by J Boyd Long
The list was broken down into continents. Under North America, there were six locations listed:
Elkherd Mining Group, Milford, UT, USA
IBZ Energy Refinery, Pascagoula, MS, USA
IBZ Corporate HQ, Gainesville, FL, USA
Northern Plains Group Refinery, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, CAN
Northern Plains Group, Seboeis Plantation, ME, USA
Rancho Santa Rosa, Morcillo, Durango, MEX
“What’s a DimGate?” Eissa asked. “It says there’s one here.”
“I have no idea.” He clicked on the listing for Gainesville. “Let’s see what it says.”
Information filled the screen. There were access codes, authorized users, warnings about logging DimGate activity, and a list of tech support contact numbers. None of them looked like any phone number Quentin had ever seen. He clicked on the Recent Users tab. Carl Holt’s name was the only one listed, but there were several entries showing his activity over the previous month.
“This shows Holt accessing Dimension 1 and Dimension 165 a lot. I wonder if that’s some kind of secret database where they store all the stuff they don’t want anyone to find.”
“Wouldn’t you have found it when you were poking around?” Eissa asked.
“Not necessarily. Especially if it’s not on the main network. I bet this DimGate thing is a whole separate super-secure network storage. The name sounds right for something like that.”
He scrolled through the rest of the folder, glancing over the information. The email folder had hundreds of emails with a wide variety of names on them, but one correspondent was on every one: Gerrard Zimmerman. Richard must have mirrored Zimmerman’s hard drive. Why would he do that? Was this Richard’s insurance policy, making sure he had job security? Quentin went back to the file with the DimGate user information.
“I think we’ve stumbled onto something here,” he said, copying down an access code onto a piece of paper. “We need to go find this DimGate thing and see what it is. I’m guessing it’s some sort of giant hard drive or something. Whatever it is, it’s obviously important, and the more evidence we can find to give the FBI, the better chance we’ll have of nailing them on the first try.”
Eissa stood upright and stretched. “How in the hell are you going to find a server? Isn’t this place full of them?”
He copied the folder with Zimmerman’s hard drive to his own external hard drive and began erasing his activity trail and shutting down the computer. “I’m guessing this thing will be upstairs in the C Suite. If it’s that important, it wouldn’t be in with the rest of the network servers. We just have to find a server room up there.”
They got back on the elevator. Quentin reached for the button for the twelfth floor, but stopped just before his finger reached the button.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure if there are security guards here at night. I’ve never been upstairs before, and I don’t want to step out of the elevator into a security checkpoint or something.”
Eissa stuck her arm out and stopped the elevator doors from closing. “Are you shitting me? I thought you planned this all out. Are you telling me we’ve been winging it? Fuck!”
“No, no,” Quentin said. “Up until this point, we’ve done exactly what I planned. I know there aren’t security checks on the lower levels, but it didn’t occur to me that we might go anywhere besides Richard’s office.”
They stepped back out into the foyer and let the elevator close behind them.
“So now what?”
“Let’s go back to Richard’s computer. I can get into the security camera system and we can look around up there and see what the situation is.”
It took him a few minutes to find his way around the camera system. The first camera showed the stairwell door near the end of a hallway. The camera was in night vision mode, which made the exit sign seem unnaturally bright. The next three cameras showed empty hallways with closed doors. The doors all had electronic keycard locks, their lights glowing like tiny beacons on the computer screen.
The fifth camera showed the elevator doors. The sixth camera also showed the elevator doors, but from slightly further back. The lights were on, and there was a security guard sitting behind a small desk beside the bank of elevators. He was holding a cellphone, his finger sliding up the screen repeatedly.
“Facebook,” Quentin said. “He’s in the Facebook trance. That’s exactly what my sister looks like for hours at a time.”
“Well, that throws a wrench in the gears, huh? I’m glad we didn’t just go trotting up there. You almost got us busted.”
“Yeah, definitely.” Quentin continued scrolling through the remaining video feeds. “As long as he’s the only one there, we might be okay.”
“What are you going to do, pose as a lost pizza delivery guy and try to lock him in a broom closet?”
Quentin rolled his eyes. “No, thank you for your vote of confidence. We’re going up the stairs.”
Eissa threw up her hands in a defensive posture. “Whoa, hold it right there, Einstein. I have two points for you. Well, one point and one question. First, my fat ass isn’t climbing nine flights of stairs. And if that guy is sitting right in front of the elevators, wouldn’t he have noticed when we took one up here to the third floor?”
Quentin paused for a moment. “That’s a good point.” He pulled up the camera that was zoomed in on the elevators and examined the wall around the doors. “This doesn’t have a floor indicator.”
“Okay, so no floor indicator. It’s still going to make noise, though.”
“It’s okay.” Quentin pointed to the screen. “He’s wearing earbuds. We should be fine.”
Eissa look doubtful, but didn’t say anything.
“One more thing. Let me see if there’s a stairway door alarm or anything we need to worry about.”
He poked around the unfamiliar dashboard in the security program for a minute, and finally located the alarm system. The stairwell doors on the top three levels had alarms, which he was able to place in standby mode. He also found a tab labeled 12-100. He opened it on a whim.
“Bingo,” he whispered.
“What is it?”
“I think I just found what we’re looking for. This door has its own alarm, and its own registered user list. I bet this is the secret server room. Hang on a minute.”
He added his employee number to the short list of names, which included Gerrard Zimmerman and Carl Holt.
“Well, it looks like we just need to find door 12-100. My keycard should get us in.”
Quentin cleared the computer’s history again and shut it down. They walked back to the elevator in silence. If the universe was on their side, the guard wouldn’t feel it running. His heart sped up with each ascending floor, and by the time the doors opened on the eleventh floor, he was sweating.
“Okay, we go left to the end of the hall, and out the last door on the left into the stairs,” he whispered.
“Hopefully that guard doesn’t decide to look at the cameras right now,” Eissa said.
The hall was carpeted up here, and everything was nicer than down where Quentin worked. The doors had brass nameplates instead of paper cards, lighting was indirect, and there was even a coffee and ice water station on a small table. The breakroom for the IT department seemed like a prison canteen with its dirty floor and old vending machines, and he was insulted by the stark contrast. The anger felt better than the fear, and he embraced it.
“So, this is how the other half lives,” Quentin muttered. “Must be nice.”
“You wouldn’t be happy up here,” Eissa said. “You don’t get along with Type A personalities, and this floor is probably packed with them.”
“Good point. Just seeing how nice it is up here makes me hate them all, anyway. It’s like we’re just a bunch of cattle in a feedlot down there.”
“First time in the real world, huh?” Eissa snorted. “What’s the story about the guy that doesn’t know h
e’s a slave, until someone shows up to set him free?”
Quentin swallowed the urge to respond. His therapist would say that he was letting the world play football on his field of insecurities right now. How does it make you feel, Quentin? Like I don’t matter. Is that true, or do you matter? Yes, I matter. Alright, then. Focus on what you need to do.
Quentin pushed the door open into the stairwell, flinching against the expected alarm even though he knew he had disabled it. The silence continued unbroken, save for the echo of the door opening and closing in the bare concrete enclosure and the buzz of the dim fluorescent lights overhead. He led the way up to the twelfth floor, and stopped beside the door.
“Okay,” he whispered. “I don’t know where this 12-100 door is. Hopefully it’s on this end of the hallway, so we don’t have to go past the guard. If it’s not, we’ll have to figure out something else. Stay quiet and be ready to haul ass back here if something goes wrong.”
“I’m a Chippewa,” she whispered back. “We’re naturally stealthy.”
He stifled a laugh. “Yeah, your Indian ancestry ought to be a real asset in the world of corporate espionage.”
“Native American. And don’t make me kick your ass in the middle of your spy mission.”
Quentin winked at her, and pressed the latch down with his thumb, cringing at the loudness of the click as the mechanism released. He pulled the door open an inch, and breathed a sigh of relief when no alarm sounded, and no squeak issued from the hinges. He pulled it open a bit further and stuck his head through the gap.
The carpet was plush and thick, and paintings hung on the walls. The hallway was deserted, and Quentin opened the door fully and waved Eissa through. He closed it as quietly as he could, and they walked down to the first door. 12-053. He didn’t recognize the name on the plate, and they moved down to the next door. 12-061. With the guard just down the hall, they were in much more danger of being caught now, and the indignation he had on the eleventh floor was rapidly turning back into fear.
They passed three more doors with ascending numbers, and the hallway ended at a T intersection. His legs shook as he leaned out and peered around the corner. To the right, there were three doors on each side of the hall, before it opened into the lobby where the elevator banks were located. The guard desk wasn’t visible from this angle, only the elevator doors. To the left, there were just two doors, despite the length of the hallway, one on each side. Quentin put a trembling finger to his lips and pointed to the left. Eissa nodded and followed him around the corner.
The door on the left didn’t have a number, just a name: H. Belson, CFO. Directly across the hall was an identical door with no number, just a name: G. Zimmerman, COO.
Quentin glanced back down the hall. It was still empty, but he felt painfully exposed. If the guard got up to stretch his legs, or if the elevator doors opened, they would be caught with no place to run, and no place to hide. Quentin’s pulse pounded in his fingers as he pulled his keycard out, and his hands were shaking as he slid it into the reader. He willed his hand to be steady so he didn’t break the card. The light turned from red to green, and the lock clicked loudly in the silence. Eissa jumped, and Quentin quickly opened the door.
They hurried in, and he closed the door softly, his heart pounding. He bent over, his hands on his knees, and tried to get his nerves under control. He felt like laughing and crying at the same time. Eissa’s lips brushed his ear, her breath hot on his skin.
“Dude, that was loud as fuck,” she breathed. “I just about had a heart attack.”
“Me, too.” The adrenaline rush filled his arms and legs with lead. He was trembling, but at the same time, he couldn’t move. He took a deep measured breath and focused on slowing his heart rate.
“Okay,” he whispered back after a moment. “Okay. We’re okay. Let’s look around.”
The office was dark, so he turned on the light on his phone and looked around. It was a big room, with several couches and chairs around a coffee table on one side, and a massive desk near the wall of windows. On the far wall there were two doors. One had a keycard reader, and the other did not. Quentin walked over to them and opened the door without a lock. It proved to be a large bathroom, much nicer than any bathroom he had ever seen. The faucet in the sink was gold, and the marble counter gleamed in the light of his phone, reflecting in the ornately-framed mirror. He backed out and closed the door.
The second door had a tiny brass plate set in the center of it, with the legend, 12-100 engraved in it. Boom. He pulled his card out and inserted it in the slot. The light turned green, the locked clicked, and he opened the door.
Room 12-100 was a small room, about the same size as the bathroom next to it, with bare white walls, and no furniture. It was completely empty, save for the large object in the center of the floor.
In the center of the room was a door. It was flanked by a large gray box on each side, which sat perpendicular to the door. It looked like someone had taken two industrial breaker boxes and used them to hold up the door like giant bookends. The one on the left had a screen in the center, as well as a myriad of tiny lights and switches running from top to bottom.
The door was dark brown, and seemed to absorb the light from Quentin’s phone. It was plain, without any labels or signs, only a knob. Quentin took a few steps forward and peered at the control panel on the left side.
“Dude, what is this?” Eissa whispered. “Why is there a door locked in a room in the COO’s office?”
“I don’t know,” Quentin whispered back. “Maybe it’s not really a door, it might be a cover on a big-ass video screen, or something.”
The screen on the panel was blue, with a single white field in the center, and a blinking cursor. The text in the white box was light gray, and looked just like every other login screen on the IBZ network, except that instead of asking for a username, it simply said Enter Access Code.
Quentin stared at it for a moment, and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.
“This has to be the DimGate, right?” He looked back at Eissa for confirmation.
“How should I know?” Eissa asked. “The room number was right. Does it look like a secret server?”
Quentin shrugged, and touched the screen with a finger. It didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen, much less a server, but what else could it be? A keyboard appeared on the screen, and he looked at the piece of paper in his hand. With a deep breath, he entered the number that he had written down in Richard’s office, and hit enter.
The screen changed to a control dashboard. Quentin’s eyes widened in surprise as he tried to grasp it all. There were at least a dozen input fields. Some were pre-filled, but most were blank. This had to be what they were looking for, but he had never seen anything like it, and he had no idea how to search for the information they needed. Doubt began to creep in, but he ignored it and touched a field titled Destination Dimension. A number pad popped up.
“What’s your lucky number?”
“Triple four,” Eissa answered automatically. “Why?”
Quentin typed it in and hit Load. The rest of the screen filled in with coordinates data, date, time, duration, and a variety of toggle selectors with acronyms that made no sense. He touched the button labeled Activate and stepped away from the panel so that he could see the front.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said. “Hopefully this has a user-friendly interface, and we can figure out how to access whatever information it’s got.”
Eissa stepped up beside him. “Well, if anybody can figure it out, it’s you. You got us this far.”
He grinned. “Thanks. I’ll take that to mean that your confidence in me is restored.”
Quentin’s smile faltered as he became aware of a powerful electric hum in the air. His inner ear hairs began to tingle, and his smile slowly turned into a frown as he tried to identify the source of the sensation. There was a loud click, and the humming stopped.
“Wh-what the hell?” Eissa
’s hand hung in mid-air as if she had been about to scratch her head, but got distracted. “What was that? What just happened?”
“A lot of electricity just did something,” Quentin said. “I’m guessing that it activated this interface, whatever it is.” He shined the light at the door and took a step closer.
“I think it really is a door, instead of a screen. Maybe we have to open the door to access it, like a television in a cabinet.”
He took another step forward, grabbed the knob, and pulled. The door didn’t move, so he turned the knob the other way. Again, nothing. He started to let go, but as he stopped pulling, he felt it give away from him, and he cautiously pushed. It swung open easily, and the knob slipped out of his fingers as his brain registered what his eyes were seeing.
Instead of the bare white wall, which he knew was behind the door, there was bright sunshine and a blue sky. The door was sitting on an old porch, or a patio. The floor on the other side of the door was gray, rough-cut planking, which ended a few feet ahead in a set of steps leading down to the ground. A dirt lane came past them on the left, and disappeared into the horizon. It was bordered on the right by buildings that looked like a scene from an old spaghetti western movie. Some were white, but most were the same gray, unpainted wood that the porch was made of. To the left, the green grass swept away into the distance on the other side of the road, spotted here and there by huge oak trees. A dog trotted up the road towards them, followed by a small boy.