Chương 71: CDM 2, Chapter 7: Point of Clarification

"You been following this crawler case?" Enforcer Cortez asked me on our next overnight.

"Baker?" I asked, willing myself to keep my eyes on the monitors. Everyone said I was bad at lying, so maybe if I didn't look at Cortez, he wouldn't notice.

"Yeah. How much do you know about it?"

"What have you heard?"

"Undercover CDM busted him about to CK. Seems like a fairly big-time local crawler. Entered a not guilty plea citing Stand Your Ground laws." I shrugged.

"That sounds like all of it."

"Did you hear anything about the investigation? Undercover crashing is wild. That had to make some waves around here when it went down."

"I was an intern," I answered.

"You might know more about it than I do at this point."

"Do you know Baker?"

"I met him a few times. He's good at putting on a persona when he needs to."

"That's pretty much everyone famous, right?" Cortez asked in reply.

"They're all masking up when people are watching. I mean, to be honest, man, we're all probably doing that."

"That's true."

"I'm not saying it's right, but it's hard to side with crashers or to feel bad for them. They know the risks and do it anyway." It felt like a hand reached into my guts, grabbed a fistful of insides, and twisted.

"They always struck me as desperate people doing desperate things," I countered.

"There are legal channels, though. You and I joined the CDM so we could level. Any of them could have done something similar."

"What else is similar to interning with the CDM?"

"Well, there's the military… Or you could save up your money or something. For the fees."

"You ever hear that expression about what you do if you see a mom stealing groceries?" Cortez chuckled.

"Yeah.

'No, you didn't see anything.' That seems pretty different from crashing."

"I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm just saying a few levels can make a big difference for a lot of people. I understand why they risk it."

"Dude!" Cortez lurched forward suddenly to reach for the mouse.

"That's a cat. How many is that so far?"

"Nine." The night shift had adopted an unofficial contest to help pass the hours: Count the cats. The record so far was seventeen. Though it was still the first full week of RAID being operational, that number seemed really high to me, like no one would ever top it.

"Write it down," Cortez said. I pushed the pen and tablet to him.

"Megan, I mean, Enforcer Osheski, always accuses me of exaggerating my stories. She'll believe the count more if you do it." Which was a boldfaced lie. I loved the concept of this little game because it was goofy and ultimately harmless, but no way in hell was I leaving evidence around of me dicking off at work. I did not want Enforcer Chapman to find a notebook full of cat sightings in my handwriting, so I opted out of cat counting entirely.

That was difficult for me because who sees a cat and doesn't reflexively go "look, a cat!" to the nearest friendly face? Sociopaths. Sociopaths don't get excited when they see a cat. After a long stretch of nothing happening, we encountered a dilemma. We weren't allowed to surveil private yards even if those were technically in public view. If a journalist on the street recorded a yard, it was legal as long as they didn't trespass on the property.

Anything easily visible from a public space was fair game, but RAID was subject to stricter regulations. Unless a gate was in a yard, we were supposed to black it out until we had cause to investigate the obscured area. However, fields and farms didn't count as yards. We could record the hell out of cornfields and cow pastures with no issue. A particular C-ranked gate near Yellowcreek perplexed us, however.

The gate appeared in a wooded gully adjacent to an active farm, but we couldn't see it beneath the tree cover. Enough leaves still clung to branches to make the drone view mostly worthless. Here was our dilemma: it wasn't immediately clear where the yard ended and the farm began.

"The edge of the cropline would be the border, right?" Cortez proposed.

"But look," I said as I pointed to farm equipment parked nearer to the house.

"I think the tractor makes it farmland, even if the ground isn't planted." Cortez stroked his thin little mustache.

"I see what you're saying, but see. There are mowers and spreaders right up against the house, but then there's a swingset. Is the swingset on farmland or in a yard?"

"Hmm. You got me there." Dumb quibbles like this were one of the major reasons we were here in the first place. We had a stack of strict, specific rules to follow, but weird edge cases like this were inevitable. In terms of preserving the admissibility of our footage, Cortez and I arguing about this now was better than an attorney convincing a judge that our evidence was inadmissible because what we defined as farmland could be construed as a private yard.

We logged the issue for further review, noting the gate location and the source of the confusion. The two schlubs watching the cameras–us–weren't qualified to make a ruling on something like that. Until then, we erred on the side of protecting civilian privacy, blacking out anything beyond the edge of the crop line. After I finished logging the issue, I said, "You know, we do these group dinners at my place most weekends, if we can. It's nothing elaborate.

Usually a metric ton of pasta of some kind, but you're welcome to swing by. The whole thing is pretty chill." Cortez nodded.

"Yeah, sure. Maybe sometime. I don't think I can make that happen this weekend."

"No worries. It's a standing offer."

"Thank you, brother," Cortez replied. I had extended a few casual invitations to Cortez by this point, and he declined every single one. His poker face was better than mine, so I couldn't tell if he was shy, genuinely busy, or growing tired of my offering to hang out all the time. What would Nathan do in this situation? He would keep offering in a way that was casual and pressure-free, so that's what I would do here. I would occasionally remind Cortez that the door was open if he needed friends in the city.

Twenty or so minutes later, we did the hourly switch from night vision to thermal, rotating through the forty-one active drones to check for anomalies. The same gate that had us debating yard versus farmland showed a heat signature beneath the trees, near the gate. Or where we knew the gate to be, rather. Despite being portals to other dimensions, gates always matched the ambient temperature of where they appeared. I always thought that was weird. I would have expected that much energy to generate heat.

"What is that?" I asked Cortez. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. He squinted and then opened the view on the monitor directly in front of his station to get a better look.

"Deer, maybe? Or a super-Chad raccoon."

"I don't think so. The silhouette doesn't look right to me." So we waited for it to move. A few minutes later, it started to walk around the gate.

"That looks like two legs and two arms to me," I said, briefly flipping back to night vision. There was still too much foliage in the way, so I went back to thermal.

"Hard to argue with you," Cortez replied.

"A kid maybe? Maybe he lives on the nearest farm and got curious."

"The reading says 105 degrees fahrenheit."

"Shit, you're right. That's a get-your-ass-to-the-hospital-level fever." Thanks to Nathan's drone questions, I woke up that morning curious about a goblin's average body temperature. All of the studies that might have given a specific measurement were behind paywalls, but most guides broadly agreed that goblins "ran hot," probably because they had high metabolisms, needed to survive in potentially chill, wet conditions like caves, and were resistant to most basic illnesses.

"I think it's a goblin," I said. Cortez studied his screen again.

"Yeah. Definitely could be. May I?" I scooted back from my keyboard to show Cortez that he had the controls. He attempted to get a better angle on the creature, flipping between views frequently to see if he succeeded. He didn't.

"Shit. He's running." Cortez moved to pursue it, but then eight new heat signatures appeared.

"Do we chase the monster or record the crawlers?"

"I'm pretty sure we record the crawlers, but that's another thing for us to ask about."

"I agree. Scoping the crawlers is the safer choice for now, but damn. I would have liked to see where he went."

"Me too." Checking the gate registration, I saw that Dungeon Industries Inc. had bought the rights. That meant the guild's harvest team would likely arrive shortly to begin setting up while the crawlers killed everything except for the boss. I quietly checked the EPA satellite feeds. No SOCs were flagged anywhere near Yellowcreek, but that could also be because the data hadn't updated yet. The rest of the night passed without incident.

I checked the EPA satellite again that morning and still didn't see an SOC for Yellowcreek. When I reviewed notes for the area, I saw that one of the other duos noted a potential goblin sighting Tuesday night, but this was several miles north near a place called Stonerstown. I made a note to tell Nathan about that. He would get a kick out of that name. I say "potential" because the notes reflected a situation similar to ours.

They caught a heat signature but couldn't get a proper visual on it before it moved out of the area. An idea came to me, and I decided it was worth the risk. Instead of heading home at the end of my shift, I waited for Enforcer Chapman to get in that morning. Though she had an office in the RAID command center, her primary office remained on the fourth floor with the rest of the enforcers. When I knocked on her open door, she still had her jacket on and a messenger bag over her shoulder.

She didn't even look in my direction.

"Enforcer Gray, your shift was up an hour ago. We have a strict budget for hours and can't afford unapproved overtime."

"I'm here on my own time. Can I run something by you?"

"You have five minutes."

"We think we spotted a goblin last night but didn't get a clear visual, only thermal. It looks like another shift recorded something similar a few miles away. With your permission, I'd like to reach out to the EPA to see if they have records of sightings in the area."

"To what end?"

"I'm wondering if RAID caught something new or if the EPA is already on it. With all the worries about unknown threats in the wilds, I figure spotting a monster nest with the drones gives the program more credibility."

"Even if investigating nests is not part of our orders? Recent directives have made it clear our sole focus is ensuring that gates are closed." I nodded.

"I'm not saying it becomes the job, but if we have a chance to get ahead of a nest because RAID caught something, shouldn't we take it? It wouldn't take much effort to alert the EPA."

"Or automate forwarding any record that mentions seeing a possible wild monster."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I can try to get approval for the extra hours, which is unlikely, or you can do this on your own time."

"I'm fine with using my own time." Chapman stared down at her desk, thinking.

"Alright. Please be professional when you reach out to the EPA and update me when you learn something."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Shut the door, please."

"Of course." When I was sure Chapman wouldn't see me somehow, I let myself smile. I already knew the EPA didn't have an SOC in that area, but this gave me a legitimate reason to learn more about the EPA's process for wild monsters. If this played out the way I hoped it would, I'd get that intel and also have the name of someone at the EPA to reach out to in the future. My ultimate hope was to find a way for Megan and me to know what kind of monsters to expect at an SOC.

That would be huge for the Dungeon Divas and make investigating a new SOC far less stressful. Instead of heading home since my shift was over, I went back to my desk in the RAID command center. When Megan saw me, she wrinkled her face in confusion.

"Aren't you off this shift?"

"Yeah. Just looking into something I'm curious about."

"Right, right. You doing dinner with us tonight?"

"I hope not," I joked.

"I'd rather get called into a crawl."

"Ha!" Since Chapman didn't offer me a contact at the EPA, I went through the phone system. I hoped being from the CDM would get me some level of priority, but nope. After an hour and a half, most of that time spent on hold, I was finally bounced to the "Invasive Species Intervention" team, where a woman answered the phone. After explaining who I was and what I had seen with the RAID drone, I asked, "Do you have sightings in the Yellowcreek or Stonerstown area?" I heard the clickety-clack of typing.

"Nothing within the last three months," she said.

"Should we alert you when we have sightings like this? I've done a few inspections with the DOH, so I know they call you guys as soon as they get a whiff of monster activity." Her voice had the close-mic monotone of someone holding the phone with their shoulder as they took notes.

"That's an interesting question. I don't have an answer but can get you one. You said you've only had two sightings?"

"In a week. That's all the longer we've been operational."

"Oh, I see. Yeah, I can check into this for you and give you a call back."

"Can I ask you a few more questions while I have you?"

"Shoot."

"When we were trying to decide what to do with this, I saw that the EPA has a lot of public GIS data." GIS stands for "geographic information system," the fancy name for all the layers of data I could view with the satellite tool. Continuing, I said, "It looks like there's monster data in there, but all it says is 'Site of Concern.'""Okay…"

"Is there a way for me to know what specific monsters were spotted there? We might see a troll, but your Site of Concern could be for goblins. You'd probably want a call in that case, but I'd be annoyed getting a goblin report when you already know there are goblins. Does that make sense?" She started writing again.

"No, that does make sense. I can find an answer for that too."

"You're awesome. Thank you."

"Sure. Bye now." When I hung up the phone, Megan popped her head over my cubicle wall, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"Was that the EPA just now?" I grinned.

"Yep. Cortez and I saw a goblin last night, so I'm trying to figure out what we should do when that happens. It turns out the EPA has a public GIS platform that labels what they call 'Sites of Concern' when they believe monsters are in the area."

"Is that so?" Megan knew they were called Sites of Concern, but this was the first time she heard me explain how I found SOCs or that my process had anything to do with the EPA. She didn't do a good job of hiding that she knew exactly what I was talking about.

"Yep, but it's weird. They don't provide data on what kinds of monsters were spotted, so I'm also trying to see if there's a way for us to know that without bothering them directly." Megan's grin grew to match my own.

"You don't say."

"Interesting, right? I'm not sure what will come of it, but I do know I want to go to bed." As I started to leave, Megan said, "Hey, Dor. That's good thinking."

"Thank you." She continued.

"Real quick. Are you as anxious about getting the same days off as I am?" Megan meant for our Dungeon Diva runs, but she obviously couldn't say that out loud in the middle of a CDM office.

"Yeah. I'm worried we'll get a big dry spell."

"I was thinking we could ask Chapman," she proposed.

"Heh!" That reaction was entirely involuntary, and it was loud enough that I stood to apologize to everyone else in the room.

"No way is she doing me any favors."

"What about McDouglas? He seems to like you." Shaking my head, I replied, "He's already done a lot for me. I might come across as greedy if I hit him up for this."

"I'll ask Chapman myself then," Megan said, resolutely.

"I need to figure out how to do it, but I'll do it."