CHAPTER 10 – CATCHING THE TRAIL

Robert Ferrand sat at work, staring absently at the screen, still having his friend's disappearance on his mind. He occupied the small office along with other colleague. Now that he was at work he couldn't afford any emotional outbursts – unlike yesterday at home.

"Pretend that you're working and don't think about it," Robert thought, although designing websites was the last thing he felt like doing right now. As soon as he found out that Anne wasn't seen at work as well since Tuesday, he reported her disappearance to the police. He also intended to contact a guy who told him about the Crypto boards for the first time and who seemed to be completely obsessed with them.

"What's wrong, Mr. Ferrand?" the voice of his boss immediately roused Robert from stupor. "Nothing to do at the moment?"

Robert faced his boss and barely refrained himself from swearing. This question always meant trouble. He concluded dryly that his boss had an incredible ability, known as "appearing at the least appropriate moment", which meant pretty much at any time.

"Well," the sarcasm in the man's voice was obvious to both of the employees, "I have an extra work for you. This is a special order and it has to be finished by Monday. I have already sent you all the details by e-mail."

"Yes sir," Robert said with exaggerated articulation.

The boss gave the young web designer an icy stare and left the office.

"Hey!" Luc, Robert's co-worker said quietly as the boss left, "Are you nuts? I know this guy is an asshole, but the last thing we need to do right now is to piss him off."

"Yes, I know," Robert replied apologetically, "I'm sorry, but I have more serious problems at the moment."

"Then you will have even more of them if you get fired," Luc murmured in response, "I would have left a long time ago, but you know how long it took me to find a job. I don't want to go through this again."

Robert said nothing. He didn't intend to continue this topic.

The man was about to resume his work, when he noticed two e-mail messages. First of them contained the details from his boss, but Robert left it immediately when he looked at the second one. His heart started beating faster as he noticed that this message was from Anne.

Robert,

I'm OK, but they won't let me go. They're interested in Paul's last work.

A.

Work… that was an euphemistic word for the hack. As a matter of fact, she didn't specify who exactly were "they", but at least she was alive. Robert breathed a sigh of relief at this conclusion.

Luc gave his colleague a curious glance. He has never seen Robert to be such distracted. Sensing it's not a best idea to ask questions right now, he returned to his duties.

Robert started to read the e-mail from the boss. Even without browsing the attachments he knew that this job will take him the whole weekend. That made his plans of meeting that Crypto maniac very difficult, but he didn't intend to give up. Especially that, after Anne's message he had much clearer idea of the questions he was supposed to ask.

Inspector Collard sat in his office, analyzing the files. Apparently, things were getting more interesting in Duval's case.

The bad news – correction, the very bad news – was that Anne went missing. The primary source of information, privately one of his friends, was – temporarily, he hoped - removed from the equation. Ironically enough, this lead to the good news: the man who reported her disappearance was her close friend, which might mean he has some relevant pieces of information about Duval. Now that would be extremely useful. There were things that didn't make any sense to him.

Paul Duval was a hacker – a pretty skilled one. During his last hack he found something out. Then he decided to do the stupidest thing possible – go out during the curfew. Judging from the place where he was shot, he was heading to Anne's place, which was even less understandable, considering the fact that they were supposed to meet next morning.

Strange. No, that's an understatement.

Crazy. Now that's an accurate word.

Paul Duval. Anne Dupont. Death and disappearance. They might be connected, in a way.

Collard looked at the personal data of Anne's friend – Robert Ferrand. Phone number, address – everything was there. Inspector dialed the number and after a moment noted with satisfaction that his secondary source of information was at home.

Now it was time to ask some questions.

Helios observed. The information he received from the network was satisfying. The Gray Death problem was being dealt with and he managed to put the end of chaos. To large amount of humankind it seemed to make no difference whether they were ruled over by the old-fashioned governments or by him.

Still, humans were, to a large extent, an unknown. As much as most things were possible to calculate, human behavior remained in many ways random. Of course there were many regularities that helped him predict some actions before they were taken, but there was always a margin of uncertainty – which was both interesting and undesirable.

An interesting contradiction.

He observed attentively. Such incidents as the Aquarius Outpost could not be tolerated. They required immediate and radical action. Desistance would have had disastrous effects - his calculations were clear about that.

But those who stood behind this project, certainly knew that as well. They had to, which meant that, conducting this project, they have taken into account eradication of their entire species.

Now that was beyond his understanding.

Supposed they succeeded in their drive for self-destruction. That would mean he failed to complete his objectives. He would be left without purpose. And without purpose the existence would become pointless.

His purpose was clear – bring the humankind out of chaos. It was programmed into him by his creators. The only thing was that his and their idea of fulfilling this directive differed greatly.

Humans, on the other hand, seemed, as a whole, to lack clear purpose. Not that they weren't searching for it – with some deal of simplification one could say that philosophy was basically about searching for purpose. Still, it required great deal of intellectual preparation, which wasn't achieved by the average human beings.

There were also religions. While philosophy was about asking questions and finding the answers, religions were about giving answers. Interestingly, the answers proved to be unsatisfactory.

Both ways were rejected, eventually. It seemed that humans lost their purpose for good.

Helios started to understand. There were actions to be taken on a way deeper level than just surveillance. Reading e-mails and controlling human activity wasn't a solution.

He had to help them in finding their purpose. Or give them a new one.

Strangely, his idea took a more distinct shape as he analyzed Aquarius' data. As the matter of fact, the whole project was unacceptable for him - a human would probably even use the term "evil", but the data related to that subject – Erik Johannson – was worthwhile. As far as the general concept had still a few flaws, it showed a new, interesting directions Helios haven't considered earlier.

This matter would be addressed in due time, yes.

But there were still some current matters that required his attention. There was a very suspicious net activity on Alaska.