Requiem: Chapter 46
Philip Collins had just finished his work and wanted to close, but something in the upper right corner of his screen caught his attention. He enlarged the section screen and saw a graph that indicated that there was an increase in electronic internal traffic in the last few hours. For the accounting — a team that only reported to the senator — statistics were kept on the energy carriers of De Zelder. They, too, did not escape the demand for cost savings. Several energy carriers were continuously monitored and updated in a database that generated graphs in terms of consumption. Philip had seen one of the curves that normally ran almost horizontally suddenly take a dive up. Normally, most employees wouldn't worry about that, but it intrigued him because he had recently set up a similar software system at home. He was interested in finding out what could be the cause of that sudden change..
When he opened the graph and split it into his sub-graphs, he saw that the increase had started on the roof of the building and had moved to the basement floor via elevator use.. weird! At this hour, De Basement, apart from a few hardliners, was still counting on himself - despite his obstinate lament about the long hours against his colleague Jim McFinster - an abandoned space.
Would he notify the senator about this? Probably, if he contacted for such a thing, he would get the wind from the front. First, he should be pertinent sure about the cause of this anomaly. There was a console on the ground floor with the night watchman that guarded the roof with the necessary security software. He also dropped his first idea of calling this one, since the night watchman would be obliged to notify the senator in turn that he had received a call from Philip Collins. He knew this procedure, but that would have the same result if it was a false alarm. But if at first he could visually assess the situation, all this fuss might not be needed.
He decided to take the elevator to the underground car park and drive from there to the entrance of the tower to try to find out at the night watchman on duty. It would take him a little extra time if nothing was going on, but he would have paid for it. If something went wrong and he hadn't detected it, the senator could call him to account.. No, he'd rather fit for that. Confrontations with that woman he tried to reduce to the minimum and if it was necessary, preferably by mail or memos. Was a little less personal and... well, he admitted it, he was a little scared of “The Bitch.”. Those hours were no problem, he would charge them double and thick. His vest on and he logged out and left for the parking garage.
