Social Security

Emidio charged into the mess hall, and a confused Ljubiša followed behind him. They managed to stop Ana's lynching just in time. Emidio resolutely came in, claiming he had obtained new evidence. The angry mob looked at him perplexed but willing to listen. Brigham ran towards Emidio and yelled:

"I told all of you we should have taken this step by step! You could have killed Ana without hearing him out! Give it to us Emidio."

Emidio nodded and said: "Ana has an airtight alibi. She just isn't aware of it. Every time someone turns on the auto-pilot AI, the computer creates a log of it being turned on with a timestamp. From the time Ana had arrived at her post to the time of the bombing, Ana had not once turned on the auto-pilot. She couldn't have left the Navigation computer without the AI turning on meaning it is impossible for her to have planted the bomb."

"Couldn't she have just left the computer unattended?" Hitomi said.

Emidio shook his head, "Not possible. The navigation computer requires constant and immediate attention. If she had left her post even for a minute we would have seen a ton of errors, but her work was flawless. The logs are all there. She didn't for a second take her eyes off the computer, even after the explosion when the ship was spinning out of control, she stayed in her seat calculating our trajectory."

Someone as hard working as her would never leave her post, Emidio thought to himself but was still too hurt by Ana to say out loud.

"What about Roy's logs at the communication relay?" Brigham asked.

"We checked that too and we took a look at the main computer room. Roy never activated the AI assist mode, and neither did Curro. All three are in the clear. Trust me, I hate Ana's guts, I really do, but she is not the culprit!"

Ana was in shock. The person she had actively bullied for so long had come to her rescue. She couldn't help but laugh a little through the tears and disbelief. Khalid and Ljubiša came to her and removed her restraints. The Russian girl didn't say a word, too prideful to say thank you to the boys who defended her and too hurt and exhausted to fight with her accusers.

"So if Roy and Ana couldn't have committed the bombing," Lei Mei put a finger on her chin, "That kills the political motivations theory. I doubt NATO or the Warsaw Pact would recruit any of us for the bombing given they have two zealous supporters in Lupus."

Brigham agreed and said: "Yeah the political motivations theory was flimsy at best in the first place. Mok probably jumped to that theory out of Cold War paranoia. He lived through the worst of it while he was still on Earth, makes sense why adults always think something bad in the world is because of Russians and Americans. However, looking at it more closely how would they further their goals by attacking a ship of students. If it was something by them, they would have staged an attack on planet Spark or in the cities of Nova Occasio."

"If it's not a Cold War plot," Curro said trying to think, "then what were the motivations of the bomber? Why would they do this horrible thing?"

Brigham shrugged: "We won't know until we ask the culprit, but I have my theory. When we ate lunch with the President, he said that he was going to have a meeting with the General Secretary of the USSR about security. Their concern was the threat of extremist cults who resort to terrorism. Maybe the culprit is a member of a cult like this?"

"Oh yeah!" Curro snapped his fingers, "That is a real possibility."

Lei Mei frowned, "Maybe…"

"I think you're on to something Brigham," Roy cracked his knuckle.

Hitomi shook her head and sat in an empty chair in the mess hall, "Way to go leading us into nothing. What does your theory help us with? Nothing. We still don't know anything more with your dumb idea. We are out of leads. I have a question for you Brigham, how do we know you're not lying? The only one who can confirm your alibi is Mok, who is dead. Maybe you killed him?"

The heads of class Lupus turned to Brigham in suspicion.

Brigham erratically shook his hands, which made him even more suspicious. He was caught off guard by this sudden piercing gaze he got from his classmates. "I didn't do it! Remember, I was locked in the engine room, I could have died!"

Hitomi crossed her legs, "Well if you were a crazy cultist you would have no problem carrying out a suicide mission."

Roy stood in front of Brigham as if to protect him from a possible angry mob, he was not allowing another Ana situation. "Impossible. When I heard his voice over the communication, it was not the voice of someone prepared to die. You all heard it too, plus Brigham had no idea that Curro could open the door. On top of that if the culprit wanted to carry out a suicide mission he would have blown himself up with the bomb."

Curro also stood in front of Brigham to protect him too, "If the culprit is someone who isn't who they say they are or has a fake identity, I knew Brigham since we were little kids. There is no way he is a crazy cultist, I would have known by now! I vouch for him!"

"And I can vouch the same for Curro!" Brigham proudly placed his hand on Curro's shoulder. "I know he is not the one being accused right now, but I can confirm he is no cultist!"

"Awwww so cute, why don't you two start making out," Hitomi said in a mocking tone. She turned her head to Emidio "You said something that caught my ears. You gave us reports of logs from Ana, Roy, and Curro. What about your logs? You were on the propulsion control?"

Emidio nervously bit his lip, "I turned on the AI auto-pilot several times. But that wasn't because I was away from the computer, I did it because I thought I sucked at it and I didn't want to even try." Emidio lowered his head in shame.

Hitomi grinned, "So you don't have an alibi. That makes you a suspect."

The heads turned to Emidio. Instead of cowering Emidio responded with rage, "You know for someone so condescending you are really stupid Hitomi. If I was the culprit, I would have let you all lynch Ana. I had no reason to save her other than finding the truth, and believe me I despise her. You on the other hand are the suspicious one, the culprit would want to keep pointing fingers at anyone so they could fully infiltrate Lupus. And once we kill an innocent person they are in the clear. Again why would I save Ana if I was the culprit? Besides, where is your alibi Hitomi?"

All eyes were now on Hitomi. She stood up from her seat and nervously laughed: "Yeah I don't really have an alibi, I was in the infirmary, but nobody can confirm that can they?"

That only made her more suspicious, the class slowly moved towards her, ready to restrain her if she were to put up a fight. The pink-haired girl, however, had a moment of clarity. A light bulb popped above her head and she said: "Before y'all jump at me, I do know how we can find the culprit, for real this time, no accusations."

The class wasn't convinced and they moved more towards her ready to gang up on her. Brigham moved to stop them: "Guys let's first hear her out. Remember, we take this investigation one step at a time."

Hitomi gave Brigham a thumbs up and said: "Okay so my parents worked as investigators for insurance claims and welfare fraud."

Ana smirked, "I see that's where you get your ghoulish personality."

"Oh yeah and you are a bloodthirsty psycho," Hitomi gave Ana a passive-aggressive smile and continued, "The thing I learned was that there is one thing you can't fake on Nova Occasio. There has never been a successful case of this because of the system in place. You can't fake a social security number."

"How does this help us?" Brigham grimaced.

"In the infirmary whenever I want to administer any of you a medicine, I have to ask the computer to mix the appropriate ingredients and create the medicine you need. However, for me to even start the process I need to enter your guys' social security number, so the pharmaceutical company that made this machine can bill insurance for the costs later. If one of us is not who they say they are, as you say, they must have a fake identity and a fake social security number."

Brigham was pleasantly surprised by her suggestion, it made sense. The rest of Lupus agreed and they went to Mok's quarters to collect the files of everyone, there they had the social security numbers of the classmates.

The next step was entering the infirmary. Hitomi first entered her own number to confirm her identity and next, each of the student's numbers went in one by one. The infirmary computer kept giving positive results and kept confirming everyone's identity. Just as they were prepared to give up this test, the computer flashed an error screen. One social security number was fake. It was Ljubiša.

To everyone's shock they turned their heads toward the red-head boy, he stood shaking, with his Makarov pistol in hand pointed at the rest of Lupus.