The following Saturday, Finn offered to prepare a rather filling full Irish breakfast on Saturday, as Fae and him had decided to dedicate the day to sort out perhaps the most difficult aspects of their upcoming journey: getting from Cork to La Havre by ship, and the Italian Railway tickets, for which they would have needed assistance from their new DigiPunk connections. In particular, the plan was to basically take the bikes and make a weekend trip out of all that, which required a lot of energy, hence the breakfast choice.

“Sure you don’t want to come, Matt? Cycling to Ringaskiddy will be awesome, if the weather holds up”

“Nah! I’d rather save my energy for this evening. I may meet Jenny after her shift, assuming she finishes on time and there aren’t any emergencies at the hospital” said Matt while dipping a slice of black pudding into a rather large lake of baked beans partially mixed with fried egg yolk. “I’ll chill here and watch some TV or something. I need the rest, plus you guys feel free to ring me if you get mugged or something, OK?

Finn smiled. Sure, the packet ship pier at Ringaskiddy didn’t have the best reputation right after the Pulse, but things did improve considerably and thee was virtually no risk of getting mugged. Not in the day, anyway.

The two finished their breakfast, and Finn prepared a couple of sandwiches for lunch, just in case, and put them in a small backpack he was going to carry along. He did decide to split the cash he was bringing with him for safety, an he placed some in his wallet, some in his backpack, and he was going to keep five ponds in his bike pouch. The tickets weren’t going to be too expensive, but he had no idea what was going to happened at the abandoned airport. In the end, he decided to bring around 50£ with him, thinking that her sister would probably bring a similar amount for her tickets. He wasn’t too pleased of carrying around that much, but there really was no other option.

He was going to meet his sister at Harty’s Quay, so that they could get on and stay the Greenway more or less all the way to Ringaskiddy. It was a wonderful cycling route all on the coast, the perfect weekend activity when the weather was fine.

And it was truly a glorious day. As Finn got on the road, he couldn’t help counting a total of seven little clouds in an otherwise perfectly blue sky and noticed a lot more cyclists on the streets, probably off for a day trip somewhere. As he saw a tram go by, Finn noticed a big advert on its side, it just said:

What on Earth was that about? He was amazed because that was an ad by his company, and he had absolutely no clue of what it was referring to: there were no planned product launches, no announcements were made, no internal memos hinting at anything happening the following Thursday. He quickly forgot about it as soon as he put his headphones on and turned on his cassette player: he always wanted to listen to music whenever he went for a cycle or a jog on his own.

It took a good forty minutes for Finn to reach Harty’s Quay: there were a lot of people cycling and he wasn’t rushing himself. When be god there, Fae was waiting for him:

“Vediamo chi vince?”

Finn was surprised at first to hear his sister speaking in Italian, it took him a while to process that question, but then he remembered it was something she used to ask him when he must have been five or six, when she wanted to compete for something. At the time the age difference was noticeable, so she normally let him win… this time, however, it was going to be very different: there was a sparkle in her eyes that instantly told him that she was not gonna let him win this time, and she was going to race him to Ringaskiddy!

The two pedaled really fast through the Greenway, dodging families that were keeping a slow pace to let their young kids catch up, and casual cyclers that were going slightly faster but were no match for them. They were going pretty fast, probably over the limit in certain areas of the Greenway that was not really designated for fast cyclers. Luckily, it was a Saturday so they took advantage of the fact that there weren’t going to be many gardas on bike patrol, but still, it was quite risky as they would have gotten a fine, and the people they were overtaking at two times their speed didn’t look very pleased. After a left-wise hairpin in Raffeen Village and another sharp left turn at Shanbally Cross they were nearly there, and Finn was unquestionably in the lead.

Fae did her best to overtake him on the last stretch, but her brother was the first at turning for the harbor. Both their hearts were racing when they stopped, but they laughed at each other when it was over: they really missed that in their now fairly busy lives.

They asked around where the An Post ticket office was, and they were told that basically they had to follow a very long line of people waiting to board the next packet ship, that was actually due in less than an hour. As they approached the ticket office, they joined a shorter line of people that, like them, were just booking tickets.

Their turn came in just a few minutes, and they were greeted by a man in their mid-sixties, who had obviously been doing that job for a long time. He asked them what ticket they wanted and when they wanted to leave, and Fae told him that they wanted to go to La Havre and they planned to leave in exactly a week on Saturday 10th, ideally before midday. The man cycled through different options on his DigiTerm with his right hand, while playing with his long, gray beard with he left hand, humming as if he was genuinely trying to carefully evaluate which was the best option for the siblings. After a quick and satisfied ‘Aha!’ He took a deep breath, and blirted out everything, but literally everything they needed to know, almost without stopping for breathing:

“For Saturday 10th you wanna board the 09:45 express postal liner, which means you want to show up at the very least one hour before for boarding procedures such as check in and customs declarations. You cannot bring firearms, sharp objects except for small scissors, flammable objects, explosive devices, toxic chemicals or other substances that may be combined to produce toxic chemicals, unlicensed electronics, or pets of any kind. You don’t have children so I don’t have to explain that part, which is good. Your ticket does not include luggage which must be purchased separately, either today or on the day of departure, for a total of 1£ per 20kg suitcase, up to a maximum of three suitcases. Special equipment like musical instruments, foldable bikes, or similar must be declared and paid for according to a separate pricing list. The journey is going to be from 24 to 36 hours, depending on weather, and the liner runs on biodiesel.”

Finn tried to stop him multiple times, and finally succeeded at great annoyance by the ticketing clerk, who was not pleased to be interrupted. The two negotiated a discounted deal for two people with two suitcases and a small backpack each, for a total of 15£ per person, which wasn’t cheap but wasn’t that bad either, considering that included a cabin with two single beds, three big meals, and a breakfast each.

When the two confirmed, the man finally decided to use both hands to type everything in. His typing speed was unbelievable: his fingers were flying on that keyboard while his eyes kept looking at the siblings as he asked a few questions to confirm all the fares before being able to issue a ticket. Finn felt that he must have been doing that job for a long time, and since he was basically his parents age, he would have been typing on computers for near enough fifty years. The siblings were entertained by all that, and they felt relieved when each got given a freshly-printed ticket for the following Saturday: it was done! They were actually going to France, for real!

They decided to have their sandwiches sitting on a bench at the pier: they wanted to get a feel of what it was like to board a boat like that. They never really travelled much outside of the odd bus or train trip, and maybe they went on some small boats, but neither of them had been outside of Ireland. That was not actually true for Fae though: she did have some faint memories of her pre-Pulse early childhood, she remember catching the train, maybe a boat once or twice, and she definitely remembered planes. Her parents told her she definitely had been to England and Ireland at least once or twice before the Pulse, and that it took about two hours by plane, but that of course you ended up spending the whole day traveling each way because of preparations, getting to the airport, and things like that. Two hours and a bit by plane, from Genoa straight to Dublin or Cork. Imagine that. When Finn asked her what it was like to actually fly, be in the sky and see cities from above, Fae just said she remember the excitement of getting into a plane and taking off and landing, but… she said she used to sleep most of the time, and it felt boring when she was awake.

The airport. That’s where they were heading next, not to catch a plane to take them to Genoa by dinner time, but to meet some dodgy DigiPunks who promised to smuggle their way into Italy.

“Ready? We should go, it’s gonna take us over an hour to get there from here.” said Fae, not looking forward to the idea of visiting that place. At Instant Zero, 90% of electronic devices ceased to function, immediately, all at once. Out of all things that went wrong with the Pulse, planes were perhaps the most dramatic: when something goes wrong on a plane, normally pilots and air staff can react pretty quickly and manage the situation. Checklists were invented to make sure planes could take on and off safely, taking into account of all possible things that could go wrong. There were procedures for when one of th landing gear gets stuck, a flap doesn’t open, an engine fails, but there were no procedures for total, instantaneous, electronic failure. On May 26th 2025, every plane that was in the air at 8:30 GMT had to attempt an emergency landing. Civilian airliners, with basically no manual controls anymore, had no practical way to avoid uncontrolled descent: they relied on backup systems, auxiliary power generators, things that got immediately bricked by the Pulse. It had been estimated that only 16.5% of civilian planes in the air had been able to perform a successful emergency landing. Ironically, older planes had a lot more chances, an obviously so did EMP-hardened military crafts. Still, the majority of the fatalities that happened at the time of the pulse were caused by planes crashes.

As a consequence, there was very little room for aviation at all in the post-Pulse world. Twenty-five years later, each nation could only account for a few dozens of working planes at most, which became state- or military-owned, mostly used for diplomatic purposes or critical military missions. There had been attempts to revive alternatives to planes like hot air balloons, zeppelins, and blimps, but those remained rather niche forms of travel and largely for ceremonial use. With so fewer planes, there was no point in keeping a lot of airports operational, so small countries like Ireland typically concentrated their efforts in keeping only one or two airports running, in or close to their capital, just to ensure diplomatic and military access. And that is why Cork Airport was abandoned, partly used as improvised depot for bricked planes but also cars that suddenly stopped throughout the city. Twenty-five years after the Pulse, Cork Airport was just a desolated wasteland of steel and wires, sometimes visited by scavengers searching for useful parts, but normally avoided by ordinary citizens and excluded from cycling routes.

It was, indeed, a rather dystopian sight: thousands of cars, mostly hollow shells stripped of anything even remotely useful, piled up one on top of the other, upside down, dumped on top and on the side of abandoned aircrafts of different sizes, from the intercontinental, two-story airliner to the lean, private jet, to helicopters, and buses. Cork Airport was a ghost town of bent, rusted steel and scorched wires, motionless, silent, lifeless. A chill wind from the North was blowing, unchallenged, through the runaways invaded by carcasses of cars and planes. The sun, who had been gloriously shining throughout the morning, was hiding behind a few clouds, as it rapidly started its descent into the evening.

Apart from the eerie screeches of the wind blowing unpredictably through all that metal and broken glass windows, there was virtually no noise, and no movement at all. Fae and Finn quickly decided to dismount from their bikes and leave them leaning against one of the airport buildings that was still standing, and continued to wander around on foot, hoping for someone to notice them and come to them. They had no formal meeting place or time, Kathleen and Eric just confidently advised them to go there that day, as if everyone already knew everything about them, and indeed they did. After walking for a few minutes, they noticed green lights flashing from the control tower. They were flashing intermittently, as to signal the landing or takeoff of a plane, but of course there was nothing of the sort: it was just signaling them to walk for another two-hundred meters to reach the control tower. The control tower lights just flashed green for a second, just enough for them to notice them, and then once more; as soon as the siblings started to cycle towards it, the flashing stopped: someone was obviously watching them. They dismounted right in front of the control tower entrance, which opened from the inside right afterwards. A young man in his twenties invited them to come in.

“You must be Fae and Finn. We were waiting for you.”

As they went up the stairs all the way to the abandoned control room, the young man introduced himself as Kyle, and told them that the others were waiting for them upstairs.

The abandoned control room was slightly illuminated with a few neon lights but on such a way that they would not propagate too much light outside through the windows. It was quite dark, overall, and although there was a clear humming of machinery of some sorts, all the old computers seemed off. As they entered, they were immediately greeted by a rather eccentric-looking couple well in their fifties.

“Well well well, so Kathleen says you guys wanna go on a nice holiday on the Italian Riviera, don’t you? Hi, I am Pat, and this is my wife Morgan, we are the admins of this HubLink”

The sibling shook their hands and introduced themselves. Pat’s hand grip was very firm and he determined, and Morgan wasn’t far off. They both had long, silver hair in a ponytail, almost to make a point of keeping the same hairstyle. Pat however, had a mid-length scruffy silver beard (which seemed a signature traits amongst the male DigiPunks) and unusually dark, almost black eyes. They both seemed extremely friendly and really chilled, perhaps little bit too chilled. Morgan’s green eyes seemed to wonder a little bit as if they were constantly searching for flies or something.

“You guys have been smoking again? Mum! For Heaven’s sake!”

“What! It helps me concentrate. And mind your own business!” snapped Morgan, and then continued smiling looking at the siblings “you have to excuse my son, he sometimes says things that, well, are not exactly appropriate! But please, do take a seat, here”

She pulled a couple of swivel chairs and invited the two to sit down. She then turned on a switch, which caused a few terminals light up to turn on.

“Welcome to HubLink 19, a.k.a. the on-demand international relay for County Cork. We turn it on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or on-demand when needed, like today. Pat and I live about half a mile from here, while our little Kyle just moved out more towards the city…”

Finn interrupted almost immediately asking what a HubLink was, and Pat explained that it was a sort of international relay node for The Mesh, the packet radio network that united all likely-minded individuals that wanted free digitalization without subscriptions or constraints from corporations. That day, they were going to contact their associates in Italy and try to see if they could buy some train tickets from Turin to Genoa, as well as organize a place to stay for two nights in Turin.

The siblings explained that, based on their travel plans, they would have likely traveled from Lyon to Turin on the 15th of December, then their plan was to spend a couple of nights there, and then catch a train to Genoa where they would hopefully have managed to get to their parents flat. Pat said that he imagined it was going to be something like that, and he said that the accommodation in Turin and the train fare from Genoa plus various “service fees” would have been about four-hundred mash.

“Four-hundred… what?” inquired Fae.

“Mash! M-A-$-H, also known as the Mesh Cash, our cryptocurrency. Well, it’s not really a cryptocurrency because ” —he chucked— “you can’t really do proper pre-Pulse crypto on today’s hardware, but well… the concept are the same. You invest real money, you get digital money that you can spend for stuff. Best of all, you can send it anywhere in the world. Something like… DigiCoin? That’s what they are going to call it, right?” —he winked at Finn, as he was supposed to know something about that.

“I don’t know what DigiCoin is, and how can you send money anywhere in the world in minutes? What’s 400 Ma$h then in pounds?!”

“Don’t you work for EDS? Ahhh whatever. Anyhow, 400 times 0.133 is… right, 53.2 pounds. Let’s make it 53 because you guys seem cool!”

Fae and Finn didn’t expect that it would cost that much. They did have just about enough money with them, but they were very skeptical about this whole thing. Pat and Morgan also didn’t exactly look trustworthy, either…

“Look, I did the maths already, I also asked Paolino over in Turin for a quote, and it’s going to be that amount. He’s a great guy and he’ll watch over you, there’s no doubt about that. Anyhow, it’s your choice: either this or there’s the door, we have stuff to do here… it’s not like we are just sitting here watching packets going through the network!”

Pat did have a point. They looked at Morgan and she just kept smiling at them, completely stoned. Either they gave these two weirdos their real money in exchange for a promise for an accommodation, or they were back to square one, and they didn’t really fancy the idea of going to Italy without anyone there to help them and a place to stay, it just wasn’t safe enough.

“What are we going to get in exchange? Is your guy going to send us the train tickets and a booking receipt of some sort?” asked Fae, trying to be rational and understand how this whole thing was going to work.

“Of course! Or better, no. You are going to get a hash for our Ma$h transaction, and then you can get in touch with Paolino for the details.”

“Hash for Maaaaa$hhh!!! Yeah! Give us the caaash!” started singing Morgan, while her son tried desperately to get her to focus and stop scaring the siblings.

“I’ll give you twenty now, and the rest after the transaction is complete. Fair?” proposed Finn.

Pat nodded, and Morgan put on a really big smile.

“Honey, will you do the honors?” said Pat, looking at his wife “Don’t worry, the hash (the other hash) actually does make her focus. But only when she’s typing on a terminal. Honest!”

Finn already regretted giving those two the cash, which they pocketed instantly, and Morgan pushed her swivel chair towards one of the terminals and started typing.

$> run mash
*** Ma$h Secure Transfer v1.45.6 ***
* Loading wallet... OK.
> send
* Enter PIN to unlock key signing
PIN:> ********
* Processing...
* PIN OK, singing enabled for morgan~lefayyy@ieork.
* Provide transaction details.
To:> paul33n0@itivr
Amount:> 375
Notes:> 2x tickets from Turin to Genoa + 2x nights accommodation for two, as quoted. Dates: 15th-17th December.
Confirm [y/n]:> y
* Creating transaction...
* Signing transaction...
* ...
* ...
* Signed as [morgan~lefayyy@ieork] using wallet private key.
* Transaction ready to be committed to Ma$h Secure Ledger.
* ID:  
  F287C5FEC07A20A1858FCA077D5E85F0
  13444EDB40F1C661FC96FF20DCBC29B8
* IZT: 805452755 (Sat 2050-12-03 17:21:47)
* [morgan~lefayyy@ieork] >> 375M$ >> [paul33n0@itivr]
* Commit transaction? [y/n]:> y
* Committing to nearest HubLink...
* ...
* Committed to ieork.019
* Propagation in progress.
>

“That’s it. Now, can you hand over the remaining 28£ please? Give us the caaash, you got the haaash!” said Morgan.

“What do you mean that’s it? And why did you send only 375 Ma$h?” asked Finn

Pat explained that the transaction was done, the hash for it was generated and valid, it just needed to propagate through the Mesh all the way to Italy. He instructed the terminal to print two transaction reports for them, and explained that 25M$ was… their service fee. When Finn asked about contacting Paolino, Pat said he could do it, but they wouldn’t likely get a reply back for at least four or five hours.

“Four or five hours? I have to meet Aisling in less than two hours! I need to rush back actually!” said Finn, as he got ready to go.

Fae said she could stay for a while longer, but not that long… and asked if they could meet again the next day. The family looked at each other, and they clearly didn’t really fancy the idea of doing that. Kyle bailed out immediately, saying that Cork was playing and he had to go to the hurling stadium, and his parents made the siblings understand that they could probably get persuaded into coming back in to the control tower if they could get something out of it.

“And really, you should consider getting setup to get on the Mesh. You will need access during your trip, for your own good! I can fix your DigiCard so at least you’ll be able to access any of our terminals, assuming you know where to find them. Unless you have hardware of your own…” suggested Pat.

At that point, Fae mentioned she had a DigiBook, and when the couple heard that they both got instantly excited.

“I can unbrick that for 30£. And for 50£ I’ll throw in a brand new Rashid cryptoprocessor. I love those new DigiBooks!”

Fae said she’ll sleep on it and decide the next day, as she didn’t quite understand what the unbricking process entailed, and she didn’t really want to get into a big discussion there and then, as it was getting late.

They all agreed to meet around 2pm the next day.