He was on his surf board on the Maintenance bus and down to level 20, the skybox there was simply a starry night. He was on his second sweep through the level. Somewhere down here there are at least five more levels, he thought, but where? I must be missing something.

Maintenance section is totally operated and controlled by Central AI, human citizens of the Commonality of course eschewing anything to do with something so mundane. Aside from an occasional robotic transport there were no other vehicles on the bus. Random was the first human visitor here in several decades according to the section log. So far everything seemed unremarkable—normal for a dimly lit section of the Commonality that sees no traffic.

The sector’s main bus, only two lanes in either direction, wound through massive, plain utilitarian structures that bore iconic sigils and legends like: hydroponics, mechanical power transfer, electronic power transfer, hydrology, weather mitigation, plumbing, tectonics, circuitry, and on and on.

One structure, back away from the bus, had “Shipping and Receiving” written under the sigil of a robot lifting a box. What’s shipping and receiving? he wondered. None of this makes any sense. After the second circuit of the area he pulled up and hung in the space over the bus near the entrance ramp from level 19.

He began his third sweep, proceeding along the bus at a slow rate. Wong said to look in the miscellaneous stacks on level 25, a non-existent level as far as Random knew. He accelerated and surfed his way to the level 20 miscellaneous section.

He slowed after turning in to the massive square building, trying to observe and note everything he came across. Stacks, arranged in a grid pattern, continued to the distant far wall of the storage area and rose to the almost equally distant ceiling.

Nothing remarkable jumped out at him as he went through the stacks except for one that was designated “Supervision,” Even with Blink and his arsenal of program crackers and manipulators, the stack resisted every effort at entrance. “Might be a dummy,” Blink offered over the neural connection.

“Looks like it,” Random replied. “What could possibly need ‘supervision’ from the maintenance department?”

“Perhaps something unrelated to the Commonality?” Blink suggested.

Impossible. Random gave a shrug and a little “hmmf,” left the maintenance section and continued his sweep until he had returned to the starting point. Again, he started down the sector bus slowly, sure he was missing something. Shipping and Receiving? What does maintenance, Random wondered, have to do with shipping and receiving? Shipping and receiving materials and programming was handled in the higher levels of the Commerce section, every school child knew this.

He turned off the bus and traveled a narrow access lane to enter the plain, square Shipping and Receiving building. The stacks were all closed and unused. Toward the end of his exploration, deep into the blank stacks, Random saw something familiar. Ahhh, here’s something—a stack labeled “Supervision.” When he tried to access the stack he was immediately stymied with a password query. “Ultra-pass and password required for entrance,” the security screen said.

“What’s an Ultra-pass?” he asked out loud.

Blink responded, “No idea. Let me look . . .” Several minutes later his office AI said, “I think I’ve found something. It’s very old and it took a deep scan to find it . . .”

Random tapped his foot on the surfboard. Blink always took great pleasure in baiting Random. “Okay,” Random said impatiently, “spit it out, knucklehead.”

Blink gave his version of subdued laughter and said, “I found an ‘Ultra-pass’ in the Commonality base code that was to be used in case of ‘dire’ emergency. It’s right out in the open too, there’s no security protection at all. Sending to your cache now . . .”

Random applied the pass. The security screen flashed, “Ultra-pass accepted.” Then it asked for a password. “Okay, buddy, do your stuff,” he said to Blink who began a bulk search for the key. Again, Random was surprised by the lack of security because in less than 30 seconds Blink came up with ‘rebirth’ as the password.

Random entered the word and the security screen said, “Welcome!” He was in.