It started as any other day did in the city, cold, dank and wet (miserable). I went to the window and looked out, I had been working on the case it seamed forever but it had been only 12 hours. There was a knock at the door ……

"Bah"

There was a knock at the door.

I screwed the paper up I had been writing the story on. It was crap anyway. Who would have thought that 6 months ago, I won the Blue Ribbon for programming. One little mistake, and that due to an error in the command syntax manual. Look at me now. Writing 2 credit novels for a cheap magazine. And I was not doing that very well. Mind you, it did pay the bills. Well almost.

The knock at the door became louder.

"OK, OK let me get there".

I rose out of the chair, stretched to the ceiling, enjoying the sensation of release as my spine cracked, the kinks falling out if it.
Shuffling over to the door, not caring any more, and without looking up, opened it wide.

"Yes", I sighed.

"Professor Jake Ortega."

It was not even a question, just a statement of fact. That made me look up. It had been a long time since anyone had called me that. Not since the beginning of the Decker Wars.

"No. I am sorry your must be mistaken. My name is Samuels, Marcus Samuels."

The man framed in the doorway was unremarkable in all ways but one. The badge he was showing, was. It was one which I had carried so long ago. A badge that should not exist. My badge. My implant. My old life.

Rubbing my arm where the implant used to live, I motioned the man in.

With an assured stride, he entered the room. His companion, an ox of a man, closed the door from the outside, where he then waited. , There was no mistaking that he was military. Guarding. Guarding what? I did not know, but guarding the same.

Pointing to a chair, I went and poured myself a drink.

"Drink, Mr…………?"

"No thanks," - he answered, "and the name's Smith, Cabe Smith."

"Well Mr Smith", sarcasm barely concealed, "What can I do for you?"

"Professor Ortega. It is more a matter of what I can do for you" he said, eyes roaming the pit of a room, saying it all.

"Call me Marcus. I have used that name for the last 15 years anyway."

"Marcus. I assume you would wish to examine this?"

He passed the badge over to me, still in it's protective case. That showed promise. The badge laid there, a dull metallic oval, the size of a pinky nail. If the badge was even to momentarily be touched by anyone but the owner, it would explode. Even that small, it would devastate a small apartment block, since the material that the badge was made out of was the thing of science fiction, exotic matter from the edge of a black hole, but manufactured in a lab on the dark side of the moon.

I looked at it warily, and as if reading my mind, Mr Smith replied.

"Please Marcus. If we wished to kill you there are far better and cleaner ways than this, as you well know"

The trouble was, I did know.

"How?" I asked, still holding the case, the emotions started to build.

"How. This was destroyed. I know. I did it. "

"We made another one keyed to you."

"How! The technology was lost, what, during the dark times after the 1st Corporate World War, and that was a long time ago."

"We know. But before we progress, I would like to say that it is personally an honour to meet you, sir. Now I, we, would like you to fill in the gaps, please. It has taken 7 years to find you and it is only in the last 6 months we have made progress."

"Since the error?"

"Yes, since the error, and yes, you were railroaded. Sorry my idea, to misprint the manual."

"How did you mange that?"

"Let us say we have a few "assets" that are as good as you were. The misprinted area would only produce the error under an exact series of events and only two people could produce those events and hence the error. You are one of those people."

"The other?"

"An asset. That's all you need to know at this time. Again, I apologies for the deception."

"Hurmph!"

Even as angry as I was, I would like to meet the asset. The error event could only have been triggered 23 layers into the sub routine. The problem was that since the start of the 2nd Decker wars, the only compilers available, commercially, could only debug to 16 layers. The rest had to be done by hand. To be honest to myself, I was unsure that even if I could have had access to a compiler that was capable of it, it would have been lucky to catch the error, since it was so subtle and required a "human" element to trigger. I know that since I had spent many sleepless nights going over my code.

I rubbed my arm again and, noticing that, Mr Smith said.

"It is yours. Try it."

Tempted. By God I was tempted. Trembling, I put the case and its contents down. And walked to the door and opened it.

The guard was still there and looked threatening but kept his distance like the professional he obviously was. With a glance at Mr Smith, who shook his head, the guard backed away.

"Get out Get out now."

Rising to his feet, Mr Smith strolled to the door. There he turned back and handed me his card.

"You will call. Your profile has not changed in all this time. You still understand your duty."

With that he turned smartly and walked through the door, not even giving me the satisfaction of slamming it into him. I slammed the door any way.

Shaking, I turned round and sat down, belting back a double whisky, well the synthetic stuff. That did nothing. Walking to the bed, and after scrabbling around for a few seconds, I found the sealed flask of Karacs. Real alcohol. 140° proof. Cracking the seal made my eyes water, but not because of the flash contents but of what I promised myself so very long ago.

What's happening? Why now? Why me? I took a drink from the flask, and after choking a few times, I poured a measure then carefully re-sealing the flask. I looked wistfully at the drink for a few seconds then downed it in one go. This time the smooth blend, burned my throat in a controlled, refined manner. But as I swallowed, I started to cry, and with that crying came remembrance of friends lost, of the time when I was called Jake Ortega, and of people who I would have died for and nearly did.

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]