SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,51

living.

»Sancta, believe me, if I leave you for good, love itself will leave me for good. That would be my doomsday! After I have solved this tiresome issue and stopped the bloodshed amongst our kind, I will come back to you. This I swear! Though, you shouldn’t rely on vows and promises and wean yourself from waiting. If you really want to live, you got to leave the netherworld. Let me recommend this to you as your therapist. Out there countless dangers are waiting for you, at every turn evil is lurking, and disappointment is a dime a thousand. At the same time of all things you be compensated by these devils that are responsible for all those bad things. Why? Because there’s still blood running through their veins. You will face countless opportunities, and eventually true happiness. And you will realize: The Forum Romanum is beautiful, but life amongst the living is even more beautiful!«

A smile returned to her silvery face. Still, it couldn’t hide a sparkling trickle of tears. Maybe it was sadness about the many lost years, in which she had dwelled on thoughts without ever daring to put them into operation.

»So now you will say Vale! Francis?« she said.

»No, there are so still many things I want to know about you.«

»What? If I can cross a street without your help?«

Now the smile also turned back to my face.

»Yes, and what is it with the many confusing colors on those street lights?« I replied. »What I’m also deeply interested in is this glorious security technology that Umberto apparently installed here. Quite honestly, I see precious little of it. Unless your master nailed down every single column and every single stone single-handed.«

»You’re not totally off base, Francis«, she said, jumped down the terrace rudiment and ran down the hill. I followed her, full of curiosity. Meanwhile it was noon, and down there whole battalions of tourists shoved themselves through the landscape of ruins. Even from afar, one could easily identify them by their clothes. Weird that humans think that in regard to clothes they even have to outdo circus clowns during their vacation.

»Every single ancient stone has been numbered, cataloged and photographed a bunch of times. Umberto also did something else to them. He didn’t nail them down, but injected a very modern version of these things, microchips. The newest development of these chips is called smart tags, if I remember that correctly.«

In a split second I got the ingenious security concept that Signore Umberto had come up with. Here the magic words are: data transmitting labels! Skeptics have another term for it though: prying chips. I had heard of it in a TV report, even though only fragmentarily as Gustav’s monster snoring had drowned out the announcer’s voice. The smart tags or RFID-, namely radio-frequency-identification-chips, represented the fulfillment of every observation fetishist’s dreams. So far people noticed the barcode of grocery store products no earlier than the minute they get scanned at the checkout counter. Shortly, they’ll have to hope that they themselves don’t get noticed by its multifunctional successor. Namely, a current-independent radio chip – barely visible to the naked eye – that is attached directly to the product and is thought to displace the barcode at retail. By means of a new technology the tiny chips transports the data to remote sensors by radio. But also in other respects this transponder sets new standards: It also qualifies for the activation of CCTV and allows the tracking of customers, who come in contact with the product. The cashier can go home – an automatic register gathers all goods by radio and collects the customers’ money. By use of a hidden so-called transponder it can be registered when a thief stuffs something into his pocket and leaves the store as well as in which street or which house entrance he disappears after that.

And at this point our smart Umberto got into the game. He had realized the opportunities, which this chip offered to security systems, a little earlier and had used it to prepare every single ancient thing at the Forum. So stealing only a single stone from this site, for a thief amounted to voluntarily turning himself in. Security guys were able to track his every single footstep on a computer screen and, thus, locate him.

»Furthermore, there are several cameras hidden around here, which are connected to a central processor«, Sancta kept talking, after she had superfluously tried to quite ponderously explain the role of smart