City of 4,000 Spies
The resort city of Lell lies on the remarkable Lake of Many Colors, where 100,000 fragments merge and re-merge into billions of patterns. One can spend multiple lifetimes watching its fantastic, ever-swirling waves and never (not once) see a representation repeated.
However, no one comes to Lell to watch the Lake. Lell is an international city where guests from a million different sectors are fully welcomed, as long as their cash holds out! It is where one comes to mine the most precious mineral of all — the mineral of information. They say that the resort city of Lell has over 4,000 spies. That’s not counting the taxi drivers, the hotel staff, the Farqat dealers in the casino, the Unie barkeepers, the Antonine fortune-tellers, and the ever-present Koopsie girls, any one of whom will gladly gather whatever information that is requested, for a sizable tip.
“Rarrko, the second son of the Great Nobleman of Sassko, was probably Lell’s most recognizable spy. He was handsome, athletic, and ingenious. He wore flashy high-end fashion and drove a speeder that broke 1.75. He was seldom seen without a bevy of beautiful females and was often described with that old-fashioned word “playboy” (although no one knew what it meant).
He looked the part of a spy. He moved in the nuanced way that spies moved.
If you asked him, “what is your occupation?”, he would smugly smile and say, “I am a spy, of course.” If you would follow up with another question, “who are you spying for?” he would again smirk, “Who ever pays me the most.”
However, he was already wealthy beyond imagination.”
PNB7Q knew Noble Son Dusko Rarrko from many eons of clandestine work together. Their relationship was as close as a data device and a sentient being could be.
The PNB7Q knew that what was left unsaid was often more important than what was spoken. Many times, a whiff of intuition had more value than volumes of specific, and detailed information.
There was a reason why Noble Son Dusko Rarrko wished to travel to Lell without informing the PNB7Q. Intuition told the PNB7Q that this was not a need for recreation, down time, as Rarrko had called it. It was a trip where Rarrko wished to travel incognito. Not hidden from others, but, rather, hidden from the PNB7Q themselves.
Remember, the PNB7Q was a set of separate data devices organized into a single, systematic vehicle for sharing necessary information among agents and designated decision-makers in real time. Sharing was the operational word. Anyone with the appropriate access would be able to query the PNB7Q and learn both where Rarrko was going and what his purpose was for going there.
The PNB7Q not only created opportunities for quickly sharing information, but also the necessarysupports for collaborative activities. With the assistance of the PNB7Q, Sassko’s agents and its decision makers could act as one organic whole. Sharing pertinent, real-time information, and becoming, as a result, unified for decisive collaborative action.
However, on this occasion, Noble Son Dusko Rarrko was deliberately withholding pertinent information from the PNB7Q.
There was information about this trip to Lell that he did not want shared with others.
The unsaid was more important than the explicit.
PNB7Q was certain that Dusko Rarrko was travelling to Lell for reasons other than re-charging his personal batteries. The PNB7Q decided to monitor his status on a private channel, one that no one would notice, a maintenance utility.