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truth

Toril stared at her computer screen in disbelief. It showed a series of input boxes for a long password, too long to guess.

"No, no, no, no." She said aloud with serious concern. It was like running into a blue screen, not a good sign at all, especially not on the eve of Halloween, one of the busiest seasons of the year for the city's warehouse. They had a guaranteed delivery to meet.

"Could it be ransomware?" she thought. Government offices and companies had been hit by a wave of strange tech occurrences.

"But it isn't asking for money. Phishing?"

"bob, has there been a power outage?" she said in a louder tone.

No answer.

"No access to my computer should not mean no access to the warehouse's AI assistant, or should it?" She pondered. After shadowing Xileh for most of her life, there was still so much she didn't know about the inner workings of their logistics system.

The warehouse was on 24/7 and almost fully automated. She had learned to troubleshoot on her own, but today she needed to solve A.S.A.P.

She rushed out of the office taking a long hallway toward Xileh's lab. The hallway was flanked by windows revealing the warehouse's inner workings. She ran so quickly through it, that the lab felt like it was right next door. A package delivery robot holding a large box blocked the entrance. She went around it, ignoring it, and crossed the lab toward Xileh's main worktable. The robot followed her at a slower speed.

"Xileh! Xileh!" she called out a few times, as she looked around the room, but he was nowhere to be found. He rarely carried his phone, so sending out a message would not help. At his age, he didn't keep office hours like he used to. His lab, however, reflected the spirit of a tinkerer that would never stop experimenting. She sent him a message anyway, only to hear the beep nearby.

"He would not miss being here for Halloween... Well, he might notice the message when he comes back." She shrugged.

She approached the rows of bookcases and piles of paper in a corner of the room, reminded of how Xileh always wanted real world backups. She never understood why that was so important, until now.

"What if all the information was gone?" She thought as she tried to make sense of Xileh's organization style or the lack thereof.

"But automation hasn't stopped. Everything seems to be running as usual." She held some comfort in that thought.

She spotted the row of manuals for a lot of the warehouse's equipment. Her eyes scanned through them. "Found it!" She said aloud, taking the manual for her computer off the shelf. As she opened it, it had a thicker yellow page with a recovery password.

"This is probably it." She thought, relieved, and thinking she had worried too much over a password.

Taking the manual with her, she started walking out. She couldn't help but take a moment to look back. That large open studio held so many memories. The rays of sunlight were coming in through the trees outside of the tall windows, giving the lab an almost magical eerie glow, as if the robots Xileh was working on could come to life at any moment.

She was startled by the delivery robot catching up to her.

More relaxed, she said, "Ok, let me see what you got." Odd, it was addressed to her with an urgent label. No info on the sender. Her mail delivery was always done to her office. She wasn't expecting a robot delivery either; they were only sent out when the packages were larger than the subterranean logistics system.

She hesitated in opening the box, perhaps she should scan it first, just in case.

It said urgent, but so was regaining access to her system. She sent an order to the robot through her watch to head to the scan room, and she walked back to her office, not as quickly, but still feeling pressured to make sure this was the solution.

She looked through the windows as she walked, everything seemed normal. The flow of robots and boxes never stopped. Xileh had told her the story of the architect who built the warehouse. Some had complained that it was a warehouse for robots and with it being almost fully automated, it didn't need anything architecturally appealing. They wanted a climate controlled box. The architect refused to remove the human element from it, and, because of that, these rows of windows existed. They gave an almost 360° view of the warehouse at work. Xileh wasn't sure how he had convinced them to build it this way. Even if he had mentioned how building with a location in mind tends to save on energy, and how using stronger materials is an investment in the future, many only build for the now.

Not even taking the time to sit down, Toril started typing the digits to the password: 19d6689c085ae, only to come up short.

"Oh, shoot!" It was 13 digits, she needed 21. She sifted through the manual, but found nothing of help.

As she stood there trying to think of a possible alternative, the delivery robot again caught up to her. It had ignored the order to head to the scan room.

"How creepy," she thought, "First a password request appears out of nowhere, then a rogue robot. But some older robot models do not respond to the new software commands, and, this is not a sci-fi movie."

Maybe Halloween was getting to her.

"Could this be what Xileh was talking about that night at the clock tower?" She thought.

She instinctively took the box opener from the robot's side. She had opened so many boxes in her lifetime, that it was second nature. As she lifted the flaps, she saw a myriad of flowers.

"Aww," she said in surprise.

Xileh gifted her flowers every year for her birthday. She had gotten a different kind of flower each year: roses, lavender... Each had been made of different materials and colors. Each year carried a different meaning.

These were orange marigolds, and they were real! Over the generations, companies had disfavored the natural, and real flowers were a rare request. During her time at the warehouse, she had noticed a few shipments of real flowers, and always wondered what those who ordered them could be celebrating.

These had such a peculiar scent that it brought back childhood memories. Xileh used to say marigolds were the flowers of truth. They still grew in the wild behind the warehouse, on the outskirts of the city. She had often wondered if her grandma had planted them. Xileh said she had a green thumb, and that had become as rare as real flowers.

Toril smiled wide, but, her birthday wasn't until January.

She paused for a moment.

"Xileh and his riddles," she thought, while shaking her head. "Halloween trick?" She looked back at that screen with thirteen digits, needing 8 more.

She typed out her birthday: 01 03 2140

Hit enter, and...

"What?" Toril's face turned pale.