Replicate: Beneath the Steel City: Book 2

by Ben Lovejoy

  It would be the perfect crime because no-one would ever know that it had taken place. And by tomorrow afternoon, it would be done.

  Chapter 6

  I was reluctant to open old wounds with Philippa, but had decided in the end that I had to know. The way things ended, I wasn’t sure she’d agree to see me, and figured she was less likely to send me away if I was standing on her doorstep.

  I knew I’d need to be careful how I phrased things to avoid offence, but she was an extremely logical thinker – maybe even more rational than me. If I simply laid out the sequence of events, perhaps she’d just smile and tell me she understood why I had to ask. Maybe we’d be able to enjoy a chuckle about it over a glass of wine, and part company this time as friends.

  “What the hell, Lafferty?”

  Ok, that’s the abridged version of her response. The unabridged version managed to encompass, within a relatively short time, an impressively large number of unsubstantiated accusations concerning my character, personal habits and such associated miscellany as my mother’s occupation.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t accusing you, just asking you.”

  “The hell you weren’t accusing me! You wouldn’t even be here if you didn’t think it was me.”

  “I wanted to eliminate the possibility.”

  “Bullcrap. But that’s not what really pisses me off. It’s not the accusation.”

  “Then what?” I asked, suddenly confused.

  She stared at me, and looked even more confused than I felt.

  “You really don’t see it, do you?”

  “You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

  “One year, Lafferty, one year. That’s how long we were together. And according to you, you loved me.”

  “I did. Still do, actually.”

  “Yeah, right. A year, and you still didn’t trust the woman you supposedly loved – ‘still do, actually’ – enough to let me into your world. Your life. Yet now, when you turn up uninvited to accuse me of blackmailing you, you’re suddenly willing to give me more of a glimpse of that oh so secretive world of yours in 20 minutes than you did in the whole of that year.” She almost spat out the next words. “You let me go, Lafferty. When I told you I couldn’t stay with a man who wouldn’t let me into his world, you let me walk away rather than share your secrets with me. That’s how much you cared about keeping them then. Yet now, when you want to protect your precious secret world, suddenly now you can walk in here and start, well, if not exactly being open, then hinting at a hell of a lot more than you did then.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Philippa didn’t say anything more, but the expression on her face said very clearly that it was now my turn to speak and I’d better have a good response.

  “You’re right,” I said, finally. “I like to think I’m a pretty smart guy, that I’m right more often than I’m wrong …”

  I could have supported this argument by observing that you don’t stay alive and out of jail long in my line of work if you’re unable to recognise when you’ve gotten it wrong, but that wasn't quite the time. I continued.

  “But on this one, I was wrong. Very wrong. It was selfish. I was trying to satisfy my own need to be sure, and was unfair to you in the process. Doubly unfair – for asking the question and, as you say, for … well … I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

  I’ve often found there’s something disarming about a simple admission of culpability. If you give someone nothing to push against, they often stop pushing.

  “And you think that makes it ok, do you? You think you can just hold your hands up, give a little mea culpa speech and then it will all be ok?”

  Often, but not always.

  I’m a planner. It’s in my blood. I think things through in advance. Clarify my objectives. Devise a strategy. Figure out the steps. Think about what could go wrong at every stage. Put in place contingency plans – my famous plan B and plan C. What I do not do is act without thinking. I don’t let my mouth go anywhere my brain hasn’t been first.

  “I’ll tell you everything. If you still want to know. If there’s still any reason for you to care.”

  I looked around, startled, to see who had spoken.

  Philippa looked at me. Apparently it was me. Her expression was unreadable.

  I gave her the executive summary. Of growing tired of being a cog in a state-designed machine. Of doing a meaningless job to earn the money to live a meaningless life. Of living life constrained by a million meaningless rules. Of finally deciding that if I lived another day like that I was going to implode.

  I told her that the life I lived now might at any moment see me arrested or worse, but that the feeling of freedom outweighed the risk. That I had felt I had no-one I could confide in, no-one who would understand, no-one I could trust with my secret.

  “Not even me,” she said. The words sounded like an accusation but her tone made it sound like a simple statement of fact. I had no reply for her.

  She sat down at the dining table, and I did the same.

  “Wine,” she said. I momentarily had visions of that imagined scene, before I realised it was a command, not an invitation. Her serving bot moved silently from its dock, fetched a wine bottle and two glasses. I read nothing into the latter fact; serving bots defaulted to bringing one glass per person unless instructed otherwise.

  Philippa poured a glass for herself. She didn’t invite me to join her. She took a sip. Then several more. She was silent for a few minutes.

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand what I’m about to say,” she said, finally.

  “Ok,” I said.

  “I don’t forgive you, and I’m not doing this to help you.”

  “Ok.”

  “It’s just that I think I may be able to demonstrate that you’re an idiot, and right now that would please me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Given it’s not me, and it’s not your computer,” she said, “that leaves Saira.”

  “That seems to be the only remaining possibility, yes.”

  “When you were planning your security arrangements to protect your loot, did you run them past Saira?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You asked her to do her utmost to try to identify weaknesses.”

  “Right.”

  “And you gave her a monitoring brief,” said Philippa. “Made her responsible for looking out for any security breach. Told her to keep probing for weaknesses.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that that’s exactly what she’s doing?”

  I thought about what she was suggesting. Could it be that Saira had got the mystery robot to attempt to breach the security, all the while supervising its activities? I thought about it for a moment. No, that didn’t make sense.

  “No,” I replied. “I mean, sure, she would keep plugging away at the problem, but why would she begin an infiltration attempt and then abandon it after alerting me? And why would she not tell me what she’d done once she’d breached the first location?”

  Philippa gave me a look of pity.

  “What do you always say is the biggest weakness in any system?” she asked.

  “The people,” I replied immediately.

  She quoted me: “Every system is designed by a human being, and every system is vulnerable to the assumptions made by human beings, and every system can be rendered useless by the intervention of human beings.”

  The quote was word for word, but I wasn’t getting it. I gave Philippa a questioning look.

  “Who is the human being in this scenario?” she asked.

  A small glimmer of light was slowly beginning to dawn.

  “She’s testing you,” continued Philippa. “She wanted to know if you’d go rushing in to defend location one. She wanted to know if you’d do something dumb if you could be persuaded that security had been breached even if it hadn’t. She was protecting you against the one human being who could screw it all up: you.”
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  I considered this, then shook my head.

  “No,” I said, “it still doesn’t make sense. If Saira used her inside knowledge to breach locations 1 and 2, that’s not a meaningful infiltration test.”

  Philippa have me a hard look.

  “I’m sure you never used to be this obtuse.”

  The small glimmer of light grew a little brighter.

  “You said she’s testing me,” I said, “not the systems.”

  “Right. And your evidence that the two locations have been infiltrated is …”

  “… all supplied by Saira,” I finished.

  “The evidence for a breach of location 3 is … ?”

  “Saira told me so.”

  “And the evidence for a breach of location 2?” she asked.

  “A holo feed.”

  “Projected by Saira,” said Philippa.

  “But surely she wouldn’t allow the charade to run for this long?” I protested. “Once she saw that I didn’t in fact go rushing blindly in to location 1, but watched carefully from afar, the risk was at an end. She could then have reported that she saw a potential weakness – me – tested it, and found it was fine.”

  “She has no reason to believe the experiment to be at an end. You could be just thinking it over for a while before finally rushing in to do something dumb.”

  I reviewed events from that perspective. I couldn’t fault the logic.

  “I think I need to sit Saira down for a little chat,” I said.

  “I think you do.”

  I stared at the table for a while, unsure of what exactly I wanted to say or how I would say it.

  “No,” said Philippa.

  “No what?”

  “No, your belated decision to take me into your confidence doesn’t change anything. You did it for you, not for me.”

  I wanted to protest, but knew that I couldn’t.

  “Goodbye, Michael. Let yourself out.”

  She picked up her wine glass and the bottle and walked over to the sofa.

  Chapter 7

  On this occasion, I’d felt no compulsion to accompany the transport. Last time, it had been too interesting to miss – palaces and state coaches and so forth. This time it was a lot of identical gold bars, and I’d be seeing those as soon as they arrived at my temporarily-rented offices just a couple of miles from the replication company.

  My ill-gotten gains wouldn’t be spending very long there, but the visuals still had to look right. A security company would look rather suspiciously at the idea of delivering 100 bars of gold worth 5.2 million credits to a scarcely-furnished service office, so I’d indulged in a few props – and some roboguards hired by the hour.

  It looked impressive, even if I did say so myself. Two roboguards outside the main doors. Three more in the outer office, one sat behind the reception desk, the other two guarding the door to the inner office.

  The inner office appeared to have an extremely imposing vault taking up half the room. It was, in reality, nothing more than a holovision prop: a realistic-looking steel cladding surrounding an empty space. The vault door was a work of art, all steel bars and flashing lights, with two further roboguards either side of it. Also outside the vault door was a heavy-duty scutporter – nothing more than a mechanised trolley capable of following simple orders along the lines of ‘go there.’

  There appeared to be security cameras everywhere. Only a couple of them were real, allowing me to see when the security truck pulled up and to ensure that it was not accompanied by any unwanted visitors.

  My Skycar was hovering nearby, and could be on the roof landing pad within two minutes of being summoned. I was sat at the desk tracking the progress of the security truck.

  I’d opted for a location close to the replication company because the less time between collection of the gold and its disappearance, the better. Right now, the tracking service was showing the truck at the replication company. The status had just changed from ‘Arrived at collection point’ to ‘Loading in progress.’

  Six minutes and 40 seconds later, the status changed to ‘Loading complete, in transit.’ Sure enough, the dot on the map started moving. I was at maximum zoom and could see it exit the facility and turn onto the road. I’d timed the run multiple times at the same time of day and knew it should take between 9 and 12 minutes to reach me.

  I followed the progress of the dot as it made its way toward me. Truly this was the perfect crime, I thought. Not a single lock to defeat, no sneaking in anywhere unobserved. Just 5.2 million credits’ worth of gold being delivered to me in broad daylight – with the government paying for the delivery! It was a work of art.

  The truck took 10 minutes and 31 seconds to reach me. I switched to monitoring the cameras as the truck pulled up outside and an impressive number of roboguards bearing the security company’s logo got to work.

  There were guards positioned at all four corners of the truck, looking out for criminal types. I was pleased to see it. I had nothing against those who wished to help themselves to government gold, of course, but this particular government gold was mine. I had paperwork for it and everything. Anyone else inclined to avail themselves of some ill-gotten government gold could go find their own stash.

  More roboguards began lining the short distance across the pavement between the truck and the front door. A couple of pedestrians looked annoyed as they were made to wait.

  Finally two people emerged from the truck. One walked up to my roboguards at the door and handed over a tablet. The guard scanned it, nodded and opened the door.

  Scutbots accompanied by yet more security company roboguards then began the unloading process. It was all very efficient, and ten minutes later the scutporter was loaded up with the gold and the security truck and its occupants had departed.

  I deployed one more movie-prop – a lightweight shell that covered the gold, making it look like a rather unappealing collection of yellow plastic boxes labelled ‘Medical waste.’

  I lifted my watch.

  “Skycar, roof.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Scutporter, follow me,” I said. “Roboguards too.”

  I made my way through the outer office to the freight elevator. I’d used a keycard for the elevator to lock it into command mode on arrival, to ensure that it would display an ‘Out of service’ message while sitting on the ground floor.

  I’d of course checked the weight loadings, and knew that it could accommodate me and the gold but not any of the roboguards. I waited until the doors had opened and the scutporter had wheeled itself in.

  “Roboguards, dismissed,” I said.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the lead one as they filed out. “Your card has been charged. Your custom is appreciated.”

  I directed the elevator to the roof, command mode again ensuring that it would not make any unscheduled stops along the way. It reached the roof in forty seconds. My Skycar was waiting, ten scutbots at the open door. I released the lock on the freight elevator, restoring it to normal use.

  The scutporter followed me to the Skycar door, and I removed the shell, quickly collapsing it down and throwing it into the Skycar.

  “Scutbots, load.”

  With ten of them working, it took just over a minute to load the gold on board. This was the one part I wasn’t keen on: being in the open air with 100 bars of gold. The Skycar was of course instructed to alert me if any other Skycars drew near, but for that one minute I was vulnerable to a passing police patrol.

  I could have packaged the gold, but that would have taken more time. I’d reached the view that this approach was the smaller risk.

  “Scutporter, dismissed.”

  “Thank you, sir. You have been charged.”

  No cheery message from this one, I noted. Well, perhaps it mostly worked with warehouse workers who were not the ones paying the bill and not overly interested in exchanging pleasantries.

  Ten seconds later, the Skycar was in the air, and I allowed myself a grin as
I surveyed my newly-acquired gold bars. I was feeling extremely pleased with myself, having no way to know then that my perfect crime was already starting to unravel.

  Chapter 8

  The scutbots having packed the gold away in the cellar with its DIY brethren, I had one other task left to complete the mission, but I could no longer contain my curiosity about Philippa’s theory. I needed to have a little conversation with Saira.

  “Hibiki,” I said.

  Saira dutifully poured a generous measure of the Japanese whisky into a glass and brought it to me. I was sitting at the dining-room table, configured for two, and I gestured for her to take the seat opposite me. This was going to be something of an inquisition, and the more formal setting seemed appropriate.

  “You reported intrusions at locations three and two,” I began.

  “Yes.”

  “I had earlier given you standing instructions to monitor the locations, and to continually probe for weaknesses.”

  “You did,” she agreed.

  “You have been doing so ever since.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are continuing to do so now,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “One potential weakness in the system is me,” I continued. “I could do something dumb that would reveal the existence of the locations.”

  “Human error is always a possibility.”

  “Your probing for weaknesses would include testing for the possibility of human error.”

  “Naturally,” she said.

  “It occurred to me,” I continued, not entirely truthfully, “that one security risk would be a false alarm, and me charging blindly in to rescue the platinum, running the risk that I would lead someone to location one.”