to normal as her heart rate slowed. “Something like that, but using AI to convert the radar bounces into a non-visual image.”

Victor scribbled the number “8” on his notepad. “Non-visual image.” It wasn’t a question; he repeated her phrase as if trying to give it substance. “Being fed into the blind person’s optic nerve?”

“No. To her fingertips, making her surroundings into a tactile image.”

“You have ten minutes to sell this idea to me.”

Catalina tossed her head to the side, like a girl with a long strand of hair irritating her face; however, her short chocolate-brown hair, neatly brushed and pushed back, hardly covered her ears. A little blush on her cheeks would have added depth to her statuesque beauty, but she never wore makeup, thinking it was a waste of time. Maybe someday, if she ever wanted to advertise her availability for dating.

She opened her iPad and placed it on the desk, facing him. Reaching over the top, she pressed a key.

A stick-figure with a long cane materialized on the stark white screen.

Catalina sat back, keeping her eyes on Victor.

As he watched the iPad, the figure mobilized and made its way along a sketched-in street. The figure slowly morphed into a human form—a woman, then clothing was added; a flowery blouse and long skirt, both in black and white.

She tapped her cane on the sidewalk, feeling her way along.

The sidewalk and buildings took on more detail as the sounds of murmured voices and traffic came from the iPad speakers.

Color was added to the woman’s clothing as she made her way through the passing pedestrians; chartreuse for the skirt, and a shocking orange for her blouse. The outlined buildings became shops, with books and jewelry displayed in the windows, while a convenience store came into view ahead of her.

“Who did this animation?”Victor asked.

“I did,” Catalina said. “Most of it.”

He used his pen to slash through the “8” and wrote “9” beside it.

The blind woman came to a street crossing and stopped when the end of her cane dropped off the edge of the curb.

She tilted her head, listening.

“Anyone there?” Her voice came from the speakers.

A girl, maybe ten years old, came to her side. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m blind. Can you help me across the street? This is Forty-seventh, right?”

“Yes, it is.” The girl took her hand. “What happened to your eyes?”

“Afghanistan.”

“Step down.” The girl led the woman off the curb and into the street. “We can cross now. You were hurt in the war?”

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“Monica. We’re in the middle of the street, but we still have the light.”

“Do you live nearby?”

“Two blocks. Mama sent me to the store for baking powder. Get ready to step up on the curb.”

The white cane tapped ahead of the woman. When it touched the curb, she felt for the height.

“If you can’t see, why do you wear sunglasses?”

After stepping up on the sidewalk, the woman felt for her glasses and removed them.

“Oh,” Monica said.

The woman’s eyes were cloudy orbs, scared and misshapen.

“I see what happened. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Thanks for helping me.”

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“I’m Cindy.”

A knock came at the office door, then a young woman with red hair peeked in. “Your next appointment is here.”

Victor kept his eyes on the video as he held up his hand toward her in a ‘Tell the applicant to wait a few minutes’ gesture.

Catalina stared at the redhead. Dangly earrings. Perfectly shaped, gold enclosing jade stones. Ovals!

The young woman glanced at Catalina, then nodded to Victor and closed the door.

The video suddenly rewound back to the stick figure in the first frame. It started as before, but now, as the animation progressed, the white cane was equipped with a shiny metal cylinder wrapping around the shaft, near the handgrip. A bracelet of similar design circled the woman’s left wrist. Both had blinking green LEDs while emitting a soft beeping sound.

When the woman came to the curb, she shifted the cane to her right hand, then held up her left, with the palm forward. The beeping sound accelerated. She cocked her head to the side, then after a moment she slowly shifted her open palm to her left. She paused there, then moved her hand all the way around to the right.

The blind woman waited until the sounds of traffic stopped, then held out her palm to her left, apparently checking for any cars turning right, and into her path.

Satisfied it was clear, she stepped off the curb and walked confidently forward, avoiding a yellow taxi that had stopped halfway into the crosswalk.

She was soon on the other side of the street and striding toward her destination.

Victor leaned back in his chair as Catalina took her iPad, turned it toward her, and clicked off the video.

“Nice. I understand the concept,” he said. “But not only will it require some very dense coding, you’ll have to work out the computer-human interface.”

“I know it won’t be easy.”

“Are you a coder?”

“I did most of the programming of the demo video.”

“Where did you learn to code?”

“I’m teaching myself.”

Victor marked out the “9” and wrote “10.” “Why do you need Qubit’s Incubator?”

“For a place to work. And I’ll need electronic test equipment, too.”

“Why can’t you work at home?”

“I share a small apartment with a roomie who loves to party and make lots of noise.”

“You don’t party and make noise?”

“I used to.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“No other place to live?”

“I can’t afford a place by myself, or the equipment I need.”

“Your parents?”

“Not an option.”

“Do you have a job?”

She nodded.

“How much do you make?”

Catalina hesitated, wrinkling her brow as she gazed at a picture on the wall behind Victor. It was a large horizontal oval containing Egyptian hieroglyphs. The symbols were embossed characters chiseled into stone.

“I work in a café.” Die with…She tried to work out the translation. “With extra shifts and tips, I clear around four thousand a month.” Die with what?

“And you can’t get your own place on that?”

“I have…um…other expenses.” Die with memories…but what is that last part?

He marked out the “10” and went back to “8.” “What are they?”

“Why do you need to know all this?”

“Miss Saylor, do you want help from the Incubator?”

“Of course I do.”Dreams!

“Then I need enough information to make a decision. If you’re over your head in credit card debt and all you can do is make minimum payments, you’ll never get out from under that load of debt working at a café.”

Die with memories, not dreams. She smiled. All within a perfect oval frame.

She took a deep breath, examined her nails for a moment, then exhaled. “I dated a guy for almost a year. I thought we had a future together, but he tricked me into running my four credit cards up to the limit, then when we couldn’t charge anything more, he bailed on me.”

Victor lined through the “8” and wrote “10” again. “You see that door?” He pointed across the room, opposite from the door the young woman had opened earlier.

Her shoulders slumped. She nodded. “You’re rejecting me?”

“Go through that door, pick out a vacant desk, and get organized. Then–”

Catalina squealed with delight, jumped from the chair, and stepped to the end of his desk. “I’m accepted?! I can’t believe it. Can I hug you?”

“No. As I was saying, come back to see me at four this afternoon. Now, wipe that smile off your face and go find a desk. You’ve got thirty days to prove yourself.”

“Yes, sir.” She actually did wipe her hand across her broad smile, leaving behind a serious frown. “I’m on it.” She hurried toward the door.

Victor smiled as he made a note on the edge of her application—30 days.

Chapter Two

Catalina pushed open the door to find a large warehouse. She stepped inside, letting the door close silently behind her.

The place had apparently been some sort of assembly factory many years ago.

The underside of the corrugated ceiling was about seventy feet above her head. Twenty feet up, a wide balcony ran along the sides of the building. Many doors lined the outside perimeter of the balcony. A few were open, but she couldn’t see inside the rooms.

A large block-and-tackle hung from a steel girder. A metal hook, the size of a wrestler’s arm, was suspended below the rusting block on a rusting chain. Someone had hung a large doll from the hook.

Catalina tilted her head and squinted at the doll, which had a noose around its neck.

Is that Donald Trump?

The central open area of the huge floor had thirty desks placed haphazardly about. Most were occupied by men and women concentrating on their computers or building models of strange devices.

One young man glanced up at her, then returned to assembling a tall Tinker Toy gadget on his desk.

Surrounding the open area was a collection of cubicle work areas. She saw several rows of these cubicles, forming semicircles around and away from the open area, like an amphitheater. She could see into some of them, and most were occupied.

Find a vacant desk, he said.

Catalina walked through the open area, passing around a few cleared desks.

It’s so quiet in here.

Someone coughed. A chair squeaked. No other sounds could be heard. But there was an air of intensity about the place, like a classroom during a calculus exam.

She came to an unoccupied cubicle. She placed her iPad on the cleared desk and tried the chair. Leaning back, she gazed about at the blank walls of the workspace.

Just needs a few pictures to…

“Hey, Pissant.”

She almost fell over backwards. “W-what?” Looking up, she saw a young Black woman peeking over the wall.

“Pissants live in the bullpen,” the woman said. “You don’t become a drone until you’ve accomplished something.”

“Drone?”

“This cubicle don’t belong to you.” The Black woman disappeared.

Did she call me a ‘pissant?’

Catalina collected her iPad and went to the open area of the bullpen.

She found a desk with a Scotch tape dispenser, stapler, pencils, and an old-school computer.

Sitting at the desk, she opened her iPad and searched for a Wi-Fi connection.

“What’re you doing?”

She jerked around to see a scruffy old man with one hand on his hip and the other holding a steaming cup of coffee.

“I-I-I’m…”

“I-I-I’m…” he mocked her in a singsong voice. “Get out of my chair.”

Catalina grabbed her iPad, stood, and backed away. “Sorry.”

“Over there.”

The old man pointed with his coffee cup toward the edge of the bullpen, where a gray metal desk and matching chair stood like salvaged government-issued office furniture relegated to the outliers.

She went to the desk, and when she sat in the chair, she could feel the cold metal through the fabric of her skirt.

The desk was turned away from the others in the bullpen, facing a brick wall that looked more like a weathered outside wall than the inside of a building.

Her hand, as if by its own accord, felt for the pocket in her skirt. Slipping her hand into the pocket, her fingers searched for something. When they touched the smooth surface of one of the objects, she smiled.

High above was a large skylight providing a view of the blue sky, but only a dim gray glow came through the ages of caked-on grime.

Opening her iPad, Catalina searched again for a Wi-Fi signal. Finally, she found ‘Qubit Inc.’ The curser blinked, then a message popped up, demanding, ‘PASSWORD.’

She looked over her shoulder at the other pissants. They’re not going to be any help.

The ‘low battery’ LED began to blink on her iPad.

She saw an electrical outlet embedded in the brick wall, twenty feet away. She took the charging cord from her purse.

Six feet long. How am I going to reach that outlet? Move the desk? Glancing at the others, she shook her head. Invisible little pissant. That’s all I am. Do I really want to do this? At least at home I can charge up my computer and get online.

Turning back to her iPad, she tried ‘qubit’ for a password, then ‘Victor,’ but neither was acceptable.

If I try a third time, it might lock…

“Bullpen.”

Catalina turned to see a man standing behind her. “What the hell? I took a cubicle, and someone told me to go to the bullpen. I went there and found a desk. Then some snippy guy told me to get out of his chair and come over here. So now I guess this is your desk and I have to go back to the middle of the floor and wait to see if any desk remains unused. Why is everyone so mean in this place?”

The man smiled, watching her smolder.

“Well, at least you can smile,” she said, then closed her computer and rolled up the power cord.

He was about thirty-five, heavyset, with a shaved head and thick black beard. His faded blue shirt had long sleeves buttoned at the wrist.

He toyed with a red rubber band using a sleight-of-hand trick where the rubber band seemed to flip from one pair of fingers to the other two when he folded them into his palm, then opened them. Using his thumb so smoothly in his palm, it almost seemed like magic as the band jumped back and forth.

Tattoos of beautiful jaguars slipped from beneath his cuffs, sinking their bloody claws into the backs of his hands.

Catalina stood, ready to go look for another desk.

“‘Bullpen’ is the password.” His voice was soft, unthreatening. He sipped from his bottle of Coke.

“Oh.” She sat back down. “Thank you.”

She opened her iPad and typed in the password.

‘Qubit’s Incubator. Connected, secured.’

After opening a browser, she went online to her webpage.

A blurred view of the Alps filled the screen. As the panoramic image sharpened, it slipped into a video from the viewpoint of a drone aircraft approaching the tallest mountain.

“The Matterhorn!” the guy whispered.

Catalina nodded as she watched the screen.

The drone turned slightly to the right, flying toward a huge glacier. As the video zoomed in closer, a red dot appeared on the snow-covered ice field. The dot grew larger and became a woman in a red jumpsuit. She waved to the drone. Closer still, and one could see skis, ski poles, and a yellow backpack.

When the drone was a few feet away, the woman smiled, adjusted her goggles in place, then pushed off.

The drone turned to follow her down the slope as if it were on a pair of skis fifteen feet behind her.

“Wow,” the guy exclaimed. “You did the CGI?”

“Yeah. That twenty seconds of footage took three weeks of coding.”

“I believe it. Beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She looked up at him. “I’m Catalina.”

“Adu Dhabi Wilson.”

“Really?”

“I was born in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, when my parents were stationed at the diplomatic mission there.”

“So, I should call you ‘Adu’ or ‘Will?’”

“Most people call me ‘Joe’ or ‘Pissant.’”

She smiled. “I like ‘Joe.’”

“It seems you need an extension cord.”

“Yes,” Catalina said.

“And desk supplies.”

She nodded.

“Come on.”

Joe led her thorough the bullpen, where half of the twenty-four people looked up from their work, glaring at him as if he were a turncoat.

She followed him along an aisle between cubicles.

Outside the last ring of workspaces, he motioned to his left. “Kitchenette.” A few steps farther. “Bathrooms. And…” He came to a door beyond the bathrooms. “Supply room.”

He pushed open the door to reveal rows of metal shelves.

“Cool,” Catalina said. “Pencils, tape, staplers, tablets–”

“Extension cords.” He handed her a new cord, along with a surge protector.

“Great. Can I take some other things?”

“Sure. Take whatever you want. All this stuff’s for everyone’s use.”

She loaded her arms and started for her desk. “What’s the deal with the bullpen and the cubicles?”

“Something to drink?” Joe asked as he headed for the kitchenette.

“Yes.”

He tossed his empty Coke bottle in a trash bin and poured a cup of coffee. “If you take the last cup of coffee, start a new pot. We put away two or three gallons a day. Sodas and juice are in the fridge. If you see something running low, add it to this list.” He waved toward a dry-erase board on the wall beside the fridge. ‘Jif Crunchy Peanut Butter. Mayo. M&Ms’ were listed on the board. “We take turns on runs to the grocery store.” He opened a small canister. “This is petty cash for the store. The Good Fairy replenishes the cash when it runs low.”

Opening the fridge, he showed her the contents—Coke, 7-Up, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, juice…

“A bottle of OJ, please,” she said.

He reached for the orange juice, glanced at her load of supplies, then balanced it on top of her stack.

Closing the fridge, he led her back toward her desk. “When you’re accepted to incubate, they toss you into the bullpen to sink or swim. If, after the first thirty days, you’re still a viable tissue mass, you get a cubicle. Two months later, if the gods smile upon you, you rise to the top.” He pointed up.

Above them, Catalina saw the balcony going around the four sides of the bullpen and cubicle area. Two circular staircases led up to it. To the right, where Joe pointed, were fifteen doors. Some of them were open, but most were closed.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Private offices.”

“For who?”

“Monarchs.”

“Wow. And those, too?” She nodded to fifteen more doors on the left balcony.

A young woman with a Dr. Pepper went up one of the staircases and turned to her right, while the redhead from the outside office climbed the opposite staircase and went to one of the offices. She didn’t knock at the closed door, instead pushing it open and stepping inside.

“No. That side’s the dorm.”

“What?”

“Dorm rooms.”

“Who gets those?”

“The lucky ones.” Joe sighed. “How I would love to live up there.” They watched the other woman go into one of the dorm rooms. “Come on,” Joe said. “Let’s get you settled. I’ve got six days to become a drone, or die.”

“Will you make it?”

“Most pissants die of self-inflicted trauma before they metamorphosize into worker drones.”

Catalina leaned close to Joe. “Who’s that old pissant? The curmudgeon?”

“William Thomas Edison.”

“What’s he working on, a newfangled plow?”

Joe laughed. “He’s designing a system to collect water from the air using nanotubes.”

“Really? What’s inside the nanotubes?”

“No one knows. He’s not talking until he makes it work.”

After Catalina ran the extension cord from the outlet to her desk, she plugged in her iPad to charge the battery.

On her way back to the supply room, she stopped by the restroom. While washing her hands, her eyes fell on the cap of the cold-water faucet.

After drying her hands on a paper towel, she took two objects from her skirt pocket. The first was a small oval brass nameplate with ‘Evangeline Psychiatric Hospital’ engraved into the metal. The second was a micro screwdriver. She sipped the nameplate back into her pocket and removed the leather sheath she’d fashioned for screwdriver.

Working the sharp edge under the chrome cap on the faucet, she popped it off.

She rinsed the metal cap and dried it.

Holding it to the light, she admired the curlicue ‘C’ imprinted in the cap.

“Sweet,” she whispered. “A perfect oval.”

After removing the hot water cap, with its pretty ‘H’, Catalina cleaned it and dropped both caps into her pocket. She then slipped the screwdriver into its sheath and put it away.

In the storeroom, she found a desk lamp. She took the lamp and a box of colored chalk back to her workspace.

As she sipped her orange juice, she read research articles and doctorial theses from JSTOR—short for Journal Storage—a digital library of academic journals. Her interests were in the latest developments in organic electronics.

After two hours, she leaned back and rubbed her eyes. She looked at the brick wall for a moment, then up at the dim light coming through the dirty skylight.

Next, she read a scholarly thesis for over an hour, trying to decipher the technical jargon. At lunchtime, she went to the kitchenette, and in the fridge she noticed several containers with names written on them.

“Don’t touch anyone else’s food.”

The guy reached past her to take a pink Tupperware bowl with ‘McGill’ written on the side in black Magic Marker. He elbowed her out of the way to reach for a Snapple Peach Tea.