“Yes Ma’am.” she responded diligently but not quite sure of herself.
Ursula was about to ask another question of Ma’am when she noticed she’d stopped shuffling through the papers on the desk and instead had collected a newspaper in her hands. What was even more concerning to her though was the fact that Ma’am’s hands were shaking visibly as she stared, wide eyed at the front page.
Both Catlin and Ursula looked up at Ma’am inquisitively and thought they detected alarm in her body language. But once Ma’am realised the two girls had stopped and were gawking at her, a wall went up between them and her face returned to its normal, menacing, cold self.
“Search for this guy,” she commanded, dropping the newspaper back on the desk and leaving the two girls seated there, astonished.
“What the?” Catlin whispered.
Ursula bent low in her seat, “I’ve never seen her react like that before.”
“Who’s the guy?” Catlin asked, grabbing the newspaper and looking at the front page herself.
“No idea, but looks like he’s got her rattled.” Ursula answered, looking at the paper.
“Well … can we look him up then?”
“Oh. Well, yeah, she told us too, so let’s do it.”
“Him?” Catlin said, pointing to the picture on the front page of the paper. “A bank robber?”
“A bank robber?”
“Yes.”
“Why him?”
“Dunno, let’s have a look and find out.” Ursula quickly keyed in a set of commands into her console, but as Catlin noticed, couldn’t seem to find what she was looking for.
“Can you read the article, find a name for me?”
“Ah, sure.” Catlin speed read the article but came up with nothing. “Nada.”
“Well let’s try the date and time.”
Catlin read her the details but something seemed amiss after Ursula keyed in the details. “Not working?” she asked Ursula.
“I don’t know but, this could actually make for a very good little exercise in link management.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Not everyone is part of the thread here.”
“Huh?”
“… there are other threads?”
“What? More than here?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know how many, we only know and operate this one.”
“So …?”
“Well regardless, the threads must somehow be connected to each other. Because we can look up other people via a person who is connected to our thread. Matter of fact we seem to be able to look up anybody, the only problem is finding the link between them. Once we have a link then we can traverse into another thread, we call it link management.”
“Well that sounds easy,” she said sarcastically. “Multiple threads … of course!”
“Well. Ok, fair enough. But bear with me, we’ve gotten pretty good at finding people thanks to upstairs.”
“How so?”
“They give us live feed information, sourced via electrical devices that we can use to correlate. Let’s say we wanted to know who robbed the bank and wanted to catch them. First of all, most of the information is going to be available via regular surveillance, so we will most likely have a visual of the suspect and all other witnesses in the room.”
Ursula grabbed a hold of her headset and made a call. “Number Two, Eight, over.”
“Go ahead Eight,” came the response.
“Do you have information on a bank robbery in Sydney in the past week?”
“Standby Eight.”
Ursula continued talking to Catlin, “so hopefully they can come back with something useful for us and I can take you over what we do next.”
“So, this guy isn’t part of our thread?” Catlin asked, still looking at the picture of the man on the cover of the newspaper.
“I just ran a quick search for him on our thread and found nothing. It says here in the article that the government can’t seem to find anything on him also, so it might be a good exercise for you to try and track him down and learn something.”
Ursula’s earpiece buzzed, “Eight, Number Two.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sending information to Seven.”
“Thanks Number Two.”
“Over Eight.”
During the exchange, Ma’am had come over and was standing back to observe the two working together. Her previous lack of composure seemed to have dissipated and her normal brooding overture had returned.
“Ma’am?” Ursula enquired.
“Don’t mind me, continue your training and find the target.” She grabbed the newspaper from Catlin and looked it over intently.
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Seven?” Ursula called out.
“Aye, we have a suspect, black male, over six foot, image is clear. Sending translated image over now with potential links.”
“What does that mean?” Catlin asked Ursula.
“The same way we get information off the thread, by using the translator, is the same way we can search for people. Station Seven has just sent the files over for us to use. Here, click that.”
Ursula instructed Catlin on what to do when the translated image flashed up on screen. “Ok if we drop the image here,” she indicated a section of the thread, “then the image gets sent to the translator. But this time it does the reverse job for us. It translates the image and routes us to its location on the thread.”
“What?” she said dumbfounded.
“We find a picture, from a point in time, translate it to the thread and then it takes us to that particular point on the thread. We can view it all live then.”
“Ok.” Catlin scratched her head, feeling extremely lost.
“Ok, just drop this image of the black guy, here.”
Catlin did as instructed but nothing appeared to happen on the screen. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, no, remember not everyone’s a part of this thread, so they may be part of another.” She turned to Station Seven, “Seven, links please?”
“Links coming Eight.”
“Well hurry it up.” Ma’am called out, seemingly agitated by the routine exercise.
Ursula swallowed hard but continued. “If we can’t trace someone directly to the thread that we have here, then we can find them by applying people to the search who are linked to them.”
“What do you mean linked?”
“Well, if other people are part of that person’s life then they are inextricably linked, aren’t they?”
“I guess.”
“If somebody else has seen this man before, or had an interaction of some sort with him then we can find him through their link, simple.”
“Huh?”
“Well let’s say you have your thread here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And in that thread, you have your family, your friends, people you encounter ect, ect.”
“Yep.”
“Well they’re part of your life, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“They’re part of your life but not part of your thread though. They are part of another, but still they’re all connected, do you understand now?”
“Yep. Sort of like a web I guess, I think I get it. You’re using their mutual connection to find them.”
“Exactly. If I see a strange man walking down the street, then he is invariably part of my thread and thus traceable via my thread.”
“So, I guess nobody can hide, right?”
“Nope.”
“Eight, links coming.” Seven called out.
“Ok Catlin, let’s try these.”
Catlin dropped and dragged the images as she had previously, only this time there were several images being sent for the c
omputer to search.
“Ok.” Ursula exhaled.
“Well?” Ma’am called out behind them, wondering what was wrong.
Ursula reached over, taking control again, “I don’t know what happened.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Catlin asked.
“No, no. Let’s just try again.”
Again, Ursula resent the information and again the search yielded no result from the thread. “That’s weird.”
Ma’am chimed in. “Bring up one of the links, trace its thread, backtrack from there.”
“Yes Ma’am,” she complied. “Ok.” She smiled when the thread moved after dropping just one link this time. “Catlin …” she said, handing back the controls.
“Ok, what do I do now?”
“Ok, so I’ve just brought up an individual’s link, did you notice the change?”
“Yeah, it was like the thread zoomed in or something.”
“The search located the target that you requested on the thread and then brought it up in main view.” Ma’am called out from behind them.
“Ok,” Ursula continued. “So now we know this person was at the bank robbery because we have video footage confirming it. We know the time and date of the robbery and we know there’s a long list of other links to this event. So now we’re going to try and find exactly where on this persons thread the robbery happened.”
“Ok, I think I got this.” Catlin licked her lips and explored the thread on her own.
“Speak aloud,” Ma’am chortled. “Talk us through what your rationale is.”
“Oh, ahh. Well my first thought was to go back to the start …”
“Yes.”
“Well, I figure if I can find out when they were born I can gauge their timeline a little better right?”
“Ok.”
“From start, here,” she pointed at one end of the screen, “and ending here with the grey. I can estimate his age with a visual taken from the video surveillance and take an educated guess that he’s most likely in this section of his life.”
“Wrong.” Ma’am called out.
Ursula helped out. “That’s a good idea Ms, but searching that way can be very time consuming. You then have to search the entire lifespan to find a miniscule event, it will take forever. What we can do instead, is utilise what we call overlap.”
“Overlap?”
“Yes, we can bring up another link and lay it over the first one, then find the point in time by connecting the two people. The thread will show a connection between the two people because they were part of each other’s life at some point, at least for the robbery in this case. Now assuming they haven’t met before we should be able to find the event at the robbery quite easily. Once we have the event, we can find everyone connected to the event.”
“Right. Well what if they had met before?”
“Yes, it’s quite common that people meet each other hundreds of times during their lives and don’t even know it. If that happens what we do is overlap another link and another and another until we can narrow down the possibilities.”
“Ok. Five random people in a room should stand out then?”
“Yes. Once we have enough links that match, we can find the actual event on the thread. From there it’s simple, we have the robbery and we can see everything that happens from several viewpoints.”
“Including finding our mystery subject Mr bank robber?”
“Exactly.” Ma’am confirmed.
“Ok.” Ursula noted the screen with her finger, “see the connection there?”
“Yep.” Catlin replied.
“That’s our event. See all the people that are connected at the one time, they’ve all seen something to do with the robbery.”
“Oh cool.” Catlin seemed pleased with herself. “Now what?”
“Ok, we can enhance by doing this,“ Ursula leaned over, showing Catlin, “and then the event comes like this.”
Once it appeared on screen Ma’am, who’d been standing back a little, now leaned in closer to have a look for herself. Catlin leaned back, squinted and tried to see something but had no idea what was on the screen.
“Ok, so how do we find him now?” Catlin asked.
“Let’s try the image drop first.”
“No, nothing.”
“Ok, see those connections there.”
“Yes.”
“They are individual viewpoints, witnesses to the event.”
“Ok.”
“Bring up one of those.”
“Which one?”
“Any, it doesn’t matter.”
“Ok.” Catlin complied, bringing up another section. “So many witnesses.”
“Ma’am?” Ursula spoke up, noticing something in particular.
“What?”
“The kid …”
“Huh?”
“Han Solo, Harrison.”
“What about him?”
“His thread is here as part of the event.”
“And?”
“And he’s a witness to the event, the robbery, here in the street.”
“What the hell was he doing as a part of the robbery? Quick, bring up his thread.”
Ursula did as instructed and retrieved the thread line, bringing it up on screen to view.
“Oh!” Ursula gasped.
“What is it?” Catlin looked hard, unsure what had startled Ursula.
“He’s dead.”
“What?” Ma’am leant in, observing the grey thinning line at the end of the thread.
“Yeah.” Ursula confirmed.
“Huh, strange. Guess we don’t need to worry about the kid anymore. Move on and continue your training then Eight.”
“Ok,” she changed screens, bringing up the original event. “Now we can run these images through the translator and then should be able to see our mystery man, once we’ve found him then we can access his individual thread.”
“This is amazing.” Catlin marvelled. “Such a magnificent …”
“Hmmm?” Ursula mused, frowning at the screen.
“What?” Catlin sat back again.
“He’s not there.”
“What?” Ma’am frowned, looking closely herself at the screen.
“That can’t be right, backtrack to main view Catl … I mean Ms,” Ursula corrected herself.
Catlin complied.
“Ok, now try another link, yep, now bring it up.”
“Nothing.”
“Ok, try the whole file, there were over thirty witnesses that day.”
“Drop them all?”
“Yes.”
“Dammit, nothing!” Ursula exclaimed. “But I can see him there, in people’s memories. The event itself just doesn’t have a record, this is strange.”
“What now then?” Catlin asked.
“Ma’am?” Ursula turned in her chair.
“What?”
“I’m aaaah, I’m not sure what to do next.”
“You can’t find him?” Ma’am queried. “At all?”
“No, but …”
“But what?” she replied, looking back over her shoulder.
“I know someone who can?”
“That’s not going to happen Eight.” Ma’am stood back, folding her arms.
“But Ma’am, I don’t. I mean I’m not as experienced as my mo …”
“Enough!” she was cut off abruptly. “Cease search immediately.” She had a worried look on her face as she spoke and again looked over her shoulder.
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Carry on with your training Eight, don’t waste any more time on the black guy, understood,” she said, walking off in the direction of the stairs, clearly agitated by something.
Catlin waited till she’d left, watch
ing her climb the stairs to the mezzanine. “What was that about?”
“I dunno, that was just weird.”
“Yeah, she just cut you off like.”
Ursula exhaled deeply. “She does that sometimes, she has an agenda she doesn’t always tell us about. That’s why it’s best to just do as you’re told. Mind you, she did seem a little freaked out by all this.”
“You got that right.”
“Plus, she’s heading to Samuel’s office, she never does that at this time of day.”
Catlin watched her knock on the office door upstairs, wait and then it opened. She didn’t quite see who opened the door but Ma’am went in and shut it behind her.
“So what does this mean anyway? This guy isn’t in the system or something?” Catlin asked, looking the newspaper over.
“I have no idea, I’ve never known someone to not be traceable, I mean we can even trace dead people, so this ...”
“Maybe that’s why she was upset do you think?”
“God only knows.”
“Strange things happen in strange places,” Catlin mused.
“Marion would know what to do.”
“Well she ain’t here, so what’s next?”
“I think I need a coffee,” she stretched back in her chair, standing up after. “You want one?”
“Sure, why not.”
“Ok, back in a bit, think I need a ciggy too … just hang tight.”
“Ok.”
She overheard the office door open and saw Ma’am come out and head for the stairs again. Catlin turned around quickly to avoid any looks. But as she pretended to work at the station, she stole a look from the corner of her eye and noticed Ma’am walk right past her without paying any notice and disappear into the thread room.
Catlin exhaled and stretched herself out on her office chair, taking a moment to survey the room and take in her surroundings. She noticed it was quiet for a change, with only a few staff at the stations.
It only took a moment, but in that moment her mind started to drift and she found herself wondering back on something that’d bothered her since she had gotten here. What happened to Peter? Did he escape? Was that him in the 7-11?
Without thinking she quickly rounded on her chair, took control of the computer and began a new search. Her desire to know took hold of her decision making ability very quickly and she did something she knew she probably shouldn’t have.
Recalling Destiny Page 22