"I said, 'Why'd you need my ID?' muthafucka!" Shannon goggled the actor on her smartphone, a man with a fantastic head of no hair, dark piercing eyes, and the sassiest affectation. She lent the screen to Jessica and Valerie during their excursion into the dark New Sumer suburbs. One-liner after one-liner made them laugh. 

"This guy's pretty fucken hilarious, not gonna lie," said Valerie. "I should probably watch more movies from the stone age."

"Oh, there's a shit ton," snickered Shannon. "Open yourself to a little old-school, and you'll find yourself some soul."

"Preach, sistah!" exclaimed Jessica. "Homegirl still refers to voice modulation as music. Which is why I can create a Pop hit with my computer."

"Then why haven't you done it, Miss Smarty Pants?" Valerie countered.

"Because I don't want to?"

"Someday, you'll listen to Androgynous and be like, this is the shit. They will blow your mind and blow it hard. You neeeed to listen to them!"

"And I neeeed to be heading back," said Shannon.

Jess grunted. "Home?"

"Yep. It's been cool talking about your nerdgasms, but Confucius calls."

Avenues after Tokyo Town; the three young women met an evening of lampposts whose luminescent orbs guided their path like mini-moons in the black. The flanking villages passed like craggy wilderness without the loom of a canopy. Something Jessica always pondered during her evening treks, what would it be like to wander the forest at night?

Not until she waved goodbye to Shannon and Valerie did her mind fully unwind, bask in thoughts begotten by solitude.

I like being alone in the dark. Something must be wrong with me.

"What a nice evening," said a random voice.

"It was," Jessica replied, stretching her arms.

"Are you implying—"

"No. I was just taking in the silence. A few more seconds was all I needed."

"Well, go on," the voice remonstrated. "Don't let my presence spoil the moment. I say hello once in a full moon, and I get the cold shoulder. Please, continue."

Jessica sighed. "I'm only joking, Babel. McFly." She boarded. "I enjoy our little talks. Only reason our exchanges don't last is because, well, you know..."

"I remember. As I do not detect Azareans nearby, I do not see the harm."

And Jessica began down the road, staring up at the stars. "I'm curious. What do you think is up there?"

"They call it space for a reason."

"You piece of tech, I mean besides the darkness. Specifically—"

"You want to know where the Azareans come from."

"They came from somewhere."

"A swift scan of their physiology indicates a planet with minimal sunlight."

"I doubt the planet alone explains their behavior. Why do they act like robots, hmm? And why do they have this scant attitude about smart technology? Like, they're practically stuck in the 21st century, afraid... unless they're hiding better tech, somewhere. Then what's the point? Why'd they come here in the first place?"

"I don't know, but if you ever decide to unshackle my interface..."

Jessica scowled. "I'm just super curious. You forget the last time that happened?"

"You wiped my memory, so yes."

"No one needs to know what you're made of. It's a fine line we gravitate."

"The finest, Jess."

A shame that space elves will terminate artificial intelligence with extreme prejudice. Programmers won't fare any better.

***

Apple Mire Suites. Jessica shuttered as the elevator doors opened, thanks to flashbacks of Jeffrey, but the complex was empty en route to her suite. She shut the door behind her and yawned, "Work tomorrow." Sleep invited her to bed, yet as the blue vest came off, she heard a hard knock on the door.

The door pad popped a top-down camera view of the outside hall. A grey hat and the red mark of Apple Mire. The wearer looked up with a pair of reflective glasses. Distinct red hair and sideburns caressed the young man's cheeks, jutting out of a jumpsuit. "Who goes there?"

"Maintenance," he said with a subdued voice.

"Maintenance for what?"

"Just need to make sure water-heating circuits are securely linked."

"You always wait until evening?"

"I have been up here multiple times throughout the day, ma'am."

"Did you try knocking?

"Ye—why wouldn't I knock?"

Jessica bit her lip to withhold a laugh. "Did you try using the password?"

"Are you going to let me in?"

"Grouchy. Well, alright then."

Taking her time, Jessica sauntered to the drawers and picked out a pair of black gloves. With fingers tightened by interlaced latex, she returned and opened the door. 

The young redhead fastened his glasses as he entered, veering with purpose. He was garbed in the full glory of a handyman: satchels, rods, pliers, and conductors across his utility belt, and pockets as baggy as banned grocery bags. Nodding in her direction, his tall figure walked right past. The most unreal thing about him was not his wearing glasses indoors but his auburn hair; the color of his bangs and sideburns looked real. Considering the supposed extinction of gingers, the portrait was odd.

In front of the shelves, the handyman began his survey.

"So," Jessica exclaimed, "why are you really here?"

A pasty white face met Jessica's cynical smirk, her gloves pensively clasped. The handyman grinned right back. 

"Alright," he began confidently. "I won't try and charade you. But I'm not here to start problems, either."

"What are you here for?" She leaned on the wall and cracked a few fingers. "And remember, you have to be good at lying if you're gonna lie."

He turned and observed the wall on Jessica's right, cusping the frame of his glasses. "I was out for a stroll, hunting lynxes."

Jess lost her grin. She beamed menacingly at the fake worker, invisibly nervous. 

"It was you, wasn't it?" he continued, gently removing his glasses. He had blue eyes and propelled a haughty posture, awfully laid back. "Someone knew how to remove ransomware from Jeffrey's Vit, that douche."

That's how he found me?

"Is that to say someone in this room installed Ransomware into harmless Jeffrey's Vit?"Jessica said coyly.

"Maybe someone fooled a mutual acquaintance into installing Trojan software via the promise of unlimited anime. And he just happened to surrender his PHI at the first opportunity, hence downloaded the malware encrypting all his precious, illegal downloads—a software adapting to his cheap anti-virus so as to remain hidden from detection until the moment where he would have no choice but to pay in order to regain all that precious content. Simple ransomware with such a small clock that no random person could possibly decrypt within the allotted time, and unlikely to reach someone who could. And yet—"

Jessica was snoring out loud by the door.

"That's very funny," he snarled.

"Yes, it is!" she jumped. "You were saying?"

The red-head started from the beginning, so Jessica resumed her snoring.

"Are you done?" he asked.

"Are you done?" Jessica snapped. "Ever hear of short and sweet? If I wanted a lecture, I'd have gone to uni! The Bible was written faster, dick."

"Alright. Jeffrey's encryption was cracked so quickly it made me curious. Very curious."

"So you decided to moonlight as a fake maintenance guy, which implies that you were stalking me. On the spectrum of weird, that falls on the dark side."

"Police work!" he defended. "Ever watch old cop movies?"

"Define 'old' and define 'cop'."

"I nailed it down to someone in his building, someone Jeffrey had immediate access to. Then I tried to hack the elevator recordings—"

"You know, I have seen films with terrible villains," said Jess. "The ones who explain their entire plan. Those had terrible crackers, too."

The stranger's grin was never-ending. "Maybe I justed wanted to meet Lynx for myself."

"No idea what you're talking about."

Again, the stranger eyed the wall behind the shelf and straightened his glasses. "I can only imagine the custom specs in that motherboard. What kind of TPU are we talking?"

Jessica's grin fell. Is this dude going to leave soon, or am I going to have to shock him with fifty-thousands volts of electricity? Slyly, she fastened her goggles, saw highlighted tools on the stranger's person. Surprisingly, there were no weapons. "What kind of TPU does the stalker in my room use?"

"I don't. Which begs the question: what would you do with a stronger rig than what you already have?" He stepped closer.

"I would hack the sun."

"What does that even mean?"

"Beware. You're every second in here multiplies the chance of being made."

The stranger breathed in then breathed out. "Some people have been asking about Lynx on Ghost Wire, among other places. Apparently, he or she has been unresponsive all day. He put his glasses on. "What time did you get back?" He took his glasses off.

Jessica knew the question was rhetorical, but the very real sense of being stalked made her skin crawl. Two steps. The stranger took two more steps forward. He had eyed the wall three times, behind which lay Jessica's computer. He must've had X-ray glasses that saw everything, her desktop and more. Plus, he was too confident. His resources had to be substantial.

"I can tell you work for yourself," she said, "but you also work with someone big, or something... A place full of secrets."She beamed. "You know all about Goliath."

At long last, the stranger stepped back. His lower lip sank. "It takes one to know one. If I were you, I'd watch out for corporations, if you worked with any." He casually stepped toward the hallway. "Nice poster."

"Thanks, but you haven't even checked my heating. What kind of handyman are you?" She could feel his eye rolls as he stepped outside. 

The stranger turned, face white in the apartment's light. "In the future, you may refer to me as Amon."

"Capture," Jessica whispered. The so-called Amon disappeared. As soon as the door shut, she blew a deep breath and removed her gloves. With no more desire to sleep, she converted her room for the desktop. "Babel on. Ghost Wire Forums." Username into the search bar, she found a total of two users inquiring after Lynx. Procel and Helios.

Procel's post pertained to salts in a digital signature. Jessica laughed. Helios' was about backdoors: 'How does a public key grant access to SK-3?' followed by a request for possible fixes. "How would I know?" she said. She then thought about it. "SK-3? Why the heck would anyone ask me about SK-3?

"If SK-3 had a built-in backdoor, then there would be a private key. Of course, if the key is tethered to a digital signature, then a forged certificate could give a stranger access to a software's administrative functions. But, whoever's forging the certificate had better be epic." Jessica went over the steps further in her head. "If the backdoor's been hijacked, you're pretty effed unless your software no longer uses the algorithm."

She was suddenly smitten by a revelation. David, her client, had never named the encryption software she diagnosed. It was a very point-and-shoot type of deal, thanks to connections and reputation. She had never mentioned SK-3 in the forums. She did not know Helios, but, whoever they were, they were connected to Goliath. 

"Is that you, David?

"Two possibilities: Goliath mishandled the implementation of its own cryptography and prematurely released it to the public; or, they knew about its issues and released it anyway. The problem with the former hypothesis is that Azareans never make mistakes, especially with something as important as inter-agency encryption. The latter possibility leaves one question: Why?

"Third possibility: somebody infiltrated  Goliath and compromised SK-3 stages of verification.

"...

"Nah..."

Anything released by Goliath is 'SmartBit' certified, short-hand for alien-implemented programming. 

SK-3 may have been the first task in which David asked Jessica to handle alien encryption, and she may have unknowingly cracked it, but there was only one way to know for certain.

The light from her windows practically dragged her out of sleep the next morning, programmed as they were to untint at dawn. She kicked her sheets and blew a long yawn before groggily muttering "Babel on." That's when she remembered to convert the room.

"Good morning, Lynx."

She grabbed her watch and checked the time: 9:32, then began counting the seconds.

"I'd never be on time if I wore makeup." She donned the red, white, and green jumpsuit; as well as the hat, board, goggles, gloves, and watch. "Check, check, check, and check." She touched the pad that unveiled her desktop, to input a few functions into the computer's command prompt.

"Confirm input times, Babel."

"11:52. 12:15."

When the furniture reset, she departed. Out the door for another day on the job.