Ascent
It felt like you couldn't open up a single piece of hardware on the market without finding something from Tellin Microsystems anymore. Ubiquitous felt like an understatement when their stock alone felt like a barometer for the tech sector's health. Everything about them was suspicious in so many ways, but more than anything, they were _ni_ce... too nice for what was feeling like the world's first Megacorp.
They never laid down the hammer on smaller companies when it came to their license. They were always out and about with bright eyes and bushy tails whenever there were issues regarding their tech. They owned up to problems the second they learned about them, and even paid companies using their chipsets to recall faulty products as quickly as possible, all on the dime of the company. No recompense required, after all, they genuinely cared about their consumers
This was not the behavior of a company making as much money as they were.
Everyone had their half-baked theories at the ground level, usually involving some kind of plot. Their encryptions had passthroughs so they could view everyone's data. Their tech created some kind of surveillance field so they could see anything. Their chipsets were made by some weird slave labor in secret underground labs. They were in cahoots with the government. They wanted to be the government.
Yet every year, despite all the speculation on their motives, they'd always reveal a stunning new advancement that promised to kick the world forwards another decade in technological advancement. Going to a yearly tech expo felt like watching a world history documentary on fast forward.
In public, everyone loved them. Corporate partnerships were founded with jubilation and it felt affordable to Joe Everyman to take that big step forward and start living in the future. It almost felt like they could start to run out of reasons to found charity initiatives.
But in private, vitriol flew between drawn curtains and the closed doors of board rooms. It was starting to feel like dealing with a turn-of-the-century monopoly that didn't realize it was one. They couldn't even get a rise out of them, because something about their patents meant that even flat infringement of their methodology couldn't replicate the results
At first, they even tried the standard methods of corporate espionage, but with no employees angry enough at their bosses to kiss and tell, the prospects began shifting towards offense. Moles were sent in with resumes befitting the high level positions they were applying for. Not a single one went longer than two weeks before utter radio silence. They weren't dead, they didn't even seem intimidated, they just didn't want to talk about anything that they saw and traded payrolls.
Nobody could figure out the method behind the madness was, and their building wasn't giving up any secrets. Not even spies were good enough to satisfy the need for information, the handful that survived a break in attempt returning nothing but junk results. The supposed heart of their entire development infrastructure was apparently a blank, white room with little tracking dots all over the walls.
Every single effort to peek behind the curtain was a wash at best. There wasn't even any publicity to be had from the attempts, the business world just carried on like it wasn't even happening. They'd become an entire company's worth of stoics, their facade as unchanging as their ever so slightly greened business center.
It wasn't even a matter of espionage for some companies. They just wanted a reaction, no sane man would keep working with someone who clearly wanted to steal trade secrets. Alvarius Tellin never even mentioned the attempts, made on his business, or his life.
Some even made jokes that the communications arrays on top of the building were meant to mirror it's founder's infamously long ears. Always upright, alert, and uncaring unless he wanted them to be different.
But this time, it was going to be different. This time, he had to react. It was going to be the biggest, most over the top production of an industrial siege ever produced.
The boardroom table was getting crowded at Neurosoft. There was a straight split in uniforms: warring nations at peace talks. No corpro-crat would be caught dead with the street trash that ate away at their pocket books, and trash would usually be the nicest word a punk would use to describe these manicured drones. In the privacy of the boardroom, however, one had bills to pay, and the other had money.
To the right sat a neat row of designer suits, slicked back hair, and pocket squares at their tablets. They were reviewing nothing short of battle plans. A good portion of the Tellin tower blueprints were easily accessible through the fire department, and while demolition wasn't the name of the game, it was nice to draw out routes their subcontractors could at least try to follow.
The left was overcrowded with leather and torn cotton, huddled ten to one around beaten laptops as decorated as their skin, the glow against their packed faces almost brighter than their hair. Cause chaos, take pictures, don't get caught. The fact that the payout and equipment budget managed to have as many digits as they did without being lumped together meant this was going to be fun, they even got to keep anything they didn't feel like ditching!
The table's heads were distant, but farther in philosophy. Martin Frisk, CEO, wanted to send a message to Tellin; their actions weren't appreciated. Bookending a presentation of their machine learning concepts, be it vaporware or not, with a working High-Turing AI was a declaration of war Neurosoft was going to follow through on.
Nasir Sahreen, LAH (Largest, Angriest Hooligan), wanted to break things
Philosophy be damned, their interests aligned.
The negotiations were very few and scattered, agreements for suppliers were made, possible bail bonds were set up, and most notably, a few small bonuses were set. If anyone could even make it to the door of the executive office, they'd be set up for life in a position that paid fine hush money, and good references if anyone wanted to make a lateral move and start contributing to society.
But as a small company of masked, armored, and shrouded figures arrived in front of the Tellin Tower, they couldn't imagine a change in practices would be all that profitable for anyone
Clarissa, since everyone always said that moles did good work breaking things, set the charges. They expected a suddenly missing front concourse would set off at least some alarms... the consensus was that they must have all been silent, so time was of the essence
The B group was set to go off and try and mess up some software. The whole building was wired for Wi-fi, so a few strategically placed hijacking engines could screw up some days. Supposedly, they baked overnight, and merged seamlessly with the building's network. They wouldn't even realize they were getting mined.
C group was going to stick with the main brunt of them until they arrived on the supposed development floors, and then it was time for the grand tour, all expenses paid, and photos developed ASAP.
A group was headed straight for the top. If there was anything Nasir liked more than violence, money, and that cute little otter with a thing for crop tops at the convenience store, it was getting any of those things, without work or cleanup time. Right now, all he could see was the M249 in his hands, and the blank check at the top of the building. Tunnel vision, baby.
Something seemed off; and it started with Brent. Squirrels could be twitchy, but after a little while, it spread to everyone. They couldn't hear any sort of sirens or sound downstairs. Sure, their blast had knocked off some of the lights, but it was bright enough that nobody felt the need to turn on their flashlights. The running LEDs along the bottom edge of the staircase provided just enough of a dim glow to see where they were going.
Eventually, the split point was supposed to happen. Supposed to. Sergei was resistant to the idea of splitting up the team even more. Coms chatter came in far briefer bursts than it should have been with how little resistance was coming in. No news was the worst news he could think of, but the few messages that came through painted everything downstairs as going peachy...
He wanted to argue, make them shut their traps and do their jobs, but even Nasir was starting to feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. C group now had an escort, but only until the danger had passed, if there was any to begin with.
It was your average office building far past midnight. Shut down for business, doors locked, and a freshly vacuumed carpet, awaiting a parade of happy little workers the next day. Without a doubt, maintenance was long gone, so it was Carte Blanche for making a mess. All of the doors were of course locked, most digitally but thankfully, one strong kick demonstrated they were all boot compatible.
The more rooms they broke into, the more the raid was starting to seem like some sort of cruel joke. Almost every room was full of a whole lot of nothing. Tables, chairs, and carts, but not a single computer. For a tech company, it felt like they were operating out of the stone age. The only thing that breached the tension of the utter silence around them were the occasional jokes about trying to find some incantation to wipe away this illusion. Even still, open sesame was starting to lose it's humor after a while.
Still, the whole group was paying rapt attention when it came to sending their pictures back to Neurosoft. They had to understand something out of all this, otherwise they wouldn't have sent them in. Image after image showed rooms that were utterly identical, indiscernible from one another save for the position of the furniture.
The big payoff had to be coming up. Main Development Workshop. It even had double doors, so it had to be important enough for two people to want to go in at once. Booting and re-booting didn't help, so eventually, it was decided since that didn't work a crash was in order. With the aid of a sacrificial cart and the twinkling of broken glass all over the floor, they finally got in.
It was a whole lot of nothing. A cathedral to nothing. It was sprawling, sure, a multi-level space at least five or more stories on it's own with terraces, plinths, catwalks, furniture, and a whole lot of jack shit. Not even a few tentative steps into the area made anything happen. No lights flicked on. No machine gun turrets ripped them to shreds. The barely illuminated space continued to simply be as they walked in, ignorant of their presence. A lot of nothing kept happening in a big old nowhere.
Brent snapped.
He pulled out his pistol and started firing it wildly at the walls, only starting to yell out once he was finally restrained and disarmed by a very angry Sergei and one of the other C group infiltrators, who did their best to avoid his kicks.
"This is a fucking setup man! We broke into a ghost branch. I don't care what we were told, Nothing's fucking here! We need to cut and run before whoever's waiting for us comes out and puts some tracking dots to our head and we all end up in federal! Nasir! Fucking listen to me you idiot, we need to evacuate before we all die!"
The wolf didn't have a muzzle on hand, but surprisingly, a Squad Automatic Weapon against the squirrel's chest did just about as well in shutting him up.
"I'll say this once: You can cut and run now, but don't expect a red cent from me. They have to have something with a hard drive we can steal up here, or a document we can bring back, and if you want money, you're going to help find it."
Before Brent could even respond, he was unintentionally interrupted by a member of Group A. Sadie's shouts could be heard getting closer and closer. The tiger had broken off earlier to go and search more rooms while they'd been clumped together.
"Guys, I found a folder! My taclight broke getting into the cabinet, but unless these guys have an invisible ink budget we've got our first hard evidence!"
The group scrambled to form a circle with her in the center, and the tiger felt like the center of attention cracking the folder. However when she did, the look of confusion on her face spread like a particularly bad virus.
"QR codes? What the hell is with all of this?" Sergei blurted out, his bemusement echoed throughout the crowd. Talia did her best to salvage her find.
"Well, QR codes all have to be machine readable, so let me see if a phone can get us anywhere." It took about fifteen seconds to download the application, two to open it up, three to scan the code, and twelve more for her smartphone to descend into a meaningless stream of Linux code, its fate cutely summarized in a stylized logo of a dead robot.
"I'm done with this. Try and split up to find more evidence and maybe they can make something of it back at Neurosoft. I'm headed with my team to where we were going before this useless little detour." A half dozen other furs followed Nasir back to the stairs, shooting doubtful glances at one another the entire walk upwards.
As they ascended, calls back from C came about as often as calls from B, but there was a pervading doubt that they would even find anything. In Nasir's head, that quiet was to be expected. He was still wondering what the hell was happening at the base of the building, they didn't even seem to have attracted a police presence yet, so he decided that for now, they'd be allowed off the hook.
"All members of B group, I want you out of the building. Even if you have some of the spikes left, it's best you get out before we attract too much suspicion. C group, keep searching until you find something major, then get out, or wait for us to get back down if you think you need an escort again."
Glancing back, A was definitely the most heavily armed, sporting three fully automatic weapons, two that were chambered in calibers roughly summarized as "ludicrous" and two military issued combat rifles between them, not counting their various sidearms and explosives. There was a definite reason to feel safer when they were around. Either way, it was five floors to go before they reached the executive levels, which for some reason, were all qualified as residential floors.
Nasir figured if it was all just a bunch of cushy offices, he probably wouldn't even need to fire a single shot. Talk about an easy payday.
A steady line of confirmative chirps came back from nearly everyone not in the wolf's immediate vicinity as they ascended. People didn't seem the most eager to leave, most of their voices sounding flat. Nasir figured it was a lot more like mom calling them and telling them they had to get home.
The group briefly checked each door on the way up, eventually stopping at the last set. At that point, Sadie brought up a valid concern. "We should go in with our guns up. We've got to encounter someone up here. Maintenance has clearly already been through downstairs with how clean it was, and someone's hit every other floor in this building by now. If we haven't seen them yet, they have to be heading up, and this is as up as we can get."
"Wait, then we should've at least heard them, right? I mean, this is the maintenance staircase, so by all logic, they should've been heading up at some point, or someone should've come down at the very least." It was hard to tell who was who with a mask on, but only Karl would be compensating hard enough to be carrying a .50 cal.
Nasir merely nodded. "Then maybe they fled up. I agree with Sadie, we walk in ready to fight."
It was a picturesque breach and clear for such a ragtag group of street punks, every last possible vector of attack was checked before they stood in formation, glancing around to take a glimpse of the environment. Board rooms and offices. Typical tech corp chic.
"They have to be hiding. Split up and root them out. Kill them if they try to fight back," He paused for a second, then thought better. "No, just kill them on sight. I don't want some two-bit janitor getting snippy and trying to kill me with a looted gun."
There was no maintenance route as they ascended the floors, no behind-the-scenes left for them to sneak through. It was as open as open could get, with glass absolutely everywhere. It began to feel like everyone was running a corporate labyrinth of their own. Nasir just had a knack for finding where the stairs were. Everyone was separated in trying to hunt someone, anyone down.
And then, without warning, there was gunfire. Nasir heard those pops reverberating through the floors below in quick succession.
Automatic Fire.
Silence.
Cannon fire.
Silence.
Nasir began counting in his head.
Burst fire
Silence.
Burst fire
Silence
Everyone was only firing once.
Cannon fire
Silence.
Nasir waited for the final round of automatic fire, but it never came. He desperately reached for his radio.
"Sadie, report in, what's going on down there? I'm hearing gunfire, you guys didn't get overwhelmed, did you?"
Nasir forged on as he tried to call in, his weapon still kept at hip height. He wasn't quite sure if he was running towards a payout, or safety. "I'm ordering a full retreat, everyone fall back, this isn't a drill. Something's up here, and it's very hostile. Everyone who can hear this, get the fuck out of dodge or you're going to die."
Finally, after such a long period of radio silence, Nasir got a response, but not the one he was looking for. It started slow. Panicked dispatches from B group. Something was down there with them. Then the same from C, people were disappearing left and right. Desperate pleas from his own squad. Then all at once, painful, tortured screaming. Nasir could recognize every single voice. The grim realization occurred that he was the last one alive.
He dropped his radio and grabbed his machine gun, ready to make some sort of last stand against whatever was going to come up the staircase behind him. He barely even recognized the mahogany doors at the end of the hall. For all he cared, they were the gates to hell.
They were the size of greyhounds, sharp and contoured in all the right places. They moved so quickly that the few Nasir managed to hit seemed more out of pure luck than anything. He could feel them bite, but they all seemed to travel straight past him. He wondered why until he heard the door open.
He turned and fired out of sheer terror. His last three shots, and not a single one of them hit the dour looking rabbit standing in the doorway, the lights flicking on as it closed behind him. There was no mistaking him for anyone else. It was Alvarius Tellin.
"Do you mind? Your band of hooligans has been causing quite enough racket. Do you even know what hour of the night it is? My family is trying to sleep." There was no anger in his voice, no condescension. The rabbit simply expressed bored annoyance.
Nasir's panic jumped up higher as he reached for his hip and didn't find a single thing to defend himself, his hands wildly clawing all over his person.
"Quite honestly, Neurosoft's attempts at sabotage have come to bore me, but this is an all new low, even for them. Gross destruction of property, espionage, and sending murderers and lowlifes to rummage through my building." He shook his head wearily. "Why? To get a rise out of me? Are they really that petty now?"
The only thing that he could find was his phone. He dialed emergency services. Anything to get him out, even if he spent the rest of his life in prison. He wasn't expecting three hit tones from no connection.
"This building used to have so many problems with interference. It doesn't help when you build your façade like a Faraday cage. Every set of floors in this building is all but isolated, with a central communications hub to redirect traffic as needed. Of course, I had to attach a link array to the roof to avoid FCC regulations on signal jamming, but believe me, I still decide what data leaves and enters this building."
Nasir lowered his phone to find his own gun pointed at his head, the rabbit's expression still unchanging as it was before.
"Looking for this? You must have dropped it. Now, Nasir, you understand how little power someone has at gunpoint, so tell me why everyone was here tonight."
"I'm not telling you shit, bunny," Nasir spat out and was awarded with a bullet to the shoulder.
"Your compatriots died slowly and painfully by my sentries and you can do the same if you wish."
The wolf was in too much pain to come up with a coherent answer.
"I'm already aware you tried to steal my company's secrets and you were all unfortunately too dumb to try and make things work. It's phenomenal, really, the few who figured out how make our AR labs function after hours were all far too awestruck to stay bound to their former masters."
"What the hell is AR?" Nasir asked through a haze of pain and was greeted with raucous laughter.
"Augmented reality, you cur. You don't need to have a hologram to project an object in 3D, Nasir... You were staring deeply at our best kept secrets, you just didn't know how to see them. You even destroyed a cart full of pre-linked glasses because none of you had the technical know-how to even try and break into the system correctly!"
Nasir tried to lunge for the gun while Tellin laughed, but his arm was quickly brought down by a sentry.
"If that girl Sadie is alive downstairs, I might try to see if she's any smarter; she at least had the basic reasoning skills to try and get a coded sheet up and running, even if she seemed to forget her phone had a processor from the same company she was breaking into. Oh well, it wasn't even the security measures that stopped that, her phone just didn't have the ram to run the AR engine."
"Still alive? What the hell are you talking about? Do you even care if anyone in this building lives?" This time the rabbit's retort was a pistol whip.
"High handed talk for a man who proposed to go on a killing spree. Really, I could care less; you all demonstrated blatant disregard for any sort of law or morals, so why do you expect that same code to apply to you? A tad hypocritical, don't you think? Really, though, I'm tiring of you. Tell me what you're up here for or I'll have you torn to shreds."
"Neurosoft offered a nice paycheck for anyone who'd get up to the door of the executive office." The rabbit's expression soured slightly. "I even had one say he'd double the offer if I hit your personal terminal with a tunneling engine." At that, the rabbit's expression turned foul.
"So they wanted me dead then." His expression may have changed, but his tone did not.
"They didn't say shit about wanting you dead, bunny, just your terminal."
"You're clearly too stupid to understand implications. I had the top floors renovated to proper living space so I could have a chance to see my family. Odds are, if I'm not with someone else specifically, I'm at my terminal, even when I do get the opportunity to sleep. You'd have encountered me one way or another. But you know what?"
The bunny snapped his fingers and flicked his head, and the sentries dragged Nasir along to his great discomfort, his head knocking against the closed door.
"There you go Nasir, congratulations! You managed to reach the front doors of my office. Job well done. Tell you what, I'll even toss you a bonus! You get to ask one question. I'll answer honestly! No jokes."
The wolf struggled to turn his head. "What kind of crazy future shit are you hiding in here?"
It started out simple. Small, even, a quiet chuckle that turned into a full blown gut laugh. It stung Nasir to his core, even as Alvarius made a point to calm himself.
"I am truly sorry. Where are my manners? This has clearly all flown over your head, so let me spell it out for you. There is only one supposedly futuristic thing in this entire office and they're latched onto your arms. I have no intention of selling them, so let me be brief." The rabbit paused, clearing his throat.
"Every single thing in this building is made out of easily available technology, we were just the first to arrive at our conclusion. We took our problem, found a solution, then found all the possible benefits of implementing that solution. Interference issues? Compartmentalize the building. Make ourselves immune to digital espionage." The rabbit began to pace as he spoke.
"Regulate frequencies with an automated central authority. Use that authority's task allocation system to train AIs. Make AIs advanced enough to learn how to properly modulate frequencies and confine the failures sadistic enough to turn a failed raid into a radio drama in with our more advanced security systems." Nasir winced with each slow, purposeful step, which was now approaching him.
"Make AR a company standard because there's no workspace modular enough for our creative minds. Suddenly become immune to traditional espionage. Have those minds refine a process so reliant on precision that even when someone thinks they're copying it wholesale, they still screw up." The steps were now paired, the barrel of the pistol clacking against the CEO's palm
"Make leaps and bounds with those circuits. Make Moore's Law seem pessimistic. Create advanced security, because suddenly, everyone is interested in what we're doing, despite the fact that we made each step quite publicized... but that's when we stopped talking and installed carpet on every floor of our building so nobody can hear the sentries coming. I apologize, Nasir, we do have a secret." Nasir felt the cold steel of his revolver press against the back of his head.
"Everyone's so obsessed about finding our little black book, they pay no attention to the fact that we've spelled out the recipe to our success a hundred times over. Nobody wants to listen if it involves doing it the hard way. Of course, we try to make it seem like we're just better. Maybe one day I found a crashed alien ship or something, or I got a call from myself in the future. We make ourselves seem incomprehensible. Perfect. Do you know what our secret is Nasir? Do you play cards?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" The wolf asked weakly. He was already getting a bit drowsy from blood loss, but he could still hear the smile on Alvarius' lips
"No matter what your hand looks like, no matter who you're facing against, the best defense and the best offense is your poker face. That's what you have to perfect before anything else. Someone will always assume, that if you stay stone faced after a four of, maybe even flash a small smile, that whatever you have is just better. Just react to the situation you want the room to think you're in. They can't tell what you're looking down at. Make them think something they can't confirm. That you have a full house, or an ace up your sleeve. Never let them know anything for certain, otherwise they might be able to react rationally against you." The wolf's ears pinned back reflexively as he heard the hammer raise.
"That's our great big secret Nasir, the first secret everyone keeps is how many they have, and we're making the biggest gamble possible." Alvarius couldn't help a chuckle, "We just don't have any others."
Alvarius led his pet back into his office and left his jacket. Thankfully, it'd be clean by morning, and nothing that needed attention got dirty. He filled out a few forms before he heard telltale small footsteps coming down the spiral staircase behind him. Just light enough to be Lyria. The sentry wagged his tail.
"Daddy? I thought I heard some noises, is everything alright?" Alvarius turned around with a fatherly smile. She even brought her teddy with her.
"Nothing is wrong sweetie, you probably just had a bad dream," he scooped his daughter up in his arms, kissing her on the forehead. "Come on, you need your sleep, it's way past your bedtime and you need plenty of rest if you're going to watch cartoons with your brother tomorrow morning."
"Can Bandit come too?" With a simulated whimper meant to be cute, the sentry rose to its feet. Avarius couldn't help but smile.
"Sure, carrot cake, Bandit can come too. He'll keep the bad dreams away," the father slowly rose up the spiral staircase, keeping an ear open.
"Can you come too? It's really late, and I know you need sleep too."
Alvarius flashed a small smile as his daughter let out a yawn. "Terminal, powered shutdown with exemption, redirect priority email to cleaning services before shutdown." The lights faded to a dim glow as Alvarius returned to climbing the stairs. His daughter wasn't quite old enough to understand the mechanical logic the corporation operated on, so she always looked a tad confused, but she was trying.
"Just making sure everything's clean for tomorrow sweetheart, so tomorrow is as perfect as today."
And it was. Alvarius even joined his kids and wife for breakfast and Saturday morning cartoons, a rare treat for all of them. The news brief came on in the commercial break and it was just as boring as every other day of the week. An athletic young tiger survived a fall off a pier. Only good news, nothing out of the ordinary. The perfect, lazy Saturday.