The hologram was the only illumination in the studio apartment. Today was the scene of a jungle filled with life. Emyr threw the data stick into the middle of the trees, and a brightly colored parrot swooped down and snatched it out of the air.
Emyr shed out of his torn and somewhat bloody clothing. He must have cut himself on some of the glass. The cloths went in the burn bin since he wasnt keen on stiching together the rips or scrubbing the blood out. Besides, there were likely cameras, so the cloths would be evidence at this point.
After a cold shower, and a round of first aid, emyr felt almost human again. All that was left was a cup of tea, and going through the spoils of the heist.
“Did you find anything Han?” Emyr asked towards the hologram. Out of the trees a figure revealed itself and what appeared to be a short man about 36 cm tall appeared in the light of the projector. He had on an open vest shimmering with technicolor that seemed like there was a pattern hidden in another world and the cloth were just portals into that other static realm. His legs tapered into a digital static of unicode reminiscent of a genie from an old tale. His ears were pointed, and his skin was a swarthy with bright eyes that glowed with a piercing light.
“See for yourself.” Han waved his hand and the background of the room shifted. Gone was jungle and in its place, row after row after row of shelves appeared. Each book was a single file of that used to live on exocorps servers. Han like his libraries. As the shelves started to slow, han picked one of the books off the shelf flipped and through it. In terms of blackmail, we came up a little light. This is everything I could find on our friend Ferdinand.”
The book opened up and the contents jumped off the page to fill the area around Han with photos, documents, comments, and annotations. Complete with faded red threads that would connect to cross referenced material.
“Not much there, hes got a mistress he keeps in an apartment by his work, but by all accounts his wife is getting her rocks off on the pool boy, so I'm not sure thats gonna be anything but an annoyance. He hasn't been important enough for anyone to make dirt on him, and his life is pretty consumed by his work. He has people that handle his accounts, so no embezzlement, and as far as I can tell there isn’t any major kinks. Theres a novakoke habit, but at his level in the corporate ladder they have someone on staff for ‘performance enhancements’ which seems to be jargon for ‘drug dealer’.”
“I’ll never understand why the corpo rats don't just come out and say what they mean, instead of hiding behind esoteric language that only seems to make things more difficult to understand.” Emyr couldn't help but throw in a jab.
“The ways of men are beyond me I'm afraid. I’m just here to make sure you get a steady drip of porn, propaganda, and to handle those fiddly bits like searching petabytes of data to support your continued criminal activities.” Han replied as he strummed one of the threads coming out of the cloud of data. The book snapped shut, filed itself onto the shelf and the shelf started to move faster than the eye could see, all the while the red string getting brighter and brighter. Until finally the shelf stopped moving, and the thread could be seen disappearing into another book on the shelf. Han picked it up. “There was something interesting that I found when searching through the projects he is working on for his employer.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Emyr finally finished brewing his tea and flopped down in the plush couch that he has up against one wall. “Lay it on me, if you think it’s worth mentioning there is probably something there.”
Han opened up the book he found. It was labeled ‘Project Atlantis’ This one was more than just a personnel file. From its pages sailed a large cargo ship. And as it circled around Han’s avatar, the metadata started to populate in its wake. The port of sail, the destination, estimated weight, fuel costs, crew manifest and other important stats lined themselves up as if coming off the wave of the bow.
“So this seems like a normal cargo ship, but the route is 6 years old. This ship was launched only two years ago.” Han explained what stood out about the ship.
“Why’s that weird? It seems like the same ship doing the same route for six years would be the anomaly not the rule.” Emyr wondered aloud.
“You would be surprised actually, many ship captains find a stable route and hold onto it for as long as they can. Humans are creatures of habit after all. But you're right, the route could have just been run by a different ship. But thats the thing, the same ship is recorded as running the same route for 6 years. This brings the entry into question. But it’s just circumstantial, and doesn’t give us anything on Mr Ferdinand. But the size of exocorp is working against it here, because I checked the port records for that ship, since both sides of its route are owned and operated by exocorp.” Han grabbed the two parts of the wake that had the ports in them and twisted. The scene shifted to show two different ports with all the docks, loading equipment, storage areas, offices and all. He pulled from the offices a file from each. The text started to scroll past slowly enough to read if you knew what you were looking for. “These are the logs for the days that the ship should be in port. If you notice, there is only about 36 weeks of this route being logged at either port for any of the expected dates for the last five years.” Han turned to emyr and looked expectantly.
Emyr returned a blank face. “The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Only you would notice something so small. But that means we are working with a ghost ship. One that is either so ephemeral to go unnoticed by the port authority for 6 years straight. Or more likely is just a fabrication. But why go through all the effort to fake 6 years of records? Why not just record the ship normally? Its not like a well placed bribe wont make people look away.” Emyr sipped his tea, and sent a questioning look towards the resident data genie.
”I suspect so that they can avoid the cost of the bribe. Trusted captains who have been sailing with exocorp for at least 6 years are privileged to an expedited manifest check. It seems that they get upgrades from a physical check of their goods to just a weight check by an automated system. One that likely only checks if the ship is supposed to be there on the day it arrives, not if it has been there on time in the past.” Han speculated.
“And since its automated, theres not any pesky dock workers to ask why this ship no one has seen before is showing up as a return customer. I’ve got to say its pretty slick. Who was the person to last touched the shipping route?” emyr admired the ploy.
“None other than one Mr Ferdinand. Who it should be noted has the ability to edit shipping routes, but does not have control of the port records.” Han revealed.
“Well thats good enough for me, let’s hope its good enough for the client. Out of curiosity, what does it say the ship is delivering?”
Han checked the manifest. “Oceanic Farming supplies”