Mapping and geographic identification technology had developed significantly since the age humans first stepped foot out of planet Earth. However, the process was still dependent on two major stages. The sensing and the reconstruction.

Using advanced algorithms, and animation engines, engineers could vividly replicate and reconstruct a planet’s landscape to such a degree that people could very well ‘enter’ a planet without actually entering the planet’s atmosphere. How? By developing high fidelity VR experiences and, to a lesser degree of immersion, hologram and AR projections. Many corporations specialised in these ventures, sometimes adding on navigation algorithms or even meteorology data to increase the breadth of the service provided.

However, the step before reconstruction was a tricky prospect. Sensing could occur in two ways, either locally or globally. The difference was in the type of sensing mode used. For local sensing, one could send in an unmanned vehicle to navigate the terrains of the planet, capture the terrain features and stitch together a comprehensive data set. While this could be an option for unexplored planets, or for corporations with a low budget, it was ultimately a low-efficiency solution.

The most common method of sensing and mapping was to use orbital satellites. These satellites could efficiently map the surface of a planet with high efficiency and repeatability, but they were in essence a long-term investment. Most start-ups and small companies could not afford to fund a satellite launch. Furthermore, launching satellites required a go-ahead from the majority of stakeholders of planets to ensure that the space landscape was not polluted with excessive, or abandoned debris. With these issues in mind, certain corporations preferred to specialise in launching satellites and maintaining them. Opting to sell the data collected by these satellites as a b2b (business-to-business) or a b2c (business-to-consumer) model. These businesses greatly alleviated the stress on start-ups with innovative ideas but lacking funding.

Eaton I’s space landscape was sparsely populated with satellites, which was uncommon by modern standards. One of the primary reasons for this was that any satellite with the technology of Rank 3 or Rank 4 could not withstand the constant solar radiation from the binary suns. That, and the awkward gravitational fields, made maintenance a massive cash sink. Most of the satellites orbiting the planet were owned by Gaige Satellite Management, a recently spawned Rank 2 organisation. The corporation operated solely in Rank 3 and 4 systems and raked in a steady influx of cash using their business model.

Maverick Mapping and Meteorology (MMM) was a relatively small business on Eaton I and was one of the companies that frequently subscribed to Gaige Satellite Management’s data streams. Unsurprisingly, they had an easy job. The large portion of the human population was condensed into one megacity, while the rest of the planet was basically a barren expanse. Because of this, they happened to be the only company that provided mapping, navigation and meteorology services. The latter service was absorbed following a merger with a meteorology company.

On this particular day, the department that worked on designing hologram reconstructions using satellite data was scarcely populated. Instead of the usual ten members, only two were currently present and working. The office followed an open concept, with minimal obstructions between adjacent workspaces. Each workspace had two adjacent screens and a widescreen above it, forming a simple mosaic.

The darkening blinds on the windows were open by 25%, letting the base minimum amount of sunlight and illuminating the floors.

“Hey, Mace! Didn’t we just get the windows cleaned a few months ago?” One of the two men casually commented.

“Who even remembers all that Jim?” Mace replied.

Jim scratched an itch on his pockmarked face while muttering. “That’s weird. I remember seeing the guys hovering outside two months ago. And the window’s already pretty clean…Anyways, did you transfer the latest satellite imaging over to the intranet? Boss’ been riding my ass about the quality of the last hologram reconstruction we submitted. Dude’s good! He figured out that we did a rushed job; even the previous supervisor couldn’t tell it apart. Sometimes I feel like he’s spying on us.”

Mace chuckled as he responded, “most likely he is…” but his countenance changed quickly, “argh balls!”

With a look of surprise, Jim inquired, “What’s wrong?”

“The system’s hanging. I’m so done with this!” Mace groaned, while simultaneously tapping the central processing unit nestled underneath his desk.

“Hey now. Stop hitting the machine, it might break,” Jim commented lightly.

But this was immediately met with another outburst from Mace. “Fuck! Where’s the imaging gone?”

With a visible frown and a concerned tone, Jim approached Mace’s desk. “Relax, you’ll probably find it.”

“Shit, Jim, it’s really gone!” Mace started panicking.

“What? Let me see?” Jim quickly pulled a connecting cable from Mace’s CPU and attached it to his own. He then performed a series of actions in his own system to synchronise it with Mace’s. “Did you transfer it somewhere? You know the file can’t be copied. Check the logs.”

“There’s nothing. Huh! Wait a minute! I clearly remember transferring the file this morning. The logs are clean! It should be here!”

Jim expressed his frustration at what he perceived was Mace’s carelessness, “Run an in-depth scan it has to be there. Or maybe you forgot to transfer it. Damn it, man! We wasted a day! Now we have to submit another request.”

Jim’s attention was momentarily distracted by the lack of movement outside the window. “Hey, are the cleaners done? Where did they go?”

“Forget about those guys, help me search!”

-Outside-

“Nice work Colin, you’re getting really good at this!” Rhys exclaimed as he methodically removed the harnesses affixing him to the miniature hover module used by window washers. The module was just large enough for a human to stand on.

[Well, it was Simon’s subroutine that did the job,] Colin meekly responded.

“I’m talking about the remote breach. Last time I had to send in a bug. Clearly, you’ve improved!”

After he packed up everything neatly into his carry on bag, Rhys closely inspected his surroundings and his person. He was currently wearing knee-length cargo shorts with a sandy camouflage texture, and a skin-tight off-green tank top. His head was covered with a net-textured breathable beanie and he held the miniature hover module in his hand.

[Alright let’s evacuate,] Colin spoke through Rhys’s earpiece.

“Hold up. Gotta make sure everything is A-OK!”

Once Rhys made sure nothing was out of place, he moved towards the end of the roof he was currently on.

[What are you doing? Just take the elevator down!] Colin asked nervously.

“Wanna see something cool?” Rhys asked mischievously.

The building Rhys was on had 70 floors. He was currently in a district that was closer to the centre, and thus the buildings were of a better structural design and quality. While the Oasis was circular when viewed from above, the buildings were generally arranged in a grid-like structure, in which all the avenues inevitably led towards the city centre. The design didn’t do any favours to the traffic situation.

Colin anticipated what Rhys was about to do next and pleaded, [Rhys. Please don’t!]

Neglecting Colin’s desperate pleas, Rhys sprinted towards the roof edge. With a running start, he leapt off without a hint of hesitation.

His body followed a parabolic path as it accelerated downwards. The high-speed wind blowing against him as he descended, as well as the cacophony of the people and machines operating nearby, drowned Colin’s cries echoing in Rhys’ ears.

Rhys slowly positioned the hover module in his hand, stepped on it, and oriented it such that the thrust vector formed a perpendicular angle with his falling trajectory in an upward direction. He crouched down to lower his centre of gravity and gradually increased the power output of the hover module.

With all his senses working at hyperspeed, Rhys pushed the module to maximum output and lurched forward into a seamless forward roll onto the roof of a HoverBus, which happened to pass near the 40th floor. When he pushed the module to maximum output, he ensured that the trajectory was matching the direction of the bus’ velocity.

Moving in a direction diagonally opposite to the bus’s velocity, Rhys performed another leap, catch and roll onto a van that was moving at a lower elevation.

Rhys kept performing the leapfrog operation till he found firm footing on the ground.

All the while he was following an unconventional descent, Rhys could hear a stifled gagging noise through his earpiece, to which he chuckled.

“Did you like it?” He asked.

[Please… Don’t do that again. Why couldn’t you have taken the elevator down?] Colin spoke with great difficulty.

“But that’s no fun! You gotta experience the thrill, Colin! Don’t you get bored sitting behind a screen all day?”

[I’m happy and safe behind my screens, thank you very much!]

Another voice interrupted Colin and Rhys’ chat. [Alright you two, let’s move on! Thanks to Rhys’s reckless jump we have to scrub two accounts that captured a video of a “man committing suicide”. I’ll leave those to you, Colin.]

[OK Simon.]

“Sorry Simon…”

While Colin was back at Room 2307, Simon and Byron were in a van right next to MMM’s office building. The back of the van housed a compact mobile workstation.

“Why’re we here Simon? Can’t you just do this back at our place?” Byron asked offhandedly.

“Not possible! The file is tricky, it has an in-built encrypted geo-tag. If the file leaves the vicinity of this building, it will trigger a failsafe deleting the file and destroying the machine that it’s stored in. Rank 2 programming!” Simon remarked.

Simon pulled a cable connected to the system’s CPU and attached it to a slot behind his right ear. Byron noticed this and asked incredulously, “When did you get an implant?”

Simon simply smiled in response and closed his eyes.

As he did so, he felt an external connection interfacing with his consciousness. While he focused on the new avenue he found himself in front of an empty room. The walls of the room were void black with lines of machine code flashing intermittently. After a quick 5 seconds, the void started to fill up with translucent shelves, similar to a library from the olden days. The room had expanded significantly, and from where Simon stood he couldn’t see the end. Within these shelves, Simon found frames with familiar names printed on them. The frames were organised in alphanumeric order.

As he stood at the start of the endless library, Simon released a mental sigh in exasperation. ‘How am I going to find it in here?’

In resignation, Simon started to move forward towards the location where he felt the satellite imaging file would be stored. Just as he shifted forward, his consciousness zoomed ahead and stopped at a new location. The whole process disoriented Simon’s consciousness. But then when he looked around, he realised that he was now right next to the shelf which held the file he was looking for.

He scanned the shelf and quickly found the frame with the satellite imaging stored in it. However, he became stumped. ‘What now?’

Through a series of trial-and-error, Simon managed to open the file by opening the frame like a book. And when he did so, his consciousness was again sucked into the frame. At this point, Simon was quite frustrated. The consecutive and involuntary dislocation was infuriating!

Once his consciousness gained clarity, he found himself facing a 3D construct. Behind him was a hologram door, which he concluded was the way to exit back into the endless library. The 3D construct took the form of a simple cube, with layers of holographic sheets. When Simon’s consciousness touched the cube, the construct expanded and presented parallel screens of familiar machine code programming.

Using his consciousness, Simon started to navigate through the construct until he reached a holographic sheet that described the geo-tag.

Generally, you wouldn’t be able to see the programming within the satellite imaging file in this form. To get to this state, you would have to fully decompose the file using a series of steps to gain access to its internal programming. And that would take a long time to accomplish depending on the stringency of the file format. For instance the satellite imaging file Simon was facing would have taken at least a full day of work to decompose. Alternatively, Simon could also access the internals of the file by providing an unlock key. Although this would be safer and would ensure that the file integrity and contents weren’t compromised, it would take much longer using a brute force method.

By accessing the file using his bio-implant, Simon could directly access the machine code without any arduous work. This was an insane prospect! Simon realised that his bio-implant was able to directly integrate with the computer’s processing unit, straightaway bypassing most commercial software locks.

After suppressing his growing excitement, Simon started to focus on the holographic sheet before him. Usually, when programming, you would work on human-readable code. This code is sent through a compiler that deconstructs it and metamorphs it into machine code that a processing unit is able to comprehend. Customarily, people don’t bother to learn this language since it is not necessary. But nearly all professionals, especially the successful ones, know how to understand basic machine code. Of course Simon, as a professional, had learned it to a more comprehensive level.

Simon then used his consciousness to delete the entire sheet. But in doing so, he could feel an increasing amount of strain in his head. Simon figured that this strain corresponded to the amount of processing power required to accomplish the task. He then scanned the remaining sheets to make sure that there weren’t any remnant dependencies that would affect the program’s integrity. He then confirmed the changes and exited the room, returning to the familiar endless library.

Simon then pulled his consciousness from the library and returned to reality. He checked the time and found that the whole process had only taken him around half an hour. Within that time, Rhys had already returned to the van.

Simon turned towards the driver’s seat and nudged Byron. Byron nodded in return and started the engine. They made their way back to their base.

Back in Room 2307, everyone was crowded around Simon and Colin’s workstations. Rhona was on the line with Raúl Hernández, and she was quite agitated.

“We checked the contents 5 times now. There is no research facility in the endless desert!” She exclaimed with a sigh.

Raúl was not fully convinced though. With a very slightly hesitant tone, he replied, [It has to be there! Check again!]

Having reached a tipping point, Rhona exploded into the comm. “Damn it! We ran every single scan possible with the image. How confident are you?”

To that, Raúl struggled to reply. [That…]

But almost immediately, a series of shuffling noises came through the comm, and a new more baritone voice resounded oozing blind confidence. [100%! Check it again! Or try a scan from a different satellite. Do a manual survey for all I care. I’m paying you bumpkins to get results not whine!]

The last part really incensed Rhona, “Listen here you little sh-”

But before she could finish that sentence, Simon quickly interrupted her. “RHONA! Relax. Let me try something.”

Simon reconnected his system’s CPU to his bio-implant using a cable, re-entered the endless library in his mind, and re-navigated to the frame corresponding to the satellite imaging file.

Facing the 3D construct representing the file’s programming, he expanded the holographic sheets containing the file’s content. He scanned through the lines of code once again searching for anything of importance.

His consciousness swam through multiple lines until he picked out a fragmented section of code. At first, he thought that it was due to some form of corruption affecting the file. But as he looked over it again, he found that there was a particular pattern to the fragmentation. It was almost like a puzzle. This suggested that there was some form of compression applied to parts of the imaging file. He tried to de-compress the contents, but his consciousness faced heavy opposition very quickly. It was clearly beyond his implant’s processing power. It would also mean that it was beyond the processing power of their machines too.

After pulling his consciousness out of the endless library, Simon took the comm from Rhona and spoke directly to the baritone voice. “I found a discrepancy inside the data’s machine code. It seems that some of it has been occluded so that it doesn’t show up through a regular search.”

[The hell does that mean?] The voice responded in an irritated tone.

Simon responded patiently. “Basically, MMM is legally obligated to provide the complete information from their satellites without removing anything. The keyword here is ‘remove’. They are allowed to occlude data using compression algorithms so that while it remains in the stream, it doesn’t show up when accessed through regular methods.”

“Why would they do that?” Colin asked

“Most likely a 3rd party has paid MMM to occlude a part of the information so that they can hide it from others.”

With audible excitement, the baritone voice responded, [That’s it! That’s probably where the facility is hidden. So where exactly is it?]

“I don’t know. The compression algorithm is at least at Rank 2 level. It is way beyond the capabilities of our machines. I can send it to a few experts I know who can help out-”

But Simon was interrupted loudly by the baritone voice. [NO! *cough* I mean… Can you do it if you have access to better machines?]

“Yes,” Simon affirmed concisely.

What followed was an elongated pause, with a muffled conversation reverberating from the other side of the comm. It sounded as if the two voices on the other side were having a very spirited discussion. After an uneventful 2 minutes, the baritone voice spoke up.

[Well then I might have a solution for that…]