‘Thank you. You are too.’
Though she smiled only to herself, Gershwin hoped that Cody knew that she was listening whole-heartedly.
‘So… any ideas as to how we got like this? Did you drink radioactive water by accident once? Any short-term flings with a girl you didn’t know was an alien?’
Gershwin attempted a joke to lighten the mood, even if said mood was grave.
‘Did you ever wonder if what we are was coincidental or accidental, or was it intentional… purposeful… like there’s a synchronic and diachronic meaning to what we are… or meant to be?’
Agent Dioxide watched as Agent Caits keyed in the seemingly innocuous code. 64-digits, sure, but it was still incredible simplistic for securing the most sensitive information in the world. Impressed by her incredible recall, he snuck a glance at her, appreciating and admiring the work that she – they’ve put together for this.
The code was entered, and the internal gears slowly grinded, the machination functioning until a sharp pop was heard. Agent Dioxide pulled out the door only to see a dark circle. The room inside was pitch black, and even with the staircase light, one could only see a few feet into the void. It felt like it belonged to a whole new universe – scary, and threatened to suck you in, never to let you go – but he had steadied his heart and proceeded.
He turned around, almost as if for the last time, and said:
‘Go back upstairs and keep an eye out for anyone. I’ll be back as soon as I can. If there is any trouble… you run and take care of the two. I’ll take the blame.’
Before she could reply, he went in, and disappeared into the darkness.
***He turned off the EMP pulse grenade, and waited. As it turned out, there was no use waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He pulled out his phone and, being as cautious as he can be, used the light to shine his way around. He expected that the room would actually extend to a hallway deeper into the vault, because the immediate walls to his left and right were just that: walls.
He walked forward, shining his phone to the walls only to see the corners, indicating a wall in front of him. He had stopped just in front of a desk and there in front of him was a low desk with an old CRT monitor, and a printer. No obvious wires ran from or to it. No large hard-drive supposedly containing the files they needed. This was severely odd. There was no more to it: this small room is supposed to contain all the information of Anomalies in the world.
He pressed the power button on the monitor, and to his surprise it turned on – a green light shining back at him, with icons on the screen. With the mouse in his hand, he clicked on what turned out to be folders to see more folders. His eye went to the left, the leftmost being in alphabetic order, and the purpose for this escapade.
Anomalies. He clicked the folder, and it showed more folders – 30 of them, each containing the information of all the Anomalies. He clicked on the first one, the first Anomaly ever discovered and brought in: Catherin Winters. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of files, all of which were named in an indecipherable code only a select few were trained to understand – perhaps taught only within the inner circles entrusted by Big Boss. That didn’t matter – he hypothesized that the final file would be the ultimate and important of all, confirming what had happened to them on their final days in UNARM.
He clicked, and a window popped up, saying:
“Processing” ***A request came for the last file on Subject 1 to Big Boss’ computer.
Contrary to the rumours that float around in UNARM, there were no physical copies of any file whatsoever. Literally everything was printed once, memorized by Big Boss to the finest detail, and destroyed. Every file that is requested is therefore typed back out by Big Boss, a new file that is sent to the printer in the information vault. The printer uses a type of ink that lasts no more than four hours, meaning the existence of that information lives a finite life on paper, but forever in only one mind.
The façade that there is such a heavily-guarded vault is healthy to keep people in line and to maintain bureaucratic control. Only a handful of people know about the truth of the information vault not in Logistics, but in Big Boss’ perfect memory.
Thus, he knew perfectly well that he assigned no one to enter the vault this late. But, he still typed out the file to the requester – falsified, of course. Afterwards, he initiated a self-shutdown on the computer, preventing further access. Big Boss will ensure that this person never gets the truth.
***Agent Dioxide watched as the file was printed out. As soon as the operation finished, the screen turned off. No matter how many times he pressed the power button, it refused to come back to life. There was no reason to believe that he was discovered – perhaps it was a feature that only one file could be printed in a certain period of time. But it never hurt to be cautious.
He folded the file into his pocket, and turned back his grenade on. He exited the vault door, and rapped on the staircase wall.
‘Is the coast clear?’
Member
Mixtape Ghost N