Chapter 13 - A Day At The Office
Discarded metal
Chapter 13 - A Day At The Office
"It's a wonderful corporate world…"
Mark passes through the big front doors of the Psysoft tower.
Today is the first day of his investigation, posing as an employee of the corpo. People come and go through the ground floor that serves as an exhibition center for the company's products.
Mark acts like he is a regular and walks straight through the ground floor and reaches one of the corner's elevators. He gets in with a couple of other employees, trying to blend in the best he can.
The camera scans the people in the elevator and automatically selects their floors, there's a small panel on the side showing names and the floors where they stop.
He stares in awe when he sees his name displayed there.
Mark Spencer - Floor 15.
"They didn't even bother to change my name... Talk about undercover…" He thinks to himself.
The elevator moves and nobody seems to care about the panel that grows longer by listing all the people in the elevator.
Floor 15.
Mark squeezes his way out of the elevator and is now in a long corridor going straight to a small atrium with a reception desk in the center and several hallways entries.
He calmly walks to the reception desk and is greeted by a receptionist.
"Hello, sir, is there anything I can help you with?" She asks with a smile.
"Yeah, I'm Mark Spencer, I'm starting today and I'm not sure where my office is." He asks while looking around as to try to gather information.
"Certainly, Mr. Spencer, please connect yourself here." She says as she shows him a slot in the reception desk.
Mark pulls the wire from behind his ear and slots in, an AR window appears on his optics, asking him to confirm access to his ID, he accepts it. The window disappears and the receptionist looks satisfied. Another message appears directly on his optics, indicating his office number and a green line appears on the floor.
"You are confirmed, sir, you can follow the green line to your office, if there's anything else I can do for you, feel free to com me directly, it has been added to your library automatically, name is Claire." She says, still smiling widely.
Mark nods, unslots himself from the reception desk and starts following the green line. As he concentrates on the lines, a window pops up on his vision, a message from Exec Nova. He opens it.
"Welcome, Mark, I see that you are taking your marks, contact me directly if you find anything during your investigation." The message reads.
"Now I feel like all my movements are being watched…" He thinks to himself.
"Thanks for the welcome, will keep you updated if anything comes up." He replies to Exec Nova.
He continues following the green line through the corridor on his left, the walls are transparent and several office cubicles can be seen on the other side. The green line guides him through the entire floor to a door with the number of his office, 201.
The door opens automatically as he approaches it.
It's small inside, there's only space for a desk with a holoscreen and a closed shelf against the back wall, there are no windows at all and the whole office feels like a small box.
"Great… And some people fight for a job like that…" He thinks to himself as he sits at the desk.
Without thinking too much about it, he pulls the wire from behind his ear and slots it to the holoscreen, his vision switches to the network view.
As he enters the network, he notices the structure is vast, each department of the company is separated in blocks connected by a central hub that looks like a highway. He can see most of the users connected to the network, they are small avatars going by to their daily routines. It resembles the real world except it's rules are bendable to some extent.
He makes his way on the central hub and starts looking around, he gets close to the network security area and wonders if his keys can give him access. The security area looks like a big walled cube with only one entrance and several exits, it seems to act as a node with high security.
He passes through the entrance, access granted appears in his vision.
"That's easy…" He thinks to himself.
Inside the node, several users are moving in and out, from the entrance to the exits. Mark checks the different exits and stops in front of the "secret projects" one.
"Let's check it out… " He thinks.
He passes through the gate, access granted appears again.
He is now on a smaller hub that branches in several even smaller hubs, less users can be seen and some even pause their activity to actually look at Mark, but quickly they get back to what they were doing.
Mark starts exploring the different places where the hub links without entering any project areas. He suddenly stops in front of one with no activity at all, he makes a quick scan and notices that it is completely empty.
"Should be the place that had been robbed…" He thinks as he moves towards it.
Without hesitation he enters it and finds out that it is indeed empty, nothing is there, not even a trace.
"The thieves knew what they were doing …" He thinks to himself.
He gets out of the node and goes back through the security node and finds the logins archives. He starts browsing through the archives until the time of the heist.
Ethan Thompson… That's the ID used to transfer the content of the node where he was earlier, after that only a few accesses from a user called PTL. Thieves usually don't come back for a second time, especially to a place that is empty. He sends a search query for the user PTL but he gets denied access.
"Ok… Security maybe…" He thinks to himself as he logs out.
His vision slowly returns to the real world and he unslots from the holoscreen.
He decides to send a message to Exec Nova.
"Ethan Thompson? Why didn't you mention him during our meeting?" He sends her.
The answer comes in almost immediately as if Exec Nova was just waiting for his message.
"Good job, detective, I knew you were full of potential." The message says.
"Why do I feel she is toying with me…" He thinks to himself.
He stays a moment in that office box to gather his thoughts.
"Since the beginning she definitely knew who gave access but she said nothing, she is testing me… but why… Fuck it, I'm done for today…" He thinks as he gets up from the seat.
He walks out of the office and all the way back to the atrium with the receptionist desk.
"Will see you tomorrow, Mr. Spencer?" The receptionist says with the same smile she has when he came in.
"Yeah…" He says as he keeps walking, waving at her.
He gets back to the elevator and goes down to the ground floor. He walks his way through the exhibitions slowly, looking around the different products exposed.
"It just looks so random, basic home AIs, operating systems… really nothing fancy…" He thinks to himself. "What did they lose? A magic operating system… a revolutionary home AI…"
He walks out of the Psysoft tower and hails a taxi from within his neural connector.
A message pops up on his visual.
"We need to talk." From user PTL.
"Ok… Maybe that's my lead…" He thinks as he reads the short message.
"Where and when?" He answers the message.
The taxi arrives and he gets in.
"To the CTIG HQ." He says to the AI driver.
"Sir, your destination has already been entered and the fare paid, enjoy the ride." The AI answers.
"What the …" He says out loud when a second message pops up from PTL.
"Don't get angry… please follow the destination attached." The message says.
"Kidnapping? Really? I'm not worth much, you know?" He sends back.
"No, it's not kidnapping, we really need to talk… I have information… " The reply comes very fast.
"sounds scared… " He thinks to himself as he reads the message.
The car keeps driving itself to an unknown destination. He just lays back in the seat and watches as the background doesn't change much.
"Still in the corporate districts… " He thinks as the background changes, it looks more luxurious and also more quiet.
Less people in the streets, more luxurious cars on the road, he recognizes the big buildings that house the employees of various corpos. The car drives to an area with less buildings but more trees and parks. It suddenly stops.
"We have arrived, we hope you have enjoyed your ride, please ride with us again soon, sir." The AI driver says.
"Sure." He mutters as he gets out of the car.
There's a path in front of him leading straight into a park. He is a bit surprised as he never really saw anything like that, growing in a military environment. He opens the destination attached with one of the messages and starts following the line displayed by his optics.
The place is extremely peaceful, with almost nobody around. He starts wondering why the corpos even built these big parks if nobody ever uses them. He walks along the path with lines of trees covering the sun. These parks are the rare places where the sun doesn't get blocked by the buildings, It feels like stepping in another world.
The line guides him to an area with a big opening and some kid's playground. Of course no kids can be seen playing around, the area is completely empty. The line stops at an empty bench.
"There you go… now what?" He thinks to himself as he sits on the bench.
"Kidnapped by rich corpos? That doesn't make any sense…" He keeps thinking as he scouts around and sees a silhouette coming toward him.
It is a woman, not very tall with short dark hair and wearing big glasses that cover almost all her face.
"I'm sorry… " She says as she sits next to him.
She looks extremely nervous and starts looking at her feet.
Mark looks at her with a puzzled look on his face.
"Hmmm, yeah…Ok… So that's really not kidnapping… " He says out loud trying to understand what is happening.
"I will explain everything… I promise… but first, please jack in this device…" She says as she pulls out a sort of cube with slots on it.
Mark looks at it and recognizes it, it is a device that blocks signals from going in or out of implants, usually used by hackers to go invisible.
"Who the hell are you? PTL?" He asks, hesitant to plug in.
She looks at him from behind her big framed glasses, almost pleading with him to do it.
"Please…" She says while holding the device toward him.
He can see that she is already plugged in, then he nods and pulls the cable from behind his ear and jacks in.
A pop up appears on his vision waiting for his confirmation to let the device scramble all signals, he hesitates a moment before allowing it.
"Fuck it… " He says as his vision blurs for a second, indicating that the device is blocking all signals in and out.
A voice is heard directly in his head.
"Thank you." She says. "Our communication now is completely secure, they can't hear us…"
"What do you mean? Who are they?" He answers her through his thoughts.
"Everybody… You can't trust anybody… I will tell you everything I know…" She says hesitantly.
"Ok… Let's just start with the beginning, Who is Ethan Thompson?" Mark asks.
"Ethan Thompson was a good employee, but something changed him, I'm not sure what it was but before the heist took place, he was not the same." She explains.
"I know he gave out his access to the hacker who stole from Psysoft, but why? And what did they steal?" He asks.
"I don't know… the only thing I know is that he became paranoid and kept talking about being heard through implants… something at Psysoft freaked him out…" She answers him.
"So, there's something bigger than the heist at Psysoft?" He asks her while looking at her directly.
They look like they are having a conversation but no words are coming out of their mouths, everything is said directly through their neural connectors.
"I know nothing about it, but I knew Ethan for years and he probably discovered something before he disappeared and the heist happened." She says to him.
"Who are you?" He asks.
"I… I'm Sophia Patel…" She answers.