The night in the information center was very useful for me. I spent the first half of the night studying the newspapers of the last year to draw conclusions about the life of people in Sector Ten Forty-Two. And the main conclusion I could draw was that life was not much different from life on Earth. Of course, we had to make adjustments for the level of technology and the fact that we were aboard a huge space station. But life itself was the same.
People just lived, they worked, studied, got married, died. And this society was not perfect. Some people cheated on their loved ones, and this could be discussed in the media for a very long time. People killed, stole, and cheated here. But at the same time, people here loved, saved, and helped. Ordinary life with some adjustments for space and technology.
It is also worth noting that the local society was very much afraid of pandemics. The same Nerbulian fever killed two million people across the station. And this is only official data; it is unknown how many people actually died from it. But it is known that the economy of all sectors except the central ones almost died for the next five years. There were a lot of conspiracy theories that it was the central sectors that organized the pandemic in order to consolidate their superiority over the others. I don't know how true this is, and it doesn't concern me, but now I understood the fear of people when they think of the Nerbulian fever.
For the rest of the night, I did not touch the textbooks. Instead, I started looking for information about Mathieu Urs. I couldn't find much information, but I did manage to get some.
Clord was wrong, Mathieu Urs did not come out of nowhere. I found his name among the participants of the intersectoral competitions in the school course. He was among the top ten students and received a scholarship from the Church of the One God to study at any institution of higher education after graduation. He was thirteen at the time, and for the next six years there was no information about him, but at the age of nineteen he was involved in a flyer accident caused by the son of the head of the retail department of the Agnen corporation, and he was the only survivor of the six-flyer accident, suffering only a few fractures.
Once again, Mathieu disappeared for several years, and when he reappeared, he was listed as one of the winners of a contest held by Agnès and was offered a paid internship with the corporation. The next mention was of him as the third deputy head of the retail sales department. And then an article about him was commissioned, and it was read literally in everything. He found a girl on the street who had been hit by a speeder and, fulfilling his duty as a parishioner of the Church of the One God, paid for her treatment, and after the treatment was over, took her as his foster daughter. The accents were placed in such a way that one could understand that it was the Church that played a role in Mathieu's upbringing and that is why he became so sensitive. That the help of true COG parishioners to ordinary people is the main goal of their lives. And this article was written four years ago. Since then, almost every month something has appeared about Mathieu and he has looked like some kind of a holy man. It is now, looking at all these articles at the same time, that it becomes clear that they were all of a paid-for nature. My digging into the media was interrupted by a call from Leah.
"What's up? "Did you fuck someone?" was the first thing Leah asked me when I accepted the call.
“No, unlike you, I was working on a case," I answered, closing my eyes, apparently I had stretched them a bit during the night.
“Did you find anything?" she asked me. In the background, I could hear the splashing of water, she was probably in the shower or somewhere else where there was water. “How can I tell you? Find something that could ruin his reputation?”
"No," I answered, "but it's a fact that this Mathieu is a creature of the church.” I added and sent her the information, "I sent you a selection of media analysis, in short, you can trace the ears of the church everywhere except when he survived the accident with six flyers at once. You can try to dig in that direction, but it was so long ago, I don't even know where you can find details about that accident.”
"Interesting, interesting," Leah replied, quickly looking at the information I sent her, "It's so good that I have access to the government segment of the network now. Meet me in two hours at this cafe for breakfast," she sent me a link to the cafe and then disconnected.
"Hey, kid, your time is running out in ten minutes, do you want to extend it?" an information officer came into the holographic room.
"No, thank you," I replied, getting up from my chair, "you've been very helpful. Maybe I'll come back to you again.”
“We always welcome visitors," he smiled and left the holographic room with me. "It's strange to see a thirst for knowledge among young people.”
“What's strange about it? I want to achieve something in my life, and in my opinion, knowledge is exactly what can help me do that," I answered.
“I wish it were so,” my interlocutor said sadly. "Money and meeting the right people, or no, meeting the right people and money."
"Do you think so?" I asked him. - "Well, I can't get contacts, but I can get money. What do you think, maybe I should become a robber? And then plan something?" I jokingly asked my interlocutor on the way out of the informant's office.
"Well, try it," he laughed, "Just keep in mind that there is a lot of competition there, and if you lose, that's it, it's forever."
After saying goodbye to the information center employee, I headed for the public transportation stop. It would take me about three hours to get to that cafe on foot. But by public transportation with one stop, it would take me only twenty minutes. There was a small private greenhouse next to the café, and for two thousand ksars you could spend an hour with the plants.
Honestly, it was a whim of mine, I just wanted to see the local plants not from the pre-war archives, but in person. I saw one tree at the landfill, and that was it. And as a person from the Earth, I wanted to see plants next to me. I understand that this is not entirely logical behavior, but I wanted to be close to plants, and that was enough for me.
During the flight, I tried not to look out the window of the airplane, despite the fact that I had a different body than the one I lived in on Earth, we had something in common. It was a fear of heights, as soon as I got a few feet above the surface, I felt a slight numbness. I could cope with it, but the unpleasant sensations still remained, and so instead of looking at the space station through the window, I studied the people around me.
They were ordinary people, and I once again confirmed that they were not much different from earthlings. Different language, different clothes, but if you miss these moments, you might think that you are riding a minibus from Troyeshchyna to Pochayna. There were two teenagers in the back seat playing games on their cell phones, an old lady in front of me and her slightly younger friend were talking about how young people are now completely lost and do not respect the older generation. Opposite me sat a man in a strict suit, repeating something while peering through his communicator. Listening to his mumbling, I realized that he was on his way to an interview and was trying to repeat everything again before it. A man in his fifties, wearing a cap, was sitting at the control panel of the flyer, a former bus driver, though the difference was that he was fenced off from the cabin by transparent plastic without a single hole.
On the second flight, the situation with the passengers was different. Apart from me, there was not a single adult male in the cabin, only mothers with children. I even took an interest in this and it turned out that this route led from the sleeping area of the station to the children's entertainment area of the station. At the final stop, there were several shopping and entertainment centers aimed at children.
But I wasn't going to the final stop, so leaving the moms and kids to go on, I got off in the office area. When I came to the edge of the stop and looked down, I almost fainted from what I saw. Below me was several hundred meters of altitude, and hundreds, if not thousands of flyers flying in all directions. I got myself under control and headed for the greenhouse. In fifteen minutes, it was my turn and I had to hurry a little.
"Good afternoon, I'm glad to see you here." a young man greeted me when I entered the greenhouse. There were already several dozen plants in pots in the office, and the aroma coming from them was fantastic. " I want to warn you about the rules of staying in the greenhouse. "
"I read the rules on your website," I replied, not wanting to do it again." I just want to walk among the plants and maybe lie down on the grass. It's not forbidden, is it?"
"No, it's not forbidden, but every minute on the lawn with grass is charged separately. Five hundred ksars. "
" I read it," I smiled. Among the reviews was a story about a guy and a girl who decided to stay in the greenhouse for the night, it wasn't forbidden, you just pay for the time and that's it. But they decided to make love on the grass and then fell asleep. So in the morning they got a huge bill. It even went to court, but the court acquitted the greenhouse.
"Then come to the disinfector's cell." He led me to the cell, "When the green light comes on, you can go into the greenhouse.
And yes, disinfection was mandatory because the plants were very rare and could be easily poisoned by something. So, before entering, they carried out a surface disinfection, minimizing the risk of plant destruction.
As soon as the door to the greenhouse opened, I froze in shock. What I saw could not be compared to the photo on the greenhouse's website. I found myself inside a real jungle. Here, holographic projectors were perfectly combined with real plants and a real landscape.
It was not for nothing, definitely not for nothing that I decided to visit this greenhouse. There were birds flying overhead, different bugs, and everything had some kind of extraterrestrial appearance. An unrealistic shade of green and purple. Some pulsating growths on the trees. I even searched for information about these growths on the Internet for fun. It turned out that these growths were half-animal, half-plant symbionts bred artificially before the war. They raised the immunity of plants and allowed them to live longer. As a side effect, they recovered oxygen from carbon dioxide.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Soon I came to the famous lawn, where the price of staying was charged by the minute. And I understood why, people locked in a metal box want to feel alone with nature, and this was the best place to do it. So I couldn't stand it and jumped into the clearing to lie down on the green-purple grass for a while.
About ten minutes later, a reminder on my communicator about the meeting with Leah went off, so I had to get up from the grass and go to a cafe that was five minutes from the greenhouse. On the way out, I noticed a family with three children who were the next visitors to this wonderful greenhouse. I'll have to come back here again, it was really great. I was even a little jealous of the guy who worked here and could afford to visit the greenhouse every day.
"How was your night?" I asked Leah when she sat down at a table in the cafe I had arrived at a few minutes earlier.
"Four times, it's been a long time since I've had one," Leah smiled sincerely, "and if you wanted to play a joke on me, it won't work.
"In any case, I just got high too. I spent an hour in the greenhouse. It's a real buzz." I answered.
"Zach, you've never been drawn to nature before." Leah looked at me strangely. "Okay, let's get down to business. From the records at the church, there's not much useful information. Yes, every day Mathieu Urs goes to church and spends some time in the pastor's office with him, sometimes an hour, sometimes two. I don't know what they do there, there are no records. So I'll pass on that. However, there is other information: about ten million ksars are sent from the church's account every month to the Mathieu Urs Foundation for Talented Youth. The strange thing is that there is no publicly available information about this fund. But I managed to find this foundation in the government tax database. Every month it reports losses of several tens of millions of ksars. And it lives solely on donations. The donations come from the church, Mathieu himself, but no more than a million ksars, and the Ministry of Defense. It's a very strange mix."
"Did you manage to find information about what this foundation does?" I asked Leah.
"Yes, and again, this information was only available on the government side of the network. This foundation is engaged in military training of children, but after graduation, the children disappear somewhere. I was able to get a couple of the children's names, they are officially dead and their parents even receive some kind of monthly allowance. My lover's access was not enough to find out anything more. "And that's where I think, is it worth going in this direction? The military is there, and they won't tolerate us going there. "
"Did you find out anything about the accident?" I asked Leah, realizing that although this direction was promising, it was not worth getting involved in the military.
"And this is more predictive. It turns out that it was this accident that allowed Mathieu to get into Agnes and immediately under the tutelage of the head of the entire department. According to the information in the tax office, Mathieu started working in the retail sales department a week after the accident. Officially, the son of the head of that department was responsible for the accident, and he died in the accident, by the way. It's a bit strange."
" I think we should pay a visit to that department head. Is he alive?" I asked Leah.
"Oh yes, he's alive, but he's been in a mental institution for a year now." Leah smiled.
" That's interesting. Very interesting." I replied. " But we can't visit him?"
" Hardly, he's in the violent ward. " Leah replied. "So we have two choices, the pastor or the lunatic. Who's your bet?"
" I think the pastor should know more. Do you know where he lives?" I asked Leah.
"Seven hundred and forty-fourth block of the sleeping sub-sector. He bought out six residential boxes and turned them into a house. And the best part is that he actually lives there and it's an ordinary block, he wants to show that he's a simple person. There are no guards, no fancy security systems. "
"It's strange somehow."
" He is really respected there, if he asks the people around him, they can kill for him. They brainwash people in the church," Leah answered.
"So we're going to go there?" I asked her.
"Yes, but we need to prepare. I found out where there is a store that sells various special equipment that has disappeared from the military warehouses."
"How?" I was surprised.
"This store was set up by the military on their own and they make good money on it. My lover is involved in this scheme." Leah added. "I've already ordered holographic masks and a computer unit for hacking alarms. "
"Is it expensive?" I asked Leah.
" Not cheap. The masks are three thousand credits each, the computer unit seven thousand. But we'll need them in the future. So it's an investment in our future," Leah added, seeing my expression when I learned the cost of the equipment.
" Okay", I waved my hand.
After finishing breakfast, we went to the natural food store. That was the cover of this store. It was located in the factory part of the sector and it was quite strange to sell natural food there.
I sat down in the working canteen and waited for Leah to come out of the store. After ten minutes, I started to get worried, but after five more, Leah came out of the store with a big bag of some fruit.
"Is everything okay?" I asked her when I caught up with her at the public transportation stop.
" Yes," she replied," I booked us a room in a small hotel, we need to rest before the evening, and we will talk there." She answered me and then typed in a notebook on her communicator, asking me not to talk about work-related topics until she allows it.
Half an hour later, we settled into the hotel room she had booked. For another ten minutes she walked around the room with the scanner active in her implant, and only then did she drop a bag of fruit on the bed " red jars held our masks, yellow a computer." Taking the red fruit in her hands, Leah crushed it and took out a collar of some kind. She put it around her neck. It took a few minutes to set it up through the communicator and then a dark-skinned girl with two green eyes was looking at me.
"Cool," I said as I touched her implant through the hologram, "Until I touched it, I didn't realize that it was a hologram at all.
"It's an alien technology adapted to control our communicators. "The charge lasts eight hours, there are three hundred and forty standard masks for men and three hundred and forty standard masks for women, but it's better to take a standard one as a basis and modify it to suit yourself. Or even change only a few nuances in your real face," she added and changed the mask to her own face, only now she was missing the implant. "You can change the shape of the nose a little, the cut of the eyes, the ears can be enlarged, the lip can be pumped up, the dimples on the cheeks can be removed. Well? What do you think?"
"You know, it looks like you, but not you, it's a strange feeling, like I'm looking at a person who only looks like you," I answered, taking my mask out of the fruit.
" But it's not for us, the pastor saw us, so we have to be different people altogether. " Leah replied and changed her mask to another girl. Now it was definitely not possible to see Leah in it. "I'm also going to get my boobs bigger, that should confuse him even more," Leah added, putting her hands on her C.
For the next few hours, Leah taught me how to use the mask and the computing unit. The computing unit itself was not something illegal, it was just very powerful and autonomous, with the help of her implant, communicator and this computing unit, Leah greatly increased her capabilities in hacking electronic systems.
The main thing was to install the right programs on this computer unit. That's what Leah was doing until the evening. And only a few hours before the time we were supposed to leave, we went to bed and got some sleep and rest.
After midnight, Leah and I left our room and went to the nearby bars. And there, in the crowd of drunken youth, we quietly activated our masks and took turns heading to the corridor leading to the seven hundred and forty-fourth block. Already in the block itself, making sure that we were not being followed, we went straight to the pastor's house. And we were very lucky, because right now the pastor was walking a girl to the taxi flyer. I even recognized this girl, she was the one who injected me with Vadox yesterday. What a bug this pastor is, he managed to get into her panties in a day. A kiss goodbye only confirmed this, when the flyer flew away, the pastor stood for a few minutes thinking about something and then returned home.
"I have an idea," I said, "Make a mask of that girl, pretend you forgot something and call the house. Of course, the clothes are wrong, but you just need to enter the house."
"We need to make sure he doesn't have time to activate the alarm," she replied, "I haven't done this for a long time, but I'll try to paralyze him from the waist down. "
Changing her mask to that of a girl, Leah went to the door and rang it. In a few seconds the door of the house opened and the surprised pastor looked out, and then I barely noticed Leah's movement, one hundredth of a second and the pastor started to fall, Leah carefully picked him up and dragged him inside the house, and I followed her.
While the pastor was unconscious, because Leah overdid it with the force of the blow, she went to the house alarm system and started hacking it. A minute later she returned to the pastor and after scanning him, she took a knife out of her pocket and cut three capsules from his neck, arm and thigh, and it was from this pain that the pastor came to. Surprisingly, he didn't start screaming, he just looked at us carefully and then spoke.
"The money is in the safe in the bedroom.
"We will definitely take it," I answered in a changed voice, "And now we need the password to your communicator and computer.
"No," he answered shortly. It was clear that he was more afraid of this than of losing money.
"You shouldn't be, my girlfriend is a bit of a nut," I twisted my finger at my temple. At this time, Leah began to run the knife over the pastor's body, first cutting off the buttons on his robe, and then leaving light scratches on his skin.
"Okay," the pastor could not stand it and finally told her the passwords to the devices.
For the next ten minutes, Leah quickly copied the data, and then she somehow changed and came to me with the pastor's communicator. Activating the holoprojector, she brought up a recording of child porn. This asshole was jerking off a little boy and then blowing him.
"Fuck," I couldn't help but turn to the bastard. "I see you like little boys."
"I'll pay," he said. "Two, no, three million ksars, that's all I have."
"What should we do with him?" I asked Leah.
"We'll figure it out," she kicked the pastor in the head and he passed out immediately. "I can't just leave him like this.
" What if we leak it to the Internet?"
"No, you can't, but you can call the police anonymously and leave these recordings on. Pedophilia is one of the worst sins on the entire station, except for the internal sector. "
"What about our question?" I asked her.
" Yes, and it's related to that." She nodded with disgust at the hologram that continued to play the recording. " And now we're leaving."