They had been looking at the pitching machines for hours. Grant was sitting in his office. Periodic updates from Arlo Saunders regarding their progress popped up on his monitor on ocassion. Mechanically, everything seemed normal in the cages. Now, they were going over the software.
“Certainly,” said Grant, “take a seat.”
“Thanks,” said Arlo as he settled in the armchair. “I wanted to speak with you about the camera footage I reviewed last night when I first got in.”
“Sure, sure.”
Arlo fished a mini-projector out of his pocket and placed it on Gran'ts desk. On the wall there appeared an image of the batting cages with a time stamp '19-03-2063 23:27'. Arlo cleared his throat. “So, I'll play the footage from this point forward.”
For several seconds the image didn't change. The cages were empty and only the lone light near the entrance from the rest of the training facility was on. And then suddenly the image went dark.
“It stays this way for two minutes and forty-three seconds,” said Arlo, who fast-forwarded to the point where the image of the cages reappeared.
“What happened?” asked Grant.
“The feed from the camera is never cut during this short period,” said Arlo, “and the camera never loses power, otherwise we would get an error message. It's as if somebody put a dust cap on the lens, and then took it off, only there wasn't anybody in the room. We can see both the main entrance and emergency exit in this view. Nobody in, nobody out.”
Saunders fished in his pocket and tossed another object onto Gran'ts desk. A tiny, quadrupedal robot landed deftly on Grant's blotter. It then scurried off the desk and up the wall, eventually hiding behind a framed print of London Stadium, often referred to as The Old Stoop by locals.
“One of these could do the trick,” said Arlo. “An object wouldn't have to be very large to block the lens of the camera, itself only four millimeters wide. Remotely operated, it could hide out of site until needed.”
“Okay,” said Grant with some skepticism. “We have a good idea of when tampering might have occurred, and a theory as to how, I guess, but why?”
“Right. This is just conjecture on my part,” said Arlo, “but is it possible that another club might be trying to gain a competitive advantage?”
“You think a consortium club could be behind this?” Grant shook his head. “This doesn't fit with how GBC clubs operate. No, this is Pacific levels of bullshit if you ask me, but of course, we're not in the Pacific.”
“No, we're not,” Arlo agreed.
The tiny robot emerged from its hiding spot and jumped into Arlo's open hand before folding itself into a neat little lozenge shape. He put it and his projector back in his pocket and got up from his seat.
“I'll keep you posted on what we find this afternoon. And I'm going to do some digging into possible motives, in case Kun was deliberately targeted.”
“Thanks, you do that,” said Grant as Arlo left. He waited a few beats before pulling out his cellphone to make a call.
