Pat fell into his swivel chair while Mark leaned against the wall with his hands folded. Mark would have stayed on the bed, but there was too much trash on it and Mark didn't know when last Pat cleaned it, so he would rather not risk it.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
Clack!
Pat typed away at his keyboard quickly and brought up the footage from yesterday around the time when Arit said the man came to the house. Pat had already hacked into the citywide CCTV network a long time ago, so he didn't need to do it again. He sped up the footage until he saw a delivery truck pulling up to an alleyway around Mark's house.
A man came down from the delivery truck with a box in his hand and he entered the alleyway and began to walk towards Mark's house.
Pat cut the footage from one CCTV camera to another one, but he was surprised when he did not see the man leave the alleyway. He raised a brow and waited for a few seconds before he saw a new man walk out of the alleyway with the former man's clothes along with the box.
Mark spoke up with narrowed eyes.
"That's not the same person that entered that alleyway. Is there any way to see what happened in there?"
Pat shook his head.
"No. There aren't any cameras in the alley. You would think the city was smart enough to put cameras in the one place where robberies are the most prevalent, but I suppose they aren't that smart. I'm going to go forward till the man leaves the house. Maybe we can get a look at his face."
The man was wearing a facemask, so they weren't able to get a good look at his face when he went into the building. Mark stared at the man with an intense frown on his face as he watched him enter the apartment building. Just knowing that it was this easy for some random unknown man to enter the building was infuriating.
Pat sped the footage up until the man was coming out of the building. This time he was not carrying the box and his mask was off. They were able to get a good look at his hair and face and Mark immediately committed it to memory. The man had black hair cut into a short fringe and he had a wide nose and thin lips.
The man went into the alleyway again and Pat cut the CCTV footage to a new camera outside the alleyway. They saw the man leaving the alley, but this time he was no longer wearing the mailman's clothes.
Pat frowned as he saw this and he stopped the footage at a point where they had a good look at his face.
[Processing... Processing... processing... There is a 90% chance of this being a fake face.]
Mark came closer and leaned off the back of Pat's chair while getting a better look at the man on the screen. Doesn't that mean that this is not his real face? Mark spoke up in annoyance.
"Well, I guess that answers the question of if he really exists or not. This isn't his real face. I should have expected someone with this much audacity to not even use his real face. Can you find out what he really looks like?"
Pat squeezed his lips together while thinking. It wasn't impossible to find out who it was but the fake face was too well made and he didn't know how long it would take his algorithm to trace out what the real face looks like. He didn't say anything for some time and Mark was worried that Pat wouldn't be able to do it, but then Pat spoke.
"It'll take a while. This mask was made by a professional; that's why I couldn't even tell that it was fake immediately after I saw it. The contours of the face were perfectly measured, and the mask was made to fit it. If I set my system to begin the process now, then it will take anywhere from three days to a week before I can find him."
"Just do it. I need to find out who he is."
Pat nodded and went to work setting up the process.
"All right. Hey, begin the face deconstruction. Focus entirely on the nose, mouth, and the cheekbones. Set the process to take... 2% of the processing power currently available at the farm servers and alert me when the process is complete."
[Of course. I will begin at once.]
Once that was finished setting up, Mark looked down at Pat with a raised brow.
"You have farm servers?"
Pat immediately corrected him.
"We have farm servers. Where do you think all this processing power comes from? My CPU? We own a hundred-acre farm off the coast of City Z with a large server running on it 24/7. We mainly use it for Bitcoin mining and tapping into satellite feeds, but I sometimes set aside some processing power for the bullshit you put me through."
Mark huffed and then smiled. He was tempted to ask Pat just how rich both of them were now, but he decided against it. The last time he asked that question, he was already closing in on a billion dollars, so he was fine not knowing for now.