Page 63 of Coldwire
“I’m staying professional,” I recite under my breath, quickly turning away so I don’t laugh. “I’m so professional….”
I hit the call button at the side door. There’s no exterior handle, only a small panel with a camera eyeing us. I don’t have the time to prepare a spiel before a woman in a white coat has come to open the door, waving us in.
“You know where to go,” she says distractedly. She’s not looking at me, which means I can keep my stare on her face, trying to make sense of the slight blurriness I’m getting. It’s another filter feature. The woman is likely Tamera’s age, somewhere in her fifties, but the system blots out the lines that decorate the sides of her eyes without entirely removing them. She must have dragged the slider all the way up.
“Please make it quick. We need the hallways cleared for management in an hour.”
I nod. “Yes, absolutely.”
The augmented plug-in illuminates a path at our feet. The woman proceeds ahead of us, finding nothing odd about the switch in their usual delivery people. It helps that we don’t falter where we’re going, and when she makes a left turn into a lab, we continue forward, down to a door at the end of the hallway.
There are no interesting additions in the building, no bright lights or holographic art pieces. It looks exactly as it might downcountry, from the scuffed carpet to the cracks in the walls. No cameras inside either. Can’t risk having their surveillance hacked and spied on.
The glowing arrows end at a depot room, the door wide open and a bot sitting inside to scan items. Kieren and I exchange a glance. I suppose we do need to hand over these packages and let the employees wonder who ordered the empty boxes.
“Thank you,” he tells the bot.
It doesn’t respond.
“Now what?” I whisper outside the room. “Chung’s office?”
“You go west. I’ll go east?” Kieren returns.
I nod. We split, breaking into a quick stride. There’s only so much allowance we have if an employee asks what we’re doing, and a onetime excuse of getting lost before we absolutely must leave. Most of the rooms I pass aren’t sensitive areas. Just plain labs, fitted with computer screens and desk chairs.
I lean up against a few of the larger, closed doors with hefty retinascanners attached to their handles. Those don’t open when I try to push through. The server rooms, I assume. They come equipped with far more security.
I keep moving forward. Left turn, right turn. After a few minutes of walking, I hear the whine before I round the corner and come upon its source: a plainer, wooden door. The hum buzzes against my ears strangely, as though someone is playing a flute off-key outside the facility and the sound is wafting in through the wall.
I go to open the door. I didn’t expect resistance, given the lack of a lock, but it doesn’t budge. No keyhole, no digital keypad. It’s a regular handle.
“Hmmm.” The door is coded locked. That’s unusual.
I open my display, wanting to see what appears when I interact with the door. There are certain items in virtual reality that operate like this—movie posters waiting to move, hardcover books with digital versions—only revealing their extra functionality in our displays. They don’t tend to accompanydoors. Upcountry is supposed to feel real. In reality we use handles and locks.
But indeed, a virtual box pops up in my display. It leaves no room for confusion. The box is labeled withDoor. A drop-down menu has it onClosed.
I tap the menu to open all the options.
CLOSED
OPEN
ERROR#z27LxQAwx4jDEw//access:2040070120580517XXXXX
My blood runs cold.Closedis selected.Openis blanked out, unavailable as an option. But the thirdErroroption is selectable—for me, at least… likely because the tail end of the gibberish ismyuser ID for StrangeLoom.
Or close enough to it. My unique last five numbers are redacted. But the first eight digits are my birthday, the exact year, month, day—Dad chose it, because they didn’t know what my real birthday was—and then the nexteight digits are my ID expiration date in the same format, when I need to get new StrangeLoom credentials.
I’m frozen to the spot, uncertain what to do. While thiscouldbe someone else’s ID with my very same birthday and ID expiration date, the very fact that it’s selectable to me must mean it’s mine. And even without the unique last five numbers on show, it wouldn’t have been hard for someone else to narrow this down either. Only a handful of people in the StrangeLoom system will have an identical birthday and expiration.
I’ve hovered over the third option long enough that my display decides to select it automatically. The door handle clicks. I don’t hear the off-key whine anymore.
Anyone can see this. How long has this been here?
Did Chung leave his office this way? Forme?
I open the door slowly, unsure what I’ll find. The room is dark inside. Quiet. Unmoving. No use lingering and getting caught by someone in the hallway at this point. I slip through properly, closing the door behind myself and leaving it unlocked.
