Chapter 2
‘The detainee has escaped’
‘Which one?’ I glance at my desk and see the file pop up. This insurgent is one of our more mysterious ones.
‘Crap.’
I quickly glance at the Sigma. I know the AIG doesn’t approve of such foul language, but sometimes it’s necessary. And I have to hand it to the instigators; they have a knack for coming up with curse words.
‘Is this photo from the most recent incarceration?’
‘Affirmative.’
That made 7 photos in all. 7 different faces all associated with this one name, George. Was this most recent photo the true face? There is no way to be sure. A true face might not even exist. I can feel the nearly daily headache starting. I swipe through the file to see what information we have, mostly just victims, like all the others.
I turn to the Sigma, ‘how?’
Instantly the video feed flashes on my desk. I see the instigator creep out of the cell, and somehow all the way to the exit shaft that was used last time. Then the view switches to an aerial view of the syntho-grid. The movement in the tall grasses shows someone running north away from the facility.
‘And you swept the area and found nothing?’
‘Affirmative’
I clear the image from my desk and sigh. I glance at the Sigma.
‘Report.’
‘The instigator identified as GEORGE was captured and detained at our facility in poor condition. The server deduced that the probability of GEORGE dying was dangerously high. So, GEORGE was mildly healed until the probability of death fell to a normal level. Then we transferred GEORGE to another room that was illusioned to look identical to the first. This room had fewer security measures, and thus less interference in the Sigma’s reading. The Sigma went in, and stayed there for an hour. It is in that time that the instigator escaped.’
‘How?’
‘It would seem that there was a glitch in the server. It received an all is as it should be pingback for the full hour. By the time the system rebooted and noticed the error the instigator was gone.’
‘What is the probability of such an error occurring?’
‘1 in 13,422.’
‘So not impossible. This George obviously has tactical skills. What happened next?’
“The instigator GEORGE made it to the outside access shaft and climbed through. Then upon reaching the syntho-grid, there was another glitch that allowed a clear path to freedom and GEORGE took it.’
‘And what is the probability of both of those glitches happening to aid in George’s escape?’
The sigma takes a second to calculate. It must be a very small probability.
‘1 in 1,000,772,585,200,006.’
‘So either our instigator is supremely lucky, or….’
I trail off. What else could it possibly be? To my knowledge there is no technology that could allow a human to pull of these types of feats. I head throbs as I pull up a blank document on my desk and start writing down my thoughts.
‘Thank you, Sigma. That will be all for today. Please go and report to your next designated authority.’
How are they doing this? This isn’t the first insurgent we’ve had with this kind of ‘luck’, but I have never seen anything on this scale. What is going on?!
daily-dally 