Caldwell emerged from the stairwell on the ground floor and found himself in the ower lobby. The pristine white marble walls were dotted with massive plasma ss, erected for the sole purpose of reassuring ers that their data was safe if they stored it at data ters. There were ss showing the data flows of the works in plex but beautiful color-coded graphs. There were monitors displaying pulsing traffic-light is indig that systems were healthy with a green light, about to have problems with amber or irouble with a red light. All of 』s systems seemed to have the green lights. It was all systems go.
A huge horizontal s, a grid of multiple monitors, displayed multiple camera views of the mai data ter trol room. Teis in shiny silver and purple windbreakers with the logo emblazoned on them gawked at terminals, studied the graphs and generally tried to look like they were giving the er their money』s worth.
It was lunchtime. The security guard in the lobby was stuffing his face with the tents of a Styrofoam lunchbox. In the bright glow of white light firing down from a giant modern delier in the high ceiling, desigo look like stalactites hanging from the roof of some ice cave, the bereted security guard looked woefully out of place. Four Haier robots roamed around the marble floors. Their sensors told them to stay away from Caldwell. He walked up to the eleic directory board and studied it like a visitor looking for the right floor. The trol room was oweh floor, sandwiched in the middle of the building.
There was a terminal in one er of the lobby that spewed marketing bullshit about the bes of letti handle all your New a Region data needs. Video montages waxed lyrical about the size of 』s baes, bandwidth-on-demand, amazing 24/7 er support, raised floors, temperature trol and automatic server maintenand traffiit services. The terminal went on about how y pert of the Hang Seng New a 100 used o serve all their data ter needs. Logos of said panies lio more cyberspace marketing hype from said ers were displayed ready to be clicked by the potential er. Caldwell had seen enough. It was all one big smokes. He had remotely broken into enough data ters to know.
Caldwell walked up to the security guard who was chewing on some kind of greeable. Half of it, the leafy bit, was hanging oside of his mouth because the other half on the inside was refusing to be chewed. Swallowing was not on the cards for this guy as he seemed to have mao get a huge stalk of some veggie lodged halfway down his throat. Caldwell made his move.
「g King Real Estate tei,」 he said in tonese. 「Was here earlier, I just went out to grab some lunch. See you are still enjoying yours. Where did you buy that? It looks really good.」
All the security guard could do was motion with his head in the dire of the lifts. His expression said: 「Don』t bother me while I am eating, gweilo half-breed.」 Caldwell wi him aered ay elevator. He pressed the button for the tweh floor. The lifts in Hong Kong were way too fast. It took all of eight seds for the bell to sound and the puterized voice to say 「Tweh floor」.
Caldwell walked out into a huge hall lit with purple halogen like a nightclub. There was a metallic designer receptioo one side at which a mosquito-thin ese girl with a cute face was also enjoying the tents of a Styrofoam rice box. She didn』t pay him the least bit of attention, fog all her energies on lunch.
There was a sunken area in the middle o