It took him some time to reach the closest exit,and he was moving slowly not knowing if there were some surprises like: surveillance cameras,motion sensors or even traps waiting for him.
To his utter astonishment he found no such things. The maintenance tunnel was clear at least to the first exit and even the doors were not secured,the moment he touched the panel on the wall there was a slight hiss sound and the way was opened.
He did not exit the tunnel right away, first he took a small mirror he attached to a telescopic stick and slowly checked if there were any cameras or other surveillance equipment around.
When he hadn't found anything, he slowly came out.
Looking around he found himself in a long corridor,on his left he saw the passage that was welded shut and on his right there was a cross section around 50 meters away just like on the schematics he had seen.
It was a good thing that nobody was around because the only place he could hide was the maintenance tunnel, other than that the corridor was empty.
He moved cautiously to the cross section and after discovering there was not a single camera around he turned right.
After about an hour of sneaking around he finally reached his destination,The material processing center and its control center.
He wanted to confirm his suspicions, and it turned out that he was right.
All the materials that were sold on the collection platform were sorted and then sent to matter converters which turned them into bars that were easy to store and transport.
The only thing that bothered him was that all the way here he didn't find any surveillance equipment anywhere besides the cameras monitoring the separation and conversion processes below.
-They couldn't have been so stupid or lazy could they?
Tommy thought.
After looking around for a bit he finally found the control device that monitored this but as far as he knew this type of device only monitored the data in the control center and not what was happening around it.
If he wanted to take control all he had to do was to disconnect the device from the consoles which by his estimate would take around 10 minutes but he was certain that it would raise some kind of alarm if he tried.
So for now he left it alone and went to find his second objective for this excursion.
He still didn't find any surveillance but that didn't mean there was none so he decided to take it slow.
It took him another half an hour to reach the control room of the matter converters responsible for food production and water purification.
He of course found another monitoring device, the same type as before but left it alone.
When he looked at what was displayed on the monitors he went pale.
Tommy knew that the nutrient bars were created from any organic matter that was supplied into the converter, it was the cheapest food you could find and if it spoiled you could just toss it back into the machine to create another batch.
But according to what he saw on the monitor,the bars produced by those machines had an addition of a medicine called "Diazium" and he knew what it was.
This medicine was forbidden as far as he knew and with good reason.
Diazium had a specific effect on the human brain.
Even in small doses if taken long enough it blocked the ability to learn new things and it also affected the part of the brain that's responsible for curiosity.
The worst part was that the person being drugged never suspected a thing.
Diazium was colorless,odorless and tasteless and it was invisible to most of the medical scanners,it also took some time to take effect,especially if it was administered in small doses.
-No wonder that people here don't learn anything even after years of dismantling ships.
That discovery also explained some other things, for example his slow progress with learning the programming skills and lack of security in this part of the station.
Without the drive in the form of curiosity no one would try to find this place not to mention most of the people on this station had no means other than cutting torches to open the passage and fuel for those wasn't cheap.
Since that was the case the nobles probably thought that they could save some funds by not having any security devices.
And by having the exiles drugged they got perfect slaves working for them without complaints and rarely trying to escape.
When Tommy put it all together he really had to admit that it was almost a genius level plan.
But at the same time there were some loopholes.
First of those was that the drug had to be taken for a very long time to get the desired effect or the doses had to be huge.
Second was that Diazium had two weaknesses, it was quite easy to get rid of it from the human body, and once you got rid of it,you gained immunity so the drug was useless after that.
The third loophole was that this plan relied on the herd mentality of humans .
It worked great to keep everyone in line especially with the help of the drug.
But all it took was someone who didn't blindly follow the herd and didn't spend enough time in this place for the drug to fully take effect, to make this plan ineffective.
Tommy came to the station around three months ago so the drug started to affect him already but he didn't ingest enough of it yet, so he still had time before it took full effect.
That said he still had to eat and the food supply was the source of the drug.
Solution to this problem was simple: get the drug out of his system and gain immunity.
But it was easier said than done.
The easiest way to get rid of the drug was to get drunk and as far as he knew there was no alcohol on this station and he couldn't use the matter converters to get some without raising an alarm.
He was fairly sure that that was a part of the plan in the end, why use a drug on people and give them a way to not only get rid of it but also become immune.
When Tommy was deep in though he heard a silent ping coming from the tablet on his belt.
He looked at the device and saw that the timer he set reached zero,meaning that his time was up,he had been here for 3,5 hours already and it was time to get back.
The way back took him less time now that he knew that there was no security, at least not in this part of the station.
But that didn't mean he could relax so he moved cautiously.
It took him more than half an hour to get back to his room,making sure that he remained unseen.
When he finally arrived,he was too tired to even think so right after hiding his special gear in the cabinet and covering it with some spare clothes he went to sleep.