“Imagine if that van was loaded with explosives and it was driven by terrorists. Imagine further that it passed through the Dalfan gates and onto our property—just like it’s actually doing right now—and say twenty meters in, it exploded, killing whoever was in the van and completely destroying the vehicle.”

“Okay.”

“In a situation like this, how would you normally set about trying to determine the identity of the killers and the location of their hideout?”

“Usually, the investigating authorities would look for forensic evidence on the scene—fingerprints, photo IDs, VINs, a license plate—any kind of physical evidence that would begin to provide a clue.”

“Correct. But the likelihood of discovering usable physical evidence from a catastrophic crime scene like this one is extremely remote. However, if a police department or government agency had a time machine, it wouldn’t need any of the things you mentioned. All they would need to do is travel back in time to a point before the explosion.”

Singh tapped a few more virtual keys and the blue van suddenly reversed direction. He tapped another key and the van sped up 2x.

“Please observe.”

The van backed out of the Dalfan driveway and onto the main boulevard—the street name clearly identified on the screen now, just like a Google map—and drove away in reverse, along with the rest of the traffic. The clock on the video monitor was also running backward as the van sped through the industrial park area, pulling in and out of a few more driveways until it finally arrived at a warehouse some five miles away, where it stopped in front of a loading dock.

Singh froze the image. “So, this is the origination point of our theoretical ‘terrorist’ van. But we still don’t know who our theoretical ‘terrorists’ are.” Singh resumed the reversing image and two men exited the van and walked backward, climbing the stairs to the loading dock in reverse.

“All of this data is stored on your mainframe?”

“In this case, yes, because we’re still analyzing the data from our field testing with our first client.”

“Who is that?”

“The Singapore Police Force. They’re also storing all of this data on their cloud storage server. Anyone who leases the program from us in the future is free to store it on their own servers, in the cloud, or wherever it suits them. Storage is the easy part.” Singh held up the tablet. “It’s the software that powers the aircraft, cameras, and the surveillance packages we’ve developed that really counts.”

“How hard is it to use?”

“Quite simple, really.”

“Then show me.”

“No,” Lian said. “Dr. Singh has already shown you everything you need to know about the system to understand its profit potential.”