To dock into the NetDive Board, the user has to lay on the bed and put on the helmet attached to the board. The helmet is designed such that it completely covers the visual senses of the users. Lined along the surface of the NetDive Board are a collection of minuscule outlets that wirelessly tap onto the spine of the user, similar to how Meka Pilots interface with their Mekas. Now while the user is interfacing with the NetDive Board, their remaining faculties are untethered.

While docked into the NetDive Board, Colin spoke out in excitement. “Holy crap Simon! It’s insane! It’s like entering a really long library. Everything I need is just a thought away.”

After familiarising themselves with the tech, the group got on with their work immediately. The first order of business was to decompress the satellite imaging file, which Simon left for Colin to do since it wasn’t too complex. Colin enthusiastically set out on the task using one of the NetDive Boards, after begging Simon for permission. Following a short 5 minutes, the decryption was completed, and Colin eagerly announced it while praising the efficacy of the almost arcane-like technology.

Simon smiled faintly while diverting the conversation, “Did you manage to decompress the file?”

Colin replied nonchalantly, “Yes. It wasn’t too difficult, just a dual-layered distributed compression. I was so surprised by the effectiveness of this NetDive Board though. I don’t think I could have achieved the same level of file integrity if I did the decompression using a regular method. There were so many snippets that I would have missed.”

As said, the NetDive Board was a revolutionary piece of technology; it was something programmers all over the known universe desired. It was capable of making tasks that were extremely hard and time-consuming when performed using standard methods trivial. The decompression process, for instance, would have taken at least an hour or two if it was attempted using a regular system.

Colin paused, before asking hesitantly, “Hey Simon. Can I take a run at the Blue Blood Gang’s servers again? I want to perform a comparative test.”

Simon chuckled audibly and replied, “They’re going to flip out if they hear that you’re using their secure networks as a benchmarking tool.”

But before giving Colin the ‘go-ahead’, Simon added, “Before that, run a probing scan on the local network. I want to know if there are any safeguards that we need to be aware of before getting too intimate with the tech here.”

After leaving Colin to his devices, Simon moved back to his workstation and began to peruse through the satellite imaging file once again. Following the original method, he ran a series of search algorithms in parallel, and then ran a series of cross-referencing algorithms to narrow the search.

As he was working, Rhona calmly approached him from behind. “Any luck finding the facility?”

On queue, one of Simon’s screens switched to a map and started to zoom onto a location. Unlike the almost monotonously barren and flat landscape of the endless desert, this particular location was near a plateau of sorts. By the looks of it, it appeared artificial. Simon then rotated around the plateau and found a facility seamlessly blended into it, which was missing in the earlier imaging file.

Simon pointed at the screens and spoke to Rhona, “Look here.”

Rhona was amazed by the suspiciously clandestine building and exclaimed, “Wow! Is it Halcyon’s?”

“Don’t know. It’s not like they put up a neon sign screaming out that there’s a facility there.”

Rhona scratched her head in confusion and pondered out loud, “It’s pretty far out and obscure. I can see how they scrubbed out the existence of the facility from satellite scans. But what about the logistics? There have to be people going in and coming out. And what about resource transportation?”

Simon shook his head as he replied. “I don’t want to make any unsupported speculations. But they must be redirecting logistics through another channel.”

It was a common strategy used by corporations that wanted to obfuscate certain transactions.

Rhona snapped her finger as she came to a realisation. “A puppet! Stuff goes to Point A in Halcyon’s books, but at Point A it gets repackaged and shipped to another post, and so on. I mean that’s the gist of it. Most likely that they have layers of redundancies to wash out any traces.”

Simon expressed caution, “We still don’t know if it’s Halcyon’s facility yet. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves until it is verified.”

Rhona nodded in agreement. She then followed up, “What do you plan to do?”

“Get Nathan and Horace to stake out the location. Tell them to keep track of everything going in and out of the place.”

“What about us?”

Simon contemplated for a moment before replying. “For the time being, we should infiltrate Halcyon’s system in the city. See if there are any suspicious threads that we can follow.”

It was deep within the endless desert. At least a days travel northwest from the Oasis by standard transport.

For any local Eatonion, the endless desert was simply a barren and plain ocean of sand. A sea of golden brown as far as the eye could see. But in this particular location, there was an irregularity.

While there are areas of elevation and depression in the endless desert, there is a sense of naturalness to it. It was not like a sudden cliff just appeared out of nowhere. But in this location, a completely irregular landform existed - a plateau.

An unsuspecting traveller would simply shrug and move on when facing this landform. But those individuals with a spirit of adventure would notice a man-made structure flushed into this plateau.

With a closer look, they would notice that the structure resembled a type of industrial facility. Taking an even closer look, the individual would be decimated to ashes by the various defence mechanisms mounted into the plateau that would materialise after detecting any trespassers in the vicinity.

A respectable distance away from this facility, behind a modestly sized dune, a sandy-brown coated RV was parked. The rear door of the vehicle opened and Horace stepped out, rubbing his eyes as he tried to overcome his tiredness.

Carrying a pair of binoculars, Horace carefully made his way up the dune towards Nathan, who lay prone on top of a secured tarp while scouting the plateau.

The two had been staking out the facility for 3 days now, and Horace was getting a little fidgety. “I hate stakeouts. Can’t do shit!”

Nathan spoke without lowering his binoculars, “Just hold out for a few more days man.”

Unsatisfied, Horace muttered, “Argh! Why can’t they have the facility in a nicer place? The sand gets in everywhere!”

Horace hated doing this. One way or another, he and Nathan would always end up on stakeout duty. While Nathan was suited for the task, Horace didn’t like staying in one place for a long period. Especially with Nathan. He was a nice guy, but a horrible conversationalist.

Following a bout of silence, Horace fidgeted in his seat and nudged Nathan. “Hey, Nathan. ”

Nathan hummed in recognition without diverting his attention.

“Ever since Grandpa’s funeral, there’s been something bugging me. I never used to think much about the things that I used to do, my likes or my dislikes. But after learning more about myself, and what’s inside me, I feel like I’m…”

Nathan interjected as Horace struggled to find the right word, “Artificial?”

Horace affirmed with a low and dejected, “Yea.”

He followed it up with a probe, “What about you? Do you feel the same way?”

Nathan chuckled in response, which captured Horace’s ire, “What’s so funny?”

“What I found amusing was that Karina asked me the exact same question a week ago.”

Horace’s eyes expanded, but then mellowed out as he processed the information. “And?”

Nathan paused in thought. Since they didn’t know much about their birth, the triplets never really established a legitimate order of seniority amongst themselves. They simply considered that they were all born at the exact same time.

But over time, a pattern started to emerge. Due to Nathan’s regularly calm and unperturbed aura, Karina and Horace would always approach him with problems that were not at a level for Simon to handle. While Simon was more capable in most matters, they found it easier to approach Nathan with the minor issues due to their proximity age-wise. Thus through a gradual process, Nathan became the default ‘older brother’ in both Karina’s and Horace’s hearts.

Nathan replied in a composed manner, “At first, I was also conflicted. Was everything about me a lie - a string of code written by people trying to play God? Am I really interested in doing the things I like? Was my obsession with ‘Tonya’ a result of my programming?

I had tons of questions about myself. You wouldn’t believe me if I said it, but I even did a search about it online,” he smiled.

“And that’s when I realised that it all doesn’t matter.”

Horace tilted his head as he tried to comprehend what Nathan just said. Nathan recognised the lack of response as Horace not understanding his intention, and thus he continued.

“Everyone in this world is controlled by strings. The worst part is that they don’t even realise it. A man ‘thinks’ that he wants to buy a particular snack, but does he really? Was that truly his preference, or was it the result of a battery of persuasive and subliminal advertising strategies that made him prefer that snack over all the others in the market? You see as long as the man lives in ignorance, he will always hold the idea that he is the master of his own life.

In reality, everyone in this world is a puppet being controlled by those above them. Their perception of reality and the idea of control is simply a mirage their mind creates to keep them from breaking down.”

As Horace nodded in understanding, he shot off another question as a rebuttal, “Then what about those on the top? Those ‘puppetmasters’ you talk about. The ones that did this to us?”

“They are living inside a house of cards. They think that holding all the strings to the ‘puppets’ below them untethers them. But if even a single string slips out of their grasp, their entire life threatens to crumble into nothingness. You see they are tethered by themselves.

But I digress. Back to our problem. Ultimately it’s all about perspective. Animals are inclined to certain behaviours from birth, even without having an elder teach it to them. We are just like them. Since birth, we were inclined to certain behaviours, likes and dislikes. Grandpa didn’t do anything to us, he gave us complete freedom. So then what’s the problem? We are who we are because we want to be this way. Now imagine if we were stuck in that lab. Would we be able to do anything we wanted? No!”

Horace affirmed with a nod and a hum, “So you’re saying that it doesn’t matter that we were made artificially. Since our life is now in our hands, our choices are ours alone.”

Nathan agreed while he adjusted his binoculars. He zoomed into a vehicle in the distance, moving towards the facility. As the view grew sharper, Nathan rattled out, “It's another Gaiter Goods truck. Cross-reference the registration tag CZ-231550.”

Horace quickly picked up the tablet next to Nathan and typed the tag into the database. After a quick half-second, some information popped up on the screen.

Horace then said, “It’s on the list. They seem to use a fixed set of transports. Is that irregular?”

Nathan shook his head as he replied, “Well it’s not uncommon, most companies like to limit access to secure sites, so they sometimes do that.”

Horace commented, “We need a better view of what’s inside. I’m pretty sure their security system’s nothing to scoff about. You saw what happened to that Sand Sparrow. Poor guy didn’t even see it coming.”

Nathan lowered the binoculars and turned towards Horace with a hesitant expression, “I know. I don’t want to rush it though.”

Horace waved his hand to alleviate Nathan’s apprehension, “Well we have sufficient data from our observations. While we’re at it we should try sending in the upgraded Spyder Simon sent. Let’s see how the facility holds up against Rank 2 tech!”

Nathan nodded, “Hmm. I ran some calculations on an estimated area of influence of the facility’s security system. Make sure to program that in. We don’t want the bot to get fried and end up alerting them.”

Horace walked over to the RV and removed a silver case. The case was large and required Horace to carry it with both his hands. He gently placed it on a table next to the RV and input an alpha-numeric passcode to open it.

The case opened up automatically, and a screen booted up on the opened lid. On the other half of the case lay an articulated bot with eight spider-like appendages. Horace performed a series of actions on the screen and the bot activated. As if waking up from a deep slumber, the bot’s appendages flexed and lifted it off of the shock-proof casing that it lay on. The bot then crab-walked out of the case and leapt off the table onto the sand.

The bot, which was named Spyder, was a product Simon made early on in his career. Over the years it grew and was updated to fit their needs and modern trends. With access to Rank 2 manufacturing technology in Angel's workspace, Simon managed to update this model with more advanced chips and components.

Horace started to input the programming for the bot in the form of a series of high-level instructions. Unlike standard programming, these implicit instructions are high-level, human-readable, instructions written in a logic-sound language such as mathematics or one of the many novel alternatives published on the QNet.

To understand the difference between standard programming and high-level instructions we use an example. Consider a case where you are instructing a fellow human to retrieve an item from a neighbouring room. Generally, asking them to simply ‘fetch me that item from the other room,’ would be sufficient. But what we choose to overlook is that the aforementioned instruction has multiple implicit details that are assumed as known, and redundant to include.

For instance, we assume that the other person knows what the item looks like, where it is located in the other room, where the other room is, and how to carry the item. On a deeper level, we also assume that the person knows how to walk, control their arm to reach and grab, and even breathe.

It would be difficult if in-depth programming knowledge becomes a prerequisite to even use high-tech devices, especially if the user is supposed to be a layman. Therefore, the Spyder utilised a drag-and-drop type GUI in which complicated processes were condensed into distinct block-types which could be strung together with logical relationships.

Once Horace finished programming the Spyder, he compiled it and synched it with the robot. After a minute, the Spyder shuffled seamlessly across the desert landscape. It moved stealthily, with its sandy-brown body effortlessly blending into the equally sandy environment.

As soon as it reached a particular location, the robot performed a sudden flipping action to lay on its back and switched into a hibernation mode.

After several hours, an automated transport vehicle was seen zooming across the endless desert. Its destination was the obscured research facility. As it moved unperturbed, hovering over the calm and sandy surface, it inevitably passed over the inconspicuously overturned Spyder.

The robot seamlessly came back to life and magnetically attached itself to the vehicle when it moved over it. After adjusting itself into a decent position on the undercarriage, the Spyder affixed itself mechanically and switched off its systems once again. This was so that when the vehicle passed through the facility’s security checkpoints, the scans wouldn’t flag any foreign unrelated entities and eradicate it.

Once the Spyder entered the facility it cautiously came back online and started to flitter around the area where the transport was parked, safely obtaining scans of the environment. As soon as the bot recognised that the transport was about exit the facility, it returned to its docked position and exited with the vehicle. The bot then detached itself from the transport when it passed over its previous hibernation point.

When the bot returned safely, it quickly transmitted the scanned information back to the RV and received updated instructions from Horace.

It then resumed waiting for the next opportunity to hitch a ride back into the facility. This process of entering, exiting and transmitting had a specific purpose. For the bot to transmit the information it has to piggyback off of existing wireless systems. Since the group didn’t know the extent of the cybersecurity present inside the facility, it was safer to have the bot courier information intermittently, so that it wouldn’t get flagged by the facility’s firewalls.

Near the end of the week, Horace and Nathan had collated an extensive database of information regarding the externals and internals of the research facility, ready to send over to Simon who was now moving on to the planning stage.