30. Old friendships

Why have the key to the data in my head lying around in random people’s minds? This does not make sense. He could just use the public key to verify the data integrity.

Dan almost missed the door he aimed for. The light steps along midship where you could barely feel the gravity and his distracted mind contributed. He had to backtrack a few steps.

This whole setup was smelling of trouble. Nobody can be this incompetent to leave the key around. Unless, he needed to deliver the key too to someone. I would have partitioned it too if I can’t trust any single brute working for me. Thinking of trust, Ava regularly disappears to who knows where. She was just another survivor lucky to get out of the dome, but he could not shake the feeling. She was something else.

His train of thoughts speeding while his hand working. Subprocesses activating on a whim and the door was unlocked. Lights coming alive shortly after. Revealing exactly what Dan was expecting.

The room in front of him had the bare minimum furniture. Bed secured on hinges, turned based on which gravity the ship was using at the time. Straps dangling around. You need sleep even in no gravity.

The little personal items spread all over the floor. Consistent with the damage experienced everywhere. Dan scanning the room back and forth. Not with any tech, he had no way to get those expensive eye implants. He scanned with experience and logic.

Fred was dead for a long time, Dan figured he could not extract the key from his brain anymore. But he knew Fred. He was a prepper. Not the doomsday type, just the preparation is key, plans are worthless type of guy.

He must have made copies, or otherwise left the part of the key duplicated somewhere. Dan used to come to his place, to share a rare cigarette, or a shot of brandy they salvaged from excursion yachts they repaired together.

Dan rotated the bed and jumped on it. The smoke detector was the perfect place. They regularly tampered with so their unhealthy air remains a secret. And there was a memory chip behind the plastic shell.

Way too easy, one would say convenient. Dan thought of his late friend’s consistency. If Fred’s accomplices would not be tied down by the ship-wide catastrophe, they would have found it before Dan.

His injury healed really well over the last few weeks. Being in low gravity again felt like home to him.

Skimming through the memory chip was tedious, so he put it on a backburner. Defined the filters, what files he is looking for and letting his own implants do the work. It was not safe to stay there, not his first barbeque in shady business.

Whoever was that talking blob Brad’s mind shower him, would not stop taking this data back.

Not that he would not have it. Probably he has a few copies lieing in different brains. But to prevent peeking eyes. In this day and age, data is the king. Information about someone or something tramps those old fashioned contrabands. The prices are sky high and you can sell it to multiple interested parties.

Blackmail the man with a recording of his conquest outside marriage, then deliver the same recording to your client in the first place, the wife. Just a usual tuesday for Dan. But these people rarely go after the data broker or private eye who played them both. They are too distracted by expensive divorce lawsuits. And of course embarrassed by the scam.

This was different, as multiple attempt on his life proved to him, this was big league, so to say. How big, is still a mystery for Dan.

He was passing the casino floor of a fancy hotel when a hologram appeared right ahead of him. He almost stepped through, entertaining the thought of how a ghost would feel if he did so. The avatar was vaguely familiar to him.

• “Heya, are you Dan?” — the voice came from all over the place. Either the casino skimped out on a proper sound system or the crash thrown it out of alignment. Hardly mattered.
• “Yes, but who are you?”
• “Steelgopher, or just call me Gopher. Captain Pier told me to find you.”
• “Oh the virtual singer? And what do you want, I am really busy at the…”
• “Excuse me, really, sorry to interrupt, but it is important. The Giant is falling to the moon.”
• “Ahm, well, I can’t do anything about that.”
• “Actually, we need someone to check on the ion drives, at the front.”
• “Near the damaged ring? No way I go there… Find someone else. Like from the crew.” — as Dan tried to end the conversation, stepped through the avatar.
• “Seems most disappeared or leaderless, we need someone who can be trusted. Wait, what can we do for you in return?” — Gopher realising a new tactic was needed with Dan, after all, she runs a very profitable business too and recognised the fellow businessman. At least Dan stopped, signaling to her, there may be something.
• “Actually, can you decrypt data without the private key?”
• “May take a while, shorter if parts of the key is known. And, need a lot of computing power. There must be a large available one near the ion drives.” — smiled the avatar, almost grinned. Knew she had him in the trap, now if this worth enough. — “May I ask what you need to be decrypted?”

Dan’s files stored notable people’s profiles, including Gopher’s. She held a degree in computer science, warranting Dan to take a chance.

• “It is a family heairloom, a locket held a memory chip. My grandmother left it for me but the key was lost before I was born.” — Dan knew to build a lie from real events, it makes it believable. He had a jov a few years ago, but the key was in posession of a young lady and the memory chip was stolen by a thief. With all info for a thick bank account. He knew, he was the thief and the private eye too.
• “Okey, you check on the drives, I set up the decryption for you, deal?”
• “Deal.”

If you enjoyed this scene, read the story leading up to it so far here:

Giant of the Stars

Fictional story of a luxury starliner’s catastrophy

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