Tag: sheepdog

Posted on

Optical Camouflage

“Why didn’t I think of this?” Sheepdog thought. It seemed so obvious now. The man in the suit, the Relaxed Man, hiding in plain sight. He was right there, but at the same time, on camera, he wasn’t. Did he really crack the code? Was he the man missing from the footage? He had to be, the evidence was plain, but was it always him? Could there be more people out there, among the billions, sneaking past surveillance without a care in the world? The implications were staggering. Every kind of crime, unrecorded, every devious act, unknown to the global surveillance apparatus that paid Sheepdog’s salary. This was a huge threat to Splicer, and he was face to face with it. Suddenly, his comms buzzed briefly. Checking it, a single message, from Res.


You gotta drop the bone, Sheep. You know which one.

Her tone had changed. She seemed too abrupt, too succinct. Something had her scared. He knew Res wasn’t easily spooked, so something must have happened to really rattle her cage. He needed to know more, much more, about, well… everything. He sent a reply.



Let’s meet up and discuss this bone. I don’t know how close we are to it.



He sent it but instantly regretted it. He should have just said OK and dropped the whole thing, but he pushed his luck. He had too many concerns to just turn it loose and forget it. He stared blankly at the comms screen, waiting for Res to reply with a time, or a place, or anything. After a few minutes, a message arrived.



Too close. I’ll meet you at your place, tonight.



His fears were instantly confirmed. Res was shaken, and it made Sheep even more nervous. Would it even be her, coming to visit tonight? It could be some bogeyman from Splicer who he had never seen before, spoofing her comms. They had the tech. It wasn’t her usual style to set someone up, but he would feel a little better at least confirming it was Res on the other end. He rolled the dice and sent an obvious trap message.

My usual place or my other place?

Once again, his comms buzzed as he received her reply, a few seconds later. Fingers crossed, he glanced at the screen.


I know you only have one place, Cheapdog. 8pm. Don’t need to clean up for me.


With that single nickname, Sheep breathed a sigh of relief. It was only known by a handful of people, and one of those people was definitely Res, because she gave him that name, ages ago. She must have picked up on the trap and knew this was some kind of call-and-response authentication scenario.

“The eagle flies at midnight.” “I’m bringing salmon to the picnic.” 

Posted on

Haunted (part two)

While he was busy configuring the next tool, the building attendant from inside the corner building came out to ask him what he was working on. “N-nothing sir, just making sure the surveillance hardware is functioning properly”, said Sheep, forcing eye contact. The doorman replied, “it’s all new, state of the art hardware and I would hate for it to be malfunctioning already. Has something prompted this service check? I haven’t gotten any complaints”. Sheepdog lied, saying, “just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s perfect. These are all customary precautions, to ensure everything has been configured to spec. We pride ourselves on all our deployments to be operational from the minute we power them up”. The doorman was unusually curious, and asked Sheepdog about his uniform. “I noticed you’re wearing the Sendai corporation color scheme of green and blue. The last Sendai installers wore red and blue. Are you really with Sendai?”, he asked. Sheep was a little nervous but he could bullshit his way through this line of questioning. “Look pal, Sendai provides the uniform and I put it on. Green today, red tomorrow. They didn’t consult me on the color scheme. Did anyone ask you if you prefer navy blue for your wool jacket, or was it just hanging in the closet when you got to the residence one day?” The doorman grinned and nodded; point taken. The corporate overlords never did consult with employees when it came to color schemes, and he assumed it was like that everywhere. That was enough to satisfy his curiosity, and he casually went back into the building, occasionally glancing at Sheep while he worked. But suddenly, Sheep had an idea. He may have built enough rapport with this guy to ask him a few questions and maybe get a glance at his visitor logs.

Sheep packed his gear into his bag and headed inside to talk to the doorman. “Do you keep a log of residents and visitors? We seem to have a small gap in the video surveillance data and someone is missing. It’s nothing criminal, we would just like to check alignment with the surveillance system’s telematics and your hard logs. I’m assuming everyone signs in and out?” Sheep was pushing his luck and he noticed the change on the doorman’s face as the power dynamic shifted. “We do keep logs, and our clientele likes to remain very private.” Sheep slipped him a 50 credit note and said, “I don’t need to know everything, just a tiny sliver of time during a specific date”. The doorman rolled the credit around in his palm before agreeing to let Sheep take a peek at the date and time the visual anomaly happened. “Remember, I never showed you anything. You must have hacked the system by accident while performing your testing”, he said quietly. Sheep quickly looked at the logs for that time frame, and found 5 names which could have been pseudonyms or code names for residents and visitors. Still, he was making progress and he could review the list for a deeper dive later. Bowler Man was not on the list, which made sense because he never actually entered the building. One of the residents that briefly stepped out and returned was recorded as Relaxed Man. Strange name.

Sheep suddenly got lucky. As he was in the doorman’s office, he saw the Bowler Man’s limo arrive at the corner just inside. From where he was standing, he could barely see the back of a resident in an elaborate suit step outside to meet him. Not exactly a flashy suit, but a very intentional suit that he doubted you could pick up off the shelf at any retailer. It was custom, head to toe. As the handshake occurred, the people on the sidewalk stepped around the two men like a river splitting around a large, protruding rock, interrupting the flow. This was consistent with the recording. The resident pivoted on his heels, re-entered the building, and entered a waiting elevator to return him to his floor. And that’s when Sheep noticed. He was wearing a full-face mask that matched the pattern of the suit. Every inch of the resident was obscured by this material, including his shoes. The only bare skin Sheep could see was a brief flash as the man checked his watch while the elevator door closed. He was light skinned, which may rule out others in the logs he had obtained. Just as the doors were closing, a gloved hand shot the gap and opened the doors. “Hey Tony, be sure to log me back in”, he shouted across the lobby to the doorman. The doorman waved and nodded as the elevator doors closed again. Sheepdog felt the man stare at him for a moment before the doors finally closed.

Sheep thanked the doorman again and, with another palmed credit, explained that he would appreciate it If the doorman mostly forgot the details of his visit. Again, the doorman nodded, wished Sheep a good day, and said he wouldn’t expect to see him again, because he never saw him before. Low level people were easy to work, with a few credits, and realized staying tight lipped kept them safe from the wrong kind of attention.  Sheep knew that a record of him entering the building would be in the Splicer archive already, but with his manager’s approval, he could tack on a security tag for that date and time to prevent prying eyes from reviewing the footage too closely. Besides, it was much less interesting than what Sheep was already dealing with, and the mystery was getting thicker.