today. Elese is there, but I’m…not. And I fail to show up in any of the feeds from the last couple days. In fact, the places where I should have been are changed so it doesn’t look like people are talking to an invisible person. As if I’ve been erased from existence.
“Care to explain that?” Radcliff asks aloud probably for Niall’s benefit. “I can’t. Not yet.” I check the programming and nothing triggered the alarms. All is as it should be. So what happened? I need to go deeper. Problem is I shouldn’t be able to do it on this terminal and with Radcliff tagging along… Oh well, he’s bound to find out sometime.
I go deeper and examine the protective measures around the security cameras in detail. It’s a slow process and takes a while to tease out the problem. Oh my stars.
“Is that—”
“Yes,” I interrupt Radcliff. “Jarren tried to access the cameras in security.”
“Can he do that?” Niall asks in alarm.
That’s the thing. “Sort of.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that when I programmed the Q-net to watch our cameras, I had to create a very small link to that closed loop in security—otherwise the Q-net wouldn’t be able to locate the officers or check for intruders. When Jarren wormed into the camera feeds for the base, he found that tiny link. So the Q-net allowed him to view the security feeds, but it removed all images of me.”
“Can it do that?” Niall asks.
Radcliff is quiet. Too quiet. And that worries me.
“Obviously, but, more importantly, why did it do it?” I dig into the cluster. “Huh.”
“Huh, what? Talk to me, Mouse.”
“When I was setting up the programs for monitoring the base’s cameras, I must have inadvertently included an extra protection around my image.” I don’t remember doing it, but I was worried about Jarren finding me at the time. “So when Jarren wormed into the feeds, the Q-net translated that into erasing my image. It’s odd, but it saved me.”
“But if Jarren was worming into the feeds, why didn’t it alert us?” Niall asks.
“He didn’t trigger any of the alarms.” Disgust that our measures weren’t enough mixes with admiration for his mad worming skills. He’s still a murdering looter, though.
“Except the Q-net seemed to know he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
True. “Yeah, but without a breach in the security protocols, it couldn’t stop him.”
“The bigger problem is why didn’t it let us know it altered the feeds?” Radcliff asks, but I don’t think he expects me to answer.
It’s a good question. If the Q-net had let Radcliff know, then he wouldn’t have come barging in here accusing me of lying. I shoot him another glare, but he’s not paying attention. Instead, I try to figure out an answer. “The Q-net isn’t programmed to message us if that happens. I can put in a program for any future occurrences.”
“All right.”
It doesn’t take me long to weave in another protocol that will alert Radcliff of any alterations to our security made by the Q-net. “Done.”
“Is Jarren still monitoring the camera feeds in security?” Radcliff asks.
“It appears that he, or someone who works with him, checks in from time to time. Do you want me to fix the hole he’s worming through?”
“Not now,” Radcliff says. “You can do it tomorrow when you’re rested. Besides, it seems the Q-net is doing a good job protecting you.”
We disentangle. And I wait for an apology. Of course I don’t get it. Radcliff squints at his son. While we were in the Q-net, Niall put on a shirt. Smart man.
Radcliff turns to me. “Officer Dorey sent you back to rest. Why didn’t you?”
“I came to check on Niall and fell asleep on his couch.” The truth.
A grunt. “We better get back. Your parents are worried.”
Oh no. Seems when my mother came to wake me up for dinner, she found my room empty. Radcliff asked the Q-net for my location and you know the rest.
My parents’ reaction to the Q-net’s odd response and the fact Jarren wormed into the feeds is the same as mine—a combination of gratitude and fear.
“It would probably be a good idea to keep Ara out of the Q-net since Jarren’s snooping around, except we need to reestablish contact with DES,” Radcliff says while we’re eating.
I keep quiet despite the fact that he practically blamed me for the Q-net’s strange behavior. Am I to blame? The Q-net did appear to be different. Falling asleep while entangled shouldn’t have had any effect. Well,