“I can try,” Neran said, “I have no idea how close I could get though.”

“Well anything’s a start,” Usyon said, “And we have lots of time. Before you even check his bunker out though, is there any way he could kill us from where he is?”

“Yes,” Opin said, “He’s sure to have much better suits and better supplies than us, he could probably send a guy out right now to bomb our bunker and kill us. His bunker probably has an airlock too, so he could send the man out without much trouble.”

“Well that’s just fantastic,” Usyon said.

“I guess I should kind of take it slow then.” Neran said.

Suddenly Hess stood up. “I demand some way to make it clear I am not involved in any of this, and only not acting because of the threat you six…”

“Yeah, about that threat…” Biyin began a sentence, which Neran finished for him.

“It applies to other things as well”.

“Such as being an idiot.” Usyon added. “We’ll let you be but you leave us alone too.”

“Well what if he decides to kill all seven of us just because you all went and tried to kill him? What then?”

“Then you can spit on my grave.” Neran said. “We don’t care about you, you don’t care about us, we just happen to occupy the same square under the ground. Got that?”

“Fucking…” Hess started, but he stopped and took his seat again, looking angry.

“All right now,” Usyon said, “You want to start now?” He asked Neran.

“Sure, why the hell not. We don’t have anything better to do. I think I’ll scan everything around here first though, just to see what’s out there.”

--------------------------------------------------

Zeer looked at the small icon that had started to flash in the upper-left of his screen, wondering what it meant. “Telmab, what is this?” Telmab looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know, click on it and see if it does anything.” Zeer clicked, and a message popped up.

Your connection has been detected by another nearby machine. It has not initiated contact, would you like to?

“Would I like to?” Zeer asked Telmab.

“Sure, why not? If it found us I think it has to be close, and besides it says it is, so it must be another Transbeki. We can pretend we’re the mayor and his family or something.”

“Unless, of course, the other machine is the mayor and his family.” Ulhan said.

Zeer clicked Yes, and they waited as the palmcomp showed a symbol of a beamer-light, which they assumed meant it was trying to find something. A few seconds later a new message popped up.

Contact uninitiated. The other machine has blocked itself. Would you like to try again?

“What does that mean?” Zeer asked.

“I don’t know,” Telmab told him, “If they’re doing something weird though we probably shouldn’t try again.”

“Agreed.” Zeer said, clicking No.

--------------------------------------------------

“What just happened?” Biyin asked.

“I detected one of those crappy machines that asks you if you want contact every time anything pings you, and the other guy tried to initiate. I blocked it though and he’s not trying again, so it’s OK now.”

“Where was it? Do you know?” Holpen asked.

“Yeah, somewhere east of us, somewhere between two and five kilometers. I think there are a bunch of bunkers over there, for the local government and artistocracy.”

“Using crap software? Seems like they’d have the best…” Biyin said, half amused.

“Who knows? The only system I know does that does automatic contact costs about a quarter of the average since automatic initiation is a huge security risk, but they could be using it for any reason. They might have lots of comps and just be using the cheaper ones now in case batteries die, maybe they left their own at home and the bunkers were stocked with the cheaper ones, something like that.”

“Yeah guess so.” Biyin said.

“OK that’s it.” Neran announced. “There are a few dozen machines east of here with globenet access, including the one that tried to initiate, another three south of here where I think there’s a private bunker, and then the ones in the other bunkers in the building. None of them seemed like anything special, they’re just basic palmcomps on a basic globenet connection.”

“You should probably check out the connection we’re on too.” Usyon said. “See who else is on it.”

“I’m doing that now, yeah. Just the machines I told you about, oh wait, there’s a bot of some kind too, I don’t recognize it.”

“An AI bot?” Gafan asked.

“Yeah, called DragonScanner, so I guess we know who it’s from.” Neran said. Lil had had a mild obsession about dragons for the last few months.

“Will it know we’ve been scanning?” Usyon asked.

“No, that’s the stupid thing, it doesn’t record and right now it’s in hibernating mode on their end, meaning no one’s watching what it is. It’s set up so that I can read all its files no problem too, I just can’t touch them.”

“Sounds like he just wanted us to know he was watching.” Holpen said.

“Yeah, except at the moment I know he’s not watching us. It’s been hibernating for the last three hours.”

“Are you sure it’s not just saying that?” Usyon asked. “Could it have its power-status set to always display hibernating?”

“No,” Neran said, “It’s a pretty simple bot, I can see everything. It’s wide open, nothing’s concealed at all. It’s just set up to watch and let someone else watch when it’s on. The only thing it records is what it’s doing.”

“But you can’t touch it?”

“No, I can’t change anything with my comp skills, it’s so simple it’s almost perfectly secure. I can tell when it’s on just by pinging it, and it even tells me how long it’s been in that state, but I can’t do anything beyond exchange information. The machine’s pretty integrated into the government network, so when it is on whoever’s watching it can see everything we do. Right now though it’s just sitting there.”

Hess was listening very carefully to everything Neran said.