Point of Contact

26

Time travel?” Ryan shook his head. “I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but no. It’s not logically possible.”

“Actually, it is possible. Let me show you.”

Singh led Ryan to the back wall, then picked up a tablet from the nearby empty control station. The screen at the control station was a mirrored image of the wall screen.

“What you’re seeing on the screen is a live video feed of Singapore from five thousand meters — approximately sixteen thousand feet.” Singh tapped a virtual key and performance data appeared for altitude, speed, latitude, longitude, and the like.

“Can you fly your bird from this control station?” Jack asked, pointing to the one he was standing next to. There was a joystick, a keyboard, dual monitors, and a wireless mouse on the desk.

“In theory, we can fly our UAV from any of the stations you see in this room. In the future, we plan to fly multiple UAVs from each station. For now, the Steady Stare vehicle that’s aloft is being run from a control station at Seletar Airport—”

“At the Dalfan hangar?”

“Yes.”

Jack turned to Lian. “I’d like to see that facility when we’re done.”

“I’ll see what can be arranged.”

Singh tapped more virtual keys on his tablet. “Now let’s focus in more closely.” The camera zoomed in like a dive-bombing hawk. The image finally resolved on the Dalfan building in the center of the giant screen.

“There, do you see that delivery van that just pulled up at the security gate?” Singh asked.

“Yeah, but I can’t make out anything except that its roof is blue,” Jack said.

“Imagine if that van was loaded with explosives and it was driven by terrorists. Imagine further that it passed through the Dalfan gates and onto our property — just like it’s actually doing right now — and say twenty meters in, it exploded, killing whoever was in the van and completely destroying the vehicle.”

“Okay.”

“In a situation like this, how would you normally set about trying to determine the identity of the killers and the location of their hideout?”

“Usually, the investigating authorities would look for forensic evidence on the scene — fingerprints, photo IDs, VINs, a license plate — any kind of physical evidence that would begin to provide a clue.”

“Correct. But the likelihood of discovering usable physical evidence from a catastrophic crime scene like this one is extremely remote. However, if a police department or government agency had a time machine, it wouldn’t need any of the things you mentioned. All they would need to do is travel back in time to a point before the explosion.”

Singh tapped a few more virtual keys and the blue van suddenly reversed direction. He tapped another key and the van sped up 2x.

“Please observe.”

The van backed out of the Dalfan driveway and onto the main boulevard — the street name clearly identified on the screen now, just like a Google map — and drove away in reverse, along with the rest of the traffic. The clock on the video monitor was also running backward as the van sped through the industrial park area, pulling in and out of a few more driveways until it finally arrived at a warehouse some five miles away, where it stopped in front of a loading dock.

Singh froze the image. “So, this is the origination point of our theoretical ‘terrorist’ van. But we still don’t know who our theoretical ‘terrorists’ are.” Singh resumed the reversing image and two men exited the van and walked backward, climbing the stairs to the loading dock in reverse.

“All of this data is stored on your mainframe?”

“In this case, yes, because we’re still analyzing the data from our field testing with our first client.”

“Who is that?”

“The Singapore Police Force. They’re also storing all of this data on their cloud storage server. Anyone who leases the program from us in the future is free to store it on their own servers, in the cloud, or wherever it suits them. Storage is the easy part.” Singh held up the tablet. “It’s the software that powers the aircraft, cameras, and the surveillance packages we’ve developed that really counts.”

“How hard is it to use?”

“Quite simple, really.”

“Then show me.”

“No,” Lian said. “Dr. Singh has already shown you everything you need to know about the system to understand its profit potential.”

“Ease of use will be a key factor in your ability to sell it to public agencies. If it isn’t easy to use, you won’t make any money from it. So I need to see how easily it works.”

Lian glowered at him. “Fine,” she finally said, throwing a dismissive hand up.

Jack was troubled by her hostile reaction, especially given the fact he probably saved her from a gang rape last night, or worse. He knew she was no damsel in distress, but most people would be more grateful under the same circumstances.

A thought occurred to him. Unless she knows I didn’t save her at all. Maybe the incident was all a setup by her to scare him off or test him. She seemed capable of such a thing.

But he had no reason to believe that. She kicked the shit out of that one guy. If she had hired that poor toothless bastard, she owed him a bonus, or at least a dental plan.

More likely, she might have just been embarrassed by the whole evening. She did, in fact, flirt with him and he didn’t respond in kind. Not because he wasn’t interested, but only because he was raised to be a gentleman, and she was a little drunk. But she wouldn’t know that about me, would she? And technically she was the security last night, but he was the one who saved her. Yeah, she’s embarrassed for sure.

Or not. Who the hell knew? Sometimes he felt like he knew how to handle guns better than he did people, especially women.

Singh handed Jack the tablet. “The video manipulation is completely intuitive. See for yourself.”

Jack took the tablet and hit the play-button icon. The video image began running forward. He paused it again and ran it in reverse with a slider, back to the point where Singh had stopped it before.

“So I want to follow these guys back to their original locations. How do I do that? Just run the image backward until they get there?”

“You can do that manually exactly the way you were doing, but that might take minutes, hours, or even days, depending on your target. The easier way is to let the program’s tracking and facial-recognition software do the work for you.”

Jack handed him the tablet. He watched closely as Singh tapped a few more icons. On the big screen, both delivery men were surrounded by boxed target reticles, one red, one yellow. The men separated. One fell into a car, the other climbed onto a motorcycle.

Singh zoomed out, clicked more icons, and the virtual camera lens zoomed back out so that the entire city could be seen again. The two men were just yellow and red dots. A moment later a red line and a yellow line sped away in different directions from the warehouse, snaking through the city streets. Both lines ultimately landed in two separate locations on either side of the city. It took less than a second for the Steady Stare software to accomplish the feat. Singh paused the program.

“Wow,” Jack said.

“I set a time limit of only two hours.”

“How far back can you go?”

Singh shrugged. “That depends completely on how much data you have stored. If a client keeps video records for a year, they could trace those two guys — or anybody else — for a year.”

“Storage is the key, isn’t it?” Jack said. “Depending on what you want to do with the data.”

“Storage is another profit center,” Lian interrupted. “Make sure you note that in your report.”

“I will.”

“Have you seen enough?” Lian asked.

Jack studied Singh’s face. Singh’s eyes locked with his. A silent invitation.

Jack shook his head at Lian. “I’m guessing there’s still more to all of this.”

“Maybe there is,” Lian said.