Nano Bytes

743 activated his GPS and prepared to map the route. Jeck walked ahead of him rattling doorknobs and shining his flashlight through the glass on the doors. Not one of the doors was unlocked, and nothing moved in any of the rooms. They finished one floor and moved to the next. Jeck was sweating by now and stains darkened his uniform grey shirt under his arms.

«I always take a break on the third floor,” Jeck said and leaned against a wall. «I’m not as young as I used to be.»

«I will check this floor while you rest,” 743 said. Jeck waved his hand in what 743 took to be an affirmative. He walked down the hall rattling doorknobs and glancing in through the windows.

«You’re supposed to shine your flashlight through the glass,” Jeck said when he returned.

«I scanned in the infrared,” 743 said, «there is nothing in any of those rooms.»

«You don’t know that unless you use your flashlight. It’s procedure.» Jeck grunted and pushed himself away from the wall. He walked down the hall checking each doorknob and shining his light through the windows. «You’ve got to do it right,” he said and led the way up to the fourth floor. 743 followed him through the same routine. Half of the windows had screens fastened to them.

«What about the windows with something blocking the window?» 743 asked.

«That’s programmers that have something on their computer they don’t want anybody seeing. Just ignore them and keep going.» They returned to the tiny office on the ground floor and Jeck threw himself into the single chair in front of the monitors. They flashed from scene to scene in a not quite random pattern. Jeck watched the monitors for while.

«What about the rest of the property?» 743 asked.

«It’s all on the monitors,” Jeck said and pointed at them. 743 saw the hallways they had walked on screen.

«Why walk the halls if we can see it on screen?» 743 swept the frequencies and found most of the cameras. He let them input to a temporary cache and set a part of his attention to watching them.

«You can’t check the doors through a screen now can you?» Jeck swivelled the chair in a full circle and pulled out the news sheet. He carefully flattened the paper and started reading it again. 743 downloaded the sheet and scanned its contents. He paid special attention to the X-Prize announcement. It was far down the page, below the antics of a protie teen singer. 743 was impressed that Jeck had noticed it.

They scanned the monitors, or rather 743 did while Jeck made a sandwich and consumed it messily. Every twelve minutes one of the screens went blank. Jeck ignored it and pulled out a deck of cards. He laid out a pointless game on the desk. 743 followed the links on the tri–corder thing. The success showed a great deal of technological cleverness. He suspected much of it came from the development of artificial beings and giving them comparable senses to the proties.

«What about the screen that goes blank?»

«Something one of the techies is working on,” Jeck said peering at his cards. «Boss said not to worry about it.»

«Right.»

The night crawled past and 743 turned down his clock speed. They made the walk through the four floors of the building every hour. Each time Jeck rattled the doorknobs and peered through the glass as if something was going to get past them and hide in one of the offices. Exactly at 0700 hours their replacements showed up.

«See you tomorrow night, Frankie,” Jeck said.

«My designation is 743.388.02.09,” 743 said.

«You don’t expect me to remember that do you?» Jeck didn’t even wave as he walked away.

743 showed up exactly at 1900 hours and found Jeck tapping his feet and looking physiologically two stages away from full anger.

«You are supposed to be here in time to put your uniform on and check your equipment.» Jeck said.

«Sorry,” 743 looked down at himself. The ridiculous clothing hung oddly on his vaguely humanoid shape. The belt of useless tools hung from the cloth of the uniform. He needed none of them.

«Don’t be apologizing unless you mean it,” Jeck said and went through each and every one of the tools on 743’s belt making sure they all functioned properly. The flashlight flickered briefly and Jeck thumped it.

«Damn things are supposed to be indestructible.» The light stayed steady and Jeck shrugged. «If it gives out, you’ll have to come and sign out a new one.» He turned back to the screens. «Tonight you walk on your own. I’ll be watching you, so no skipping steps. Follow procedure, Frankie.»

«I’ll get started then.»

«Not yet,” Jeck pointed at the clock on the wall. «You start at 2000 hours on the minute.» He turned to face the screens. Every twelve minutes the screen showing the fourth floor went blank for ninety–seven seconds. 743 set his clock.

«OK, get on your way.» Jeck didn’t even look up from the screen. 743 walked out of the room without a word. He rattled the knobs and shone the flashlight through the glass of each window. He did the four floors at exactly the pace that Jeck had used. When he got back to the office the man just grunted.