[Planet: Escala - Country: Iristia - City: Kiphis - Tryphant Church]

[Maximus’s Perspective]

I picked up the white parcel and observed it. It was small, like the size of a large papaya and was in a white box. The box was very plain with no decorations except for the picture of the owl sitting upon a majestic tree and the words, “To Maximus” written on it. The box seemed to be made out of heavy rigid paper, like cardboard and the surface was painted in the shade of a white without blemish.

I tried to look for an opening, a crevice, a crack, anything to open the box but it seemed to be a solid parcel. Shaking it made a small rattle sound indicating that the thing inside barely had any room to move. I took the box with me and tried to look for who would have placed it next to me but everyone seems so far away. I ignored my doubts and exited the building with the parcel in my hand. I wanted to open it in a safe, secret place. A place where nobody would ever know of and one place does come to mind.

Calling the taxi driver once more I asked him to deliver me to the port side of the Kiphis. Kiphis was inherently a port city with a large portion of it’s trade coming from imports and exports of different countries. Kiphis is located in the northern part of Iristia and holds its position as one of the largest ports in Iristia alongside Sidhe, Vanir and Esane. Kiphis’s ports handle a majority of the trade between the Archipelago which transfers goods from the continent of Lapis to the continent of Tylion. Escala’s world map contains two main continents. One on the western hemisphere, Tylion and a continent on the Eastern hemisphere, Lapis with the Sicily Archipelago that connects these two continents figuratively. (Map is in post-chapter notes.). With connections to such large major trading ports it becomes inevitable that Kiphis would become a prosperous city.

After waiting for a while I finally arrived at Kiphis port, the port where my entire career began, where I knew every shipping schedule in this place, every ship that was supposed to come and go, the workers and most importantly the secrets of this place. When I created Taurus it was created as a logistics device to accurately track parts of the supply chain in real time. This meant that companies could locate exactly where their containers are and know within the margin of an hour when the deliveries will arrive, where errors occurred within the supply chain and whether or not there is corruption within the business.

In this line of business I had to connect with a lot of important personnel at the Kiphis Port figuring out where does the corruption happen the most, where do containers go missing and figuring out how my technology will affect the logistics of the port. As I was researching I discovered a large number of under the table deals happening on the port.

Let me give you an example. A single container ship travelling from Lapis to Iristia can hold approximately 8,000 containers of finished goods or processed goods. In total a container ship can carry up to 25,000 tons, for reference that’s approximately 12,500 cars on a single ship. It takes approximately a month to travel through the entire archipelago and 24 hours to unload all of the cargo before refueling and traveling back to Lapis, but the Kiphis port only has 83 cranes to work with which means some container ships have to wait over 2 weeks before their cargo can finally be unloaded. For most businesses this 2 week period is tolerable and they don’t wish to risk being caught corrupting but some businesses require the corruption to work. Businesses such as agriculture, animals, dairy products can't wait for this 2 week period which causes them to coerce the people in charge with a bit of cash to give them priority to unload their ship first. The government of Iristia usually turns a blind eye to a single instance during holidays since stalling the food supply could be dangerous to the economy of the country raising prices for staple goods like potatoes and rice.

This causes an interesting port culture where companies who are delivering food, animal parts, and dairy get priority over the other shipping containers due to the nature of the product. The eventual consequence of this is that the agricultural companies would enter a bidding competition to gain priority to unload the cargo.

Learning about the tacit corruption happening at the Kiphis port I realized that although most companies want transparency within their supply chain some don’t necessarily want that to be public. So we made it a policy to not have access to our user’s data so we can’t see or know whether or not they corrupt. They can see it, we can’t. But in the process of finding this little secret of the Kiphis port I also found where they hold these underground auctions and the boss behind these auctions. On the surface the port manager was the boss behind the entire fiasco but in reality there were 4 main bosses behind this operation, Hearts, Spades, Clubs, and Diamond.

Spades was my old friend and was also the one who helped me with getting the resources to create Taurus. I wanted to check up on him and see how he’s doing, a typical status check right after you time travel. Spade’s daytime job is a regional manager at an information company who provides market data and logistics data to businesses within Iristia. Spade’s other job was to deal with safeguarding delicate information and preventing information leakages.

Whenever a company accidentally leaks sensitive information such as a company’s market strategy, Spade's job is to locate who leaked it and prevent it from further spreading to their competitors or to gain intelligence about something or someone. He specializes in creating an information system that makes it hard for people to find information beyond the surface level and make it seemingly impossible to gain evidence. He’s a retired hacker and fraud who now uses his skills to prevent hacking and fraud. Despite not hacking in a while he still has the connections within the hacking community which makes him a very capable information broker.

Alex “Spades” Tier is a person who is in his late 20’s who lives with his girlfriend in a condo downtown Kiphis. He has short messy black hair and a handsome face which is oftentimes paired with large circular glasses. He likes to wear a nice white collared shirt paired with a tie and a black vest and his favorite black trenchcoat to top it all off. He often wears a serious expression on his face and is 5’8.

I walked into the “Grand Marirosa” hotel located by the bay, an old and exquisite hotel founded when the port only took wooden ships hundreds of years ago. Entering the hotel I was met with the vintage decoration designs of using geometric shapes to decorate the wall. The chandeliers were squares and the desk was a semicircle. In contrast to the geometric style the location of the furniture was asymmetric with two chandeliers aligned to the left and a single one on the right. Heading to the receptionist I greeted her with a smile,

“Hello sir, How may I help you today?” she greeted with a smile

“I would like to use the eagles room” I responded

“The eagle’s room, you said?”

“Yes, the eagle’s room”

“I’m afraid that that there’s no eagles room at this hotel sir”

“Can you please check with your manager? I’m sure there’s an eagle’s room here”

She looked at my unkempt hair and messy shirt I randomly used as I got out of the house and began to hesitate. I saw her hesitation and took out my wallet displaying the random wads of cash inside usually meant for alcohol.

“You can be sure that I’m a paying customer”

She nodded before politely bowing, “Please give me a moment sir” and headed to the back. She returned with a late 20’s middle 30’s lady who I assumed to be the manager.

“How may I help you sir?” she asked

“I’m here to use the eagle’s room”

“I’m afraid that there’s no eagle’s room here”

I pulled out a black card with an eagle on it from my wallet and handed it to her. She took it, observed then gave it back to me. It all happened like we were passing business cards.

“Would you like anything to eat sir?”

“I would like eggs and a side of steak and I want to borrow a knife.”

“We have fried eggs today. Would you be fine with that?”

“Sure”

She took a piece of paper and wrote down 316 on it with a knife.

“This is your room number and that card is your key. Please enjoy your stay”

“Thank you”

“It’s my pleasure”

I walked to the elevator and headed to room 316. Using the card as a key I opened it and inside was a room with a single bed and no furniture. The walls were distinctly grey and covered with soundproof boards. The windows were tinted and the walls were layered with Celleon, a material that disrupts any kind of communicative wave from entering or exiting the room. Sitting on the bed I took out the knife she handed me and sliced open the white parcel revealing what was inside. Inside was a piece of paper and a container filled with green liquid and a brain was inside.