‘Please!’ Daniel interrupted, gesturing with his eyes for Amy to leave the room.
As she got up to leave Penny quipped, ‘Don’t worry, Rav, it’s just a lovers’ tiff,’ and laughed.
Daniel shut the door and walked Amy towards Penny’s desk, out of earshot. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ve got no idea. They’ve been here about ten minutes. Ravi knows we were at Mo’s lab. One of his mates spotted us walking through the workshops. He phoned Penny late last night to ask what we were doing there. Luckily she hardly understood anything that was said, so I’ve just been acting dumb.’
‘Does she know about Ravi’s meeting with Anubis and the others?’
‘I don’t think so, it’s not been mentioned.’
‘Right, this is the story: it’s all been a big mistake, Mo couldn’t find anything wrong in the drone data and you’re happy with the file Tanka sent over yesterday.’ Daniel squeezed Amy’s arm, ‘You okay with that?’
‘I will be, once Director Hedrick knows what’s going on. I’d hate this to ruin his retirement!’
‘That’s not going to happen, I promise you!’ Daniel glanced down at his watch, ‘I need to talk to a couple of the engineers at PI. Anubis spent a lot of time writing drone firmware there. Maybe he’s left some clues.’ He put his arm around Amy and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Now, go back in, say we had a row last night and that I came over to apologise. Tell Ravi there’s no problem with the files. And, if you can trust her, tell Penny about Ravi’s meeting last night. I’ll catch up before lunch.’
As Daniel started to walk away Amy called out, ‘What about my presentation?’
He turned back, ‘Prepare it using Tanka’s file, just as though nothing had happened.’ He raised his hand to his mouth and blew a kiss, then walked out of the office.
Amy returned to the meeting room. Penny and Ravi both looked up as the door opened. ‘What’s going on, girl?’ Penny asked.
‘Nothing. We argued on the way home last night. He just wanted to apologise.’
‘Ahh, what a cute guy. Nobody ever apologises to me,’ Penny said, glancing at Ravi.
Ravi ignored the comment, ‘I understand there’s a problem with the file, Amy? Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘No, it was all a silly mistake. It’s my first assignment and I just didn’t understand the systems.’
Penny gave Amy a quizzical look just as the door swung open to reveal Hedrick’s smiling face. ‘By Creation! In all my years as director of auditing this is the first time I have been beaten into the office.’ He looked at Amy, ‘Preparing for your presentation, I guess? What it is to be young and enthusiastic! I am really looking forward to this afternoon, Amy.’ He glanced at Ravi, ‘How did you get on with Deputy Director Anubis yesterday? I am meeting with him at nine to discuss our auditing systems. I understand he has a lot of new ideas.’ He turned to Penny, ‘Could you get me a coffee when you have finished here, Penny?’ Then, without waiting for any replies, he turned and left the room.
The three sat in an uncomfortable silence until Ravi stood up, and addressing, Penny said, ‘I’d better get going, I’ve got work to do. I’ll speak to you later.’
As the door closed behind him, Penny turned to Amy scowling, ‘Well?’
‘I’ve got something to say that might upset you.’ Amy paused, unsure how Penny would react.
‘Go on, girl… Spit it out!’ Penny snapped.
‘It’s Ravi.’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, last night, after you left Mo’s lab, Daniel and I went to Micco’s to look through the printouts.’
‘And.’
‘Ravi was there. He was with Anubis, Tanka and the Gatekeeper from the vaults. They were huddled together in one of the booths at the back of the cafe. Daniel’s sure the missing file is down to them. He thinks they’re going to push the blame on to Director Hedrick.’
Penny stood up like a launching missile, pushing over the chair she was sitting on, ‘Not while I’m in Creation they’re not. That little shit! I thought it was strange, him coming on all lovey-dovey this morning. What an ass-hole!’
‘Sorry, Penny, I know you’re fond of Ravi.’
‘Listen, honey, Rav’s just someone to have lunch and a quick shag with. If he thinks he can use me to get to Hedrick, he’s going to regret the day he emerged!’ She paused, wiping the corner of her eye, and then, picking up the chair, said, ‘I’ve got to print out the reports and get the director’s coffee,’ as she walked quickly out of the room.
Amy sighed as she took the blue planet’s file from her shoulder bag. She placed it on the table next to the open notepad and started to draft her presentation.
Hedrick’s office door was open as usual; ‘Your coffee, Director,’ Penny said, as she entered, placing the cup on his desk. ‘We’ve got a busy day today!’
‘We always have busy days, Penny. I am waiting for the day you say there is nothing to do today, Director, go off and enjoy yourself.’
‘That’ll be the day, Director! You have a meeting with Deputy Director Anubis at nine and then there’s Amy’s presentation this afternoon. I’ll have the daily reports printed out in ten minutes.’ Penny was speaking over her shoulder as she returned to her desk, leaving Hedrick sipping his coffee, disappointed that she hadn’t commented about his newly-groomed mane.
He smiled to himself, recounting the reaction he received when he arrived home the previous night. Hedrick lived in the suburbs of Creation in the home he had been allocated when promoted to Senior Team Leader. He and Kassia had raised their offspring there, but now only their daughter was still living at home, completing her final year at the Academy.
Hedrick’s wife had assumed she was too old to conceive, and so their youngest daughter’s arrival after a passionate night following a friend’s commitment party, was a total surprise. Unlike humanoids, creationists have a very short gestation period, only three weeks. A fertilised female shows no signs of her pregnancy until the day before that blind, mouse-like, creature emerges from her reproductive pits, crawling unaided through her body fur, searching for a nipple on which to suckle. There is a saying in Creation that there are two journeys a creationist must make alone; the first to their mother’s breast, the second to Eternity.
As Hedrick had entered the front door, his daughter came rushing through the house to greet him, waving the results from the previous week’s Academy test. As she turned the corner into the entrance hall she stopped abruptly, covering her mouth to hide her laughter. ‘Mother!.. Mother!.. There’s a strange male in the house. Come and see!’ She rushed forward, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. She waved the results sheet in his face, ‘Look! Look! Top of my class!’
‘Of course, you are my daughter, I would expect nothing less.’
‘I bet you didn’t get top grades at the Academy. Mum says her grades were better than yours,’ she taunted, heading back to her room.
‘Did she now?’ Hedrick called after her, remembering the day his wife had won the prize for top academic student in their last year. He looked up to see Kassia standing in the kitchen doorway.
‘Wow!’ she said, ‘Who’s this handsome stranger in my house?’ She prowled towards him, slowly put one arm around his neck and kissed him full on the lips. ‘I think I better take you upstairs, before my husband gets home,’ she said seductively. Then, she broke away smiling, ‘You look great, Heddy! Supper will be on the table in ten,’ she called out returning to the kitchen.
Penny snapped Hedrick out of his daydream as she dumped the morning’s printout onto his desk. ‘I bet you won’t miss having to wade through these reports every day, Director.’ She paused and studied Hedrick, making him feel quite self-conscious, ‘You look a hundred years younger, Hedrick, all the females will be after you on Friday, including me!’ She left the office before he could reply. This was the first time Penny had addressed him as Hedrick. On any other occasion his rebuke would have bee
n instantaneous, but this morning, it somehow seemed completely appropriate.
He turned to the summary page and looked at the Universe Seeding and DM Extraction figures. 3101 singularities were seeded in the Space Dimension yesterday, of which 98.12% ignited, well above the minimum of ninety-seven percent. But the continued dip in Dark Matter extraction was worrying, Hedrick took the cap off his fountain pen and ringed the figure several times.
His mind drifted away as he replayed Penny’s last comment. He put his pen down, got out of his chair and walked to his open office door. ‘Penny.’
‘Yes, Director.’
‘Would you like to join me for lunch at the Directors’ Club tomorrow?’
Penny gazed at Hedrick, speechless for several seconds. ‘Yes… yes I would, Director. I would like that very much.’
‘Good, so would I.’
It was exactly nine o’clock when Anubis strode through the office, acknowledging individuals here and there as though he was royalty. As before, he walked straight into Hedrick’s office, positioned one of the visitors’ chairs and sat down. Hedrick continued reading the daily reports, ignoring his presence. Anubis leant back on the chair and called out, ‘Penny, black coffee, two sugars.’
Hedrick looked up, ‘That is very good of you, Deputy Director, but I have already had my coffee.’ Anubis’ resulting smile was more of a smirk.
Hedrick pushed the report to one side, ‘I hope Ravi looked after you yesterday. Did you find it interesting?’
‘It was more revealing than interesting. I admit you’ve set up some useful systems and there are some very good people out there, it’s just a shame they don’t respect you.’ Anubis was slouched in the chair, grooming the fur on the back of his hand.
‘That is ridiculous!’ Hedrick said indignantly, ‘Of course they respect me!’
‘If they respected you, they wouldn’t hide things from you, would they?’
‘Hide things! What things?’
‘It’s common knowledge that files go missing. I believe one was lost yesterday.’
‘Rubbish, we have never lost a file.’
‘How do you know if they don’t tell you?’
Penny knocked on the open office door holding Anubis’ coffee. Hedrick waved her forward, ‘Come in, Penny.’
She placed the cup before Anubis and turned to leave. ‘Penny, have you told your director about the file that was lost yesterday?’
She turned back, her hackles rising but she managed a calm reply, ‘A file was misplaced yesterday… not lost.’
‘Very convenient. But have you told your director?’
Hedrick came to Penny’s defence, ‘That would have been somewhat difficult as I was out of the office yesterday and it is only nine fifteen now. I am sure Penny was going to tell me during the morning. Thank you, Penny, you can tell me about it later.’
Hedrick had to suffer a further twenty minutes of Anubis lecturing him about how inefficient the auditing division was and the changes he was going to make. But then, as Anubis drank the last of his coffee, Hedrick hijacked the conversation. ‘You may be right, Anubis, only time will tell, but you were telling me about your exciting work developing drone software.’
Anubis immediately took the bait as Hedrick knew he would, ‘It was the drone firmware actually. I wrote the subroutines that generate the social apparitions.’
‘Social apparitions?’ Hedrick repeated quizzically.
‘I’m amazed you don’t understand these things, Hedrick.’
‘You forget, Anubis, when my career started there were no drones, it was all down to angels, ghosts and poltergeists.’
Anubis sat up in his seat, ‘Look, it works like this. Let’s assume intelligent life exists. We then have to steer it towards discovering temporal elements. We do this by monitoring and controlling social development. There are the obvious things like language, for communication; religion, for social stability; race, for cohesion, etc. But then there are the more subtle attributes, like the seeds of mathematics, physics, chemistry and ultimately, temporal fusion.’
‘Several of my teams are dedicated to auditing the social control parameters. Can you imagine the effect of multiple languages or religions? Everything would break down into chaos!’ Hedrick said, laughing at his own joke. ‘So, how do these apparitions function?’
‘It’s really quite straight forward. At an appropriate time in the planet’s development, a passing planetary drone inserts the apparition. Now these apparitions look exactly like the indigenous life forms, but they are endowed with specific attributes. Let’s take the science of physics as an example. There are a whole series of apparitions; Aristotle, Archimedes, Zoornima, Newton, Bohr, Ardnaci, Einstein, Hawking… the list goes on forever. These intelligent life forms think they are discovering physics; in fact they’re being fed it, drip by drip. It’s the same for all technologies.’
‘Do they not twig they are being manipulated?’
‘No, that’s covered by the Darwin apparition. It expounds a theory that the development of life is controlled by a process of evolution and natural selection - takes their eye completely off the ball. The really amusing thing is that these so called intelligent life forms actually think they’re in control of their own destinies.’
Anubis and Hedrick both started chuckling at the very idea.
12
The Bug
Daniel stood looking through the observation window at the anonymous figure in a white pressure suit working on the planetary drone below. He was in the PI building and had come to see Jessian, a female software engineer whose dissertation had discussed testing techniques for debugging drone firmware. They had dated for a short time during his penultimate year, but the relationship had fizzled out after only a few months, almost without either of them realizing. They were still close friends, socialising in the same circles, and occasionally lunching together at Micco’s.
The figure looked up, the face obscured by the opaque gold visor of the helmet. It raised an arm and waved at Daniel, who waved back. He left the observation room and made his way to the airlock decompression chamber. By the time he arrived the figure was already standing inside, arms outstretched as the blue decontamination beam scanned them from head to foot. The airlock light turned from red to green and the all-clear klaxon sounded as the pressure door slowly opened.
By the time Jessian emerged, she had already removed her helmet and pressure suit gauntlets. Daniel smiled. Jessian was probably the most unglamorous female he knew. Not that she wasn’t attractive, she was; but unlike all other females in his circle, she had no interest in grooming, makeup, or wearing stylish clothes. ‘It’s my Dan the man!’ she said, walking up to him. They kissed on the cheek like brother and sister, ‘I spoke to the Dude this morning. Spooky stuff!.. Get me a coffee while I change.’
‘Whatcha gonna to change into, a beautiful princess?’ Daniel quipped.
‘Very funny, Dan… now piss off and get my coffee!’
Jessian had booked a meeting room on the eighteenth floor, well away from the software development labs. The room, long and narrow, was furnished with a conference table surrounded by chairs. At its head, mounted on the wall, was a huge whiteboard and, to the side on a long desk, was a digital workstation, printer and videophone. Jessen walked directly to the workstation and switched it on while Daniel followed carrying the coffee and a briefcase bulging with papers.
‘Mo said to look at any planetary code that Anubis wrote, first,’ she said, logging on to the workstation.
‘I’m not so sure,’ Daniel replied, ‘he’s hidden his tracks pretty well so far. I can’t see him leaving dodgy code about, and anyway, if there’d been a problem with his drone firmware he’d have fixed it long ago. I think we should look in the revisions log and check for any updates or fixes that relate to bugs causing multiple events.’ Daniel was now looking over Jessian’s shoulder at the workstation display, sipping his coffee.
‘But all development software has
bugs. That’s the whole point of testing; to get rid of them before the drone flies.’
‘Yes, but maybe the fix wasn’t done properly, maybe it was intermittent, maybe the firmware only displays the problem under specific circumstances.’
‘Good thinking. I’ll search the log for intermittent bugs,’ Jessian turned back and started typing.
‘Limit the search to the social control modules.’
‘Okay, SC it is.’
Amy was sat at the meeting room table mentally rehearsing her presentation when Penny cracked open the door, slid through, and silently closed it behind her. She looked concerned. ‘What’s up?’ Amy said.
‘Has Daniel called yet?’
‘No, why?’
‘Anubis just asked me, in front of the director, about the missing file. He implied we’ve been hiding stuff from Hedrick.’
‘Sounds like he’s conjuring up an alibi. What did the director say?’
‘He just said we’d talk later.’
Amy looked at her watch, ‘It’s ten fifteen, I’ll need another half hour to finish this charade off. If Daniel hasn’t called by then, I’ll go over to PI and track him down.’
Hedrick patted the top page of the daily report as he spoke, ‘So you are telling me that planetary drones can audit without making any mistakes.’
‘Exactly!’ Anubis replied, ‘My firmware is foolproof, it’s never made a mistake, that’s why they want me to take over here.’
‘So, you wrote all the planetary drone software yourself-’
‘No!’ Anubis interrupted, irritated at Hedrick’s inability to understand the simplest of technical concepts. ‘I wrote the firmware for the drone injectors, it’s the injectors that insert the apparitions. For Creation’s sake, Hedrick, it’s not that difficult to understand!’
‘I’m just confused. At lunch on Monday you said you wrote the language software.’
‘I DID!’ Anubis stopped and calmed himself down. ‘My dissertation was on planetary languages, so when I came to GOD I was allocated to the language-drone team. It was early days then, before any of the drones had flown live missions. We were testing them in dummy universes. Anyway, I worked my way up the ladder and became a team leader. On the way I wrote lots of code, for loads of different modules.’
Creation- The Auditor’s Apprentice Page 10
