Through the Looking Glass by Heather Lewis Chuck He sat alone in the cramped room illuminated by two monitors. He waited for his shift to end. Afterwards he would be on call; a slave to faceless white collar overlords. A yellow memo pad scrawled with notes and a case folder lay next to his keyboard. He had been attentive at the beginning of his shift, noting her activities and eccentricities in the way she did things, but the night had weighed on him. This last hour he had not managed to find anything worthy of writing about at all. A set of headphones plugged him into the audio feed of a scratchy audio card on her laptop. Another agent had been watching her for weeks; he was just a temp. Another case in a neverending string of persons of interest. The left monitor showed him a live feed through the laptop camera. He felt lucky that her model did not include the green recording light. Though it would have only been another few steps to disable it, it would have been easier to get caught. The firmware on her router was a joke. What was her name again? He lifted the case file to read the label on the manilla folder. He narrowed his eyes and scoffed. A code name. He flung the folder and it landed in disarray on top of a filing cabinet. Why am I watching this chick if I don't even have the clearance to know her name? He leaned back in the chair and propped his feet up. She had returned from some conference so she was tidying up the place. Music played from her laptop as she was folding laundry. The right monitor showed no interesting packet flow from her internet connection, just a call from a client to some file sharing server. He had surfed through her music collection yesterday. Anyone who listened to Katy Perry was a nonstop train to snoozeville. All the computing power at their fingertips and somehow the human element was still used to spy on the human element. He counted down the days to when he would be replaced by a fancy algorithm on some supercomputer. Although he hated it, this gig beat working in a cubicle farm where all the drones were plugged into their screens. They hardly ever looked at one another. A few with more gall would laugh and trade pictures of who they were watching. Never did he imagine that this is where he would end up. He had always aspired to more. "Hey Chuck." His relief nudged his shoulder. Chuck jolted awake and nearly fell out of his chair. "Good morning. Anything new?" "Hey Lance, I didn't even hear you come in." Chuck rubbed his eyes. How long had he been asleep? "Nothing new here." Chuck said through a yawn. "Not unless you count the cat bringing in a dead bird." "Yeah, Fuzz is quite the hunter. A week ago it was a lizard." Chuck held back a quip. His relief had about as much personality as a wet mop and he cared about extending pleasantries to him like a shotgun blast to the face. It was better to not engage him. He signed out, got up from the chair, and stretched. "Have fun." **** Chuck took a long drag from his cigarette. "You want another?" the bartender asked. "Yeah Sal, make it a double." Sal retreated back down the bar to fill his order. He exhaled. A long trail of smoke floated sadly towards the ceiling like a ghost of lost ambition and failed dreams. "Here you are Chuck." Sal slid the glass over to him. He took a long swallow from the glass. The whisky no longer burned. He was feeding the warm glow. He rolled the contents of glass watching the liquor swirl and ebb. The bar was sprinkled with other malcontents. It was late and most of the regulars were sleeping off alcohol comas in their soft warm beds. The people that remained were like Chuck staring maudlin into the holes of their lives. An odd couple at the other end of the bar was loud and obviously drunk. He paid them no mind and put out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray. A television buzzed above the long bar. A pretty blonde sat behind her reporting desk with the Faux News tag emblazoned on the corner of the screen. Her lips moved but he couldn't hear what she was saying. It was a replay of an earlier show. NSA FORCED TO SHUTDOWN SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM was written along the bottom. He chuckled to himself. When did the news become so funny? Chuck drained his glass and laid a couple bucks on the bar for Sal. Chuck wanted to speak to him, but he was busy with another customer. He swung around on the barstool to leave, colliding directly into a drunk young woman. "Hey now!" A young man had held her by the arm and kept her from falling back. Chuck stood up and blathered apologies at the two. Had he had more than he realized? He hadn't even noticed them behind him. "Are you alright honey?" The young man said to her. Chuck didn't bother sticking around to hear her reply. He stepped out into the night, breath steaming in the light of a street lamp, and pulled his coat close. He rubbed his hands together vigorously out of habit but it was the glow of cheap whiskey that staved off the cold. The gloaming was right around the corner and the skies were beginning to lighten. A fine crust of frost crackled underneath his boots as he walked. It was one of the few times of the day the city smelled clean and the streets were blessedly empty. There was no one to watch his walk of self pity to his shoebox apartment. There was no one to watch him fumble with his keys to open the gate and walk up to a poorly painted hovel with rusted railing in a row of matching squalid apartments. Even plants didn't waste their time growing here. The neighbors left much to be desired. He preferred not to think about them until they woke him up with yelling in the middle of the night on his days off. He turned the key in its lock, walked in, and forced the door close behind him. It never did fit in the jamb the way it was intended to. He flipped the light on. A single bed and desk dominated the space. A door led to his bathroom. It more resembled a hotel room than his home. He didn't care that the light was still on and his shoes were still on. Walking to the bed he let himself fall forward and was asleep before he hit the pillow. Jules She flew to Vegas tomorrow. She knew she could warn him then, in person, without using her cellphone. He had fallen off the regular channels during the past couple of months but knew from previous conversations that there were business opportunities he could not miss. So she bided her time and kept her nose clean. Mostly. The first time she could tell she was being watched she noticed some of her valid SSL certs weren't correctly signed. She noticed her tower turn on of its own volition. She noticed a process that had not been there before. A slight drop in her bandwidth. She knew Kevin had something to do with it, but the problem with prodigies was that they always believed themselves invincible. She imagined him singing "Can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man" all the way into a prison cell. Kev had done some shady applications with even shadier organizations even after she warned him not to. Her crime was that she knew him. She neatly folded her laundry and set aside the items she would take with her into her open suitcase. Music played from her open laptop on the kitchen table. It stared at her with a lifeless black screen and she shivered. She could only imagine who was watching her and hoped her imagination was more frightening than what actually was. The past week she had tried to act normally and put her new found knowledge out of her mind. She had nothing to hide so they had nothing to find, right? Whoever 'they' was. She finished packing her suitcase and rolled it to the door. About now would be the time she would sit online until half past midnight, but she couldn't bring herself to touch her laptop. She shut off the lights and went to bed instead. She lie awake. Her eyes were two lasers burning holes into her ceiling. Kev was going to be lucky if he didn't need a straw to breathe out of once she was done with him. **** The plane ride was nice enough. The cabbie was a little chatty kathy on the way to her hotel, but he was pleasant and only meant well. By contrast the clerk at the check in had hardly given her a second glance. The hotel was packed with various people she could immediately tell were here for the conference. Groups of two or three headed to and from the conference hall. She always loved the mohawks. A group of men in collared shirts stood in a circle near the bar carousing. Had no one told them they were far too overdressed? She had been on edge the night before and tried to sleep through the flight to no avail. Her exhaustion was present on her face so she stopped to drink an espresso at the first opportunity. Afterwards, she rolled her suitcase up to her floor. The room had more room than she needed, a large bed, and a view, but it was Vegas; each casino along the strip was a different stage of beautiful debauchery. She didn't bother unpacking because she had no idea what awaited her here. She stared out of the window for awhile, watching the strip. The pretty lights filled her with a twinge of melancholy. She checked her phone. Defcon23 had been going on for a few days, but she wasn't just here for Defcon. Kev would be at the DC407 party. Now she had to make sure she was there. **** She waited in a line at the door amongst a group of young men, an obvious stripper, and a neckbeard that most of them avoided because of the smell. A doorman held them back until other patrons left. She hadn't seen Kev yet and felt nervous. What if she didn't find him here? What then? She had felt relieved at leaving her laptop at home for once, but loathed the idea of trying to contact him here. Two men in zootsuits left the party. One of them cradled an open bottle of vodka with a straw. The bouncer let in the couple in front of her. She tried to look past the shoulder of the bouncer into the party. Music had spilled out into the hallway but nothing could be seen past the foyer. A few people clustered together in the entryway, but no one she recognized. Behind her a true line had formed. Some spoke about a talk they saw. Others carried on the party in the hallway. The bouncer moved aside for a group of four to leave and let her and a group behind her in. Past the entryway the room opened up. People filled every available alcove. The open bar was packed. A man made drinks in red solo cups to a thirsty crowd. Half of them danced in place with drink in hand. Across the room a small crowd stood around the DJ watching him turn knobs and cheering him on. No Kev. Around the corner the crowd thinned around two scantily clad women and a fully clad man in a bathtub. He sang aloud and out of tune while raising his glass in a toast. Still no Kev. Finally she spotted him sitting in a tight knit group in a corner of the next room. He had shaved his head into a mohawk since the last time she saw him, half calf combat boots resting on a table filled with various fallen soldiers. She didn't recognize the man he spoke to. They were in such heated discussion that he didn't look at her until she was standing next to him. His eyes grew as large as the grin on his face. "JULES!" He moved over to give her more room, resting his arm on the back of the couch. He noticed she didn't return his easy geniality and his face hardened. "Tell me what's wrong." "I should kill you Kev. You've been bad again." "No worse than usual, love." He laughed. "I want to laugh with you Kev, but I'm serious." She paused. "Someone is watching me." She sat down next to him in a huff, both relieved and frustrated to have found him. "Why so serious? Give me your phone." She reached into her purse and gave him her phone. He proceeded to flip through screens faster than she could process. As he worked his expression grew more grave. He gave her phone to his friend who had been listening intently. They exchanged a look and Kev made a motion for him to leave. "Wait." Kev pulled his friend aside and spoke such that she couldn't hear him. They both turned to look at her for a moment before finishing their conversation. His friend left with her phone. At her protest Kev turned to her. "I need a burner laptop, there's only so much I can do from here. " He lay back against the couch and spoke so that only she could hear. "How involved do you want to be in this? Could I interest you in an adventure?" Chuck His eyes were crusty with sleep when he awoke. Sunlight streamed through his curtains onto his face. He was definitely hungover. He was in the same place he remembered, facedown on his made bed, shoes still on. He groaned as he reached up to wipe the sleep from his eyes. "Take your time mate we have all day." Chuck went wide-eyed and sat up quickly, head spinning. He groaned again and tried to block the sunlight from his face. "What is this? Who are you?" Jules stood next to Kev. "I think you know who I am." Chuck recognized her. It was the woman he had been watching. More importantly, it was the couple from the bar. He looked around for his phone, panicking. "Looking for this?" Kev held up a small black object. His phone. "What? How? What do you want? You obviously don't want me dead or I would have woken up that way." "Smart bloke this one." "And you!" Chuck waggled a thick finger at Jules. "I was just watching you!" Jules smiled. "She really looks like me, yeah?" "But who...?" Chuck blustered. He was too hungover for this. "You're asking the wrong questions, mate." Kev smiled. "I don't make demands unless I have to. You should be asking what kind of deal I want to make. " "What...what kind of deal?" "The kind of deal where you give me the information I want about your organization and your mate Lance and your life finally becomes everything you've aspired to." Kev motioned to the apartment. "Unless this is what you really want out of life."