The Mechanical Era

A couple of dozen minutes have passed since the interview had started. Kant had asked Carl a lot of questions. Some he prepared, and some he made up on the spot. All to which, Carl gave a satisfactory answer. However, not all was good.

As the secession progressed, Kant noticed a few things while he questioned and interviewed the candidate. Whenever he asks Carl a question from his list, Carl will provide a very long and detailed answer to it. However, when he asked a question that is his own, his answers were much shorter.

It was an observation that tingled Kant's suspicion. He started to wonder whether it was related to the other things; his missing pen, someone opening his drawer without his permission, as well as the rather attractive maids with a dodgy past that have been recently hired at his castle. Could all of them be connected?

"Are there any more questions you have for me, sir?" Carl asked Kant with a gentle, innocent smile on his face.

"I..." Before Kant could finish, something from his desk falls off the floor. Kant checks and sees that his fountain pen, the one he had got the maid to give him, had fallen and broken into pieces, spilling ink everywhere.  Kant stares at the pen, before getting up. He excused himself, to walk over to grab another pen from his cabinet. However, Carl seemed to have a different idea.

"I actually do have a pen with me right now, sir. I bought it to hand it over to you as thanks for giving me such an opportunity to work again," Carl claimed.

"Really? Well then, I humbly accept your gift," Kant replies.

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Kant's suspicion meters start to go off. It was unheard of for anyone to give something to a potential employer because they were 'given' an opportunity. It would have made more sense to give it after he got hired. But now? Kant suspected there was something larger at play here.

Carl makes his way to his briefcase and takes out a box, wrapped around on a violet wrapping paper, and a ribbon. He then holds the both with both his hands, before handing it over to the king.

Kant accepts the gift with both hands and decides to open it up now. Kant neatly unties the ribbon and unravels the wrapping paper without tearing it apart. What he found was a wooden case, with a familiar-looking fountain pen contained inside.

Kant picked it up to carefully examine the pen further, to see if there was anything odd to it. The fountain pen's wooden body was coated in black paint. At the right end of the pen body, was the company's logo, a white triforce.

"What do you think, sir? Do you like my gift?" Carl asks the king.

"Yes... I do. Thank you, Mr. Carl..." Kant replies, still examining the pen.

"You are welcome, sir. I had one of my buddies fetch it for me. They said that you liked that brand. Is there a particular reason as to why?" Carl questioned.

Kant remains silent for a second, as he comes to the conclusion that this might be his missing pen. To be certain, Kant took out his book and looked through the pages of his 'memory book'.

"To answer your question, it is because I like them. Now, I face a few more questions that I have for you. Just give me a minute," Kant lied. It was a mask to cover up his true intentions to Carl. He did not want him to know the true purpose of the book, which contained a lot of secrets.

He flipped through the pages till came to the date he noticed the pen had missing. On the note, it clearly states that a black fountain pen, one with a white triforce symbol on the end of the pen, had gone missing.

The chances that Carl had picked out a pen that looked EXACTLY like his own missing pen, set off a lot of red flags. Although he was not certain, it was most probable that it was. With this revelation, a wave of questions flooded Kant's head, as to how, what, or why Carl had done it.

If Kant had to guess, he assumed that Carl had sent in a few agents to the palace. These agents would then steal his pen, for whatever reason, hand it over to Carl, so that he could give it back to Kant.

These agents had to have arrived very recently, as it was unlikely Carl had sent in the spies before he got the interview letter. From what Kant had known, he was living out his early retirement for the rest of his life.

As to who these agents are, Kant had a couple of culprits; the attractive maids! Specifically, the ones that got hired very recently to work as maids, within the palace. Although first Kant came to suspect them because of their looks, what really got them under his radar was the way they got the job in the first place.

Usually, when hiring anyone at the palace, they undergo a background check to make sure they are not someone with malicious intentions.  This background check could go on for few days, which often delayed an interview. This had been the case for Alan's and Armstrong's interviews as well.

However, when it came to those maids, Kant was shocked to find out that no thorough background checks had been done on them. But that is not all. Not only there had been no background checks, but these maids, according to his findings, were hired on the spot by the interviewer, which is conducted by a city official far below the bureaucracy.

Once Kant had uncovered this information, he sent out a bunch of private investigators, in case they were watching, to conduct a background check on them.  Although Kant had not received the report from the private investigators yet, he was now certain that they were the culprits.

From his memory, he knew one of them, Alice, knew where he had kept his pens. She must have snuck in while he was not present. She then handed over the pen to Carl somewhere along the way, which lead him to give Kant it back right to him.

It could also explain how Carl had managed to answer the questions on his list so easily. He could have had one of the maids write down the questions for him, allowing him to practice and craft up the perfect answers for the interview. As for why he got the maid to steal the pen, he did not know, yet.

Underneath Kant's table, was his PCR-18 revolver, with 6 shots chambered inside. It was present there so that Kant could quickly take it out any intruder or assassin that dared to harm him. After adjusting his tie, Kant started to ask Carl a few questions, to unravel why Carl attempted such a bold move.