The scene unfolded as so many others often had over the years. The Watcher, who thought he was in complete control and on top of the situation, was in fact himself being observed.
The Watched person had been scanning the Watcher even before he took his seat at the bistro. They say, a little knowledge, is dangerous, and this was proof thereof. The Watcher, although he was oblivious to the fact, was in serious danger of being eliminated, purely by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What was really unfolding here was a web of intrigue, politics and espionage that stretched all the way back to the Emperor and his inner circle, with their greed, corruption and lust for power.
Our scene consisted of two pawns in a chess game which stretched across the galaxy, and had as many players as there were pieces, on the board. There was no doubt that this was a complex game, which truly only resembled chess by virtue of it being both strategic and tactical. The greater goal was the primary directive and everything and anything would be deemed to be acceptable in achieving this goal. The stakes were high, with the rewards endless, to the successful players.
It was always interesting to watch the opening gambits, in a new game, put into play by this chance meeting on Bega Centauri.
The Watcher:
His face was well tanned and his skin appeared to have a somewhat leathery texture to it. He was wearing a black poncho with a bright red satin hat, which was held on his head with grey ribbon tied beneath his chin. The hat had fur all the way round and it looked like real fur to me. He was wearing an enormous pair of sunglasses that just about covered his cheeks. He had a a grey moustache and the hint of a smile on his face all the time and his eyebrows remained raised. This caused his brow to be wrinkled and he looked as if he was constantly puzzled by something? He looked oriental although I could not see his eyes. He was not a young man and looked as though he was in his late sixties.
He caught my attention as much by his looks but I think more by virtue of the endless questioning by his raised eyebrows. I casually accessed my comm’s apparatus and scanned the local surveillance camera’s. I locked them onto him and immediately requested an identitly check. I knew that this might alert him to the fact that he was under surveillance or at the very least he would know someone was interested in him. I was surprised at the holographic projection as my comm’s link started giving me feedback. His name was Oblique Tarbesk, a class A – level 5 robot. In plain English this made him a top rate personal security guard. The type of robot assigned to a foreign diplomat stationed on a none too friendly planet. So, I wondered, whom he might be working for here on Bega Centauri. I ran another diagnostic check but it came up blank. I was not that well acquainted with this planet. It had its fair share of eccentrics and industrialists and this robot could be working for anyone of them. It did not particularly interest me, the fact that he was registered and his identity scanned, suggested to me that everything was in order. I am a sort of a roving security analyst, my work entails auditing security apparatuses and procedures on all planets across the Trifa quadrant. I report directly to ISA, Interplanetary Security Agency. The Emperor was due to make a state visit to Bega Centauri in three months time and I was part of an advance guard to audit existing security procedures.
I merely filed an incident report and thought very little of it. I somehow couldn’t help but feel he was mocking me in some way, that hint of a smile, seemed to stay on his lips and he seemed to doff his hat to me as he left.
The Watched:
I saw him the minute he entered the square, I had set my containment field well beyond the confines of the square. I was alerted to his presence whilst he was still half a block away. Combri Avechi was his name and he was a minor security officer in the ISA, Interplanetary Security Agency. He was a level 3 administrative robot and probably believed himself to be human, a quirk of modern robotics. He was not an operative and was therefore not a personal threat. His security clearance was or could potentially be a problem though. I immediately hacked into his comm’s link and intercepted everything coming to and from his apparatus. I done this in a way that would make it appear normal to him. He had to believe that he was accessing the ISA mainframe and this would mean that there was a prefunctionary delay in both dealing with his request as well as authenticating his log-in. We had set up a dummy link and tested this extensively early last week. This was the first time we were going live with this though. The feedback he was getting now would tell him I was a level 5 robot and for all intents and purposes he would think that I was the personal bodyguard for some or other rich industrialist. I watched his reaction and waited to see how he would react to the blank on whom I was actually working for. This was crucial and would turn this situation one way or the other. He filed a routine incident report, which would never reach ISA and seemed to be happy to leave it at that. I had entered a virus on his apparatus which would corrupt everything he had submitted for the last 48 hours and would continue to do so for another 24 hours before it stopped working completely. There would then be no record of most of his trip here to Bega Centauri but more importantly the fault would be traced back to a period well before his contact with me. I hoped this would be the end of my contact with Combri but then again it wasn’t up to me. If the order came through I would have to make sure that the records were dealt with on a more permanent basis.
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