The twin tower stands still in the middle of darkness, from the window on my office at the 6th floor i stood watching passersby on the streets below. “Freaking call center agents on their way home… what a waste of talents”, i was murmuring in my mind as i blow a the smoke out off my lungs out into the open window. Its my 10th cigarette for the night, I smoke almost 2 packs a day and I always blame it to work — I have to smoke in order to be always on top of what I am doing. If only we have more bright minds working on this project it would have been done months ago but good talents are hard to find in this country nowadays; all of them were lured into the promise of easy money working as call agents.

I’m waiting for the computer to finish the uploading the last batch of code for the project I am working on, a part of a mobile communications platform. It’s a very high-tech stuff and it’s what I’m good at; working with bleeding edge technology so far ahead of its time to the point it would probably blew ordinary people’s mind to think such technology already exist in our time.

The client is a rich foreign company and the project would be part of its system’s back-bone, a very important one. Communications. banking and even the military will rely on it for the years to come. Its also precisely why i chose to be part of the project.

The computer beeped twice signaling that the upload is complete, i cant help but show a slight smirk on my face. Unknown to the clients, 5 more of their servers has been added to my list of drones; the code that was uploaded contains special hydra virus that is nearly impossible to detect. These types of armored viruses are fairly new, they are “living” computer virus in simplest terms, it learns then evolve. It hides itself into the hardwares memory buffers — thanks to the undisclosed vulnerabilities present in 90% of the routers and switches that comprises the backbone of the entire world wide web. It’s inevitable since those vulnerabilities were place there for that purpose, a effort made by people that came much earlier before me. They are the people that were placed strategically by “the company”, an insider they are often term. However for us who work with the company they are called the Arches — Greek for origin.

“Four years more”, I whispered softly. There’s still plenty of time to prepare, but first i need some shut-eye for later today i will still need to contact the others.

I manage to build a make-shift bed by joining some of the office chairs side-by-side, this will do for now for I need all the rest i can have before the dawn breaks. This is the part the make my work sucks, just like a call agent that works during the night; I have not felt the warmth of the Sun for a long time. Finally as I lay down on my make-shift bed and feeling the hard edges poking my spines i thought… Hell, this work sucks more than being a call agent after all!

That didn’t really matter, the project I’m in now is crucial to “the plan”. A plan that was initiated 35 years ago. A plan that our generation of Arches must fulfill; A plan where the fate of humanity will depend on for survival… 4 years from now.

To be continued.