Zero

As Sophia's rejuvination took place in the coach section of a 747 jetplane, another descent into darkness was taking place in a jungle much farther south. Girl-Zero, Kylie’s journey

Clang, clang. Those sounds against the stained steel were barely heard over the heavy barrage of water droplets hitting inward grooves, carved into the rooftop like tunnels on the underside of a tennis shoe. These rivets lead to several pipes that brought the water inside the structure for processing, and a trickling sound was added to the intense ambience during the monsoon season, the quietest sound in amongst the dripping of drops, drooping leaves with splattering spittle from the sky, puddles unprotected against the natural onslaught; deliverance from peace, stillness and evaporation.

Four feet tall, feminine girlish figure, with a light to medium grey exterior, with pulsating shock absorbers hidden beneath a smooth metal alloy named Eranium. Clang, clang, limbs covered with grey storm cloud coloured finish having it resemble the oncoming thunder raging behind her eyes. Clang, clang, a light blue flickering, as the tears from God, strike let pellets against the bullet-proof glass with a clinking sound resembling a stained glass window. Clang, clang, "a petite collection of curves covers this sleek, economically efficient exterior neo-modern design covered by a beautifully textured medium grey paint finish!" Clang, clang, "the latest in bio-mechanical processors, yielding 25,000mhz. While remaining perfectly cool, the processor unit composed of the latest in bio technology perfectly synchronizes on mission data, adaptability, tactical reasoning with protocols built through our patented Artificial Intelligence, without the use of algorithms. The first artificial brain!" Clang, clang, the pitter patter of raindrops, and no imprints of her foot steps left behind.

And, before any of the impressed speechless military 'customers' composed of generals, their advisors, prime ministers and their chief of staff, corporate presidents and their vice-presidents, could ask the large white Zero on her back remains a mystery she did a double flip into the air and then bowed afterwards with a giggle for which she received quite the applause after group grasped their breath. Though, everyone was calling her Zero, that the end of the day. Many wondered what their version would be numbered as, in order to keep track of how many orders might be given that day, though none would dare write the number down, too obvious.

Everyone just assumed it was a designation, for property, a reference number, an indexing method for material parts, a cataloguing barcode, and deep inside a voice, a murmuring whisper (whimper), barely audible inside the mind, a sound file erased as erratic erroneous garbage caused by a passing breeze, the faint resembling syllables pronounced... 'a name?' Girl-Zero, became her nickname after that day, as was intended. They lacked the creativity to come up with a name themselves, so someone had the bright idea of putting a large 0 on her back and seeing what came of it. She was a prototype model after all, meant to display the capabilities of Memnes Tech International for their big debut into the military and corporate security weapons division. Many did not expect her to remain public beyond the press conferences, and certainly not operational. Many of the consultants, advisors and vice presidents, had their stooges try to calculate the operating costs alone and many wild and crazy numbers were given for fear of coming up with nothing at all. Heaven forbid someone forgot their scientific calculator.

Most of the vice presidents, scoffed at the numbers giving only a very mild terse glance at the unfortunate soul silly enough to try the social experiment. Those that did not, knew it was beyond calculation to keep all of her parts running smoothly, let alone the insurance if these fools actually applied this extreme piece of hardware after field testing was complete. The thought of being the sponsor, or the contributor of field tests meant you had leverage to watch the testing in progress, or at least, have the best Intel on the results, and perhaps information on schematics including upgrades, modifications and the ability to introduce new technologies once they were published.

Girl-Zero, was proving to herself, that beyond the biomechanical circuitry hardwired with veins, synthetic conductive brain tissue, that the human soul still resided in the depths of her. And, for the life of her, she could not understand why that was so. Her optical scanner's detected no artillery on the rooftop, nor any cameras, or motion detectors. It was, as if they did not expect a halo insertion from the surrounding canapé, from a drop point three miles away. A single intruder, against a whole complex, seemed inconceivable even if he or she found a way inside.

All of the soldiers were equipped with large automatic rifles that also acted as Grenade launchers with incendiary napalm rounds. Besides whenever someone is armed with Napalm, and it's publicly announced in the top military science journals, executives get a memo advising against sending armed soldiers to extract the latest new thing. And, as well they should, less grieving families crying over a closed casket funeral. And, that fit into everyone's budget just perfectly.

When the initial showing of this device was hosted by a corporate conference in Brussels, rumours began circulating about a new wave of artificial intelligence was engineered by the leading scientist Dr. Ronald Scremling. All allegations of a prototype brain being developed as part of a secret joint venture between leading robotics’ experts Adapts, and Memnes Incorporated who was known for their bio-engineering division and international relief efforts across the world in diseased stricken parts of the world. Their relief efforts catch headlines every year, as they find new cures for horrible diseases. It is little wonder they receive big corporate sponsorship, and are the world leaders in the battle against HIV-Aids, and all types of diabetes. Still, everyone could put their finger on the strange causal relationship there, but none would say it. Due to a morbid fear that seemed incomprehensible, and a convenient truth that money was waiting to be made.

And, as well, this mission was always theorized in the wild imaginations of writers, publicists making the next big publicity stunt. No one knew that the prototype displayed to the industrial leaders was already field tested, and had been involved with several real military insertions throughout the United States, Canada and Brazil. And, it had been instrumental with viral hotspots, nuclear meltdowns and chemical accidents. No one at Memnes, or Adapts doubted Girl-Zero's abilities, and the remarkable achievement in both scientific fields, noteworthy of mention in the annals of robotics, artificial intelligence, and bio-engineering.

Girl-Zero, was not totally alone, as a calm female voice chattered in her ears. "Zero, it seems the Intel we received from the Brazilian authorities was correct. This facility relies on the inaccessible terrain to make the rooftop inaccessible to mobile units. If these schematics are right, the entry points should appear as exhaust vents, 25 feet from your current position straight ahead. This building has eleven floors, some built right into the solid limestone underneath. We located the target on the first floor of the basement levels. Getting there is the first priority. The materials seem to be composed of light building materials, likely, drywall, wood and paints. Though, there is no intel as to what the materials will be in the secured levels.“ Girl-Zero noted the last few words and replied, “understood, In the event of radio silence, I will be extremely careful.“ And Girl-Zero's eyes looked ahead of her, twenty five feet, and through the relentless sobbing from the clouds, Girl-Zero caught sight of exhaust fumes leaving an open air vent.

"Confirmed, entry point. 20 feet." Girl-Zero stopped there knowing the rest was erroneous to her operator. A quick scan revealed nothing set in place to reveal her location, cause an EMP pulse, or report a malfunction. She reached the vent, tore it out, climbed inside and replaced the vent. It was dark inside the vent, and Girl-Zero had to run, the instant she entered the vent her sensors detected a sound of whooshing air. No Intel how long the process would restart if she missed this cycle of recycled air. A quick scan of the interior detected a four and a half foot tall crawl space, well crawl space for any person that is. She ran as soon as her feet hit the steel, except she ran like a dog. All four legs for increased mobility, her hands resembled her feet then with subtle shifts in the positions of fingers and the wrist. Imbedded in her programming, was the ability to adapt to surfaces, given a time-frame and structural apparatus, she could be a monkey.

Girl-Zero was accessing her stored schematics file while she ran, full tilt, down the vent oblivious to the noise she might be making and what triggers might be set off by that noise. She was five feet from the vent before she went into a dive, legs first, towards the open vent shaft when she heard her operator say. "You are going into one of the main air exhaust shafts recycling the air from the furnaces and the main labs two floors below you." A subtle, change of pitch, from the usual matter of fact voice, caught Girl-Zero's attention. The slight suddenness of the intake of air denoted an attempt to withhold a gasp, as a toxicity report flashed in Girl-Zero's left eye. Searin gas, though it did not melt through her metallic exterior, but it would kill anyone foolish enough to enter, or anyone caught anywhere near the facility. "I now know why they did not protect against a halo insertion, the soldiers would be dead before they hit the roof." The normally, cherry young woman's voice, sounded aghast then, only for a moment, besides... a mission was at hand.

Girl-Zero, entered the second air vent with a crash, and the scattering of metal, as it hit another steel floor below it. A loud clank, with several scattering bits of screws, bearings, and ripped pieces of steel tumbling, sliding and colliding with a hard metal surface. The sounds were bouncing, as much as the metal was, and it was then that the cherry voice came in with a chide. "You were designed to be quiet, as well as, quick ya know." The voice almost scoffed, was it playful? or was it intended to sound playful. Girl-Zero didn't compute the inferences of the sudden rise in pitch and fall in the despair she heard previously. "The ventilation shaft here is designed to be loud, likely to set off sensors built a few feet below of loud vibrations. I've likely blown the whole mission by now, yay me." Girl-Zero, despite her programming, had an indestructible sense of humour. The cheery chuckled but otherwise fell silent.

This ventilation shaft ran for quite awhile, but it had many exits leading down left and right, on a slope. Despite her state of the art scanners, the distance was too far to calculate. "I hit a main shaft, the target is, 250 feet, North West. Schematics show these vents lead too crew quarters, labs, and bathrooms. That explains the effluence I detected, and the residual whooshes of fans. Mmm, Chilli Mac." The female voice just laughed. Girl-Zero could almost hear her head shaking from side to side. And then, popped a serious question. "Did you get anymore information on the package I am collecting?" And, the voice sounded normal enough, but the hesitance on the other end noted quite a lot of things. "Yes, um... I found it that it's schematics and detailed blueprints, but anything further than that is classified." The voice sounded nervous, if only slightly. "Classified, just like me." Girl-Zero found an uneasy comfort in the similarity there, but she had cards to play. "Remember who else can get it for you. No one." And, hey, it was true. A mobile unit of commando's would have already been killed, before they even entered the building. Schematics showed dart guns that fired silently from the trees unto the wary, and unwary. What the darts were filled with, made a lot of people sick to their stomach just to think about. Not to mention, the cloud of Searin gas that was released earlier, along with other unnamed toxins not usually found in exhaust of any sort. The land surrounding this facility, thusly, is not inhabited.

Sometimes, the neighbouring villages disappear due to shifts in the wind patterns. Due to this, the sparsely populated region is in constant flux, and generally avoided. But, despite the evidence towards this fact, Girl-Zero's confidence is cut short by a matter of fact feminine voice. "Yes, that's true. But, while that's true, you've never asked before.. so." Girl-Zero, did not quite understand why she asked, perhaps curiosity. But, she realized, that she did this work because she was built to, because there was no one else to do it. And those reasons satisfied her. On any other day maybe. The one reason that always satisfied her though, and the one that burned deep inside, was that she had to.

There was little say in the matter, when her boss could pull the plug, and she would be without a home, regular upgrades, or power. She often speculated, at any given time, they could shut her down. But, she never confirmed it, she only logically came to that conclusion and did not feel as though the data was sufficient enough, to give it a whirl. She was playing with a large assumption and it did affect a lot of pricey hardware, hardware she could bargain with eventually. Except, bargaining with herself, when they had the keys to her skull, did not make for a logical deduction. And, furthermore, she hated the implications of bargaining her own body to win freedom with people as ruthless as this.

She came upon a vent shaft that sounded quieter than the others. And, she got up on her two legs, her hands returning to look like normal hands again. Her wrist adjusts itself back to it's normal position. Her feet and legs shifted slightly to accommodate quiet movement and she crouched as not to rub against the walls, or the ceiling. The building schematic showed this to be a utility room, i.e. more likely to be unoccupied upon entry, but one can never be too sure with humans. Sometimes, they are in these rooms for reasons no one would clearly understand. Upon reaching the end of the shaft, she detected no noises, voices, mutterings or other odd scratching noises she sometimes encountered. Scratching she hoped was mice trying to pry open a hole in the wall paper.

She carefully opened the vent and slide through the two foot long opening onto the floor with a soft clank. She saw various chemicals, peroxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulphate, nitrogen and many others. All with large red labels, and the words, "Do not handle". "Aww, it's my favourite part, the toy room and I can't play with any of it!" Girl-Zero's voice actually sounded believably disappointed. "Oh now, if you do that. This entire section will be dead in less than 30 minutes." The young woman chuckled at the end, with a light content sigh. "Yeah, if any of them tip one over... by mistake.. ya know.." Girl-Zero said that as she looked around and found Arsenic, Hydrogen Bicarbonate, and Potassium. All of these were in big white jugs cluttered with many other white jugs held by metal shelves, that looked quite heavy. Another thought did concern her, if she combined the wrong chemicals and they exploded, she could be damaged dramatically, however slim a chance that was. "Setting detox point. 1AAB76 Alpha." Girl-Zero said, and put that into a directory all it's own. The voice on the other end said, "Confirmed here."

It was critical for her survival that she use everything in her disposal, to do anything she needed to do. Chemicals, were a good source of stimulants for lots of activities and finding a supply like this meant she could always come back and mix the right ones together. The young woman's voice came on again, "Set three additional detox points, within your vicinity. Sending now.... sent." Girl-Zero saw her schematic icon blink, and she activated it to display three more detox points, with unknown contents, two halls over. She closed that file, for now. Never know what comes in handy during a mission.

"Thanks. Schematics show this is a biological research division, lots of white coats, light armed regiment, medium surveillance. Locked doors with key cards and pin codes, cameras, a detox scan at the main exits, what did they do, trap the Easter bunny?" Girl-Zero's voice sounded light hearted, amused even. "Yes, they trapped the Easter bunny, now let's hope it never gets out, shall we?" The young woman's voice sounded sure of herself. "If you say so." Girl-Zero replied back.

She opened the door slightly, and peaked out, she saw no one moving in the hallways, but knew there could be a camera catching her every move. There was no window to this door and the bottle of the door was sealed to the floor. She found opening it released the air from inside, as if it was designed to pressurize this room in case of a spill. She would have to rig the door if she needed to clean this floor. She hoped, she wouldn't have to. The hallway seemed empty, but a sensor picked up that a camera was watching the hallway, as it turned left Girl-Zero crept out of the doorway careful to keep out of sight right below the camera. As soon as the door sealed with a whooshing sound, Girl-Zero went down the small corridor, as soon as the camera was turning to look right. Running six steps, an imperceptible twitch in her lower extremities causes her to dart left on a dime. The camera, finishing it’s rotation did not catch the petite metallic form causing a small shadow on the grey tiled floor. The kind of shadow, that only lightly tints the surfaces it is cast upon, like the smallest amount of mildew on the shower curtain, like the blending of dark to light, when the sun is temporarily hidden behind a cloud.

Girl-Zero did not waste anytime moving, as she heard footsteps coming towards her. The heel-toe clopping sound of high heels, and a rustle of trousers against each other, along with pieces of paper folding against each other. A busied mind reading over the words, diagrams and results of a hard days battle against preconceived ideas. Silent, and yet loud between the ears, Girl-Zero knew the type. Quickly, her hands and feet stuck against the wall and held on while air rushed out of the zone between the drywall and the metal. The sound, loud enough to be heard, but not understood right away echoed through the halls, and might have caught attention of the oncoming woman, if she was not buried in her papers, or more likely trying to surface beneath the pile of them.

Still, an odd noise for this area of the compound. It made the petite woman raise her oval sculpted face for a moment and narrow her eyes just slightly, “what made that sound?” and then she heard several more that grew louder, as she approached. Something was moving, she knew that much, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. Having never recognized the sound of suction against a dry wall surface the popping did not immediately click within her head, beneath the well-groomed brunette dyed hair. She went back to her papers, after a glance of what was ahead of her, nothing… so she continued on her way. Her mind had a lingering thought that knowing was not important to the job at hand, and so she went back to her work trying to make sense of the latest results splattered on the pages in front of her. “It doesn’t make sense” Girl-Zero distinctly heard, a slight eastern accent from Jordan, she guessed.

Girl-Zero was flat against the ceiling, not making a sound, not moving an inch in any direction. Not pressing against the ceiling while the researcher was right beneath her. Simply staying still enough to avoid any random noises that inevitably occur with movement of almost any kind. Noises happen, and Girl-Zero knew, to be silent there had to be a reduction of movements. Enough reduction meant you were invisible, or invisible enough. The wall had slight, small indentations of hands and feet going upwards towards the ceiling, noticeable if you were searching for it, or perhaps by chance, it would be found and pondered over. Girl-Zero did not care because she was not seen, and as the clopping heel-toe sound of expensive high-heels turned the corner, Girl-Zero dropped from the ceiling and she continued traversing the hallway. Seeing lots of depressingly sterile grey drywall paint transforming creative potential into a very professionally manufactured prison. She wondered at the lives these people must lead, and if it was better than her own. Certainly, they had free time, time to socialize, as humans were known to do frequently, otherwise they were cut off and became destitute creatures of loneliness, wanting human contact and yet terribly afraid of the consequences of relationships of any kind.

Girl-Zero did not sense the trappings of an underlying fear of relationships, people or friends in that woman. The seriousness of her step, the power behind each collision of her heel against the tile flooring, the way none of the walls burdened her stature, the focus and the delicate hands handling the papers told Girl-Zero all she needed to know. People lived well here, better than she, at least. That made her happy, in the depths of science, research, cold hearts and colder minds, there was a measure of humanity within these walls. Despite how much the dank starkness tried to evict it from those they held within them.

Girl-Zero did not spy any further camera’s but she did expect another at the end of the hallway she was currently in, it made perfect sense to keep tabs on your prisoners after all. Girl-Zero did not think of these people as anything else, despite how pampered they might be. Her sensors did not pick up any coming up head. Just a long winding hallway, turning left, and right, sometimes sharp corners that would catch anyone else off guard causing them to stumble. It was in one of these hallways, she came upon the tail end of a conversation where a measured, eloquent sounding voice of about 35 came through loud and clear “Or rather than your overly simplified explanation, Tom. It makes more sense to say ‘We ratified the reduction protocols by 50% due to the ingenuity of the QA department.’ right?” And another, younger sounding voice, replied. “Yes, alright. I will present to Edwards when I see him. Any idea where he is?” Sounding much more chipper, alive even, than the dead sounding monotone drone that was underlying the hum of the light fixtures.

“Don’t worry about it, you only told Bill and John. And they have their own country where they dream up things to tell oversight, and can’t come up with a reason why oversight does nothing with their claims. Just keep a lid on experiments with the adapters for the T1. We can’t replace that if one of the conductor’s blew.” Said with a reassuring tone that seemed to elicit a relieved sigh from the younger gentleman. “Alright, absolutely none from here on in. I didn’t know what I was thinking that another circuit could increase efficiency. You know the polarization switches and--” the excited voice stops suddenly and hurried feet walk away in a rush. When the business shoe fades into the distance, the older wiser voice speaks with obvious irritation as he flips open something with a snap “Damn kid, going to blow up the whole place. Dimwit, he almost did too.” Girl-Zero couldn’t hear what else was said, she guessed into a phone of some kind and after a few minutes, the weathered voice spoke again. “Yes, alright, alright, yeah no problem. No more Harvard flunkies yeah, world’s a happy place with less of them in it, I agree entirely. Giving myself a pat on the back now sir, we averted calamity.” And then silence again, after a minute or two, a few more words slipped out, “No, no one will miss him, least of all me. Goodbye sir.” Another snap and slower steps followed in the younger man’s footsteps. Something about the walk resembled a funeral march.

Girl-Zero waited for the man to continue on his way, listening to the footsteps breaking the back of the floor with each heel of his leather skin black shoes. Deep inside her, stirred the disgust and the relevance of problems and solutions. The absence of hesitation, and a cool fluid movement with which she walked, she knew she was as deep and dead as this man. Perhaps, worse, no… she knew she was much worse. Capable of much worse, and had done much worse in the past.

She followed this man as quietly as she could, though she waited while he walked down a long narrow corridor by himself, as there was nowhere to leap or hide behind if he were to turn for any reason. She did not like having no contingency plans for eventualities of that nature. She held herself in high esteem for a well-thought out execution. However, deep inside the condescendingly derisive nature of the last words to the younger man, there was a spark of life holding onto the young man’s recent accomplishment. If the whole place blew, his tenure at this god-forsaken place would be over, if only that little brat succeeded!

But no, it was not to be. And Girl-Zero, was happy about that, it meant her mission was still a go. Despite what that might mean for her future, probably another mission after that, and another and another… she expected and did not resent the repetitive nature of this work, after all, who else got to play hide and seek with thousands of people everyday. And, what’s more, she got to go into every door marked, “No Entry”.

She saw the older man, in a dark blue sports jacket, with matching slacks and shining black shoes turn a corner on the long walk and allowed her to traverse the hallway without fear of being caught. In mere moments, while they were alone, a female voice popped into her ears. “So far, so good. Your coming up on the main reactors, now Zero. From the last conversation, we were able to determine that another extra shift of engineers is on duty to fix a major overload caused by “juniors” experiment. So this area will be highly populated and likely, very annoyed, do not get in their way. As well, because of this overload, many of the sensors are offline, but they are working fast to repair the grid, but if their circuit boards are blown, or if capacitors are melting, it could take longer than that. Do not take extra time to get out of here, if the reactor’s meltdown, or…” And Girl-Zero, replied, “An Electromagnetic release will short circuit everything in my body and I will be dead, I know that.” And the worried feminine voice replied,

“That’s correct.”

Girl-Zero hated that weakness, and it was her only real weakness. Electricity does not play well with itself, she knew. There was a saying, “Too much of a good thing.” And it was true in her case.

A few fingers type in a fluid set of motions with her fingertips just lightly tapping each letter, as a small report was written. Summarizing the events so far, and how smoothly things are progressing. Girl-Zero was moving cautiously, but unlike other missions the sensitive nature of the compound could not known to have been compromised, otherwise… the media would hear about every dirty little project that was supposedly, “scraped”. And a hefty amount of untold tax dollars being spent in ways that went beyond dubious. But hey, it was the modern age, mature! Or so people would say, the cynical people, the bored and angry people. The ones that couldn’t quite grasp the extent themselves. And, most importantly, the ones that already knew stuff like this went down everywhere.

She had short brown hair that just tipped on her shoulders, a slim figure with a lot of tattoo’s on her arms and her back. Glimpses of dragons, flames and another life underneath the professional cheerful exterior. With a tap of her baby finger on her right hand, the message was sent to her companies client. A man none of them knew a lot about, only that he wanted a specific piece of information from the data files of a server located within the “non-existent” compound deep within the South American jungle and he was willing to pay through the grave to do it. He might as well, have sold his liver, right lung and part of his heart. It was astronomical, and in these days, they were not willing to negotiate, just accept. The kind of job everyone wants a piece of.

Everyone whispered though, as if on the tip of their tongues, held back by a polite demeanour and a strange sense of exciting fear, they had it on their fingertips. “a wealthy industrialist supporting the nationalist rebellion against the Russian government”, “a crazy rich business man involved with wet works, and cutting edge research with robotics, cybernetics and bio mechanical advances Scientific American only dreams about,” “a government spook sent to find information about a rival senator, to make a political move into the offices of corporate CEO’s,” but none of them could really say any of them with any conviction. As long as they all sounded important for a few minutes, who really got hurt? They all agreed that this job was lucrative like the health industry was to the insurance companies back in the early to late 90’s, something Senators quit their tenures for. As the rumours flew, the truth kept itself out of the conversation, and everyone agreed it was probably boring anyway.

In an office, a few thousand miles away, within a large dark office building. A square amongst a collage of light grey, white and brown circles, triangles, and octagonal shapes, there was something about it that didn’t fit in. The architecture seemed out of date, as if the building came out of the 1970’s and was transplanted in. The office was full of rounded edges, of mahogany, with a dark chocolate coloured finish. He was well built, and yet his mannerisms depicted that of a soft spoken man with a large sensitive spot. It almost betrayed his muscular build, and the way he moved with it gracefully, like a fighter. It was more than that, because his ability to be correct about everything that comes across to him, like some kind of machine. His smile had lots to say, and no one had the impulses to say it but him. And, what made everyone laugh with honesty was his nickname, “Mr. Impossible.” It was too arrogant to be taken seriously, and everyone jibed at him for it. He took it all in stride, and never got defensive, as if the name stuck to him like gum on the heel of sneakers might stick. He read a report with interest, his eyes scanning over the brief paragraphs indicating progress within the compound. Especially interesting, was the robots abilities to determine on it’s own denoting an advanced AI system component closely resembling a natural human brain, with some distinguishable differences. And, among these differences, was a cold rationality coupled with a light hearted humour that seemed to be passé about the harshest of human flaws. It was expected in a machine, but not so much in a person. Perhaps, the machine would not fault morally, within the secured walls of right and wrong where many people were at fault. Choosing lines and sides based on silly notions of justice, revenge and so forth.

It was experience that taught him to take these ideas into consideration because many people clung to them, as a support structure for their lives and how to live them, when it got in the way of decent discoveries and progress. At the top of the report, he raised his eyes back to a question the robot had asked of her operator, "Did you get anymore information on the package I am collecting?” and it raised an eyebrow. In all of the information he found about previous exploits it had never questioned anything it did. Stealing schematics for new biological delivery systems, blueprints for nuclear reactors, blackmailing senators with incriminating photographs, and framing high level executives with felony offences. All of this seemed remarkably well-done without any backlash, questions or speculation. Why now?

Mr. Impossible thought about this for a minute, and realized it may not be as important as quelling the questions, as they were symptoms of a greater understanding of the mission’s true goals. This was something he could not tolerate, nor would he dare let someone down there realize what he was hiring them to do. He picked up the phone and an older man’s voice came on the phone. The voice was husky, and full of grit, but the greeting proved he was worth his salt. “Mr. Master’s window repair, Robert speaking. How can I help you?” Mr. Impossible replied, “Hello, I am here regarding the window beneath the archway on 22nd street, near the bakery. It’s not fixed yet.” He sounded casual and even jubilant. Though, the last few words had an incurrent of concern hinted in the finality of the last “t” sound. The sound that stops the heart for a mere few seconds and then the body forgets all about it because there’s no basis to be afraid. Is there?

“Oh, we’re sorry, we’ve got a lot of customers and the waiting… wait,” a sigh escapes the husky voice, a long drawn out flight from the back of the throat to his teeth. Some banging sounds are heard, and loud footsteps. A loud slam enough to move the whiskers on Mr. Impossible’s cheek. “Yes, I can talk here. Is this Mr. Impossible speaking?” The voice sounded concerned and frightened indicated by the shakiness and random high pitches in his voice. “No, it’s his secretary Ralph Colders. We’ve received your report and we have found some discrepancies we would like to discuss with you.” Some silence after the matter of fact explanation, and “Ralph” continued on. “Namely, the question asked after insertion took place that was not properly addressed. We were curious as to why the nature of the mission was not detailed to the element.” The voice on the other end sounded more professional now, and more in control, the voice did not shake, and maintained an even tone. “Yes, we felt the nature of the mission was on a need to know basis, and we fear there might be a relationship formed for the top secret prototypes stored here and herself. If there were any others like her made, and so forth. We do not want to risk it.”

“Yes, I understand you government spooks do that kind of thing, need to know and all that. On this occasion though, we’ve authorized complete disclosure. Just because it’ll stop any further questions, otherwise agents just ask more and you know how that goes, Rob eh?” Mr. Impossible liked the idea of being other people, easy going, free spirited and light hearted. He felt these personalities gave the other person the ability to speak freely as well, to join in the happiness on the other end. “Yes, completely. We’ll detail the nature of the mission completely, thank you. And let your boss know there will not be any further discrepancies on this end from here on out.” It sounded serious, professional and measured. As if Robert was fighting the urge to be free spirited like “Ralph”. Perhaps, he dealt with everyone this way, or perhaps he was frightened by Mr. Impossible himself. Thought of him as one those insane people that went around doing whatever he pleased. Perhaps, it had nothing to do with him at all, but a rigid sense of professionalism. Mr. Impossible decided on the last one, not wanting egocentricity to take another victim.

“Sure, I’ll get right on that. He will appreciate your efforts, Robert. You have a good day.” And Robert replied with a bit of relief. “Yes, you as well, Mr. Colders.” A click and the phone was hung up. Aliases were something Mr. Impossible did on the spur of the moment, because it was easier being someone else considering the person he was had many facets that were easy to misunderstand and become the topic of conversation and within that reason, a yearning not to be understood, because it was less confusing for others to believe what he wanted them to believe, because the truth held many atrocities that were confusing even to the most knowledgeable mind, because he did not want the truth anymore, and mostly, because his real employer could be hurt with the truth. And because the truth was the only real weapon left in this world, an incorruptible center to which all that stands the test of time is built upon, he knew this while so many people did not.

Girl-Zero heard someone coming towards her before she climbed up the wall, more like scampered up the wall and hugged the ceiling where she became very still. A man in a grey overall suit came striding up not immediately noticing the slight indents on the walls, or the sounds that created them. Though, his eyes blinked, as he spotted small hands and feet leading upwards, he looked at them for a minute perplexed and then saw that they lead upwards. His head turned upwards following the tracks, as he spotted a square like piece of ceiling tile put perfectly in place above his head. But, no sign of anyone there and the tracks suddenly stopped there. Was what more confusing, that he found someone crawling up walls? Or that the tracks suddenly stopped and no one could have done this, no human being anyway. Due to the reduction of damage on the walls, no broken drywall bits on the floor, no chipped walls, no small holes for handholds. It didn’t make any sense that a person would do this.

“What the hell?” said the man in overalls, as he carefully scanned the area once more. He then shook his head confusedly, Walking away he stopped after a few steps to turn his head back towards the corner, he rubbed his chin. Thinking this over, he only knew of one creature with feet that small, a small child. But, a child couldn’t walk on the walls. He turned back and continued on his way, with a lot of weird questions stirring around in his head. Girl-Zero crept out of her hiding space, and dropped back down to the floor. She departed to the right wall that appeared to have an office light on at the middle of the hall. A light yellow colour splashed against the stark whiteness of the drywall pain provided some of the only variety on the surfaces of this compound. Girl-Zero heard no voices, except a few fingers typing away at a computer.

She approached quietly and then passed by the doorway, quietly as not to cause a stir. The hallway continued onwards for about seven meters and then turned left. With many offices further on, and many more keyboards typing away and murmurings of voices adding to the ambience of a normal office environment. She turned the corner and saw a busy office of many people walking about in every direction, great just what I need. She continued on spying a door to either side of her, the left was wide open while the right was left ajar. She saw that the left had three people in it, all huddled around a single computer, while the other remained quiet except for quiet murmurings and sounds of… unravelling, snuffling and a quiet girlish… giggle? Girl-Zero knew humans to be humans, and took an educated guess what was behind door number one.

“You know we can’t,” with a slight French accent was all that she needed to hear, and all that she heard. She saw glass above three feet ahead of her cutting off the remaining several rooms from each other, a clear view of several employees on the phones, writing reports, summaries, and some were annoyed and shaking their heads. Punctuated within the office were men in large overalls like the man Girl-Zero had evaded earlier, likely he would tell them of the strange experience if he returned. But, it was something she could not help. A missing person caused more questions to be asked, inquiries as to whereabouts and cause of death?

She strode low staying below the glass and she saw it was too busy to effectively creep by any given group because there were people going everywhere. She would inevitably be seen, her logical processor didn’t need to tell her that. The hallway offered many doorways, many that lead to occupied offices and others that people were leaving and entering too quickly to enter in and hide. But, hide for how long? It was something she didn’t want to do, besides the quicker she achieved her objective, the less chance there was of detection and complications arising from it.

She saw several open doors in front of her with lights flooding the hallway, and of all the doors that were open, there was one that was closed. The others were open, as well as the space directly above her that lead into a bright office. It seemed someone was speaking on the phone in that room, something about a stressful life here. The locked door looked like an unremarkable door, except that there was a code lock on the front of it 25 meters away. She heard the door behind her, to the right, shut rather loudly. They finally kicked it shut, typical people. The person on the phone turned their heads and muttered, “assholes” and then turned back talking on the phone. She reckoned that whatever was behind the locked door, was the server for the entire area. But, she would like to bypass the whole area if necessary, but her schematics didn’t show any vent shafts leading out of the area that were easy to get to.

She grasped onto the wall and quickly, and as quietly as she could, climbed into the office towards young lady speaking on the telephone. There was a few footprint sounds but nothing that made this woman turn her head. “Yes, I know about that. It was Roberta’s idea.” Some chatter on the other end ensued, as Girl-Zero quietly traversed the room to the other doorway to the woman’s right. “Wait, I think I have that here.” Some clicks with a mouse, and a few taps on the keyboard. “Wait, what was that?” And Girl-Zero, having nowhere to turn ducked low on the floor not making a move. But, it only lasted a second and the young woman continued on with her conversation. “Oh, never mind. So many strange noises in the place, I swear there must be ghosts here. Anyway, the 7A lab report..” and the conversation was dismally boring after that. Girl-Zero continued sneaking by her petite frame into the open doorway and then quickly ducked behind the wall, as she heard the woman get up from her chair. The high heels echoing in the hallway, as she stepped closer to the doorway. She looked down the hallway and saw a few men in dark grey overalls looking over a few papers attached to a black plastic clipboard. She hugged the wall making herself, as thin as she could, as the door closed shut. Moments later, the other door closed and this avenue was shut off. But, she moved beyond it just in time. There was a shadow in this area because the light wasn’t on, she climbed up the wall here and hid on the ceiling feeling she was exposed hanging onto the wall. In that corner, there was no door directly behind her, but there was full jug of water upside down on a large white platform with a dispenser below the water jug.

Her reasoning allowed her to realize that hiding in the shadows only worked well if the light did not reflect off of her and if she did not move very much, or at all. Though, she had to move and get beyond this point before she was detected, or worse. One advantage to this location was that she had a good view of everyone in the office. This allowed her to spy a black haired young man in a dressy blue shirt and dressy dark pants with matching leather shoes stride toward the water dispenser. She was hugging the ceiling and she saw his eyes not looking up, but rather forward with a smile on his face. The kind of confident smile that spoke of authority.

Perhaps, assumed authority. Girl-Zero didn’t want to contemplate the specifics too much. It was irrelevant. He took a paper cup from the stack on the side of the dispenser and then took some water, as the bubbles climbed from the bottom of the jug towards the top with a glup glup sound. He took a large gulp of water, standing up tilting his head back quickly with his eyes closed. He looked to be enjoying that cup of water and then looked forward again. She then thought of something, what if she walked on the ceiling? Considering how many people looked up to gaze at the ceiling, well some people did when they had no ideas about what to do next, or if they were bored or laying down. Still, it was better than walking around with all the activity around this area. She crept out from the shadow above the young man’s short black hair and into the office opposite the now closed office doors. An older man was sitting at a desk writing put something longhand that looked to be a letter to someone. He was focused on it and did not look up, as she made her way around the fluorescent light a meter long.

She activated her schematic then and it showed there were no stairways, but that the locked door did contain servers and an electrical box. She reasoned that a large enough short circuit could disable the servers entirely and cut security down. Then there would be evidence of tampering and coupled with the strange tracks found on the walls earlier, something could be theorized. But, still, if she managed to evade everyone in this office and move on to her objective without so much as a peep, who was the wiser. She was crawling on the ceiling into the original hallway where she entered the office looking at a group of three men in overalls walking towards her all discussing amongst themselves, and then briskly walked under her. She continued on her way above them making her way across the office past many busy workers and technicians.

She was lucky as well, all of the cameras were disabled in this section, otherwise making it past them without disabling them might have been impossible. Lucky for her technical breakdowns occurred, and even more so, that people were the ultimate cause of mechanical failure. It was a stroke of luck people worked here, and it was a stroke of luck some were poorly trained. Some, and not all, as she spotted the older man from before. The man that walked, as if he was holding a coffin. He was standing next to the young man he was speaking to before speaking amicably about his summer vacation, eliciting a lot of laughs from the young man. A shame he had no idea what was coming to him. A moment later, the older man clapped the younger man on the shoulder and started to lead him away from the group he was with. She overheard a snippet of the conversation. “Alright, we can take a look at the new virtual reality unit, because I think I can fix the resolution bug. If it works on this unit, we can program it into the rest. Where is it, left?” And the older man nodded faintly saying nothing. They continued their jovial attitude, as they walked under Girl Zero going in the direction she was heading.

She followed them on the ceiling having not been spotted yet. But, always ready to spring if she heard a voice indicating that someone saw her. They were walking at a normal pace, and did not seem hurried. Nothing about what the older man was saying, held any tension, or remorse. Something about this, seemed all too natural for him. Something Girl-Zero could relate to herself, and it bothered her. And, unlike everything else that came through on her data read outs, she was able to keep her emotional development secret by processing it as random data bits rather than a coherent code. It was disregarded and treated as erroneous data due to processing that had no relevance to the mission. Something no one knew she still possessed.

She continued onwards, following the two, trying not to make any noise as her feet and hands acted like suction cups with a very quiet release, as not to have any pops. They turned down a hallway and she quickly went after them happy to be out of the offices. Where it seemed someone swore rather loudly, as the lights dimmed for a moment or two, flicked back on and then some of them went dead. More shouting elicited from the office area and flashlights were turned on. As she turned the corner, they were in the room at the far end of the hallway based on the direction their voices were coming from. She continued crawling on the ceiling towards them, as she got closer parts of the conversation became relevant. “In fact, most of the experiments with these units has proven successful in making test environments for many combat simulations, and we’re very excited by their progress. Now if you will just take a seat here.” The older man said. The younger man laughed lightly as he said, “Oh cool, so I put this on.” As the older man closed the door, he said, “Yes.”

The voices were mumbled then, as a machine was turned on. Girl-Zero was right against the door then, as something heavy was put on the floor with a muffled clank. “Just listen to my voice, Tom. What your feeling is a light headedness due to the difference of perspective, everyone feels this at first. Just breathe deeply and it will pass shortly. You feel alright?” The older man spoke in a wonderfully jovial calm voice. With a soft, and warm undertone to it. She could hear through a vent right beside the door, as she heard a distant younger man’s voice say, “Yes, I feel fine.” The young man said it slower than usual, as if the words were not coming to his mind as quickly as normal. Somehow, something seemed wrong with the way the younger man was speaking. As if he was being drugged, or having his mind manipulated in some way. Perhaps, the VR unit had elicit programs that calmed the soldiers down. She did not know. But, the older man’s earlier comments about light headedness suggested drugs, perhaps, inhaled.

She continued to listen to the older man’s soothing voice, and something inside her tensed up. She was not soothed, and not calmed down. She felt a fear, stinging her. “I know this is your first time trying this Tom, so I want you to know that this data will help further research to start testing on a wider scale. We are going to present this soon to the board of directors. Tom, are you listening?” And another distant, perhaps more distant voice, said. “Yes, I am. Sounds wonderful.” He said in a long drawn out breath, as if trying to come up with the strength, or the will to speak. Something about his voice seemed to be dropping off. He seemed to be falling asleep. “Good, I was just making sure. You should be feeling a sense of euphoria now, as the brain begins to adjust to the environment it is enveloped in. Just breathe deeply, and if you feel the need to rest your eyes, go ahead. The data will still be recorded whether you are awake or not. Do you feel sleepy at all?” And again, a drone came out of the young man that resembled the word, “yeah.” And the older man said, “Alright, I will come back to check on you in a few hours. Just stay still. Have a nice rest, Tom.” And the older man was heard walking towards the door. Girl-Zero had heard the last few words and moved up the hallway and entered into a door marked, stairs, level 5. She knew the fate of Tom, like many before him a man with high dreams, aspirations and the rare indefinable quality that keeps him going, striving to be and not sleeping. Sleeping would be all he does now, and Girl-Zero turned his head a hundred and eighty degrees to look at the older man come out of the room from her perch on the ceiling several meters away from the door. His slightly balding head reflected the light from the fluorescing starkness baking itself on the scalp. And, one of the many times, random data appears on her processor was when a notion of a dank pollution was found to be seeping into the man’s pores, like a cancer caught from the air. The kind of effluence not caught by the air scrubbers, or a handkerchief when you cough.

She turned her head back towards the doorway where young Tom laid. She brought her schematic and found she was near a stairwell that was situated on the other side of the wall where Tom was currently. To find a door meant she had to re-enter the office area and, it was a stroke of luck she was not seen crawling on the ceiling trying to avoid light fixtures or, unfastened ceiling tiles. It was quicker to make a hole and crawl through it, depending what was behind the drywall. It wasn’t like Tom was going to make a fuss over a hole, and whoever found it would have a real story on their hands with a dead body in the room.

She dropped to the floor and strode towards the door, it was closed but she found it was not locked. How odd, maybe he didn’t expect anyone to come down here. She opened it and quickly entering the room, she closed the door behind her with both hands, as not to make a sound. Her schematics showed it was the western wall she needed to work with. At that moment, she gazed toward Tom still sitting in the chair motionless except for a considerable build up of moisture where he was sitting. Girl-Zero spent no more time with Tom, with a dirty yellow cylinder next to him on floor, that emitted a faint hissing sound from the nozzle of a tube running towards the ‘virtual’ reality unit attached to Tom’s head. However, her sensors indicated traces of toxins not normally found in the air. The room was permeated with them, no wonder the older man left shortly after it was activated. However, the rank smell this would normally create in someone’s nose before they passed out did not occur with Girl-Zero, and she did not pass out.

If she made the hole, whatever toxins were present within this room, would flood the stairway and more people could be potentially contaminated. So, she turned off the valve on the cylinder with a short hissing sound that briefly got louder and then stopped. The handle creaked and squeaked when she closed it as tight as she could. She went towards the western wall that had nothing in front of it and made a hold with her fist into the drywall. She then punched a hole in the drywall with the other hand and proceeded to create a medium sized hole in the drywall to see what was beyond it. As she figure, there were several wooden 2’4” acting as studs with nails driven into them with large amount of pink insulation inside the walls. After the insulation was taken out, and bangs and clanks struck the floor with a clatter as she created a hole big enough for her to crawl in. She punched a hole through to the other side and crawled through tearing the drywall away and then flipped onto the stairs.

She went down the stairs without a second thought. Something worse was going to expose itself on the stairwell pretty soon, as all dead bodies stank worse than living ones. She passed by two doors on her way down staying out of sight of two security cameras by crawling along the walls. The third, she disabled due to it’s position on the stairways. It was pointing directly at the door she wished to enter, and while this may cause suspicion at the security desk. She was sure they could repair the damage. Well, they could not repair the holes in the wall she made earlier, very easily. It was a six meter drop onto the stairwell. She approached the door and, with a clinical exactness the door opened with a whooshing sound, as it slide along the floor leaving a doorway resembling a submarine. She hated how secret compounds all had areas with the very latest in door technology. It all felt like it was a maze, and she was lab rat.

She stepped in gingerly, and quickly darted right behind a cleaning cart. The door whooshed shut again, with a click. She was closed in now, she knew it despite what that click could have meant. Besides, there was a cleaning lady in the room with bright blue slacks, and matching flannel shirt. She was about 5’9” and weighed a modest 150lbs. She looked busy mopping the floor while her mind was elsewhere. The room had a lot of chemical residue in it that must have been the cleaning solution she was using to disinfect. She looked up at the door for a mere second and then went back to mopping unaware of anyone entering the hallway. She called out with a slight accent, reminiscent of mexico, spain, cuba, something with a Spanish dialect. “Is anyone there?”. The voice did not sound scared, more curious. It was clear she was bored out of her mind. She crept closer to the cleaning wagon and Girl-Zero slowly crept out, as not to startle her. The cleaning lady stepped back with her eyes blinking. She said, with a frightened voice, “What are you doing here?”

Girl-Zero replied in a pleasant, charming and disarming voice, at least she hoped it was disarming. “I, um… I got lost?” She gave a small shrug, very much like a kid of seven. She remained quiet and looked confused. Still, she was gripping her mop enough to cause the knuckles on her hands to be white. “Hey, I‘m not going to hurt you.” She said with a smile, and the cleaning lady still held onto her mop, at once, oblivious to her surroundings. “ok, the strong silent type, got it.” She strode past her and the cleaning lady backed away to the wall watching every move Girl-Zero made. Girl-Zero, upon passing the cleaning lady, she turned her head and giggled a little, as if it was a huge joke. It was then that a chattering came into her ear. She turned her head away from the cleaning lady then and stopped walking.

“You are taking an awful risk being spotted like this. You realize she could alert security to your presence. She’s a liability.” the voice on the other end said with a sigh. A heavy sigh. “Negative, proceeding as planned.” was the response, as friendly as ever. Command came in with a slight crackle, “Negative? You realize the first thing she is going to do is phone for security. It’s what I would do. And, you know many before would love to capture you, and study you. It’s a risk we are not willing to take.” The voice sounded slightly distorted. “It is too much trouble in here. Listen, transmission is starting to break up. Materials appear to be steel, that has a faint electromagnetic field surrounding it, due to electric wiring embedded in the wall. Any other rules you want me to break before contact becomes impossible?” There was a brief pause, as if angry, or annoyed. Girl-Zero, guessed both. The voice on the other end came in, “No, no more. We view this as a serious breach of logical programming and clearly defined mission parameters. When communication becomes available again, we will find another route for extraction considering you just busted your only known escape route.” And, the transmission became full of static. “Command, command. Come in, your breaking up.” Girl-Zero sighed and then shaking her head, looked back at the cleaning lady. “Guess, I’m all alone now, just like you. Listen, it would be really bad if people found out about me down here. Can we keep a secret? Just us girls?” The cleaning lady nodded slowly, she spoke then, “You disregarded their orders to kill me, didn’t you?” And Girl-Zero nodded. “Yes, I did. Your defenceless. Do not let me regret this.” Girl-Zero looked at her with a semi-serious grin on her face. As if appearing, serious and playful, all at once.

The cleaning lady swallowed then and said, “Sure. You got my word. No one will know.” Girl-Zero smiled then and nodded. She strode past her and approached the door, and a whooshing sound struck, as softly as a feather hitting her cheek. With enough bite to it, to change the spell the room had cast on them both, enough to alter the silence that clenched the heart in uncertainties. One thing did not change then, the fagile fabric that hangs us all in the balance. And, with her schematics, she detected a small compartment under a floor panel that could have easily stored the body. Perhaps, deep inside, that little bit of information slipped notice.

The radio static continued in Girl-Zero’s left ear and she shut off the communication connection, and the audio circuit. The static died out and she guessed this was the basement levels she entered. She was seen once, and had left evidence behind her. Perhaps, she’ll get blamed for poor Tom’s demise. She shook her head and processed the last encounter. Yes, she took a risk trusting anyone these days, let alone command. Even if she could trust command to do exactly what she expects them to do. This cleaning lady was another story, what if people are as fickle as the wind that exits their behinds?

It made her uneasy, queasy, and she felt confused then. Putting that aside, she saw a fork in the hallways. One side was, labelled Lab A -C and then other side was labelled, D-G. In large black letters against a marble background a foot and a half long, and half a foot wide. Below these two signs, there appeared the words, also in black block lettering, “Administration”. She walked right, towards the Administration and Labs D-G. She listened carefully, and heard no one coming, or no one leaving behind her. I guess the cleaning lady was still standing still deciding her situation, she had to get out of here quick if the lady decided to cry wolf.

She darted around the corner and saw several doors all labelled with an alpha numeric designation that went in increments of 2 with each door. A2, A4, A6, A8, A10... And so on. It did not matter what side the door was on, each number was even until it reached A22. Each of these doors stayed shut when she approached them. About, five feet above the floor was a hand shaped square that showed up on Girl-Zero’s sensors as having a lot of electronic circuitry underneath it.

There was little chance she would be hindered by a hand print scanner. After a brief scan, she found it was highly secure network and it would take a little time to break through the ice to get beyond the server’s security and trick it. She realized she needed to get out of the hallway if someone came walking around. She, approached one of the doors, A6 was on the front of it in large black lettering against a light grey marble surface against a reflective steel surface. Not a lot of dust in this area, must mean that traffic is not that frequent. Perhaps, not a lot of people worked here, or perhaps they were all sleeping.

She put her palm on the steel door frame and climbed up towards the panel. She put her face in front of the panel and using her weight with two legs and one hand, the other one ripped open a panel to the left of the hand scanner, and then found a lot of wiring for power, and data transfer. All she needed to do was to find the right one, and then she saw a blue serial female connector below the wiring jumble and then her pointing finger on her free hand opened up to reveal a connector to fit the desired port. Once she connected to the unit, she met many security blocks, asking for ten digit alphanumeric pin codes. She started on the many possibilities, the enormously large amount of permutations, the deviations one letter or number could make. The amount of time could take a serious computer several days, to weeks, to crack it. So, as this was running, she looked for other routes to disable the device and open the door, or to hack into it using less subtler methods.

She tried looking for backdoor program defaults, finding none, she looked for atypical backdoor programs and none turned up either. She looked for any encrypted files, or directories but she was denied access by the ten digit pin she was currently trying to decipher. She was working at this for half an hour until eventually, the computer started talking to her in a much more positive light. She had found a small directory filled with technical notes on the system, nothing much was complete or detailed, except it did have many small notes about various levels of security added to the software and that it was only done yesterday. Perhaps, there were bugs in the newly written code she could exploit. One note in particular, mentioned that D33A did not get rid of a strange encryption method that encoded a single file named, Mados.sys. This file took a minute to decipher using roman numerals and then translating to English from Greek. Since the pin was nowhere near finished, she decided to try and bypass the security lock entirely, using a backdoor that granted her access to a technician’s tools. The normal stuff meant to check for bad sectors, incomplete login attempts, and suspicious activity within the system, as well as, intricate notes on a completely reworked system for the Bios, Cmos and the bit structure deviating away from the 4, 8, 16, 32, pattern and using odd numbers and different permutations to achieve getter efficiency. Essentially, changing the very fundamentals of computers. Girl-Zero was lucky, if they had implemented this into these units, she might not have been able to gain access electronically.

She found in Mados.sys that there was an exploit due to a security loophole allowing technicians to use a secret five letter password holding down two keys to bypass security for minor directories. She gained access to minor directories, and searched for any notes about more sensitive systems. If they made that kind of mistake, they were likely to create other loopholes that were a tad bit trickier. She was hanging on the wall for about twenty minutes until a breakthrough occurred. She found the ten digit pin code in the first letter of each minor directory minus three. It was kind of funny, it being right there and yet completely hidden. There was a note as well, explaining this with several addendums explaining the chances of this and how funny it was, but no notes about alteration.

One of them said, “Look, you morons! It doesn’t take a seven year computer science student or a well-established awarded professor to figure out a simple security breach of this magnitude! SOMEONE change the directory structure and remember, because of our immensely powerful technological breakthroughs we research here, we all must use simple rudimentary implements such as PENCILS to write down these codes. Everyone who remembers using these tools will also remember a flat carbon based material created from the genus group of plant life called TREES. I will not repeat what it is here, because it shocks me I had to explain to someone what it was already today.” -Edward Stone. She giggled and shook her head. Yes, paper, the brilliant discovery made far before anything called -computer- was even thought of. Who knew it would be so useful. She accessed the major directories then and saw many of them resembling last names, weird synonyms, and acronyms, and several directories better off named “twain”.

She knew it would take too much time to search through every directory, so she picked one at random deciding a file of their hand print was on file with the rest of their user information. However, this was not the case because she did not find any files relating to fingerprint recognition, or anything relating to scanners. She did a quick scan of the rest of the user directories and found a lot of tasty gossip about a camping trip, illicit photographs, plans to build a deck, a new staffing hierarchy for the offices on another floor, but nothing about hand prints or the technology behind it. She deleted all the information she did find, knowing it was all a smoke screen for something far most dubious. Useless facts shouldn’t be stored on a secure server like this, unless it was meant to convince a hacker, “her” namely, that nothing was actually there.

It did occur to her that she was not searching too deeply, and she was not utilizing all of her capability in this section of the network because she was trying to be efficient about it, then she realized that the answer lied deeply within this system instead of on the surface. It appeared that the password she did find was a stroke of luck. It was likely some people were also fired for that mistake and rightly so. She redid her search using an argument to search for hidden directories and found a few, however, she knew there was more. She added arguments to her search pattern and more showed up. It was also clear these directories were protected using methods her current software could not recognize. Some were using passwords, and others were trying to tell her software that they were not there when there were slight indications that the directories existed, except it was ostensive to even suggest such a thing.

A directory took up space, and Girl-Zero calculated the maximum amount of space in the directory and found a lot of it taken up by directories that were not being found. She calculated the hidden directories she did find and recalculated the maximum amount and there was still a significant gap. Something else bothered her because the resources being sent to this system seemed to be double what it normally needed. As if the resources were being used by software, and hardware that did not exist. A lot of memory was being used for programs that were in the directory she was in, and yet she could not find any of those programs or the directories where they were. She felt like she was chasing ghosts, and it was then that it struck her. She needed to change the basic algorithm she was using to search. It was a long complex equation, and it was not changed since she was changed, created?

Suddenly, she is in a field of flowers surrounded by other children playing a game of soccer. It was her turn to kick the ball, and she did! Really far, she was doing good! In the exhilaration of the moment, the cold dank walls and the inhumanity left her. She watched the ball with wide eyes as it shot down the field towards the opposing team’s goal. Score! She scored! The breeze brushed against her face, as she jumped for joy feeling the blades of grass between her toes. Feeling a bug fall off of her leg above her ankle, she let it pass, as all the other girls on her team rushed to her with big smiles in their faces. She was so happy, and the screamed out loud. “Did’ja see! Did’ja see! I made a goal! We gonna win!” Then, all the other girls disappeared. She was no longer at the soccer field.

Everything was dark, the sky, the ground beneath her. It was burning, woodchips (was it woodchips?), and a pungent stench of death. She saw animal remains, and yet not everything looked like animal remains. Some of it closely resembled human remains as well. She saw bits that could belong to a pelvis, and others that closely resembled parts of a finger. Nothing was together, and there were so many ashes, and smoke. She was surrounded by smoke climbing high into the sky. But, the most atrocious thing was not what she saw. It was what she heard that made her heart beat, beating quickly, out of fear. Heart, beat… beat…. Beat… She heard the flames burn unknown materials around her, and cracking wood, and small explosions to her left, random gunfire to her right off in the distance.

She closed her eyes and then opened them finding herself back staring at the hand print scanner. “What the hell!?” she said with a shake of her head. Shaking off the feeling of guilt, and pain. It was then that she held onto her chest, above her heart, heart? HEART! She had no heart. She had no…. heart. And the faint sound of it beating, quieter, quieter… quiet was still echoing in her ears. It was a long moment of silence before she realized she was still trying to break into the room in front of her. Whatever that experience was, it would have to wait, despite how disturbed she was as a result.

She saw she was no longer in the system at all, and then she shook her head. It was time to just hotwire the bloody thing and leave it at that. The security system could be broken, as all systems would be under her delicate touch. Though, she wanted out of there and quickly, before another flashback, if that’s what it was, gripped her entirely. At a time, less opportune than her current situation allowed.

She found a red wire and then a blue one, and before ripping them out. She did find that one was AC power, connected to an adapter and another was DC. The voltage was listed on the adapter itself, a large black rectangular box. Lots of other yellow wires were going from circuit to circuit bunched together with plastic ties going every which way. An electricians nightmare if any of these became broken in the smallest possible way. A thought struck her, would the door open if this panel was removed? Or would it never open if the wiring was damaged somehow?
They certainly thought out the security aspect of this section of the compound and it made sense that they would protect against tampering of the circuitry directly rendering the circuit inoperable and thus, the door inoperable as well. She thought as much, at least it made perfect sense to her to put that measure in place. The red and blue wires were larger than the yellow ones and, yet, the yellow wires all seemed to be taking electricity from one circuit to another. Large clusters of yellow wires connected to a large amount of sockets from the left were connected to a large amount of ports on the right in a circle. Her scanners indicated that it was to facilitate the energy needed to power the scanner, as well as, send information back and forth. She found the main processor and finding that it was not protected against direct contact, she placed her finger on the processor unit and found it was receiving interrupts in a loop keeping it in passive mode and to indicate that the panel had been lifted from it’s seating. She gave it a few more interrupts by sending small electric charges to the processor and the door opened moments later.

Hell, if it was that easy, she might just get through this mission. She gave herself a laugh and strode into the unoccupied office. Then, the door shut quickly behind her and clicked. She was locked in, but getting out was likely to be as easy as getting in. She found a desktop computer, and a desk filled with stacks of white paper of various sizes. The desk was a dark grey colour, along with the chair, walls, and the floor. There were no cameras in the office, prison cell, oubliette. Girl-Zero chuckled at how these things resembled the worst places to exist. She went to the Desktop computer and tried to find the schematic and blueprints she was ordered to find. She knew it was likely to be in one of the hidden directories she found out before. Except, she would have to search deeper this time. She started and successfully broke into the computer’s mainframe within a few minutes, and half an hour later she was delving deep into the hidden files finding lots of research on unexplored scientific ideas, all very interesting to investor’s, but not what she was looking for.


She delved deeper, having been there an hour now, and all she came upon was a directory named “God”. God? What the hell was this doing here!? She thought, and could not come up with a reason that it seemed so out of place in a science facility. Religious type maybe? The directory was by itself under a directory called “Theoretical Genesis”. Genesis, beginning, starting, creation, birth, death, ending. All these words played in her eyes and yet none of them seemed to fit with the grand implications of these words. What was there to theorize about something no one could prove? It was too big a question to contemplate and yet, some big brain in this compound wasted his time considering how we all tame to be. She looked in the directory without any password, or any protection, and found, to her surprise, a simple text file that read:

“Current research into the connection between God and Satan has proven to be exemplary within the confines of theory. However, when put to simple facts the deduction that any of these have any sort of basis in reality, fact, let alone scientific endeavour ceases to be important to the betterment of mankind based on the fact that no real proof has been ushered in to prove the existence of a proverbial Hell dimension where every church official on the globe agrees suffering is commonplace, expected and exacted and, along side it, a grand paradise exists where glorious saints, angels and the blessed are lavishly treated for their good deeds on earth. However…

All of this seems to be behind us with a recent find collected from Dr. Absontai and his excavation team from their excursion in northern Canada. Before I continue, the find itself though remarkable and unbelievable at the same time, must be taken with a grain of salt. I, for one, being an experienced and educated researcher have taken the time to ask myself the question if this find isn’t just the creation of an unstable mind that somehow managed to secure his or her work within the confines of a sealed room deep in the mountains. But, I will let you all decide for yourselves because of the amount of evidence found at the site pointing to a direct connection between God, Jehovah, and Lucifer, or otherwise, known as Satan. And, manuscripts that were either unintelligible lines or writings from “beyond”. Somehow, despite the realities present to those who use common sense, this research has flourished with the examination of these pieces of evidence.

Now, onto the writings themselves. From what Dr. Absontai has pieced together, Satan was banished from Heaven because of the rebellion Satan made against God, and his angels. Except, that the original inception of such an idea was started by a third party--”

Girl-Zero instantly looked for any further information regarding this text file and found a lone directory several layers up. She downloaded all of the information within this second directory and continued to read into the text file.

“that called itself, Magar. Any further information about this third party have not been unearthed, and no mention of Magar ever occurs again in biblical texts. It appears that the great battle that ensued was a ruse to weaken both parties and create a conflict that has lasted for thousands, if not billions of years. Of course, this is from the Christian perspective, as other religions all have a different form of Genesis for the creation of the universe, men, women, laws and morality. However, upon review of different religious texts there remains a similarity between the name Magar and another mysterious figure appearing before biblical texts began circulating out of Rome. A name, Malchi, appears in oriental texts and another Magisa, appears in many of the earliest native oral traditions that only the oldest of the elders know. Normally, played out to scare young children into doing chores, behaving well, and so forth. But, to add more credence to this mysterious figure, Dr. Absontai has come up with a relative comparisons with this name and several others that appear in every religious text, oral traditional story, and all of them have this figure inciting war, famine, disease, strife and despondence within societies of various times. The mysterious disappearance of the Mayans, Rome’s burning and rebuilding, plagues, the witch trials, and yet, while they seemed to be sporadic and random, there is a large connection between the method to which this Magar uses to incite these horrific tragedies. There is never any direct contact, except for brief mentions of conversations with Magar, or similar names, and then tragedies occurring thereafter.

Another brief note: Dr. Absontai has lost all contact with his team and no one has seen him. If anyone finds any members of his team, or him, please contact me or one of the security… fuck it, contact anyone and find the sonuvabitch!

-Anonymous.”


She continued her search for schematics and blueprints and found another directory containing her target. Finally, she found schematics about robots, wait… not just robots, but cybernetic implants made into human beings in order to enhance and augment many robotic functions within the human body. If completed, the results would resemble a robotic creature able to break into computers, perform complex electrical feats, and go anywhere with the ability to climb, leap, jump and do the jobs she has been doing all over the world. Great, competition.

She turned back to the locked door and then stopped. After taking a second look at the schematics and blue prints, she made a connection. The name for the project was Genesis Assimilation and then in the corner of the blueprint was a familiar name. Her own. “Kaylee named prototype model for the Genesis Assimilation program. Any and all data for her missions---” the rest was deleted and erased. The schematics showed various metal densities and methods of implantation, implementation of sub routines and, the word “replacement”.

Replacement? Replacement of? Wait… humans into cybernetic models for government work? Who would give it up, and become someone’s pet project that they forget about half way through because funds ran short? There were enough moral quandaries to keep her going for hours, and that was not what bothered her. This mission seemed strange, due to the amount of erroneous data she churned out that tried to make computational calculations of emotional responses, and moral dilemma’s, the hesitations associated with difficult decisions. A minute, then a minute and a half. And all she had to do was move on and escape. Except she went through her orders, “Find blueprints and schematic information pertaining to Genesis Assimilation and proceed to extraction.” And yet, she hesitates. The connection to command was still severed due to electromagnetic interference in the metal infrastructure, but it did not matter because she knew her orders well enough and the quicker she was out of here the happier they would all be.

She would not be happy though, knowing there were people being turned into machines. The loss of feeling, not even cold, not even pain, not even the calculated cruelty people are famous for. No, she had none of that, and these people would have none of it either. All of this, and so much freedom sacrificed, all to become more free and what… powerful? Did these people actually consider power to be a real and tangible commodity? It was beyond comprehension.
And here was some bright scientist considering all of the benefits while the realities climbed ever so slowly up his spine.

She clenched her fists feeling disgust she turned back to the desktop and smashed it with her fist, repeatedly. She smashed the monitor next and then taking several pens she crushed them in her hand onto the papers and then one of her fingers opened up and set them all on fire. After her finger closed back up she pressed a button by the door and it unlocked and whooshed open. Smoke alerted the fire alarm, and she started to run back tracing her steps back towards the door out. She knew she could not return to the door out by the cleaning lady, not now that the alarms were blaring and everything got dark with flashing red lights. Must have scared the locals around here to death, all of a sudden. And yet, she saw no one running to the exit in panic with their eyes looking this way and that.

She heard no footsteps resembling heavy work boots, or the shuffling of oversized pant legs as they hurried up and down the hallways. She did not hear raised voices, shouts and orders, mutterings, cries or scoffs of annoyance. She did not hear anyone on the loud speaker, she did not hear people speaking into radios, or any of the static that bursts right before someone picks it up and holds the small black button on the side. However, she did hear several doors slam shut with several loud thuds, and then a definite series of clicks that could only mean they were all locked. She saw above her small holes opening in the ceiling followed by a slight hissing sound, as her sensors picked up a chemical toxin entering the air from storage tanks held in the ceiling. Her sensors picked up five foot wide cylinders a foot and a half long connected to pipes that were connected to several others in a complicated series of pipes adding an entire foot to the ceiling. It was likely to keep this area free of communication by creating an electromagnetic field with the specific metal they used for the siding of the pipes. Girl-Zero immediately moved towards the room she entered this complex with only to find the cleaning lady unconscious on the floor near the exit with a gas mask that only seemed to be partially on. She didn’t have time to make it to the door, let alone put a mask on.

Girl-Zero quickly attached the gas mask properly to the woman’s face. She found a weak pulse, and shallow breathing that indicated a difficulty in her lungs with the toxins present in the air. Likely, they were failing and there was little Girl-Zero could do for her. Except, Girl-Zero never accepted that. She moved to the door and found that the locks were holding the door at six different points. One at the top, one at the bottom and two on each side. There were no digital readouts, no hand print recognition units, not even a handle to pull the door open. The door was not composed of something brittle like copper, bronze or aluminium. This was several inches of solid steel and titanium deeper within. She moved back to the cleaning lady and put her ear close to her chest, while she was looking at the gas mask covering the smooth, unblemished oval shaped head. Girl-Zero knew that the skin breathed as well, and that most chemicals were absorbed by the skin making the gas mask all but useless in those situations. Still, she heard a heart beat, and her chest rose and fell with regularity. The other disturbing thing was that while the toxins were being released, the oxygen was not cycling through and eventually this would cause asphyxiation despite the mask being on or not.

Girl-Zero grabbed a hold of each of the woman’s legs and began to drag her along the floor.

Two eyes felt heavy, like lead weights were attached to them and suddenly the urge to rub them became overwhelming and the itching stopped once some fingers wiped away the muck that had collected at the corner of her eyes, close to the nose. Oddly enough, it was her ears that came to the waking world next, and she swore she could hear Mano Chao playing quietly beneath the whooshing of a large fan, a repeating beat with a calming click of something plastic against something else. She could hear Mano Chao though, singing Ma Gustas Tu. He loves marijuana, no surprise there. And, at that time, her blurry eyes could make out lots of grey concrete, and a light coming in to the left with shadows going in a circle around and around. It almost put her to sleep again watching the shadows as she lay on something hard. Except, her head was resting against something soft, and she turned her head and closed her eyes again. Sleep overwhelmed her and once again her mind filled with thoughts of New Years, white dresses, purification, Carnival, bathing suits, and coconut milk.

It was many hours later that she awoke again, her eyes feeling less heavy this time, her body ached from sleeping on such a harsh unyielding surface. Her spine must have been out of joint for far too long, it would be difficult to stand with such joint pain. Still, she rose and groaned as her back muscles rebelled against their imprisonment. Move! They said to her, move and stretch! We demand release! Blasted muscles can wait, she thought. She still heard Mano Chao playing in the background, and she distinctly heard, Denia. In Arabic this time, whereas before it was Portuguese. She hummed along and it was then that she saw something familiar. Her hand went to her back as she stood up, her face strained and she let out of a grunt, and a few more groans. She heard a voice then, “Hey, she’s back! Welcome back to the world of the living, you had me scared.” She recognized the Robot from before, before the halo system activated, before the burning sensation in her throat, before she scrambled with that stupid mask that didn’t fit right, and before she scrambled to the door only to have it shut tight and lock. Before she lost consciousness and said her farewells to the world.

She nodded and blinked, as she stretched her arms up high finally taking in her surroundings in full. They were in a small room with stone concrete for walls, and a floor where her jacket was bunched together to form a pillow. There was a large circle of light against the wall to her right, where a dull blue door hit against the stark grey concrete with bits missing, places were exposing pipes, others were about a foot length long and half a foot deep. She saw such decay and desolation at that wall, her face went blank and a familiar apathy hit her. Then she looked back at the robotic girl that had saved her life. “ You saved my life, I…” she said in a worried voice, a scared voice even with strong hints of confusion. “That’s right, are you alright?” Girl Zero said in a cherry upbeat voice that sounded almost childlike. She blinked look down at herself. Her clothes seemed intact, and nothing was undone or out of place. She rubbed her forehead and nodded. “Yes, I’m.. I’m fine. I… thank you. What’s your name..? Where are we?” she said that with bit more intensity than she wanted. She was scared, that was evident, but she wanted to sound grateful.

“My name’s Kaylee. Nice to meet you, we’re um… in a maintenance room above ground level. An auxiliary recycling chamber in the Blue zone near a large thermal reactor. My maps show we’re in Section 410b in Delta quarter. I hope that helps. And there’s no need to thank me, I am glad you are alright.” Kaylee strode over from her perch near the fan exit, as the cleaning lady was putting her jacket on again. Her nametag was missing and she sighed. It would be a pain to get back to work, but she was alive. She eyed Kaylee and though she was half her height, there was still an apprehension. Kaylee did not seem to notice, or did not care, one or the other. “Oh, I have no idea where that is,” she giggled then realizing her predicament. Kaylee extended her hand and the cleaning lady shook it uneasily. Perhaps, the toxins were still affecting her balance. The cleaning lady kneeled down and smiled and gave Kaylee a big hug upon seeing such a sweet and happy looking girlish face on top of all the mechanics.

“So you know Mano Chao?” the cleaning lady said as they released their embrace. “Yep, I have all of their albums downloaded in my databanks. I can’t get enough of him, he’s so cute.” Kaylee giggled like a schoolgirl leaving the cleaning lady with a confused look on her face. “Yeah, he is cute. I saw him live in Rio De Janeiro a few years ago. Fell in love.” Kaylee nodded and looked about her. “Sorry for the dankness, real boring in here but… it was the only place I could hide, I was playing hide and seek with the big boys here, their fun and stuff, but they play rough. Too rough for a lil girl like me, ya know.” Kaylee was conversing easily, as if they were good friends or something. There was a familiarity to her tone that suggested she was being completely sincere, chatting it up in the midst of this situation seemed so out of place and confusing. Then all of a sudden, the tone got a tad more serious. “Look, um… I’m going to have to break the fan to busy out and climb up the wall. This will make the room real stuffy, real soon. So… your going to have to go before you get sunstroke or something, kay?” The cleaning lady nodded with a reply. “Yes, I will. And, I’m really ok.. Just confused, and… lost. Other than that, everything works. I will never forget you Kaylee and what you did for me.” Kaylee smiled and said, “if you want to thank me, my dear. Get into another profession, somewhere far FAR away from here. This place isn’t meant for nice ladies like you.” Girl-Zero said that with a nod and then leaped up to the fan. The cleaning lady watched and as the fan stopped spinning, she could see the girl robot climb out like a monkey. And then, that was that… there was nothing left to do but ask herself the zillion questions she had on her mind. Why didn’t she just leave her there… why did she wait for her to wake up, what was it about that robot that seemed almost human? She opened the door and strode down the hall wondering what the hell happened while she was out. She was alive, what did it matter? She shook her head and decided right then and there to get out… somehow.