Cyber Dreams 2.27 - Explorations

I could tell my last chapter wasn't very popular with everyone; I made a few adjustments to my main document, but I think some of the concerns will be addressed in this chapter and in the ones coming up.

One of the criticisms, quite validly, pointed out that some of the secondary characters are pretty 1 dimensional in this arc. Gordon being a prime example. I think, because of the rapidly heightened stakes, it feels like we're near a climax. We're still in the rising action of the arc, though, and there will be more chapters to flesh out some of these characters.

Thanks, as always, for your feedback and all the help :)

-Plum

Following the white-coated GARD employee down the hallway, Juliet suddenly imagined herself being cuffed to a surgical bed while a machine drilled her head. She knew it wasn’t a “vision” exactly—she was just reacting to her own fear and stress, but still, she slowed her pace and stared at the woman in front of her as though she could bore into her head with her eyes, and really, really tired to “listen.”

She caught her breath with delight and surprise when she heard, clear as day: Oh lord, I’m so sick of these endless flashcard tests. Here we go; keep smiling, and we’ll get through it. Lunch in a couple of hours. Hearing the woman, bored about conducting tests, allowed Juliet to relax the tension in her neck and shoulders—she doubted she’d be thinking those thoughts if she meant to surprise Juliet with another impromptu surgical procedure.

They spent the morning repeating the color test dozens of times. She carefully made sure to keep her number of correct guesses between five and nine, never wanting to give the GARD employees reason to single her out as particularly successful. Ursula, the woman with the old-school glasses frames, sat with her and conducted the tests, somehow maintaining a cheerful demeanor the entire time.

“This should be the last one,” she said on their twenty-seventh run-through. “It’s almost lunchtime, and then you’ll have an interview and a different sort of test.” Ursula had no qualms about chatting during the tests and never glanced at the camera array, seemingly unconcerned about people watching or about the recordings being made.

“Can you tell me anything about it?” Juliet asked and then said, “Blue.”

“Right now, you’re exercising the lattice’s receiving capabilities. We designed it to help you transmit your latent psionic impulses as well; we’ll have you try that functionality today.” Juliet was concentrating on Ursula, with her eyes closed, trying to see the next color, so she wasn’t surprised when the woman’s unspoken next thought came through: What a load of horse manure—I’m due for a promotion, and Vance better watch his back when this whole program goes down.

“Black,” Juliet said, guessing the wrong color. Ursula smiled pleasantly and tapped her screen. “Do you work with Violet and Doctor Vance?”

“Oh yes. Violet requested the day off. I don’t blame her, being up to near midnight dealing with that man.”

“That man?”

“Vance.” For the first time, Ursula looked at the camera and then shrugged. “He’s a bit much, if you know what I mean.”

“Sure. Um . . . white.”

“That was the last one! Good job, Lydia. You can wait here; we have a boxed lunch for you, and the interview will be in thirty minutes. Feel free to get up and stretch.” Ursula quickly stood, moving to the door. “I probably won’t see you anymore today, but I sure enjoyed working with you this morning, Lydia.”

“Thanks, Ursula.” Juliet smiled—easier to fake with Ursula than the other GARD employees she’d met—and stayed in her seat while she waited for Ursula to walk out. She was just about to stand and stretch when a tapping knock sounded on the door, and then it opened, and a young, thin man with a scruffy, sparse goatee stepped in carrying a brown box, much like the one Juliet had been given during orientation.

“Your lunch,” he said, setting it on the table. He ducked his head several times as he left, clearly avoiding eye contact. Juliet watched him leave and then opened the box. A sandwich, banana, and a cup of pudding sat within, and she closed it back up.

“I’ll pass,” she subvocalized and then pulled out one of her protein bars. While she chewed it, she closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind, wondering if she could pick up any thoughts nearby. She listened to herself chew and swallow several times, but no thoughts came to her, and she continued to subvocalize, “Angel, Ursula didn’t act like anyone was watching the camera today. If I get you a direct connection, what are the odds you can hack the surveillance network to delete the footage of me messing with it?”

“Excellent odds—it’s only a matter of time. If I fail before someone comes, though, the footage will remain. What would we gain? I don’t know if there’s any way to remain connected wirelessly, even after hacking the network, so we’d only have a short window of access.”

“You could record everything on this camera network for a couple of minutes,” Juliet said, standing up. “It might give us an idea for a better attack vector.” She feigned stretching, doing some long, slow lunges to bring herself around the table, and when she was in the corner beneath the camera and sensor array, she glanced up, looking for the cable port. She didn’t see it and subvocalized, “Where’s the port?”

“They have a locking plasteel shroud over the data port . . .”

“Damn,” Juliet hissed, nearly silently, then she reached into her belt and tugged out her vibroblade, watching its virtually invisible edge shimmer with its hyper oscillations as she reached it up to the plasteel shroud where a tiny crack indicated a latch. She slipped the blade in, wincing as the high-pitched sound of the edge slicing through plasteel filled the air, then she tugged it along the seam until she felt the resistance of the latch being severed. More quickly than was probably safe, Juliet jerked her knife free and slipped it into the sheath in her waistband.

“Get ready,” she subvocalized, then, for good measure, completed another circuit of the little room, moving around the table, lifting her arms, stretching, and sighing as she rolled her neck. When she was beneath the array again, she quickly yanked her data cable out of her arm and stretched onto her tiptoes. She flicked the—now-unlocked—shroud open and stuffed her data line into the exposed port. That done, she hugged the wall, waiting for Angel to work her magic.

The seconds stretched into a minute, stretched into three, and Juliet began to wonder if this had been a massive mistake when Angel said, “I’m in. This network only covers this floor. It’s monitored through a centralized terminal. I’m replacing the footage of your activities with a longer loop of you doing lunges around the room. I’m downloading footage from all of the cameras.”

“How long?”

“There are six months of footage; to get it all will take me about nine minutes.”

“Just start with the most recent and work your way back.” Juliet closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind, willing herself to “hear” nearby thoughts. She stood there in self-imposed darkness for a minute or two, listening to the ticking of the air circulation, and then, out of nowhere, she heard a man’s voice: Let’s see B2056, B2057—just a couple more doors.

Juliet reached up, pulled her cord out, let it retract, and carefully pressed the shroud latch back into place. She resumed her long, stretching steps around the room as Angel said, “I wasn’t finished.”

“I think someone’s coming,” she subvocalized.

“Well, I got most of the last month’s footage,” Angel replied. Juliet grunted her acknowledgment, and she’d just made her way around the table when a knock sounded. The handle twisted, the door opened, and a very tall, thin man leaned his head through the gap. He had long, wispy brown hair and was clearly going bald, but he didn’t seem to care. He looked unkempt, from his wild eyebrows to his loose tie to the stains that looked like coffee on his white coat.

“Knock knock!” he said, grinning and slipping through the door, never opening it more than a foot. Juliet stood still, one hand resting on the tabletop.

“Getting some stretches in, I see?”

“Right. Been sitting a while already today . . .”

“Right, right! Shall we do your debriefing standing? I don’t mind!” He leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of himself, clearly doing everything he could to seem friendly. Juliet liked him immediately, and she hated herself for it. She must have frowned at the thought because he continued, taking a step back and holding out his hands placatingly, “No, no, stupid idea! I’m Doctor Hoyt, by the way. Come, have a seat. This will be the easiest part of your day; you have my promise.” He gestured to the empty chair Juliet had vacated.

Juliet sat down and said, “I thought I’d have thirty minutes for lunch.”

“Am I early?” Hoyt asked, holding a hand to his chest and looking alarmed. “Oh, dear! I just got a notification that you finished your color test and that I could come in. Do you mind terribly if we get this going? You can eat while we talk.”

“Go ahead,” Juliet shrugged. Hoyt sat across from her and produced a tablet just like Ursula and Violet had used. Juliet wondered what she could find out if she got her hands on one of those. “Angel,” she subvocalized, “while this guy’s chatting with me, I want you to start examining the video files you stole; see if you can start putting together a map of this level. I want to know where Doctor Vance and Violet have their offices, particularly.”

“I’ve already begun that process.”

“God, I love you . . .”

“We’ll start with one question, and then I’ll follow up based on your answer. Is that all right?”

Juliet had almost tuned out Hoyt as she conversed with Angel. She jerked her head up and made eye contact with him, saying, “Yes.”

“Okay, please describe what you see or feel when trying to guess the colors in the color-match assessment.”

“What I see and feel? Nothing really. I close my eyes to try to concentrate, but I just kind of say the first color that comes to my mind. I don’t feel anything, really.”

“You don’t see any flashes of color or hear any voice that might urge you to pick a certain color?”

“No.”

“Hmm,” Hoyt nodded, tapping away at his device for a moment, and then he said, “So you don’t feel any changes since your procedure at all?”

“I passed out yesterday and had a bit of a headache afterward, but nothing unusual today.”

“Okay, could you describe your headache?”

“Just some pressure. Here,” Juliet tapped the base of her skull, having decided to describe a regular headache, not the weird tingling fuzzy feeling she’d had behind her forehead.

“Very good, mmhmm,” he tapped on his screen again. “And that’s gone now?”

“Yes, I felt totally normal after a good night’s sleep.” Juliet shrugged. She hoped the arrays up above didn’t have some way to determine if she was lying, but then she realized it would be stupid if they didn’t. They had to be watching her heart rate, respirations, body temperature, and micro musculature movements. They probably had a sensor monitoring her synaptic patterns. No, Juliet decided, if she really wanted to fool these people, she needed to get access to that data.

“All right, all right. You’re aware that you’ll have a daily report to fill out going forward, yes? After we get you through another sort of assessment, you’ll be back to regular duty, but we do want those reports. Is all of that clear?”

“Yes. Just as clear as it was yesterday when Violet read me her script.” For a brief moment, Juliet contemplated reaching out with her enhanced arm and slamming Hoyt’s forehead into the table. She could hack his datapad, reconnect to the camera system, hide the footage, then get out before anyone saw what she’d done. Her arm twitched, and she almost tried to do what she’d been visualizing, but then he smiled and swallowed, his overlarge adam’s apple bobbing with the motion, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Your next exam will be in this room, and, as you said, I was a bit early coming in, so there might be a bit of a wait.”

“Oh? Is your office nearby?” Juliet stood and held out a hand, trying to stall so she could fish for information.

“No, no. I’m a few hallways removed.” Hoyt took her hand, squeezing it gently and smiling the first genuine smile Juliet felt she’d received from a GARD employee. Suddenly she was very glad she hadn’t smashed his head into the table.

“How much time do you think I’ll have? Is there a restroom nearby?”

“Oh, yes. Hmm, probably upwards of twenty minutes. There’s a restroom in the procedure room down the hall, B2037, I believe.”

“Can I just, like, go?”

“Sure, I’ll walk you. When you finish, please head back here ASAP; like I said, you’ve got one more test this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Juliet followed Doctor Hoyt down the hall to the room with an adjoining bathroom—she couldn’t tell if it was the same one she’d had her procedure in, but it looked identical. He didn’t follow her into the room, and she paused by the door for several seconds until she heard him move off. Angel had upped the gain on her audio implants without her asking, and, for the millionth time, Juliet found herself amazed at the PAI’s intuitiveness.

“Okay, Angel. How about a map? You know where Violet’s office is?” A small map appeared in her AUI with her position marked by a blinking blue dot. The hallways were marked out clearly, and a dotted line indicated the direction she needed to move. “Here’s hoping the guy watching the cameras isn’t too alert today.” She stepped out into the hallway and started following Angel’s directions.

When she made the first turn, a white-coated woman was approaching, her eyes focused on her datapad as she walked, and Juliet kept moving, holding her breath in anxious anticipation. The woman never looked at her. Another turn brought her to a hallway with green-painted doors rather than orange, and each was marked with a nameplate. “Bingo,” she said, hurrying toward the third door on the left—Violet Harris’s office.

The door was locked, but Juliet saw a data port in the bio-lock and quickly inserted her cable. If Angel was good at anything, it was busting lock encryptions, and she popped that door faster than Juliet could silently breathe her ABCs. When she heard the click, she pushed down the door handle and slipped through, carefully latching the door behind her.

Violet’s office was dark, but Juliet’s implants brightened things up, and she saw a cluttered desk, an old-fashioned file cabinet, and a bookshelf; the office was the size of a large closet. “Fuck,” she hissed, moving over to the desk. “I was hoping she left her datapad in here.”

“There’s a network port behind the desk, Juliet,” Angel said, and suddenly a red circle flashed on her AUI, showing it to her. “They likely don’t allow those data pads to have wireless connections to their server. Each employee probably has to connect physically to download and upload to their databases.”

“Perfect!” Juliet hissed and quickly moved around the desk, crouching behind it to plug her cable into the port. “How’s it look?”

“The ICE is formidable. I’ll get through, though; I learned a thing or two when combatting the camera system’s defenses.”

While Angel worked, Juliet turned and started pulling out Violet’s drawers, peeking within. She found lots of memo pads with neat, hand-written notations, mostly numbers without any sort of reference or key. She kept digging, and in the bottom left drawer, Juliet found a small data chip taped to the inside of the drawer. “What do we have here?” she grinned, peeling the tape away and stuffing the tiny, fingernail-sized chip into her sock.

“I’ve gained access, Juliet!”

“Great! Step one, make sure they don’t have any reason to second-guess my identity or answers in the test rooms.”

“I’m searching the databases for references to you.”

Juliet watched the clock on her AUI, watching the minutes tick by; they’d already been out of her testing room for eleven minutes. “Don’t forget to fix the cameras to not show any of this little field trip.”

“That’s already done. I’ve set a daemon that will wipe thirty minutes of footage for the whole floor. It will perform its function in fifteen minutes and then destroy itself.”

“Won’t that raise suspicion?”

“Yes, but not of you specifically. I’m sorry, but I don’t have enough time to edit all the camera feeds you were caught in. Nor any way to edit them after you make your way back to the interview room unless we reconnect to the camera in . . .”

“I get it. Don’t worry.”

“I’ve found the sensor array data for you. There are many red flags, but I’m normalizing the results. I also found a flag their pseudo-AI raised regarding how you were able to time your responses to the color shifts—normalizing.”

“Good . . .”

“I found your DNA sample in a database; it doesn’t match Lydia Roman’s. I’m fixing it.”

“Holy shit! I forgot about that!” Juliet thought for a minute, then said, “Can you fit the databases in your memory?”

“Only if I delete most of the footage from the cameras.”

“Keep as much as you can, but grab those databases and also as much as you can on the GARD employees.” A sudden thought occurred to her, and she added, “I’m not sure we’re done here, but just in case we can’t get back, can you hide a daemon in their server that will delete everything if we don’t intervene in, say, a week?”

“Everything?”

“Yep.”

“Yes, but they likely have physical backups, Juliet.”

“Ugh, good point. Okay, I’ll keep thinking about that one. Do it anyway, though; it might cause some havoc when we need it.”

Angel replied, her voice a little strained, “I had the idea to write a daemon that will automatically normalize any future scan or test result data they record about you. This will take me approximately five minutes to do correctly, in a manner that won’t be detected, and I don’t think I can do the other one simultaneously, not without risking error. Do you want me to drop this and create the server-wiping daemon instead?”

“No. Your idea was smarter.” Juliet gently thumped her knuckles against her forehead while she waited. Angel was right; if she were going to avoid trouble, she needed these squints to think she was being honest in their little tests and interviews. She’d need to devise a more permanent plan to destroy the GIPEL program data, anyway; it would be crazy to assume GARD didn’t keep physical backups.

“I’m finished, Juliet. I have the databases and have installed the daemon.”

Juliet yanked her data cable out, stood up, and by the time the line had retracted back into her wrist, she was already peeking out the door. “You have biometric data on the GARD employees?” she subvocalized while she slipped back into the hallway.

“Yes.”

“Start programming one of my fingers to match Vance’s print; I don’t wanna get stuck behind any more doors.”

“Excellent idea!”

Juliet rounded the corner to the next hallway and almost walked straight into a white-coated GARD technician. Using her newly acquired data, Angel helpfully supplied the man’s name, placing a tag above his head. “Oops! Excuse me, Larry,” Juliet said, sidestepping and waving him by.

“Oh, uh, no worries.”

“I like that tie, Larry,” Juliet said; she really did—it was bright yellow with little blue birds, and it brightened his otherwise clinically boring attire.

“Oh? Thanks!” His face lit up noticeably as he turned and continued on his way.

“All right, Angel,” Juliet subvocalized, hurrying back toward her testing room. “Let’s go see what kind of crazy thing they expect me to do next.”