Chapter 6
In a busy street near to the centre of the city, a big brown blocky van was pulling up to the curb with a squeak of heavily applied breaks. The swaying movement of the changing momentum rattled its contents, almost as if in excitement of an impending delivery. The man driving the truck was tall, with dark glasses and a simple short haircut. He stepped out of his vehicle, and was almost camouflaged against it in his matching brown uniform. He then walked into the reception of the building he had parked in front of, and requested a mail trolley. The security guard behind the desk gestured silently to a corner where sat a half full trolley of letters sent through the normal mail. The courier grasped the handle and drove this much smaller vehicle out to meet the rear of his own. A moment later, he returned with a now full trolley, a layer of bulky packages, between which a certain small flat parcel was almost invisible. He returned the trolley to its sitting place, and then returned to his van, leaving the building and our parcel behind.
In the reception, the parcel sat in the trolley, whilst upstairs a certain junior employee was finishing his other early morning chores, taking a full round of coffee orders, arranging post to go out from the previous day, and a million other small admin and dogsbody duties. He soon made time to collect the mornings mail, and retrieved the trolley from the reception downstairs. He took it up in the lift to the main floor, and began to sort through it. As was the general case, any letters without a direct addressee named on the envelope, were to be passed on to the assistant editor to be checked for importance. So the parcel that holds our interest ended up on the desk of a slim tall man with a hooked noise, and a pair a strung glasses hanging around his neck. It was placed there whilst the assistant editor was away from his desk, but he soon returned. He settled into a job he partly enjoyed, as often opening the unnamed letters supplied some interesting information for a story, or gave him insights into the work of his colleagues, altho this latter point had little to do with professional jealousy as it was his job to help the others, he wrote no stories of his own. As he progressed through the piles, he unravelled many different pleas for attention to a story, mostly mundane, some he separated to a pile for immediate response, some in a pile for the juniors to look into later, and the rest he dropped in the bin. When he picked up the package from Theodore, he lifted his little ruler and slit it open, and emptied the contents of it onto the table. He saw two usb sticks with numbers and a letter and what looked like a blank piece of paper. He raised the letter to his face and used the other hand to raise his horn-rimmed spectacles to a usable position, and began to read.
"To whom it may concern,
My name is Theodore, and i am a computer technician. I have had proof of some extremely worrying scientific experiments come into my hands and i have decided to publicise them in the hopes of gaining some help to bring down the company. So far the experiments we have deciphered include illegal genetic experimentation, viruses that violate data protection laws, chemicals that can affect the human body in clearly illegal ways, and other wierd and worrying things. The photograph in this parcel shows a rat that was subject to genetic tampering, and as far as we can tell the rat was simply a test to see if they could do what they wanted to do, which was just changing the form by changing the genetics. Please insert the USB stick labelled 1 into a computer, and it will explain some of the projects we have reconstructed the data for. The second usb stick, marked 2, contains the original data files, sorted using a simple method based on their original filenames. Please examine the data and complete a news presentation as you see fit, and when I have seen it on the tv, i will openly make myself available, in person, to your office, so that we may discuss further actions in regards to the company.
Yours sincerely,
Theodore."
The editor let loose a little chuckle, he felt that it was a little presumptuous of this 'Theodore' to assume a presentation would be made. He lay the letter back on the table, and took his coffee cup in one hand, a large, brightly coloured, hand made affair from his grandchildren. Whilst he sipped, his other hand reached over and flipped over the assumed blank piece of paper. As his eyes fixed on the image of the two headed rat, his cup dropped from his hand and hit the hard tiles at his feet, creating a rather impressive explosion of multi-coloured china and coffee that went completely unnoticed by the editor.
It took maybe thirty seconds before the editor regained his composure, and stood up, ignoring the mess of coffee, he strode straight into the station managers office, without even knocking.
"What the hell do you -" The editors superior had started to utter a reprimand, he was outraged at the interruption of his subordinate, but as he spoke he saw the look on the assistant editors face. He began again, "What is it?"
The editor said nothing, he was still at a loss for words. He simply turned the sheet of paper he held against his chest, the photograph, towards his boss.
The general effect could be described metaphorically as being similar to the effect of dropping a sugar lump into the entrance of an ants nest. The news department had every free person working on the data to retrieve details usable by the news presenters, the editor was sending people out left right and center to find experts to give some understanding to the data. It had a huge effect on the organisation, and every resource available went to creating a presentation for the six o'clock news that very same day.
In the reception, the parcel sat in the trolley, whilst upstairs a certain junior employee was finishing his other early morning chores, taking a full round of coffee orders, arranging post to go out from the previous day, and a million other small admin and dogsbody duties. He soon made time to collect the mornings mail, and retrieved the trolley from the reception downstairs. He took it up in the lift to the main floor, and began to sort through it. As was the general case, any letters without a direct addressee named on the envelope, were to be passed on to the assistant editor to be checked for importance. So the parcel that holds our interest ended up on the desk of a slim tall man with a hooked noise, and a pair a strung glasses hanging around his neck. It was placed there whilst the assistant editor was away from his desk, but he soon returned. He settled into a job he partly enjoyed, as often opening the unnamed letters supplied some interesting information for a story, or gave him insights into the work of his colleagues, altho this latter point had little to do with professional jealousy as it was his job to help the others, he wrote no stories of his own. As he progressed through the piles, he unravelled many different pleas for attention to a story, mostly mundane, some he separated to a pile for immediate response, some in a pile for the juniors to look into later, and the rest he dropped in the bin. When he picked up the package from Theodore, he lifted his little ruler and slit it open, and emptied the contents of it onto the table. He saw two usb sticks with numbers and a letter and what looked like a blank piece of paper. He raised the letter to his face and used the other hand to raise his horn-rimmed spectacles to a usable position, and began to read.
"To whom it may concern,
My name is Theodore, and i am a computer technician. I have had proof of some extremely worrying scientific experiments come into my hands and i have decided to publicise them in the hopes of gaining some help to bring down the company. So far the experiments we have deciphered include illegal genetic experimentation, viruses that violate data protection laws, chemicals that can affect the human body in clearly illegal ways, and other wierd and worrying things. The photograph in this parcel shows a rat that was subject to genetic tampering, and as far as we can tell the rat was simply a test to see if they could do what they wanted to do, which was just changing the form by changing the genetics. Please insert the USB stick labelled 1 into a computer, and it will explain some of the projects we have reconstructed the data for. The second usb stick, marked 2, contains the original data files, sorted using a simple method based on their original filenames. Please examine the data and complete a news presentation as you see fit, and when I have seen it on the tv, i will openly make myself available, in person, to your office, so that we may discuss further actions in regards to the company.
Yours sincerely,
Theodore."
The editor let loose a little chuckle, he felt that it was a little presumptuous of this 'Theodore' to assume a presentation would be made. He lay the letter back on the table, and took his coffee cup in one hand, a large, brightly coloured, hand made affair from his grandchildren. Whilst he sipped, his other hand reached over and flipped over the assumed blank piece of paper. As his eyes fixed on the image of the two headed rat, his cup dropped from his hand and hit the hard tiles at his feet, creating a rather impressive explosion of multi-coloured china and coffee that went completely unnoticed by the editor.
It took maybe thirty seconds before the editor regained his composure, and stood up, ignoring the mess of coffee, he strode straight into the station managers office, without even knocking.
"What the hell do you -" The editors superior had started to utter a reprimand, he was outraged at the interruption of his subordinate, but as he spoke he saw the look on the assistant editors face. He began again, "What is it?"
The editor said nothing, he was still at a loss for words. He simply turned the sheet of paper he held against his chest, the photograph, towards his boss.
The general effect could be described metaphorically as being similar to the effect of dropping a sugar lump into the entrance of an ants nest. The news department had every free person working on the data to retrieve details usable by the news presenters, the editor was sending people out left right and center to find experts to give some understanding to the data. It had a huge effect on the organisation, and every resource available went to creating a presentation for the six o'clock news that very same day.