Sector twelve was dark. Not totally pitch black since the emergency lights still cast their faint illumination over the sector but the shadows were deep and the details were soft. It had been that way for some time now. For anyone not used to it, it would have proven difficult to make out much of their surroundings. For Matiew, who had been watching the camera feeds for weeks now, it only took him a few moments to understand what he was seeing.

“Bring up C-7 again,” Matiew said, referencing a camera further down the hallway.

The display in front of Matiew blinked and a new view of the sector appeared, this time looking back down in the opposite direction than he had previously been looking. He absently reached out and picked up his cup of water and took a sip through the straw.

He was still in the hospital and had converted his room into his office. None of his injuries were life threatening, and most of the time Matiew felt well enough that he didn’t notice the pain. However, his cracked ribs were going to take time to heal. Until they did, he had to be cared for in ways he had long hoped never to need. If it was just painful to use his manual wheelchair then he could have used a powered one and been fine. Unfortunately, he also couldn’t transfer himself into or out of his wheelchair without seriously aggravating his ribs. He had hoped that, with enough painkillers, he’d be able to still make things work out for him to go home but the repeated stress of lifting himself up and out of his wheelchair, even just a few times a day, would put his ribs at risk of breaking even further. At the very least it would prevent them from healing properly and Dr Faucher had insisted that Matiew either be given an in-home caregiver or else remain in the hospital.

“See anything?” Min asked. She was working with Matiew in his room, both examining different camera feeds.

“Nothing new, but…

Matiew’s voice trailed off. There really wasn’t anything particular about this part of section twelve, but the fact that the cameras were clear, no longer obscured, was what had caught their attention.

The only other person in the room was one of the newer members of the RCC, a young woman named Rine Glough. She was generally talented but lacked experience, hence her being chosen to help operate Matiew’s computer for him since sitting up for any longer than a few minutes was too taxing on him. The work was certainly well below her abilities but Min had said this would give Rine the opportunity to observe and learn from them.

“Have you found BaBS-Y yet?” Min asked.

“Yeah,” Matiew replied, somewhat surprised that Min hadn’t seen the robot. It was the first thing he’d checked for. “It’s at its charging station.”

He heard Min typing away at her computer and he could see the top of her head over her computer display, eyes squinting as she tried to make sense of the dim images.

“Tucked between the two CaSS units,” Matiew added after a few seconds. “You should be able to just make out its feet.”

It was a bad angle for the cameras that covered that part of the atrium, or rather, BaBS-Y had positioned the CaSS units well to give itself some privacy.

“Sorry, excuse me,” a friendly voice interrupted their work. Standing in the doorway was Hannah, the nurse. “Have you had your bowel movement yet, Matiew?”

She asked the question very matter-of-factly, as though asking whether or not he’d had lunch. In a way, Matiew was glad she didn’t seem embarrassed about the situation. It was one of the primary reasons he wasn’t currently allowed to go home and take care of himself.

Min and Rine kept their faces as devoid of any expression as possible although Matiew could still see their embarrassment. It was another aspect of being paralyzed that not a lot of people considered. Before the awkward silence in the room could become too pronounced, Matiew shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said, “maybe give us another half-hour?”

“Sure thing,” Hannah replied. “I’ll be back to give you a hand.”

She left but the room stayed quiet. Matiew glanced over at Min and even though she was looking at her screen, her eyes weren’t squinting anymore and she was obviously not really studying the display.

“Thank you for your moment of silence,” Matiew said, needing to break the discomfort in the room, “Let us all mourn the loss of my dignity. Taken too soon from us by the cruel clutches of –

“Oh knock it off,” Min laughed and the awkwardness lifted.

“Are your ribs really that broken?” Rine asked, her eyes growing wide as she looked to his chest where tight bandages were helping to keep his ribs from moving too much.

“Yes and no,” Matiew replied. “If your ribs were broken like mine, you wouldn’t need…uh…Hannah’s help.”

“Oh, is it…

Rine didn’t finish her sentence but Matiew had had this conversation before, or at least ones like it, and knew where she’d been going with her question.

“Certain things are a bit more involved for me because I’m paralyzed,” Matiew said and left it at that.

Rine nodded, caught a glance from Min and didn’t say anything further.

“Maybe during our break Matiew can tell you some of his stories,” Min suggested with a smirk. “He’s got some good ones.”

Matiew refocused on the screens in front of him and got back to work. What was BaBS-Y doing? The cameras were all clean. Why? The robot had been keeping them all obscured until some time last night when it apparently decided to go around and begin cleaning all of the cameras. In fact, as Matiew had Rine cycle from one camera feed to the next, he also realized that it had cleaned the atrium.

“What did it do with the broken benches?” he wondered out loud.

When Min asked him what he meant, he pointed out how the atrium floor was clear of all the debris left over from when they first sent the MaCS to confront BaBS-Y.

“There were what, three? Four broken benches?” Matiew asked.

“Did…did BaBS-Y fix them?” Min stammered in surprise. “Look, count the benches.”

Matiew did. They were all back where they were supposed to be.

“This can’t be right,” he said after looking over the atrium from every available angle. “How could it repair them? And why? That’s not part of its programming!”

After a few minutes with neither Min nor Matiew coming up with any answers, Rine spoke up.

“Are we sure the camera feeds are reliable?” she asked tentatively.

“I don’t want to just assume BaBS-Y can’t access the security cameras,” Min said, “but there are several layers of security protecting those systems and I’d be very surprised, even with everything the robot’s done, if it could bypass all of that in the last couple days.”

“Still,” Matiew considered the possibility of BaBS-Y somehow altering their camera feeds, “I don’t think we can just ignore the possibility either.”

He mused on that for a few more minutes and then asked, “Can we get power switched on down there? Just for a minute?”

“You want to flick some lights on?” Min asked. “Won’t that show our hand a bit early?”

“True,” Matiew agreed, and then said, “Maybe just flicker a couple lights in some of the stores. Are there any storage rooms with lights we can remotely control?”

Rine immediately began searching for just such a thing but Min was still shaking her head.

“That robot’s got its feelers in a number of subsystems,” she said. “It’ll probably notice if we begin playing around with the electrical grid down there.”

“You could try switching the emergency message displays,” Rine put in.

“The what?” Matiew asked but Min just slapped the side of her head.

“Of course!” Min exclaimed. “We could have been communicating with the stupid robot all along!”

“What are you talking about?” Matiew asked again.

“Some of the displays, here, pull them up Rine, they’re connected to the emergency power grid.” Min shifted over to sit beside Matiew’s bed and point things out to him while Rine accessed the different systems. “Not a lot of the camera’s actually see those displays since they’re right up against the ceiling.”

The screen changed and displayed the view from a camera looking down the length of atrium. Along the top edges of the screen, just barely visible, were the emergency notices about sectors twelve through fifteen becoming depressurized. The notice scrolled passed and repeated itself, over and over again.

“Normally those systems are autonomous,” Min went on, “but there’s nothing preventing us from changing what they say.”

Matiew was nodding his head excitedly.

“This could be huge,” he said. “We can contact BaBS-Y, and check to make sure our camera feeds are still accurate.”

He was about to instruct Rine to pull up the emergency message so they could edit it when Min stood up and motioned for Rine to join her.

“Where are you going?” Matiew asked.

“We should get the director in here if we’re actually going to begin negotiations with the robot,” Min explained and then added with a wry smile, “and you haven’t had your bowel movement yet.” She winked. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

They left and Matiew, with not much else to do in the time being, pressed the nurse call button. He was excited but also nervous about suddenly having the opportunity to contact BaBS-Y so quickly, and without having to go down there himself. He only hoped that Mr Jorgenson would agree to it.