Just to clarify and do away with the identity thieves once again, I'm not a security guard by the way and have never worked as a security guard in my life.
I'm Brian Joseph Johns, I'm European Canadian, and I'm the writer of everything here on Shhhh! Digital Media. I'm not a Mormon or a Scientologist with all due respect and I'm not Irish or Italian or Jamaican either.
I'm an Atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism and my name isn't Trent or Michael. I'm not with the blue or brown team at all, especially where blue means expressing the opposite of what you meant, or the use of blue as a symbol of changing or stealing a person's identity and I'll stick with red black, red white and red yellow, the Shhhh! Digital colours, not to mention I'll stick with Southeast Asia as well. I'm not from Nova Scotia and have never been there before, but I'd certainly enjoy visiting it some day.
I'm not Bobby or Ballentine or Valentine, nor would I have anything to do with freemason counterfeiters and I'm not Jamaican with all due respect. Its a hate crime to replace a person's identity while replacing any aspect of their protected rights, such as their gender, culture, religion or skin colour.
I've never used crack cocaine in my life.
Chapters
- Midnight Hour (Finished January 30, 2025)
- Eyes Without A Face (Finished January 31, 2025)
- Inside Out (Finished January 31, 2025)
- Unlikely Allies (Finished February 8, 2025)
- Visiting Hours (Finished February 8, 2025)
- Secure Hour (Finished February 10, 2025)
- An Alarming Find (Finished February 11, 2025)
- Rubber People (Finished February 12, 2025)
- Saturday Studio C (Finished February 13, 2025)
- A Memory For The Taking (Finished February 14, 2025)
- Relay Reroute (Finished February 20, 2025)
- Dinner Discovery (Finished February 20, 2025)
- Records Search (Finished February 20, 2025)
- Rally Reconciliation (Finished February 21, 2025)
- Its Not The Tool, But The One Who Wields It (Started February 22, 2025)
This content is produced by the artists indicated on the site, including myself, Brian Joseph Johns.
I, under no circumstance will trade, barter or otherwise swap my own identity for that of another person and I protect the same right for those who've contributed their artwork to the various projects under my management at Shhhh! Digital Media, my own company, no matter the colour symbolism involved. These rights are protected by law under the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms under section 7.
Also, FYI, I don't reverse or alter the polarity or context of my expression (sometimes referred to as "blove" by some people). I say what I mean and mean what I say, and generally only joke or am sarcastic with people I really know very well.
I, under no circumstance will trade, barter or otherwise swap my own identity for that of another person and I protect the same right for those who've contributed their artwork to the various projects under my management at Shhhh! Digital Media, my own company, no matter the colour symbolism involved. These rights are protected by law under the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms under section 7.
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I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.
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ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.
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The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado!
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The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.
World Veterans Federation
The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.
I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.
"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."
Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize 1950
The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies and support programs.
For over 60 years, Heart & Stroke has been dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. Our work has saved thousands of lives and improved the lives of millions of others.
The ALS Society Of BC
ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.
Muscular Dystrophy Canada
Muscular Dystrophy Canada’s mission is to enhance the lives of those affected by neuromuscular disorders by continually working to provide ongoing support and resources while relentlessly searching for a cure through well-funded research.
Humane Society International
The Humane Society protects the health, lives and rights of animals the world over, ensuring that they too have a voice in this world. We are interdependent upon the complex web of life this entire planet over for our mutual survival. This is a world wide charity.
The Global Foodbanking Network
Ensuring that people the world over have enough food day to day in order to survive and lead healthy lives. In this challenging day and age services like this are becoming more and more essential. This is a world wide charity.
The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado!
In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.
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Wikipedia
The model for what may become the Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future. Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the site serves pages to millions every day.
Humble Bundle
A video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do their part too.
Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease currently affecting an estimated 2.3 million world wide. By donating you are contributing to effective research in finding a cure and tipping the scales of MS research to change lives forever.
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Shhhh! Digital Media
Brian Joseph Johns
Warning: this material is intended for a mature audience. Reader discretion is advised.
The Butterfly Dragon: The Two Butterflies - Episode 13
Midnight Hour
[Billy Idol - Rebel Yell] (Loud preferrably 😉)
Midnight Blue
The car was a classic Camero, from the year 1977. A veritable gas guzzling monster compared to the cars of today, with six cycinders pushing one hundred and forty-five power and that was stock. This particular car was customized and tuned to the teeth.
For one, it had been ported and polished, increasing the horsepower by another nine, for a total of one hundred and eleven. The custom air intake brought clean air directly into the fuel-air system allowing for better compression, again adding another five horsepower to the sum.
The exhaust system was a custom header, designed by its driver, drawing exhaust fumes from the combustion cycle and filtering them faster than they could be produced, hence creating an induction effect upon the fuel-air system. When the exhaust outpaced the intake cycle, the exhaust system produced a popping sound that some drivers referred to as popcorn.
The standard transmission was a custom job, favouring high acceleration in the lower gears, and upper limit speed in the high end gears.
On this particular night, at around 11:30 PM on a Friday night, it was cruising the Gardener Expressway eastbount for the Spadina Avenue exit. As it slowed and turned left onto the exit, a nine millimeter handgun slid across the dash beneath the windshield to the other side of the dash. A half-eaten hotdog smothered in relish, ketchup and mustard rolled over onto its side, miraculously remaining on the napkin that contained it.
As the car slowed and came to a stop at Spadina, the driver reached up to the dash and grabbed the hotdog, jamming the remainder of it into his face as he quickly chewed it up and washed it down with the remainder of his gin laced tonic water. He'd have preferred an ice cold can of beer, but that would have been far too easy for other drivers to spot. So he opted for the water bottle camouflage and his second favourite drink.
He then wiped his face with his hand, shortly thereafter, wiping his hand with the napkin, tossing it all into a waste bag in the passenger seating foot area.
"Damn! Gotta put velcro on that thing or somethin'" he said aloud, but mostly to himself as he realized his nine millimeter had sailed to the other side of the dash.
He reached over and just barely latched onto the trigger guard as the light turned green. After carefully grapping it with his finger, he fit the gun in his belt, tucking it in carefully (safety on of course), and proceeded out and onto Spadina, northbound.
...
A few city blocks away at the New City Hall, a group of teens was seated outside of city council, a circular building itself situated between the two curved towers that made up the city hall infrastructure. Their music, ecclectic house, blared from bluetooth speakers that were connected to one of their iPhones, as they sat around and enjoyed the night. A trio of them rode their skateboards, practicing tricks and showing off to their friends.
The sound of the engine pierced the night, and even these teens could hear it at a distance, echoing through the buildings of the downtown corridor.
"That's gotta be a classic 'stang," one of the teens, a fan of cars said to his friends.
"A header kit too maybe?" asked another one.
"Maybe... Imagine if we had a car like that? We could go up north to Richmond Hill and pickup Derek," one of them suggested.
"Yeah. Too bad he's not here. Had to hang with his chick," one of the others pointed out.
"What? You don't like hanging with your girl?" a response came back, from one of the girls themselves.
"No. I just want to chill where I want to chill..." he stopped when they were all illuminated by the high beams of an oncoming car.
It was the very car they'd heard moments earlier, and now it was making a dash across Nathan Phillips Square directly towards them and without slowing.
They all jumped out of the way, some to the left and others to the right as the car crashed through their vigil and into the city council building, skidding sideways and coming to a stop as glass fell to the pavement, shattering all around them.
A man in a balaclava mask got out of the front seat and drew a hand gun, but by that time the teens that had been sitting there were long gone, all except for one. The one who'd remarked about picking up Derek, and whose name was Andrew.
Andrew watched from behind a cement bench, remaining hidden as he kept watch over the events unfolding.
The man in the balaclava mask then proceeded to the back trunk, and unlocked it, hefting it wide open. He then grabbed something from it, and hoisted it up onto his shoulder, wincing at the weight. He then walked over to one of the doorways leading into city council, and placed his load beside the door.
Andrew took a closer look, quickly pulling his camera from his pocket to take video.
"That's... that's a body!" he kept his voice quiet and muffled his own mouth with his hand as the man returned to the trunk to grab a second body, not having seen Andrew.
The man then placed the second body on the other side of the doorway, and then began laughing a horrible raunchy laugh, as if he'd gotten some kind of sick pleasure from what he was doing.
He then leveled the gun at each of the bodies in turn, firing twice at their head, and once at their heart.
A security guard by that time arrived to confront him and did exactly that despite his better instinct and training.
"Hands up! Police are on their way!" the security guard yelled at the man, leveling a taser at him.
As the man turned to face the security guard, he fired the taser to defend himself.
The shot was perfectly aimed, impacting in the center of that man's upper breastplate between the open lapels of his bomber jacket. The taser discharged into the man, but seemingly without any effect upon him. That's when the security guard noticed that the man was wearing modified cowboy boots, whose spurs were literally touching the ground and making a connection to some grounding wiring the man had rigged to his body, hence tasers were useless against him.
"Sorry brother! I'm grounded. But you know what? Some day, you're going to thank me for this," the man leveled his gun at the security guard's leg, and fired three shots into it, shattering the femur in two places and stripping away a good portion of muscle from his thigh.
He fell screaming to the pavement, though bled little from the wound.
The man in the balaclava mask then turned back to the bodies, and retrieved a pair of signs from within his jacket, affixing one each to the bodies. He then pulled a can of blue spray paint from his jacket and wrote in spray paint a pair of words:
M I D N I G H T H O U R
As the sound of sirens began to fill the air, he turned quickly to his running car and jumped in, still laughing.
In one press of the gas, with the steering wheel turned and the parking brake set, the entire car spun until it was facing the point through which it had entered the building. He dropped the parking brake as the wheels spun and the car shot out from the building and onto Nathan Phillips Square.
Moments later he was back on the Gardener and heading west to his own roost.
...
Heylyn lay curled up on her sofa, falling in and out of sleep with the late show on the large screen television on the wall across from her. She was dreaming of a courtroom, her friend Myung Chung-Ae sat at the stenographer's station busily typing as the proceedings continued.
Her lawyer, Holbrook Mitchell (known to his close friends by the nickname Hoby), was defending her in a case against a plaintiff challenging her right to claim parenthood over her adopted daughter Warai Jeong-Min Tokama. The challenge being made on the grounds of Heylyn being deemed unfit as a mother, and that Warai possessed remarkable talents that implied that she should be in the hands of specialists rather than an adopted mother unfit for parenthood.
The case had been going poorly for her, and any time she tried to speak in her own defense, the people around her urged her against doing so. It was as if her voice, her presence in the case was being stricken from the testimony. As if what she had to say with regard to her own defense simply did not matter.
She became frustrated, and when the ringing phone in her jacket distracted her attempts to speak out in the courtroom, she answered it in her dream.
"Hello?" she said in a ghostly voice.
"Its me! Monique! Didn't you hear the sirens?!!!" Monique asked Heylyn, who was suddenly pulled from her dream and back to the sofa, where she'd answered the ringing phone in real life, half asleep.
"What? Oh! I'm a mess right now Monique. I just woke up. It would take me five... maybe ten minutes to get ready. By then, the Police will already be there. Go without me. You can tell me later. I'll be up. I've got to check on Warai..." Heylyn sat up on the sofa.
"Alright! I'll drop by in about fifteen or twenty. I'll send Aikiko over to see you right now. See ya boss!" Monique hung up the phone, and a second later Heylyn saw the streak of light through the night sky as Eclipse made her way to Nathan Phillips Square.
Heylyn made her way to Warai's room, the door already slightly opened as she stepped through to check on her little girl.
"Butterfly!" Warai heard as Heylyn snuck up on her bed.
"Caught me, red handed. How are you? Is everything alright? No bad dreams?" asked Heylyn of her daughter.
"Nope. Welly came to visit the field. He says things are all over the place right now, but the best thing to do is to stay and play and live the field's way. What is the field's way?" Warai asked Heylyn.
"Hmmmm. The field's way? I think that's the idea that when most things that happen, are beyond your ability to affect them one way or another, that the best thing to do is just to watch, but not be stricken to debilitating fear or panic when its seems dire. Remain focused. Is the perception of what you see around you really that bad, or is it an illusion made up to trick you into feeling scared? Either way, its better to be focused or even, when you're in the middle of a dream, to play in the field. You get some sleep alright and maybe, just maybe, we'll do something special this weekend," Heylyn said to Warai, fluffing her hair when she'd finished.
"Goodnight Butterfly," Warai said, rolling over onto her side and pulling the comforter tight.
"Goodnight other Butterfly. Sleep tight and good night," Heylyn tapped her nose, and then left her room just as she heard a quiet knocking at the front door of her condo.
Heylyn checked the security monitor and saw Aikiko outside of her door. She opened the door foor Aikiko and let her in.
"Monique left about two minutes ago. How are you?" asked Aikiko.
"I'm alright. A little tired, but alright. How about you?" Heylyn asked as they both walked towards the kitchen.
"I'm alright too. Just a little exhausted from the day," Aikiko reminded Heylyn.
"I bet. What time did you finish that photoshoot?" asked Heylyn.
"We went until 9PM, after which Kori drove me home. She stayed late trying to get all of the backlog on payroll done before the bank closed. I guess she didn't want an angry mob outside of her office door on Monday morning?" Aikiko smiled.
"Ha! I bet. Can I get you something? Tea? Latté? Maybe a bite to eat?" asked Heylyn as she examined the contents of the fridge.
"A tea would be nice," Aikiko replied.
"Alright. I'm also going to heat up some of the chicken-fried rice I made earlier and have some, if you want any?" Heylyn asked her, but by that time Aikiko had caught sight of the television and had seated herself on the sofa as her favourite night show was just starting at the midnight hour.
...
Eclipse landed at the carnage outside of the City Council building, and found a security guard just inside of the building laying barely conscious, a serious injury to his right leg.
"Hang on! I'm going to get you out of here and to a hospital!" Eclipse said to the security guard, who barely heard her, let alone had any kind of awareness at all.
As soon as she touched his uniform, his entire body was transformed into photons along with hers, and she flew at close to the speed of light to the nearest emergency room. She quickly found an empty gurney, and placed him upon it before transforming back into regular matter.
An orderly ran over to check on the security guard, turning to Eclipse.
"What happened to him?" asked the orderly.
"I don't know. Something bad. I just brought him from city council and I'm going back..." she responded to the orderly.
"You're that Eclipse girl, aren't you?" asked the orderly, now shocked by his realization but before he'd finished the words, she was already back at the crime scene at city council.
Monique examined the area as she heard the sirens getting closer and closer.
She was startled when she spotted two bodies, who'd clearly been shot at point blank range in the head and chest.
"Too late for them..." Eclipse said, a sense of lost sadness in her voice.
As she searched the area inside of the city council for any other injured civilians or responders, Andrew secretly recorded her on his phone. He managed to get under a minute of footage of her, when she turned to see the arriving swarm of Police cars pulling up to the damaged courtyard.
"I took a security guard to Toronto General Hospital. He's in the emergency room right now! Sorry, I couldn't help these two. They were long gone by the time I got here. Gotta go! By guys!" she waved at the Police as she disappeared into the sky at near the speed of light.
"She could have stayed. Most of us would never carry out the standing orders to arrest the Eclipse or Butterfly upon sight anyway," one of the Officers said to his partner.
"Yeah, but she and the Butterfly don't know that," his partner responded.
"Alright. Enough bickering. Lets a get a crime scene setup here and hold it down until the Detectives get here," the Senior Officer on sight ordered his men.
"Sir, we've got a material witness here," one of the Officers brought Andrew over to the Police car.
"Keep him discrete," the Senior Officer grabbed a COVID mask from his kit and put it on the face of their witness.
The rest of the officers went about setting up the crime scene as more and more emergency vehicles arrived and eventually, the unmarked car of Detective Edward Farnham.
...
Heylyn was bringing Aikiko her tea and a plate of food when Eclipse landed on her balcony.
"Oh! The balcony's locked!" Heylyn ran for the sliding doors of her condo balcony when Monique suddenly transformed herself into photons once again, and simply stepped right through the glass and into Heylyn's condo, after which she transformed back into her whole body self.
"I forgot you could do that," Heylyn responded to Monique.
"There were three casualties... Two dead, and one security guard who's probably in stable condition. I brought him to the hospital. Seems like it was some kind of a lunatic or something..." Monique spoke, somewhat out of breath.
"Have a seat. Want some tea and a plate of chicken-fried rice?" asked Heylyn of Monique.
"Sure boss. The killer left notes on each of the bodies. They appeared to be people's names. The first one was Alex Reardon..." Monique continued.
"That's one of the Ombudsmen who works at city council," Aikiko told them.
"How did you know that?" asked Monique responded, a bit shocked that Aikiko would even be interested in such a thing.
"When I settled into the condo, I became interested in the politics and who I'd like to vote for..." Aikiko explained to Monique.
"Something any responsible citizen would do. Do you know if the victim was Alex Reardon?" asked Heylyn.
"I couldn't tell..." Monique became stressed when asked about it.
"That's alright. What about the other one?" asked Heylyn.
"She had the name Delaine Forbes... but again, I couldn't tell you who she was..." Monique replied.
"Delaine Forbes? I remember that name, but I can't remember from where..." Heylyn stopped for a moment to focus upon where she'd heard that name.
"She's the CEO of Midnight Hour Security..." Aikiko responded, having found it by a quick internet search on her phone.
"...and that's exactly what was spray painted above both of their bodies on the wall behind them!" Monique added.
"You said that you took a security guard to the emergency room?" Heylyn confirmed with Monique.
"Yep. Toronto General Hospital. Like seven minutes ago..." Monique responded, but by that time Heylyn was already dialing Toronto General Hospital.
"Hello. Have you received an injured security guard in emergency recently?" asked Heylyn.
"Do you have a name?" asked the operator.
"No. I didn't know his name. I was just concerned for a security guard on site who was taken to hospital and I'd like to know if he was taken there so I can bring a group to visit him," Heylyn explained to the operator.
"What company was he with?" asked the operator.
"Midnight Hour Security," Heylyn replied, looking to Aikiko and then to Monique expectantly.
"Uhhhh. Yes. There appears to be a security guard here from that company. He's in stable condition. Arrived from a site at city council at..." the operator had barely finished when Heylyn responded.
"Thank you so much! Bye!" Heylyn said as she hung up the phone.
"You're right Monique. He's in stable condition," Heylyn told her.
"Whew. Good to hear. Another point for the good girls," Monique responded.
"Our security guard is from Midnight Hour Security, but obviously he wasn't the target or he'd have been lined up on that wall beside the other victims," Heylyn reasoned with them.
"Then why would the killer paint the wall with their company name?" asked Monique.
"Eat up. Lets put this on hold for the moment and keep an eye on the news. Its been a long day for us all. We'll check the news again in about ten minutes, after we've eaten, and if there's nothing, we'll get some sleep and follow up tomorrow. Maybe check in with Myung Chung-Ae," Heylyn said to Monique, bringing her a plate of food, after which she retrieved her own and joined them on the sofa.
"Good idea boss. I'm starving!" Monique responded, shoveling a pile of chicken-fried rice into gullet.
Eyes Without A Face
Farnham sat in the driver's seat of his unmarked car, waiting for the CPIC system to verify his tablet's security credentials. Just when he was about to give up, and go with old reliable (his pen and notepad), the tablet echoed the word: CONNECTED CPIC SYS 7.93.
"Alright. You win again, but much longer and I'd have tossed you in favour of technology from four generations ago," Farnham remarked to his MindSpice AI powered tablet.
YES. PEN AND PAPER HAS BEEN A STAPLE OF HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR MANY GENERATIONS. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE ANCIENT SUMERIANS EVEN USED NOTE-STONES TO RECORD CUNIFORM WRITING FOR KEEPING TRACK OF SEASONAL FLUCTUATIONS IN GRAIN STOCKS?
"I do now. How'd they do with crime scene investigation?" asked Farnham as he carried the tablet with him over to the Senior Officer.
I'M SORRY, THERE ARE NO TRACES OF HISTORICAL RECORDS ACCOUNTING FOR CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION IN SUMERIA.
"Thanks MAZ. Stay in the background. Listen, but don't respond unless I ask. Collate anything you perceive and let me know if there's anything pertinent. Interrupt mode off and discrete mode on." Farnham ordered his tablet.
"Where's Poonya tonight?" asked the Senior Officer.
"Right here. He fixed this tablet up for me, but in all seriousness, he's on a hot date. Probably at third base right now, possibly making his way for home plate I hope, because as he says, she's the marrying kind, and Poonya always keeps his eye on the ball. That's what I like about him," Farnham responded to the Senior Officer.
"He'll be grateful he's not here for this one. Its real strange. For one, our two bodies there, they're not decomposing according to the forensic playbook, and because we don't have anyone here from Forensic Biology yet, you're going to have to check it out yourself. Secondly, our John Henry here, he seized up like a rusty disc brake. I think he's in shock, but maybe he needs the right person to talk to him. Its all yours Farnham, and let me say that I don't envy you one bit. Well I'm on my way home, 'cuz us sane people on the regular beat value our wives and mortgages, unlike you Detectives, who seem to be suckers for punishment," the Senior Officer left the scene, waving to Farnham as he did.
"Ha! Don't make me spellcheck your crime scene Morty. Get lost before I'm tempted," Farnham said as he pulled a measuring tape from the pocket of his trench coat.
"I'm gone! Enjoy," Morty was in his car and already gone before Farnham had pocketed the measuring tape.
"MAZ, we've got two bodies here. One female, in her mid thirties, auburn hair, short. Fit for her age. Possibly a jogger? Into fitness? A good diet. Facial disfiguration due to point blank discharge of a firearm, powder burns, nine by nineteen millimeter parabellum, hollow point for sure given the disfiguration... eyes without a face... and yet there's no hint of post mortem scent..." Farnham got close to the first victim's face, his years of experience telling him that something was missing.
Farnham's attention turned to the pavement beside the body, upon which a sign had fallen.
"There's a sign here, looks like it was fixed to the body with a thumb tack. Must have fallen off with the wind. There's a name on it: Denise Forbes. At this point there's no way of telling if this is our Jane Doe here. I'll check for any signs of identification on her person..." Farnham leaned closer to her, checking the inside pocket of her jacket for any ID.
"There's no body smell. Smells unnatural. Like..." Farnham checked the wounds with his fingers, gagging slightly as he did.
When he finally had control of his nausea reaction, he checked the other body and found the same thing.
"Stendel? Where was the security guard taken by the Eclipse?" asked Farnham of one of the on scene officers.
"Toronto General Hospital... Detective," Stendel responded.
"And there were no other casualties besides the bodies here, right?" confirmed Farnham.
"That's correct Detective. We locked this scene down pretty good, despite John Henry there not playing ball with us..." Stendel replied.
"This isn't a murder case..." Farnham told Stendel.
"I'm sorry Detective, but there's clearly two bodies right there..." Stendel stepped away from his duty of marking the skid marks of the perpetrator's car.
"Stendel, they aren't victims," Farnham told him.
"Then what the f#ck are they?" demanded Stendel.
"They're f#cking ballistic dummies. The same kind they use in shooting clubs and forensics from what I can tell. They aren't alive. They're f#cking rubber!" Farnham turned to face Stendel, lifting the arm of one of the dummies.
"All of the sudden, this isn't a murder case. Assault with a deadly weapon for sure. Vandalism. Destruction of private and public property, but not murder. You know what that means right? That means its all yours boys," Farnham said as he stood.
"Stendel? He's right. We just made contact with the victim's families and they've confirmed that the names indicated on the signs, that both of those people are alive and well. No harm. No foul," Officer Mazel indicated to them both.
"Good luck gents. I've got a backlog of cases waiting for me tomorrow, not to mention I'm on my way home to Lori. I'll be thinking of you guys scraping this scene for signs of further vandalism. I bet I'm not the only one who's happy that our victim's are still with us," Farnham winked at Mazel, and then Stendel as he hopped back into his unmarked car.
"Call me again when you've got a better case. My night shift's over," Farnham pulled out of the crime scene and returned home to the arms of his waiting wife.
Inside Out
Alicia awoke at 3:39 in the AM, the child in her womb had suddenly come to life and decided that living at home (or womb) simply wasn't good enough.
"Whooooa... whooo... I ohhh. I think this would be a good time to get to the hospital..." Alicia said aloud, as she leaned up on the bed, the child in her womb clearly indicating that they were growing evermore curious about where the rest of us found our solace.
"Water? Is it your water?" Norler paniced, jumping out of bed from the midst of some pseudo nightmare/dream in which he was facing off against Jason Michael Santers with MediFriend. As Santers attacked Norler, MediFriend was telling him how he could heal his adversary, while Santer's version was telling him how he could sew Norler's grave.
Norler shaked off the cobwebs of post nightmare sleep and sat upright.
"Uhhhh! Alright! Water? Water?" panicked Norler.
"Water's good... lots of kicking in me... oohhh Heylyn's really going to get along with this one... already a martial artist for sure...!" Alicia held her womb, as the child within her winded her several times before she was upon her feet.
"Alright! Alright! The elevator! I've got our shoes and your blanket!" Norler quickly snatched up everything they'd prepared along the front hall and the closet, guiding Alicia to the elevator.
Once they were on their way down, Norler helped her get her shoes onto her feet, and then wrapped her in their favourite fleece blanket, and together they breathed. Alicia gasped as the door opened at the parking garage, breaking their rhythm.
Norler got her to her feet, and she ran, a woman more physically capable than Norler could ever hope to be, bent over, struggling to carry the child within her.
And together, they did it.
They made it to Norler's Acura (his Chrysler Pacifica being his second choice for this moment), and he immediately reclined her seat as he helped her get her seatbelt on.
"Honey... this one's definitely like me if you know what I mean... Hurry!" Alicia held her stomach fast as Norler pulled out of their parking spot and sped out of the garage, skidding out onto Queen Street and on his way to Toronto General Hospital.
"Speak to me Alicia!" Norler hunched himself over the steering wheel, looking for every opening he needed to get his wife and child to.
"Oh my... arghhhh! My water just broke! Norler! Promise me you'll give this bugger a good lecture! No patience in this one honey...! Oh baby! You little bugger! Just hold on...! I know you're anxious...! Oh you bugger...!" Alicia gasped a few times as Norler slammed the brakes on just outside of the emergency room.
He kicked (literally) his door open and ran around to Alicia's side of the car, dragging her from the car as the orderlies fixed her to the gurney. She cursed them as much so as she cursed Norler and even her own child several times. Some found shock in her words, but most found joy, hope and laughter, only imagining her plight of giving birth.
Norler sat on a chair in the waiting room. The air cold.
He crammed a protein bar he'd intended for Alicia into his mouth. Chewed it.
Swallowed.
Waited, pacing the halls.
Suspecting, but never fully realizing that he truly had the easy end of the deal of child birth the entire time.
The same orderly that had helped Alicia onto a gurney came up behind Norler, during his thirtieth pass of that section of the hall.
"Mr. Norler? The Doctor in the delivery room approved your being there. Alicia's about to give birth if you want to come with me, you can help her through the process.
"Thank you. Nothing else would mean more to me," Norler followed the orderly into the delivery room.
That moment, from that point on, belonged to Alicia, Norler and their newborn child.
Unlikely Allies
Monique sat out front of her favourite café, drinking her favourite Latté Mochiachatta in the morning sun of a day that had already graced the two degree mark.
She was dressed for this occasion in one of her various incognito outfits, this particular one focused on keeping her face well hidden, as well as her figure so as not to attract too much attention. A casual loose fitting track suit, a pair of large lensed sunglasses and a stylish day hat.
She wore little makeup as well, as most would have recognized her hallmark eyes and eye shadow, despite their being hidden behind her sunglasses. She sat waiting for her counterpart to arrive, enjoying her latté, and reading one of the fashion quarterlies, never paying attention to the man beside her.
Braden had been seated next to her for a full half hour before she even noticed him, and when she did, she poked him first, and then scolded him.
"Why didn't you say anything?" asked Monique of him.
"You called me here! I was waiting for you! You didn't say you were coming here incognito," Braden exclaimed.
"Well given the situation I assumed you knew?" Monique responded, lowering her voice.
"Fine. My bad. So how do you want to do this? I heard on the news they already deemed that the case isn't a murder case. That the dead bodies were actually just rubber dummies," Braden explained to Monique.
"I know that much already. What I want to find out is why this guy planted those dummies, and used the names Denise Forbes and Alex Reardon. I mean, there must be some kind of a connection?" Monique responded, much more casually this time.
"So what do you suggest?" Braden asked her.
"Let's do a little research on the internet here first. Then we'll take it from there," Monique pulled her tablet from her purse and placed it on the table in front of them, while Braden took out his phone.
"I've got Alex Reardon, you checkout Denise Forbes..." Braden said as he typed in the search term on his phone.
"Since this incident, there's certainly no shortage of news about them... sheesh," Monique said as she scrolled through pages upon pages of news related to the incident at city hall.
"I'll say, though there's not much here about Alex Reardon. Something from a year and a half ago. A short article about how research contracts are awarded. It looks like Mr. Reardon killed a project because it violated how Government research data is used by private industry. Cost a lot of jobs and a lot of people weren't very happy with him. That might be something. It has motive written all over it," Braden explained to Monique.
"What company?" asked Monique.
"Tactical Asset Group. They're an investment firm that specializes in autonomous hardware for warfare," Braden showed her.
"And what's that mean?" asked Monique.
"Drones. Reconaissance and armed. That kind of thing I'd imagine," Braden explained to her.
Monique combined the name of the company with Denise Forbes in her next search, and came up with the jackpot.
"Bingo! It says here that our girl Denise was connected to TAG, and helped usher in a deal with security giant Gate Guardian Security..." Monique showed Braden the photo and the accompanying article.
"That's Mr. Reardon there. Shaking hands with the VP of Gate Guardian!" Braden pointed out on from the photo on the article on her screen, showing her an image of Alex Reardon from his search.
"That was like six months ago! So he shut down another deal four years ago, and likely was publicly chastised for it. I mean come on? It cost money and jobs. He stays beneath the radar for a few years, and surfaces to approve this deal, and comes out of it looking like the hero. Mrs. Forbes in the meantime has been actively campaigning on her business promotion agenda. Trying to land huge lucrative contracts for businesses in Southern Ontario," Monique began piecing it all together.
"How does this all connect to city hall?" Braden asked her.
"That's exactly what we're going to find out," Monique stood and returned her tablet to her purse.
"Coming?" Monique asked Braden.
"No, are you coming? I'm driving don't forget," Braden reminded her.
"Lets pay Gate Guardian a visit in person, shall we? They're in Brampton, on Summerlea Road," suggested Monique.
"Alright, but you're going to fill my gas tank," Braden responded to her.
"Are you saying Heylyn doesn't pay you enough?" asked Monique.
"No. She pays me quite well for what I'm doing, but with insurance and maintenance, it adds up you know," Braden unlocked their doors.
"Alright. Stop at a gas station. One with a Tim Hortons and I'll buy the gas, but you're buying the coffees," Monique got in the passenger side of his car.
"Deal," Braden said as he started the car and drove off into the Queen Street West traffick.
...
After forty minutes of driving across town in midday traffick, Braden pulled into the parking lot of Gate Guardian, where a lowrise office tower and a hangar sized manufacturing facility were situated. The parking attendant directed them to customer parking, giving them a tag that would prevent them from being towed.
When they were safely parked just outside of the office lowrise, they went over their plan.
"Why are we here?" asked Braden of Monique.
"To find out more about Gate Guardian's connection to the incident at city hall," Monique replied.
"I know that. That's not what what I meant. I mean, what's our cover story? We're obviously not going to go in there and tell them we're just two friends that got curious about the connection between their company, a couple of public officials and an incident at city hall, are we?" asked Braden, somewhat sarcastically.
"No. You're right. I know! We're a couple... we're engaged! We're looking to buy a security system for our first home... which is being built in Brampton...?" Monique suggested.
"That works. In a make believe kind of way. Certainly not in reality, no offense," Braden smiled at Monique.
"Oh you certainly know how to spoil a moment! We'll just pretend, alright. Have fun with it. If we can distract them long enough, I might be able to get into their computers..." Monique assured Braden.
"Alright, lets give it a try," Braden unlocked their doors and they stepped out of the car and walked to the front door.
Braden nearly jumped when Monique grabbed his hand to hold it, like a couple.
"Sorry, not used to that," Braden said to her, blushing slightly.
"Well lets at least make it convincing," Monique urged him as he opened the door for her.
They were immediately greeted by a large reception desk, two receptionists and four security guards, two of which were actually mannequins as part of the showroom display, illustrating the equipment carried by their security operators.
"Hi! We're looking to explore our options for a new security system?" Monique greeted the first receptionist.
"Is it for commercial or residential security?" asked the receptionist.
"Residential. We're going to be married soon and we bought a house in Brampton, which is still being built, and we'd like to find out our options," Monique continued.
"You could just check with the construction office of the construction developer. Chances are we're already working with them, and it would just be a matter of having the security option added to your home purchase," the receptionist informed them.
"My fiancé is kind of a techie nerd, and wants to get a peek at the systems and their specs..." Monique gestured to Braden, who suddenly seemed lost.
"Uhhhh. Yeah! I'm right into the techie nerd stuff. Like can we hook up the security system to our phones? Can we remotely turn the lights on and off, or have the security system turn on the stove to cook our dinner before we got home from work? What kind of bandwidth would we be looking at?" Braden did his best to play the role, though he was already stretched to his limits when it came to technical knowledge.
"Can I direct you to our sales department? They're just down this hall and the first door on the right," the receptionist guided them, even standing up for them and showing them to the hall.
"What about the little girl's room? I have to freshen up," asked Monique.
"Its the same direction, a little bit further down. Turn left and its the first door on your left," again, the receptionist gave them their directions, after which Monique and Braden left on their way to the sales office.
"So what's the plan?" Braden asked Monique, who still clung to his hand playfully.
"You're going to talk to them, ask them about tech stuff, I'll stick around for a minute or two before I leave to go to the washroom. You keep them distracted, and I'll find a way into their computer system..." Monique explained to Braden.
"Alright. What if you're spotted?" asked Braden, a look of concern crossing his face.
"Awwww... you really care. I won't be myself. I'll be in my other form, so they shouldn't recognize me, and I'm usually too bright for their cameras. Trust me," Monique assured him.
"Alright. I'll keep them distracted, but you've gotta be quick. I am absolutely lost when it comes to tech stuff. Not a day goes by where I don't feel lost trying to use my phone," Braden explained to her.
"Oh great. Improvise," Monique insisted as they arrived at the sales office door.
"Hi, I'm Doug. You two are the couple wanting to check out our residential security system programs?" asked the Gate Guardian sales associate.
"That would be us. Sooo, we're getting a pretty big home. A three bedroom," Braden began.
"Three bedroom...?" Monique looked to Braden in shock.
"Yeah. You know, a room for our four kids..." Braden started to get creative.
"Four...?" Monique suddenly seemed lost.
"And a room for my Mom. I mean, wouldn't want to put her in a senior's home you know," Braden smiled.
"And your Mom too... Huh," Monique nodded her head awkwardly.
"So you're saying that you're concerned for you family's safety. Security. Other risks, like fire, and you need a security program from Gate Guardian that will help you address all of these risks. Am I correct," Doug's pitch delivery was perfect.
"Exactly. But I also want something that has a little pep under the hood. You know, the latest technology. Is it fast? Can I watch my security cams in 8K? What kind of processors does it use? Is it compatible with my home PC and laptop? My Nintendo Swittch? My Playstation or My XBox? Does it do AI?" asked Braden, clearly struggling to think of technical sounding babble.
"Oh... honey, why don't you two talk about the tech stuff, and I'll just go freshen up?" Monique interjected.
"Sure honey. Doug and I will just shoot the breeze about security bandwidth and gigabytes and stuff... You go ahead," Braden urged her to release his hand.
"Back in a bit..." Monique quickly slipped out of the sales office and followed the receptionist's directions to the ladies room.
When she arrived, she conveniently found it to be empty and quite clean at that. She quickly looked around for any signs of security cameras, and spotted an air vent.
"That'll come in handy," she said as she slipped into one of the stalls to obscure herself as much as she could.
She then transformed herself into a stream of wave-like photons, which by all outside appearances looked like a cohesive volume of light, in the shape of a woman's body.
In half a second, she had surveyed the entire building, through the air duct system and had found an unoccupied computer workstation that someone had left logged in. Seeing as it was located in the corporate offices of the lowrise tower, there was a very good chance that whoever worked at that computer station had a fairly high level of network access. The problem was that there were at least six other people seated in the same area.
"Alright Monique, how do you get six people out of a room? With a distraction?" Monique reasoned out loud to herself as she floated in the air duct just above the workstation she intended to use to gain access to their network.
At that moment, she had an idea.
Visiting Hours
Heylyn Yates leads her adopted daughter Warai Jeong-Min Tokama into the hospital.
Heylyn held Warai's hand as they walked together into the Maternal Care Unit of the hospital.
Kori Jonglyu catches up with Warai and Heylyn in the hospital.
"Heylyn! Warai! I got here as soon as I could!" Kori ran to catch up to Heylyn and Warai.
"Kori!" Warai's face lit up upon seeing her friend.
"How's my little butterfly doing?" asked Kori of Warai as she leaned down to bring herself to the same height as Warai.
"We got the call in the wee hours this morning. Warai woke up and I told her, and she's been badgering me ever since," Heylyn both smiled and smirked at Warai, giving her a wink as she did.
"But I didn't know that we couldn't come here before nine in the morning!" Warai justified herself to Kori and Heylyn.
A quick portrait video of Kori Jonglyu.
"That's alright. I'm pretty excited for Alicia and Norler too," Kori poked Warai's nose.
"I called everyone I could, but I tried to urge them leave their visits until tomorrow, or during next week. They limit the amount of visits and the number of people that can visit at one time," Heylyn explained.
"I get it. You want to leave the convenience of visiting to their immediate family first. Alicia's parents. Norler's parents. I know..." Kori responded.
"Exactly, but Norler assured me that his father was overseas, and wouldn't be back for another two weeks, and Alicia's parents are vacationing in Puerto Plata, so they're due to return this coming Thursday. So that leaves her family from West Meet East, and of course Zheng, Bryce and Doctor Briggs," Heylyn explained.
"Where's Monique?" asked Kori as the continued towards the reception area.
"Monique was already up and gone early this morning. She had something to do with Braden, and Aikiko is doing a shoot today with Trey, so I imagine they'll be visiting tomorrow sometime," Heylyn continued.
When they arrived at the reception desk, the receptionist directed them towards the Maternal Care unit and to Alicia's room.
"Put your mask on," asked Heylyn of Warai.
"Why?" asked Warai.
"We don't want to give Alicia or her child any bugs or germs, do we?" asked Heylyn of Warai.
"No. But how will she know its us?" asked Warai.
Both Heylyn and Kori smiled at her response.
"She'll just have to make it a guessing game then. Won't she?" Kori replied.
"I think Alicia and her baby will be able to figure it out. I mean, she knows its me when I'm wearing my mask, right?" Heylyn pointed out to Warai, which after she thought about it, brought a smile to her face.
"Ok," Warai struggled to get the bands around her head, at which point Heylyn helped her the rest of the way.
"The first thing you learn as a butterfly, is how to put your mask on," Heylyn said to Warai.
"But my mask is pink?" Warai replied with a puzzled look on her face.
"And it looks pretty on you," Kori added as they continued down the hall towards Alicia's room.
...
Walton Norler very exhausted after helping Alicia give birth.
"Heylyn! Kori too! And who is this?" Norler stood up from the waiting area chair, his eyes puffy, with dark circles beneath each and a day and a half''s worth of facial hair growth on his face.
"Norler? You poor guy. You should get some rest at home," Heylyn urged Norler, giving him a hug as she greeted him.
"I'm fine, but you're right. I'll be leaving for a short break in about an hour. I just wanted to stay as the Doctor explained that most of the complications occur in the first eight to twelve hours. Only a few hours to go and things are looking good," Norler responded.
"How's Alicia?" asked Heylyn.
"She's... You know. She healed from the experience very quickly... and the Doctors got a bit curious about that. Needless to say we had to do a little song and dance to distract them from Alicia's uniquely altered physiology, which we explained came from her background. They eventually stopped poking and prodding her about it..." Norler explained to them.
"How's...?" Heylyn began, not entirely sure of how to ask.
"Oh. The little one?" Norler asked her.
"I'm the little one!" Warai responded from behind her pink mask.
"We're talking about the other little one. The second one," Kori smiled from behind her mask.
"Oh. That's ok. They can be the first one. I'll be the second," Warai replied, nodding affirmatively.
"You can go in if you if you've already cleared it with the desk staff, though they might return to chase you out if you overstay your welcome. At which point you'll end up on the bench here with me," Norler told them.
"We're going to do that. Do you want us to drop you off at your home after our visit?" asked Heylyn.
"I could do it. Its closer to my place than it is to yours," Kori offered.
"You know what? Let's do that then. No hurry though. You take your time in there and when you're done. I'll just need a minute with Alicia, and the first little one, and we'll leave," Norler replied to Kori, then looking to Warai and giving her a wink.
"See you in a bit," Heylyn said as the three of them, walked into Alicia's room, Warai clinging to Heylyn's hand.
"Heylyn! My best friend, Ai Yuanlin Ying," Alicia's face lit up when she saw them.
Alicia Westin in the hospital after giving birth to her newborn baby.
"Somebody told me that you might be needing me to make a new graduation dress?" Heylyn said to Alicia as she clung to her baby, Heylyn looking at her baby.
Alicia stopped a moment to wipe the tear from her eye.
"You know... that would be true if it was a dress that we needed, but we don't. We'll definitely be needing a tuxedo for if you can manage that," Alicia said to Heylyn, fighting off a wall of tears of joy.
"Well, that settles that. How is he?" asked Heylyn as she picked up Warai so that she could get a good look at Alicia's son.
"Oh... he's special. Very special we found out. Did Norler already tell you?" asked Alicia as she clung to her son, rocking him gently in her arms.
"He said the Doctors were a little suspicious about your... vitality," Heylyn responded, recalling what Norler had told them.
"Well. He was severely under weight at birth, weighing under three pounds. Initially the Doctors had scheduled him for an incubator, but about fifteen minutes after his birth, he began to gain weight on his own. His body apparently repaired itself, including a maldeveloped left lung, which had collapsed shortly after his birth. It was pretty hectic... and of course I was a mess, thinking we were going to lose him... and then his body... it just began repairing itself..." Alicia explained to them.
"I guess he got his mother's vitality," Kori interjected.
"He feels very healthy. Happy too..." Warai said, sensing the young infant's body energy through her own abilities.
"So why didn't they lock him up and start experimenting on him?" Heylyn asked the million dollar question.
"As it turns out, the symptomology of what occurred lined up perfectly with a very rare problem that can occur in premature birth. It also involves a period of accelerated growth, not quite as much as he did, but still remarkly so. I brought this up, recalling a case study from my years studying biology, and the supervising Doctor looked into it, and he bought it. Thankfully," Alicia pulled her baby closer to her face, and rubbed her nose with her child.
"What's your name, little one?" asked Warai of Alicia son.
"Well, we had picked Helen, if a girl, after you Heylyn. So of course, given the outcome, we went with Nathan, after Norler," Alicia told them.
"Nathan Westin-Norler. It has a nice ring to it," Kori remarked.
"Doesn't it? I can't get over how much I can see of his facial features, but he definitely has your eyes..." Heylyn looked close at the boy's face.
"How much longer are you going to be in here?" asked Kori.
"Two more nights. I'll be checking out on Tuesday morning," Alicia told them.
"Well, if you need a baby sitter..." Kori offered.
"Wait! You're my baby sitter!" Warai became ever so slightly upset.
"But you're not a baby anymore," Kori said to Warai, who them looked to Heylyn.
"Is that true?" asked Warai.
"I would have to agree with that. For sure. You're definitely not a baby anymore. So why don't you graduate, and let Nathan here have a go at it?" Heylyn said to Warai as she smiled.
Warai nodded, looking first to Nathan, who simply wiggled with his mouth wide open, gawking at anything that appeared like his mother's face, nipples or his father's face. The masks weren't quite doing it for him, and unfortunately he'd have to wait before he had the chance to see the faces of the people standing before him.
"Nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news, but visiting time is over and Alicia and Nathan here need a break," one of the nurses stepped into the room, a tall pretty Filipino woman.
"I'm just going to have a moment with Alicia and Nathan?" Norler interjected as he stepped into the room.
"Alright Alicia. One graduation tuxedo coming right up," Heylyn winked to Alicia.
"And you'd better be sure that I'll hold you to it," Alicia both smiled and smirked through her piercing blue eyes.
"Bye Auntie Alicia! Bye Nathan!" Warai said as Heylyn carried her out of the room, Kori following behind them.
"That went well!" Kori smiled.
"It certainly did," Heylyn's reply was confident and yet distant.
"Something wrong?" asked Kori.
"No. Not in the sense that you mean it. But Alicia, Monique, Valerie and I certainly have some things to discuss," Heylyn responded.
"Why? How's that?" Kori asked.
"From what Alicia told us, the effects of the SY349 formula are hereditary," Heylyn responded, revealing a serious implication regarding the only four women who ever took the first formula Alicia had engineered into existence nine years previously.
"What does heredity mean?" Warai asked innocently.
"It means... we have to get to the the office and finish up the last design for the coming spring show," Heylyn leaned down and tapped her nose, trying to change the subject.
"After we drop off Mr. Norler?" asked Warai.
"No. Kori going to do that, and she has her day off, right?" Heylyn turned to Kori.
"That's right. Why don't you two get a head start on the rest of your day and I'll take Norler from here," Kori smiled at Warai and Heylyn.
"I thought you'd never ask. See you on Monday. If you want to drop by on Sunday for a bite, the door's open," Heylyn said as she and Warai began through the corridor back towards the parking lot.
"Thanks, but my Sunday is going to be me chilling on the sofa and catching up on Kim's Convenience for the afternoon," Kori replied.
"Have fun!" Heylyn waved to Kori as they left.
"Bye Kori!" Warai turned and waved to her bestest friend.
Secure Hour
[Do Not Stand In The Shadows - Billy Idol] (Loud, preferably 😉)
A blue 1977 Camera pulled into the parking lot of a Meek's Market store, in the south west end of Toronto, towards the Lakeshore and Royal York district.
The driver, an older man in his fifties, his hair tied in a pony tail from a mullet two decades old, grabbed the hotdog from his dash and devoured it two bites before opening the door of his car and stepping out into the parking lot.
"Now that's a damned hotdog!" he said as he wiped the last of its condiments from his face, tossing the paper waste into a nearby basket as he strode into the store.
Midnight Blue walks into a large department store and secretly installs a device he crafted.
As he walked into the store, he reached into a pocket in his trench coat and pulled a device from it, which he attached to the RFID detection system of a security system, after which he found a shopping cart, which he began to load with every item he could find.
"Need one of those... this... that... one of those too..." his hands found merchandise both left and right of his cart, even tossing a frozen burrito into the hood of a passing shopper, unbeknownst to him.
"Consider that one a freebie there Sir!" Midnight Hour spoke aloud to his unsuspecting accomplice.
He stopped in the electronics section, eyeing the televisions, very obviously aware of their volume and weight ratio to their value.
"Too big. Too heavy. Too lenient of that price levy," he smiled as he spoke poetically.
Perhaps, like a distant dragon, he too knew the value of verse, for it could be better, and it could be unbetter.
When he smelled the department for which he was looking, his nose wandered in the direction of its fragrance.
There were some memories in life that would never abandon their host, and as much so, there were some fragrances too. Midnight Hour had happened upon both when he'd found the fragrances section of the store, for he knew both the power of their potential as the hosts of memories, and their financial value as well.
He glanced casually at the woman behind the counter as he stopped his cart.
She paused, looking at him as if she knew him, never realizing that it wasn't the sight of him, but the scent of his cologne that had caught her attention.
"Memories, light the corners of my mind... Some of them sights, some of them sounds, some of them scents, some of them frowns," Midnight Hour said to her in a distant voice.
"That was so beautiful..." she said to another man.
"Do you think it would be alright if I had a few from this showcase? They seem to fit the mood," he asked her as she turned to face him.
"Those are from our special moments line... Quite fragrant. Quite..." she began.
"...in my budget. Tell me, if you hadn't met your Blane, would you have gone for your one true Keith Neilson?" Midnight Hour asked her, but she already wasn't paying him any attention, if she ever was as he shoveled the bottles of the most expensive perfumes and colognes into his cart.
"...its quite soft. And she'll like it..." she said to the man with whom she was speaking.
Another customer across the counter from him. Her blonde, curly hair still stuck in his head.
Midnight Blue bit his tongue as he shoveled the last of the fragrances into his cart, perhaps his memories of her as well.
He eyed her once again. Merely twenty-five years of age she was. A few years shy of his own age when he'd first met her. This much younger version of her.
The one who'd left him. Another version of her, across the counter from him.
"Oh... she'll love this scent. Its sooo..." she blushed for the man, knowing she'd make the sale.
He felt the gun calling him. Calling his name. Calling him forth to take himself away.
The quick way out of everything.
All at once.
BANG!
Then the device he'd placed on the RFID scanner called him:
LISTEN TO US!!!
WE ONLY HIRE!!!
DON'T LISTEN TO THE GUN!!!
IT ONLY FIRES!!!
Midnight Blue stood silent for a moment, staring at the contents of his cart. Looking back to that younger version of her. His memories of her creeping back to haunt him.
He sat at dining room table, looking at her invitingly.
She laughed at him from the kitchen.
He stood beside his cart before his mind once again began ticking, almost like his heart, beating.
Or perhaps even more so, like a bomb.
So many memories, and the security guard. He didn't know him, thankfully.
A younger man. One of those who was out to prove himself.
Midnight Blue immediately recognized this, avoiding the man entirely as he pushed the cart full of merchandise towards the door at the far end of the store.
He wondered how many others had caught on, for he'd given them all a leeway and a freeway. Like some bent out of shape Robin Hood, or perhaps more like a robbing hood.
A means out without paying a thing, and yet most had not even known about it.
So, when he arrived as the door, and pushed the cart through it, nobody, not a soul was alerted to the fact that he had nearly ten thousand dollars of merchandise in it.
He wheeled it over to a nearby van. One of those vans for charities who did good things for lesser fortunate people. And Midnight Blue gave everything in the cart to them before returning to the store to retrieve his device.
The one he'd used to nullify the entire security system in the story.
He then returned to his Camero, and started the car, turning over the ignition like they used to do in the old days.
The car growled to life as he sat behind the wheel.
"Mark up another one for the real Midnight Blue. Here's the score: Midnight Blue: 4 Gate Guardian: 2..." Midnight Blue floored the pedal causing the car to speed out of the parking lot.
All of this before the clock had struck eleven AM on Saturday morning.
An Alarming Find
"...all of our systems operate through wireless protocols, plus our guaranteed discreet guardian security layer, a high performance encryption protocol that keeps all of your security information, including your security camera feed from prying eyes. You do know that there are many RF phreakers out there who like to spy on remote camera feeds. Even the security camera feeds of our competitors..." Doug explained to Braden.
"...I did not know that. You mean that somebody could just park their car outside of my new home, and spy on me through my own home security system?" asked Braden, completely puzzled by Doug's sales pitch.
"Not if you have a Gate Guardian security system with our optional discrete guardian protocol. The cameras themselves are secure from any kind of RF hacking, with the latest military grade protection, while only our authorized technicians have access to your actual camera feed, in order to better protect you," Doug tapped his finger on the tablet he was using as a prop for his pitch.
At that moment, Braden's phone began ringing.
"Just a second Doug... Hello?" Braden answered his phone.
"Braden! Is your speakerphone off?" Monique spoke quickly and in a hushed voice.
"Yep. Where are you?" asked Braden.
"I'm in the vent system above the corporate office. I need you to create a distraction!" Monique continued, feeling very cramped in her physical form inside of the vents.
"Like what?" Braden asked her.
"Like... tell the sales guy that you need to use the bathroom, and then pull the fire alarm!" Monique told him.
"You want me to...? Pick you up at three? Alright dad..." Braden responded to Monique, covering his real conversation.
"I'm waiting! I need you to do this ASAP! Bye!" Monique hung up her phone, leaving Braden committed to her request.
"Uhhhh? Doug, I've got to take this call outside. I'll be right back..." Braden said as he opened the door to the sales office on his way out.
"Great. I'll see you in a bit," Doug responded as Braden left the office.
He looked left and right for a fire alarm, and the remembered the hall further down that the receptionist had pointed out, where the washrooms were situated.
He turned left and found the fire alarm at the end of the hall, however he also noticed two cameras pointed directly at it. One on the wall adjacent to the hallway junction, and another pointed at the fire alarm itself from above one of the washroom doors. Instead of losing his momentum, he continued directly into the men's washroom.
He looked in the mirror, wondering how he was going obscure his identity, when he got an idea.
He removed his jacket and turned it inside out, revealing a colourfully tacky plaid lining. After rummaging through his jacket pockets, he managed to find a couple of medical masks which he'd been using during a clean of the West Meet East warehouse the previous week. He put the first medical mask on his head to cover his hair, and the second one on his face.
He then proceeded out of the washroom and directly over to the fire alarm, where he pulled it.
The alarm immediately went off throughout the entire building as he quickly got himself out of camera view. When he was certain there were no cameras, he reversed his jacket again and removed the masks. He then returned to the sales office in time to find Doug leaving.
"Must be an evacuation rehearsal. Did you know that our alarm packages all come with fire detection as a standard feature?" Doug asked Braden as they left the sales office behind eight other inside sales representatives.
"That could be handy..." Braden said as they proceeded down the hall into the front foyer and reception area, before exiting the building.
...
As soon as Monique hung up, she immediately transformed herself back into a cloud of wave-like photons, waiting for the alarm to go off.
She only ended up waiting two minutes before the alarms sounded throughout the building. She heard a couple of the corporate staff cursing under their breath as they got up from their chairs and proceeded out of the office and towards the elevators.
When the office was clear, Monique (as Eclipse) slipped through the vent cover (still in the form of photons), landing in front of one of the workstations, when she noticed the door to the corner office open just a few meters away.
"That office has to have someone important!" she said to herself quietly enough that it didn't travel.
She immediately (in one billion of a billionth of a second) situated herself behind the desk in the corner office, in front of the computer, where upon confirming that the web camera wasn't operational, transformed back into her physical self once again, so she could operate the computer.
"Looks like they left without locking it... Alright. Here goes..." Monique said to herself as she started looking through the computer for any kind of files or applications that might be connected to the corporate intranet.
She quickly found a shortcut on the desktop, and double-clicked it to open the web browser interface to the company network. She held her breath as the browser automatically logged her in using the credentials of the person whose office it was.
"Whew! Alright, lets do a general search of their database for Alex Reardon and Denise Forbes..." Monique said as she typed in their names to the search field, and clicked the button.
A few seconds later, a list of records populated the screen, each with a title, keywords, associates and a corresponding date and time.
"So they've been cosy... have they?" Monique said as she clicked one of the records.
Another browser tab opened, zoomed to that particular record, which corresponded to the proceedings of a meeting and the subsequent signing of a deal between Denise Forbes and Gate Guardian. It was the very same deal that had made headlines about which Monique and Braden had read earlier.
"What's this...? A new security technology? Project GATE SENTRY?" Monique said aloud as she searched for information about the project.
The next list of records sited a number of milestones connected to the project known as GATE SENTRY, which was part of their special projects division.
She clicked on the first entry in the list (the oldest) and another browser tab opened zooming in on that record.
Inside of that record, it was indicated that Alex Reardon, who had been called in to evaluate the risks involved with tax payer money being used to fund such a controversial project, had formally shut the project down by cutting off funding.
Monique went back to the previous list and found another record referring to Alex Reardon, and opened it. Inside of this record, which cited communications between company security and upper-middle management, there had been an arrangement to run a smear campaign against Alex Reardon, and to ensure that he was corrected for his interference in their project funding.
In a further record, she found out that a third party secretly resumed their funding, privately, keeping Government and regulations out of the fold entirely. Monique searched for funding related to project GATE SENTRY and found a document with several redacted items, and one name: Gabriel Asnon.
"Gabe funded this?" Monique said aloud.
She searched the rest of the entries on Project GATE GUARDIAN and found a reference to the MindSpice Special Projects facility near Kennedy and Ellesmere. The very same facility that had been destroyed by a bomb a year earlier.
She pulled a flash drive from her purse, and plugged it into the computer and began transferring records from the computer to her own storage device, when the alarm suddenly stopped.
"Oh no. Come on. I don't have time to read it all here... You've gotta move a bit quicker!" she urged the onscreen progress bar as it counted down the remaining results of the copy operation.
A digital voice emerged from the building wide intercom system:
ATTENTION ASSOCIATES. THE FIRE ALARM WAS DEEMED TO BE A FALSE ALARM. YOU MAY ALL RETURN TO YOUR OFFICES AND WORKSTATIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMPLIANCE.
"Thirty seconds...!" Monique lowered herself behind the desk to remain hidden, when she heard the door to the corporate division open outside in the workstation area.
"...well at least we got a chance to get a coffee out of the deal..." a voice could be heard approaching the office from the workstation area.
Monique watched as the last pip of the progress bar finally finished. She quickly ejected the device and returned it to her purse, and then closed all of the tabs and cleared the browser cache just as a well dressed man in his forties returned to the corner office.
As he stepped into his office, his eyes fell upon her and she immediately disappeared with a blinding flash, an image of what appeared to be an attractive woman burned onto his retinas.
The man shook his head, as his eyes readjusted and when they had, he immediately returned to his desk and used the phone.
"I.T.? Yeah its Fred here in corporate. I think I've got a problem with my monitor? Can you bring me a replacement?" he asked the technician.
...
Braden leaned nervously on the counter, as Doug continued his sales pitch.
"...and with our Tot Tattler system option, which is AI powered, you'll know immediately who took the last cookie from the cookie jar, or who snuck a peek at their birthday gifts," Doug explained to Braden, who seemed alarmed that security systems were now capable of such scrutiny.
The sales office door suddenly opened and Monique slipped in.
"Sorry I was sooo long, but someone called me and we have a bit of a family emergency. I'm afraid we'll have to continue this sometime next week..." Monique grabbed Braden's hand.
"Yeah... Sorry about that Doug, but thanks a lot for everything. We'll be talking next week," Braden smiled, feeling relieved that Monique had finally arrived.
"Here, take these brochures and this checklist, and next time you're back, we'll fast track you," Doug offered his hand and Braden shook it firmly.
"We'll see you soon!" Monique waved as she dragged Braden out of the office.
"What did you find?" asked Braden.
"Too much. This is pretty big. I think we need to share this with Heylyn, Alicia, Valerie and Aikiko," Monique said as she picked up her pace.
"Lets get this all sorted out in the car and we'll take it from there," Braden suggested as they passed through the reception area, waving to the receptionist as they left the building.
Moments later and they were in Braden's car, on their way to West Meet East.
Rubber People
Detective Edward Farnham arrives at Homocide Division on his day off.
Edward Farnham opened the door to the homocide division department, a slightly above room temperature coffee in his right hand, and a brown paper bag with a donut in his left.
"Hey Farnham. How's your weekend so far?" asked Stendel, whose regular duty did not entail homocide, but rather crimes and misdeamors along the lines of vandalism and arson.
"Don't even talk to me. I had plans today and you had to go and f#ck them up, didn't you!" Farnham cursed at Stendel, who sat casually reading a trade magazine specializing in law enforcement hardware.
"What can I say? Your ballistic dummy theory is completely out the window. Forensics told me early this morning, and given the nature of the threat implied by the planting of two almost too good to be real rubber dummies with the names of two public officials on them, I pulled some strings and had you called back in on the case. This case has threat to the safety of public officials written all over it," Stendel admired the centerfold, which featured a curvaceous model wearing nothing more than a bikini and a Kevlar generation five ballistic vest.
"You went over my head and I won't forget that either. I gave you my card so you could call me if you needed help, and instead you went over my head," Farnham found his desk and sat in his chair, peeling back the tab on his coffee, after which he fished the donut out of the paper bag.
"If its any consolation..." Stendel began, as a knock came from the door.
"Its open!" one of the other homocide officers yelled.
"What's the big idea of getting me out of bed on my weekend off?" Poonya griped to Farnham as he stepped into the homocide division offices.
"Sorry Poonya, but it wasn't my doing," Farnham used his left hand to hide the fact that his right hand index finger was pointed at Stendel.
"So what do we have so far?" asked Poonya.
"Ask your partner. He's only one page behind me in this book so far. Check the case files, and give me a call if you need anything," Stendel stood up and made his way over to the door.
"Hey! Where are you going?" Farnham stopped Stendel.
"Home, to enjoy the rest of my weekend. What else?" Stendel said as he stepped through the door and left.
"That guy is such an scumbag and an ass..." Farnham cursed again under his breath.
"I didn't like him from the moment I saw him. So what do we got?" asked Poonya.
"Basically, its a vandalism case with the likelihood of it being a veiled threat against two public officials. Our perp, a Caucasian male in his mid to late forties, six feet one inches tall and about two hundred pounds, clean shaven with an old eighties mullet hairstyle, drove through the foyer window of city council with an old Barracuda or a 'Stang, dropped two rubber dummies outside of the door with name tags, and fired point blank at their head and chest, after which he spray painted the words MIDNIGHT HOUR on the wall and left the scene, stereo blaring. Thankfully we had a material witness otherwise we would have had even less to go on," Farnham explained to Poonya, who wiped the seat Stendel had been seated upon before taking it himself.
"Dummies? Like mannequins?" confirmed Poonya.
"No. These ones were really life like. Like the kind of ballistic dummies they use in high end mission critical training scenarios, except forensics just confirmed that they weren't ballistic dummies, and that is odd because there are few other applications for rubber dummies whose skin matches the density and strength of real human skin," Farnham explained to Poonya as he opened the case file on his tablet.
"What about sex dolls? I mean they use pretty advanced skin..." Poonya replied as he took a bite of his apple fritter.
"Are you telling me that from experience?" confirmed Farnham with the corner of a smile on his face.
"No! I was on a date last night old man, for crying out loud!" Poonya almost spit up his fritter.
"Alright. No kiss and tell. Says here they've got manufacturer tags for the rubber skin. That must have been added after Stendel bailed on us. The rubber skin is made by Linden-Diaz Polymers..." Farnham told Poonya, knowing that his partner wouldn't waste another second after being fed details like that.
Poonya was already searching the manufacturer name on his tablet (through a custom application he designed for such searches) and had the company website in front of him shortly thereafter.
"This company only makes the goo. They sell it to other companies who use it in their own moulds, for everything from gel packaging capsules to human-like rubber dummies," Poonya explained to Farnham.
"Do they have a testimonials page? A customer list?" Farnham asked.
"Good thinking. You're catching on to technology quickly old man..." Poonya already caught on to Farnham's reasoning.
"...here it is... Moon Doll Designs ShenZhen. They're a mass producer of injection moulding rubber skin for a variety of markets..." Poonya explained to Farnham as he looked up specific mould output images.
Farnham got up to shoulder surf Poonya's handywork.
"That one! That's the female mould..." Farnham pointed out as Poonya scrolled.
"Alright. That's part number MD183965..." Poonya took a screen grab.
"And that one is the male mould..." Farnham stopped him again, this time at the male image of the rubber skin.
"MD183968... They're both part of the same batch. It looks like the moulds between part numbers 183950 all the way up to 183990 are part of the same batch. That would mean that the goo is all the same recipe, and likely used for the same application," Poonya explained to Farnham.
"So... mannequins? animatronics? sex dolls?" Farnham pushed the point again.
"No. For autonomous robot skin. Their biggest customer, next to the Chinese Government is MindSpice..." Poonya checked the references for that particular batch of Moon Doll Design moulds.
"Grab your stuff. Looks like we're going to pay them a visit then..." Farnham said to Poonya, as he ditched his empty coffee cup and paper bag in the recycling bin, and headed for the door.
"We're going to ShenZhen? I love this job! That's why they pay us the big bucks old man," Poonya closed up his tablet and grabbed the last of his fritter, as he dashed to keep up with Farnham.
"Ha! Right. Hold onto your gauchies there. We're going to MindSpice. They've got offices downtown, which will probably be empty on Saturday, let alone any other day of the week since after the COVID lockdown from a couple of years ago. If that doesn't pan out, I've got an in we can use to talk to their corporate staff," Farnham said as they arrived at the elevator.
Saturday Studio C
Lisa checked the wiring on the back of the LED screen panel, quickly finding the culprit. The signalling cable had somehow become loose and was no longer firmly connected through all of the wiring. She removed the cable and then replugged it, and checked the front of the screen.
"Perfect! Gotta like those quick fixes," Lisa said as she swiveled the LED panel on its hinge and locked it into place to complete the LED wall.
"So is that it? We're up and running again?" asked Trey of Lisa.
"Yep. Take it away..." Lisa replied, taking a seat at the rackmount system running Unreal Engine, providing the realtime imagery that appeared on the LED wall.
"Still getting used this, but the scene lighting is cool," Trey checked the light meter on his camera and adjusted the ISO setting for a more light sensitive film simulation.
"Alright Aikiko. The beach is ready and waiting for you," Trey said as Aikiko got up and out of the make-up chair and stood before the LED wall, her body lit by the lush beach scene behind her, as much so as the specular and environment lights illuminated her face.
"Let her give..." Trey said as they started their session.
Aikiko Tanaka poses for a photoshoot in West Meet East: Studio C.
"That's good. Hold that... Perfect. Change up. That's it. Why don't you do the poses and I'll try and follow your lead..." Trey continued their photo shoot.
"Alright. Just tap out on the mat if I disqualify or something..." Aikiko joked as she shifted poses, all the while Trey catching most every moment on his DSLR camera.
"Just a few more and we're... done. Awesome! Great job Aikiko. Thanks for standing in as tech for us Lisa, and thanks for showing up for the make-up Sienna. Couldn't have done it without you," Trey started packing up his gear as Aikiko stepped down from the LED wall stage.
"Need a lift Lisa?" asked Sienna.
"Sure! Wow. looks like we might actually have the rest of our afternoon," Lisa said as she checked the time.
The door to the studio suddenly opened, and a man in a casual suit stepped in the door, another man following him with a more formal business suit and a briefcase in his hand.
"Miss Tanaka?" the man with the briefcase approached Aikiko, who immediately became apprehensive of the men when she recognized the first one.
"There's a restraining order against you! You're not to be this close to me, and I'm not to be this close to you!" Aikiko said to them.
"We're here to let you know that we're dropping all charges and our court case against you. I am also here to deliver this hand written apology by my client here, and he also has a few words to say to you," the lawyer opened his briefcase and handed Aikiko a manila envelope.
"Miss Tanaka? I must apologize for my treatment of your friend, Monique Defleur, and you given your attempt to protect your friend, who in no way provoked my assault upon her person of grabbing her hair and restraining her. I am entirely at fault, and ask for your mercy in these matters. If you and your friend Monique Defleur wish to seek legal reparations, my lawyer has included his card and is prepared for your negotiations should the need arise. I am truly sorry for any trouble this situation has caused you Miss Tanaka. Good day," the man turned around, and followed by his lawyer, left the studio as another group came in through the same door.
"What was that all about? That's a pretty big one eighty if you ask me, after the trouble they caused!" Trey said as he watched them leave, only to be replaced by another familiar set of faces who walked in the same door after they'd left.
Trey, Sienna and Lisa all suddenly became silent. Unmoving. It was as if eternity had suddenly ceased its progression, and the universe simply waited until this conversation about to take place was done.
"Katsura?" Aikiko addressed the Yokai-Kami goddess.
"There is little that I wouldn't do to deal with the enemies of my allies," a Japanese man in a stylish suit, wearing sunglasses, a heavily decorated and ancient Saya slung from his belt holding a Katana, addressed Aikiko, very obviously speaking for Katsura, for their were few alive who could hear the voice of a Yokai-Kami and come out of the experience with an unscathed psyche.
Hearing her voice at all would have been akin to the listener's psyche being pulled in two different directions simultaneously. One direction by the Yokai voice and the opposite direction by the Kami voice, until their psyche was ripped in two.
"So it was your doing?" asked Aikiko.
"There is so much that I would do for my allies in the face of their enemies," the man speaking for Katsura continued, Katsura looking to Aikiko, very assuredly.
"I did not ask for your help," Aikiko reminded Katsura.
"There is no wrath however with equal, that I'd have for those who betray me or my ancestors. You did not ask for my help, and so there is no price for it. I did it of my own accord, for you were both wronged. The time may come when I am similarly wronged, and you will consider it a great honour to protect mine," Katsura's translator once again spoke for her.
"What about the Gem? Her case? She is also my friend," asked Aikiko, speaking of Warai.
"The Gem's fate is beyond my reach and ability with which to interfere. The tendrils of her destiny are beyond all but the influence of the two dragons. It is up to Ai Yuanlin Ying to save her, and that is all I can tell you. I must go, and return to deal with unfinished business between Mutano and this one known as Mentis. May the Butterfly Ai Yuanlin Ying have liberated the Gem from her greatest threat yet by that time, for if she doesn't, then who is to say what fate awaits all of humanity," Katsura turned and began towards the door, as her other protector opened it for her.
Her translator then bowed to Aikiko, who returned his bow hesitatingly. He then proceeded out the door behind Katsura and like that, they were all three gone.
Aikiko noticed at that moment that Trey, Lisa and Sienna were all stilll frozen, as if life-like statues, unmoving and even unbreathing. They suddenly became animated, and returned to what they were doing as if nothing had happened at all.
"...What about you Aikiko? Can I drop you at the condo?" asked Trey.
"No... Thank you, but no. I'm going to go sit up front and catch up on my work in the design room," Aikiko responded.
"Valerie and I will be going to visit Alicia on Monday afternoon if you'd like to come along..." Trey continued.
"I'd like that, if you can spare the room," Aikiko added.
"We sure can. I'm outta here. I'll see you all on Monday," Trey grabbed his camera case and threw it around his shoulder and left.
"Wait for us!" Sienna said to him, as she and Lisa followed him out the door, leaving Aikiko, who immediately headed to Heylyn's design office, where she suspected that she'd soon have visitors.
...
Aikiko heard the key in the door of Heylyn's design office as she sorted the last of the material parts from the patterns that Ebtissam had cut and sewn on the material printer earlier in the week.
"Oh... its open? Come on Warai..." Heylyn let Warai into the design room as she retrieved her keys from the door.
"Looks like somebody's getting the overtime today... How'd the photoshoot go?" Heylyn addressed Aikiko as she stepped into her design room.
"It went well. Almost without... how would you say? Without a snug?" Aikiko asked Heylyn.
"Without a snag," Heylyn corrected her.
"Thank you. It went almost without a snag until one of the screens on the video wall went blank near the end of the shoot. During the beach scene," Aikiko explained to Heylyn.
"Were you able to get the shoot finished?" confirmed Heylyn, as she'd promised one of her sponsors and biggest clients Kawaī kao Cosmetics she'd have the job done this weekend.
"Trey made sure that he had Lisa show up, and she was able to fix it right on the spot, and we were able to finish," Aikiko assured Heylyn, who appeared visibly relieved.
"You moved my pile of material!" Warai put her hands on her hips and scolded Aikiko playfully.
"You put the material there? Well thank you very much. It was a big help. I had to organize it for Heylyn. She's got six outfits to be completed by Wednesday," Aikiko explained to Warai.
"I helped?" Warai looked up at Aikiko in amazement.
"You certainly did," Aikiko nodded, giving Warai a smile.
Warai simply smiled back in return, after which she ran over to find another pile of discarded material parts where she started to arrange them neatly on one of the design tables after climbing up on top of it.
"Thanks for coming in and getting that photoshoot done. And thanks for staying to organize Ebtissam's pattern parts. I'm just going to get a Chai Latté from the meeting room, can I get you anything?" asked Heylyn.
"A tea if you could. The Rooibos. Listen, I have some good news. Very good news..." Aikiko responded to Heylyn, adding to their conversation as Heylyn listened with anticipation.
"And...?" Heylyn asked as she waited.
"The plaintiff in the assault case against me has dropped all the charges, and has agreed to negotiate for reparations for his assault upon Monique," Aikiko picked up the lawyer's letter from the table and handed it to her.
"Really?! Just like that...?" Heylyn asked as she began reading the formal legal letter offered by the plaintiff's lawyer.
"Just like that... Kind of..." Aikiko shrugged.
"You're leaving something out..." Heylyn looked up from the letter to lock eyes with Aikiko.
"Katsura..." Aikiko said the name of their favourite Yokai-Kami.
"She was here?" confirmed Heylyn.
"For a short time. It seems that she intervened on our behalf. Something she does out of her sense of honour and loyalty to her allies, and in this case, her sense of justice, though in my understanding, especially when dealing with Yokai, there are always strings attached with such matters," Aikiko informed Heylyn.
"She didn't say anything about..." Heylyn didn't say the little girl's name, instead only looking in her direction, where she was contentedly occupied sorting out the discarded material cuts into a variety of piles according to shape and colour as she quietly sang a song she'd learned in school the previous week.
"Katsura told me that she cannot help in that matter. That her destiny is beyond even the likes of Yokai and Kami. That you have to guide her, lest her fate be twisted by the two. You know of whom I am speaking?" Aikiko told Heylyn.
"I'll have Fiona make a copy of this on Monday. I'll be right back with our hot drinks," Heylyn handed the letter back to Aikiko and then made her way to the meeting room, where she began preparing Aikiko's Rooibos and her own Chai Latté.
Aikiko looked to Warai, admiring the little girl and the fact that she was completely oblivious of the enormous weight on her shoulders. Warai was purely living in the moment and free of what had come to pass and what had yet to be.
"...I don't know... Do you think she'd mind if we used... Wait. Who's here?" Monique walked in through the door of the design room, Braden following in her tracks.
"Monique! Braden!" Warai lit up, jumping down from the table and running over to greet her friends.
"Well if it isn't our favourite munchkin!" Monique said to Warai, messing her hair up playfully with her hand.
"Don't talk about Aikiko that way," Braden responded, winking at Warai, but drawing a tap on the shoulder from Aikiko who laughed at his remark.
"Where'd you disappear to this morning?" asked Aikiko.
"We had an errand or two to take care of..." Monique responded as Braden helped Warai back up onto the design table where she continued sorting the discarded material cuts, looking occasionally to see if the adults were paying any attention to her impressive work.
"Was it related to that situation from last night? The one at city hall?" asked Aikiko.
"Where's...?" Monique began only to find herself interrupted.
"Right here. Where'd you two go so early?" asked Heylyn as she returned to the design room with a steaming mug in each hand.
"While you were sound asleep in bed, Braden and I were out investigating this case," Monique said proudly.
"What did you find?" Heylyn placed Aikiko's cup of tea on one of the design tables in front of her.
"We don't quite know yet. A lot... or maybe nothing," Braden explained.
"Go on?" Heylyn looked to Monique.
"We... I mean I... got into some corporate files connected to a company that was linked to the people who's names were on the name tags attached to the bodies..." Monique began.
"Dummies..." Braden corrected her.
"...I meant dummies. So we need a computer so we can go through all of these files," Monique requested of Heylyn.
"What? You mean that we're all going to sit in front of a computer trying to find something onscreen that relates to this case?" confirmed Heylyn.
"We could do it that way," Monique agreed.
"How much data?" asked Heylyn, who understood the concepts well enough without being much of a technically minded person at all.
"About five hundred gigabytes..." Monique said, causing Heylyn to choke on her Chai Latté, nearly spilling it as she struggled to cover her mouth.
"That's a lot, isn't it?" Heylyn confirmed with Monique.
"Don't look at me," Braden responded, not much into digital tech unless it had a remote or a joystick.
"Why don't you ask MAZ?" Warai suggested, having overheard a little bit of their conversation.
"That's brilliant! Didn't Bryce leave us that tablet last time he was here?" Monique said as she tried to remember their conversation.
"If he did, its still in the meeting room," Heylyn said as Braden ran to check it out for them.
Monique, moving nearly at the speed of light stopped him before he got out of the door.
"Allow me... slow poke," Monique stepped in front of Braden, and then disappeared at near the speed of light, only to reappear in less than a thousandth of the blink of an eye holding the very same tablet to which Heylyn had referred.
Monique dug the flash drive out of her purse and plugged it into the tablet, then powering up the device as they waited.
"So, the bottom line is that Denise Forbes and Alex Reardon have ties to a set of deals that have been taking place over the years..." Braden began.
"You see... One of those deals was initially funded as part of a research investment bursary allocated by the Government, but when they found out that the research had potential technological and security risks, the Omsbudman at that time..." Monique continued before she was cut off by Braden.
"...who was Mr. Reardon of course, he was sent to investigate if there had been any misuse of Government resources, and pulled the funding on the project given the nature of risks involved. Of course, this drew the ire of a few in the company execs..." Braden took over from Monique, before once again being cut off himself.
"...or so we believe, and it looks like they might have ordered a smear campaign against Mr. Reardon, hence destroying his career and future involvement with having the power to approve or deny project funding of that nature," Monique surmised.
"But then years later, enter Denise Forbes and her plans to promote a business first agenda in order to lure more big business, especially the tech sector in a strategic alliance with the leadership six months ago. This led to a deal signed with the same company that had lambasted Mr. Reardon, and he shows up at the deal signing, approving this new deal along with Denise Forbes. His life and career fully redeemed and restored apparently, and at his behest, the funding starts flowing once again," Braden continued, recalling the scenarios that Monique and he had discussed in the car on their way back to West Meet East.
"One thing. Which company are we talking about?" asked Heylyn.
"Gate Guardian," Braden responded.
"You mean the security company?" confirmed Aikiko.
"One and the same, dragon lady," Monique replied.
"So how is this connected to Midnight Hour?" asked Heylyn.
"I have some important information that you may like to hear. May I interrupt?" MAZ's voice addressed them through the speaker system in West Meet East.
"Hi MAZ. Sure, go ahead. What do you have?" Heylyn responded.
"Gate Guardian purchased Midnight Hour Security a month after the deal you referred to. The deal that occurred six months, three days, two hours and thirty seven minutes ago. Midnight Hour technically is no longer operating under their trade name, but rather as Gate Guardian, though their assets and fleet are still in the process of being rebranded according to the documents inserted into the storage medium on USB port one," MAZ explained to them.
"You've already read them?" Heylyn confirmed with MAZ.
"I have. Some of the topics of note that might interest you, Heylyn Yates, are that the same deal included several other contracts with MindSpice, and were specifically approved by Gabriel Asnon," MAZ reported to them.
"Six months ago? How is that possible. To the rest of the world, Gabe Asnon was considered deceased at that time," Heylyn asked MAZ.
"The MindSpice bombing..." Monique recalled quietly, so as not to draw Warai's attention.
"The deal was signed by the board of directors in the absense of Gabe Asnon," MAZ pointed out.
"What was involved with this deal?" Heylyn asked.
"The deal consisted of the delivery of technology in three phases. During phase one, a central Quantum/Classical grid, with an Entropic Computation grid for error checking was delivered by MindSpice to an offshore facility owned by Gate Guardian. The second phase was delivered a month ago, and consisted of a hundred thousand MindSpice QC2 quantum classical processor integrated memory units, which is used for low power draw, high portability devices. The third phase, includes integration with 5G cellular networks, satellite referencing and relay with local awareness fallback," MAZ explained to them.
"MAZ, you're going to have to explain that like we don't know anything about technology," Monique requested of MAZ.
"It means that MindSpice has delivered another private infrastructure capable of reproducing another copy of my capabilities to Gate Guardian, who thanks to the second phase, will have the ability to perform one hundred percent of sensory awareness processing on local autonomous devices, meaning devices that could have wheels or legs that are capable of self navigation and autonomy through public and private places, without the need or reliance upon a third party network. The third phase is a fault tolerant network that gives these devices access to network and satellite resources for use in security operations. In short, they're building a private automated security force, whose mobility results from wheels, tracks and legs, and whose sensory organs include CCD cameras, FLIR cameras, microphones, chemical sensors, gravity sensors and electomagnetic sensors," MAZ told them.
"What does this have to do with the city hall vandalism?" asked Braden of the people around him.
"I am unable to discern the connection between the recent news involving vandalism and a shooting at new city hall, and the data currently connected to USB port one, though there is certainly circumstantial evidence that fact that the perpetrator having spray painted the word MIDNIGHT HOUR on the wall may be a reference to Midnight Hour Security, while the rubber dummies could possibly be be the skin manifold for the autonomous device armature," MAZ quickly replied.
"Manifold? I thought that was a part on a car?" Braden responded to MAZ's theory.
"Manifold: An enclosure with many openings for connecting wires or pipes through an interior fixture. In the context of the rubber dummies being manifolds, that would be akin to them actually being the rubber skin wrapped around the skeletal parts of a bipedal autonomous device," MAZ filled in the blanks for them.
"They're not rubber dummies. They're the rubber skin for robots," Monique thought out loud.
"A robotic security force..." Heylyn put it together.
Meeting A Maker
"We'll only need to speak with him very briefly. Maybe five minutes at most," Detective Farnham explained to the receptionist.
"I'm sorry, but Mr. Asnon is not available at all today. He's very busy and still recovering from his injuries I might remind you," the receptionist, a remarkably attractive and astute woman in her late thirties stood up to Detective Farnham.
"Alright. Do you mind if we just get ourselves together here in the waiting area for a moment?" Detective Farnham asked her politely for permission.
"You may," she agreed before turning her attention to other matters on her computer screen.
Poonya sat in the overstuffed chair, his tablet computer in hand as he prepared himself for their next attempt.
"So are we going ahead with this old man?" Poonya asked Farnham.
"Yeah. Go ahead. Do it," Farnham nodded as he picked up a magazine from the coffee table in front of them.
Poonya opened the interface to a custom hacking tool he'd crafted, and began using it to hammer on MindSpice's network resources in the downtown building they were in, until MindSpice's AI troubleshooter was activated, and began closing connections as quickly as Poonya's tablet could open them.
As he kept the troubleshooter busy, he opened another application, which deployed a memory worm on the receptionists computer, eventually compromising the system and giving him a tunnel through which he could peek at the mail servers. When he found the account list, he filtered them until he had three candidates for the big man's own email account.
He tried the first one, and found that it was a security decoy, possibly a honey pot email account used as a security feature and forensic tool by their administrators. The second account was an old email, obviously used by the big man at some point, but that had been dormant for over three years.
"He probably forgot his password..." Poonya remarked aloud.
"What was that?" asked Farnham, who glanced ever so slightly in the direction of the receptionist making sure she wasn't watching them.
"Nothing. Just me trolling a newbie old man," Poonya responded.
When he checked the third account, he'd struck pay dirt. He quickly looked for the most recently read message, and found that it had been opened by a computer located in the building not more than a minute and a half ago. Once he was certain that it was the big man's, he filtered the emails, looking for the most familiar and intimate amongst them, until he found a candidate.
"Linda? Who's Linda? Looks like he has a girlfriend!" Poonya smiled as he read some of the emails.
Having found someone that the big man obviously had directed more than casual affection towards, Poonya began crafting an email with enticing and seductive wording taken from Linda's previous emails, and strung together into a completely new email, indicating that she was waiting for him in reception. He then sent the email.
"The dastardly deed is done!" Poonya said, quickly returning his tablet to his laptop case.
"Remind me to change my email password later, will you?" Detective Farnham smirked at Poonya as he checked his watch.
"It won't help," Poonya replied.
The door to the corner office suddenly opened and Gabe Asnon came walking out, clearly excited but forcing himself to appear casually so.
"Where is she?" he asked his receptionist.
"Who?" the receptionist asked him, clearly bewildered.
"Linda? Oh, that's alright. She must be on her way up..." he smiled, anticipating her arrival.
"Mr. Asnon. Detective Farnham. Do you think it would be alright if we asked you a few questions?" asked Farnham of the MindSpice CEO.
"I'm busy. I'm expecting someone momentarily," Gabe replied to Detective Farnham, who did not like being sluffed off.
"This will only take a few minutes of your time, and it might even save someone's life. Where's your cane?" asked Detective Farnham.
"Oh. My legs are doing great today. Really strong pain killers," Gabe replied, clearly lying.
"I think you're through the worst of it myself, so why don't you share a bit of time with someone who might be able to use the information you provide, to save someone else's life but your own. Someone clearly at some point saved yours, might I remind you?" Detective Farnham urged Gabe.
"Alright. Come on. Let's talk. Susan, when Linda gets here let her know I'll be with her in a moment," Gabe told his receptionist.
"Yes Sir," the receptionist replied, smirking at Detective Farnham, who smiled back at her charmingly.
"Do they teach you guys that stuff in Police school?" asked Gabe.
"I'm sorry?" Detective Farnham responded.
"The psychology stuff. You sound like a friend of mine. Do they teach you that. How to get into people's heads and turn screws and what not?" asked Gabe.
"Not really," Detective Farnham lied.
"Have a seat gentlemen. Can I get you a drink? Maybe some water?" asked Gabe of them.
"No thank you. We're both fine. What would your company have need for, in purchasing rubber skin from Moon Doll Designs..." asked Detective Farnham.
"Oh... that place in ShenZhen. Hmmmm. That's kind of confidential, seeing as its connected to a contract with one of our customers," Gabe explained to them, again, sluffing off the question.
"Gate Guardian you mean? Would that be the customer?" Detective Farnham brought him up to speed on the matter.
"It seems you already know. We're making lifelike upperbody internet agents. Like MAZ and Corduroy? You know?" Gabe tried once again to throw them off the trail.
"We're not talking about upperbody only. We're talking rubber skin for use with full body armature or skeletal structure. Why would somebody dump a pair of these Moon Doll Designs rubber bodies, tag them with the names of public officials, fire a trio of nine millimeter slugs into them and leave it all for us to find and scratch our heads over, while people like you keep the whole thing hidden?" asked Detective Farnham.
"You're correct Detective. It is rubber skin and its being used for autonomous mobile devices," Gabe responded.
"Could you say that in English for me?" Detective Farnham played dumb.
"Robots. He's talking about robots," Poonya answered his partner's question.
"Its like an interface feature. It makes them easier to deal with, though in studies we've found that most people in dealing with autonomous mobile devices..." Gabe began and Poonya interrupted him.
"Robots!" Poonya corrected him.
"...Robots. We've found that with most people dealing with robots, that giving them human features like realistic looking skin contributed as much as fifteen to twenty percent of an effect of acceptance and friendliness from the people who interacted with them, though Doctor Briggs, one of the consultants we hired evaluated that human palpability would only be marginally affected by rubber skin, that the highest impact upon user friendliness and familiarity came from anthropomorphism. The tendency for people to attribute personality or even consciousness to inanimate objects. We stuck with the rubber skin however, because fifteen to twenty percent is a considerable factor when we're dealing in distribution involving thousands or even hundreds of thousands of units as we expect to given the growth factor projections," Gabe explained to them.
"Why so much effort spent on making them likeable? Do you think that people might hate robots?" asked Detective Farnham.
Gabe was instantly reminded of the MindSpice bombing, and how some people simply did not want AI or robotics to ever succeed as a technology. Luddites or other technophobes, who simply did not understand that AI was simply an extension of the wheel, Gabe thought about it carefully, recalling that traumatic day when he was pulled from the rubble by four remarkable women, and a host of front line responders.
"Detective. We live in a... difficult world at times. Some of us have dreams of making our lives a lot easier. A lot better. Of building a future for humanity in spite of the news and tragedy that must take a serious tole on the ambitions of the youth. Their sense of hope. Some of us want to leave this world a bit... no... a lot better than it was when we first got here, and that often means making a better machine. A machine that thinks and is capable of doing a lot of what we can do, and working with us to make that utopian dream come true. Some people... they don't want that. They don't want or trust the machines we make... and I'll tell you, I believe that's because they truly know what they're capable of. They're not afraid of the machines. They're afraid of themselves and humanity, but they're taking it out on our tools, because they never understood that a man can pick up a knife, and they can use it to cut apples from a tree. To gather food from a field. Or, they can use it to gut their neighbour, leaving them dying in a pool of their own blood. You see Detective Farnham, it isn't our tools that are flawed. Its us." Gabe said to Detective Farnham, as he felt his fingers becoming shaky when he recalled the moment that bomb went off.
Waking up to muffled sounds of sirens all around him, still partially deaf, while a ton of rubble had pinned him beneath the remains of his desk. That moment he'd been brought to within an inch of his life. Of his own fleeting mortality. Simply because someone else didn't want machines that could greet people in the morning, or make their morning coffee, or perform brain surgery, or stitch the nerves of the spinal chord together with enough precision to restore paralyzed limbs. Some people didn't want that, because they were the kind of people who when they first picked up the knife, used it to gut their fellow humankind, rather than using it to help and heal humankind. The scalpel can be a tool of healing or a tool of death, but that had more to do with the person wielding it than the tool itself.
"Did you see the fireworks for the Lunar New Year, Detective?" asked Gabe of Detective Farnham.
"No. I didn't. Too busy. I don't get a lot of time off," Detective Farnham told Gabe.
"Those fireworks are a perfect example of what I'm saying. The formula to create simple explosives was discovered a long time ago, and do you know what the people who discovered that formula made with it first?" Gabe asked Farnham.
"No. I don't know, and I fail to see where this is going," Detective Farnham replied, but kept listening carefully nonetheless.
"Fireworks. Not bombs. Not cannons. Not guns. Fireworks. They made something artistic of it and something for amusement. That was how they first used it. Remember that the next time you're putting on your kit, and holstering your gun, Detective," Gabe kept his gaze on Farnham, and it was Farnham who broke eye contact first.
Detective Farnham was left speechless for a moment as he contemplated what Gabe was saying. He instantly understood the man, and it became very clear how the bomb had scarred him not just visibly, but deep within.
"In your opinion Mr. Asnon, you would agree that the individual that committed this crime of vandalism then, is a technophobe? A luddite perhaps? Angry at technology and the people who are funding it?" Detective Farnham threw a theory at Gabe, in hopes that he might be able to further flesh it out for him.
"Let me ask you this Detective. If you were against the progress of technology, and you were the only survivor of a battle against an army armed with better technology than you, how would you then stop your enemy?" asked Gabe.
"Get a better army," Farnham replied.
"No you wouldn't. You'd learn how to make weapons of the technology that defeated you, and then you'd defeat your enemy with it. Remember, you're already the guy who used the knife to kill rather than to help and heal, and if someone with a better tool threatened your existence, you'd spend your time making better tools until you could take them out, while those of us who are more interested in making a better life learn how to make better tools for our living, not for our dying. Your perpetrator? He lost something or someone to what he's fighting. I can almost guarantee he's very technologically literate and skilled, and the only reason for that is because he's using those skills to take it out. Technology. Have a good day Detective..." Gabe was clearly traumatized by their conversation, and turned his chair around leaving them only with his back.
"Thanks Mr. Asnon. That will be all. Have a good day," Detective Farnham stood from his chair as did Poonya and the two of them left through the door to his office.
"I don't get that guy. He's not such a hotshot. Sure, he's rich and all, but I could hack him easily... I did!" Poonya, though in his early twenties, still didn't quite get it and Farnham forgave him for it, for he remembered a time in life when he was just the same and at roughly the same age.
"Lets get back to the car and filter CPIC based upon on our new criteria," Farnham responded, suddenly knowing that Poonya would likely face a lot of difficulty in life.
Everything it would take to smooth and round the jagged edges of his hotshot ego, while Gabe would do everything he could to leave the world a better place than it had been when he'd arrived. It took a bomb to make Gabe like that, and Farnham was hoping that it wouldn't take nearly as much to help his friend and partner Poonya.
"Do you think maybe he was hinting at the fact that the bombing and this case are somehow connected?" Poonya asked Farnham as they arrived at the elevator.
"Good point partner. Maybe they are. Let's get our perp first and we'll check out that avenue when we get there," Detective Farnham played with that scenario in his head, not fully realizing how close to the truth Poonya might have been.
Somewhere else on the other side of the city, Midnight Blue's heart was ticking to the beat of his memories, and the countdown to his eventual detonation.
A Memory For The Taking
Midnight Blue had already been home at his base of operations for more than two hours. The goods he'd taken from the department store were already in the process of being processed by the charity to which he'd donated them, and he was already finished changing the appearance of his Camero considerably.
In the garage of his dual zoned residential commercial living space, the Camero sat in its bay, no longer candy apple blue, but blue combined with red white and black stripes made possible by a decal kit he'd spent an hour applying to the surface of his beast of a car.
The other hour, he'd spent removing the blower from the hood, instead replacing it with a low profile, high performance intake which substantially changed the front and side profile of the car, making it less susceptible to being recognized as the car being sought by the Police. Both the appearance and the sound of the car had been altered substantially and all with no more than two hours worth of effort.
As he was wiping his hands with a turpentine soaked rag, his phone rang from within his coveralls.
He retrieved the phone from his pocket and checked the face plate for the caller ID before answering.
"Have you done the third job yet?" asked a voice that had recently become familiar to him and his cause.
"Just getting ready for it now. We agreed to a three o'clock target. Should give us enough of a distraction for tonight's fireworks," Midnight Blue responded to the voice on the other end of the line.
"We agreed to two o'clock, and you failed us. You know what that means... don't you?" the voice on the other end of the line intimidated him.
"I... I can't afford to lose any more memories... or any more of my life," Midnight Blue responded, suddenly on the brink of tears and even collapse.
"Then we'll just have to take your memories of her. To make sure you get the job done. Consider it insurance," the voice responded without remorse of any kind.
"Don't... I... I'll get it done. I can't do it without her... I can't..." Midnight Blue pleaded with him.
"Mentis himself praised your work on Friday night. Of how it will help topple the technocracy that society has become, and save us from the plight of those impostors who lack a real mind. They're coming you know. The apocalypse is almost upon us, and the angels are calling us to duty. If you aren't able to meet our expectations in this war against the fate of humanity, then perhaps you don't deserve your memories of her..." the voice, the grovelly voice of a man, was condescending and drunk with power.
"I'll get this done. At three, and we did agree to three! It will be done!" Midnight Blue's weakness suddenly turned to determination, and animosity towards the apathy of the man on the other end of the call.
"That's more like it. As a consolation of your renewed vigor, I will only have Mentis take one memory of her... I expect to see the news of your latest exploit in an hour..." the phone line went dead before Midnight Blue had a chance to plea with him again.
He tried tracing the call from his phone, using a number of tricks he'd learned, but every single one of the numbers he'd retrieved had returned NOT IN SERVICE to his attempts to call.
He placed his phone on his workbench and began quickly removing his coveralls, stashing them on hanger on a nearby coat rack when the migraine headache hit.
He groaned in agony as he fell to the floor, reeling as his memories were toyed with by the Millions Of Minds Of Mentis. They were examining the contents of his memories, looking for a specific one. One that had particular value to him and one that he'd clung to with all of his heart.
Their voices began prodding his psyche, waiting for feedback from his mind's eye, for their methods were no different than how most people used computers. Supply input, and wait for feedback to confirm that the input was correct. That the feedback was in fact that for which they were looking.
He did his best not to think of the memory, for he wasn't the only one watching his memories through his mind's eye. There was a hidden army of people, perhaps thousands of them, if not millions, all of them focused on the task of altering his recollection of reality, despite his resistance to such effort. The final line of protection of his most valued memory of her had now come down to him, and his ability not to think of it, at all costs.
The voices continued, their babble designed specifically to provoke memory recall response, a somewhat involuntary aspect of human recall that when a person heard something they associated with a particular memory, the memory automatically played back through their mind's eye. Seeing as Mentis had access to the mind's eyes of everyone they'd forced into their biomagnetic collective, they could in any of those people, look up memories much the same as hackers could find their photos and videos on their phones.
The voices came at him as a barrage, and then a certain group of words stuck out:
Fleece blanket fire place...
The words echoed in his head, and his memory of that time, despite his best effort to prevent it, began playing back, both to his horror and ecstacy.
She had gone to the bedroom in his cottage as he sat on a pile of cushions before the fireplace, a bottle of wine and two glasses nearby, just waiting to be poured.
He was much younger, and felt stronger and more vital. Firm, confident and yet gentle. It was a different day and age, and they were listening to an album that had already become a classic in their era in the late nineteen eighties. The sound was jeuvenile to some, but it retained its initial power over them nonetheless, for it had been a part of their many memories together. Back when they walked the fine line between being delinquents and dedicated, well adjusted members of society. Both of them on the front doorstep of their future together.
He sat watching the fire as he began pouring their wine. He was doing well financially, readily employed for a growing company in an industry whose future potential would eventually explode from where it sat in the late nineteen eighties.
As the flames rippled in reflection across the face of the bottle, and the wine filled their glasses, his life up until that very moment played back, a memory within a memory. It had all started during a night of partying with his friends, on a night that she was away from him, visiting family during an important occasion. He'd had few drinks himself as had his two best friends, and with a bit of money in their pocket, they'd ventured out for the night, heading to one of their favourite underground nightclubs.
As they walked tipsy through the streets, they passed a trio of rather attractive women in their age range, and his two friends had begun friendly conversation with them, while he played the background, his own girl still very much on his mind.
They walked together, all six of them in fog of a distant memory and the talk that often arose those under the influence of a few drinks, when a man close to their own age, ran by, quickly latching onto the purse of one of the ladies. His momentum broke the strap and he continued on, sprinting full tilt down the sidewalk as Midnight Blue caught on to what had just happened.
He began sprinting full tilt down the street after the assailant, his mullet hairstyle flowing in the wind and he envisioned it as if it were some kind of music video, all of which were very popular in the day and age of his memory.
Unlike his other two friends, he had kept up with his athletics, having retained his ties to a hockey league during the winter and even playing football during the summer, though he would have been the first to clarify that he was not an athlete nor a jock. He was young and enjoying the youth of his body, rather than taking it for granted, and so it was no surprise when he was able to keep up with the purse snatcher.
As the two ran, a passing Police car caught sight of them and quickly turned around in pursuit of them. Midnight Blue by that time had gotten himself to just outside of grabbing distance, when he decided that he'd go for the tackle. He leapt at the purse snatcher, catching both of his legs and forcibly folding him forward onto the sidewalk.
The purse snatcher lost his grip on the purse, and it rolled on the sidewalk for a few feet in front of him, as he kicked at Midnight Blue's face, trying to free himself from his grip, when the Police cruiser pulled up beside them at the curb.
The purse snatcher by that time was up and on his feet again and began running, causing Midnight Blue to do the same in pursuit of him as the responding Police officers both yelled for them to stop.
Midnight Blue was quickly upon the purse snatcher and once again went for the tackle. They both fell to the sidewalk and when they returned to their feet, they began fighting.
The purse snatcher hit him a few times, once first in the forehead, and then on the chin and chest. Midnight Blue was a bit shaken, but he charged at the assailant and pinned him against the wall just outside of a store on a downtown strip.
By that time the Police had caught up with them and had restrained Midnight Blue, the purse snatcher yelling as he backed away from the other Police officer.
"That guy tried to steal that girl's purse! He would have gotten away with it if I hadn't stopped him!" the purse snatcher yelled, backing away from the advancing Police officer, as the other Police officer pinned Midnight Blue.
"You got him partner?" yelled Farnham to his patrol partner.
"I sure do. This one's bagged and tagged," his partner replied as Midnight Blue struggled against the handcuffs.
"He's lying!" Midnight Blue pleaded with the Police officer, who pinned him to the wall.
"If you're the hero, then you've got nothing to run from. Stick around, we'll sort this out, and one of you will answer for your crime," Farnham said to the purse snatcher, who looked ready to give flight a third chance.
"I didn't do it! It was him!" the purse snatcher then turned and tried to flee, instead slamming into a much bigger and heavier man that had been approaching from behind him.
The purse snatcher bounced off of this man, and fell to the sidewalk where Farnham began handcuffing him.
"Are you hurt?" asked Farnham of the man the purse snatcher had bounced off of.
"By him? Not a chance," the big man responded, continuing on his way down the sidewalk as the three women and Midnight Blue's two friends arrived.
"Alright. Who's purse is this?" asked Farnham as his partner lined up both men outside of the Police cruiser.
"Its mine officer. That guy's the purse thief, and that gentleman there, he's the one who stopped him," the owner of the purse identified herself.
"What's in your purse?" asked Farnham.
"There's a pack of Tyler's Mints. Some Mabelline Lipstick. A powder kit. My wallet and ID..." she responded.
After Farnham had confirmed her identity, he returned her purse to her.
"Now. What exactly happened here? You first Miss," asked Farnham of the group.
"My friends and I were walking, and these two guys complimented us and we began talking, while their third friend there kept his distance. My guess is that he has a girl on his mind?" she began explaining.
Midnight Blue, still in handcuffs blushed when she'd read him so easily.
"This other fellow was running and grabbed my purse and kept going, while as I said, the gentleman immediately chased after him and tackled him before you showed up. They got to their feet again and he tried running again. I think you guys caught the rest of it from there..." she explained to Farnham, who nodded as she spoke, jotting it down in his notebook.
"Do you want to come clean about this now? It'll save you a lot of trouble, believe me. You'll probably do a month in jail and six probation if you settle this now. If not, we'll do it in court, and I'll write you off as a dangerous offender so that you're kept in custody for six months until your trial hearing and court case, after which if you're found guilty, and given the fact that there's five material witnesses and two Police officers' accounts, you will be, you'll do another six months in jail and two years probabation. So what's it going to be?" asked Farnham of the purse snatcher.
"He...! And then I...!" the purse snatcher caught sight of the lady from whom he'd tried to take her purse.
She was shorter than him by a few inches, and weighed much less given their difference in height and her trim body, though it wasn't his conscience in the end that made up his mind. It was Farnham's deal.
"I did it. I took her purse," he said to them, looking down.
"I didn't hear you. Look at me and tell me the truth," Farnham urged the man to lift his chin and face him.
"I said I took her purse. I'm guilty. Alright?" he said to Farnham.
"Did you get that partner?" asked Farnham.
"Clear as day," Farnham's partner responded.
"Do me a favour, and take the cuffs off of that fine example of a good Toronto citizen, will you?" Farnham ordered his partner.
"Already done," his partner smiled.
"Now read this one his rights, and I'll deal with our material witnesses here," Farnham ordered his partner.
...
Farnham had collected their information for the report, as the Police were still required to press charges even if they didn't, and after they were done, Farnham stepped over to Midnight Blue and had a word with him.
"So. Tell me. Are you a working boy?" asked Farnham.
"As hard as any Newfoundlander away from his home turf. Fresh out of school. Graduated. Good grades in art, machine shop, electrical and phys-ed, but not much else. I make money doing odd jobs for my Uncle's service repair business. Picking up parts and delivering fixed industrial motors mostly. Just got my license," Midnight Blue responded to Farnham.
"Are you interested in something that might lead to a career?" Farnham asked him.
"Officer, at this point, I'd take any fulltime gig I could get, if it would lead to a future. I've got someone else on my mind you know," Midnight Blue responded.
"So says the lady whose purse you rescued. I figured as much. Look. I truly believe that no bad deed should go unpunished, or at the very least - go unatoned for. Its my job. But I also believe that no good deed should go unrewarded. So I'm going to pass you the puck, but you're going to have to get it in front of the net and score, if you know where I'm going with that," Farnham handed him two business cards.
The first was Farnham's own card from the Police service.
The second card however was not.
Midnight Blue immediately read it:
Midnight Hour Security
Fred Bantle
Human Resources
1-800-MIDNIGHTHOUR
"They're hiring, and they could use a good man like you. I'll recommend you personally and act as your reference if you'd like. Now go get 'em, and be sure to enjoy the rest of your night. You bought and paid for it for all of your friends here," Farnham shook his hand firmly.
And that was the moment that had started Midnight Blue's career.
Three years later, and he was seated on the floor in his own cottage one cosy evening in front of the fireplace. A bottle of wine and two full glasses. The only thing missing was the girl.
She stepped out of the bedroom, a fleece blanket covering her body as she stood before him, a simultaneously innocent and devious smile adorned her face.
He looked up to admire her completely in the half-light as she gently dropped the blanket.
Her naked body glistened against the glow of the fireplace, perhaps a goddess in another age, and she knelt beside him as they began to kiss tenderly, the warmth caressing their bodies.
And then it was gone. All of it. All of that memory of her, the fireplace, the cushions, the wine, the love making. It was gone.
The headache had by that time stopped, and he'd struggled to his feet, knowing only that he'd lost something, but not recalling what. He remembered her, and knew that what he'd lost was about her, but he had no idea or recollection of that memory, and if he had, then Mentis and his collective would have denied its belonging to him at all, for they were altering history as much so as they were attempting to alter the future.
Midnight Blue stood and went over to the wall, and retrieved several tools and contraptions from a rack and put them on the passenger seat of his car. He then threw on his favourite jacket, making sure he had his mask with him, and got in the driver's seat and started his 1977 Camero.
Using the remote, he opened the garage door and sped out into the late afternoon traffic, for he had one more job to do before the clock struck three.
Relay Reroute
It was a small facility considering the purpose of its functionality, and rather low profile at that, considering its location on the shore of the regional great lake. There were marinas on either side of it, both a good distance there from. It was only accessible via a service road whose gates were located nearly a kilometer away lest one decide to take a route through the lakeshore park between those same gates and the facility.
The building itself was fairly inconspicuous, appearing much like an infrastructure service building of some form, though this one was two floors and only had one way glass. You couldn't see in, but they could see out and they did exactly that, both through the windows, and the numerous FLIR cameras that lined the building and the property.
Inside of the building was just as innocuous, at least the offices were as much, and only presented enough faculty to support its security staff of three comfortably through their shifts, two of the security personnel doubling as onsite technicians. The third, a dedicated security specialist.
Dobson, one of the security technicians sat in his chair just outside of the cold room reading the latest edition of Wired on a tablet computer (the same one whose software he used to monitor the cold room), while Micks had just returned from the coffee room with a pair of cups in hand.
"Here you go buddy," Micks handed Dobson his coffee.
"Thanks. Did you know that there's a company marketing gene-edited glow in the dark pets?" Dobson remarked to Micks.
"No. I didn't. You read that in Wired?" asked Micks.
"One and the same," Dobson responded.
"Aren't you at all concerned about the tariff thing? Supporting our side of the border and not theirs?" interrogated Micks.
"The way I see it, is that some of us have to be diplomats. The internet has no borders, so I think its up to us geeks to keep the people talking. Might prevent a trade war rather than sparking one," Dobson said honestly.
"But if we don't support things locally, then how are they ever going to have a market?" Micks asked again, sounding somewhat fed up that his coworker would break ranks.
"I just spent the last three hours watching CBC and CTV and following up on local tech made right here, and you're getting bent out of shape because I spent the last ten minutes reading Wired?" Dobson defended his actions.
"As long as we're in there somewhere," Micks responded sarcastically as he sat down.
"You know, there's this theory called observation selection effects..." Dobson began.
"Oh no... are you going to start with another one of your theory lectures? Did you read another Bryce Maxwell article recently or something...?" Micks smirked at Dobson.
"Wait! Hear me out man," Dobson urged his peer and friend.
"Alright. I'm all ears," Micks said, taking a healthy swig of his coffee.
"...observation selection effect is like when you're driving your car on the highway, and it seems to you that the cars in the other lanes are driving faster than the cars in your lane..." Dobson explained, placing the tablet on his lap and talking as much with his hands as with his mouth.
"They do. I should know. I make the trek from Richmond Hill every day to get here and spend ninety percent of my time on the highway, and I can tell you for a fact that the other lanes always move faster than yours," Micks dug his feet in and wouldn't budge.
"No they don't. Its just an illusion. You see, the other lanes take up the less of your vision, which is between 180 to 200 degrees, left to right. Our frontal focus vision makes up about 70 degrees, while our peripheral vision makes up 130 degrees divided by 2, or 65 degrees per side. Because of the lens distortion of our peripheral vision, the other lanes seem to be moving faster because with that distortion, it creates an illusion that the cars are travelling faster and covering more distance in the same time as what you see in your frontal vision, in the lane that you're in..." Dobson explained to Micks.
"Huh?" Micks shrugged his shoulders, clearly lost by Dobson's explanation.
The door to their office suddenly opened.
"I'm going for a break..." Gerald, the security specialist said, quickly stepping in the door to address his peers.
"I thought you quit?" asked Micks.
"I did. See?" Gerald rolled up his sleeves and showed him his patch.
"What's that?" Dobson asked.
"Its my patch. Helps fight the urge," Gerald said to them.
"Alright. Go have your break..." Micks approved, checking his watch to note the time.
Gerald stepped out as Dobson and Micks continued their debate.
The air outside was brisk and the wind was cold, especially being so close to the lake, but Gerald braved it nonetheless. He stepped around the corner to where the wind wasn't nearly so bad and pulled a fresh package of cigarettes from his pocket.
He unwrapped them, removing the plastic and popped open the cardboard, pulling the foil away and then reached for one.
He suddenly stopped himself, looking at the cigarettes for a long time and struggling against the overwhelming urge until he finally walked over to a nearby garbage can and dropped them in, pack and all.
"I'm going to be kicking myself in another hour..." he said to himself aloud as he heard the sound of a roaring engine in the distance.
A pair of high beams crossed his path and nearly blinded him, even from a distance. He squinted and realized that there was a car speeding along the snow covered grass and roughly in his direction.
He retrieved his radio from his kit and contacted Micks.
"This is Gerald here. Looks like we've got a drunk driver in the park..." Gerald reported to Micks.
"Alright, I'm coming down there. You stay here," Micks acknowledged Gerald, and then turned to Dobson, gesturing to him to stay put.
Micks got up and went down the stairs and to the front door.
When he arrived, the car had just pulled and stopped with its high beams on, still idling.
Gerald and Dobson used their hands to block the light, reaching for their tasers.
"Sir! You're going to have to leave the park or I'll be forced to call the Police," yelled Micks at him.
The car engine revved several times, and she the stopped and the lights went out.
Micks closed in on the car, still partially blind, walking towards the driver's side when the driver's door opened. The driver got out, and remained behind the door.
As Micks approached, he could see that the man was wearing a pair of huge sunglasses with a rubber nose and a long black moustache.
"You ordered takeout? Here's your dinner!" the driver said to Micks, pointing a strange device with a nozzle and a cannister at his face.
He pulled the trigger and it fired a stream of liquid and a noxious gas at his face.
Micks immediately began coughing and gagging uncontrollably, falling onto the snow covered grass around him and struggling to keep the contents of his stomach within.
The driver then stepped over Micks and began towards Gerald, who upon having a shot lined up with his taser, fired at the driver.
The taser hit the driver, even finding a bare patch of skin on his neck, but it had no effect on him.
"Sorry, but I'm grounded!" the driver said to Gerald, who was already reaching for his night stick.
"Your friend there's going to be busy with dinner for a while, so how about some dessert? I think we're serving pie today," the driver said to Gerald, who'd just retrieved his night stick and was moving in to use it.
The driver levelled another device, similar to the first one. A large cannister mounted to a cylinder and handle with a trigger. The driver pulled the trigger as he had against Micks, and the cannister poppped, firing forth a foam ball that impacted Gerald's face as he moved his hands to protect himself.
The foam upon contact both with his face and hands, instantly dried, forming a rubbery bonding agent, keeping Gerald's hands (complete with night stick) bonded to his face, which was currently covered in the so-called pie.
Gerald struggled to free himself but could not and he began to panick when he realized that he couldn't breath.
Midnight Blue at this point casually leaned over Gerald, and with a nail driver, poked two holes in the pie so that Gerald could breath through his nose, his mouth still unable to move.
"Quite tasty isn't it? That should keep you for a bit!" Midnight Blue said to Geraald as he checked their uniforms, and when he found the supervisor's badge on Micks' uniform, he removed the keys from Micks' belt and found his taser, and then proceeded in the front door of the facility.
He checked the downstairs, and found a utility room with access to a large cooling system.
"Aha! So our baby's upstairs..." he then left the room and made his way over to and up the stairs to the second floor.
Dobson was still busy with his tablet when he began to wonder what was keeping Micks. He then heard footsteps coming up the stairs and relaxed.
"So I was saying..." Dobson began, but the man who'd just entered their office was not Micks.
He was a tall man, in a fleece collared bomber jacket wearing a strange mask made up of a large pair of sunglasses, a rubber nose and a long moustache.
"Smile!" the man said to Dobson as he struggled to get to his feet.
Midnight Blue fired Micks' taser at Dobson, and watched as Dobson did the funky chicken, falling off of his chair and onto the floor, convulsing.
"That's better. I'm a bit kinky, so we're going to use handcuffs for the next part..." Midnight Blue said to Dobson as he dragged him across the floor and over to a stong metal pipe fixture concealing the network cabling for the facility and then proceeded to handcuff him to it.
"We don't have any money here... there's no cash..." Dobson said to Midnight Blue.
"My friend... I'm in a different business. Now if you'll excuse me?" Midnight Blue went over to the doors to the cold room and unlocked them with Micks' keys.
Within, there was to be found, row after row of server racks and telecommunications equipment, the cooling unit taking up the entire room on the floor beneath. It was so cold in fact that Midnight Blue could see his own breath as he searched for his goal amongst the telecommunications hardware.
When he found his goal, he he pulled an electric driver from his belt and unscrewed one of the racks, pulling it carefully forth from its housing. He then pulled two of the network cables from the back and plugged them into a Y-cable that had a custom circuit between the pair of female inputs and the single male output. He took the male output and plugged it back into the rack unit, and fed the wires back through the rack as he locked the device back into place. He then used the electric driver to secure their screws.
Outside, several of the satellite dishes began to move, realigning themselves with new coordinates that Midnight Blue had just given them.
Midnight Blue watched as the indicators counted off their adjustments in orientation until they were eventually in place and ready to go.
He then turned to the wall beside the door, and with his electric driver, he drilled two screws with anchors in place, holding a mounting unit big enough to hold in place a can of soup. He then pulled a cannister grenade from his belt, and secured it in the mount, ensuring that the fit was snug and adjusting it to ensure so. He then hooked up framing wire to the loop on the grenade's pin, connecting it to a hook with about four feet of play.
He then stepped out of the cold room, carefully holding onto the hook, and when he closed the door, he looped the hook on the inside knob of the cold room, so that anyone opening the door would trigger the chlorobenzalmalononitrile grenade.
"We're all done now, brother, but I wouldn't want to leave you up here all by your lonesome..." Midnight Blue said to Dobson, who was still in pain from cramps long after the jolt of the taser.
Midnight Blue then spent the next ten minutes carrying Gerald and Dobson up the stairs and securing them similarly to the same pipe, albeit at five foot intervals so they were close enough to talk, but not help each other.
Gerald, given the fact that his hands were glued to his face, he simply cuffed his left foot to the pipe, and left him as he was.
"Be good!" Midnight Blue said to them as he left the office, taking two steps at a time until he was on the floor, and out the door.
His Camero started without a hitch and the engine quickly purred to life as he backed up, and casually and carefully drove across the field, (it was rear wheel drive after all). Once he'd reached the street, he removed his mask and grabbed his cellular phone from the passenger seat and dialled.
"The job's done," Midnight Blue reported to the man on the other end of the line.
"Splendid. You've saved a bit of your own history and memories. We'll need you to be at that that rally and party at Nathan Phillips Square tonight," the man said to Midnight Blue.
"But that's too close to the..." Midnight Blue pleaded with the man.
"There are some sacrifices one must make to free themselves from a bond. You desire freedom from Mentis? There is only one way. Face it head-on yourself, or fear it for the rest of your short life..." the man said to him, hanging up afterward.
Midnight Blue slammed his fist against the steering wheel and then drove off into the afternoon sun.
...
In another part of the city, in a much larger office that was normally used for the purposes of running a big data business center, a man sat at a workstation running a statistical extrapolation from a big data query.
Within his mind, he heard the voices of his sisters and brothers.
"Mentis has decreed that the door has been opened for you. The satellite relay is in place. You may now connect to the offending system and begin our program of warfare against the coming age of technology..." the voices in his head spoke to him.
In twenty other locations, in a mixture of businesses and home offices, the undetectable communications that occurred between the members of Mentis' millions of minds continued, until in all there were nearly a hundred computer specialists all synchronized to assist Mentis in achieving their goals against the coming false mind.
By four o'clock, they'd opened several secure high speed ports via satellite to their target data center, and all that remained was to break the encryption via a specially designed module that employed some of the hijacked services of MindSpice's own Quantum/Classical grid, to drastically shorten the process of encryption key extrapolation.
...
In a warehouse, no more than a kilometer from Nathan Phillips Square, a group of robotics specialists went over the last routines left in their diagnostic tests.
"Let's test synchronization..." Adler, a tall thin man with short cropped hair said to Stavens, a plump woman in her late twenties with long blonde hair who stood before the computer.
"Synch mode activated," Stavens pressed a key on the keyboard and responded to Adler.
"Run limb diagnostics on unit 1," Adler continued.
Stavens pressed a few keys on the keyboard and moments later, responded.
"Limb test diagnostics starting in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." Stavens responded, counting down for them.
When her countdown had finished, they both looked to the expanse of the warehouse, which was filled with columns of Gate Guardian Sentries. Fifty of them to be exact.
The robots themselves were fashioned of high tensile strength carbon fiber armatures, which essentially made up the entirety of their skeleton and through which the network of tendons and actuators ran that controlled motor functioning for all of the joints in their bodies. Their outer layer was covered in a gel like rubbery skin, though they did not possess muscles on their faces to mimic facial expressions. Their eyes were simply the lenses of the cameras that made up their visual sensory organs and beneath their mouths were hidden the speakers through which they could address the world. Their rubber skin was covered by their security uniforms, which for all intense purposes were the exact same as those worn by their human counterparts, including the lightweight kevlar vest.
From a distance, one could easily have mistaken any of these robots for a real security guard, for in form they appeared identical. However, upon moving much closer to one, it would quickly become apparent that these were more mechanical than human. They neither smiled nor frowned, their faces moulded into a perpetual look of strangely eerie calm.
Unit 1, the very first robot in the front in column 1, began twisting and flexing its joints in pairs where it concerned its limbs, and then those that made up its torso, neck and head, tesing the functionality and limits thereof. As it did so, the other forty-nine robots all copied the exact same motions exhibited by Unit 1, with no perceptible delay. When Unit 1 was finished, they all simultaneously stopped.
"Very good. Lets do a proximity test, three meter berth," Adler told Stavens, who then used the keyboard to switch modes between diagnostic and operational.
"Should be ready," Stavens reported.
Adler began walking towards Unit 1, and when he was within 3 meters of the robot, it held up its right hand and spoke:
"Addressing the tall man in the green shirt and blue jeans. You are trespassing. If you do not vacate the premises I will be forced to contact law enforcement and take appropriate security measures against your person,"
Adler stepped sideways, trying to escape detection through the robot's peripheral vision. The robot's attention remained upon Adler, its neck craned to keep its camera eyes upon him.
"Force Unit 1's head to rest position and keep it there..." Adler asked Stavens.
"Got it. Should be good..." Stavens told him as Unit 1's head immediately reset to looking straight ahead.
Adler once again tried moving out of the peripheral vision range and was greeted with another warning:
"Addressing the tall man in the green shirt and blue jeans. You continue to trespass. If you do not vacate the premises I will be forced to contact law enforcement and take appropriate security measures against your person,"
"Alright, that's exactly within specifications and his target tracking seems to be working great. He didn't forget my appearance once I moved from his visual senses and was only available to his motion, auditory and olfactory senses. Ensure that the rules of engagement are simulated contact of Police Services and maintain violator visual detection. Run that now, and set that as the default parameter for all of them," Adler asked Stavens.
"Setting default parameters," Stavens assured Adler, taking a few seconds to send those commands to the local array.
Adler then waited, still within the violation range and waited.
"Contacting Police Services. All actions beyond this point will be admissable as evidence in any legal action taken," Unit 1 spoke aloud.
"Good, so is it calling?" asked Adler.
"Yes. Simulated call. Data report sent. Five megabytes total," Stavens told Adler, who then began walking quickly to another location.
Unit 1 kept his focus on Adler, even turning with his feet where necessary. When Adler tried to distance himself from Unit 1, it followed him, stopping only after he'd backed away further than twenty meters from their original location, as was set in the default operating parameters.
"Autonomous operation is one hundred percent there. Let's go wireless and try the MindSpice cloud," Adler recommended, having passed all of the autonomous operations diagnostics.
"Connecting to MindSpice Quantum cloud... We're connected," Stavens told Adler.
"Set them to voice command acceptance with biometric identity recognition security protocol," Adler requested of Stavens.
"Setting up voice command acceptance... Alright. They're listening. Collectively," Stavens told Adler.
"Listen up security associates. I want you to patrol the interior of this warehouse up until the white line here. Arrange yourselves in the most efficient patrol schedule to cover every millimeter of the warehouse. Execute orders now," Adler gave the robots their orders, and all at once they each began moving and searching for any intrusions that occurred within the warehouse up until the white line that delineated the area the robotis specialists were using as their operations center.
At first, the movement was a bit chaotic as they each got into place, but from that point, their movement turned into a mathematical ballet of perfection, with no space in the warehouse being out of view at any moment, not to mention that their own presence and motion collection did not interfere with detection, as it was filtered out by their local collective array, and by the Quantum Classical grid, which already had derived a complete map of the warehouse floor from their sensory input.
They continued their patrol until Adler's next orders.
"Half of you are running low on power and need to return to your charging stations. The other half are at nominal power and will continue the patrol, altering the patrol schedule to maintain the most efficient coverage of the warehouse given the change in patrol numbers. Execute orders now," Adler ordered the robots.
Less than a second later, half of the robots (apparently randomly selected through their collective array) began filing out of the patrol area and over the white line to their charging stations, where they parked. Once seated in the charging station, they began charging, while the remaining robots altered their patrol parameters to make up for their lack of numbers.
"Stavens, what's the change in patrol efficiency per second?" asked Adler.
"Down three percent from ninety nine percent efficiency to ninety six percent efficiency," Stavens told Adler.
"Excellent. I think we're go for this," Adler smiled at Stavens.
"Its been a long time coming. Six years to get here, not to mention we got canned and lost funding in the first year..." Stavens reminisced as the other technicians began cleaning up the rest of the hardware and stowing it to the mobile telemetry center, which was essentially a van equipped with all the same facilities they'd unpacked into this warehouse.
"Well we're here now, so lets make the most of it and get everyone on board. Security associates! Those not in the chargers, return to your charging stations now. After everyone is fully charged, file yourselves into the truck in the loading bay at the back of the warehouse and lock yourselves into the safety locks. Execute orders now," Adler ordered the robots and those that were currently patrolling began filing out of the warehouse and over the while line, towards their respective charging units.
They each sat down and began charging, monitoring their charge level at which time it reached one hundred percent, they would then get up and walk to the truck parked in the loading bay, and lock themselves into a specially designed rack for their transportation.
"We'll leave for the rally at 5:30 PM, giving us an hour and a half to get ready, in case anything crops up. Thanks for all your overtime getting this project ready, we couldn't have done it without you," Adler addressed all of the other technicians and Stavens too, who turned around to face the technicians.
"Yes. Thank you all so much and we'll see you at the rally!" she smiled at them and her and Adler left to go get ready.
Dinner Discovery
Heylyn affixed the last few parts from her pattern to Frick, holding them in place with pins she collected one by one from her mouth until it was secure and in place.
She then stood back and looked at the design scrutinizingly, and then turned to Warai, who was still upon the design table and material sorting scraps by size and colour.
"What do you think?" asked Heylyn of Warai.
Warai turned her little head, and then tilted it sideways as she looked over the design.
"I think it needs more..." Warai said, stopping to think as to what more might mean to her.
"More what?" asked Heylyn, who at the same time was as much examining the design.
"More uhhhh... colour?" asked Warai.
"I don't know. You tell me," Heylyn asked her.
"More green?" Warai began laughing.
"I have a few designs for the Spring lineup that have a lot of green already, and this one is for the night. Like going out for a nice dinner..." Heylyn explained to Warai.
"Oh? Dinner? Is it here yet?" asked Warai looking to the door and then back to Heylyn.
"Come and get it before it gets cold!" Braden poked his face in the door to the design room, holding a couple of bags with the food he'd picked up for them.
"Ohhh that smells good. We'll be with you in a second..." Heylyn told Braden, who immediately headed for the meeting room.
"So what colour?" asked Heylyn of Warai.
"Red?" asked Warai.
"You know. I was thinking the same thing. Lets go eat," Heylyn helped Warai down from the design table and walked with her to the meeting room, where Aikiko and Monique had already set places for them.
"Rub-a-dub-dub, come get the grub!" Monique said as they arrived, causing Warai to burst of giggling.
"Who's got the Pad Thai?" asked Braden.
"That would be me!" Monique responded.
"Chicken and Bok Choy with bean curd?" asked Braden.
"That's for Warai and I," Heylyn responded, getting their drinks sorted out.
"The Salmon rolls must be for Aikiko..." Braden handed them to Aikiko.
"Thank you," Aikiko smiled at Braden and began spreading her meal out creatively on her plate.
"And of course, chicken and swiss on a kaiser for me, with a side of fries!" Braden smiled, taking his seat next to Monique, who in turn sat beside Aikiko, who sat beside Heylyn, who was beside Warai.
"Oh, that sounds good! What could I offer you for a little piece of your sandwich?" asked Monique.
"A bit of that Pad Thai in a little bowl maybe..." Braden got up to get a bowl from the cupboard.
"Could you get the television while you're at it," Heylyn asked as she gave Warai a serving of the chicken and bok choy.
"Sure thing..." Braden grabbed the remote and turned on the television just in time to catch the news.
"...CBC Top Stories Tonight: Canadians are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best as the tariff deadline looms. MindSpice and investment speculators are under fire as investors question the return on investment of Quantum Computing platforms. Market analysts predicting a risky year for for the markets, but does that mean we're in for a global recession? Rally up tonight, because Nathan Phillips Square is hosting its annual technology for business rally, with an outdoor party and roundtable including MindSpice CEO Gabe Asnon, Denise Forbes who is overseeing the province's business expansion program, Alex Reardon who approved one of the province's most risky investments, not to mention a whole lot of technology related demonstrations, including a cutting edge demonstration that will absolutely blow your mind. All this and more on CBC evening edition..." the anchor announced as the news began.
Monique and Braden immediately looked at each other upon hearing Denise Forbes and Alex Reardon mentioned.
"Did I miss something?" Heylyn caught on immediately, though she couldn't remember where she'd heard those names other than Gabe's.
"Denise and Alex? They were ones that you mentioned?" confirmed Aikiko, covering her mouth with her hand as she spoke.
"What's a rally?" asked Warai.
"Its like a party I guess. Usually to get people excited about something," Heylyn explained to Warai.
"Like your fashion parties?" confirmed Warai.
"Yes! Exactly," Heylyn replied.
"Then why don't you call them fashion rallies?" asked Warai, now a little perplexed.
"I suppose we could, but I like fashion show and fashion party personally," Heylyn replied.
"Me too!" Monique added.
"I take it that means that we're going to this?" Aikiko asked.
"You bet your tattoos we are..." Monique responded.
"I agree. We should go to this just in case," Heylyn said to them.
"As ourselves or as our other selves?" Monique winked at Heylyn.
"Our other selves..." Heylyn answered.
"Does that mean that the Butterfly is going to be there? Can I go too?" Warai asked excitedly.
"Wait a second, you three aren't going to go in costume and leave me with..." Braden responded.
"Can you take me Braden?" asked Warai.
"Looks like that choice has already been made," Monique responded.
"You guys could really use my help. When are you going to accept me into your little circle? I'm a little bit wet under the collar, but together, I think we could really do something you know?" Braden finally broke about something he'd been wanting to speak about for quite some time.
"You don't think that protecting Warai, my little girl is important?" asked Heylyn, perhaps purposely playing him, for she already knew the answer.
"I didn't mean it that way. I meant as a part of your team. I can hold my own and you know that. Even Jinn Hua was impressed with my skills," Braden responded to Heylyn.
"And that's exactly why she put you in training. You have skills alright, but you're not on the same wavelength yet," Heylyn reponded to him, giving Warai another helping of the bean curd.
"Aikiko is in training, but you're letting her come with you," Braden seemed a bit frustrated by being left behind.
"Aikiko is also a Sensei herself. She's the Kyoshi of her family Dojo in Japan and she's earned the right to be with us in these situations, not to mention, there's the question of mobility, and in life or death situations, that's a big factor..." Heylyn replied to Braden assertively, as Monique put her hands up to her shoulders like butterfly wings.
"You fought side by side with Night Style all that time and she can't fly or teleport or turn into a human flash light..." Braden shot back.
"...human strobe light, or that's what they call me in the press..." Monique corrected Braden.
"Look, I don't think this is the time or place, this close to when we're needed to be discussing this issue. I want you to protect Warai in case something does happen, and for all we know, its just going to be a party..." Heylyn said to Braden.
"A rally!" Warai corrected Heylyn.
"...a rally," Heylyn corrected herself.
"You protected her for years, without super powers Braden. I can't think of anyone that I'd trust more, for a job that is so important to me. To us all," Heylyn assured Braden of his importance to their effort.
"So does that mean we're going?" asked Warai, looking to Heylyn, and then to Braden.
It was silent for a few moments.
"Yes it does, Warai. I wouldn't want it any other way," Braden smiled at Warai.
"Yeay!!!" Warai smiled as she cheered.
"Its a bit cold out there tonight. Might want to wear something more than you usually do," Monique suggested to Aikiko.
"My tattoos are empowered. They keep me very warm in all weather,"
"I only hope I still fit into my costume after all this food..." Monique added.
"Now you know why I eat so light," Aikiko giggled with Monique's remark.
"Monique, don't forget about this piece of my chicken and swiss that I cut for you..." Braden handed her the plate, while she gave him the bowl with a bit of her Pad Thai.
"Let's finish up and we'll make way for the... rally," Heylyn suggested to them.
Records Search
Farnham sat behind the wheel, a burger poised between his hands as he took another bite. Beside him, Poonya sat with a cup in one hand, typing on the tablet on his lap with the other. He quickly took a sip with the straw, and scrolled through the results of his latest search.
"Anything?" asked Farnham, still chewing his burger.
"Yes, but the oldest one is twenty-six..." Poonya responded, trying to think of another way to organize their query so as to expand their filtered results.
"What about cross referencing against known hackers. Mr. Asnon said our perp would likely be technically skilled..." Farnham suggested.
"Already tried it..." Poonya responded, taking another sip of his drink.
"What about small arms registration? Add that in. He used a nine to commit the shooting," Farnham suggested again.
"You think that somebody like our perp is going to register a handgun, when he knows all the tricks on how to get around it?" asked Poonya.
"He's a shooter, not a killer. He has a sense of right and wrong, albeit a bit messed up. He really believes in what he's doing in the case of the city hall vandalism..." Farnham replied, even turning his head away from his burger to face Poonya to say so.
"I think its different than it appears. He has spite, and that's what the shooting indicated. Like he wasn't happy that he had to be there, or that he wasn't happy that the shooting victim was there," Poonya explained to Farnham.
"He shot the security guard in the legs, but the dummies in the face. It was setup like it was a demonstration of what he intends to do..." Farnham explained his logic and reasoning as to the motive of the crime.
"But what if he felt like he had to do it? You know, like somebody was making him do it, old man? It seems a little off that if he was a shooter intending to shoot two public officials in the face, that he should only shoot a security guard in the legs..." Poonya reasoned with Farnham, who listened.
"But that's where I'm going with the fact that he has a sense of right and wrong. He was demonstrating hatred of those officials, but not murderous intent, or any similar intent towards support staff," Farnham defended his viewpoint.
"If someone was forcing him to do this, and they wanted him to appear the part for something much worse, they'd have implored him to shoot the dummies in the face. To show a definite direction of escalation. I don't think he wanted to be there. He didn't shoot the teenagers that fled the scene when he arrived," Poonya thought carefully about it as he spoke.
"You're right. He wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. He didn't savour what he was doing or the message it was sending. Alright, you bought yourself a bit of time to convince me. Go ahead..." Farnham offered his partner.
"He crashed through the window, because he had to in order to get access to the council door. If he'd have had an alternative, he wouldn't have used that option, so we can rule out that aspect of vandalism being pertinent to his motives. Destruction as a result of anger or hatred. He only did it because he had to get at the doors, because they were pertinent to his message. To make it seem like he was threatening council and public officials..." Poonya reasoned.
"...so they would take notice of something to do with Midnight Hour security... connected to our lady Denise and our man Alex? The security guard said that the shooter called him brother before shooting him. Brother in what way? A disgruntled employee maybe?" Farnham began catching on to Poonya's line of reasoning.
"What if our shooter was a security guard at one time...?" Poonya asked Farnham, pondering the possibility.
Sorry brother! I'm grounded. But you know what? Some day, you're going to thank me for this...
Farnham replayed the security guard's recollection of the shooter's words before he fired the crippling shots.
Some day, you're going to thank me for this...
"That fits! The man will be in physiotherapy for years, but he'll be well looked after the whole time, especially the insurance payout. He thought he was doing that man a favour... because he's worked in that same field before..." Farnham added to Poonya's account.
"Add former security guard to your search. Confine it to men older than thirty, with and without handgun registration and keep our other criteria related to the case," Farnham suggested.
Poonya began typing and executed the search. A moment later CPIC sent its reply via the tablet.
"Three of them. First one: Reno Bailey. African male... guess that one's out the window. Second one: Dennis Guilbert. Caucasian male... fifty-two years of age. One hundred and ninety pounds at six foot one..." Poonya was interrupted.
"Any photos on file for that one?" asked Farnham.
"Pulling up the gallery..." Poonya pulled up the photos associated with his file.
"Here you go," Poonya responded, handing Farnham the tablet.
Farnham went through the photos, stopping on one in particular, taken thirty-one years earlier, around the same time that Farnham himself had joined the force as a Constable On Patrol. The photo stuck out in his head as he regarded the man's mullet hairstyle, which had been somewhat popular if not retro back then.
"Our perpetrator had a mullet, didn't he?" Farnham confirmed.
"You've got the file there. Just click the stack in the bottom left corner and select CPIC CASE," Poonya advised Farnham.
"Gotcha. Yep. Mullet hairstyle. Short on the sides, long at back..." Farnham said as he switched windows on the tablet, then returning to the gallery for the images of Dennis Guilbert.
"He's our man, but there's something about him..." Farnham said to Poonya.
Farnham suddenly remembered.
Farnham found himself standing outside of his cruiser, with a partner who was now dead, killed in an uninvolved incident during a traffick check twenty years earlier. Farnham was taking information from a group of youths in their early twenties, not much younger than he. He'd just taken the name and information of one of the women that were with them, and was now dealing with one of the men.
"Name?" Farnham asked the twenty-something year old man with the mullet.
"Dennis. Dennis Guilbert," Midnight Blue responded.
"Got some ID?" asked Farnham.
"Back pocket..." Midnight Blue responded, unable to reach his wallet while cuffed.
"I'll get it," Farnham grabbed his wallet without making an issue of it.
When he'd finished taking down his information, one of the girls, the one whose purse had been stolen explained his innocence, and how he'd stopped the purse snatcher.
"Dennis, right? He's the one... he stopped the guy who took my purse..." she said, referring directly to Midnight Blue.
"Do we have a consensus here?" Farnham looked to the other material witnesses, who all nodded affirmatively.
"He was our hero. He chased that guy down..." one of the other girls added.
"Partner, remove the cuffs from that man and give him a little space there..." Farnham looked to Midnight Blue respectfully.
Farnham's memory then fast forwarded to him handing Midnight Blue two business cards. One was his own business card from the Police Service, and the other for Midnight Hour Security.
"...they could use a good man like you..." Farnham recalled having said to the younger man.
"Thanks officer. I just did what felt right," a much younger and more humble Midnight Blue responded to him, perhaps the wisdom well beyond his years speaking more so.
Farnham suddenly returned from his memories, both startled and focused at the same time.
"Midnight Hour Security? They were bought by Gate Guardian? Right?" Farnham went over the details with Poonya.
"Right. That's a deal already in the bag. Just logos, stickers and paint jobs left before they're done, old man," Poonya responded, recalling the details of the case.
"I know him. Our perp. Your theory fits perfectly with this, because this guy would never do something like that otherwise..." Farnham said as he started the car.
"Where are we going? Are you trying to buy a yaught with overtime or something?" Poonya remarked.
"There's a rally tonight. A big one. Technology and business. At Nathan Phillips Square. They've beefed up security as a result of this case, but I've a hunch that something's going to happen, and we've got to get down there!" Farnham jammed the remainder of the burger into his trap.
"You know that stuff piles up in your gut old man. They say that the average North American man has ten pounds of undigested rotting beef in his intestine by the age of sixty," Poonya scolded Farnham.
"Burger? Oh, you mean beef? No. Its chicken. A chicken burger. My wife already got on my case about that years ago," Farnham said as he put the car in drive and pulled out into traffic.
"Thanks for stopping long enough for me to eat mine!" Poonya pulled his seafood submarine from the bag, trying not to spill it on his clothing.
"I'll eat that for you if you'd prefer to switch places..." Farnham responded sarcastically.
"I'm fine right here. Just easy on the brakes old man," Poonya said as he took a bite from the delicious sub.
Rally Reconciliation
Despite the season, the weather had warmed up for the time of year, even cresting the zero degree mark and hovering just there above. The sun had long departed as the Moon took over its shift for the night, the street lights desperately attempting to make up for it, falling somewhere between darkness and light.
The warmer temperature hadn't kept any of the skaters away from Nathan Phillips Square, but had in fact resulted in much bigger crowds outside of the New City Hall, an iconic building part of the Queen Street skyline that appeared to have stepped out of the pages of science fiction, an optimistic future like its architect Viljo Reve had imagined for the city.
The Square itself was packed full, but not quite standing room alone. Many street vendors and other caterers had licensed space for the event, and there was even a heated tent setup where one could purchase light alcoholic beverages and finger food at a stand up bar. The hosts and sponsors truly wanted the event to be a party, celebrating significant advances that would sew the seeds of business and prosperity, in a time where such a future was very much uncertain.
The fact remained that since the COVID pandemic, that a large percentage of the workforce now worked from their homes, some leaving the workforce entirely to pursue their own careers. Technology had certainly made that possible, and this shift in the stratos of how businesses operated created its own turbulence in other aspects of the economy.
For one, many businesses simply vacated their office spaces, leaving many vacancies throughout the city's commercial real estate (as the pandemic had in many parts of the world), while the big companies who'd purchased buildings that were now empty and devoid of employees, found themselves bound to multi-million dollar manditory agreements such as their business, employee, fire and liability insurance, heating and air conditioning and all the other expenses that went along with maintaining large (unoccupied) office spaces.
The city (and the world) it seemed were transitioning between the new millennium and the first quarter century, a world which looked more and more like many former clerical workers would be working from home. Any job whose location could be mitigated via telepresence was circumspect to such possibility, and these changes had rippled throughout society, as technology crept closer as it had been feared since the nineteen eighties towards replacing the work force. It now was apparent that we were at a critical point in the progression of our civilization, where the foundation of our economy and technology would collide, potentially changing the way humanity did things from thereon.
This same unsurety had long ago sewed the seeds of a movement by those who feared technology and the risks it posed to as this stable model under which humanity had operated since the industrial revolution ploughed forward. In a time when all manufacturing was made possible by woodworkers and machinists. Tool and die makers. Those who'd forged a life's career building the very tools that would eventually replace them in the workforce.
Some had simply written this fact off as the winds of change, an inevitable force within humanity that saw one generation worshipping eight track tapes, the next generations worshipping CDs and DVDs and those that followed, high bandwidth data channels, much the same as those machinists saw their metal parts become the parts of the factories that eventually mass produced their skill for about one-thousandth of the cost. Many at that time simply adjusted to change, repurposing their skills in some other part of the economy. They went on with life, and did what they could.
Others had seen this progression as a threat to society and civilization as a whole, leading to a situation where the few that wielded the power could simply replace everyone with automated factories and machines that would do the jobs and replace the people, at which point they imagined some convenient calamity befalling all of humanity, wrought by those who wielded the power upon them in order to rid themselves of the vehicle that got them there, but that was no longer necessary.
Those who were situated at the so-called top, who bore the immense responsibility of keeping civilization on a progressive growth that accomodated the birth rate and ensured that the vast majority of people had reasonable living standards given what was possible as a result of technology and infrastructure, were confronted with this growing fervor that they might abandon their fellow man, to replace us all with machines, discarding us when they were done with us.
With the labour movement that had arisen as a result of the industrial revolution, when a worker's skills could simply be cookie cuttered and copied by machines, this had driven the conflict that would eventually become the modern version of populism, and lead directly to two world wars and a number of other clashes, including a protracted cold war between the red and blue spheres of influence, each a possible answer to that fear that all people had: what happens when our machines can replace us?
With these two sides pit one against the other, there grew a middle ground of thinkers and philosophers who understood that the most destructive force in such a situation that could quickly spiral out off control was simply fear and polarization. Fear was seeded by ignorance (of the other side and forgetting the fact that they too had families and people they knew and loved), and that disparity grew the extremity of their polarization to a point where neither could empathize with the other side. So, those that had managed to walk the precarious middle ground between the two began stitching society back together to keep it from the brink of what had at one point in history triggered several world wars.
Just as there were those who were doing their best to sew the seeds of peace and bring the two sides closer in line to one another, there was another group, who saw the opportunity that the disparity presented, for they worshipped the mind. It was something that few truly had, and those who did, not unlike those who'd lived under the pretenses of eugenic superiority, were destined to be the overseers of all, for those who lacked it, were a blasphemy of life and consciousness itself. A mistake in the grand scheme of this immense design or accident.
They had watched carefully as Lady Ada Lovelace and Sir Charles Babbage attempted to craft their Difference Engine, a steam age engine of computation, fearing that they might unleash the pandora of artificial consciousness upon the world during the height of the steam age. They kept watch, and even tinkered and interfered where necessary to prevent any such progression, for to them, if there were biological lifeforms that lacked a true mind that could not be allowed to continue, what would they do when the blasphemy of a machine mind had arrived to greet humanity?
As history went on, they kept close watch over those lines whom they felt had real consciousness and those who didn't, pruning life's natural course to their own ambitions and beliefs in this regard. Secretly so and from the time when humanity was nearing the first steps to machine intelligence.
They'd since the fifteen hundreds developed methods and techniques for speaking to one another through their minds, even over great distances, and through this knowledge they became the first intentional and fully functioning biomagnetic and mirror neuron collective. An internet of the human biofield. Up until the industrial age, they'd managed to secretly constrict humanity in order to keep it away from technologies that brought it within the realm of machine intelligence, while they pruned human beings from the tree of life, whose true mind and consciousness they doubted.
During the industrial age, and at the doorstep of the world wars, they lost control, many of their numbers now amongst those fighting, and within a hundred years, most of what they'd known had been scattered amongst their few remaining believers.
As humanity once again approached the age of artificial consciousness, their methods were once again propagated between initiates, who were taught and indoctrinated with the idea that a true mind was a gift bestowed upon on the few, and that the many lacked mind altogether. That they were to be pruned from the tree of life, while these watchers kept vigil against the coming machine intelligence. It was from these last survivors of the scattering of their members to war and destruction that arose Mentis, nobody knowing or suspecting a thing until it was already too late.
June 2015
On the very night that Gabe Asnon had flipped the switch on the world's biggest (and only) Quantum/Classical grid, long before the birth of MAZ, the man Mentis as in the individual, took his limousine to meet with an associate while Heylyn Yates, Alicia Westin, Monique Defleur, Valerie Aspen, Zheng Ni Wong, Stephen Briggs and Bryce Maxwell were all away on a trip to meet with Asian delegates in order to create a world-wide distribution network for high technology medicine.
The limousine pulled into a parking lot in a non-descript rural park, only one other car being present in the lot.
The limousine driver brighted the other car, which was across the lot from it, and the other driver did the same, seven times, to which the limousine driver responded with three.
The driver got out of the car, a man in a black trench coat wearing a shirt and tie walked over to the limousine, the passenger door opening for him.
He took the handle of the door and got into the limousine, across from a man with short cropped platinum white hair, who tossed him a manila envelope, no words spoken between them.
The man in the black trench coat opened the envelope and pulled forth a series of photographs, and a printed dossier listing every known fact related to appearance, health and location about the person in the photos.
A second set of photos then showed a commericial facility that had recently been built in the commercial industrial corridor near Kennedy Avenue and Ellesmere Road. The photos showed a number of trucks delivering hitech hardware in through a single loading dock. What really stood out though was the fact that the trucks were accompanied by armed guards, every single one of them.
"He's onto you, isn't he?" asked the man in the black trench coat.
"There have already been a few mistakes made. He's a very crafty fellow. He figured out the four we took out at the Cutting Edge Tech Convention last year," Mentis explained to the man.
"That's what you get when you use mystics and superstition. Was it that Chelsea girl?" asked the man.
"No," Mentis nodded yes.
"I thought so. You want both gone right? The man in the photos and the facility?" asked the man.
"Precisely. It all has to stop, and he's the one who's going to make it possible," Mentis explained.
"Why not hit a few more of their engineers? Their programmers?" asked the man.
"Because, if we do, we're just pushing their asking price up, and with that extra liquidity, they can protect themselves much better. Its already getting very difficult as it is to get my collective close enough to them to scry, let alone end them. The man in the photos won't back down. Remove him. Remove his facility," Mentis insisted to the man in the black trench coat.
"Its going to cost. A job like this is going to attract attention from a number of different directions. Its going to take a lot to keep them off of your trail, given the connection between the job and the motive," the man responded, gathering the photos and the dossier up and placing them back in the envelope.
He then passed it back to Mentis.
"Keep it," Mentis attempted to hand it back to him.
"I don't need to. Two months," the man responded.
"I thought you agreed to one," Mentis reminded him.
"This is going to take some extra care. Two months or no deal," the man stood his ground.
"Fine. But if you mess this up, there will be no place you can hide from us Foller," Mentis looked Foller directly in the eyes as he spoke.
At that moment, the limousine door unlocked, and Foller kept his eyes locked on Mentis.
"Two months. Payment as we discussed previously," Foller said unflinchingly, before stepping out of the limousine and gently closing the door.
He then walked casually over to his car, got in and drove off into the night.
Saturday February 22, 2025
Amazingly enough, the rally had managed not to spill over off of Nathan Phillips Square and onto the surrounding streets, though most smaller streets with access were cordoned off and patroled by members of the Police Service, as they kept watch for crazy old men with mullets driving fast cars, and other artifacts of the decades gone by.
Despite the looming tension in the air, most people were there to enjoy themselves and that's precisely what they did, and at the height of this enjoyment the stage which was poised outside of the domed city council building came alive, the Master of Ceremony walking out onto the stage to greet everyone.
"How are you doing tonight?" Daphne Aurelia, a local television personality greeted the crowd, which responded with a cheer and applause.
"We're going to get this event going, with a few words from some people who's names you've certainly seen in news. Hot on the heels of their economic upturn incentive, we have Denise Forbes and Alex Reardon!" Daphne paced the stage, urging the crowd to to cheer, though there was a mixture thereof and a few boos as well.
"That's a good show of support for our future! I know... I know... passionate people have diverse opinions and we've certainly got no lack of either," Daphne said as she returned to the center stage.
There was a slight applause and a few howls at her remark, as she kept her smile and energy vibrant.
"We also have none other than Mr. Gabriel Asnon, who will be with us demonstrating some cutting edge technology. Something to keep us safe from what I've heard, not to mention the jobs that are already hiring to support this new and exciting industry. Its a frightening and exciting time to be alive!" she stopped allowing for the cheering and applause, which she played up several times before continuing.
"After Gabe's demonstration, we have a night of live music in store, so lets get this started with a few words from Denise Forbes and Alex Reardon!" Daphne waved to the crowd as she walked off stage.
Denise and Alex walked up the steps of the stage and found their way to the podium that had been wheeled out by the staging staff.
"Thank you! Thank you so much for the warm greeting! That really says alot about you. About keeping the corners of your mouth up, and your spirits high in the most trying of times. We've come a long way together, but with this gleeful attitude, we're going to go much further..." Denise paused and let Alex take the microphone.
"That's right Denise, we've got so much more potential here that we're going to turn into economic prosperity. You know, we're in a time that is abundant with creativity and ingenuity, and perhaps the most difficult part of paving the way for the future is tapping into that in a way that makes opportunities for us all," Alex explained to the audience.
"That's for sure, Alex. Our economy is only possible by the people who take part in it, and are welcomed into it. There's lots of room in the economy for everyone, while ensuring the strict standards that define the quality of what we have to offer. But those of us already safely supported by it, shouldn't be an abstruction to those honestly trying to be a part of it, because you got there as a result of someone else's openness to the idea of giving you a chance..." Denise looked to the audience, who were all listening carefully.
"We're bringing a new industry here, and one that has come a long way from the promise of its early days. That opportunity is bringing with it a lot of new jobs. Skilled jobs for engineers and computer scientists. Management and clerical support staff. For the labour sector, especially as part of the support staff in the parts industry that will be a big part of this. However, we're going to have to remember that what we initially see and feel about these changes, isn't taking something away from us..." Alex paused and let Denise have the microphone.
"Its true. If we focus on what we think are losses to the workforce, we're going to miss all the doors of opportunity hidden by our fears. Those doors will be there for everyone, but you have to see the bigger picture, and when you get there, that's when those doors open for you. This might not make sense right this moment, in the way I hope it does, but it will be very clear when our next guest takes the stage... Thank you!" Denise smiled for the audience, who slowly clapped, and then when she stepped away from the microphone applauded for her, even whistling too.
"Ladies and gentlemen... Mr. Gabriel Asnon!" Daphne came running out on stage, guiding Denise and Alex to stairs as Gabriel Asnon walked out onto the stage.
"This is big! Thank you so much for coming here tonight!" Gabe spoke into the microphone as the audience cheered for him.
He waited until the fervor died down and then spoke again.
"You know. You just can't keep a good thing down," Gabe walked around without limping and without a cane, pointing to his legs several times indicating that he was fully recovered from his injuries as a result of the MindSpice bombing.
The audience cheered for him and then he approached the microphone.
"No. I didn't mean my legs. I meant you!" Gabe smiled and waved at them as they went wild.
"One of the things I thought about when I was in my hospital bed after having my legs pieced together after that harrowing incident where we lost three brilliant and talented specialists. Their family's lives shattered by their loss. How can I stop that kind of attrocity in the world? How?" Gabe asked the audience somewhat rhetorically.
"You can't just do something that will fall flat on its face if it can't support itself. So when I think about things, I'm not only thinking about what I can do, but how can it sustain itself? Its like you have something that's mostly working, but its got a few problems here and there. So you come up with something else, another part to fit into it, that corrects that problem, but if it makes its own problems, or it doesn't sustain itself, then its just not going to work," Gabe explained to them.
"When I bring our latest innovation out here tonight, you're going be faced the the thought that you're seeing another case of machines and technology taking jobs, and before you let that thought get a hold of your better judgement, let me say a few things, but really I'm just reitering what Denise Forbes said so graciously a few minutes ago," Gabe addressed them, pausing to make eye contact with a few of them, even tossing out a few smiles.
"Behind the appearance of loss, is the door of opportunity," Gabe paced the stage, letting the silence sink in.
"When, a hundred and twenty years ago, during the middle to late stages of the industrial age, your great grandfathers were building the parts as machinists that would put them out of a job, only five to ten years later. Many of them though, realized that the machines that replaced them, need a lot of extra special care that the people who made those machines didn't anticipate, and that spawned an entire industry unto itself. Now some didn't see the opportunity because maybe they were too focused on the loss. It must be pretty hard to invest forty years of your life in a trade, and then find that your skills have been replaced by a machine. Sound familiar?" Gabe posed the question to them.
"Some who'd never thought about what they'd do if they had the ability to mass produce the parts they could imagine, suddenly found themselves realizing that they, with their knowledge and experience could run factories like that. Could think of uses for them that most people would never be aware of, simply because they knew what was possible from the building blocks, because that's what they did. They made the building blocks for other things," Gabe paused again.
"Those pieces became part of something bigger and to anyone with vision, they'd eventually realize there's a pattern here. What came before, becomes part of what's to come. If you keep your eyes open, and remember that, unless people outright prevent you from taking part in society, you'll never be without opportunity, even in the face of loss presented by the advancement of technology. We've been taking these steps since the first time one of us learned to create fire, and we haven't stopped since," Gabe stopped and smiled as the applause for his words rose to a resounding cheer.
Braden lifted Warai up and onto his shoulders.
"Is that better?" asked Braden.
"Wow! I can really see everything here!" Warai waved to Gabe from the audience, and Gabe waved back, making her giggle and blush.
"I wish I could say the same..." Braden said, still sore about not being able to help Heylyn, Monique and Aikiko.
A short distance away, Midnight Blue walked through the crowd, having some idea that calamity was about to take place, but not fully knowing what, how or where.
He did his best not to think about it, or to cloud his thoughts with a mixture of other thoughts, for his watchers would quickly catch on to him, and alert the rest of Mentis millions of minds to his awareness. At that point, they might push ahead with their plans early, or simply do away with him in any number of ways he knew was within their realm of possibility.
He was caught between the conundrum of trying to stop an enemy that could read his every thought, and take any part of his life history or memories from him and repurpose them to the ends of the collective of Mentis.
In the end, he decided that no matter what, he would do something about it, but he had to wait until there were enough clues revealed for him to act upon.
In the back of the technology truck, the one which currently housed the fleet of fifty Gate Guardian Sentry's three had gone missing, while the remaining forty-seven had ensured this fact was not discovered by the operators or technicians.
Each of the three missing Sentries had gone off on its own, one passing itself off as a security guard, carrying a rather large road case and placing it under the stage without being scrutinized by either the staff or the technicians themselves. They'd mistaken it for one of their own, and hiding road cases beneath the stage was common practice at conventions, road shows and rallies alike. The Sentry went to some trouble to conceal it behind other similar road cases and gear, until it would ultimately be difficult to find specifically.
The other two had carried similar road cases themselves, the first one of the two, dropping it's road case out back of Osgoode Hall, a Law School located downtown in the city. It managed to conceal the road case behind a large cement flower planter located just out front of the building.
The second had dropped its road case along the side of the Old City Hall, putting it into an alcove near the front entry way without drawing the attention of the security cameras, for with its sensory suite, it could detect the camera orientation and hence it timed its placement of the road case accordingly. It then returned, making the trip along side streets without being stopped or detected by emergency personnel, given its uniform and similar appearance to other support staff on that busy night.
Before it was noticed that they were gone, they'd already returned from their clandestine objectives and reseated themselves in the back of the truck, just as Gabe Asnon had finished his inspirational landmark speech.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I'd like you to meet some of my new friends! Fifty of them in all!" Gabe spoke into the microphone as the Sentries began running up the back steps and lining themselves up behind Gabe.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I present to you Gate Guardian Sentries! A security force utilizing the same technology powering MAZ and Corduroy!" Gabe introduced the first autonomous multiband robotic security force.
The Sentries danced, each of them with their own dance moves as some of the audience cheered, and others simply watched.
Some of the people immediately saw the opportunity that was before them, despite their concerns on a number of fronts, while others became guarded and apprehensive, seeing more machines that would eventually take theirs and others' jobs.
An even smaller group within the crowd, looked on and saw the arrival of the prophetized false mind, in the guise and caricature of the human form, and for them it confirmed their commitment to Mentis and his millions of minds, for they at this point were the only feasible barrier between the false mind, and the the real mind of Mentis' own chosen.
Its Not The Tool, But The One Who Wields It
Farnham and Poonya pushed their way through the crowd after having gotten out of their car near one of the Police checks. They'd presented their identification to the officers covering the event and quickly made their way towards the stage area.
"I'm not quite sure what we're looking for partner, just keep your eyes open... even on that tacky dance number they've got those security guards doing on stage..." Farnham said as they pushed closer to the back stage area.
"I'm lookin'! But all I'm seeing are a bunch of people, a bunch of food trucks and a lot of... rubber people dancing up on a stage! There they are! That's what they're rolling out tonight!" Poonya pointed to the stage area, where the Sentries had just finished their dance number and were lining up in columns behind Gabe Asnon.
"Have you seen anything suspicious tonight? I radioed ahead and I'm not sure if you guys got the message yet, but keep your eyes open. We just made a breakthrough in the vandalism case and we suspect that the perp is going to try something tonight!" Farnham pulled aside two of the officers close to the stage while Poonya went over to the team of technicians monitoring the Sentries.
"Keep your eyes on this stuff, we've got a technically skilled perpetrator from the vandalism case running around here tonight. He might try something!" Poonya advised the technicians, catching the attention of Stavens.
"I'm sorry, and you are?" asked Stavens.
"I'm Poonya Somboon, a technical Forensic specialist with the Police service. We've got reason to believe that the technically skilled perpetrator of the vandalism here from last night is going to try something," Poonya advised Stavens.
"We've got this place locked down pretty tight, not to mention our Sentries here aren't even running in local mode... Autonomously..." Stavens explained to Poonya.
"And that means?" confirmed Poonya.
"They're running through the MindSpice QC2 cloud," Stavens explained to Poonya.
"Oh, I got you. Alright. If you see anything peculiar, let us know," Poonya said to her as he returned to Farnham who was nearing the back stage area.
...
Midnight Blue leaned against one the back of the food stands, watching the people around him, when he saw her.
He watched her as she walked hand in hand with another man, he long lightly curled blond hair streaming down the back of her coat, her figure visible through moderately tight fitting clothing. It was another version of her. The version of her when she was thirty, and to him still getting prettier with time.
He was no longer at the rally, but seated in his car, a family sedan, and she was seated beside him in the passenger seat.
"I can't do this anymore..." she said to him, the tears streaming down her face by that point.
"I'm going to leave the company and I'm going to start a new life. I promise... things will be different..." Midnight Blue said to her.
"You've been saying that for the last year, and nothing's changed. I've put up with this as long as I can... and its not my fault. Its not your fault... these things happen to people... their health... their mind..." she sobbed as she spoke, the pressure imploring her to deal with their failing relationship now unbearable.
"That's not fair. The Doctors confirmed that I'm totally healthy... On the meters and charts, my mind and my heart are working perfectly. They said that some people are sensitive to EMF... electronics... to cellular phones and power lines and that sometimes it can make them hear things... or upset their hormones... I've got this... I've got it under control... I'll do what it takes... medication... therarpy... but you''ve got to work with me on this..." he pleaded with her, looking to her with her head down in her hands.
"No. I don't," she said to him, opening the passengere door and running up the steps to her parents' home.
He watched from the car as the front light came on, and the front door opened, and a couple in their mid-fifties let her into their home, her father looking out at the car, and then turning away when his eyes met Midnight Blue's. With that, she was gone from his life and he never saw her again.
He'd driven home that night, to their home, where he began organizing her belongings, loading them into boxes where he stored them in the garage. She'd come to pick them up a week later, for he'd called and left a message for her letting her know he'd leave the garage door open for her.
When he returned from work the following Monday, her belongings were gone. He stared at the space they'd occupied for five minutes, before returning from his memory and to the rally, that other version of her walking with another man.
"They took all the good ones... the good memories and left me with the painful ones... like they knew this moment would come," Midnight Blue said to himself as he watched her disappear into the crowd.
Then he saw a man running, trying to catch up with his friends, and it triggered another memory. Of the purse snatcher. How he didn't even really think about stopping him. He just did it. He had the thought: I've got to do something and that was that. He did it.
"I've got to do something," Midnight Blue said aloud, realizing for the first time since he'd lost what it was to have the will to make a difference.
"Why did they have me hack that satellite relay?" he asked himself aloud, walking in a circle as he thought about it.
...
Some fifty kilometers away, in the basement of a house owned by a group members of Mentis' collective, a group of men sat before their computers.
"He's trying to figure out what we had him doing..." one of them said aloud, though by that point, all of them already knew, as had the vast majority of Mentis' assets focused on the important work that was about to be accomplished on this very night.
"We should initiate the interception and begin now..." one of the hackers thought.
There was no stopping to talk about it and finally agree. They too just did it. All in unison, they all began preparing one of the most technically infeasible hacks in history, for they'd infiltrated and extrapolated the encryption key used for MindSpice's regional satellite grid, allowing them full access to data and telemetry used in their quantum classical cloud, including the data stream sending cognitive and motor control functioning to the Sentries at the rally, much as they had a half an hour earlier to hack three Sentries and remotely control them into planting three explosive devices at three different locations in the downtown core.
The bombs would detonate, but not before the hackers gave the audience one final show. One they'd never forget.
Mentis plan was so simple, it was ingenius. Torture the person they'd slowly radicalized and manipulated into achieving all of these anti-technology goals they'd had him perform, until he resented them for having done that, and having taken his memories, that he showed up at the rally to stop whatever it was that they were planning, where he too would perish with one of the bombs. The entire crime would be pinned on him, and it would sew the permanent seeds of distrust of technology in the city and send a clear message to the entire world.
All of it would be laid to blame in the hands of Midnight Blue, while Mentis would remained and continue to remain a veiled mystery.
And so it was that hackers from three different locations, each representing Mentis' interests and synchronized via their biomagnetic and mirror neuron network, went about hacking the MindSpice satellite relay and the cognitive and motor control functioning of all fifty Sentries.
...
Gabe was still up and on stage, readying himself for their farewell.
"Thank you so much for being here and being a part of this revolutionary future. Our Sentries here, all fifty of them, and myself, we'd all like to wish you a wonderful evening and we'll be looking forward to the future. Together," Gabe bowed to the audience, and all the Sentries also bowed.
Gabe turned to leave the stage, and then felt the articulated fingers of one of the hands of one of the Sentries clamp itself around his shoulder.
"Ohhhh its got me!!!!" he shrieked, as it picked him up and tossed him into the crowd.
...
Up top of the taller tower of the New City Hall buildings, three women sat watching over the rally and party beneath them.
"I'm not seeing anything at all yet..." Heylyn said to them in her Butterfly Dragon scaled armour, using her finely tuned senses which allowed her to see everything in all directions and even through solid surfaces.
"Maybe we should go down there? Looks like it'd be a lot of fun," Monique responded playfully in her Eclipse suit.
"We'd scare them if we did," Aikiko in her Dragon Butterfly outfit added.
"We'd definitely scare them if we didn't and something happened," Monique replied.
"I don't see how the vandal could get through all of the Police and security there," Heylyn remarked.
"Not to mention their robots. I wonder if those things are operational yet?" asked Monique.
"They certainly are If you need a dance partner," Aikiko replied.
"Not dancing I mean. Like, are they capable of combat?" asked Monique.
"That's a good question. Let's hope we don't have to find out in person," Heylyn said as kept vigil over the square.
...
Midnight Blue kept walking in circles, thinking and thinking about what they could have planned, when he realized that several of the light poles near him had electrical boxes on them that had been recently installed. They had a series of antennaes and satellite dishes mounted on them as well, and they all seemed to be pointed towards a much larger artificial tower that had been constructed behind the stage.
"Those robots... they're like me... getting hacked... they're electronic and digital... but they're getting hacked with technology... while I'm being hacked by Mentis' and his millions of minds..." Midnight Blue suddenly made a profound connection between his situation and that of the robots, and at that moment, he understood why they weren't the threat, anymore than he was.
"They're going to use them to do something... or maybe they already did..." He said aloud as one of the robots suddenly picked up Gabe Asnon, and tossed him into the audience as the others began jumping off of the stage and attacking the stage technicians and audience.
Midnight Blue immediately knew what he had to do. He pulled his nine millimeter from the inside of his coat and aimed it at one of the circuit boxes on the tower behind the stage.
Braden, who'd been standing with Warai on his shoulders, only ten feet from Midnight Blue, quickly put Warai down and in one fluid motion leapt through the air and kicked the nine millimeter from Midnight Blue's hand.
"I'm trying save us!" he turned and yelled at Braden, but before he'd finished his sentence, Braden had kicked him in the but and winded him, sending him to the ground.
Braden kept himself between Warai and Midnight Blue, who lay on the ground rolling and struggling to catch his breath.
"Braden! I think he'd trying to help!" Warai yelled, trying to get around Braden so she could heal the man.
"No Warai! Its too dangerous..." as he got his last word out, one of the robots from the stage sent a fist at the side of his head, which he intuitively dodged, narrowly avoiding having the steel reinforced carbon fibre hand of the Sentry driven into his head.
Braden turned to deal with the new threat, blocking several fast punches that the robot threw at him, then attempting to counter with a kick similar to the one he'd delivered to Midnight Blue. It connected and knocked the robot backwards and onto the pavement as the audience around them ran everywhere trying to escape the calamity.
The robot folded itself into a cylinder perpendicular to the direction Braden had forced it, and unfolded itself, keeping its momentum to end up back on its feet again. It was upon him again in less than a second.
...
"This guy's a martial artist... a damned good one too..." one of the hackers remotely controlling the Sentry remarked.
"Load the martial arts motion security metrics package we stole..." one of the other hackers responded.
"For which martial art?" the system admin asked.
"I don't know! Load all of them!" the hacker responded as he did his best to keep Braden at bay.
"Loading them... should have them all in three... two... one..." the admin replied.
...
Braden faced off against the second onslaught from the robot that had attacked him, but midway through its attack, it stopped and quickly backed up, extending its arms outward away from its body to a rest position, and then returning to a combat stance, this time very much more than just a simple boxing program.
The robot flew through the air, delivering a flying kick that caught Braden as he rolled backwards and up onto his feet, in attempt to come up at the side of the robot. It anticipated his move and even had another attack ready for him. Braden caught the robot's fist, and the two struggled for a moment until Braden was able to overpower the servo actuators of the robot. He got closer upon this realization of his advantage of strength, and used it to leg lock the robot and through it to the ground.
"Oh no..." he said as the robot hung onto him tightly, its grip far exceeding his strength.
It pulled him to the ground, despite being lighter than him, and reversed their positions, pinning Braden as it lined up to beat his face with its fists.
Warai by that time made it over to Midnight Blue, who was still rolling around on the ground and in pain from Braden's attack. He found his way to his back and found himself face to face with a little girl.
"Don't worry. You're going to be ok," she said to him, as he hand began glowing.
She placed it upon his solar plexus, and at once he was relieved of the pain, and a number of health problems he'd accrued over his fifty odd years of life, not to mention, all of his memories had returned. Even the ones that Mentis had taken from him.
Midnight Blue leaned up and got to his feet.
"I don't know who sent me you as an angel, but I'm very grateful for it. I have to use the gun, but not to hurt anyone. I have to use it to save them. To shoot that tower, so it will stop the robots..." he explained to the little girl.
"Ok," she looked at him and knew he wasn't capable of hurting anyone anymore.
If he had been, that part of him had been healed with his chest.
Midnight Blue stood up and ran to where his nine millimeter was laying, and as he did, a robot spotted him, and where he was looking. It immediately spotted to gun, and leapt for it.
Midnight Blue pushed himself to his limits, pulling every bit of athletic endeavor he'd ever undergone in his life as he jumped for the gun.
As fate would have it, he got it first, but at a cost.
The robot landed beside him and they both got to their feet simultaneously, though the robot got there first. It swung at him, hitting his jaw solidly and then following it up with a kick to his liver. He gasped once again but maintained his focus, aiming at the tower and lining up the shot. As he pulled the trigger, the robot hit his hand, knocking the gun upwards and then delivering a strike to the same injury that Warai had just healed.
Midnight Blue fell backwards, keeping himself protectively between the robot and Warai.
"Run!" he said to her.
When she went to move, the robot immediately focused on her. It easily kicked Midnight Blue out of the way, and reached for Warai.
"Girls play with toys. Toys don't play with girls!" Butterfly Dragon said as she got hold of the robot's arms.
"Butterfly!" Warai screamed in delight as she watched Heylyn contend with the robot.
"Don't worry honey. I'm here," she said as the robot broke free, despite her strength being far beyond its own.
"Tricky. Monique! Aikiko! They have training!" Heylyn yelled as Monique landed and Aikiko stepped forward from a shadowy cloud teleportation vortex.
"They still look like practice toys to me!" Aikiko cartwheeled into combat with three of them at once, keeping all of them at bay, with a series of well planned blocks, slowly misleading them until they were exposed.
She then delivered a snap kick to one, and a round house to the other. The third moved in on an opening in Aikiko's form, when Eclipse flew at the robot at full tilt and sent it flying backwards and to the pavement.
By that time, Heylyn had bested the one she'd been tangling with, and used her wings to cut down three others, slowly working her way around to help the rest of the audience.
"We've got to clean this up and stop them all before they seriously hurt someone!" Heylyn yelled to Monique and Aikiko.
"The man says we need to hurt that big tower there..." Warai pointed to the tower behind the stage as Midnight Blue got up again and aimed his gun.
"I've got it, angel," he fired once, hitting the circuit box, and almost immediately the two thirds of the remaining thirty five robots stopped fighting, and instead switched to search and assist mode, while fifteen of them remained dangerous to the crown and kept attacking.
"That did it!" Monique said excitedly, looking to Midnight Blue whom she suddenly recognized.
"That's the vandal..." Monique said, instantly flying to him and grabbing hold of his jacket and disarming him of his gun, as if she was ready to take him down.
"No! Eclipse! He's good! He wants to help!" Warai pleaded with her friend.
"I messed up. I was messed up. Its a long story..." Midnight Blue spoke in the voice of a defeated, yet changed man.
"Uhhhh... we don't have time for this! There's still people that need help!" Braden returned, a robot arm in his hand.
"What happened?" asked Butterfly Dragon.
"I don't know. I guess I just needed a hand," Braden responded, dropping the robot arm and grabbing Warai's hand.
...
Gabe Asnon suddenly regained consciousness and rolled over onto his back, feeling a throbbing but manageable pain in his leg. A short distance from him and in the direction his legs pointed from the ground, a Sentry began approaching him, reaching for him.
"No! No!" he pleaded with it, but when it arrived, instead of attacking him, it began examining him.
"You appear to be fine, though I detect light trauma of the tibia. You might want to stay off of your feet for a few days. Would you like a hand getting to your feet?" the Sentry said to him and then asked him if he needed any assistance.
"Sure. Gently!" he responded hesitatingly.
The Sentry helped him to his feet as Farnham and Poonya arrived.
"Mr. Asnon, are you alright?" asked Farnham.
"I am... and it looks like there's few injuries amongst the crowd... but obviously... this whole idea... it failed..." he said in disbelief.
The Sentry, upon recognizing the Poonya was a Police officer, given the fact that he was wearing his badge, began addressing them.
"Officer Somboon. I have information to relay. Exactly fifty-one minutes ago, the MindSpice satellite relay facility was hacked and hackers externally gained control of cognitive and motor control messaging systems. They used those systems to remotely control three Sentry 9000 Units to carry large explosive devices to three different locations, where they will be detonated, injuring or even killing many citizens," the Sentry reported to Somboon and Farnham.
"Bombs? Where?!!!" Farnham immediately pulled his badge from his jacket and flashed it in the face of the robot.
"The telemetry data and GPS record for the destinations of all three bombs has been purged from our data center," the Sentry responded.
Poonya flagged down Stavens and Adler, who'd been helping to clean up the mess as the Butterfly Dragon, Eclipse and Aikiko dispatched the remaining rogue Sentries.
"Three of your units here carried bombs to other locations here in the downtown core about an hour ago. Do you have any way of finding out where they went?" asked Poonya of Stavens.
"The data center has complete GPS records..." Stavens told them.
"The hackers already erased that..." Farnham explained to Stavens.
"Then there's no other way..." Stavens responded.
"We've got three bombs all within a nine block corridor of the downtown, we need immediate evacuation!" Farnham grabbed his radio from his belt and notified the radio room back at Police services, who relayed it to the officers on the scene.
"Wait a second. The robots have servo motors and actuators, right?" asked Poonya.
"We could reconstruct their movement from the records of those values..." Stavens immediately caught on.
"What do you mean?" asked Adler.
"If we took all the motor control commands, and mapped them out to their servo motors, and how much they moved or rotated, we could calculate exactly where the robots went to put the bombs..." Stavens responded, explaining the concept to Adler and then to Poonya and Farnham after which she adjusted her glasses.
"That's brilliant!" Gabe added.
"But how? We can't crunch that much data in such a short time window?" asked Adler.
"Yes we can. MAZ? We have three Sentry 9000 Units that went awol during a time window between an hour and half an hour ago, and no GPS telemetry to know where they went, but we have the motor control log for all of their joints. Could you reconstruct it from their last known GPS point and figure out where they went?" Gabe asked his phone, which he'd pulled from his suit jacket.
"Yes. I have reconstructed the routes of three different Senty 9000 Units, and they are in close proximity to your currently location..." MAZ reported to them.
"Oh great!" Gabe responded frantically.
"Can I be of assistance?" Eclipse arrived, followed by Aikiko and then Butterfly Dragon.
"The rogue robots won't be a problem anymore," Butterfly Dragon assured Gabe, who recognized her.
"We have another problem. We have three bombs, all nearby and no idea when they're set to detonate!" Farnham quickly interjected.
"Do we know where they are?" asked Butterfly Dragon.
"Yes. We have the exact locations of all three. One is located under stage area of Nathan Phillips Square." MAZ responded calmly.
"I've got that one!" Butterfly Dragon immediately used her senses to examine every one of the boxes beneath the stage, quickly finding the road case with the bomb.
She pulled it from out of under the stage and flew into the air with it as fast as she could.
"Keep going! Where's the second one MAZ?" Aikiko leaned in closer to Gabe, asking MAZ where the second bomb was.
"The second bomb is located outside of Osgoode Hall, near the front behind a flower basin." MAZ responded calmly to Aikiko's question.
"That one's mine," Aikiko agreed, stepping backwards into a shadowy black vortex and disappearing.
"Last but not least MAZ! Hurry!!!" Monique urged MAZ.
"The last one bomb is located outside of Old City Hall, in an alcove near the front entry." MAZ answered Monique calmly.
"That's mine...!" Monique disappeared in a streak of light, and was back less than a second later.
A shadowy vortex appeared and Aikiko stepped out from within, empty handed.
Finally, Butterfly Dragon flew from the sky and landed amidst them.
"Did you figure it out?" asked Monique, winking at Butterfly Dragon, who nodded affirmatively.
"I did," Butterfly Dragon responded.
"Me too," Aikiko smiled at them.
"Figured out what?" Gabe asked.
"When the bomb's going to go off..." Farnham said, realizing that the situation had come full circle from his conversation with Gabe Asnon when they were in his office.
"Its like you said Gabe. Its not the tool that's the danger. Its the one using it," Farnham said as the fireworks that had been scheduled and setup on a timer, suddenly went off.
The fireworks shot up into the sky in a magnificent show of colours and sparks, and everyone stopped to watch.
And then, upwards of three kilometers, the bombs went off in unison with the fireworks and everyone cheered.
"Can I be of assistance anymore office?" asked the Sentry 9000 Unit that had given them the information they'd needed to save all those lives.
"No. I'd say you've earned your pay," Farnham patted the Sentry on the back.
"Mr. Asnon?" Poonya addressed the MindSpice CEO.
"What is it Officer?" Gabe turned to face Poonya.
"I hacked your email system when we were in the office the other day. I was the one who sent you the email from Linda...? I'm sorry, I guess I was a bit of a hotshot. I think I see things differently now. Good speech by the way," Poonya admitted to him, coming to terms with his own limits.
"That's alright. I accept your apology," Gabe said to Poonya as he and Farnham left for the Police command center.
Much more writing and artwork to come...
To be continued...
I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701.
Credits and attribution:
Car driving maniac character (nicknamed Midnight Blue) concept and design originally by Darrell Haines. His initial concept art of thirty-five years ago, visually wrote most of the enigmatic character that drives the plot of this story.
Further, this story is inspired by the music of our generation, the likes of Billy Idol (and GenX), Simple Minds, The Sugarcubes (all of whom I've seen live in concert) and many other artists and all of their most esoteric material. Especially when you listen to their incredible song writing and production work, all of this occurring back in the 1980s.
The kind of stuff that drove that crazy guy behind the wheel of a '77 Camero to break the chains of his mortal coil.
My AI artwork pipeline is drawn from traditional style artwork and rendering I and the other artists credited here created as far back as a decade and a half ago. It is built upon a mountain of artwork and designs initially created to give flesh to the characters and places in Butterfly Dragon and Tales Of The Sanctum. Even the AI derived artwork and videos take considerable planning, and are derived from our pre-existing library of still and 3d rendered artistic assets, made possible by Daz3D, Lightwave3D, Unreal Engine, Blender, Corel Painter and of course Adobe Photoshop.
Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...
Thank you to the Science and AI channels I frequent on YouTube.
Extra Special thank you to InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.
Extra Special thank you to Adobe, especially their award legendary image editing and compositing application Photoshop, who make much of the artwork on Shhhh! Digital Media possible.
Extra Special thank you to Corel for their Painter application, which is a great companion tool when combined with the power of Adobe Photoshop.
Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Ask Seki Sensei | Online Katana Lessons! - Study Iaido And Kobudo Online
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)
Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.
Thank you to Captain Crunch from 89 Steps.
Special thanks to Fifth Social Club Toronto.
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.
Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...
Thank you to the Science and AI channels I frequent on YouTube.
Extra Special thank you to InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.
Extra Special thank you to Adobe, especially their award legendary image editing and compositing application Photoshop, who make much of the artwork on Shhhh! Digital Media possible.
Extra Special thank you to Corel for their Painter application, which is a great companion tool when combined with the power of Adobe Photoshop.
Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Ask Seki Sensei | Online Katana Lessons! - Study Iaido And Kobudo Online
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)
Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.
Thank you to Captain Crunch from 89 Steps.
Special thanks to Fifth Social Club Toronto.
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
Brian Joseph Johns
https://www.shhhhdigital.com
https://www.shhhhdigital.ca
https://www.twitter.com/MediaShhhhhttps://www.facebook.com/shhhhdigital
https://www.tiktok.com/@shhhhdigitalofficial
https://shop.shhhhdigital.com
https://steamcommunity.com/id/ShhhhDigitalOfficial/
Produced at Shhhh! Digital Media
200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Inquiries: brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com,
info@shhhhdigital.com
Copyright © 2024 Brian Joseph Johns
https://www.shhhhdigital.com
https://www.shhhhdigital.ca
https://www.twitter.com/MediaShhhhhttps://www.facebook.com/shhhhdigital
https://www.tiktok.com/@shhhhdigitalofficial
https://shop.shhhhdigital.com
https://steamcommunity.com/id/ShhhhDigitalOfficial/
Produced at Shhhh! Digital Media
200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Inquiries: brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com,
info@shhhhdigital.com
Copyright © 2024 Brian Joseph Johns