# CHAPTER 4 DATA THAT ARRIVED TOO LATE
The archive room door did not open.
The handle stopped moving.
Raka and Surya both held their breath.
A few seconds later, footsteps retreated.
Slowly.
Then disappeared at the end of the hallway.
Surya dared to move only after the sound had completely vanished.
“Don’t come out yet.”
Raka nodded.
He turned his attention back to the laptop.
The screen, dark a moment ago, lit up again.
But the warning message had disappeared.
There was no trace of it.
As if it had never appeared.
Raka looked at Surya.
“Are you sure this is safe, sir?”
Surya gave a bitter smile.
“No place is safe once the system is involved.”
“Then we have to find out who did this.”
Surya shook his head.
“You need to know when to stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Raka fell silent.
Then he answered:
“Because my father is part of it.”
Surya did not argue.
6:21 p.m.
The office building was almost empty.
The lights in several rooms had already been turned off.
Raka was still in his office.
He was waiting for someone.
Bima.
The young programmer had been unreachable since morning.
But at 5:58 p.m., a message came in from an unknown number.
> **I know what happened. Meet me in the old server room. Don’t bring anyone.**
There was no name.
But Raka knew who had sent it.
He headed for the old server room.
It was on the lower floor of the building, far from the main offices.
SENTRA actually used new servers housed in the government data center.
The old server was used only as a backup.
Raka opened the door.
Darkness.
“Bima?”
There was no answer.
Then a voice came from the corner of the room.
“Turn off the light.”
Raka flinched.
“Bima?”
“Turn it off.”
Raka pressed the switch.
The room went dark again.
A few seconds later, a monitor flickered on.
Bima’s face appeared from behind the server rack.
He looked exhausted.
His eyes were red.
“Where have you been?” Raka asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yesterday you said ADMIN-ROOT shouldn’t exist.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Then who’s using it?”
Bima shook his head.
“I don’t know yet.”
Raka moved closer.
“Did you find something?”
Bima stared at the monitor.
“Something worse.”
He opened a folder.
“Look at this.”
Raka stepped closer.
The folder contained transfer-decision data from the past five years.
An employee’s name.
**Maya Kartika.**
Decision date:
**January 14, 2025.**
Raka read it.
“Promotion?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the problem?”
Bima opened the source data.
“Look at the date of her performance evaluation.”
Raka read it.
**January 18, 2025.**
He frowned.
“Four days after the decision?”
Bima nodded.
“That’s not all.”
He opened another document.
**Bram Santoso.**
Promotion decision:
**March 3, 2025.**
Evaluation data:
**March 7, 2025.**
Raka began to understand.
“The decision was made before its basis even existed.”
“Exactly.”
Bima opened the next document.
“And these aren’t two isolated cases.”
The screen filled with lists.
Dozens.
Then hundreds.
Raka stared at them.
“How many?”
“I haven’t finished counting.”
“Estimate?”
“One hundred seventy-three decisions.”
Raka exhaled.
“All of them like this?”
“Most of them.”
Bima pointed at the screen.
“What’s stranger is that the system says they’re all normal.”
Raka stared at the data.
“How is that possible?”
Bima opened a table.
It contained three columns:
**Decision Date.**
**Supporting Data Date.**
**Validation Date.**
In many rows, the order was reversed.
The decision appeared first.
The supporting data appeared later.
Validation happened only after the decision had been carried out.
Raka stood motionless.
“Bima…”
“Yes?”
“This isn’t an input error.”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
Bima looked at him.
“The data arrived too late.”
Raka pulled up a chair.
He sat in front of the monitor.
“Find the oldest case.”
Bima typed.
The search results appeared.
2021.
An employee’s name.
**SUTRISNO WIRAWAN.**
Transfer decision:
**February 8, 2021.**
Organizational-needs data:
**February 15, 2021.**
Validation:
**February 18, 2021.**
Raka stared at the dates.
“A week.”
Bima nodded.
“The decision was carried out before its administrative justification was created.”
“Who changed the dates?”
“That’s the problem.”
Bima opened the system log.
“There were no changes.”
“Impossible.”
“Logically, yes.”
“According to the system?”
Bima pointed at the screen.
“According to the system, nothing is wrong.”
Raka looked at him.
Bima continued:
“SENTRA doesn’t record the dates as having been changed.”
“Then what?”
“As if those dates had been that way from the beginning.”
Raka frowned.
“So someone can fake time?”
Bima nodded slowly.
“Not just time.”
He opened several other files.
“Timestamp.”
“What does that mean?”
“The time recorded when an action is performed.”
Raka fell silent.
Bima enlarged one of the data entries.
“If someone has access to a certain layer of the system, they can make an activity from today look like an activity from last week.”
Raka stared at the screen.
“So someone can make a decision made today look like it was made earlier?”
“Yes.”
“And the reverse?”
Bima nodded.
“They can make data actually created today look as if it already existed before the decision.”
Raka stood up.
“Then all those documents could have been created at any time.”
“Exactly.”
“But made to look as if they’d existed from the beginning.”
“Exactly.”
Raka paced back and forth.
All the pieces of what had happened began to connect.
His transfer letter.
Hendra’s resignation.
The change in the employee’s status.
ADMIN-ROOT’s activity.
They all had dates.
But those dates might not be reality.
He stopped.
“Bima.”
“Yes?”
“Open my transfer data.”
Bima looked at him.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Bima typed Raka’s name.
The screen displayed:
**RAKA ADINATA**
Status:
**PLACEMENT IN PROCESS.**
Bima opened the history.
There was a transfer decision.
Date:
**August 12, 2026.**
Raka fell silent.
“That was four days ago.”
Bima nodded.
“Even though you only heard about it two days ago.”
Raka pointed at the screen.
“Open the supporting data.”
Bima opened it.
Empty.
“There’s nothing.”
“Try again.”
Bima ran the search.
A few seconds later, a document appeared.
**Organizational Needs Analysis.**
Date:
**August 16, 2026.**
Raka froze.
“Four days after the decision.”
Bima said nothing.
Raka pointed at the document.
“Open it.”
Bima opened it.
The document explained why Raka needed to be reassigned.
Organizational needs.
Performance evaluation.
Competence.
Efficiency.
Everything looked reasonable.
But the document was dated **August 16**.
Meanwhile, his transfer decision was dated **August 12**.
A chill ran down the back of Raka’s neck.
“So they created the justification after the decision.”
Bima nodded.
“Looks that way.”
“Why would the system allow that?”
“Because the system doesn’t judge whether a decision is right.”
“Then what does it do?”
Bima stared at the screen.
“It makes the decision look right.”
The room fell silent again.
7:02 p.m.
Bima opened a hidden folder.
“There’s one more thing.”
Raka turned to him.
“What?”
“All the date changes follow the same pattern.”
He showed Raka the log.
**02:13.**
Raka recognized it immediately.
“ADMIN-ROOT.”
Bima nodded.
“But there’s something stranger.”
“What?”
“The date changes weren’t made one at a time.”
Bima opened the code structure.
“It’s a batch process.”
“Explain.”
“Someone gives the command.”
“And then?”
“The system changes thousands of timestamps at once.”
“Can it be done from outside?”
“In theory, yes.”
“And in practice?”
Bima fell silent.
“It can also be done from inside.”
Raka stared at him.
“Who has access?”
Bima did not answer.
“Bima.”
“No one.”
“No one?”
“Officially, not a single account has access rights that extensive.”
Raka gave a bitter smile.
“Then we’re back to ADMIN-ROOT.”
Bima nodded.
Then the screen suddenly flickered.
A new window appeared.
**SYSTEM MAINTENANCE.**
Bima shot to his feet.
“Don’t touch anything.”
Raka watched the screen.
Code began running on its own.
Line after line.
Then a command appeared:
> **TEMPORAL SYNCHRONIZATION**
Bima went pale.
“What is that?”
“Time synchronization.”
“What for?”
Bima did not answer.
The next command appeared.
> **ROLLBACK TIMESTAMP — 00:30**
Raka stared at it.
“Rollback?”
“It’s changing the time.”
“Now?”
Bima nodded.
The screen changed again.
One by one, the dates on the documents began to move.
**August 19, 2026 → August 18, 2026.**
Then:
**August 18 → August 17.**
Bima shut down the network.
It didn’t work.
He pulled the cable.
The screen stayed on.
“How is that possible?”
Bima stared at the computer, his face pale.
“This isn’t an ordinary connection anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“The server is running the command from inside.”
Raka watched the numbers move across the screen.
Then the system stopped.
All the dates returned to normal.
Bima exhaled.
But Raka saw one change.
His transfer document.
The decision date, which had been:
**August 12, 2026.**
Had now changed to:
**August 19, 2026.**
Today’s date.
Raka stared at it.
“Why did the date change?”
Bima did not answer.
Then a notification appeared.
**DECISION HAS BEEN MADE.**
Raka read the line beneath it.
> **TIME CANNOT BE CHANGED AFTER A DECISION IS MADE.**
Raka looked at Bima.
“Then why did the system change the date just now?”
Bima shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Raka looked back at the screen.
Then he said slowly:
“It wasn’t the system that changed the time.”
Bima turned to him.
“Then who?”
Raka pointed at the document.
“The person controlling the system.”
9:14 p.m.
Raka left the server room with Bima.
They walked without saying much.
At the end of the hallway, a light flickered.
Bima stopped.
“Raka.”
“Yes?”
“If what we found is true…”
He did not finish.
Raka waited.
“Then every decision SENTRA has ever made can be called into question.”
Raka nodded.
“Not just the decisions.”
“What else?”
“The history.”
Bima looked at him.
Raka continued:
“If dates can be changed, we no longer know when anything really happened.”
They continued walking.
Before leaving the building, Raka’s phone chimed.
A message came in.
Unknown number.
Raka opened it.
> **You finally understand.**
A second message appeared.
> **The system is never wrong.**
Raka waited.
A third message arrived.
> **The system only remembers what we want you to remember.**
Raka stared at the screen.
Then one last message appeared.
> **And tomorrow, you’ll learn that your transfer happened long before you were born as an employee.**
Raka froze.
He read the sentence over and over.
Bima saw his face.
“What is it?”
Raka handed him the phone.
Bima read the message.
His expression changed.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Raka looked at the dark office building.
“That’s exactly the problem.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket.
“If time can be rewritten…”
Raka stopped.
“…then someone may have already rewritten our past.”
Behind them, on the third floor, a computer that should have been off suddenly powered on.
The screen displayed a single sentence:
> **TIMELINE UPDATED.**
Then:
> **RAKA ADINATA — RECORD FOUND.**
A date appeared beneath it.
**SEPTEMBER 17, 2020.**
The same date as Raka’s father’s resignation.