Box

Chapter 1

Aydin patted it, then moved away from it and started to perform Tibetan Rites.

The muffins were already done when Aydin finished his morning exercise. He ate them while sipping his coffee. He complimented Box on the muffins, which layered Box's screen yellow again. Then he washed and changed into the uniform of a Border Police Lieutenant-Colonel. He put on his eGlass, which was one glass rectangle attached to a headphone, then over it set a Border Police eGlass protector, a visor that looked like a hybrid between sunglasses and a helmet's visor.

"Call Commander Cajon, please."

The command was for the eGlass, not for Box, and to see the conversation, Box had to connect itself with Aydin's eGlass. When it did that, it could see a display with a view of a living room and the Commander in his armchair set on a raised platform. Despite his small build, the Commander looked like a king on his throne, ruling over his subjects. The impression, Aydin said, the Commander was going for.

"... Lee Morgan, your new team member," the Commander said.

"Yes, I read the memo," said Aydin.

"But this is not the reason why I requested you to contact me. I got a notification from headquarters. The police have discovered large amounts of drugs, too large to be trafficked into this country by mules. They believe the drugs are coming in through small customs like ours."

"You don't believe that our station could be involved, do you?" Aydin said.

"Headquarters wants me to put all of our officers under surveillance."

"I have no intention of spying on my co-workers if that's why you called me." Aydin's voice rose slightly, not enough for the Commander to notice, but Box did.

"You were a detective, so I thought, why not have you investigate?" Commander said. When Aydin didn't say anything, he added. "Just keep an eye on things."

"Anything else?"

"No, that's all."

"Yes, sir." Aydin nodded and disconnected the line. He gestured for Box to follow him and together they left the room.

Box hovered by Aydin as he crossed the steel mesh hallway and walked down the stairs. It aimed one of its side cameras at the basketball court, then back to the steel structure of the stairway attached to three rows of stacked-up multifunction rooms. Aydin's was the only one on the upper floor, and since he was a Lieutenant-Colonel, his room was bigger than the regular officers' quarters and it had a proper bathroom, not a sink and a toilet hidden in the wall.

They walked past the basketball court to the five-story high Tower that was between the living quarters and the shield wall, whose reddish electricity lit the blue sky and added a red glow to everything in its vicinity, passing an android on wheels trimming a ribbon of grass on their way. It was called a Helper, and it was one of two that oversaw maintaining the station and its surroundings.

The first floor of the tower was a garage with parked bikes and eggshell-like hovering vehicles called Units, and a workroom. It had another door at the other side of the space that opened to the Helper station overlooking the border crossing, and across the grassway was the customs warehouse. The station had four hundred Helpers, androids that took care of mundane and automatic tasks such as maintaining the buildings, cleaning, cooking, small repairs, working in the customs warehouse, and keeping watch alongside the shield, notifying the station of breaches or anything out of the ordinary. Since the southeast border was bordering on a second-world country rather than a third- or fourth-world country, and there weren't many incidents or breach attempts as was the case with the United Country of Europe's southwest border, the Helpers by the shield were there because of U.C.E.'s general safety protocols and not because their presence was necessary.