The facility was one of contrasts. One part was a one-way loading dock where a truck would come into a pristine and empty dock to unload materials before leaving, then a door would drop and all supplies would be brought in. There was no shipping going out, so it was secure. Other parts were widely separated by dark and narrow passageways. Apparently, this was to prevent people from wanting to wander around where they were not authorized. Some rooms were cramped with papers, computers, diagrams, and the likes while others were fully functioning clean rooms. The contrast was quite discordant as you would go from one area through a series of hallways and doors to another and the entire atmosphere would change instantly.

What got me was the fact that various technical papers were out in easy view in many of the rooms. As I covertly gave them the side eye, I noticed that each one seemed to focus on a different specific part.

It was not until near the end of this tour of the facility that we finally got to the room with the final product. In there also was one of the chief scientists working on the project.

My eyes were drawn instantly to the chair. Designed to recline after someone was strapped in carefully it had the appearance of a minimalist design with... huge flowers around it in a cascade that covered all available space. The scientist was describing to the auditor how it worked and so I listened in with care. Beside me Tom gave me a side eye and then smirked but said nothing as I listened.

“The flower looking parts are designed to vibrate a bit to change their positioning with regards to the subject. These minor changes help us keep different sensors rolling on to the subject through their own apertures. The sensors are mostly packed into the back of each of the devices with nanoscale to micron sized sensor heads providing the scanning we need. Some overlay is possible due to different wavelengths and sensor types so that is why they can overlap so well. We cannot map the whole mind at once of course but we can determine quickly the subjects’ normal behaviors in their prefrontal cortex and their cerebellum.”

The agent asked questions about the 'big words' and the scientist identified them as the parts that control language skills and the part of the mind that decides if something is a lie or the truth.

The scientist started describing the various sensors and their full applications, but those parts were decidedly over my head and I could not keep up. Nor could the agent who was responsible for questioning him. The scientist quickly came up and outright said “Most of this is going to be way beyond an average agents’ capabilities and that is no insult, this is after all a mix of the highest of brain scanning technology and an understanding of minute aspects of the brain. For example, just the math behind Michael Harrington's Rubik's cube brain mock up is easily a match for rocket science. To think that he did all that math without a degree in 2013 to 2015! These things will need a specialist at best to even try to understand. I think you should be more focused upon the possibilities behind our technology here.”

The scientist, a Greg Albright, went to show specific parts where they would work together to keep track of the ventral prefrontal cortex for the emotional state of the subject, where the scanners for the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex were located which apparently helped identify language comprehension, and he went on about how the specific comprehension system was to keep track of 'known triggers'.

The agent asked about known triggers and Albright answered that the triggers were the most easily identified words. Things like yes, no, and very direct answers. Albright went on to describe that each human could store some things in almost the same way and other things in a vastly different way.” It's like wordsmithing, a word like struggle can be interpreted to be like a fight, a challenge, a difficulty, and even a societal movement. Due to my efforts to keep very careful track of words for my blogs this made absolute sense and was something I definitely could take away from this audit to the resistance.

“However, the subjects have at best, between them all, thirty two ways to say no and twenty five to say yes. There are other key words we can easily narrow down to a range but trying to go for strings of words can get more complicated. Right now, we are working on a number of key phrases and statements that would suffice for the needs of our government as well as factual identification of their responses up to a point.”

I think my eyes grew wide at that point, what I thought I heard was that the technology worked but they were just working on their equivalent of a dictionary. Actually, not technically a dictionary but a phrase recognition system as it sounded like they had a decent library of words they could always rely upon.

Tom grinned as the scientist continued and whispered in my ear “yeah it is not all bad news, if the system can be deployed properly then no one will care if there was a traitor and all that, even the security lapses will be forgiven because we could wrap up all loose ends and the Elites would never worry again”.

His statement worried me greatly. It took all my effort to not shake or show an emotion at that point. This could doom everything.

The worst part was that my family, my fellow resistance members, and even ask of society relied upon one person... That person being inadequate to the job, being unsure of how to proceed, always being at risk, out of his trained skillet, and that person was me... Everyone is doomed.

__________________________________________________________

Tom decided that we should look at the work being done where the servers were kept. Row after row of these mainframes were inside this large climate-controlled room.

He led me to a small attached where there was a table and four leather seats. Tim indicated for me to sit in one and grabbed the one opposite of me. When I gave him an inquisitive look he simply said, “We need wait for them to show up.”

The them turned out to be Eric and Carl. I started to try to stand b they both waved me back down and they both got into the remaining seats.

I thought to myself that seemed weird. I thought that unless something was found they would be busy, it surely seemed to be their standards from what I had learned from my parents and from my own audit. So why were they here like this together?

Carl simply looked at Tom once he was seated, that sort of head lean that asks a question without saying a single word. Nothing ominous about that. Was I nervous? No, not especially, just anxious, nervous, and worried at maximum levels. What the hell is this about,” I thought to myself.

“I give high marks; he was on top of several ideas that really would work” Tom said with a smile as he looked at me.” He proposed several that would work even where we would be hard pressed to succeed.”

Eric laughed and then said, “At least he did not suggest knitting, did he?”

Knitting? What the...

“No not at that level, but it was inspired work”.

“Knitting?” I just had to ask; I mean seriously what the heck is this stuff?

Carl laughed next and then pounded the table once, “Seems we can one up this guy,” then he looked at me and said “We had a recruit once propose that a turncoat could smuggle in sewing supplies and might knit up a garment that would have code hidden in how it was knitted. That turned some heads down at headquarters.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

They continued softly laughing and grinning for a second.

The nervous part of me was out of control, I was out of my zone and unsure what was going on, so I just felt like asking “What is going on here?”

Tom replied to me after getting my attention with a small hand wave.” As you know you are not a true auditor, you are just an assistant to a company auditor. The lowest of the low right?”

I nodded.

“Well, it's simple, we have a recruiting method where we check for the talent of people. Most are not so talented but are very dedicated to the cause, do you follow?”

“I think?” I said confused...

“So, we have a hard time recruiting smart people, often the dumb people are scared of smart people and will sabotage them as much as they can and then we are back to square one” at which point Eric waved his hand and Tom stopped.

“You see,” started Tom, “We need a leader trainee but without protection no leader trainee really gets anywhere. But you, you have the protection of being an influencer and a manipulator, or as an entry level executive. This indicates strong support from at least a few of the Elites and thus others will be very hesitant to try to cause you harm while you are at the academy.”

I sat there thinking about his words when the last one reared up and slapped me on the face.” Wait... What? Academy?” It was sort of hard to spit words out in a coherent manner.

Carl laughed “Congratulation, this was all a test. We audit this place a lot, usually without the executives ever finding out, as a way to test potential recruits and to make sure that the trash gets no chance to make connections here. We actually audited it last when the executives were replaced by some of our own agents. The idea that the first executive caught in decades was at the heart of this operation made a lot of people sensitive and thus we were told to train up you and replace all possible outsiders with our own people.”

This did not seem to help the anxiety which was mounting a nuclear war inside my gut, and I uttered “Academy?” one more time.

“Yes, the Academy to train Auditors. You will officially be trained as a national level auditor, but your first post will continue to be here until the completion of our truth detection equipment.” was his reply.

Inside me I knew this was bad, I sat there with my head lowered as I thought about this. I knew the equipment was almost done, I had critical knowledge of the facility, and now they were going to send me away to the one place I could probably never get a message out.

“Why so glum? You act like you have seen a ghost man,” said Tom.

I about peed my pants then, I was giving myself away, floundering I thought of several things before I thought of April.” I umm, have an umm, a date with a gal”

“Oh!” and everyone laughed which got me to lamely laugh as well.

“Dude do not worry, it starts in two and a half weeks, you can get your fun time in and make sure that she won't try to find someone else while you are there for three months at the academy”.

Two weeks was a long time, I could definitely prepare some sort of message in that time frame and possibly find something more of use for the resistance. I felt my own shoulders relax from my tense state.

“Okay so now that you are aware, you will continue to help us do an audit for the rest of this week, we will focus it upon your strengths and help to try to define what department you will end up in at the end. I suspect that we will have you placed in either propaganda or in document analysis. I would recommend the latter as while you have written good words about our Elites you have never really tried to do any works on our government separate from them and that might hinder you. You really do have a find nose for finding things and deducing the meaning which is what go our attention in the first place, you always helped the Elites with exactly what they wanted with information you gleaned from the web...”

Even as Eric continued on, I started losing attention, though I tried to nod through the next half hour as if I was listening, I was trying to think on how to take advantage of the remaining time, how to compose a message, how to prioritize what I had learned, and so forth.

“... And with that I think you have a lot on your mind already, let's conclude this meeting. Just keep on top of your email and we will make sure you get the itinerary.”

I used that moment to excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I did need to go, and this was a good way to make sure I could think with silence around me.

Bathrooms in our modern times were no longer proof against being watched, recorded, and being intruded upon in other ways. I had even heard word once of the government using heat sensors and cameras inside a toilet just to see if someone was really taking craps or was the source of some dropped toilet proofed notes that were flushed into the sewer system from a military camp. That guy was found and killed of course, after an extensive and very hands on 'audit'.

No, my intent was to merely think and not have my facial features misconstrued as I also took advantage of the facilities. I had a meet up this weekend with April, I could also visit my parents to hand off information afterwards and remain plausible. Those were good opportunities. Next would-be subject matter. I had the general shape of the device, I had the fact it was close to completion, I had a summary of how it worked, and I had a single name... What was his name? Albright... I thought hard and tried to remember, oh yes Greg Albright, I even recalled exactly how the guy looked.

What else did I have to report? Oh, yeah, that bad news that I am going to be training to be an auditor. Not just some corporate auditor where I could focus on those they already had caught and give them next to nothing, but an auditor who would be expected to find and out fellow resistance members.

Now how to give all of this at once? A typical message might get seen given the severity of what I had learned. I am probably under the most scrutiny possible for the next two weeks. Any electronic device I handled would be watched, any business I visit will be audited and anyone I visit would be audited. At least that was my full expectation. That means even April would be at risk of an audit if we held hands, touched for long, or did something that they could not see. The same with my parents, I had to presume that if I went somewhere they could not see that they would be going full blow super audit and might find something despite our best efforts to not get caught.

It would have to be visual and yet it could not keep their eyes on it. It would need to be a photo and all information would have to be visible in one photo. Or maybe not a photo but some new alternative method? It made me think of that knitting comment, except I had zero skills in knitting, and it probably would be a bit obvious now if I was to knit something like that.

I needed a way to send information without getting caught. If I could knit, I could use our four-box system where the interior of a box could have a cross line in two directions or an x as well. Each box could then hold a trit and trinary would expand it fast. More so we could use extra crossings in some circumstances to further increase the code. However, it would take a long time to knit a message. And again, the problem that they have talked about this.

I had to think fast, I needed a quick solution. I could use the stars and pick a few to create a length, a wavelength, and with a stopping and starting point? No, it would also take too much time and just studying the stars could give me away. With the increased scrutiny I was sure I was under I just could not come up with anything requiring technology so that was quite limiting.

Vaguely I thought of cooking a cake with rainbow coloring added carefully but I really was not that good of a cook.

Time was up and I had no viable solution, in fact I felt frustrated because my backup methods looked like they would not suffice. Being a resistance spy is frustrating work when you are literally being watched at every possible moment.

So, I stopped my visit to the toilet, washed my hands, and went back to meet the others.

“Took you long enough,” said Tom when I came back. He was the only one in the room.” They made me wait until you returned to tell you to go over purchase orders for parts for the project, they think this will help you get your mind in the right type of game. Also, they told me that they placed some dummy orders in there throughout the years and to tell you that, so that you can find all the bad orders possible and try to identify why they are bad orders.”

Jeez that sounds like some serious make work, years of materials.

Tom must have seen my face crinkle, he laughed and then said, “No you do not need to go over it all, just do your best and try to find at least one, if possible, you would definitely miss the start of next month's Academy class if you had to find everything.”

Tom led me out of the building, which resulted in a far smaller inspection than I expected. Tom languidly waved his hand and said “Technology, it keeps us honest, and audits ensure it”. I did notice Tom had to surrender his phone; it was a good thing I had left mine in my office on the charger.

The rest of the day I was going through purchase order after purchase order. As I was doing it, I found I could make five piles of the paperwork, one for the 3D Printing supplies, one for electronic parts, one for manufacturing equipment, one for normal items such as toilet paper and coffee cups, and then one for anything more unusual. I would sort that last one out even further later. The work was far faster than I had thought it would be.