The Heist of Hollow London, page 18
AN INVITATION TO REAPPLY
Loren was sitting in Bizarre?!, the coffeehouse across the street from the plant that was rated as the best place to get something to eat in the corpurbation, which was not saying much. They had eaten a toasted sandwich that, they’d been assured, did contain real bacterial cheese even though its flavor did nothing to support this claim, along with a mug of tomato soup that came from a dispenser next to the cappuccino machine. The place did serve appetizing cakes, but Loren hadn’t anticipated there would be time to sample them. They’d expected to be summoned for the next stage of the operation at around 19:30.
It was now 19:55 and they had eaten a slice of red velvet cake. They were starting to feel like it was all fucking up, and they were considering what to do if that was indeed the case. Arlo, Nadi, and Drienne would have to extricate themselves however they could, but there shouldn’t be any evidence to connect Loren or Kline to any of this. Might be best for them to split up and avoid all contact until they got back to Vancouver.
Although, should they go back to Vancouver at all? Whatever happened they were still retained by Mia, but did Loren have much to lose by trying to escape and start again somewhere else? Loren suspected Mia had poured most of her money into this operation, gambling on getting back her personality and restarting her career with it. Did she have the resources to search the globe for a couple of rogue mades, perhaps drawing attention to her role in the heist in the process? Or would she just let them disappear?
Loren had reached no conclusions, and was considering ordering a slice of pear-and-custard tart, when Kline told them it was almost time and they ought to get into position. Loren paid the bill, thanked the waitress, picked up their bag, and walked out of Bizarre?!
* * *
Kline hadn’t achieved what he’d been asked to achieve, and yet it had happened anyway. Most people wouldn’t question this stroke of good fortune, but Kline was the kind of person who needed to know what was going on and why. In his former line of work, his superiors wanted and expected him to behave like this, and it was why he’d had access to the internal messages of everyone below a certain pay grade. Even when people’s vendettas were petty, Kline enjoyed working out what they were and understanding what was behind them. Even when someone’s empire-building was pathetic, he enjoyed tracing it and identifying the extent of its ambitions. Xecs and seeos were always told HR didn’t have access to their messages, and that only the lower ranks got spied on that way, but that wasn’t true. Xecs and seeos just got spied on by a higher class of HR operative.
A stet had listened to Henrik’s interview with Nadi and generated a report, which Kline read. Kline then looked up Henrik’s current activity. Henrik was in his office, firing off messages to people who weren’t going to answer them because their jobs no longer existed. In fact, the only person reading these messages was Kline. Henrik’s messages said information about Oakseed’s collapse had leaked through to the workforce, despite his best efforts (he explained what these efforts consisted of), and he wanted to know what he should do about it.
It seemed to Kline a curious coincidence this information had leaked through on the day of the operation.
Kline alerted Arlo that Henrik was in his office and seemed occupied for now, so Arlo and Drienne should work quickly and take advantage. Arlo sent a reply saying Thanks, but Kline barely registered it. He was identifying the employees discussing the rumors of Oakseed’s collapse, accessing their messages, and trying to work out if they’d all heard it from Sharon Harris, or if there was another source.
* * *
Arlo was debranding the support department: a large, open-plan L-shaped office that currently had only two staffers present. One had glanced up at him as he’d walked in, then gone back to her work. The other didn’t even seem to have noticed he was there, as she was deep in conversation with the system, discussing how the rewards framework for harvesting could be revised to optimize production.
The office contained a lot of stuff to be debranded—supports loved to put up signs and posters and promotional materials, and often didn’t take the old ones down but put new ones on top of them in layers, so you could dig through them archaeologically and reveal years of recent history. Arlo instructed his squadron to resurface any promo into visually similar copyright-free stock images, removing any logos in the process.
Drienne told Arlo she was on her way up with the Lost Weekend, and Arlo told her to take the staircase at the back of the building, as this would enable her to avoid walking past Henrik’s office with its floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the corridor.
Duh, Drienne replied. I did think of that.
* * *
As Drienne entered the support department, she could see Arlo at the other end of the room, keeping up the debranding facade: the job was seriously trying her patience now, but Arlo seemed genuinely into it. That was so like him.
She signaled for his attention and he said he just had a few things to finish in this office. “You could speed things along by doing that stuff,” he added, pointing to a corner kitchen that included a cupboard filled with company mugs.
Drienne felt it would be far more fun to throw all the mugs out a window, but that would attract the wrong sort of attention, and besides none of the windows opened far enough. She duly opened the cupboard and scrubbed all the logos. She also scrubbed a non-branded mug bearing the slogan I’M AN INFERIOR IMITATION OF MYSELF UNTIL I’VE HAD MY COFFEE! out of spite.
When they left the support department, they took the door that came out directly opposite the premium store. Arlo instructed his squadron to get to work on the carpet, and watched over them while Drienne continued along the corridor. She needed to activate the Lost Weekend as close as she could to the on-site servers, which were in the support department; this room was directly adjacent to one of the corner meeting rooms. All the corner rooms were empty. It was an ideal place to activate, apart from one detail: the fold-back walls had large windows in them. Drienne needed to be ready to act innocent if anyone came walking through the corridor.
The meeting room had been used earlier that day, a cake box from a shop called Bizarre?! sat empty on a side table. Drienne picked a bit of stray icing out of the box and licked her finger. Then she took a chair away from the table in the middle of the room, pushed it up to the wall that adjoined the server stacks, and placed the Lost Weekend on the chair. She signaled to Arlo she was in position, and while she waited for the signal back from him, she made her way around the meeting room with her squadron. The walls were decorated with images of Oakseed facilities around the world, placed here to remind employees they were part of something larger. Drienne replaced them all with reproductions of paintings by Paul Gaugin.
Drienne heard a door open down the corridor, and she glanced up. Through the windows she could see Henrik leaving his office. He spotted her, smiled and waved, and then he started walking toward the door of the room Drienne was in.
* * *
Arlo was still standing by the door to the support department, mentally preparing himself to take the final step, making one last check that he hadn’t forgotten anything, when he heard Henrik’s footsteps coming down the corridor. He breathed Fuck! and ducked back inside the support department, holding the door slightly ajar so he could hear what was happening.
* * *
“Hello!” Henrik said, sticking his head in the door of the meeting room. “Is your colleague around anywhere?”
The Lost Weekend was still sitting on the chair. If Henrik’s attention wasn’t drawn to it, he might not notice it. With considerable effort, Drienne forced herself not to glance at the device.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
He nodded his head in the direction of the corridor. “Is that his squadron out there, working on the carpet?”
“Er…”
“Ah!” said Henrik, pointing to the Gaugin pictures that now decorated the wall behind Drienne’s head. “Very nice.”
* * *
Kline was monitoring the situation and he was already on the case. He felt perversely pleased, because he really liked the earlier solution he’d come up with to keep Henrik occupied, and now he’d get to use it. He had mere moments to execute this idea, but he’d done it literally thousands of times in his former job and it was like breathing to him.
Kline issued Henrik with a standard invitation to reapply for his existing job. This was a preliminary process designed to weed out anyone who was in declining mental or physical health, or anyone who was no longer a good fit for the company’s direction, or just anyone they wanted to get rid of but who they legally owed the opportunity to reapply. It was standard practice to give no warning. Henrik would have done this at least a couple of times before in his Oakseed career, and with the plant being sold, it would come as no surprise he was being asked to do it again. He would see it as a lifeline, an indication that maybe the new buyers weren’t going to get rid of him after all, and though employees were allowed thirty minutes to start the process or submit their reasons for postponing it, Kline knew from experience that hardly anyone ever waited, and a man as desperate as Henrik certainly wouldn’t.
Sure enough, within moments Henrik was back at his desk, placing his Airstrip over his eyes and preparing to begin the interview. Kline had chosen an avatar he thought Henrik would like, a bashful young man who seemed a little self-conscious about the whole procedure.
The process would take about twenty minutes, and Kline shared this info with Arlo and Drienne. He also pointed out, in case they hadn’t realized, the next stage of the operation would disrupt the interview, because it would disrupt everything, so this grace period would end the moment Drienne activated the Lost Weekend. Even so, he thought it likely that Henrik’s focus would initially be on what had gone wrong with his interview before he realized something had gone wrong with the plant as a whole. You’re welcome, Kline added.
That done, Kline shrank the window containing Henrik’s interview and moved it to the edge of his vision, then he brought back the window containing his own investigation into the workfloor situation. Henrik was no closer to understanding what was going on in his workplace, but Kline had developed a troubling theory, and unfortunately he was confident it was correct.
26
FIFTEEN YEARS, TWO MONTHS, TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS, FIVE HOURS, TEN MINUTES, AND FIFTY-THREE SECONDS
Thank fuck yes he’s gone back to his office, read Drienne’s message to the group. Kline you’re an evil genius.
Arlo reemerged from the support department and approached the sapphire door. The only people on this floor right now ought to be himself, Drienne, Henrik, the two supports, and one member of admin staff. All the securits on duty were on the lower floors or posted to the exterior of the building.
Arlo and Drienne’s access included the premium store, because they had to debrand every part of the plant. No one would consider it a risk to allow them in there: they didn’t have permission to open any of the lockers, and they would be scanned on exit to ensure they weren’t leaving with anything they didn’t bring. So all Arlo had to do was place his hand on the door handle, wait a second for the handle to identify him, hear the lock click open, and then calmly open the door and walk inside. Just another room he had to tick off.
The corridor carpet continued into this room, but that was the only branded item in there. The room had no signage and was plainly decorated—a glorified cupboard, really. While his squadron got to work on the carpet, Arlo located the locker Samson had commandeered. He signaled to Drienne it was time.
* * *
It should look like a genuine systems failure. Loren had looked up what OS and hardware Kentish Cyc was running on, as well as its stability record, and confirmed that it crashed semi-regularly, so no one would find it surprising or suspicious. Loren had designed the Lost Weekend to be deliberately crude—they could have put together something more targeted that would knock out the essential parts of the system, but then someone might realize the attack was targeted. It would be more convincing if the whole thing just fell over for a moment.
Drienne activated the Lost Weekend by flicking the switch just inside the crack at the edge of its casing, then she went to stand on the other side of the meeting room. Rationally, she knew the device wasn’t a bomb, it wouldn’t explode or affect her in any way, but she couldn’t help feeling it was wise to keep her distance.
It didn’t explode, or visibly do anything at first. After a few seconds it smoked slightly, and then something fizzled and flashed inside it. Loren had said it would do that, and it was a sign the device had burnt out. But for the brief moments it had been in operation, it had sent out a pulse that overloaded the corpurbation’s central server, which was the hub for every system in the immediate area. This forced the server to disconnect and shut down, to protect itself from damage and protect Oakseed’s entire network from attacks. Drienne checked her slate and found that it had lost its connection. Loren had said that too would happen, and it meant the device had worked. For the next minute or so they would be out of contact. But they all knew what they were to do.
* * *
Loren would have preferred to do this from the comfort of Bizarre?!, but given the bulkiness of the signal emitter they’d built for the job, using it in a coffeehouse would have attracted attention. It only just fit in their rucksack. After getting word that Arlo and Drienne were in position, Loren had walked around the side of the main building. This was the area least overseen by securits, whose attention was more focused on the front entrance, the passage that led to the platform, and the platform itself. There was nothing on this side of the plant except the dead-waste outlet, which was fenced off and by definition contained nothing worth stealing. Loren was sitting near the dead-waste yard, leaning against the side wall of the plant. The emitter was in front of them, its mast extended. Like the Lost Weekend, the emitter’s interface was brutally simple, because it only needed to do one thing and Loren had programmed it to do that thing already. It had a single switch, off/on, and Loren’s finger was poised to flick it.
The moment their slate registered the disruption, they flicked the switch and the emitter sent out a single, powerful signal, one that stated the current time was fifteen years, two months, twenty-seven days, five hours, ten minutes, and fifty-three seconds earlier than it actually was.
* * *
The reason for this interval was that fifteen years, two months, twenty-seven days, five hours, ten minutes, and fifty-three seconds was the exact physical age gap between Joshi Samson and Arlo Rahane. It was important to be precise about this. Looking up the difference between their birthdates wouldn’t do, because “birth” meant something different for nats and mades, and for nats it wasn’t an exact science: biologically, you could be exactly the same age as someone born a month earlier than you, if their mother went into labor two weeks early and yours went into labor two weeks late. You needed to know the moment both people were conceived, and while this information existed for Arlo, Samson’s parents had not thought to note this time down on any official records.
This was why Arlo had been dispatched from Shanghai carrying a case that was chained to his wrist. The case contained the toes of Samson’s left foot, preserved moments after his death at a time that had been exactly recorded. Mia had purchased these very cheaply from the hospital, demand for used toes being minimal. She analyzed them and had extrapolated exactly when Samson began, and from there the exact difference in age between him and Arlo, who had been made when Samson was at the academy and had been singled out as someone with xec potential.
All of this was necessary because of the two-step security on the locker. First, a retinal scan identified who you were. This was why all mades were legally required to undergo an eye transplant, which issued them with generic eyes that security systems would immediately identify. But in the event of a made being developed in contravention of international law (possibly without the knowledge of the source donor) and not undergoing a transplant, the lock also required a microscopic genetic sample upon being sealed, from which it would ascertain the age of the owner the same way Mia had done. It could be opened only by someone who matched the owner’s genetic profile and correct age—which by definition could not be true of a made, who would always be younger than their donor.
Mia had spotted a loophole in this. Age was not a constant: by definition, it changed all the time. So every time the lock wanted to check someone’s age was correct, it used a baseline of the time that person’s life began, then it referred to the current time and worked out exactly how old they would be now. The current time was maintained with constant reference to a standardized signal, ensuring everything was globally kept in sync and every time stamp was guaranteed to be correct. In most places this signal was impossible to interrupt, as it was received in multiple ways. If the locker couldn’t get the signal from multiple verified sources that all agreed on the time, it would presume the signal was being deliberately overridden, and refuse to open. But because Kentish Cyc was isolated and its connection was centralized, all devices got the time from a single satellite signal routed via the IT department.
The Lost Weekend was so called because it knocked out the systems at Kentish Cyc, and when they came to they didn’t know what day it was. They needed to pick up that information again from the satellite. And Loren’s emitter was powerful enough to briefly swamp the signal with a false one. Which made the locker think it was fifteen years, two months, twenty-seven days, five hours, ten minutes, and fifty-three seconds ago, and its owner was not lying dead on the other side of the world at the age of forty-one, but was standing right here at the age of twenty-six.
