Lior took out the folder from his briefcase and tossed it in my direction. I did not catch it, obviously, and it fell onto the floor near my leg. He didn't even notice it already going in the opposite direction.

"Thanks, El. It was nice chatting with you. As always… As fucking always". I was the only person hearing the last phrase as I was the only person in the room. Knowing Lior, I could have been the only person in the building already. For all three years we'd been working together, we talked maybe three times. Once a year - he was a man of remarkable consistency. It was one of the reasons I chose to work with him. It and him not caring about side profits I was having from his projects.

The folder was giant as it contained a pile of papers - corner points of someone's life. He was old-school - this Lior's feature I was not quite fond of. It was a minor inconvenience, though, comparing to the perks of working with him. Specifically, to work with him, I've learned handwriting.

As for the project - it was almost usual. Find no-one knows what, no-one knows where, and no-one knows when. Well, the latter was more or less definite - it was in the past. As for the first two - that is why I was given this folder - to find out.

I always started with a 'what' clause because knowing the thing of your interest minimizes the area of search drastically. Fish is found in water, as they say, a bird in the sky, and money in someone else's pockets.

Objective - the late staffing researcher of Amaterasu corporation. He was still alive though when the contract started. Unfortunate. I preferred not to get involved in the corporations’ politics. Still, the guy's position was clearly lower grade, thus with limited access to dangerous secrets, so I decided to take the job. Plus, the money was quite good.

I took a Quber to my office, a giant warehouse near the old port. The place, not very popular, but safe enough for me not to worry about my belongings or life.

Automatic turrets guarding the entrance reacted to my friend-or-foe marker with a welcoming click. First time I almost shat myself from such a greeting. Demure from the outside, this building seemed enormous from the inside. It also felt very empty, if not taking into account one couch and one stationary control panel.

I took my shoes off and stepped onto the thick carpet completely covering the floor of the warehouse, except for the plinth under the console and a couch. Small fireflies instantly ascent from where my feet touched the carpet and started to fly around with anticipation of a dog offered not with a bone but with a nice bowl of meat stew. Each step on that rug induced more fireflies, marking my road to the console in ambient yellow light.

The folder was carefully placed onto the flat area to the left of the holographic screen already running greeting melody followed by a complicated dance of cubes and spheres in the air above it.

The folder itself was a significant information container. Special, Lior provided, scanners were already retrieving data from it. The carpet on the floor started to move. Firstly, tender, barely-noticeable waves covered its entire surface. In time local extremums started to rise up forming brazen, malevolent sculptures, or fall down into an abyss of the basement. The whole warehouse turned into an ocean of bronze. I always loved this moment - the sculptures were so avid of actual life, they started becoming alive. Objective, his family and friends, home, office, and all the significant points of his life got reenacted by a swarm of nanobots eager to help. Easily trackable VR worlds were of no use in my business. Except for the green eyes, this old and obscure, semi-military nanobots tech was the only legacy I inherited from my grandfather. I found a suitable application for it, though. While I was reflecting, the simulation initialization had been completed. Four boxes, one separate basement, and eight people appeared where nothing was present moments ago. People were standing in a circle facing its center. The Objective, Aaron O'Connor, stood there. Wearing his expensive work suit and top-notch farsighted glasses, he looked like someone from top management rather than a simple HR employee. In a world where pretty much anyone could afford eyesight correction or even implants, glasses were something only privileged could pull off. Not those who managed to enter the elite during their adulthood, no. A bad sight from childhood, corrected solely by glasses - that was a clear indication of wealth. Pure extravaganza as for me, but this point could become one of the keys to the project. From my experience, I knew that each project had plural 'keys' and not a singular master ‘key,’ though.

As soon as a nano swarm was active I was able to control it via a bit modified basic neural implant AVa-99c. I looped a set of general micro reactions and micromanipulations of the Objective.

Objective walks; he talks slightly over pronouncing the letter 'r'; he opens the door, he takes off his shoes; he sleeps… Something was off about his movements. It looked like he was not living but instead acting them. For the years of behavioral analysis, I learned to notice these inconsistencies very quickly.

They say the devil is in the details. Let's find his devil. I loaded a set of more specific reactions.

He takes a glass with a left hand; he is nervously juggling a coin between his fingers on both hands; he blinks, sometimes closing his eyes too hard; he smiles, opening the top lip just enough to see his top left fang; he fixates an eyeglasses bracket on his nose bridge with a left index finger.

Apparently, he was a southpaw.

He starts walking with the right foot; he uses a higher than an ordinary platform on his shoes; he makes a gesture like he wants to place his right hand into his left sleeve and changes it at the last moment fixing sapphire studs…

I approached him to examine a bit closer. Being left-handed myself, I knew what to look for. My right hand, as a secondary one, was full of micro scars and my left hand, as a primary one, was full of toughened skin patches. It was much more to that, but to find a needed clue - it was enough. The skin on Aaron's right hand was clean and smooth as an ass of a baby. The index finger on the left hand was hardly having any signs of it being used a lot to fix glasses, also.

I dug into a pile of paper that came with the folder. I found what I wanted only after a fifteen-minute search, which is why I fucking hate paper. Anyway… His medical records were all here. As usually, only early years were filled with major procedures: slight gene correction of what his parents’ mutations were not able to handle - either not inherited or were not as specific as was needed; hybrid diagnostic nanobots colony implantation - that was unusual but not unseen; eyesight correction (!)... Ok… Six years ago - car accident - a slight decrease in eyesight, complete replacement of the right arm, two more nano cultures injection - higher nervous system regulators and VR catalysts.

Interestingly, he left his sight flawed, considering it would have been the easiest fix of all he experienced that day. After that accident, he had semi-annual health checks by the corporation doctors. Six more nano colonies and numerous mutations were injected during the first two years after the accident. Those things cost a fortune, and average corporation employees would not be able to earn in such a short period. There was an argumentation, though - a new project with him as a key recruiter. It was not new for the corporation though. An internal project known under the code name "MS-16" had lasted for nearly two decades by the time Aaron joined it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There were no specifics, though, which was interesting because all the previous projects had vast descriptions.

Once a wide circle of the search was narrowing down at a good pace. I have decided to switch to his relatives for a bit - son, daughter, and wife. I dug one particular sheet from a pile and looked at it - shit. He had one more son from his first marriage. Martin - now he should be around forty. Interestingly, there was no eidolon of him in Lior’s information - thus, one swarm sculpture less than needed. It could have meant two things - either he is dead or so far out of reach, even the best detectives couldn’t have found him.

One of the reasons I chose to pursue a digital archeology career was my umm.. hunch if you will. During the investigation, I always knew which path was the one that would lead me to the destination. Sometimes it was scary even for me. Looking at the 3d image of Martin with Aaron - I knew that I would have to unwrap this arc till the end If I wanted to get paid for this project.

Martin was important.

His current family was important.

His recent changes were important.

His new project was the key.

I stood a few centimeters from Aaron, looking closely into his eyes and at his face in general. Emotions transcription sometimes worked in very subtle ways, especially if the person was not very emotional or articulate during their life. I sent a pack of eidolons to the algorithm moving from random people to the more particular ones, ending with his current family members and son from the first marriage. As expected, random unknown people were inducing very little response from the nanobots dummy of Aaron O’Connor. His colleagues and just familiar people were causing a wide range of emotions: ranging from interest and contentment to anger, jealousy, and even resentment. All emotions were very clear, vivid, and apposite. The same reactions appeared in response to his family and Martin. The feelings he felt were much more complicated in this case but also very readable and appropriate. Fatigue, joy, happiness, fury, love…

Everything seemed to be perfect. The laminal emotions reactions, I would say. Interesting.

I left nanobots sculptures standing there alone for some time and dove into the pile of paper, which the only pervert can consider a data set. I had to become one to excel in my job. Search through a physical representation of raw data was a nightmare. I had no idea how those barbaric ancestors of mine had been doing it till the late eighties.

I started from the corporation and as I was expecting needed information wasn’t there. Well, not entirely. Partially I have found what I wanted - the list of original boards of the Amaterasu corporation from the day it was created. This kind of information was so old and so outdated I don’t even know why Lior put it here. And even photo images. Not even in 3d. Twelve people; eight men and four women. All from their middle thirties too, maybe, early fifties. I read a list once more. Something was wrong. In the list, there were five women and seven men. Interesting…

All the information I was reading or even looking at, was digitized and placed into a protected folder at my rig. The rig was custom and currently outside a global network, thus I was able to access data in a usual way via the optical nerve interface and body motion capture. I projected the initial board photo image and put a name into the overlay over each member. After this easy filtering, I looked at a seemingly male member of a board with an apparently female name. Nowadays, it is nothing unthinkable, but back then, it was at least unusual in a company with the Bushido business model.

After thorough investigation, what appeared to be male kimono, was, in fact, a female version, but specially made as close as possible to the male one, not violating appropriate margins. The woman wore glasses and kept her hands hidden in sleeves. Left hand in the right sleeve and right hand in the left one. Nothing unusual…

I found her on several more archive images taken during the next few decades. Aging hit her hard. In the time, there were no so exquisite life extension techs as now. After the Mars Incident, humanity was given a SOUL stone tech, making a person’s possible lifespan almost infinite. The limited amount of the source material and the impossibility of synthesizing more made this way of life extension prerogative of the richest of the richest. There still was a problem - only seven percents of people were suitable for their souls to be stored in the SOUL stone, making it even more useless. The solution that did not suit everyone equally was found - only the most influential people of the planet were given a chance to be stored in SOUL stone.

I didn’t know, yet, why I recalled this irrelevant piece of information, but my hunch was calm, indicating the correct path. The pieces were assembling into a complete puzzled. There were a lot of missed elements yet, but the overall picture was already recognizable.

Remember, I was telling you about corporation politics and my reluctance regarding involvement? I have one piece of advice to everybody reading this - always comply with your principles and don’t compromise with your own mind, even if the reward is valuable. I’ve done this, I’ve compromised, I have forgotten my principle blinded by the shining of money.

While I was thinking about these abstract topics, the cross-datacarrier search, between the papers in a folder, public internet data, archive corporation images, and eidolons, I’ve triggered some time ago, provided results. Image-analyzing neural networks, which became popular pretty long time ago, worked almost perfectly now. The problem was in the usage restrictions, of course, but I knew several guys at the right places(well, those contacts were one more legacy from my late grandpa), so I’ve owned several different military-grade versions, and they did perform. The one I added to the search produced the result. To understand the importance of it, you need to know a couple of modern world facts:

Fact 1 - there is no SOUL transition tech available as of now. The users of SOUL stones were either living in VR worlds or in state-of-the-art artificial bodies.

Fact 2 - for nearly a century, corporations haven’t lost a single secret due to the rigged laws and mutual pacts between corporations.

After I reviewed the search results, though, I made a couple of observational conclusions:

Conclusion 1: there IS a SOUL transition tech available as of now. I even know one of its users - Asuka Watanabe, the founding member of Amaterasu corporation. The last known host of her SOUL was known as Aaron O’Connor, my current objective.

Conclusion 2: I am done. The corporations would never let me go with information of such kind.

What about the result? It was a behavioral similarity analysis of all the people on all the images and eidolons I had, disregarding the looks. It gave pretty definitive output - with a possibility of 63 percent micro gestures and behavioral patterns of seven people we performed by the same person; with the possibility of 37 percent micro gestures and behavioral patterns of twenty-one people were performed by the same person; fifteen persent for fifty-six people. Several of those people were higher managers of several corporations and even presidents of small countries. It was insane. Most of them were either dead or dysfunctional, with only two persons in my database living their everyday life.

I could have given up, but I’ve decided not to rush with my decisions. I didn’t know how much time I had left, so I needed to use it properly.

I needed to know what is the main subject of this project. Who and, more importantly, why incudes it. Maybe knowing it will give me some leverage.

I went back to the console and enabled technology simulations in the rooms created by the nano swarm. All the tech devices started to behave the same and have the same information as their real-life prototypes.

I was trying to be calm and continue working with the objects in the rooms, but the stress was too high.

The gates smoothly closed behind my back as I headed to the nearest pub to take my edge off. Automatic turrels clicked, confirming mode-switching. This time their clicks sounded not so friendly.