CHAPTER I

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Late August 2035 ~ Boulder, Colorado

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The world was depending on her; she had promises to keep.

“Pssst,  Ladesque!” Roach peered around his monitor as she entered the computer  centre, his bright blue eyes sparkling. “I’ve made an amazing  breakthrough.”

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It ought to be me, not Roach, making amazing breakthroughs.  Several feet shy of his desk, Ladesque stopped. “Tell someone who  cares,” she grumbled. Immediately, a deep dimple appeared in Roach’s  chubby chin, enhancing his boyish look.

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She  plodded past him, settled into her steno chair and flicked on her  computer. It groaned and her monitor sizzled as if the entire system was  upset she’d disturbed its slumber. Impatient with the decades-old  technology that ought to by now have been instantaneous, she drummed out  a rhythm on her desk. It was actually more than just a rhythm. She’d  learned American Sign Language years ago from a deaf playmate and often  used it to talk to herself. ‘I need a breakthrough,’ she signed. ‘A breakthrough.’

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Her  computer dinged, undoubtedly asking for her permission to do something.  She ignored it. With a slight tweaking of programming even 2010  technology could be forced to look after itself. And she’d done that  slight tweaking—a trivial success considering her much larger mandate.

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‘Breakthrough, breakthrough, breakthrough.’  So far this morning, it was just her and Roach in the room. Even  Porter, who was usually the first to arrive, hadn’t wandered in yet.  Alongside her and in front of her, a dozen vacant workstations waited  for their people. The open-office milieu, the bosses said, was designed  to encourage team work, enhance cohesion and increase communication.  However, in her opinion, putting techies in an office without walls did  nothing but encourage immature behaviour.

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Working  against the motion of the chair rollers, she entwined her legs beneath  her thighs in somewhat of a lotus position. She wasn’t as flexible as  she ought to have been. She’d been rushed this morning and chose to  sacrifice her daily yoga to charcoal mascara and champagne eye shadow.

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Ladesque  leaned forward, hoping to catch her reflection in the monitor. She’d  been told often that she had her mother’s eyes. She shared her mother’s  dark, thick, wavy hair too—or had her mom worn hers straight? She’s only been dead three years; I can’t believe I don’t remember.

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Ladesque  quickly checked the family photo on her desk. Her mother’s hair had  indeed been dark and wavy—before the cancer treatments had stolen it  from her. And her Dad’s, thin on the top and greying—just as she  remembered. Not until both her parents’ smiles again felt familiar, did  Ladesque look back at her monitor.

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She  caught the glint of Roach’s silver pendant and felt the tickle of his  breath on her neck. “I’m serious about my amazing breakthrough,” he  whispered. “Come see.” He gripped the back of her chair, spun it to face  his desk and began racing with her across the room.

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“Stop it!” she protested.

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Unable  to get her feet to the floor, she grabbed at Porter’s desk. Her fingers  slid ineffectively along the smooth mahogany until she finally got a  grip on the corner. The abrupt change in momentum wrenched her chair  from Roach’s grip and sent her spinning. On the first revolution, her  arm hit Porter’s desk organizer. A stapler and a dozen pens went flying.  The second time around, her shoulder walloped his computer, stopping  her chair dead and sending his monitor to the aging carpet with a thud  and a tinkle.

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Before  she could so much as gasp, Roach had caught the back of her chair and  again and was shoving her toward his work station. He halted in front of  his computer, plopped into his chair and began typing.

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Ladesque  rubbed her shoulder and peered behind her. Porter’s monitor was strewn  across the floor—sharp-edged chunks of metal and glass entwined in a  labyrinth of cords and wires. A tiny spark crackled deep in its housing,  followed by a puff of blue—like a last breath.

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Roach slapped her arm. “Look!” He jabbed at his computer screen.

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Ladesque untangled her feet and stood. “I just killed Porter’s monitor and it’s all your fault!”

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“Never mind Porter’s monitor. He wanted a new one anyway.” Roach’s hands brushed the keyboard. “Watch me make history!”

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Ladesque hesitantly stepped toward the mess. “We could’ve started a fire and burned the whole place down.”

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“So what? Everything is backed up off site. Sit!”

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“I can’t believe you said that!”

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“What did I say wrong?”

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“The  end of the world wouldn’t matter to you as long as your fricken-ass  data is backed up!” She stomped back to Roach. “I could tell you North  Korea launched a nuclear missile, and you wouldn’t care because your  data is safe.”

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Roach slowly stood and faced her. “I didn’t know Korea launched a missile. When?”

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Frustrated,  she slammed her fist against his desk so hard the sting traveled from  her hand all the way to her aching shoulder. Roach continued staring at  her expectantly. “Korea didn’t fire a missile,” she said between  clenched teeth. “It was an ‘if’. If Korea—never mind. I have work to  do.”

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“You didn’t say ‘if’!”

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‘You’re an idiot.”

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“Sit!”  Roach roughly pushed her into her chair then took his seat and crossed  his arms. Ladesque would’ve struck back if the man had looked anything  like an adult. However, Roach had the demeanour of a younger  brother—someone perhaps a grade or two past middle school. His push was  like that of an exuberant child playing tag on the playground. She  sighed and crossed her arms to match his. The entire tenth floor labour  force was in its thirties. She was the only one who acted it.

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“Watch the monitor,” he said.

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The screen was a blank white page at first. Then words began to appear. Faintly. Ladesque squinted and leaned forward.

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“I’ve come here today,” she read aloud, “to explore with you the nature of the universe. Are you ready?”

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“Yes, sir,” Roach said quickly. “I am ready. Proceed.”

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“I don’t have time for this shit,” Ladesque said.

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Roach reached back and caught her forearm. “Watch!”

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“You have a question?” appeared on his monitor.

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“Yes…yes.  A question…” Roach’s fingers tightened around her arm. He leaned  forward and spoke to the monitor. “What is the meaning of life?”

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“Let me go, you idiot!” Ladesque wrenched free from his grasp and stood.

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“Life is a process—”

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“Don’t you get it?” Roach asked. “It’s God, communicating with us via my computer.”

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“Roach…”

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“No, look, Ladesque. I’ll put my hands behind my back. I am not keyboarding, yet words are appearing—”

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“Roach!”

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“It  makes sense, Ladesque. Electronics is a fabulous way for spiritual  beings to communicate with us. Our computers are harnessing the pure  energy of electrons—quantum particles that transcend physical nature.  Beyond matter. Beyond Newton’s laws of physics. Existing on a purely  spiritual plane—”

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“Quite literally, for heaven’s sake, stop. I’m not a moron.”

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“Are you saying I am?”

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“Well, you sure as hell ain’t God!”

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“Could you at least play along with the illusion? There’s commercial potential here. We could start our own church—”

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“I don’t want to start a church!”

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“Think of the tax breaks.”

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“Roach,  this is not the 1900s. This is decades into the third millennium. Where  the hell are you going to find people who will believe God is talking  to you through your computer? This generation knows magicians don’t cut  ladies in half. This generation, for years, has both mentally and  physically interacted with video games. This generation doesn’t even  believe in God. And besides, how are you going to come up with words  that sound anything like godly wisdom?”

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Roach sank into his chair and scowled. “You’re no fun.”

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“Here’s a question for your deity,” Ladesque said. “Dear God, what was my mother’s maiden name? Game’s over Roach. That simple.”

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“Nobody would ask God what their mother’s maiden name is.”

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“Guess  what? I just did and God couldn’t answer. I wonder why, you idiot.” She  flung her chair in the vague direction of her desk, stepped over the  remnants of Porter’s monitor and stomped toward the exit. I don’t belong here.

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“If  you were to ever get the internet back up and running like you  promised,” Roach called after her, “the program could secretly Google  that maiden-name question and come up with a correct answer!”

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“Ladesque!”  Talon, the office director, called from three doors away. Ladesque  glanced up at the surveillance images on the ceiling monitors. The  slightly over-weight but always exuberant Talon was grinning and waving  at the camera in his office. He jabbed at the phone on his desk. “A call  for you!”

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“Who is it?” she mouthed.

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“I can’t hear you! Come pick up.”

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Ladesque  took a couple of steps toward his office then changed her mind and  turned to the bank of windows. Ten stories down, traffic was insane. The  world was not supposed to have turned out this way. And it may not have  if the fallout from the global financial collapse that began in 2010  hadn’t halted science and technology like no other event in  history—except, perhaps, the ice age that sent Europe into the Dark  Ages.

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People  were supposed to have had personal jet packs for commuting by now, or  better yet, been able to work from home. She doubted that would ever  happen, even if by some miracle she did get the internet up and running  again. Man was a social critter, an animal who ran in packs. A colony of  desperate, moving, seeking, working ants. At least from ten floors up,  that’s what her world looked like.

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“Ladesque!  Take the call, NOW!” She finally relented and proceeded to Talon’s  office. He was the only tenth floor employee who had his own space.

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Talon  motioned to the phone. “For you.” Ladesque was positive no one had  dreamed landlines would be back in vogue twenty-odd years after the  first iPhones stormed the market. It was one of Ladesque’s priority  projects to develop the security necessary to enable the world to once  again go wireless and digital. “It’s the FBI,” Talon said.

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Ladesque  strode past Talon. “The FBI, yeah, right.” Talon had the best office in  the entire building. Not only did it have a corner window overlooking  the roof garden, it also had a five-hundred-gallon tropical fish  tank—complete with real coral.

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“It is the FBI,” Talon insisted.

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“Why don’t you take the call?”

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“They asked for you.”

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“They asked for me?” Ladesque tapped the aquarium.

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“Don’t tap the glass!” Talon shouted. “Can’t you read the sign? It says, ‘Don’t tap the glass.’” A clown fish wandered over to kiss her finger through the pane. “Yes, they asked for you. Answer the damned call.”

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“The FBI asked for Ladesque?” She tapped again and attracted a second fish.

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Talon sighed loudly. “Yup.”

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“You lie.” She reached for the jar of fish pellets and shook some into her hand.

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“I’m not lying.”

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“You’re lying again—by saying you’re not lying.”

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“How do you know who they asked for?”

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“Talon,  who is Ladesque? Is that my name? No. Is it a name anyone beside you  idiots call me? No. Is it a name the FBI would call me? No.”

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She  sprinkled the fish food into the aquarium and watched the flurry of  activity. Some fraternities had frosh, some initiation. Some men’s clubs  even had hazing. The tenth floor had nicknames. One did not belong, she  was told, until one was given a nickname—preferably a nickname one did  not like. She had no idea how her coworkers had come up with the name  ‘Ladesque’.

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Initially  she’d thought they were making fun of her Canadian heritage, since  Americans thought all Canadians spoke French. La…La desk. ‘La’ since she  was the only female, and ‘desk’ because that’s where she stayed while  the rest of the nerds gathered around someone’s locker to drool over the  latest porn magazine. La Desk—that’s what she thought it was until  someone wrote it on the assignment board. ‘Ladesque’, a meaningless word that appeared in no thesaurus. Meaningless, like her. Like her life.

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“Oh, yeah,” Talon said. “You’re right. That’s weird. How would the FBI know we call you Ladesque?”

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“They don’t know. That’s my point.”

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“The FBI did ask for Ladesque.”

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“I’m  not an idiot.” She had twenty bucks riding on the bet, like all the  others. It was somewhat like the vintage Seinfeld contest except it  wasn’t the last one to masturbate who won the pot but the last one to  accept an assignment from the FBI. The temptations were considered equal  since it was notoriously difficult for a computer nerd not to be  seduced by the FBI.

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“I’m not kidding,” Roach insisted. “This has nothing to do with the contest.”

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The  contest was to enforce the tenth floor’s pledge to never help the FBI  again. Ever. The geeks were protesting the fact the FBI constantly used  their expertise but never gave them any public credit.

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‘Our experts were able to…’  the FBI often announced at news conferences. The tenth floor wasn’t the  FBI. Didn’t get paid by the FBI. Never even got visited by the  FBI—phoned maybe, but for sure those surly agents in dark suits and  reflective glasses would never actually set foot in the nerd cave and  press the flesh of a binary expert. Talon said it was because they were  afraid they’d catch some intelligence which, Ladesque had pointed out,  was always what the FBI was after.

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Talon had collected a stack of FBI media releases that said things like, ‘France has asked the FBI for high-tech help…’ and ‘Russia is calling on the FBI’s computer expertise to help solve this issue…’ On the bulletin board in the coffee room was a headline clipped from a newspaper that read, ‘The International Monetary Fund credits the FBI with South America’s booming economy’. Ladesque guessed Talon had pinned it there since he had headed the South American recovery project.

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The  tenth floor didn’t deny the FBI dismantled the South American drug  cartels but without Talon’s business and political acumen, there would  have been nothing to replace the lucrative drug trade that had driven  the economy for decades. In fact, without Ladesque’s efforts to destroy  the cartels’ underground communication networks, the FBI wouldn’t even  have been able to achieve the little it had.

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“You take the call, Talon,” Ladesque suggested. She tapped the glass again. “Or are you too afraid you can’t say no to them?”

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“They want you, I swear.”

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“Don’t swear. Roach might hear you and he thinks he’s God today.” She turned to leave.

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“They’ve been on hold for you forever, Ladesque. I have to tell them something.”

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“Tell  them I’m in the can.” Ladesque swept a pile of files off Talon’s desk  as she strode past. “We are supposed to be a paperless society.”

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Talon  picked up the receiver. “She says she’s taking a shit…No, I don’t know  how long she’ll be. Women take forever in the can, especially when they  decide to go paperless…”

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Ladesque  tried to slide into her workspace without Roach noticing but his eagle  eyes caught the movement. “Why don’t you like working here on the tenth  floor?” he asked.

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“Because  I have to.” In the outside world it was a given: if one was stuck in  one’s job out of necessity, enslaved to it for whatever reason, one  couldn’t like it. However, on the tenth floor, nobody cared that their  life forever would be ten floors up from the pavement in downtown  Boulder, Colorado. From the moment the criminal background checks were  completed, the fingerprints and DNA taken, the personality profiles  completed, the oaths of secrecy signed, employees were enslaved to the  tenth floor. Forever. Such job security appealed to the geek natures of  most who worked with Ladesque. To her, though, it certainly didn’t. Not  anymore.

“Everyone has to work somewhere,” Roach protested.

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A  month or so ago, Global had even started random medical testing on  employees. She hadn’t appreciated being poked and prodded just to ensure  she had a desk on the Tenth Floor in perpetuity. “This is a workplace  of idiots. Children in men’s bodies.”

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“You’re  not in a man’s body.” Roach whistled toothsomely despite the fact he  knew his attempt at appreciation would enter deaf ears and was, quite  possibly, illegal.

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Ladesque  was asexual, a member of what the media had dubbed the ‘eunuch’  generation. Upward of twenty-five percent of North American females her  age were infertile and lacked libido—an unexpected result of generations  of chemical birth-control. Pill-guzzling and patch-crazy females had  stolen not only fertility from their female descendants, but sexual  desire as well. With the affliction so common and the victims so  accepting, asexuality quickly vanished from medical journals. It was no  longer considered a sexual dysfunction and was enshrined in the  constitution as a sexual preference.

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At  the age of thirteen, after she’d had her pheromone production and  pheromone receptors and preceptors tested, Ladesque attained the  official status of asexual. The diagnosis granted her special legal  protection and social benefits. It was also why those who’d hired her  assumed she would function quite well amidst the male testosterone that  dominated the tenth floor. Unfortunately they’d neglected to consider  that sexual proclivity was just a tiny part of what separated men from  women. Now, she was stuck here forever—with idiots.

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“Why do you say this is a workplace of idiots?” Roach asked.

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“You  have to ask? You, who pretends he is God and expects me to believe he  is? You, who insists upon being called Roach when your mother gave you a  perfectly fine name. You who insists on calling me Ladesque when my  parents named me—”

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“Hey, there are valid reasons for the use of nicknames.”

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“Give me one.”

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“Same  reason gangsters give themselves names like ‘Tiny’ or ‘Scar Face’ or  ‘Mama Boucher’—to disguise their identity from the cops, to separate  themselves from their evil deeds and to protect their families from  their criminal cohorts. We are, after all, top-secret workers working  top-secret projects. Anonymity is important for the safety and security  of not only ourselves but the work we do. Once you leave this building,  no one knows who Ladesque is. No one can sue you for anything done here.  No one can trace illicit tenth floor activities to your humble abode in  the suburbs. No one can blame you—”

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“What  the hell?” Porter yelled from the door. He marched over to the pieces  of his monitor strewn across the floor. “Who did this?”

“Sally Jergens,” Ladesque said quickly.

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“Who  the hell is Sally Jergens? What the…” Porter kicked at the monitor and  then bent to study its innards. “Wow. Cool. Ah ha. I see now how that  works.”

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“I guess you’re right, Roach,” Ladesque said, returning to her keyboard.