Security Measures

Sitting herself lightly on a chair beside Helen, Patricia crossed her legs as she pulled up her personal terminal.

"You also mentioned that your house was broken in. For that, I can provide slightly more help."

Saying that, Patricia then switched windows to a website.

"I'm actually an employee in a security company that is pretty well known for their security products. If I don't say so myself."

Walking me through the page, Helen left the two of us to head to the kitchen and take out the moon cakes.

"I recommend this home security plan, it includes a whole mini-server for you to store the recordings of your home videos, as well as around 6 security cameras to place around your house. This way you don't have to worry about anyone in the security company accessing the videos and you have full control of it."

The security plan had a lot of pages stating all sorts of details about the plan. It also had a lot of unknown terminology that I didn't understand.

"Patricia, I think you're confusing her with so many words. Instead of just explaining, it would be better to show her."

Helen placed the moon cakes down on the table and called out to the children. Hearing her call, all four of them shot up from the floor and hurried over. Brian and Theodore were the first, while Oliver was leading Kayla over by her hand.

"I'll take care of the children, so Patricia, you go show Alex the system. Since Patricia works at that security company, she will be able to explain it better than I will. She also helped me install that same system in my house."

When Oliver reached the table, he helped Kayla sit on the chair before being sent our way by Helen. Together, we headed down a corridor in Helen's house into a small little room.

"This is Helen's security room. Obviously I won't reveal anything confidential about her but I'll give a brief rundown of how it works."

Patricia opened the door to a room that had several monitors in it. Running on the monitors were in-live video footage of the house. On one of the screens we could see the three kids eating moon cake peacefully while Helen caressed Kayla's face.

As we watched on the screen, Helen opened her personal terminal, as if she received a notification, before smiling and waving at the camera.

Closing her personal terminal, Patricia then approached the monitors.

"These monitors, as you can see, show live footage from all the monitors. Helen chose to install a security room, but you can also choose to sync or connect it to your personal terminal. However, I personally don't recommend putting sensitive information on your personal terminal. It's not really considered that safe since it was originally made for only several billion users for its original planet, Bellum, where the Colonizers came from. But since it was majorly expanded to include all the planets, its security is patchy at best, non-existent at worst."

Typing on the keyboard attached to the monitors, Patricia continued to ramble as she went to the settings.

"Because of that companies and people who are concerned about security either use private servers for their personal terminals. This prevents hacking unless someone physically connects to the main server computer. This is really expensive, space and money-wise, so it's usually employed by companies. For small families, we use these sort of 'archaic' methods, as some people would like to call them, for security instead."

Moving to one of the many advanced settings, she finally stopped at the page called video archives.

"Over here is the video archives, where all the footage from each monitor is stored. I won't click into these, but as you can see from the top that it connects to your personal mini-server. This mini-server is part of the company's personal server, but we can't excess the videos from our side since it's encrypted from this side. These videos are encrypted and compressed so it'll be able to store an estimated of 100 hundred years worth of video data from around 20 home security cameras. After that you can either delete videos or buy a new server at a discounted price."

Patricia continued to explain the many advantages of the security system as both Oliver and I looked at the monitors. There were many files, each named after a year. In those files were probably a bunch of files with the month names.

Listening to Patricia, the home security plan sounded more and more enticing.

"Well you don't have to decide to buy it now. But when you do, tell me first so I can refer your customer number to me. It'll make it easier for us to meet in the future and I can double check the security of your house as well."

Going back to the live monitor feed, we then left the security room. I was quite convinced about the plan, while Oliver had a thoughtful look on his face.

[Be careful! She may be only telling the advantages about the system and not the disadvantages. There might also be a chance that she is trying to take advantage of your ignorance towards all this high-tech stuff to bug your room or do something!]

Sazzy warned me as we walked back to where Helen and the children were eating.

"I know. We'll search online more about this and other types of security systems before we decide. Also, Patricia mentioned that the security for the personal terminal is so bad. Why is it still used then?"

Taking one of the moon cakes, I typed my question to Sazzy as Patricia and Helen talked to each other.

[It's so well used due to the reputation of the Colonizers. For us, since we were introduced to the anti-Colonizers faction from the beginning, the Colonizers seem like the ultimate evil. But for a regular person, the Colonizers are geniuses that have built the foundation for our current society. Barring all the bad stuff they did, which the general public does not know and some don't care about, they were the first species to travel to other planets and spread their culture and influence. Or as I would like to call it, colonization. Before the Loser's War, the majority of big companies were those started, or led, by Colonizers. They were the big guys, the elite. And this image still persists to this day, even if the number of actual Colonizers is not enough to prolong their own species.]

Sazzy sighed as she explained the whole reason why nobody could release all the dirt on Colonizers, even if there was so much evidence of their misdeeds. And we aren't even talking about the mass poisonings they did.

[If the general public stops trusting the Colonizers, the only ones who truly suffer are the minorities. Especially those who depend on AT centers to give them protection or revenue to live. And that's only if the general public would even believe all of this! Either way, there's nothing much the anti-Colonizers can do. And both sides know this.]

Hanging her head in frustration, I typed out several comforting words to Sazzy as I took a bite of the moon cake.

Like looking up at the moon in the middle of the forest, the nut flavor of the red nuts mixed together with the mild sweetness of the green berries. Then, the slight saltiness of the clam powder entered, as if a gust of wind carried the scent of the sea towards you. Throughout all this, as a constant presence in the background, was the sweet sweet taste of nectar. Unlike the sweet taste of the green berries, this nectar was like if the moon was a ball of honey. Always present, occasionally stronger, sometimes weaker, but it was always there to highlight the flavors of each ingredient. Like the moonlight shining through the dark night.

Taking another bite of the moon cake, I felt my mind digest the information Sazzy had given me before I remembered what I wanted to ask her back in the security room.

"Going back to the topic of the bad security of the personal terminal, is that how you managed to get personal terminals for both me and Oliver?"

I took one more large bite of the cake and finished it up. Then I licked my fingers.

[In a sense. Honestly, there are so many problems with the public personal terminal server that we can just make a random personal terminal account and if it is ever found, the technician in charge will think that it's a glitch in the system. There are millions of such accounts so one 'newly created' one won't stand out.]

I saw Sazzy reach out to the moon cakes while drooling. It's been a while since I've seen her relaxed enough to remember that she was a glutton.

"Want me to describe the taste for you?"

The moment I texted that, I could see her eyes shine as she vigorously nodded her head. It must be hard being a glutton who can't taste anything.

Trying my best to use my limited vocabulary to describe taste, I typed furiously on my personal terminal.

"Are you informing your boss about your house break-in?"

Helen questioned as she picked up the empty plate.

Ah right. Sazzy was known to the public as my boss in charge of my Jolt.

"Uh Yeah, I am."

Well I was technically not lying.

"You should probably discuss the new security measures you are going to add to the house with her too. I'll teach you how to add her details into any security program if you need help. Also you probably should be a little wary of her. I couldn't find any information about her anywhere so she might have some suspicious ulterior motive for helping you."

[If you ask me you are more suspicious!]

Sulking at the side Sazzy crossed her arms and glared at Patricia.

"You did a background search on us?"

Although I was asking this to her, it was kind of expected. After all, how could you trust someone you didn't know anything about.

"On the chief's orders. Sorry if that alarms you, but we needed to do it. And your personal terminal also has that meddlesome glitch that wipes out data regularly so I couldn't find anything. However, your boss is much too suspicious to be a glitch. There were no calls, no address, no signs of anyone actually using the account. Yet it was used as a backup for your account. Your boss might be hiding something if they're going so far as using a ghost account, so be weary."

Hearing her advice, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Sazzy too was left slightly helpless. After all, how would I be able to explain what Sazzy was and expect anyone to take me seriously.

I couldn't just tell them "Well it looks like a ghost account because the owner can technically be counted as a ghost. Also she's right here with us now."

Accepting their concerns, I could tell Patricia knew I was not going to 'confront' my boss, Sazzy, on this and just stayed mum after that.

Then me and Helen headed to the kitchen to wash up. Finally, after Helen told me not to take offense with Patricia, who sincerely was trying to give me advice, we left the house.

"Since you two are leaving early tomorrow I'll say it now. Have a safe trip!"

The four of them wished us a safe journey and we went back to the guest house.

"Did you have fun with them?"

I asked as Oliver naturally held my hand as we walked.

"Yes! They're all nice people! We even exchanged contacts so we could talk!"

Seeing Oliver smile, I couldn't help smiling myself. Today was a long day, but tomorrow was probably going to be longer.