Leave all the lights on
So we can see the black cat changing colors
And we can walk under ladders
And we can swim as the tide turns you around and around
- David J. Matthews
Weakness was seen as an invitation to exploit, and when found, it was excised like a tumor. However, there is a lot that you can learn from a person who is trying to exploit you. You would know what they needed, and how badly they needed it, and what they were willing to pay to get it. You would know who their partners were, and who their enemies were. All you had to do was put yourself in their field of vision, then wait and watch.
So I followed Wilson. She led me to her work station and picked up her terminal, having ignored my pleas for food. She scanned her messages, and highlighting a few, started composing a response. I am not sure why she let me see them, but I read them and could read her replies. She was struggling with another researcher, trying to get him to understand the implications of the result of one of her tests. He was resisting, and from what I could read, deliberately playing dumb so that she would show her hand. Then it would be a simple matter of passing her work off as his own. I decided to bait a hook.
"I'm a Finder, y' know."
"So what, go find something," she said, without looking up.
"It means I know things about people. I can see things that they are trying to hide." I was still playing the fish-out-of-water role.
She got a little nervous and turned her terminal away from me. "What do you mean? What do you know?"
"I know that the guy you are messaging is trying to pass off your work as his, and the more you explain, the more convincing he will be. I also know how you can beat him."
"How?" she said, suddenly interested. Then her eyes grew suspicious. "And what is in it for you?"
"Food," I said simply. "I have been here since this morning and I haven't eaten a thing. I am also really tired and could use a place to rest for a bit."
"Fine, I can get you those."
"And the tour of the facility I was promised," I added as an afterthought.
"First the solution, then the rest."
"Ok, but only if you promise. Send your results to the project manager directly. Explain how clear the results are and assume that he fully understands their implications. Then propose the next steps. Then tell him that your co-worker is slowing down your progress and is clearly unsuited for a position of this responsibility. Add the evidence of his continual questions, omitting your responses. If you do it soon, you might just beat him to the punch and save your career while simultaneously wrecking his."
She thought about that for a moment, then turned back to her terminal and started keying in her new response.
"Um, food? Sleep? Tour?" I said plaintively.
She wasn't paying attention. She was no longer even thinking about me at all. She had what she needed and was done with me. But I wouldn't simply go away.
She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out her pass.
"Commissary is in the southwest corner," she pointed vaguely behind her. "The rest bunks are in the health station next to it. Wander around but don't touch anything!"
It is probably surprising to you that it would have been that easy to get a pass, but you have to keep in mind that I was an assignment to Wilson and would not provide any additional benefit. The sooner she was rid of me, the sooner she could get back to her fight.
I wandered past a few open cubicles, then grabbed a lab coat that fit. I really was hungry, so I headed to the commissary. At about half way there, Darwin decided to join me. He is ever the opportunist. At the commissary, I selected some high protein, high carbohydrate bars for myself, and a protein selection for Darwin. He rejected it outright, and we cycled through the choices until we fell upon the vegetarian option. Sometimes it pays not to ask too many questions.
I decided to sleep later, so I gave myself the grand tour of the facility. It was, by all appearances, a standard lab, leaning towards the sciences required in mining operations, geology, chemistry, physics etc. The other sciences were not ignored however. I found a respectable biology and physiology section working the perennial problem of inuring miners to the constant bombardment of radiation they received outside the influence of a planetary magnetosphere.
There was one section, however, that intrigued me. Unlike the rest of the departments, which essentially kept themselves to themselves, this one seemed to be more broadly themed, including scientists from every domain in the room. Perhaps this was the hub of the whole floor and all the departments were working on projects distributed by this central team.
I stepped in a little closer to one person's terminal while he was working on a message regarding a particularly thorny propulsion problem. He sent a message to a member of another team, then turned to look at me.
"Can I help you with something?" he asked, a slightly hostile tone in his voice.
"No," I replied. "Just shopping"
He must have assumed that I was a potential purchaser, as he turned back to his desk. So, they were thinking of selling their research to outside bidders. An interesting, if somewhat bold move.
I continued to wander through the section and invading cubicles. I was pouring over some printouts when a familiar voice interrupted my research.
"What are you doing here, this area is restricted!"
It was Petersen. He had arrived just in time. I had found something. A lead.
There was a dossier called Special Project that had drawn my attention and I was leafing through it. Much of it was redacted, but there was enough there to identify the goal of the project. A new shuttle design, and if what I had read was true, this design was hundreds of years ahead of anything we had now. 3p was onto something.
So far, I had discovered that virtually every unit in the lab was dedicated in part to this project, and that some of the regular staff 'upstairs' had also been recruited. I flipped forward several sheets while Petersen stood there, unsure of his next move. He never usually had to think that far ahead.
There it was, the connection. There was a message addressed to Imanda Selim, notifying her of her secondment to the research team. Now to follow that link backwards. I put down the folder and walked by Petersen without a single glance. "It's all right Petersen, I have what I came for."
I wandered into an empty section of the lab and sat myself down at a portable station. For want of a better way in, I slid Wilson's pass over the reader and was granted immediate access. Had these people never heard of security? I appreciated a break in a case as much as the other guy, but there were standards to consider.
It is a strange feeling to both admire and despise a client's work. And it wouldn't be the last time I lamented the poor use that a company had made use of its internal security resources. If that captain had been responsible here, I wouldn't have stepped more than five feet from him, let alone be wandering about at will in a lab coat with a pass.
I trolled around the network for a few minutes, looking through the file organization, getting a feel for how they stored their data. I settled in and found the Special Project site, and started digging around, asking the computer lots of questions.
The computer, for its part, was more than happy to oblige. It provided me with lists of names, experiments, progress reports, the works. Disgusting. It shouldn't have been this easy. I made a mental note to clean out the boxes of old case files stacked in the large back room in my office.
I kept digging around and once again found something interesting. It was a formula for a fuel mixture, connected to the shuttle project. Now I don't want you to think that I could read scientific notation, but I can read a file title, and someone had left the title of the otherwise clearly redacted form at the top of a rather complicated formula.
Who was the author of said fuel mixture formula? Imanda Selim's name was on the form, but based on what I now knew of this process, she probably hadn't the foggiest clue that she was being credited with these advance discoveries.
I continued to scan through the various documents online. They were a mix of scans of handwritten designs and formulas, again in that angular script, variously stamped T.S.#1, and T.S.#2. Interspersed within these were professional machine quality reinterpretations of the handwritten formulas and specifications.
And then I found it. Another original, handwritten formula, scanned in. I recognized the writing from two of the three sheets that Imanda Selim had handed to Rohit Mehta. It was stamped T.S.#3. It was also under the program heading of the Long-range Exploration Expedition, Neptune Area. It appeared that I had found LEENA.
I was one step closer. The missing woman's name wasn't Leena, her project was. But what did T.S.#3 stand for? I should know this. Someone had said something that tickled the back of my mind, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I hate that.