by J. N. Chaney
Evelyn closed out the pad. “Exactly. You’ve cracked it again.” She stood up and walked to the door. “As always, I have some other work to get to. I’m sorry this was such a short test. You enjoy your week and I’ll have something new for you soon.”
I walked to the door, disappointed that there wasn’t more to it. “Just let me know when the job is, and I’ll be ready.”
Evelyn kept the door closed. “Nothing you need to worry about. This is the last time I’ll have the legwork done for you. So be ready to gather your own backgrounds in the future. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t help you cover all the basics?”
She opened the door and nudged me out.
It would be six days before I heard from Evelyn again. In the interim, I went to class and studied up on the practices and overlapping market of the three big security firms operating out of Foldin City.
I had passing familiarity with Klemtite Essentials, though my physical tour of their operation had been cancelled. Their work revolved around physical security with biometrics and sensors as a specialty. The group was started in the last century as an alternative to dwindling support of Union-sponsored civil police forces. What started as a private police force became a go-to for corporate defense.
Their technology worked better and more cheaply than their competitors’, but the innovation dropped off as they found themselves creating both the sword and shield of the security arms race. Klemtite’s folly was trying so hard to stay ahead of its competitors, it became self-refuting.
Unable to compete in the technology sector, Dynamic Security Services rose up to offer human-backed security solutions. Their monitoring stations offered low-cost solutions to high-end problems. A computer and camera could be fooled into loops and erasure algorithms. A human was fallible, certainly, but had to be accessed to fail.
The downfall of DSS’s model was in their major marketing thrust: why pay top dollar for a computer program when you could pay pennies for a human. The underpaid humans quickly felt undervalued and loyalty to the company gave way to looking the other way for the right interests at the right time. My research into DSS started to uncover some interesting insights into why all security eventually failed. The corruption didn’t spread into the organization—it started at the top and broke the core below. It was clear that the pair of founders were open to the company becoming a Big Brother organization, spying on clients for the right price and influence.
The third player in the area was Chrysalis Motivations. The organization had a young pedigree and was known for its avarice and greed, which led them to radical ideologies and corner-cutting business practices. The company seemed to serve as a rebuttal to both Klemtite and DSS.
Their reaction to Klemtite was to dispense with any biometrics or electronics of any sort. They reinforced everything to require physical keys that couldn’t be accessed or picked without unwieldy physical objects. The objects in question also carried radioactive isotopes that had to decay at a specific rate to be recognized by a chromatograph within the lock. The prospect of carrying around radioactive keys meant security staff with heavy lockboxes and shortened life expectancy.
They also used nuanced algorithms and artificial intelligence to stochastically monitor all systems. Any interruptions to the power or timing caused alarms and dropped bulkheads, which needed isotope keys to access. Working in a Chrysalis facility was listed as a Type 3 work hazard. That said, their largest source of failure was employee theft—workers taking whatever they felt entitled to, limited only by their security access.
My research turned increasingly cynical as the sources followed became less reputable. Secrets about security companies were suspect and whispered in dead ends on any given network. I trusted only so much of anything I read and looked forward to eliminating false information as soon as I could.
I considered my next step in this process as I again walked into the park area of Cascade Gardens. Evelyn was smoking on the stoop of her apartment and waved me over. She stubbed out the cigarette and left the remains on the ground as she opened the door. I scooped up the butt and tossed it in a receptacle by the door just as I had seen Winston do several times over the past few weeks. Evelyn smoked only when she was thinking and never cleaned up the remnants.
She didn’t speak or acknowledge the behavior as we made our way into the elevator and up to her apartment. The routine of these meetings was becoming apparent as she offered no pleasantries or social interaction until the door was closed and we were in the apartment.
She tossed me her coat rather than hanging it on the rack by the door. “Get out my pad and sit down. I’ll be right back.”
She went into the kitchen and came back with a glass and a tall bottle of a clear alcohol. I had the pad in hand and was in my usual spot. She took the pad from me, accessed the information she needed, and handed it back.
I took a look at the presented data as I heard her open the bottle and pour a tall drink. By the time I looked up, she had already finished the glass and was pouring a second.
The décor of the apartment was also looking less kempt. Nothing so much out of place, but the furniture no longer looked pristine. There were strands of red hair in several places, and the door to the bedroom was ajar.
Evelyn glared at me, catching my gaze. “Alphonse. Focus. The pad. What do you see?”
She hadn’t asked me any specific questions or explained the purpose of the heist itself. All I had were specs on a lock. It was a prototype from Chrysalis Motivations, a type of master system that overrode the mechanisms. It was subtle, barely more than a line on a graph created by a gas chromatography readout.
“It’s a lock. Or a new mechanism within Chrysalis locks, to be precise. Do you need to know how to beat it or how to get one?”
She put down the glass and composed herself. There was relief in her voice. “So, you did some legwork. I was afraid for a moment that this would take days for you to answer.” She gave a nervous laugh and stood up. “I intentionally set my apartment in disarray to distract you. To make you feel pressured to find an answer quickly, and you are a step ahead. Good. Good.”
I watched her put away her coat and then shut her bedroom door. “I’ll tidy up the rest after we’re done here.” She sat in the wingback chair and gave me smile. “Now, my dear Alphonse, how do you suggest we get the locks this prototype system has been attached to?”
I turned off the pad and placed it on the table. Chrysalis information was difficult to access. The sketchy details presented in the data pad were, I suspected, partial guesses. The readout from the gas chromatography graph corresponded to nothing. I didn’t have the chemistry background to confirm it, but with nothing to compare it to, it was just a line.
“You won’t find the information in the network. If you found a physical copy not attached to a door inside a facility, I would suspect it was a fake.”
She leaned forward, reaching for the bottle and the empty glass. She held them in front of her but didn’t refill the glass. Her posture conveyed she was nearly daring me to force her to drink.
“Your best hope to find the real information is to find someone inside Chrysalis. Not someone on the design team or the security staff. These would both be trained to lie or mislead. You need someone with something to gain, someone that can be bought because they exist to be bought.”
She smiled and put the glass and bottle down again. “You’re describing a corporate headhunter. Someone employed to find talented individuals in a company and lure them from one company to another. Rather than break in and find the information, we just need to lure the information to us. Excellent work, Alphonse. I hope you are getting as much from this training as I promised.”
I stood up and approached the door. “Until next week, then?”
She stayed in the chair, her gaze switching between the pad and the bottle. She seemed to snap out of it for a moment and turned to me. “Yes, next week. I’ll have something even more difficult then. Keep
up on your studies. You never know when you’ll be put on the spot.” She gave me her quirky corner smile, and for the first time since I’d seen her on the stoop, she seemed her usual self.
“I’ll do what I can.” I closed the door and headed back to Quintell.
I spent the next two days looking into more information on Chrysalis. Word in the network dead ends suggested they had a new type of lock in development. Something that was both more secure than their previous models and prevented the problems of their previous lockdowns. Something that coordinated the algorithms and the key isotopes.
The information I found made no sense. And it was also contradictory, with one source saying the key was improved and the next saying the algorithm was the subject of change. Conspiracies of alien technology and even mind-control implants wove their way through these discussions, casting a shadow of doubt over all of it.
One discussion mentioned a hunt for talented individuals with knowledge in both programming and radiometry. The dates were all over the place. Perhaps this was the example that Evelyn had used to create the puzzle?
Late on the second day, I found a message requesting another meeting. It came in too late for me to leave campus. The next day crawled by as I struggled to stay engaged in classes, wondering what Evelyn would have for me. Not just the puzzle itself, but what odd contrivance she would put around it in an attempt to increase the difficulty.
Vance caught me in the hallway after class. “Hey, Alpha, you got a moment to talk?”
I brushed past him on the way to my room. “Not right now. I have to get on a project. Catch me tomorrow?”
He slid into his usual slouch. “No problem, my man. Catch me when you can.”
I went to my room to change and rushed to the meeting.
Evelyn met me at the gate and walked me to the apartment, her nature jovial and a touch flirty. “Good to see you again, Alphonse. This will be a quick one. I would be very surprised if you could answer the puzzle just from what I will present.”
We entered the apartment and she sat me in the usual spot. This time she sat next to me on the sofa and showed me the pad. She held it and waited for me to instruct her to move through the information.
First was a floor plan for a fabrication plant. I observed the ingress and exits and the workflow passages of the business itself. “Next, please.”
She flipped to the second page, which was a list of technical specs for some type of container. There was a time stamp attached, giving a date for the day after tomorrow. “Any more?”
She shut off the pad. “No, that’s all you get.”
“The date was listed for two days from now. Is this real or another job you’ve already completed?”
She laughed at the question and faced me. The space between us on the sofa was small and her behavior was overly familiar.
“Is this part of your training regime?”
She smirked. “There will always be another challenge to face, Alphonse. Always a different set of conditions to distract. You’re a bright boy. I’m sure you see right through it.” She stood up. “So, let me know when you have an answer. Message me and I’ll send Winston over to the school to hear it from you. He’s due to complete an inspection on the grounds this week.”
I got up and walked to the door. “What is it that I’m doing? What do you need solved?”
She paused with her hand at the door. “Oh, silly me. How would you get that container out of the factory?”
I considered for a moment. “I’ll give you an answer soon.”
“Of that, dear Alphonse, I have no doubt.”
I worked on the issue for the rest of the evening and into the next day. The fabrication plant was a tight operation. They manufactured state-of-the-art containment vessels. Each was custom-made to exact specifications and the plans only existed until the job was done.
I suspected this was to prevent duplication, so it would be unfeasible to get a copy of the vessel. The only real solution was to get the one being made, which meant that the theft would be immediately noticeable.
I looked at the fabrication plant’s order and request procedures through the network. They offered final moment changes and adjustments to ensure the utmost quality. That was the key.
I walked around the grounds and found Winston talking to Mr. Kurns at the maintenance building, so I went up to the pair. “Hello, Mr. Kurns. Doing some security changes?”
He shook his head. “Just a routine look around, nothing serious. Anyway, we’re done here. Don’t get in the inspector’s way, Alphonse.”
Mr. Kurns went into the maintenance building and I walked behind Winston’s van. He followed after a moment. “E said you would tell me something?”
I looked around to see that no students were looking in our direction. None of them seemed the least bit interested in the security inspector and his van. “The update protocol is the key. Send a change of address within ten seconds of the completed fabrication and the factory won’t know anything has changed for days.”
Winston gave me a broad, toothy smile and slapped me in the arm with his almost comically large hand. “I’ll let E know you told me. She’ll want to talk to you again real soon.”
14
On the second day of Winston’s inspection, he passed me a message from Evelyn. It was simple but conveyed a sense of her personality.
Time for more outside training. Homework and legwork go together. Meet Remi uptown for a night out to remember. PS. Bring drinks and mittens. – E
The message was both instructional and a code. The references to drinks represented a bar in the uptown area. The mittens reference wasn’t about the name but what the bar offered. There was a sub-zero bar called McCool’s just off Park Street, which was a clever use of the postscript. The reference to time and the repetition of “out” meant two o’clock.
It was the night before rest day, so I was glad I wouldn’t have to pull double duty the next afternoon if it went long. I made my way through the streets and to the appointed building. I’d considered showing up early, but a time had been given for a reason, so I decided to wait until then and follow instructions.
At exactly two o’clock, the door at the side of the bar opened and Remi poked his head out. “Get in,” he told me.
I moved from the corner to the door quickly but fluidly, as Remi had instructed in our gun heist.
He nodded as I approached, reinforcing the earlier lesson. “No matter how fast or slow you move, if you do so consistently people will assume you have a reason to be there and won’t be suspicious,” he reiterated.
We stood in a stairwell linking the back end of the bar with a series of utility tunnels that dipped below the refrigeration systems.
He looked over my outfit and scowled. “Really? In matching coats?” he asked.
“It was the only thing I had that seemed appropriate for a night mission. I wasn’t given any specifics,” I said.
He sighed. “I would say it was a bad idea, but that is hypocritical. Reason I have the coat is it blends well with night work. Just don’t ever get yourself a matching hat.”
After walking up the stairs and into a position on a sub roof, we were below the bulk of the commercial building, which went up another fifteen stories but was still below the signage for McCool’s. Remi had two sets of field glasses set up just above the protraction of wall below the sign. From the street level, it would be almost impossible to make us out against the glare of the sign and the shadows of the sub-roof.
We took up position at the glasses. “You take the pad and jot down everything you notice about the people coming and going from the building across the way,” said Remi. “I know you like to rely on your memory, but we need the data. Observe, write. That’s your job. Got it?”
I took up the pad and glanced through the glasses. The building across the way was a simple four-story structure. There was door facing our direction and lights on across all four floors. Connected to the south side was a parking
ramp that led underground. “What am I looking at?”
Remi chuckled. “Hard to know what something is that doesn’t give itself away, huh? No information means you have to know what you’re seeing to see it. That’s a shift change station for the Union forces in the area. Private security handles most of the policing and guard work for Foldin City but it’s still a Union colony on a Union world. That means they have to maintain a presence. They just keep it under wraps.”
“Do I count cars, or do you have a plan to get more information from them than I know about?”
“Glad you are already up to speed, kid. Hit that button on the field glasses and it will show infrared. That won’t give you a complete view, but it will let you count bodies. Any other questions?”
I surveyed our immediate area. Aside from the pad and the glasses, there was a plastic box. “What’s with that?” I asked, pointing to it.
“Drinks and snacks. We’re going to be up here for a while, so get comfortable and stay focused.”
I stretched and resumed my position at the glasses. “Is that until first light?”
“You’ll know when we’re done. Now test the infrared. Get used to the view and be prepared to swap back and forth quickly. If you have to adjust, you’ll lose valuable data.”
I checked the setting and worked it back and forth. It was difficult to make out anything from the changeover at first. The colors blended into each other and the brightness overall made swapping back to regular vision difficult in the dark. After a few adjustments, I concluded I was basically ready. “I’m set.”
We stood in silence for a few hours. I wrote down everything I saw from the people entering the building and the number of transports and passengers leaving. The comings and goings were sporadic. For an hour, nothing would happen, and then there would be a rush of arrivals for nearly twenty minutes. Then a pause and several transports would leave. No transports entered in the hours I watched, and nobody walked out of the door, only in.