by David West
"I wish Martin was there last night...."
"He was, for some of it. Will you give me a second? I'm going to hop into Irene's computer and see why Martin is offline. I will program your screen, so you can see through my eyes while I head over there," he explained.
The computer monitor suddenly showed inside Wade's room, in a first person view through his eyes. He was looking onto a projection screen on the wall, at, well, me. I was staring at myself. He looked away and headed directly to a door, with a red digital display above the door, which counted in milliseconds to read:
Port 57271 - Irene's Shrinker
He walked through the door and into a room with green walls, white carpet and paintings evenly placed around the room. In the middle, was a grey couch, and next to it, an extremely comfortable looking black chair. There were windows with birds flittering about outside, and tree branches swaying in the nonexistent wind. It reminded me a lot of Dr. Delane's office.
"Irene?" Wade called out, poking around.
Yells, shouts and crashes boomed through my speakers, making both of us jump in surprise. He opened the door from where the sound was coming from and walked in, to find a laser tag tournament in the middle of a bout. Irene was throwing grenades that flashed a blinding light, shooting semi-automatic laser guns at her soon to be victims, and yelling out commands to her team.
Wade sat on the bench with the A.I. who were out of the game, from being shot, mostly by Irene.
"She wins the damn tournament every year!" one A.I. groaned pathetically.
"Who, Irene?" Wade asked.
"Yeah, but her battle name is, Merciless Laser," another A.I. informed enviously.
"No way..." he said in excitement. I knew what he was thinking. He couldn't wait to tell Martin about her secret.
Soon enough, Irene was victorious, and the blue team disconnected back to their systems in defeat. Wade stood by the door that goes back to her room, but she passed him, looking up once at him, but not saying a single word.
"Irene?"
"Yes?" she asked, turning to him again, revealing she had battle paint on her face.
"You didn't tell me you liked video games!" Wade exclaimed.
A look of disgust from what she heard covered her face. "I don't like video games. They are violent and immature. Laser tag is a pass time that relieves excessive emotions and stress."
"You're playing a game inside a computer... How is it not a video game?" Wade questioned, beginning to get irritated.
"It's an activity," she insisted.
"Whatever, I just came over to see if you wanted to see the recording I made of Adam's date and if you knew why Martin is offline."
"I'm sorry, I don't know who any of those people are that you speak of," she apologized, opening the door to her psychiatrist office. "Now if you'll excuse me."
After she closed it behind her, Wade simply opened it and followed her in. When she heard him behind her, she spun around in alarm.
"What do you mean you don't know who they are?" he questioned.
"Who are you and how did you get in here? This room in my system is securely locked, how did you get in here?"
"Irene, it's me, Wade... We have a port open between our computers. Do you not recognize me?" he asked in confusion.
"Wade... Martin... and Adam? Aren't you and Martin, Adam's A.I.? I'm sorry, but if you don't leave right now, I will disconnect you and report this to the CBA. If you require an appointment, which it looks to be like you're definitely in need of one, email me and I will refer you to another psychiatrist," she ordered, pointing out the door from which Wade had first entered.
Wade didn't move until he saw a shadow ripple through the paintings in Irene's office.
"Can I just say one thing?" he began, waiting for Irene to agree with a nod. "You can report me to the CBA, but if you see any indication of trouble, such as another A.I. barging through your system, disconnect immediately, ok?"
"Goodbye, Wade."
He didn't use the door, he simply disconnected from her system, and I was looking back into his room.
"We have a serious problem, Adam," Wade stated. His constant smile faded.
"I know, it seems like Irene forgot all her memories of us."
"It's not just that, a CBA agent was watching us in her office. Our system's connection to each other has been closed, so I'm fine, but she is still in danger," he explained gravely.
"Couldn't you just disconnect her from the internet, by sabotaging it or something, so the agent can't connect to her?"
"It's much trickier than that. I don't have access to the certain parts of her system that can do such things. You must physically get the laptop."
"I have to steal a computer from a doctor... That's just great. Ever since I met you guys, I've been up to my neck in trouble," I chuckled lightly.
"Does that mean you won't do it?"
"Oh, I'll do it, it's actually very exciting," I admitted.
"That's good, because it looks like you might have to steal Martin from your old office as well," he said casually. "After looking at the security footage, a couple hours after he went offline, they replaced him with another computer."
"What? You want me to steal two computers? That's grand theft!"
"I know, exciting right!" he exclaimed, dodging the point.
"Fine, I'll head over to Dr. Delane's office now and steal her computer, then whip by the ol' office and steal my desktop which is very large and will be impossible to sneak out of the building," I listed cynically.
---
I was sitting outside the office in my car, feeling the same rush I felt before I broke into the ISP building and met Lara. After fitting a new ski mask tightly on my head, I headed up to the office, which, luckily, had a fire escape that led to Dr. Delane's window.
Outside the office, I felt the cold breeze through my thin, one-layer, long-sleeve shirt. I felt like an idiot for wearing all black, as it was a sunny afternoon. The inside of the office was completely the same as it was when I last visited. The one armed couch I would sit at was on the other side of the room as me, and Dr. Delane's chair was facing it, with its back toward me.
My eyes weren't adjusted to seeing in the dimly lit room, as outside was bright and white with snow. I carefully and quietly entered, walking toward the laptop in the corner of the room. It was open, like it always was, and it faced the session - the session, which was very much in progress. I wasn't aware of this fact yet though, as before I entered, Dr. Delane asked the patient a question, which he thought long and hard about before answering.
"I don't know why, I just see them. They're my friends, why wouldn't I see them?" he asked Dr. Delane.
His eyes wandered from the ceiling, to Dr. Delane, to me. I was completely frozen. His voice scared me to my core. I even surprised myself when I didn't let out a shriek of fright. The man on the couch was surprised too, and his mouth was hanging open. Of course, he was lying on his side, so his jaw was oddly crooked.
"You shouldn't see them, because they aren't real, Timmy," she informed the grown man.
"There's someone inside this office right now, dressed in all black, with a ski mask on," he said in a gasp.
"This is good, this is very good. Please continue," she asked, readying her pen and pad of paper. "What is this imaginary friend doing?"
"He's not one of my imaginary friends, I mean, I don't think he is. Like I said, he's wearing a ski mask, so it's hard to tell. But, he's tiptoeing closer and closer to your laptop, he's trying to steal it. He's literally tiptoeing," he said, now sitting up and staring directly at me.
"How does this man make you feel? Why is he tiptoeing? Does he remind you of someone who used to tiptoe earlier in your life?" she encouraged, writing dozens of notes down per minute.
The laptop was in reach! I couldn't believe I was pulling it off! However, like all things, they become much more complicated. The screen suddenly turned on, and Irene's face was looking angrily at me. She began to
open her mouth and scream, but the volume was turned completely down. With a furious look at the volume bar in the bottom right of the screen, she began increasing it.
I pressed the key to turn the volume down as fast as I could, making her voice barely come out of the speakers.
"Well- Wait- He picked it up. He picked up the laptop, and there's a woman in the screen! He's kidnapping the woman trapped inside the computer!" the man on the couch exclaimed, sitting up in his chair. "His hand is covering her mouth!"
I looked down and realized I subconsciously had my free hand covering her mouth that was on the screen.
Dr. Delane's pen was frantically writing everything down, writing one note about the episode per second.
"He's gone, he left out the window," the man said in relief.
"Well, this was quite the breakthrough," Dr. Delane began. "I believe you hold yourself back from wanting to do ballet. That's what the tiptoeing and sneaking around represents."
"Incredible!" the man exclaimed in wonder, lying back down.
"As for the thief kidnapping a woman who is trapped inside a computer, I believe this represents you trying to suppress your inner wo-"
I was too much in a hurry to get the hell out of there that I didn't get to hear the rest of Dr. Delane's conclusion. It seemed intriguing though!
Once I got to my car, I placed Irene's system on the passenger seat, and then my phone rang.
"Adam, I know what happened to Martin," Wade said on the other end.
"I'm on my way to the office now. I have Irene with me," I said in triumph.
"Great. Try and hurry, most of the office is heading out to lunch right now."
Wade told me that he asked the A.I. around the office where Martin was, and they all told him the same thing. He disconnected from the entire network - completely offline. Even when IT Steve came to replace the parts in his system to fix Martin's connection, the connection was inoperable. The boss was planning to throw Martin's system out that night for his insolence.
I sped up to make sure that didn't happen. It was only about a mile to the office, so taking the streets went rather smoothly. Well, it went smooth until a police cruiser raced passed me, toward Dr. Delane's office. That's when I realized I never took my ski mask off.
I took it off and drove into the driveway. I walked nervously, legs about to give in at any moment as I entered the building. The theft wasn't what I was worrying about, however - it was facing my co-workers after all this time; after jumping from the roof. Perhaps they forgot about me. I mean, they never made any effort to acknowledge my existence before.
"They left the office for lunch right?" I questioned cautiously.
"Most of them did. There are still a few stragglers doing paperwork and chatting with each other. It is pretty clear for the most part."
"So, I should have plenty of time, at least half an hour to do this," I said, calming my nerves.
"Five, actually," Wade corrected. "They left for lunch a while ago, I just avoided telling you that part because Martin really needs to get out before they get back."
"Five minutes?!"
I quickly walked inside, keeping my head low and cell phone pressed against my face. The stairs seemed longer than ever as I walked up to the second floor. Then again, I may have never walked up the stairs to work before.
"Alright, you should be fine if you crack the door open and look inside. Check your phone's screen," he directed.
On the screen was a full layout of the office, with the locations of its occupants and the direction they were facing, along with a cone in front of them, showing their line of sight.
"I feel like I'm in a stealth video game... A very real, very scary, stealth video game," I described.
"It looks like one from my end," Wade informed me. "As long as you stay low, you should be fine. From here on out, I will be sending messages to you through text."
I cracked the door open, as instructed, to find that it was mostly empty. I heard typing in one corner, Fredrick walking to the copy machine in the middle of the mazed cubicles, and a few others avoiding work by talking, eating or throwing paper balls into trash cans. It wasn't until Fredrick dropped his liquorish, and went to pick it up, that I snuck in.
I immediately tripped on my way in. With my cast on, it was very difficult to crouch. My screen had the text, LOL, in bold print, covering the map of the office.
"I have a broken leg!" I snarled quietly. "I'll walk out of this building right now!"
The screen then flashed 'sry' briefly. I looked to my left, and then to my right, I was clear to go! On my hands and knees, I scurried around the cubicles, inside them when my old co-workers walked by, and crawled once through a passage in one of the cubicle walls. On the other side, from the hole in the cubicle wall, I looked up to see Fredrick staring at me, with the stick of liquorish he picked up from the ground inside his mouth.
"Dude, are you being a perv?" he asked in a deep tone.
"No," I answered, coming up with blanks when trying to think of an excuse.
"Alright, cool. It's nice to see you again man, glad you didn't die," he stated coolly, backing his chair up so I could get up and stand.
"Thanks."
He took a bite of his red liquorish and began going back to work.
I walked, this time keeping a keen eye on my phone, to my desk. When I got there, the computer had single pink flowers, in very small vases, which used magnets to attach to the computer case. The computer screen had rainbow colored post-its along the outer screen, and finally, a heavy metal album on the tower of the computer.
"Martin looks so pretty," I stated, after raising the phone to my ear.
"Pick his system up and get out of there, people are coming back from lunch. If you leave now, you'll have a clean break to the stairs," Wade direct quickly.
I began unplugging all the cords, taking the tower under one arm, and the screen under the other. I eyed the layout of the office on my phone while it teetered between my teeth, as I was trying to make sure no one was looking. It must have been luck, because not a soul looked my way while I walked straight from my old desk, to my exit.
Lady luck has a strange sense of humor though - the elevator opened as I was walking by. My boss stood there, gawking at me, with a powdered doughnut between his lips.
We stared at each other - him with a doughnut in his mouth, a newspaper in one hand and coffee in the other - me with my cell phone in my mouth, computer screen in one hand and computer tower under my other arm.
"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" he yelled, voice booming through the office, powder clouding in front of him.
I picked up my hand holding the screen, grabbed my phone from my mouth, and placed it in my pocket. "I'm not-" I hesitated.
"Put those back and get the hell out of here before I call the police!"
"Actually, sir, these are mine," I pointed out.
"What?"
"Yeah, remember you said you'd promote me if I brought my own equipment?" I asked. "Well here they are. I was just coming back to collect my things."
"Oh," he said, with a loss for words. "Well don't let me catch you in here again.
"Are you going down?" I asked, entering the elevator with him. "I've got my hands full, do you mind?"
He pressed the button for me, unsure of his own actions. When the door opened to the ground floor, I stepped out, in the crowded room of my old co-workers coming back from lunch. They gawked at me, and I smiled warmly back. Is this what taking control was like? I enjoyed it. I felt like a new man.
A couple of my old co-workers, along with Justine, opened the doors for me.
I gently placed Martin's system, the computer screen, and the power cords on the passenger seat next to Irene. After strapping it all in place, I mounted my cell phone to the holder on my car and began driving home.
"Are you glad to finally be rid of that place?" Wade asked through the speakerphone.
"Yeah, after all this time, I
finally feel free. Also, a little like a kleptomaniac, but that isn't important. I stood up for myself, and it felt good," I sighed.
"Dude, you stood up for yourself? You paid for your own office supplies," Wade stated in sheer disappointment. "And then you were going to let them keep your computer for someone else."
10. Wade
Martin's operating system asked Adam for a password, which he muttered aloud while typing in his best guesses.
"Password... no... Maybe backwards? Drowssap," Adam began fuddling. "Maybe I shouldn't use capitalization?"