by Pete Molina
Chapter 5
Jeff was sitting at his desk again, at work, a fact that had him puzzled. He had spent all of yesterday in interview sessions with the FBI, specifically with Agent Jim Dawson. They had asked him the same questions, made him take the same truth test. As far as Jeff could tell the results were the same. At the end of the day Agent Dawson had come in to the interview room with a cup of coffee and told Jeff that they had received a full confession from Sam. They didn’t have Sam Storm 6.7 in custody but in the confession exonerated Jeff of all wrong doing.
On his way home that night, the headlines in the news had read that he had been cleared of any wrong doing in the incident but that he had used poor judgment. Jeff accepted that assessment; he had used poor judgment. The real surprise of the day was a message on his terminal that had been marked urgent from Damon Harding himself.
The message was a video of Harding at his offices. “Jeff, I know we’ve had our differences. And given the events of the past week I am sure that you expect to be formally discharged from your position; however, that is not going to happen just yet. Because the investigation has cleared you of the major charges, only that of poor judgment remains. We at Second Chance have decided that at the moment we would like you to continue your services and have made that recommendation to the government, provided that you are suitably punished for your lapse in judgment.”
“We recommended that you return to work for a probationary period in which there will be increased oversight of your activities. I believe that you will be formally contacted by your superiors in the government in this matter once they reach a decision. Welcome back,” Damon had said in a convincingly sincere manner.
The part about recommendations to the government were only for propriety; what Damon Harding wanted, he got. There had been an additional message from his superior in the government that had confirmed Harding’s recommendation. He was to return to work immediately.
This put Jeff in an awkward position. On the one hand he was happy to be back; it was a totally unexpected event. But Jeff knew that something was going on. They should have asked for his resignation immediately, but they hadn't. On the other hand was the request from Sam to start the restoration of that old backup. That would be a violation of the law and certainly another lapse in judgment. If he were, in fact, being monitored, they would know if he started the restoration. Damon Harding was a very smart man and a ruthless one. Jeff wasn't fooled for an instant by the message from Harding. He knew that Harding was doing this for his own personal reasons and that sooner or later Jeff would be charged, probably with something worse than ‘poor judgment’ being pinned on him. Jeff didn't want any part of it.
He stared down at the cube of Sam 23.1, it was just an inert piece of crystal but it contained a record a snapshot of what he had been at twenty three, but Sam 6.7 had continued on and become something terrible. The Sam stored in the cube deserved Jeff's loyalty even if the older Sam 6.7 didn't. He knew he would be fired anyway, and probably not to far in the future to benefit Harding's own scheming.
So why not just start the restoration and tender my resignation? Screw Harding, Jeff thought. I hate Sam for doing this, for putting me in this position, but what's done is done. I can't change that now. If I want answers, I don't have any choice in what I have to do. I hope Sam knows what he's doing. And what about Sam 23.1, what's he going to think of all this? He's almost thirty years out of date. Will he even help me once he knows what I've become. Of course the way things look now, it's like I did help Sam strike at the system from the inside, just like we planned. If I just let him believe that, I think he'll help. Hell, maybe in some way it's true. Maybe I did help subconsciously. I'm glad I didn't think of that during the truth test. They'd have crucified me.
Jeff made his decision and picked up Sam's old backup cube off his desk. It'll be good to see you again Sam, he thought. But this isn't going to be easy to get away with. Jeff logged in to the system and started setting it up to receive the backup data and to start the restore. He knew that they would find out about it before too long, but Jeff knew some things about the system that could delay that notification long enough for the restoration to pass the no stop point and that was all that mattered. He had been a pretty good hacker at one point when he was younger.