The Quantum Connection

'Well, I thought they needed my help with the SuperAgent code?' I would ask.

'I don't know any more than you do.' He would fiddle with his tie and then change the subject. He would always seem irked that I wasn't focused on the current busywork project he had given me.

So, I worked on reverse engineering some of the most benign devices you could imagine by day and then went home and sat with Lazarus by night. The drugs had begun to diminish in effect against the depression again and occasionally I would wake up and not realize hours had passed. But good ol' Lazarus would always be there to help me through it. I would hug him and sob some and tell him that he was my buddy. That seemed to help almost as much as the drugs did.

Then, in a morning-depressed haze, I would go into work for more run-of-the mill reverse engineering busywork. I reverse engineered a tank turret control computer, ejection code for a French fighter plane, the reaction control system of a recovered satellite (although I never figured out how the satellite had been recovered), and I was working on a radio jamming device found in North Korea nearly six months later. Don't get me wrong; some of the work was challenging, but nothing like the reverse engineering of that magical green and orange quantum cube device. The biggest depressing fact was that after more than six months, there was still no clearance.

One day I was so bored I thought I would go further out of my mind, so I sloughed off work and I went surfing on the Framework instead. My office hook-up wasn't as fast as at home but I didn't feel like measuring voltages on a Russian computer motherboard. So I logged on and started to look up that Dr. Who fellow. It didn't take long for me to figure out the reason that Dr. Daniels had brought him up. That guy was some very old British television character who apparently lives in a phone booth, or whatever the British call it. On the outside it looks like a regular phone booth, but on the inside it is large enough for a very comfortable apartment. It is explained as some sort of space warp or something. Just like the 'warped' RAM chips Dr. Daniels's wife had theorized.

I was still on the Framework when the phone rang. Finally, Larry called me into his office for a chat; I hoped every time the phone rang that it was about my clearance. This time it was.

'Steve, we need to talk.'

'Yeah, what about?' I hoped this was it. After all, it had been nearly seven months since we had been to Washington, D.C.

'Sorry, Steve, but your advanced clearance has been declined,' he said and looked down at his feet for second. My heart fell to my shoes.

'Why? I mean, I told the truth about everything. I . . . I . . . don't understand, I'm a good American, aren't I?'

'Son, nobody really believes otherwise.' He paused. 'Except that . . .' He stopped again.

'Except what?'

'Well, son, as far as your background investigation is concerned, you just suddenly appeared in Dayton, Ohio, at about the age of eighteen. There is no proof that you ever existed before that. No hospital records, not any living witnesses that can say you are the same kid that came out of your mother's birth canal, nothing. In fact, the only proof to corroborate your life is that your parents' tax records can be found and that they paid taxes on a dependent.'

'So, there you go; I was their dependent,' I argued.

'No, son, there is no evidence that it was you. Oh sure, they filed a social security number for you when you were nine, but there are no pictures, no birth certificates, no DNA samples, nothing.'

'But . . . but I can't help that. The Rain killed them! The Rain killed them all! Don't you understand? There is nothing I can do about that!' I was frantic.

'Calm down, Steven! I understand. But you have to understand that this is the perfect approach for a mole or a spy to infiltrate our nation's security. Conveniently, all the records were erased and some guy moves in and becomes Steven Montana. How do we know that you were not killed during the meteors? People don't realize this, because on the surface and in public, the world looks as though it is getting along famously and friendly now. We are all banding together after the disaster and gelling as one race. It looks that way on television, but in the real world espionage and counterespionage are at an all-time high. The FBI, CIA, and Homeland Defense agents have caught literally hundreds of moles trying to take identities of victims from the meteor disaster.'

'No! I am me. I am me!'

'Steven, calm down, son! I know you are you and that you are a good guy. But I can't prove it. Nobody can. Since you passed the lie detector, you can maintain your current clearance level, but you can't go any higher and you have to forget anything and everything you heard in D.C.' He pulled a form out of his desk and handed me a pen. 'Read this and sign it.'

I read it. It basically told me that I had never heard of quantum connected CPUs, funny-colored cubes that data falls through, Air Force Group W-squared, SuperAgents, and anything else related to that CIA meeting. Then it said that I would suffer penalty of up to life imprisonment if I ever divulged any of it to anybody. 'Are you telling me that I never invented my SuperAgent?'

'Sorry, son, your computer has just been confiscated and your machine at home is being cleaned.'

'What! You can't do that. I invented it; it's mine! Do you hear me? Its mine!'

'No, son, the U.S. Department of Defense paid for it, so it is theirs. This is the way it has to go, Steven.'

'No, but you don't understand.' I was still no calmer. 'I can't just not work on it now that I know how to do it. I can't!'

'Steven, you can and you will, or you will go to jail. I want you to take a couple of days' administrative leave and go home and think this through before you say or do anything harsh. But you have to sign this form right now.'

'And what if I don't?' I defiantly suggested.

'Steven, don't do this. If you don't sign this now, I have to notify DSS and in a matter of minutes there will be a warrant out for your arrest for violation of the National Security Act.'

I was lost, cornered, screwed, stabbed in the back, and just generally fucked! I grabbed the pen from Larry and signed the form. 'Larry, you can go to hell!' I turned and walked through his door and slammed it as hard as my two hundred forty pounds would muster. I heard pictures fall from the wall on the other side and fall to the floor and