The rain intensified and drummed loudly on the windows. Drops quickly penetrated the house through the poorly closed window and formed a rapidly spreading puddle on the floor. Entering the apartment and noticing this, Mikhail cursed and commanded irritably:
"Turn on the light! Clean up!"
The room was instantly illuminated, and a robot vacuum cleaner crawled out of the corner and began to bustle about. The guy plopped down wearily on the sofa and threw his legs up on a small round ottoman in front of him. The sofa, the ottoman in front of him, and all the other items that made up the surrounding interior were done in light colors, if not white, then light gray or milky white. The owner definitely loved minimalism, so there were simply no non-functional items in the room. On a glass table with white legs and a tabletop resembling a square window frame stood a laptop in a metallic-colored case. A large sliding window leading to the balcony was framed by vertical light-colored blinds. The walls to the left and right of the door, up to the ceiling, were covered with bookshelves that were the same white color as the table, and only their contents — numerous book spines and boxes with some kind of retro music discs — delighted with their variety of colors.
"Play playlist #42. Volume 25%," said Mikhail, leaning his head back wearily on the back of the sofa.
The music started playing. For a while, he sat motionless, closing his eyes and thinking about something, then picked up his laptop from the table and immersed himself in his work. About an hour passed. The robot vacuum cleaner had long since finished its program of cleaning the apartment. The rain outside the window began to subside. The sky gradually darkened, heralding the steady approach of evening. Outside the window, somewhere in the distance, the lights of high-rise buildings and shopping centers began to come on.
Mikhail sighed heavily, closed his eyes slightly, and then opened them again, tired from staring at the monitor, and then dialed Alexei's voice mail.
"Did you find anything?" Alexei asked immediately.
"Yes. I started by analyzing the history of the crashed drones and discovered that an unscheduled update was loaded into them yesterday. This was done bypassing the central server, so of course there is nothing in the logs."
"Predictable."
"Since all the drones received the same instructions, I tried to track down similar packets by size and transaction time. It's not possible to do this with my own brain, especially since the guys, as always, used a chain of encrypted proxies. I had to connect a neural network..."
— And? What was the result? — Alexei impatiently urged.
— With 98% probability, the entry point has been determined. The root hub on the house. I'll send you the address... It looks like they just opened the panel and, having stolen an inactive MAC address, connected to the network.
— Well, that's great! Are there any cameras there?
"Plenty... But that's the thing. There's nothing on the video.
"Did they cut a piece out? Well, check the nearest cameras on other buildings..."
"I checked, Lyokh... Everything's empty," Mikhail replied anxiously. "But nothing's been cut out there... The timer's in place. Even the trees are swaying and the clouds are floating...
"Could it be a mistake?"
"I checked everything... Looks like the video was just edited... Right away... On the fly."
Alexey fell silent. Rare raindrops were still tapping on the glass. Twilight was thickening outside the window.
"Do you understand what does it mean?" the programmer finally said after a long pause. "We have an unprecedented security breach. They're listening in, stealing drones, and now CCTV... Colander with holes!" Do you realize that if this thing is being used... And if it already exists, then it's already being used... Woland remains blind.
"What should we do?"
"What can he do to us? Wiretapping, cameras, access to user stations... Clearly, that's no longer enough. Give him the traffic analyzer, cryptography, and codes. Let him track any suspicious packets, crack password lines, audit all scripts of all applications, hack the darknet...
"Isn't that going too far?" Mikhail asked doubtfully.
"Do you see another way?" Alexei replied with a question. "We're losing control. We no longer create technology, we only observe the results of its application...
"Technological singularity," the robotics engineer said thoughtfully.
"Exactly. Give him the authority..."
Mikhail wanted to say "okay" and even started to open the administrative program, but at that moment everything seemed to freeze. The music stopped, the LED lamps in the apartment went out, and even the laptop screen strangely turned off. Only a narrow strip of clearing sky and the sunset breaking through the clouds filled the room with a dim reddish light.