[SFAP] Chapter 12:10

This is the last section of the twelfth chapter of Sonnets from a Proton. The novel starts here.
The next section is here.

“Any news?” asked Martin
“Kind of” replied Iz “According to the Habitat there’s no-one entered here except you.”
“So how does it explain the theft?”
“It can’t, but it does blame you for forcing it to turn off the internal surveillance”
“Damn thing has enough external surveillance it doesn’t need to listen to me fart in my own home”
“Well nothing and no one left here with it”
“Then the Habitat is lying”
“No it isn’t I checked the video since you last claim to have it. Only you came through that door, or at least you and guests”
“You checked yourself?” asked Martin
“Yep, watched at high speed mind, but yes only you.”
“Then the Habitat is definitely lying. That’s it.  Half of this supposed utopia here is based around not only the lack of crime, but the lack of need for crime and the bloody thing is a sham, it doesn’t work and it’s covering up”
“Keep taking the pills Martin there’s no need to get like that”
“Well then?”
“Well then two other options, something else broke in here through another method, or the Habitat has had its records tampered with”
“We don’t even know where the Habitat has its records much less how the technology works much less how anyone could tamper with it”
“Right so it’s very unlikely someone would do that”
“But not impossible”
“No, but neither is it impossible that all the atoms of that spacesuit simultaneously quantum tunnelled through into another part of the habitat, but let’s rule that one out for the moment”
“What then?”
“We need to work out a way to get into the hub”
“Why?”
“That’s where the Habitat has its core”
“So we think”
“Well yes, so it has told us anyway that’s where we can actually converse with it properly”
“The drones do get in the way.”
“Quite, so let’s just go with my hunch.”
“What hunch?”
“You don’t have any surveillance in here do you?”
“No I told you”
“Good, because the only one who could have done this is the Habitat.”
“What?”
“One of the reasons for my little visit to the Habitat’s nether regions are that I just don’t trust it. It had something to hide down there or at least people were trying to escape it’s influence and I wanted evidence it wasn’t playing things straight, but that society down there was just an artifact of it trying to play by the rules. Or at least give the impression it was.”
“After enough time if someone you don’t trust keeps on being trustworth you have to start trusting them.”
“That’s it, it has earned the trust but yet I don’t trust it, I wanted a way to find a chink in its armour but I couldn’t, not here anyway, but your little robbery could be just what I’m looking for.”
“Well I don’t trust it either, I’m just waiting for it to turn on us, we’ve just not earned this.”
“Exactly it’s humanity’s biggest gift horse in history. Why would we trust it? And here we are with a crime where the only possible criminal is the gift horse in question”
“Yeah, but why? It is the only one to have the capacity, but what motive, it could produce a billion spacesuits in the time it would take to do this”
“Bit of an exaggeration, but yes, maybe it’s starting a museum, maybe it’s for its own uses, but I think it wants us to come to it and this is a good bit of bait”
“It could ask.”
“And then we’d be suspicious”
“Most people would be honoured”
“But you wouldn’t”
“Yeah but it could invite me anytime for the plate project”
“And you’d have gone, but with me?”
“If it had asked”
“But would it have known that”
“I’ve done it before”
“I agree”
“So you’re wrong then it doesn’t want us to go there”
“Then why are the drones not speaking to us anymore?”
“You noticed that huh?”
“Yep, come on let’s go”
“Wait why the hub?”
“This is a bit of jump I’ll grant you but follow this. It is the only entity with the capacity for this theft, only it has no motive except to get the two of us interested”
“Didn’t you say it was the one that reminded you of it.”
“No it was one of it’s drones that did that, just as I was leaving that hellhole the drone suggested i come to you and ask you about this very thing. Very suspicious.”
“So if its drone hadn’t prompted you for this then you’d have probably never discovered this theft”
“Correct”
“So it wants the two of us involved, but why do you think it wants to see us?”
“What is our other course of action?”
“Find a drone and complain.”
“Which achieves nothing. No it wants us to do something I can think of nothing other that it wants us to go to it”