// Subject Access Request - A33 - 3G98 - Makari //
// Recordings - Entry 7 //
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*The feed opens. The room is grey, mostly bare, what you can see of it. The view appears to be across a metal table, on the other side a man sits patiently. He's relaxed, but clearly paying attention. A Vherokior, quite solid build, average size, his hair twisted into a short ponytail, as is obvious when he turns to look at something. A voice off-view, female, steady, faint Intaki inflections.*
"...and so you see here the remains of what was pulled from the lockbox. A body, burned and scarred but... remarkably well preserved. Quite abnormal augmented features. You remember?"
The Vherokior nods calmly. "Yep. Citizen Astur."
The voice replies; "You admit that quite freely, if you don't mind my saying. Is this a ruse?"
The man smiles with a slight huff of a laugh. "I though the implant would tell you. If I didn't wan't you to know I'd just say I won't tell."
He smiles over the table, presumably at the person asking the question. "Citizen Astur wasn't exactly our best-kept secret. Most people knew we had an open interest in any enemy asset. Including personnel, for all the good it did. I'm surprised you managed to find it in that condition."
"Yes I was going to come to that. The burns happened after the time of clone death. Comparatively recent." She paused for his reply.
"Well, we'd hoped nobody would find anything." The Vherokior looks back to whatever was being displayed. "Suppose you can't burn everything in a hurry."
The woman's voice quickly picked up. "Yes, you refer to burn protocol, in this case for Operation Delphi... but originally, and publicly, this was said to not be the case. The vault was locked down, according to record, not emptied or destroyed."
"There was some disagreement there. Originally, yes, we were gonna seal it, everything it held. Every lockbox, every experiment, every document, lock it down, come back and get it if we needed." He turned back to the voice. "Obviously though the dance didn't finish there."
There was a pause, a little tapping off screen, a few beeps, tell-tale signs of a datapad being used. The woman spoke again. "What exactly does burn protocol entail?"
The Vheokior shrugged "What it says on the box." There was a brief pause as he took out a pack of cigarettes, removing one from its row as he spoke. "Everything classified under SIC in our possession or within reach destroyed. Bar the Master File."
The voice interjected, a note of confusion in an otherwise tranquil tone. "Everything?"
"Yep. Right down to the janitor's schedule."
"A little... extreme?"
The Vherokior shrugged again. "Not really, but you're the historian. Maybe it looks different to you."
"But why did this happen?"
The Vherokior paused. He flipped the cigarette between his fingers for a few seconds before lighting it. He breathed it in, exhaling smoke. "First you need to understand, only one person, perhaps two, had the full top-down view of it all. The rest of us, most officers and directors included, only had parts of the full picture, little snippets of the things the Accord knew and possessed. Together you had perhaps an idea of the full picture, but never an original full view."
He took another drag of his cigarette and continued. "What we did know, though... it didn't scare, I find that reading or just observing under test conditions doesn't scare, but it did grab us. Tightly by the throat."
The voice cut in "Weapons?"
"Not exactly and not in all cases. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the secrets of the century, there were, and are, far more impressive and dangerous collections out there."
"So why burn it?"
A pause as the Vherokior exhaled a cloud of dry smoke from his nostrils. "Because those other collections are one of three things; kept under lockdown, stolen or destroyed. The more we looked, the more we understood the why. Sure, we could have sealed the vault and left it, spirits know those doors are hard to breach... but any vault, safe, bunker or whatever, to do it's job it still needs a human element. Any bank needs guards."
The voice spoke up inquisitively. "VIs are in fair supply, was-"
"No." The Vherokior interjected. "You did not want some of the things there getting too close to a problem-solving VI without... a supervisory element. Namely something flesh-and-blood."
"Still, to destroy it all..."
The man scratched his chin. "We didn't know if we were coming back. And like I said, any bank needs guards. A bank without guards gets robbed."
There was a brief pause, another cloud of smoke before the Vherokior smiled a little again. "Besides. You missed a key part."
Another pause before the voice spoke. "How do you mean?"
The Vherokior tapped the fingers of his free hand on the table. "Anything in our possession or within reach. And it was a decision reached hastily... but still late."
"So parts of the old archive, the vault, they still exist?"
"Can't say." he raised a hand reassuringly "and you can check the implant to verify, I genuinely do not know where some things ended up. The Master File certainly still exists, that's kept beyond any director or CEO. Other stuff is... kept safe. Even though it's beyond our reach, or whatever reach we had."
"Where?"
The Vherokior chuckled and smiled at the voice. "Now, like I said earlier... That would be telling."
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Author
Topic: The Makari File (Read 769 times)