by Greg Remy
“Yes, ma’am. No problem whatsoever.” Zoe noticed a slight reddening of his cheeks.
“By all means, lead the way, John.”
He was careful to swing around Zoe, though brushed up against Darious somewhat aggressively. Zoe turned back and gave Darious a sympathetic look. They followed the student through a maze of corridors and bulbous laboratories until they reached a set of silver double-doors. John typed into the control panel and the doors slid into the walls, revealing a spherical room with the floor stretching along its center line, elevated from the true ground like a tongue with railings. As the three stepped in, diffused illumination lit the short pathway to a large control panel at its center. John turned on the console with a flick of his wrist and the entire room lit up with astronomical grandeur. The surrounding sphere became transparent, yielding an unobstructed, digital view of outer-space. Even as Zoe looked behind them, the doors they had come through had vanished and for all appearances they were now floating amongst the stars. Darious turned around several times in awe.
“Okay,” said John, “What in particular can I retrieve for you?”
Zoe focused back on him. “Margo Sector. 24-28-853. Timestamp: 3270975. Give or take.”
As John typed, the stars around them flew backwards, disappearing beyond the group’s periphery. Zoe saw Darious stumble a moment on the unmoving floor and chuckled. The trio zoomed through floating-parsecs in mere moments with entire solar systems flying by. The computer animation began to slow, and they soon stopped. Then the space surrounding them rotated, lining up the bright ring of the Milky Way with their horizontal axis.
“Perfect,” said Zoe. “Now, please display all ion trails from twelve hours before to twelve hours after.”
“Resolution?” asked John.
“Umm. Let’s start at 10 meters. That would show vehicle traffic, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.” As he typed into the console, the view of 3D space did not change. “So, what is this for anyhow?” John asked.
Zoe ignored his question. “I don’t see anything. Let’s try lowering the resolution.” The panorama remained the same. “Lower the resolution.”
“I did. We are at 1 centimeter, the minimum before the image will start to become fuzzy from qua—”
“What?” said Zoe, perturbation stirring her voice.
“We are at 1 centi—”
“Yes. Yes. Okay let’s broaden our scope then. Zoom to a single cubic floating-parsec.” The stars around them quickly closed in and more pushed into view. “Where is the ion trail? Are you sure your plotter is tuned?”
“Yes, ma’am.” John pulled up a projection screen which floated just above them, showing calibration logs, all with green checkmarks next to them.
“Zoom out. 10 floating-parsecs.” The view of the cosmos once more scoped out, now presenting a vast collection of stars. Darious heaved and swallowed, putting a hand on the railing. A wavy band of pink became observable at this scale leading diagonally across the room. “There we go,” said Zoe. “Sooo...” She followed it along its winding path through the stars and then pointed above them. “There.” There was a small blip in the otherwise unbroken string. “What is that?”
“It appears to be the ion trail from a small cargo ship,” said John.
“Indeed. It’s a semi’s ion trail,” said Zoe. “But look, there is a piece missing.”
John rescoped the 3D screen so that just the tip of either pink line was visible on either side of them and they were standing within its gap. “That is where we started. 24-28-853. Correct?”
“Yes. But...” She paused in thought. “So, we are being shown that a semi was rambling along here.” She pointed to the pink line at their right side. “Went somewhere.” She gestured at the blank space right in front of them. “And then reappeared over there.” She exaggeratingly tossed her arm to their left to where the line continued on.
“Yeah,” said John. “That is really… odd. Who knows.”
“Who knows! Oh, come on! Look. Do this: same zoom as we currently are, but put us at nanometer resolution.”
“But the rendering will suffer—”
“John, now.” He did so, revealing a pixilated mesh of pink dots and lines all around them, except for the same perfect sphere carved out from the centered location. “Isn’t it obvious that this spot has been edited out?” said Zoe flatly. John turned around and stared at her with a peeved look on his face.
“Edited? I beg your pardon?”
She sighed and pulled out her lightcard, setting it on the control panel. Azimuthal elevators are one thing, but this is on a whole other level.
“Please download the information to this.”
John typed in a command and blue swirls on the panel emanated around the lightcard. In a few seconds they were replaced by a crisp green circle, signifying the sync was complete. “Okay John, please bring up the lights; we need to move on.” Zoe was already leaving the room with Darious trailing her as the doorway once more reappeared. At the end of the hallway, she sat on a metal bench and Darious took a seat next to her. She thought back to Semporal beach. Nothingness.
“Zoe,” began Darious, as if reading her thoughts, “this is what you had suspected at the lake, is it not?”
She looked over at him. “While we were at those spatial coordinates, I had scanned everything around us inside and out. Nothing. Not even any evidence a transport vessel had recently been through there. Ya, I figured something was up.”
John came up a moment later. “Well, ma’am, is there anything else I can do for you?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Would you happen to have a singlet vectorizor in the microwave-band?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes. There should be one or two in Storage Six with the other microwave instruments. Follow the hallway to the left and take your fist right at the next juncture. Then follow it straight to its end.”
“Thank you, John.”
“Anything else I can do for you?”
“No. I do appreciate your help. Keep up the good work.”
When he had left, Zoe stood up and looped Darious’ arm around hers. She smiled at him. “Let’s go pick up the vectorizor and we’ll be on our way.”
Upon reaching Storage Six, Zoe at first thought the door was locked; she couldn’t even find a service panel. “Ugh. It’s not like anyone’s going to steal anything.” She pulled out her lightcard and after typing a few commands into it, she held it up next to the door. “Ah, it has a magnetic lock. Probably to keep out those hooligans.” She pushed hard and it simply opened with a loud pop. Shrugging to Darious, Zoe entered in, returning with a bronze device having multiple ports on either of its two long ends. “You never know when you’re going to need one of these.” She smiled to him and the two made their way back to the ship.
Darious seemed to be more at ease once the gangway had retracted and they had both resumed their respective chairs. Zoe brought up the data from the lightcard on her main monitor. “Do you think they would be upset if they knew I had uploaded their entire main frame?” She shot Darious a smart look and turned back to her monitor. “Naa.”
She flipped through several screens. “Erik’s flightpath has indeed been edited out of existence.” She swiveled to Darious. “Now the question is, who would do that?”
“I suppose a good follow-up question, for Mr. Erik, is why?” said Darious.
“Right,” agreed Zoe.
“But can you even ‘edit’ out an ion trail?”
“Sure can,” said Zoe, continuing to scroll through the compiled information from the IRC. “However, it takes a real effort and real power. Imagine a controlled burn of open information from all around the galaxy, and not just, that but from under the noses of public institutions and so on. Covert military operations used to do it when the technology first became available. Then corporations used to do to hide exports for tax reasons. I have seen edited ion trails, but this one is really a brute. Brute and blunt. Seems s
omeone has a tad of arrogance about them, supposing that no one was going to have a look into it.” She added rhetorically, “And who would? So, a semi, among a million other semis, malfunctioned and lost a day. No one was hurt. No one but the driver saw anything. There is really nothing to do. And I bet anyone who sees that little missing blip will just assume it’s a glitch. But we know that Erik’s time-location stamp matches up. Galactic coincidence? I think not.” She paused in thought. “What is going on here?”
Zoe looked at Darious, at those tattooed eyes, and could feel her own being etched. She sat in silence for a few minutes, continuously matching up her fingers and pulling them apart like a zipper. A thought entered her mind and excitation followed. “Darious, I believe I remember Erik mumbling something about filing a report. I assume it has been deleted like the semi’s ion trail. However, it may give us a clue as to the why and the who did this.”
Zoe did a quick search and found all semi-drivers in the region were employed by the shipping company, Millennium Co. Luckily, their local headquarters was only a couple of floating-parsecs away.
“Well, well. Let’s see what the Millennium has to offer,” said Zoe with a half-cocked, surely grin, and the ship blasted onwards to its target.
Chapter 8
From Eggs to Onions
Zoe had looked up more information on Millennium Co. and decided to give them a call. “Darious, hang around, but don’t say anything.” He nodded. Zoe initiated the call and two thin microphones raised from either side of the captain’s console encircled by a ring of neon-blue. The speakers around the cabin crackled momentarily as the call connected.
“Good day,” came a woman’s nasally voice, “Welcome to the new Millennium, Sub 6. How may I direct your call?”
Zoe smiled at Darious who was hanging overtop her chair. “Hello, ma’am, this is Martha Wagner. I have a friend who uses your services. Through him, I had the recent pleasure to meet one of your drivers, a Mr. Erik...” Zoe quickly pulled up his information. “Mr. Erik W. Cavendish. He did such a fantastic job; I wish to hire him for shipments to a new business I’m heading up.” There was a momentary pause on the other end.
“Yes Mrs. Wagner, we can help you with that. We are always pleased to hear positive feedback from our drivers. One moment please.” There was a brief pause. “You said Mr. Erik Cavendish?”
“Yes,” said Zoe.
“Oh, our apologies, ma’am, Mr. Cavendish is no longer with the company. May I suggest another driver for your needs? We carry a substa—”
“Erik is no longer with the company?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Why is that?”
“One moment please,” said the secretary.
“Darious,” Zoe whispered under her breath, “it’s never easy, is it?” Darious nodded in agreement.
“Ma’am?” the voice crepitated over the speakers in the cabin.
“Yes?” said Zoe.
“Mr. Erik Cavendish was let go eight weeks ago. I do apologize for the inconvenience.”
Zoe didn’t skip a beat, “May I ask why he was let go? He was such a very good driver.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Zoe strengthened her voice and added a dash of incredulity. “Miss, I am a woman of little patience. I request to know why Erik was fired. You can be sure I will be following up with your superiors.” There was another pause from the other end.
“Ma’am, it shows on my records that Mr. Cavendish was let go for inebriation during a delivery.”
Zoe turned to Darious with a wince and whispered, “Well, that I might believe.” Then Zoe snapped back to the microphones.
“Wait, let go eight weeks ago? I saw him on a delivery just a few weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Mr.—”
“It was a delivery in your region and he didn’t seem like he was bootlegging.”
“Bootlegging? Ma’am, I—”
“Millennium Co. is the only delivery service in the area, am I correct?” asked Zoe.
“Yes, ma’am, Millennium has established itself as the premier delivery service for the nearest forty sectors and is...” Zoe muted the microphone and spoke over the woman.
“Darious, Erik sure seemed to be on a run for Millennium. He had mentioned logging, and the cargo he was hauling was within their line of business. And considering they have the monopoly here...”
“More of this ‘editing’ perhaps?”
“I do think so,” replied Zoe, unmuting the microphones and cutting into the sectary’s continued diatribe. “Excuse me, do you have the forwarding information for Erik?”
She paused, and Zoe could hear distinct annoyance through the phone line. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m not seeing anything here.”
“I expected as much. Well, thanks. Have a good day.” Zoe hung up the line before the secretary could respond.
“Oh Darious, it’s going to be one of those days.”
“It is odd, is it not?” he asked, standing next to her. “It seems unusual for a business to carry on this way.”
“Oh, trust me, it’s not. But it feels more than your run-of-the-mill company corruption. I dunno Darious, I have an odd feeling about all this. Shall we continue further drown the rabbit hole?” Darious looked a bit puzzled. Zoe tried again, “Shall we explore this mystery further?” At this, Darious displayed a bit of nervous excitement.
“By all means Miss,” he quickly cleared his throat, “Zoe.” He smiled bashfully.
“Okay Mister Darious, get to your station. We have a bit of... investigative computing to do.” Zoe stretched out her arms and cracked her fingers while Darious prepped himself at his virtual console.
First up was general research regarding Millennium Co. They found it had greatly expanded its shipping influence in the last ten years after being acquired by the corporate giant, Pantheon Industries. That struck a cord with Zoe; she had heard of Pantheon—it had its porky finger in most everything. Now that was certainly one black hole to be avoided. Before being gulped down, Millennium had thrived on a smaller scale as the company ‘Two Guys and a Semi’ but it was their more recent history Zoe was interested in.
“Darious, can you search for any and all information on Millennium’s driver stats, hiring and firing rates, etcetera? That is, if they have such information public.”
“Certainly captain.”
Zoe herself was absorbed in research on Pantheon Industries. The black hole had begun to consume her. The conglomerate had existed for centuries and had subsidiaries out the wazoo, including subsidiaries within sub-subsidiaries. The corporate headquarters occupied an entire planet. Now that was logistics. The further Zoe looked, the more she realized, Pantheon, in some form or another, was indeed everywhere: shipping companies, metal-work companies, and even printing companies. As her head began to whirl, she paused and decided to oversee Darious’ progress over his shoulder.
“I have not been able to find any pertinent information,” he said.
“I’m not surprised they don’t have it available, but it was worth a shot. We may have to go a bit deeper. Come and sit next to me.” She resumed her seat and diminished all prior research, bringing up a clean screen. “Millennium Co.” Its home screen popped up with a graphic of a burley man shaking hands with a businesswoman and several descriptive lines below them. Zoe brought up a second window, overlaying the first with developer coding. She navigated though it with the same swiftness by which she piloted her ship. Upon a third window, she began her own coding which drew feedback from the website. “A little peep is all we need. No need to open a backdoor, just a little peeeep through the keyhole.”
She waited a minute and then was signaled that 63 of the 10,000 attempts by her computer were successful. Several more screens appeared, and Zoe picked out a singular one, navigating through its many titles and subfolders. She homed in on the company logs at the date of Erik’s bamboozling booze occurrence.
Upon opening it, she sighed. “Of c
ourse,” she said. Darious looked in closer. “See there,” Zoe said pointing.
“Ah, yes. The gap between hours 13:00 and 16:00.”
“It’s all gone. And there should at least be the user-access information automatically generated here.” She pointed to a lower left-hand string of text “But it’s also been blanked out. Looking at these data chunks, this sure looks to be an outside job.” Zoe poked around a few more files, but no further pertinent information presented itself. She closed up the search, piece by piece, in the reverse order of her inward navigation, backing out and fully restoring each data block to its initial position. All traces of her peek-a-boo game would be nullified. She closed the last window with triumph and then looked over at Darious, “Well, considering how the Majora Station was wiped and now this, it sure looks like someone up high is pulling the strings.” She pulled at imaginary whiskers on her face. “I’m tempted to look into Pantheon Industries, but oh man, that could be a bad idea.”
“Repercussions?”
“Pretty bad I imagine. Consider a corporation with multiplicities of quintillions of dollars, capable of who knows what—for sure able to bend diplomatic wills and wield the CF as its personal lap-dog. And as for the CF—you certainly don’t want to be on their bad side.”
Zoe turned to the view of outer-space, staring at the grand magnificence just outside her window. The Milky Way shone brilliantly. “Ah screw it; just a peek.” She began the same computational procedure, but after thirty minutes and 4,815,162,342 attempts by her computer, no backdoors could be pried open. Zoe was soon enthralled in all sorts of work-arounds while Darious silently watched. After another half hour of furious typing and negative alerts, inspiration struck. “Aha! I just remembered another way.” Fifteen minutes passed in unspoken data-crunching fervor. “Damn. Okay, we’re going to need all the computing power we got.” She laid her lightcard on the table which her projection console encircled with blue rings, integrating the device’s computing capabilities with its own. “Have any electronics on you?” she asked Darious.
