Stolen Time

by Keith Hughes

  He grinned at her.

  “Have you done other things?” Angie inquired. “Harder things?”

  When Ryan nodded, Angie gave him her brightest smile.

  “Like...?” She let her hand slowly rub his arm.

  Ryan shifted. “The City of Detroit, the automakers, Selfridge Air National Guard Base. I've been in them all. Firewalls bypassed, passwords cracked, and secrets revealed.” He all but preened with obvious pride.

  “I never heard about any of that.”

  Ryan snorted. “Hey, when your security system has been pwned and your virtual shorts are around your knees, most people tend to keep it quiet.”

  Angie shifted on the couch to eliminate what little space existed between them and felt the heat of his leg as hers pressed against it. She tightened her grip on his arm slightly, enough for him to increase their contact.

  “Have you ever hacked a place called... Intellisys?” Angie looked deep into his eyes.

  Ryan gave his head a quick shake. “Can't. Tried but can't. Security is too good.” He inhaled with a shaky breath, clearly struggling with Angie's increased proximity. “I would need a back door, something inside their system to let me in.”

  Angie leaned in until their noses were almost touching. Her left breast rubbed against his arm, and from the way he stiffened, he was aware of the intimate contact. They were almost close enough to kiss.

  “What if I could help you? Get inside Intellisys?” she said seductively. “Would you like that?”

  “You bet! If you can get me a back door through their firewalls, the rest is easy.” Eyes aglow, Ryan licked his lips, lost in his mind.

  Angie had no doubt his mind was spinning as he imagined the marvels to be found within Intellisys’s systems. She cleared her throat, drawing his attention back to her.

  He frowned. “How are you going to do it?”

  “I'm going to be inside their building,” she said, “and inside their firewalls.”

  His eyebrows rose, and he whistled softly.

  “And if I deliver this for you, will you do a little something for me?” Angie gave him another smile.

  His face reddened again. “S-sure. What do you need?” he managed to ask, although his voice did sound a little hoarse.

  “I need a virus, one that will scour their systems and delete certain key bits of information. Can you write that? For me?” Her eyes were only inches away from his.

  Ryan nodded again, and Angie thought they might knock heads.

  “When do you need it?”

  “Now,” she said eagerly. “Can we do it now?”

  Ryan nearly gasped at the double meaning in her words, and Angie gave him no time to recover from that sexual jolt. Instead, she beamed and stood up. He blinked at her as if confused by her sudden distance.

  She took his hand and helped him up. “I don't see any computers in here.” Her grin turned predatory. “I guess we'll have to do it in the bedroom, then?”

  Angie resisted the urge to laugh as her choice of words caused him to color all over again. She knew she was laying it on thick, but it seemed to be pushing Ryan's buttons.

  He led her to a dimly lit and extremely cluttered room. A small bed filled one section. It was covered in rumpled sheets that looked weeks overdue for a change. The room smelled of dust, sweat, and other things Angie tried not to contemplate.

  Ryan sat before the only other furniture in the space, a large desk with a massive bank of monitors covering one wall. Six different screens were laid out in a grid. Keyboards and mice covered the surface below, along with Jolt Cola cans and Slim Jim wrappers. Several computer towers with blue and green lights winking on them were arrayed on the floor. Odd bits of paper were taped to the monitor casings, and two caught her eye. One was a picture of her that had been taken at work. She was sitting at her desk, laughing with someone on the phone. From the slightly grainy quality of the picture, she assumed it had been taken on a cell phone.

  The other picture made her freeze. Her smiling face was attached to a body very much like hers, but the model lacked even a stitch of clothing. The form was lying stretched out, displaying all its charms to the camera. Whoever did the Photoshopping had done an excellent job, but the physique itself gave her pause. Outside of a few small differences Ryan would not, or at least should not, be aware of, it was a fair match for her body. It unnerved her how well Ryan knew her figure.

  Ryan noticed she had stopped watching him and glanced at what had attracted her attention. He colored again and half rose from his chair to pull the pictures down then opened a drawer and slipped them inside before closing it again. He mumbled something, most likely an apology.

  Angie struggled against her instinctive revulsion and tried to give him an unconcerned smile. She was not sure how well she pulled it off, but he was too embarrassed to look at her anyway, so she put the pictures out of her mind and tried to get her seductress mojo back. She crossed to the bed and forced herself to climb atop it. She lay on her side with her head propped on her arm and looked at him.

  “I hope I'm not taking you away from anything important this evening.” She smiled warmly.

  Ryan turned to see her stretched across his bed, and Angie could almost hear his heart rate increase.

  “N-no.” He looked embarrassed again and turned back to the monitors.

  Ryan typed furiously on a keyboard, and streams of characters appeared on one of the screens. He said nothing as he worked, occasionally humming or mumbling to himself, as if he had forgotten she was there.

  After a few minutes, Angie rose from the bed, moved behind him, and laid her hands lightly on his shoulders. He jerked a bit at the initial contact and looked briefly up at her with an embarrassed grin. She gave his shoulders a small squeeze.

  “How's it going?” Angie purposely kept her voice husky. She continued her movements on his shoulders, turning them into a light massage.

  “Good,” Ryan said, having to clear his throat when his voice cracked. “I'm almost done.”

  He fell silent and continued to type out code on the screen. Angie stayed quiet, not wanting to distract him from his work. After a couple of minutes, he stopped typing and sat back. His head rested against her chest, but she did not pull away.

  “I need the search terms,” Ryan said. “What the virus will search for.”

  “Allow me,” Angie purred and leaned over his right shoulder.

  Her bosom brushed against it, and she saw his right hand twitch. For a horrible instant, it seemed he was going to reach up and caress her, but his hand shifted to his lap instead. With relief, she put her fingers on the keyboard and typed.

  “Dr. Francis Bertrand, PDA, PU Lab, Dix, time travel, borrowed time” appeared on the screen. Ryan whistled softly when he read them all. Angie straightened, and he gave her a questioning look. She grinned and shrugged slightly.

  “Can you have it prompt for additional keywords?” She winked. “Just in case.”

  “Sure.” He turned back to the keyboard and typed a few more commands. Then he looked back at her. “Anything else?” He had a hopeful note in his voice.

  “No, that’s everything.” Angie put her hand back on his shoulder.

  He relaxed into the contact and turned back to his work.

  The screen showing the code and keywords disappeared. In its place, a new screen appeared, with Compiling flashing in blinking red letters. A yellow progress bar slowly expanded from left to right.

  Ryan rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out a small white flash drive attached to a lanyard. He plugged the flash drive into a USB hub amid the detritus. A few keystrokes more, and it was loaded with the virus. He pulled it free from the hub and spun in his chair to offer it to her.

  Angie took the drive and slipped the lanyard around her neck. In the course of sliding the flash drive into her shirt and getting the cord underneath her hair, Angie leaned forward slightly. With the extra undone button, she offered an excellent view down her shirt. His wide eye
s and elevated breathing told her he had taken advantage of the opportunity. Sometimes being a slut is too easy, Angie mused.

  Ryan eventually shook himself out of his reverie and averted his gaze. “There's only one file on the drive,” he mumbled, glancing furtively at her. “Plug it in and run it. It'll insert your virus and install my back door.”

  Angie gave him her biggest smile and leaned over to kiss him once on the cheek.

  “Thanks,” she whispered into his ear then straightened and sauntered toward the doorway. “See you at work.” She left him in the bedroom before he demanded more payment than she intended to give. It was one thing to give Ryan a bit of a peep show and rub certain bits against him, but her need to fulfill his fantasies had limits.

  Seconds later, she was back in the elevator again. As it took her back to the lobby, she fished her engagement and wedding rings out of her pocket and slipped them back on her finger. She pressed her hand between her breasts to feel the flash drive concealed there and smirked as the car came to a stop. When the doors opened, she stepped into the lobby to find Ness waiting for her. He had a small duffel bag slung over one shoulder.

  “How did it go?”

  “I got it,” Angie answered with a triumphant grin.

  Ness considered her with a small frown.

  “So how did you convince him?”

  “Oh, I only titillated him a bit.” She tried to laugh it off.

  “Yes, I can tell.” Ness looked pointedly at her shirt.

  She blushed as she rebuttoned it to its normal level, and he laughed at her sudden need for modesty. After all, he knew her charms intimately.

  She couldn’t help but join him in mirth and arched an eyebrow. “Don’t we have something to be doing?”

  “Come on.” Ness took her hand. “We have a world to save.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Frustration

  Wednesday, June 9, 2010, 5:57 a.m.

  Acid churned in Dr. Samuel Dix’s gut, something he had not suffered since pulling all-nighters during his college days. The thrum of caffeine in his nerves played counterpoint to the ticking resounding in his brain.

  A prolonged absence from his boss would help him concentrate, but John Fletcher arrived every thirty minutes like clockwork. Dix had hoped he would sleep and give him a few hours of peace, but Fletcher was dogged in his attempts to gauge his progress. Each time the CEO left, he reminded Dix of his deadline. Emphasis on the “dead” if I’m late. He frowned.

  Even in the face of John's ultimatum, Dix had initially been confident he could get the work done on time. Everything worked within parameters for smaller creatures, and the progress encouraged him. He had advanced to rabbits and had success with them, as well. Each exhibited a lessening of the borrowed time, but it still measured within acceptable parameters, if only barely, and he'd convinced himself the differences were merely an anomaly. But that little piece of self-delusion had faded when he sent the first dog through time. It had lasted barely five minutes before splashing into a puddle. He had been working on the problem when John arrived to start the clock ticking.

  His inner organs churned in ever-expanding fear as he frittered hours away in vain attempts to solve the riddle. A small part of his mind imagined the sensations associated with dissolving into liquid, and Dix was inwardly horrified that he would even contemplate that outcome. John’s deadline had a physical presence, a stalking predator getting ever closer as the seconds streamed by. As what were possibly the last hours of his life ticked by, Dix knew he had to work as hard as possible in order to avoid becoming its prey.

  But he struggled to find an explanation for the problem. He pored over Dr. Bertrand's notes, scrounging for anything related to the mass of the subject. After many attempts over the last thirteen hours, Dix decided he would not find his answers there. Rising from his chair, he paced in circles around the lab table covered with the stacked components of his machine. Running his fingers through greasy hair, he caught a whiff of himself and wrinkled his nose. He had been working for almost a day without rest when John delivered his ultimatum, and after he calculated the time spent, the total indicated it had been almost four days since his last shower. He inspected his shirt, which was covered with an abstract pattern of reddish streaks from where he had wiped his Dorito-stained fingers.

  Dix needed a few minutes to disconnect from the problem. Sometimes, only by putting his mind in neutral would the solution come to him. Removing his lab coat and T-shirt, he noticed without surprise that his clothes also stank. He dropped them in a hamper next to the bathroom door. Many scientists spent days or weeks engrossed in their research, so most labs had an attached bathroom with a shower. Intellisys also provided laundry service, and Dix, along with many of his colleagues, kept several changes of clothing there for that purpose.

  He kicked off his sneakers, worn without socks, and the remainder of his clothes joined the shirt in the wash pile. Dix padded naked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, frowning. His unwashed hair swirled in wild and puffy waves. Two days' growth of beard darkened his cheeks and chin. He looked disreputable, like someone he would avoid if encountered on the street.

  Next, he turned on the shower and let the water achieve the scalding temperature his body craved. When steam filled the small glass stall, Dix stepped into the stream. For a few minutes, he let the water run over his head and body, reveling in the wet heat. Eventually, he grabbed shampoo and scrubbed at his hair. He followed the directions on the bottle for a change and lathered, rinsed, and repeated the whole process. It took the two cycles before he finally rinsed off the last of the grime. He used the small mounted mirror and a razor to scrape the growth from his face. Finally, he used a washcloth to spread rich lather across his body.

  As he ran the cloth along his limbs, he idly considered the steam surrounding him and the power it represented. Images of locomotives and ships running on steam filtered through his mind before his attention fixated on a single word. It floated in his mind's eye, and he stared slack-jawed at it.

  “Power,” he said as if in a trance. “Of course.”

  Dix leaped out of the shower a second later without rinsing or turning the stream off. He trailed soap and water across his lab floor as he dashed to the machine. It currently ran on only forty-two volts, the same amount of power used for a common house phone. His equipment was limited to a normal household current of one hundred twenty volts. He tapped on a keyboard and increased the power settings for the device to one hundred volts then padded to the group of cages stacked in one corner of the lab and selected a tabby at random. It howled and scratched his arm, but Dix did not notice the cat's struggles as he took it back to the table. He set the animal on the metal plate of the launching point and placed a clear plastic box over the cat. The feline glared at Dix through the transparent material as he pressed the button to launch the cat one minute into the future.

  He was immediately heartened by a sudden shift of position by the cat. It had apparently survived long enough to be sent back to its home time. He lifted the clear plastic enclosure and returned the feline to its cage.

  The only sound was liquid dripping off his body as he waited for the reappearance of the cat. Finally, after what felt like an interminable interval, the minute expired, and the feline returned, still glaring reproachfully at Dix. He waited as the seconds ticked by, watching the cat prowl the small area allowed it. When the time since the cat's arrival passed the five-minute mark, Dix held his breath in anticipation. Finally conscious of his need for more air, he discovered nearly seven minutes had elapsed in total and the cat was still alive.

  Elated, he returned to the bathroom to sluice off the remainder of the soap and shut off the water. He peeked out into the lab and noted with satisfaction that the cat was still following his movements with glaring eyes. In a couple of minutes more, he had dried and dressed in fresh clothing. The shirt had been decorated with a diagram of the caffeine molecule, something he felt desperately in need of.

/>   When he returned to the lab, over fourteen minutes had passed since the cat had arrived, and it still showed no ill effects. He turned to a dry erase board and performed some calculations. Based on the data points provided by the hamster, rabbit, and cat tests, he would need something in the order of four hundred volts to send a man through the machine with a safe amount of borrowed time. The lab could easily provide enough power, though he would need to upgrade some components of his machine to prevent an electrical fire. With a satisfied smile, he pressed the return button on his monitor, and the cat disappeared into the past.

  Dix looked at the clock and saw he had eight hours before John would expect him to try out his invention. Time was running short, and he had to get the machine reconfigured quickly. As he searched the cabinets holding various electrical components, he realized he still needed to examine Dr. Bertrand's original device. The older man had successfully sent a human through time on the few volts available in an average PDA. In some way, Bertrand’s breakthrough had entirely eluded Dix. To make the device as portable as the CEO wanted, he would need to reverse engineer his predecessor’s innovation from the sought-after PDA. For his own sake, Dix prayed they found it, and soon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Deployment

  Wednesday, June 9, 2010, 11:31 a.m.

  It’s good to be off the street, Angie mused as she snuggled drowsily under the sheets.

  As darkness fell, they'd settled in another hotel to spend the night. From the road, it appeared to be a nice place, and it turned out to be run by an old couple who lived in an apartment connected to the front desk. The rooms were clean and quiet, everything Angie desired. She craved a decent night's sleep, although Ness jerking awake at every noise from the parking lot provided frequent interruptions. They had even managed to sneak out for an uneventful and thoroughly enjoyable breakfast.

  Though she knew any security provided by the hotel room could quickly turn out to be illusory, the calm surroundings nonetheless seeped into her, providing a sense of well-being. The resulting mental state was much better than Ness’s obvious nervousness as he showed her how to ignite the thermite.