"This must be the code instructing the Helpers responsible for the final station to proceed to the location where they retrieve narcotics and place them into containers and packages." Box highlighted the words in red text on the screen. They were in Aydin's multifunction room, with Aydin and Lee sitting on the sofa and Box floating above the coffee table. It had just finished comparing the basic program for the customs warehouse Helpers and their station, showing them its results on the wall.
"Let me see." Aydin stood up and walked to the wall. "There's only a mention of one Helper." A moment of silence as he touched the eGlass and used the keyboard that drew itself before him. "It's not a warehouse Helper, but one of the station's two janitors. There are some easy commands that imply that it could be the one putting the parcels into the packages, but that's not possible, since it doesn't have access to the warehouse."
"It could be there as a safeguard to sidetrack investigators if someone were on the smugglers' trail," Lee said.
"Possible, but not likely. Let's look at its recording." A few moments later, Aydin's eGlass projected 335's recording on the wall. It only showed the Helper trimming the greenery and taking care of the station's buildings.
"See?" Lee said.
"The footage could have been manipulated." Aydin closed the player window, which brought the code document into the foreground. "The rest of the code looks like it's addressing the warehouse Helpers by their station. This makes sense since Helpers can move around with the incoming cargo. Since Helpers orient themselves in the space by making a grid layout of it...." He pointed at the second red line with G12. "This should be the coordinates of the place. Box, show me the warehouse plan, please."
Box, who was already connected and signed into the warehouse's system via Aydin, projected it on the wall.
"I should be able to find the layout of the grid in the Helpers Hive system."
"I can do it." Box went to the Hive system.
"You'll just overload yourself." A minute later, a light came from the edge of Aydin's eGlass and drew lines over the display of the warehouse plan. Letters appeared on its left side and numbers on the lowest line. Aydin came closer to the wall and pointed at the spot on the layout. "According to this, G12 is here. I would expect it to be at the front of the building since it's on the other side of the shield, not on our side."
The place he pointed at was at the end of the building. Box made the plan 3D and zoomed in on the spot. It showed a vent. "I was correct."
"It looks like," Lee said.
"Box, show me that spot from the outside, please," Aydin requested.
Box displayed the vent, half-hidden by a bush.
"I'll see if there are any cameras that have a view of it," Aydin said, and then after a few moments told them, "No, it seems that this is a blind spot, which is most likely done intentionally."
"I'll set a camera there." Lee stood.
"Give me the camera, and I'll take care of it," Box proposed since it wanted to be useful to Aydin. It lifted itself. "I can go right away."
"I'll set up cameras in the evening," Lee said.
"But I could handle it immediately." Box fixed one of its cameras at Lee.
"That's very nice of you to offer." Aydin patted Box. "But I think we should leave that to Lee. Remember, she has that cloaking device and you don't."
"But I have your beanie. It's essentially a cloaking device."
Aydin scowled. "You have what?"
"Your black beanie. It's excellent for camouflage," Box explained.
Lee chuckled.
Box fixed another camera at her. "It is."
"Nobody said that it isn't." Aydin's fingers followed the curve of Box's orb in a soothing caress. "But let's have Lee do that."
Box fixed its cameras at the table. Did his handler not trust its ability to do a good job?
"We can't burden you too much, since we plan to entrust the surveillance to you. You'll have to alert us as soon as somebody comes close to that vent."
A weak hint of yellow coloured Box's display. It lifted its cameras to Aydin. "I can accomplish that."
"I know you can." Aydin gave it a smile and another pat on its orb.
"We are counting on you," Lee added.
The yellow glow over Box's screen thickened. "I won't let you down."
"I know you won't," Aydin said before he turned his attention back to the projection. "I don't dare mess with the coding, and I don't even know if there's a possibility of looking at the history of changes made in the Hive's program and who made them, but if your expert could look at that and see if there's any user attached to this code?"
"I'll propose that to headquarters right away." Lee touched her eGlass and when the keyboard appeared, she started to type.
"Another thing that we could focus on is how the narcotics arrive on this side of a shield since border shields are designed to detect illegal substances, that is if they are not carried by mules or stored in containers made out of the lead."
"The easiest way to find that out is to catch the smuggler." Lee stood and joined Aydin, her gaze on the layout displayed on the wall.
A yellow glow like a halo still framed Box's orb. It had been given an important task, which, after Lee positioned two cameras that evening, it took very seriously, keeping a window with the view of the vent always open, even though it had also set a motion alert. It also monitored the Helper in charge of the border crossing and looked up every person who crossed the border in the general database. On average, twenty to fifty people per day crossed the border, but in two days of monitoring, all of them, according to their general personal information, were from either the U.C.E., U.A., or the neighbouring country and seemed like ordinary citizens. But when Box looked at the general database for pictures of criminals convicted of smuggling, they looked like ordinary citizens, too.
"How do you determine when someone is smuggling something?" Box asked Aydin, who was lying on the bed, in his sweat suit pants and a T-shirt he used for sleeping, propped against the pillows, reading via his eGlass. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and Aydin was enjoying the free time he had before the start of his afternoon shift.
Aydin glanced at Box. "If they are old hands, you don't, but if they are new, jitters usually give them away. Why?"
"I've been examining the personal data of all individuals who crossed the border in the last twenty-four hours, and none of them appear to be smugglers. However, when I researched convicted smugglers, they didn't fit the typical criminal profile either."
"That's why it's so important to catch whoever has programmed the Helpers to do their dirty work."
Box who had been on its station, lifted and flew to Aydin. "Who do you suspect, Linda or Mark?"
"It could be Jacob."
"Jacob is a field operative. He lacks the authorisation to access the Hive or the expertise to reprogram Helpers."
"You don't know that. Just because something isn't listed in his file, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
"You believe he's capable of it??"
"No, I'm just saying not to take anything for granted and don't take anything at face value, not even the official forms. I mean, look at Lee. She was able to sneak into the customs warehouse. That takes skills, yet there's nothing listed in her special abilities."
"Is she a ninja?" Box asked. Aydin liked old 2D Chinese and Japanese movies and from them, Box had learned that there were specially trained people who excelled at fighting and who could not only sneak anywhere they wanted but also fly-jump through the air. Old Chinese and Japanese had special abilities; too bad that they had in the last hundred years lost them and nowadays all the movies and all the shows, except the reality ones, were made with CGI.
Aydin chuckled and pulled himself higher against the pillows. "I don't think they exist anymore. But you should ask her."
"She wouldn't disclose that if she were."
"Yeah, most likely." Aydin leaned closer to Box and whispered, "But just between you and me, I think that she is."
Box lowered onto the mattress and rolled to Aydin's hip. "You have feelings for her, don't you?"
Aydin's hand covered Box's orb, and he absently started to stroke it. "I might, a little."
"Will she depart after we apprehend the smuggler?" Box snuggled against Aydin's side, its cameras looking at his face.
"Probably."
Something happened and before it had a chance to look at the players running in its background, an alarm buzzed, followed by the view of the vent coming to the foreground of its display. The window expanded so that it took up half of Box's screen. It showed a Helper trimming the bushes.
Box was about to minimise the window when the Helper who was now by the vent lowered the hand holding its trimmers and bent down. Its chest opened and from it, packages fell to the ground.
"Observe." Box projected the footage on the wall.
Aydin sat up.
The Helper pulled the grate off the vent and pushed the packages inside, took some small boxes out, and stored them in its chest before it put the vent's grate back on and resumed its trimming.
"What are those?" Box asked.
"Probably the items that they take out so that the weight of the containers and packages stays the same." Aydin stood. "What's the Helper's number?"
Box zoomed in and looked at the black barcode on Helper's neck. "386 86 335"
"335. So Lee was wrong. 335 was not a fake clue. You recorded this, right?"
"Affirmative." Box lifted.
"Send the footage to Lee and then call her, please."
Box fulfilled Aydin's request, and when Lee, who had the morning shift, took its call, it displayed her in the middle of their room as a hologram.
She turned to Aydin. "We need to look into the Helper's records before they get deleted or modified if they haven't been already. I doubt that I'll be able to do that, but you can."
He sat on the edge of the bed and, using the eGlass, activated the keyboard and started to type.
Box connected itself with his eGlass, watching Aydin enter the Hive system and go through the directories until he came to the one containing the list of Helpers.
"Now we know why it was mentioned in the programming. We should have monitored it. My mistake." Aydin typed the number into the search window. "Let me access its cameras." A few more moments of going through the directories and folders and then a clip started to fast-forward itself, slow enough for a human eye to be able to follow the Helper's movement. "Box, could you...?"
Box didn't need to ask what but displayed the footage on the wall across the room. "I could have reviewed the footage much more quickly."
"I know," Aydin said. "This is its recording from two days ago."
They watched the Helper taking care of the station's maintenance; repairing the buildings and its furniture, and grooming the landscape. After a while, Aydin increased the playback speed, but just a few minutes later, he stopped the footage, rewound it, and then played it at its normal speed. In the greyness of a dawn they observed two Helpers exchanging packages and just as they turned away from each other, Aydin pressed pause.
"Why wasn't there a notification indicating that a Helper had vacated its position?" On its display, Box zoomed in on the other Helper's barcode and read it out loud. "386 86 153."
"For the same reason, Helpers are passing along narcotics," Aydin said. A display on the wall showed him going through the same Hive system directories as before, and the footage that moments later projected on the wall gave them a view of the trees dappled with the red light of the shield. "It's stationed in E12. Let's see what it was doing this morning — Box, what's the timestamp of the exchange?"
Box went to the recording it had just made and told Aydin about the date that appeared in the right bottom corner.
"It's strange that its code wasn't mentioned in the programming," Aydin commented.
The player on the wall closed and a new one appeared, showing them the same view, only this time the tree tops were caressed with the soft light of the weak morning sun.
"There must be something wrong." Aydin rewound the recording. It showed the same image but in a different frame of the morning. He fast-forwarded it, but the view of the trees didn't change, only the angle and the strength of the sun's rays did.
"Whoever it was must have already tampered with the records," Lee said. "It's probably just a matter of time before 335's recordings are changed too. It's weird that they haven't been already."
Box replayed the clip of the exchange that included Aydin saying, "Likely the items they remove to maintain the consistent weight of the containers and packages." It zoomed in on the parcels. "How do they determine which items weigh the same as the parcels? Is it a random selection? And how do they extract narcotics from the parcels and containers afterward? Do they remove them while in transit? Furthermore, how do they ascertain their destination when recipient addresses are solely listed in accompanying documentation?"
"We suspect containers are targeted and narcotics delivered directly to smugglers since otherwise, the post offices would receive complaints about missing items. But we don't know how the Helper chooses the packages, information that we hope the examination of the code added to the Helpers' programming will provide," Lee said.
Using its recording, Box inspected the code again. "There wasn't anything resembling an address in there."
"I know." Lee crossed her arms.
"We could try to track the whereabouts of the items that were taken out of the containers." Aydin rose from the bed and walked to the wall. "Since Helper 153's recordings have already been modified, we can't use it –" It turned to Box. "I do expect you to monitor its and 335's movements from now on."
"Affirmative." Box signed back into the Hive.
"Where was I? Oh, yes. We can't use 153's recording, but we can look at the exchange the Helpers made and try to see if we can get serial numbers off the items that were taken out."
"That won't help us," Lee said.
Arching his eyebrows, Aydin faced her. "Why not?"
"Because the items end up at the Golden Arch, a New China retailer, which sells them for two-thirds of their original price."
"How do you know that?"
"It's classified."
Aydin rolled his eyes. "Okay, let's make a quick summary of what we know: somebody is using Helpers 153 and 335 to take items out of the packages and replace them with narcotics. Since there were no third-party breaches, it means that it's an inside job. The only ones who qualify as suspects are Mark and Linda, who are both in charge of Hive maintenance and who have, according to their personal files, experience in programming. In theory, considering programming was part of his education, I would say Mark, but I could be wrong. Well, I hope I'm wrong." He rubbed his neck. "We could put them both under surveillance. Even though, since the Helpers are the ones doing all the groundwork, I doubt surveillance would give us any results. Is there anything new on the code?"
"No. We still haven't been able to learn who made the changes. Whoever it was, they are good."
"Box, show me the code again, please."
Box displayed it on the wall.
"The last time I took a glance at it, I noticed a set of numbers in the insertions that belonged only to the Helper 386 86 335. Box, please find it."
Box used the search function.
"There are three matches."
Lee, in her hologram form, joined Aydin before the wall. She glanced at Aydin, frowning. "Haven't we already talked about this? The extraction of the items and replacement with narcotics is tied to a station, but with the maintenance Helper, they had to tie the commands with the exact Helper, since there are two."
"Yes, 335 is one of two Helpers that move around the whole station, all the rest are tied to their positions, including 153, or so we can assume since there's no mention of its code." Aydin lifted his brow, a small smile playing on his face. "So, if something happens to 335, and it suffers such a bad malfunction that it has to be replaced..."
"The code would have to be modified, or there won't be anyone to take the narcotics and deliver them to the warehouse." A satisfied smile curled Lee's mouth up.
"But nothing could occur to 335," Box said. "There are no large wild animals near the station or any other factors that could cause malfunction."
Lee shook her head at Box, a smile still on her face before she turned her attention back to Aydin. "So, who's going to do it? Me or you?"