Herald of Steel

Alexander was pretty pleased with the layers of security he had created if he said so himself, feeling like the chances of anyone successfully stealing his technologies from here being close to zero.

This was because to do so one would require to attain a set of things that Alexander felt was very very unlikely to obtain.

First, he would need to get the iron plate, which was neither easy nor cheap.

Next was the name and designation, which, granted would not be too hard to forge.

But the next three hurdles seemed impossible to overcome without internal support.

The 16-digit number issued to each individual was not only unique, but it also had a trick to its numbering that few would find out, and even if they did, they still would have to match with the number in the roster.

Then there was Takfiz's signature and handwriting, which all the guards were familiar with.

And last of all was the thing next to this writing, the fingerprint.

Even if the other two were possible, even if somehow anyone had managed to get past the two hurdles by stealing or even memorizing the card number of someone else and perfectly or nearly perfectly copying the signature, Alexander was pretty confident that the last obstacle would be impossible to overcome, - The fingerprint matching.

Alexander had first shown this technique to Takfiz and all his retainers, and that had created quite the buzz as he recalled.

Instead of explaining how the fingerprint was formed due to reasons ranging from dietary to just the tiny movements of the infant in its womb, Alexander had simply declared, "From today, we will this method to identify others," as he stamped his fingerprint on a piece of paper and asked if anyone else thought they might be able to produce the same pattern.

"You can try all ten fingers, and even your toes if you would like," Alexander had smugly proposed after which, the men, and one woman, Cambyses, did try to their credit, each using a few of their fingers, only to find that each of them was vastly different from all the others, and even with their own.

After some time, they finally decided to concede, at which point Alexander said with the same smug face, "The prints of your individual finger are unique. None will ever match another human being in this world. Not now, not until eternity," and thus showing off his vast knowledge.
The theoretical variation in the number of fingerprints was 7.47e+275, which, to give some context was 10^193 times greater than there are individual atoms in the universe for that stood at a paltry 10^82.

In fact, fingerprints are so unique that even clones and identical twins who shared the exact same DNA did not share this.

"Oh this must be why we are called god's unique creations. Truly my lord is blessed," Alexander recalled Theocles being particularly moved by this display, feeling this revelation about the human biology to be a gift from Gaia, the goddess of life, while the others, who were much less religious, marveled at how a simple method could be used to uniquely mark people.

Speaking of the gods, Theocles's rant about them made Alexander remember a colleague of his, who was a devout Muslim who had preached to him, 'You know the existence of the fingerprints was revealed to us 1400 years, in the verse that says, "Does man think that we shall not gather his bones? Yea Verily. We are able to restore his very fingertips!" which, according to that man was a verse addressing the Day of Judgement and god's ability to perfectly recreate men even when he had turned to dust.

Alexander had then only politely smiled and nodded, which was the same thing he had done with Theocles as he then went ahead with the implementation of this identification system.

He knew that names could be faked, numbers could be guessed and Takfiz's signature forged.

But as long as the rosters were not tampered with, and the guards at the gate were not bribed, passing the fingerprint test would be impossible.

At least, Alexander could not think of a way to make all three, the one in the ID, the one in the roster, and the one a person would stamp on the visitor's ledger to enter, to match without significant insider help.

And only a very few handfuls of people currently had that kind of power, and Alexander trusted all of them to the extent that he was sure that they would not sell the technology out.


For he made sure that those people knew the risk of failure and earning his ire would outweigh any kind of reward for succeeding.

Many might argue that only the fingerprint method would have been enough for his cards, feeling the unique code to be redundant.

But Alexander had learned from that annoying two-factor security authentication which he used to get whenever he freshly logged into his email to know that relying on just one method of identification was not always foolproof.

And hence, to upgrade his security that bit more, he also introduced this numbering system which was helped by the fact that Adhania's numbering system was much like the Arabic numerals instead of the complicated roman numerals.

And even the way he would produce this number was quite unique, as for this endeavor, he had first ordered the specific creation of a ten (10) sided die, with the faces numbered from 0 to 9, corresponding to each of the digits.

Then the person being issued the card would roll this die thirteen times in front of a clerk, who would note down each of the results, and once this was finished, would later add all of them to get the last three numbers, thus easily producing a unique 16-digit digit code.

As Alexander thought back to all these, in many's opinions byzantine procedures, while he stamped his right and left thumb on the entry roster, his eyes wandered to look at the details of everyone who had entered and exited the premises that day, as indicated by the date on the top right corner of the page.

And on the very last column of this detailed record was written their reason for doing so.

For example, one name read Galiqk, next to which was his designation- Food deliverer, proceeded by all the other details, after which was written the time he entered the workshop district and lastly a short inventory of what he had carried inside and how much of it, which was in this case, a few tens of tons of wheat and a variety of vegetables.

And right below it that read the same name and number, except the time was changed to a bit later and now the comments were, 'Delivered. Empty cart.'

In this way, this camp was supplied with only a very few trusted men, who were told to stick to a very specific set of paths, so that they would not see anything they were not supposed to see, nor hear something they were not supposed to hear, or even smell something they were not supposed to smell.

As Alexander read the entry something that caught his eyes was the description of the time, the first of which read, "Just after dawn," instead of what a modern man might expect like 6 am, while the next one similar to its predecessor read 'Just after breakfast.'

Of course, this intuitive method was used due to clocks not being a thing yet.

'Hmmm, a pendulum clock should not be too hard to make,' Alexander absent-mindedly mused as he felt that the mechanical clock was a pretty simple tool, having just two gears representing the hour and minute hand in the ratios 1:12, that were attached to a moving object.

And he did this all while he flipped back the pages of the roster, looking for any discrepancies as he glanced at the various names that had gone in and out of his estate.

Yes, not only entering but even exiting the premises needed valid reasons, which were either issued automatically by the nature of one's job, or given out by a select few men, like the heads of each of the workshops.

Alexander was pleased to see that there were no glaring flaws in the roster, which helped to mitigate some of his anger, as completed his part of the roster by writing his reason for entering the district which was 'Touring the premises', and then before went to enter through the gate.

But just as he was about to, Alexander paused and then asked the two men one last question.

"I will enter the workshop district with my ten bodyguards. How should that be done?"

Galipsos understood this was Alexander testing him, as he quickly answered, "My lord, you can enter the premises with them. But please be aware as they do not have any ID cards of their own, they cannot stray away from you or enter any places unless with your express permission."

His warning was not a problem with Alexander's bodyguards as they would not leave his side anyway, but this protocol was specifically designed for any guests that might accompany Alexander in the future for a tour.

"Mnnn, good," Alexander nodded with pleasure, and after reiterating one last time about not letting anyone without the proper credentials in, even if it was god, he finally entered his personal workshop district which he liked to call 'The Rhinelands', named after the famous industrial part of Germany.