Chapter 06: Drs. Kim and Tsukishima fulfil their obligation to the ISAF in the civil war of the Jezebel system - part 3

Meeting the team

Ashley and Lauren opened the door to the conference room to find 3 graduate students seated at one end of the long table. The table’s surface was wiped down and strewn with books, laptops, poster tubes with papers rolled up inside, yellowed pieces of paper inside sealable bags, and new blank pieces of paper not in bags. One of the students was slumped back in her chair reading something on her computer, another was hunched over typing away, and the last student reclining in his chair reading a book held in one hand. He was wearing a sweater with “Waverton University of Jezebel” emblazoned over an image of a golden butterfly. Behind the students was a trash can stuffed with food wrappers and loose sheets of paper. In the middle of the table was a box of sandwiches.

The student in the sweater noticed their entrance, “oh hey, you two must be the field expert Archival Officers. I’m Hira, I’m a PhD student at Waverton University studying planetary history.” He got up and extended his hand across the table. Meanwhile, the warrant officers filed into the room and took their seats around the middle of the table, helping themselves to the sandwiches.

Ashley and Lauren shook his hand in turn: “Ashley.” “Lauren.”

“Hey, is Susan with you?” asked Hira.

“No, she said she was going to her office for a bit,” said Ashley.

Hira had a relieved look, “that’s great news, normally she’d be in here lighting a fire under us.” Hira yawned. “Speaking of which, the Colonial Museum has finally agreed to let us visit their archives and see some original material gathered from the facilities before the political situation went out of control. It would be great if we could have as many Archival Officers with us as we can.”

The student that was typing said something in the local system language, Hira turned around.

“What? Oh yeah,” said Hira, he turned back to face Lauren and Ashley, “he was saying how it took the combined pressure of Wave-U, the planetary government, and the Intersyst military to get the museum to open its archives.”

“Why would that be?” asked Ashley.

“Ah, that’s because the family that owns the Colonial Museum has its roots in the country,” said Hira, “they’ve been kinda cagey since the war broke out. Don’t get the wrong idea, they’re fine people; they’ve just been feeling pretty awkward and worried about what people are thinking about them. Especially since this city got way more crowded since Afban and Souban got relocated here, people have just been more on edge. Anyways, it looks like you guys are pretty hungry so I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks,” said Lauren, “do you know where we sit by any chance?”

“Umm,” said Hira.

“Over here,” Atid’s voice came from the other end of the table.

“Oh, Atid!” said Lauren, “sorry for not noticing you earlier.”

“Not at all,” said Atid, “I’ve just been sitting here reading newspapers.” He gestured at the stack of newspapers behind his laptop.

“Find anything interesting?” asked Ashley.

“Well, pretty much everyone has something to say on the influx of refugees from the other two cities,” said Atid, pulling one of the newspapers from the stack, “an op-ed in the leading newspaper says that the influx of refugees is a side effect of the capital’s move to pull back defensive personnel like law enforcement and soldiers, supplies, and equipment. I was actually hoping to ask Susan about this when you guys got back but it seems she’s not with you guys?”

“She went back to her office,” said Lauren, “she didn’t seem to be in the best mood after we failed to gain access to the radar network.”

“Have you found the communication booths? I need to call someone back at the Citadel,” said Lauren to Atid.

“Yeah, I’ll send you the location,” said Atid. He picked up his phone and swiped around a bit, “there, I’ve sent it to you. I went there myself, they even have private rooms, it’s—” Atid’s ears perked up, “someone’s coming,” his head turned slowly until he was looking at the door. The door opened to reveal Susan.

“All historical army researchers and Waverton University students, follow me, bring all your notes with you, now,” she said, she turned on her heel and left. Half of the officers and the three students filed out of the room. On his way out, Hira looked at the Archival Officers as if he was going to his doom.

“Um, it looks like you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to ask your question,” said Ashley.

Going to the museum

The rest of the day had been uneventful for Lauren. She, Ashley, and Atid spent the rest of the afternoon working. The three technical army researchers finished setting up the remote interface for the building they visited that day. Ashley and Lauren were able to find the user manual for the Potesta System but the LF-2 version of it was completely corrupted. There was another copy of the manual that was only partially corrupted but it was written in a language neither of them recognized, which they presumed must have been the original language of the colony.

The Archival Officers found Susan in a much better mood the next day. She walked briskly through the conference room doors and set up her computer at the far end of the table next to Atid.

“We’re just waiting on the grad students, and then I’m going to give a little speech,” said Susan to the AOs.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Atid to Susan.

“Shoot.”

“Is it true that the cities of Afban and Souban were evacuated in order to pull back soldiers, law enforcement, and supplies?”

Susan chuckled, “no, that is not the reason, but it definitely tipped the scales for a lot of the leaders that were on the fence.”

The door opened to let in Hira and the two other graduate students from the day before.

“Alright, it looks like everyone is here. Now since our task force was split up most of yesterday, I’m going to go over what the officer and student groups accomplished so that we can all be on the same page. Yesterday, two of our Archival Officer friends gained access to the network of building 0, on their first try, which we now have a remote connection to.”

Cheers came from the graduate students.

“However!” said Susan, “we were unable to access the radar system. All of the accounts we could access in building 0 have expired ‘access keys’ which we suspect is simply a long string of characters. So much for the field trip. On the other hand, the student group, Hira specifically, came across some documents which plainly state that the access keys are generated by one of the buildings in the radar system complex.” Susan surveyed the room. “Which means that the building that generates access keys is made with the same ‘design for eternity’ principles as building 0. And this means that, in all likelihood, it is still operational. Now as I’m sure all of you know, building 0 is the only building in the radar complex that is within our controlled territory, the other seven being in the northern no man’s land. General Albritton has agreed to give us whatever we need to retrieve the access keys on the condition that we do so without drawing the attention of the enemy and provided we are absolutely certain we have the right building. Also she’s giving us five days after which the brass will change back to their normal brutish tactics. So, in that time, I want you to bend all your efforts to finding out which building has the keys to ending this war. And when you think you’ve got it, you need to prove to me that you have the right building. We get that key, we see everything, we find the nerve center of the rebellion, we win. That is all.” Susan closed her laptop and left the room, rustling Hira’s hair on the way out. “Good job, kid,” said Susan.

“I need to get going to the library,” announced Atid, standing up.

“Let’s go talk to Hira,” said Ashley to Lauren. They moved to sit next to Hira, the technical army researchers were across the table from them, crowding around the remote connection station. Hira was straightening out his hair.

“Oh, hey guys,” said Hira, “we should share notes and divy up who researches what, but we need to get a move on to the museum, I scheduled our visit not knowing that Susan was going to give a pep talk.”

“Alright, let’s go,” said Ashley. They packed their computer cases and followed Hira and another student to the parking lot.

The other grad student tossed the keys to Hira, “you drive,” she said devoid of enthusiasm.

Hira caught the keys, “stayed up late again?” The grad student nodded.

Ashley and Lauren got into the back of the car.

“Oh, this is Temmie Sitdikov by the way,” said Hira, gesturing towards the sleepy student who turned around and made a small wave.

“You are Ashley and you are Lauren, right?” she guessed.

“You got it,” said Lauren.

“So tell me,” said Temmie, “did you really hack into building 0 on your first try? Stoyan’s group spent weeks trying to get in.”

“We used decryption methods tailored for antique systems,” said Lauren, “encryption techniques back then look almost nothing like they do now.”

“That and the person who wrote the decryptor knew what he was doing,” said Ashley.

“Nice, nice,” said Temmie, turning to face forwards again. She began to speak in the planetary language to Hira.

“Use Uni-phone for the sake of our visitors,” said Hira, driving onto the main road.

“Oh, sorry,” said Temmie, “I was just saying that it looks like Susan won her bet with Stoyan. She wagered that you guys would succeed in under 20 tries.”

Hira activated the turn indicator.

“What are you doing?” said Temmie to Hira.

“Turning onto Tower Street,” said Hira, confused, “it’s the fastest way to the museum.”

“We can’t do that, we now have to have a traffic sticker to drive on Tower Street during daytime hours.”

“Aw shoot, you’re right,” said Hira, “I hope the museum staff are okay with us being a little late.”

When they arrived, the four historians found the docent seated on a bench in front of the museum.

“Let me guess,” said the docent, “couldn’t get a traffic sticker?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Hira.

“Not at all,” said the docent, “a lot of stores have sold out of them anyways. Anyways, right this way.”

The group followed the docent through the museum down into the basement archives.

“We have laid out all the artifacts we have that relate to the northern monuments,” said the docent, stopping at a large table with many adjustable lamps attached to it. “These are all the belongings of the only corpse found in the northern monuments, in building 3.”

“Which one is building 3?” whispered Lauren to Hira.

“The barracks,” whispered Hira.

“We have what must have been a gun, a flashlight, and a phone, which is well and truly broken,” said the docent.

“These were found in building 7,” said the docent, gently spreading several weathered, brown pages, “they belonged to a manual of some sort. We found some more pages in building 5, and we’ve transcribed everything that is legible on them.”

“It’s funny how the more low tech pages are more valuable to us now than the phone is,” said Hira.

“It’s a running theme in our group that a few centuries really changes the utility of objects,” commented Ashley.

“Is this all you have?” said Hira.

“This is all that has been given to us,” said the docent.

“Do you have pictures of the front and backs of all these pages?” asked Ashley.

“Yes, we can share them with you,” said the docent, sitting down at a nearby computer.

“It’s less than I was hoping for but I’ll take it,” said Hira to the three other historians.

“There’s still that book I’ve been telling you about that has hundreds of pages from documents found in the radar complex,” said Temmie.

“Yeah, but we haven’t been able to find it for two weeks,” said Hira, “I’m not even sure it exists.”

“It exists,” said Temmie, “I remember looking at it when I was a little kid.”

“Here you go. Will that be all?” said the docent. He handed Hira a data pin.

Ever since their invention in the Collaboration Era, data pins have been the de facto portable storage device. Several centimeters in length and only a few millimeters in diameter, their biggest design flaw is in how easy they are to lose.

“Yes, thank you,” said Hira, sliding the pin into a data pin holder along with his personal and school data pins.

The quartet came back to the conference room to find everyone quietly at work.

“Where have you all been?” asked Linas, looking up from his notebook.

“We went to the museum. We got about a hundred photos of documents recovered from the buildings,” said Hira, holding up the data pin.

“Oh, excellent. Upload it to the server then,” said Linas.

The Archival Officers and grad students spit ways each going to their respective end of the table. Ashley took out her laptop while Lauren looked down the table. Temmie flopped into her seat, grabbed a large book from another grad student’s stack and leaned forward and rested her head on it. The other grad student gently pushed Temmie’s shoulder.

“Hrmrr?”

“The historical army people say they have a document in the old planetary language.”

“Really?” Temmie sprang upright, “In Veranto?”

“Yeah, it’s on the remote access machine.”

“Oh, man,” said Temmie, picking up a book and a notebook then walking over to the large computer, “I’ve never seen Veranto on a computer screen before.”

Meanwhile, Hira was talking to Linas. He then got up and walked over to Lauren and Ashley, crouching between them so that his head was around the height of a seated person.

“Notes time. The university crew has been collecting notes about the radar complex in general for some time before you guys arrived. So we have pretty general notes about the radar complex. The same goes for Linas and his guys. We were thinking that we would plow on ahead with the new material while you two go through the stuff we’ve already read while keeping an eye out for possible connections to access keys.”

“Sounds good,” said Lauren, Ashley nodded.

“Great, I’d suggest you guys start with Pilkvist’s ‘Inside the Northern Monuments,’ you’re going to have to get the book from Bika, since it somehow doesn’t exist online. That and the 11948 archeological report by Norban Regional University. That can be found on the server,” Hira got up and went back to the far end of the table.

“Do you want the book or the report?” said Ashley.

“I think I’ll go for the book,” said Lauren.

After a few hours of reading, Lauren looked over her notes. She now knew that there were eight buildings in the radar complex: the control station (which they visited yesterday), the transmitter array, the receiver array, the communication hub, the generator station, the barracks, the beam scheduler, and the space weather station. For a long time, the radar complex had contaminated the groundwater for the nearby farms until the caves beneath them were filled with cement. The transmitter and receiver arrays were giant walls of antennae some 100 meters high and 400 meters long. The setup was based on long range radar from the pre-colonization era except that it used bio energy signals embedded in electromagnetic waves instead of just radio waves.

Susan and Stoyan entered the room carrying two large boxes.

“Lunch time everyone!” said Susan.

Lauren put the book she was reading into a sealable plastic bag, “what is it?” she asked Temmie who was looking much more awake than she was in the morning.

“It’s grilled Beuwap,” said Temmie, smelling the air.

“What is a Beuwap?” asked Lauren.

“Uhh, it’s a quadruped, has black and white spots, herbivorous, males have horns, has big paws, and lives in trees, and it’s about this big,” said Temmie, holding her hands at arm’s length.

“Wait it’s an animal?” said Ashley, shocked, “like a wild animal? With feelings? Is that legal?”

“Well it’s not wild,” said Temmie.

“The consumption and local sale of animal meat is legal everywhere in the galaxies,” said Lauren, “most of the developed systems have banned animal farms because it’s a terribly inefficient use of arable land. And they can’t import it because the Office of Export Controls has banned that to prevent reckless animal husbandry in the developing systems.”

Ashley watched Lauren place a patty on her plate.

“So,” said Lauren, “you get left with insect protein and lab grown meat. Which are close enough for me.”

Ashley placed the smallest patty she could find on her plate and compensated for the lost Calories with extra starches and vegetables. Meanwhile Atid came back to his seat with a plate loaded with five patties.

“What?” he said, “the box is huge, there’s no way we’re running out.”

“Nothing, I’m just realizing how many factors there are in determining if someone likes real meat,” said Lauren.

Lauren took a bite of the patty. Despite the unfamiliar flavor, she was reminded of her days on her home planet. Specifically the peaceful summer days when she and her parents would sit outside on the deck that overlooked their fields behind their house eating solar grilled steaks. She remembered how much she enjoyed wearing those extremely dark sunglasses every time they brought out the solar griller. And she remembered the one time her father almost burnt his hand in the solar griller because she accidentally opened the shutters when he was trying to take a steak out. She probably should have been a little more careful with a machine that could ignite damp twigs.

Lauren looked over at Ashley who was doing her best to pretend that she was enjoying the food provided to her, but Lauren could see that Ashley was not used to eating real meat.

Susan casually grabbed Lauren’s shoulders, “what’s wrong with Shorty?”

“It’s her first time eating meat,” said Lauren.

“Oh right, you guys are from core systems. Shame you can’t get any real meat there.”

“Well, I’m from Plei actually.”

“Oh right! my husband and I vacationed there, beautiful hills.”

“Did you go in the spring when you visited?”

“Of course!” Susan got up and clasped her hands onto Ashley's shoulders, “don’t worry Shorty, we won’t be getting any more meat for a while.”

The rest of the day had been uneventful. The highlight of her studies was when she found a picture of a page from a user manual in the book she was reading that said “...the Sensor Data Access Control Office must be manned at all times. Personnel are to be cycled in 13 hour shifts.” Lauren wasn’t sure if that office was the place they’re looking for but it was the closest she got to seeing the words “access key.” Meanwhile, Ashley found out that the access key building was most likely one of the “primary buildings” but she didn’t know anything about these primary buildings other than that the access key building might have been one of them.

Checking in

The steel facades of the defense headquarters glowed orange in the light of the setting sun. Lauren walked through its halls following the map Atid gave her, eventually reaching the door of the communication center. She pinged her badge to get in and then moved through the empty room and locked herself into one of the adjoining smaller rooms. She connected her laptop to the single cable coming out of the wall behind the desk and entered her login credentials.

“Okay,” said Lauren, “time to call Neil.” She got a prompt to press the PING button on her badge and the seal of the Knowledge Corps appeared in the center of her screen with the words “Knowledge Corps Intergalactic Communications Network v16.1” below it. Lauren navigated towards the calling menu and put on her headphones.

Neil appeared on her screen, “hey, there you are.”

“Hey,” said Lauren, “hello from the Fringe. How are things at the Citadel?”

“Good, good. Yeah, I went to the Citadel Sports tournament. I watched the Polar Bears play the Penguins.”

“That’s soccer right?”

“Yeah, the Archival Officers won. Oh, I also went to the tennis tournament, I think one of the guys from your group won.”

“Yeah, that’s Jethro.”

“That’s his name. How about you? Anything about the mission you are able to share?”

“We went to the ancient facility yesterday. I know this stuff isn’t really up your alley, but just think that we were the first people to log into this system in a few hundred years.”

“Yeah, no, that is impressive,” said Neil, “wait, was this in enemy territory?”

“Not really, it was at the border of no-man’s-land, so next to the area that is next to enemy territory.”

“So were you exercising caution?”

“Yeah we had a bunch of soldiers and even two fighter craft with us.”

Neil nodded slowly, “yeah that means you were pretty safe, but were you doing things to protect yourself.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lauren.

Neil hung his head for a moment and massaged the back of his neck. “You know,” he said, “exercising caution means being ready for the unexpected.”

“I think the soldiers would be much better at that than I,” said Lauren, “or even you for that matter.”

“Soldiers can’t protect you from yourself though.”

“Are you being serious?” said Lauren.

“Yes!” said Neil, raising his voice for the first time in years, “obviously you don’t understand the rationale for exercising caution on this mission—maybe even in general—so if you trust me, just do it without asking why.”

“Do what?” said Lauren without thinking, being caught off guard by the directness of Neil’s words.

“I don’t know!” cried Neil, “check corners, watch your step, stick to the center of the group. Use your head!”

“Okay, okay!” said Lauren, surprised by her normally quiet friend’s outburst.

“Sorry,” said Neil, already calmed down. He took a breath. “Look, as a scientist, I hate to ask you to take what I say at face value, but we can work on the why when you are back here, safe.”

“Okay,” said Lauren.

Neil leaned back in his chair, “so where are you at with your investigations?”

“Ah yes,” said Lauren, relieved by the change in conversation, “so we were able to log into one of the buildings, but we couldn’t access the radar feed. Apparently to do that we need a code, which one of the eight buildings in this complex generates. However most of them are in no-man’s-land.”

Neil furrowed his brow.

“Obviously we can’t do that,” said Lauren, “so right now we are trying to piece together documents from the time of those buildings to find out which one it is. And the information has been… sparse.”

“Well, if it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be worth doing, right?” said Neil, “I want to let you know that I will be going to a resource colony for field research so I won’t have a reliable connection to the KCICN. If you have any wielding related questions, be sure to check the primer I gave you.”

“Will do! Have fun!” said Lauren, “and you stay safe as well.”

“Definitely,” said Neil, he yawned. “it’s 2:00 am here,” he said, “if there’s nothing else of note, I will be signing off.”

“Nothing that I can think of,” said Lauren, “good night!”

“Good night,” said Neil.

People watching at the square

Lauren spent the next morning restoring as much as she could of the Potesta system user manual. It took her a while to find the right error correcting code for restoring the manual since it was using a format much older than what she was expecting based on when the Potesta system was supposed to be built. The LF-2 version of the manual was unfortunately beyond recovery on all user profiles they had access to and all of the native language manuals were still missing chunks after the restoration. By lunchtime she had managed to restore nearly all of the manual by piecing together the recovered sections from each profile she had access to. At the end of lunch, fish stew and bread, Temmie turned on the projector at her end of the table and got up.

“Ok everyone, I want you all to look at this book,” she said. A photo of a little girl in a library appeared on the projector screen. Temmie advanced a slide to zoom in on the book’s pink and gold cover depicting a barren landscape split in half by a massive wall of struts that seemed to be infinite, stretching away from the camera horizontally and vertically until the heavy fog swallowed it up.

“I don’t remember the name of the book, or the author,” said Temmie, “but, I mean, you can see the cover.”

“Why are you showing this to us?” asked Linas.

“Because it contains hundreds of pictures of original documents recovered at the radar complex from even before the NRU archaeologists visited. I’m pretty sure it’s in this city, if any of you guys find it, you must bring it here. That’s all.” She disconnected her computer from the projector and sat down.

Lauren got up and walked over to Temmie who slumped back in her chair, “check the server, I restored most of the Veranto version of the Potesta system manual.”

Temmie fixed her posture, “there’s more? I want to see this. Excuse me, I’d like to borrow this.” Temmie lifted the portable screen next to Hira’s computer and started pairing it with her computer

“What makes you think you can do that?” said Hira.

“I need it to translate the manual,” said Temmie, opening a dozen windows and flipping through the pages of a large dictionary. Hira looked at Temmie then at Lauren, shrugged, and went back to work making a list of museum artifact photos that were in LF-2 and those that were in Veranto.

“Is Temmie your language expert?” Lauren asked Hira.

“Yeah, and a good one at that, she’s co-advised with someone in the linguistics department,” said Hira, “honestly, this is the most energetic I’ve seen her since we got approached by the army.”

The next two hours were exceedingly frustrating for Lauren. She read through dozens of photos of pieces of writing recovered from the Potesta complex. For each one, be it a scrap of paper to a dense page from a book, she had to translate the document from LF-2 to Uni-phone. Complicating this was that she had to often fill in letters and words that were obscured by glare, by dust, or rendered illegible by time which was itself complicated by the fact that she was doing it in a dead language. She was starting to curse herself for not practicing LF-2 more after taking her last language class. Then there were the photos that were upside down.

Lauren ran her fingers through her hair, “did they get a blind person to take these photos?”

“It’s not unlikely that the photographer wasn’t literate in LF-2,” said Ashley, taking a notebook from a small stack in front of her and reading it.

“You really like notebooks, huh?” said Lauren.

“Oh yeah, I forgot how much I like putting pen to paper,” she said, clicking her pen, “I’ve just used Smart Sheets since I started working at the Citadel. I was hoping to buy some local notebooks from here before we go back home.”

Lauren looked at her barren notebook. She had acquired no new useful information from all her effort. She slapped the table and got up. “Why don’t we get those notebooks now?”

“As in right now?” said Ashley.

“Right now, I need a break from this translating, I’m getting nowhere.”

“Hm, okay, how are we gonna get away?”

“I can drive,” said Lauren, she walked over to Linas, “us officers have a car right?”

“Yes we have two light utility vehicles,” said Linas, not looking away from his screen, “why do you ask?”

“I want to run an errand.”

“We can send someone to get what you need.”

“Yes, but I don’t know what it is that I need.”

“This sounds like a waste of time but Indah has the keys,” said Linas.

Lauren and Ashley climbed into the olive green utility vehicle.

“Where are we going?” said Ashley fiddling with her badge, “don’t forget to alias your badge.”

“To Waverton Square, the cultural heart of Euban,” said Lauren flipping through the pamphlets she found at the hotel then double pressing a button on the back of her badge. She entered an address on her phone and handed it to Ashley, “can you give me step by step directions? Geez this thing drives like a boat.”

“Sure, you’re going to take the rear exit of the parking lot and turn left.”

Lauren exited the parking lot and turned left, threading the needle between opposing traffic while Ashley clutched onto the handholds.

“Sorry about that,” said Lauren, “what do we do next?”

“Go straight.”

“And then?”

“That’s it,” said Ashley, “the street dead ends at the square, parking is on the right.”

“Oh,I guess we didn’t need that,” said Lauren, laughing.

“I’m going to close out of the navigator then,” said Ashley, smiling.

“Yes, that would be great,” said Lauren, “say, would you consider yourself a cautious person?”

“Um, not particularly. I was more reckless as a kid, but I guess everyone is like that. I became a lot more cautious after I got hit by an autonomous taxi while on my bike. Wouldn’t go outside if I could help it for a while, but eventually I got over it.”

Ashley looked out the window at the passers-by and then looked back at Lauren. “I feel like I should say that my behavior earlier was more due to me not being used to being driven by a person and less to do with my confidence in you as a driver.”

Lauren laughed, “oh, I wasn’t asking because of that. But I admit that was an aggressive maneuver. Also, I’m not ignoring you, I’m just looking at the road.”

“Ahh, and here I thought that Cole was just being rude when he drove us,” said Ashley.

“Well he could have been doing both,” said Lauren.

Waverton Square was bustling as was usual for a midweek afternoon. School children were criss-crossing the courtyard, some on their way home, some carrying instrument cases to practice, and occasionally a group of cross country runners would jog through. Adults walked through the square buying groceries from the produce vendors and fishmongers who set up shop to catch businesspeople on their way home from work. And with all these people came all the bags: resin-plastic grocery bags with that day’s dinner, shiny cardstock bags touting brands from the developed systems as luxuries, briefcases carrying people’s hard work, instrument cases, gym bags that smelled of routine exertion, cancelled out by the aroma from insulated bags attached to bicycle couriers delivering food.

Lauren and Ashley set down their hard cases and coffees on an outdoor cafe table.

“They didn’t have faerie-bean bahulu,” said Ashley, crestfallen.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s a developed system luxury,” said Lauren, leaning back in her chair. She surveyed the sqare. “Sure aren’t a lot of old people in this city.”

“But there sure is a lot of law enforcement,” said Ashley, “look, blue police officers, grey police officers, soldiers, some of those robots that give you the creeps.”

“How many suits have you seen?”

“Not that many, I’m starting to feel overdressed sitting here.”

“I think that group over there is all business people, they’re all carrying briefcases.”

Ashley tapped her phone a few times, “let’s see what they’re talking about.” She put the phone to her ear and moved her head around a little until the display on her glasses told her that the phone was pointed at the group of people. Ashley closed her eyes and listened.

“It sounds like they work in marketing for a food supplier. They’re talking about how they’re going to change their packaging to take the sting off of the higher prices due to the shortage of food. The other guy is saying that the quality is also lower since it’s not local so it will be a harder sell.”

Ashley swiped the temple of her glasses and put away her phone, “so yeah, businesspeople are more casual here.”

“What is that app?” asked Lauren.

“You should visit the Archival Officers’ tool portal, there’s loads of weird stuff like that, all just as secret as our recorder glasses.”

Lauren sipped her coffee, “well, what you said seems to be right, the street vendors are selling fish pretty easily but are haggling with anyone who tries to buy so much as a potato.”

Ashley was looking out across the square, her grey eyes scanned left to right before she turned her head a few degrees and her eyes darted to the left to start again. “It seems,” said Ashley in a halting voice, composing her statement on the fly, “that there are multiple populations in this city. The largest group is relatively well dressed, walks faster and with more direction, has more accessories, and is the only group that visits smaller stores. The next largest group is also dressed relatively well but also much more warmly, they don’t have much in the way of accessories, usually just bags, they only frequent what appear to be planet-wide franchises, and half of them appear lost, backtracking and checking their phones often.” Ashley looked away from the square to take a sip of her coffee, “the third largest group seems to be uniformly wearing grey clothes, they exclusively travel in groups, and they do so along two or three paths as if there is a very small set of places they have to be.” Ashley’s eyes darted around the square as before she spoke. “There might be other groups, but the first three groups encompass 90% of the people I’ve seen. I have also seen a group of youmen.”

“How can you tell?” asked Lauren.

“I don’t really know, you just get a feeling that the person you’re looking at is youmen, I’m sure is an ensemble of subtle cues,” said Ashley, looking up in thought.

“I can’t tell a human from a Youmen if I can’t get a good look at their eyes,” said Lauren.

“Actually I think I know why,” said Ashley, “because Youmen are more similar to each other than humans are to humans. You grow up around a bunch of youmen, you get imprinted with a set of ‘vibes’ that you get used to. I mean you can’t rely on appearances because there is a close to one-to-one mapping with humans in terms of types of appearances. Anyways, many humans can give off those same vibes but also many others. So anyone that gives off a vibe that isn’t in the youmen ‘list of vibes’ they’re probably human.”

Lauren was comparing what Ashley said with her own experiences.

“I mean, I’ve been wrong before,” said Ashley, “and there are plenty of youmen comedies that are built around that misunderstanding happening. But youmen act on that sense all the time.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” said Lauren, “do you think they’re keeping their identity a secret?”

“Most likely, given the situation brought about by the war right now.”

“Well, going back to your earlier observations,” said Lauren, “the two smaller populations are probably people from the other cities.”

“Oh, you mean the evacuated ones? Afban and Souban?” said Ashley.

“I think so, the ones Atid told us about,” said Lauren, looking at the square, trying to find the groups Ashley identified, “have you seen any interaction between the groups?”

Ashley thought for a while, “I don’t think so. Group three definitely did not interact with anyone outside their group.”

“So tensions are probably high, like Atid said,” commented Lauren

“I wonder what’s agitating them.”

“Probably the increase in population density.”

“Really? It doesn’t seem too dense to me. Even this square isn’t packed. This is the most popular one right?”

“Yes. And it’s all relative. Developing planets are very sparsely populated. The population of this whole planet is only a little bit more than ten Sanmachis. I remember when I first moved to Sanmachi, I was overwhelmed by how busy and packed it was. I imagine that’s what many of the people here are going through was well.”

“Huh, that would explain the traffic sticker Temmie was talking about. How sparse is Plei?”

“More sparse than this,” said Lauren, “can you infer anything about these groups?”

“Group 3, the ones wearing all grey, might be from the friendly agricultural regions, or at least some of them, because they seem to be the most confused by everything going on, not sure why they are wearing grey though.”

“Maybe they came from the most distant agricultural regions which might have been taken by surprise and thus didn’t get to take many belongings with them, including most of their clothing. So clothing was supplied to them by the capital region.”

“Could be. Group 2 might actually be a mix from the other two cities which are south of here and probably warmer. That would explain why they don’t frequent local businesses.”

“So group 1 must be the native populace,” said Lauren, “did you see all those abandoned construction sites on the way here?”

“Yeah, those must have been Intersyst public works projects. Intersyst won’t fund development for systems that are in a state of rebellion. That explains the lack of construction workers. Although there are a lot of medical students in their scrubs walking through,” said Ashley, “and they all look real tired.”

“Speaking of tired, my sleep schedule has slowly been drifting out of phase with this planet’s day and night cycle because I’m used to sleeping along a 24 hour day not a 26 hour day,” said Lauren.

“We should get you some sleep medicine at the pharmacy on our way back,” said Ashley. She looked back at their car, “oh, no.”

“What?” said Lauren, she looked at the car. A person in a white suit stood next to it looking through their notebook. On their head was an angular grey hat with “GCP” written in large white letters on the side. They looked up from their notebook and surveyed their surroundings.

“It’s someone from the Galactic Combined Press, they’re probably here to dig up whatever they can about this civil war and we’re the only ones wearing suits, they’re going to spot us. Hey don’t look at them!”

The reporter locked eyes with Lauren and their face lit up. They strode towards the officers at an alarming pace.

“Shoot,” said Ashley, “here they come. Just let me do the talking, Lauren. And tint your lenses.”

“How do I do that?” asked Lauren, panicked.

“Double tap the left temple.”

Lauren double tapped her glasses temple and her lenses polarized, she looked up to see the reporter standing at their table, hands on their hips.

“May I help you?” said Ashley.

“Good afternoon officers,” said the reporter.

“Pardon?” said Ashley.

The reporter tapped the gold and white embroidery on the lapel of Ashley’s blazer with their pen. “This seal of the Archival Officer Corps means that you two are officers of the Knowledge Corps. Hence I address you two as officers. If I recall correctly, there is also a seal on your glasses…” The reporter lifted Ashley’s glasses with their pen before she grabbed her glasses and pushed them back into place.

“Ah, a youmen. All the way out here. You should untint your glasses, your grey eyes would look lovely against your black uniform,” said the reporter, jotting a few notes in their book.

“I have so many questions. I thought it was going to be easy to get a story on this planet at this time but believe you me, it’s been tough. Surely you two can help a reporter out. You guys know everything don’t you?” they looked at Ashley’s badge, “Karla.”

“Listen, Brett,” said Ashley, reading the reporter’s name tag, “first, I must remind you that you are forbidden by Intersyst law from disclosing any identifying information about a Scientific or Archival Officer unless you are meeting with them at a press conference, this includes but is not limited to names, photos, appearances, or the division or group in which they work. Second, we wish we could help you but we’re just as clueless as you, we just got here a few days ago.”

Brett laughed, “of course, how modest of you. Well, I’m sure you can answer a few basic questions for me then at the least. How did you get here?”

“By car,” said Ashley, flatly.

“I mean to this planet. I already know you’re not from around here,” said Brett, amused.

“On board an Astratum frigate.”

“Why not a normal space liner?”

“Knowledge Corps Officers can receive free transport by any Astratum vessel, surely you already know that.”

“Just checking,” said Brett, scribbling in their notebook, “what brings you here? And don’t say to people-watch, I am again referring to the Jezebel system.”

“We’re here to observe the conflict and advise the military following the resolution of the conflict to break a rebellion cycle which seems to exist on this system.”

Brett scribbled in their notebook for a few seconds. “Fascinating. This all makes sense yet for some reason I don’t believe you.”

“Is that a question?” said Ashley.

“What about your sidekick?” said Brett, leveling their pen at Lauren, “what’s the matter? Not much of a talker?”

Ashley and Lauren looked at each other. Lauren turned to the reporter, “no, not really,” she said.

Brett crossed their arms, “I don’t buy it. You Archival Officers keep all this information to yourselves. I can’t even begin to imagine how much everyone would benefit if you were to just open up your archives to the public. We all deserve to know the state of our civilization, and you know better than anyone else, better than the Federated Academies, Cosmitech, the Altarian Publishing Group, or even the Galactic Combined Press, what that state is. But instead you just sit on it. Why?”

“First off we don’t know the sta—” Lauren felt a pressure under her jaw that gently forced her mouth closed. Lauren rubbed her chin. Brett stared at her, simultaneously disappointed and mystified.

Ashley redirected her attention to Brett, “For starters, it’s pointless to try and guess which organization knows the state of our civilization ‘the best.’ Secondly, most of the information we analyze is already publicly available or was publicly available but then forgotten. Third, we keep the conclusions we draw from that data to ourselves until we are confident in them.”

“Why not share them immediately? Time is of the essence,” said Brett. Lauren thought she saw a few soldiers looking in their direction.

“The average person is passionate about things close to them, but that makes them hasty and quick to jump to conclusions. There are frequently conclusions out there that can easily lead people to jump to incorrect conclusions of their own or that can be used by demagogues trying to sway the hearts of people. It is the stance of the Archival Officer Corps that these conclusions need to be reviewed dispassionately before they can be disseminated to the public.”

Brett pulled a glowing card out of their breast pocket and handed it to Ashley. “Here’s my card,” they said, “call me once you’ve done your dispassionate review. I’d love to hear what you think of all this.”

Brett tipped their hat and turned to walk away.

“Brett,” said Ashley.

Brett stopped and wheeled around.

“If you can hold off on writing anything about us for five more days, our dispassionate review will most likely be over and I will be able to tell you much, much more,” said Ashley.

Brett grinned, “you’re asking me to hold off on writing that you guys even exist, the one thing that I am legally allowed to write about?”

“Do you really think that is enough to get a story?” said Ashley.

“No I don’t. You’ve got yourself a deal then,” said Brett.

Brett turned around and walked off into the park. Lauren and Ashley watched them until they disappeared into the crowd.

“Did you push my mouth closed… with wielding?” said Lauren quizzically.

“Yes, I’m really sorry about that,” said Ashley, “I didn’t know what you were going to say. It was either that or I step on your toe.”

“It’s okay, I was just surprised is all,” said Lauren, “and you can step on my toe next time and I will pipe down immediately. What was the big deal anyways?”

“If word were to get out that the ISAF has brought out specialists to figure out the ancient radar system, the enemy might try to blow up the complex to prevent us from being able to use it since we only really have control over one building. We obviously don’t want that to happen,” said Ashley, “that’s why I told the reporter that we’re doing Atid’s job. But the best case scenario is that Brett honors our deal and just writes about other stuff. Maybe I should find a story for them so they don’t get desperate.”

“Ah, I understand now,” said Lauren, “well in that case, should we run our errands and head back before someone else finds us?”

“Yeah we probably should, we stick out more than I thought we would,” said Ashley, “drug store, stationary store, then back to base.” She pulled out her phone, ”what’s the map service on this planet called? I’m going to look for the stationary store.”

“Butterflymaps.jzbl,” said Lauren, “I’ll look for a pharmacy.”

Lauren and Ashley walked across the square from the drugstore to the stationary shop. Lauren read over the instructions of the sleep extenders she bought, “for each hour of extended sleep, add a sachet to one cup of hot water, take immediately before bed, do not take more than four sachets, talk to your doctor if, yada yada yada.” Lauren tucked the bundle of sachets into her jacket pocket. They arrived at a very narrow building with a yellow sign written in the local planetary language. The bell attached to the door rang as they entered.

“Welcome to Sunset Supplies and Crafts,” said the cashier.

Lauren nodded to the cashier. Ashley brought Lauren to the notebooks aisle and proceeded to scan through the wares.

“What kind of notebook are you looking for?” said Lauren.

“Notebooks with colorful geometric designs on the covers,” said Ashley, “or ones that have been designed to look like standard issue equipment for some organization.”

“Like this one?” asked Lauren, holding up a spiral bound notebook with “Euban Regional Army Standard Issue No. 27.”

“Ah, well there are other criteria,” said Ashley, standing on her toes, reaching for a notebook on the top shelf. Lauren started to reach for the notebook.

“It’s okay, I got this,” said Ashley, she held her hand out to the notebook. The notebook slid towards her hand until it fell off the shelf and into her outstretched hand.

“The other criteria is that the notebooks have to lie flat,” said Ashley, “and it should be easy to write on both sides of the page since I don’t like wasting pages.”

“Hm, I never thought about these things,” said Lauren, “it makes sense though.”

“Yeah,” said Ashley, “you don’t have to watch me, I might take a little bit.”

“Kay,” said Lauren. She ventured further back into the shop. “They have a used books section,” she remarked to herself. Lauren took a step back from the shelves and scanned them looking for anything pink and gold. Something white and gold but not what she was looking for. She moved on to the next set of shelves. Nothing. She turned around and took a step back to scan the opposite set of shelves. A glimmer of gold against a thin pink spine. Without taking her eyes off it, Lauren crouched and pulled out the book. The cover was pink with gold trim. In the center was a faded picture of a set of buildings. She flipped through the book, images upon images of weathered pages and rusted signs. Lauren flipped to the beginning in search of a preface or introduction. She bit her lip. She couldn’t read any of the writing, but by now she was able to tell that it was in the local planetary language. She checked all of the pages that didn’t have pictures to find that it was all indecipherable, not even the publishing information was in Uni-phone which meant that the book couldn’t be circulated outside of the Jezebel system. Lauren walked back to the front of the store next to Ashley.

“Ashley, look at this,” said Lauren.

“Hey! Is that the book Temmie was talking about?” exclaimed Ashley.

“I think so,” said Lauren.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s all written in the local planetary language.”

“Hm,” said Ashley, “the picture looks kind of off too.”

“Yeah, I don’t think the picture is the same either. Maybe it’s a different edition,” Lauren snapped the book closed, ”I’m going to buy it anyways.”

Ashley and Lauren returned to a storm of activity at the conference room. Indah was standing on a chair attaching pictures of the eight buildings to the top of the whiteboard while Hira was writing collected facts about each building below its respective picture. Contributing to the din was the printer churning out pages. Next to the printer Linas was picking up each page as it exited the printer and giving them to different people. Temmie was in a frenzy typing away at her computer, only pausing to rapidly page through her large book. Two of the technical researchers, Claire and Hatim, were working at the remote access station. The only calm spot in the room was around Atid who was quietly reading at his laptop. Giannis was next to the door when Ashley and Lauren entered and greeted them.

“Oh you guys are back. You should go see Linas, a lot has happened since you were gone,” he said to them. He called to Linas, “hey Linas, they’re back.”

“Excellent,” said Linas, handing out the last slip of paper from the printer, “come over here.”

Lauren and Ashley rounded the table to stand with him, Hira, and Indah next to the whiteboard.

“The university linguist has been translating the manual you recovered,” said Linas, “she’s still working on it but we’ve already learned a lot about each of the buildings as you can see.” He gestured towards the whiteboard. “But more than that, we’ve gotten a lot of references to other documents,” he held up a translated page from the manual for them to see.

“The technical team has identified many of those documents in building 0’s network. But, nearly all of them are corrupted. I think you know what comes next.”

“We need to restore those documents like we did the main manual,” said Ashley.

“Precisely,” said Linas, “the technical team has tried to do so but they’re not sure where to start. The linguist says that she should be able to finish translating the manual by the end of the day. Ideally, we would have more documents for her to translate by the time she is done so that we can be as efficient with our time as possible.”

“Apologies for not returning earlier,” said Lauren, she scratched the back of her head, “and for, well, leaving in the first place.”

“No problems here,” siad Linas, “possibly unrelated: Sue says she wants to see you two as soon as you get back.”

Lauren and Ashley walked into Susan’s office. Despite being a large office appropriate to her standing, it felt cramped. Papers and books occupied any flat surface in her office besides the floor, large pieces of field equipment and tubes with maps were leaned against every corner. Susan was sitting behind her desk, with her elbows on its surface and her fingers interlaced. Behind Susan sat Cole with his arms crossed.

“Welcome, please take a seat,” said Susan. Lauren and Ashley sat in front of her desk.

“So Cole tells me you had quite the run in with a reporter from the Galactic Combined Press,” she said.

“Did you follow us?” said Lauren to Cole.

“Not exactly,” he said, “as soon as I learned you left the premises and saw that your vehicle was headed for the square, I asked all the patrols up there to keep an eye out for any Archival Officers. It wasn’t that hard, with the way everyone dresses here.”

“Yes, we did cross paths with a GCP reporter,” said Ashley.

“Alright, listen up,” said Susan, leaning back while holding a pen in both hands by its ends, “you must tell me everything you said to that reporter. Screw it, tell me everything that was said at all.”

“Okay, first off, our badges were in alias mode and I did almost all of the talking in this encounter,” said Ashley, “Lauren said half a sentence which I ended up repeating.”

“You’re the senior Archival Officer here, correct? Also did you give ‘em the spiel about KCO’s and personally identifying information?” said Susan, pointing her pen at Ashley.

“Since Atid wasn’t there, yes. And yes,” said Ashley.

“Good. Continue.”

“The reporter, Brett, immediately identified us as Archival Officers, addressing us as such. They asked us how we got here. I at first replied with ‘by car’ but they pressed further and I told them that we came aboard a military frigate.”

“How did they react to that?” asked Susan.

“They didn’t seem surprised by that statement. Brett even said ‘just checking’ or something like that I think,” said Ashley, “Brett then asked why we were here—”

“What did you say?”

“I told them we were here to observe the conflict and make recommendations to the local government after the fighting ends.”

“Hmm,” said Susan, “did they buy it?”

“Yes and no,” said Ashley, “they said that it made sense to them but they still didn’t want to believe us.”

Susan shook her head, “I don’t like that. I’m definitely going to have to report this to General Albritton. Well at least you didn’t tell them what you were actually here for. Anything else?”

“The reporter knows that I’m youmen, or that I at least have grey eyes,” said Ashley. Susan waved her hand dismissively.

“They then asked if I had anything to say,” said Lauren, “I said ‘no not really’ and then the reporter became annoyed saying that the Archival Officer Corps should stop hogging all the information, basically. That made me want to say something but then Ashley signalled for me to stop.”

“Did Brett figure out what was going on, if you were to guess?” asked Susan.

“I’d guess no,” said Ashley, “that was the half sentence that I ended up repeating. I basically told them that what they said was false and gave them the official statement on why the Archival Officer Corps doesn’t release findings right away.”

“Then what?” asked Susan.

“They kind of gave up at that point,” said Ashley, “they gave me their card and—”

“Show me,” said Susan, she held out her open hand which Ashley put the glowing card into. Susan extracted from her desk a scrap of paper and a pen and gave them and the card to Cole. “Copy down everything on this card but do not let it interface with any of our devices. I need to get intelligence to run a background check on this reporter, make sure they aren’t a spy.”

“Yes ma'am. Do you want me to shred it afterwards?” asked Cole.

“No, put it in an RF cage and give it to one of your squad members to carry around with them while on patrol. Probably overkill, but I’m not taking any chances.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Cole.

Susan turned to the Archival Officers, “anything else I should know?”

“Yes,” said Ashley, “right before Brett left, I offered to tell them much more about the situation if they could hold off on mentioning that we exist for five days which they said they would honor.”

“Hah! Well that just puts a little more pressure on you guys doesn’t it?” said Susan, amused, “provided they honor that. Anyways, here’s what’s going to happen. You are to leave this building as little as possible, same goes for Atid. Whenever you do, you’re going to wear a Waverton University sweater over your uniform so you can blend in better and your badges are to be in alias mode whenever you are not using the ping function. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Ashley.

“Will do,” said Lauren.

“Alright then. Get out of my office, I need to make a call to our general,” said Susan.

“Oh, you’re alive,” said Hira as Ashley and Lauren reentered the conference room.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” said Lauren.

“I think you’re the only one that is afraid to be in Sue’s presence,” said Indah.

“Maybe. I can verify half of that statement,” said Hira.

“Anyways, what did we miss?” asked Ashley.

“We started a collaborative document on the server with a list of documents that we’d like you two to recover,” said Linas, turning away from the building list on the whiteboard.

“Perfect,” said Lauren.

“Yeah, I’d say mark all documents that can’t be recovered at all, all documents that can only be recovered in the old language, and just go ahead and recover all the rest of the documents.”

“Sounds good,” said Lauren. She returned to her desk with the book she bought earlier that day. “Oh, I almost forgot. Hey, Temmie!”

Temmie was sleeping with her head resting on her dictionary. Lauren gently nudged her shoulder.

“No Hira, I didn’t take your— Oh hey Lauren. Did you see the translated manual? Or at least the half that I’ve translated so far?” said Temmie, as she rubbed her eyes.

“I just got back so I haven’t read it but it seems like you’ve dug up a gold mine from what the rest of the team tells me,” said Lauren.

“Aw, I just translated it. You did the hard part.”

“They were both integral steps,” said Lauren, “listen, I think I found the book you were talking about.”

Temmie started. “Wait? Really? Show me, show me!”

Lauren handed the pink and gold book to Temmie who opened it and rapidly paged through the book, scanning each page.

“This… is not about the radar complex,” she said after a while, “it’s about an old estate in the Heartlands, also from the first colony.”

“Well whoops,” said Lauren, “at least it wasn’t too expensive.”

“I wouldn’t feel bad,” said Temmie, “there aren’t that many pink and gold books out there. Actually, this book might be written by the same author as the one I’m looking for, that is, they might be part of a series. I’m going to check this name with all the libraries around here!”

Temmie got up but Hira grabbed her by the sleeve.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Hira, still looking at his laptop, “everyone is literally waiting on you for the full translated manual.”

“But—”

“You can go look for it after you’ve translated the manual. Unless this book straight up tells us which building generates the access keys, it’s only going to be useful as part of the puzzle.”

“But I’m too tired to do anymore translating right now.”

“Yeah but the army people won’t believe that if you then go and scour the city.”

“Who cares what they think?” said Temmie defiantly.

“Susan cares,” replied Hira, “and by extension I care, especially if it’s going to put her in a bad mood.”

“Fine,” said Temmie. She sat down in a huff. “People can’t understand the value of something unless it’s in their damn hands,” she muttered. She turned to Lauren, “thank you for finding this for me.”

“Yeah, no problem,” said Lauren. She returned to her work station next to Ashley, “how do you want to go about selecting documents to recover?”

“How about we each just take whatever is the oldest item on the list at the time we finish whatever we were just working on?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Lauren. She logged onto the server and went to the directory written on the whiteboard. Ashley had already claimed “PTS-699-002” which had the note “automatic defenses” next to it. Lauren put her name next to “PTS-699-003” which had the same note next to it.