Underbox: Thirteen
© 2021 by Walter Reimer

Thumbnail art by  capt_hairball


“Good morning, sirs! May I assist you today?” The tone was earnest, almost eager to help.

It might have been endearing if the speaker had been alive.

The speaker was a sleek white plastic pillar, roughly a meter tall and fifty centimeters wide. The top fifth of the pillar was a flat panel, angled upward slightly and capped by two catlike ears. The display had two wide, earnest-looking eyes over a feline nose and whiskers. A pause, and the display showed a mouth that matched its words as it said, “Oh! Hello, Detective Suleymanoglu, Detective Schmidt.”

Despite themselves, Hamo smiled at the latest incarnation of the police IT section’s concierge/receptionist. Joachim gave the machine a skeptical look. “Hello, Katz,” Hamo said. “We were asked to come down.”

“Yes,” the robot said, pivoting around on its wheels. “This way, please. Fräulein Bauer told me that she’s waiting for you and Detective Schmidt.” Katz trundled off down the hallway, and the boar and the cross-fox followed it to the Computer Forensics Lab.

“Fräulein Bauer!” Katz said as it entered the room, and the display frowned as a crumpled-up snack cake wrapper bounced off its face. “I’m not picking that up.”

“I’ll get Ernst to install arms on you,” a slim rabbit femme said tartly as she poked her head from around a work bench. “We can reconfigure you to look like a Maneki Neko. Hi, Detectives,” she said, her mood shifting visibly. “Come over here. Thank you, Katz.” The robot turned and moved off, grumbling about janitorial services.

“Never mind him,” Bauer said with a dismissive flap of her ears. Her fur was a piebald white and brown. “His programming’s a work in progress.”

“Aren’t we all,” Hamo said dryly. “You told Joachim that you had something for us?”

Bauer nodded and whisked a white cloth from a small tray, revealing a collection of wires that resembled an attempt at lacework with silver thread. “Frau Lobel allowed us to extract the cyberway from her husband’s body when she took custody of it. Your reports stated that it looked like a J9A, which is made by Southern Star Electronics out of Nairobi.”

“You’re going to tell us that we’re wrong,” Joachim said.

“Well, yes,” the rabbit conceded. “It looks like the SSE’s product, but there’s subtle differences in the pattern and in the operating software.”

“So, aftermarket?” The boar asked.

“Way off the market,” the doe replied. “The code’s a good job, very professional, but it’s nowhere near the quality you see out of Africa these days.” She pointed at lines of code on the screen beside the cyberway. “Some of it looks like it was adapted from local routing protocols.”

“’Local?’” Hamo asked. “From here – Berlin, you mean?”

“One of our local hackers, maybe?” Joachim added.

“Yes on one, no on the other,” Bauer said. “The use of the Transport Ministry’s software is deliberate, which tells me it’s a local. But I don’t see any of the local talent being that sloppy or ambitious enough to try to copy SSE’s work.”

“Any thoughts on where we might start looking for this person?”

The rabbit shrugged. “Could be anywhere – “

“Which means the Underbox,” Hamo said.

“Very likely,” Bauer nodded.

On their way back to the office, Joachim cocked an eye at Hamo, who was standing with their back against a corner of the lift car, arms crossed against their chest and gazing fixedly at the floor. “Thinking again?”

“Hm? Oh, yes. I think we should start talking to Lobel’s coworkers and friends.”

“Yes?”

“He had to have gotten that cyberway from somewhere,” the cross-fox said, “not to mention that the thing has to be implanted and calibrated. And someone who worked in the Ministry as long as Lobel did had to have made some friends, people he could talk to.”

“And tell secrets to? Like, where they could get an aftermarket cyberway?” Joachim asked with a grin.

“Exactly.”


***


Four interviews later, the cross-fox and the boar were using the employee’s lounge to take a short break. Hamo stretched and scratched under their ribs before asking, “Who’s next?”

Joachim glanced at his notes. “Fellow named Mollwitz, fallow deer. Should be waiting for us.” He took another drink of his soda and dropped the empty bottle into the recycler. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

The buck was middle-aged and he looked up quickly as Hamo and Joachim entered the conference room set aside for their interviews. “I have done nothing wrong,” the buck said defensively, ears swiveling.

Joachim smiled reassuringly. “You’re not in any trouble, Herr Mollwitz. These are just routine questions.”

“Tell that to Frau Burger.”

“Oh?” Hamo raised an eyebrow. “What did Frau Burger say?”

“She said that we – all of us in her bureau in the Ministry – were going to be in trouble.”

“Well,” and the cross-fox smiled, “let us deal with Frau Burger, all right? All we need are the answers to a few questions.” They started the recorder, giving the date and time, and naming the subject of the questioning.

Joachim started the ball rolling. “Herr Mollwitz, how long did you know Herr Lobel?”

“Hmm. About twenty years.”

“Was he a good worker?”

“Oh yes! An absolute rock, very dependable,” Mollwitz said. “That’s why everyone was so surprised when he ended up dead down there,” and his expression drew into a frown.

“In your work, do you use a jackglove?”

A nod. “Yes. It’s a little inconvenient at times, having to take it off and put it on, but it’s faster than poking at a keyboard,” and he held up one paw, “especially with my arthritis.”

The boar smiled. “Yeah, I have to agree with you on that. Did Herr Lobel tell you that he had a cyberway?”

Mollwitz looked surprised. “Yes, he did. Showed me, too.”

The two detectives exchanged a glance and Hamo asked, “Did he say where he’d gotten it?”

The buck smiled. “Well, I did tell him that I was interested in having one; a lot more convenient than the glove, ja? So I asked him, and he hemmed and hawed, and the only answer I got from him was that he got it from someone . . . down there,” and he pointed at the floor.

“Did he say that he could put you in contact with this person?”

“Yes. He told me to meet him at an address down there.”

Despite their professional detachment, Hamo leaned forward and asked, “Do you still have that address?” The cross-fox had an intent look on their face that made the deer flinch backward.

“Oh, um, well,” and the buck fumbled his phone out of his suit pocket. “Hang on a moment.” He started poking at the screen, swiping back and forth before turning the phone around. “Paul said that he had a place down there, and I would meet him there and he would introduce me to the guy.”

Joachim swiftly copied the address, a flat on the topmost level of the Underbox, while Hamo asked Mollwitz, “That’s Lobel’s flat, yes?”

“Ja.”

“And Lobel said that the person who sold him the cyberway was male?”

Mollwitz frowned, thinking; after a moment he nodded. “Yes. I’m certain of it.”

Hamo sat back and took a breath. “Thank you very much, Herr Mollwitz. You can go, but if you think of anything else, please let us know.”

“I will.” The buck looked a little shaky as he got to his hooves, and he walked out.

Joachim was busily scrolling through maps of the Underbox, pinpointing the address. “Here,” and he showed it to Hamo. “Not too many stops away from him and his wife’s home.”

Hamo sighed and pinched their muzzle between their eyes. “First, we get through the rest of these interviews, to see if Lobel told anyone else about this. Second, we need to talk to Frau Lobel again, and have her go over the family accounts. Then,” and the cross-fox sighed again, “we’re both going Downstairs.”




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