Down the rabbit hole.

Argh Monday morning, I hate Mondays I thought as I dragged myself out of bed. I examined my body in the mirror while shaving the last patches of my facial hair. I’d started laser hair removal 6 months ago as super effective home units were available now and not having facial hair was something I could shrug off if asked by just saying I hated having to shave every day. Today I needed to work in the office, so I put on my usual office attire of jeans and a shirt, paying particular care to make sure my shirt covered my bracelet. According to the instructions I could take it off during the day without messing up the HRT program, but I didn’t want to risk it with the cops still being around.

I was on time as I left my apartment for the rail station. Most transit on our planet consisted of a combination of transport pods which were charged based on distance and demand and an efficient rail-based system. The rail system would be familiar to anyone who lived on 20th-century earth. Apart from the trains being automated, more modern, more regular and ticketing being implemented using a combination of biometric scanning and the datapads everyone carried it was pretty much identical. Like most rail stations my local station was a modest affair, just a couple of platforms and access ramps from street level. As I arrived at the platform a train turned up and I managed to find a seat. The journey to work lasted about half an hour and my mind was lost in thoughts the entire time.

I walked into the office on time and made my way to my desk. I worked in IT support and today I was on duty on the help desk. As it was Monday morning, I was rushed off my feet helping users by sorting out various problems. Lunch came around quickly, and I headed to the break room to get something to eat.

I walked into the break room to the sight of my boss ranting about the latest minority that the right-wing news feeds were targeting. I loathed my boss among other bigotries he was a massive transphobe and a homophobe, and I was 100% certain he would find a way to immediately fire me if he found out about my life outside work.

I made my way past my boss to the safety of the break room’s vending machine and dialed my usual meal deal which a short time later appeared in the slot. Being in his presence was the last thing I wanted to do so I decided to eat my lunch at my desk.

At my desk I thought about the last few days, there was no putting it off any longer I had made a decision. I took out my datapad and started to type out a message to Alice:

Me: Hi Alice, I’m in. I accept your offer.

Alice: That’s great news, I’ve been compiling some intel and looking for potential targets. Sending you over what I’ve discovered so far!

I’ve done it now, I thought. I never thought the ‘crime’ in the phrase ‘be gay, do crime.’ would be treason but if that’s what it takes for this planet to be better for people like me then it’s worth it.

I had some quiet times that afternoon and I managed to find some time to take a look at the company’s systems and what areas my credentials had access to. I wasn’t hopeful as the company's opsec team was better than I hoped, and most information was restricted to me. For Alice’s plan to work it was not enough to just have me working for her on the inside. I would need to find a way to get more privileged access to the company’s systems somehow.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, my datapad showed I had a new message it was from Alice:

Alice: I was thinking, we could meet up at mine to go over the intel I found and work on some plans if you’re free. What do you think?

Me: Sounds, like a plan. I don’t have anything else to do tonight.

Alice: Cool I’ll send over my address. Don’t forget to make sure you use my little location spoofing program from Sunday in case anyone is still tracking you!

Me: Will do.

The end of my workday soon came, and I brought up Alice’s tracking program on my datapad. I configured it to spoof a journey to my house and then headed out to the station. Alice had arranged a transit pod which was waiting for me down the road.

---
I got out of the transit pod and found myself outside a small house in a quiet area on the outskirts of the city. I knocked on the door and Alice opened it. “Hi come in.” Said Alice and I followed her to the living room. Alice’s living room was a mess of computer gear and other assorted electronics. On a table was a datapad with wires coming out of it that were connected to a circuit board. “Sorry about the mess. Can I get you anything to eat? I have a beef stew cooking in the kitchen if you’d like some.” Said Alice.

“That would be lovely,” I replied, and I found somewhere to sit while Alice disappeared into the kitchen.

After a few minutes, Alice returned with two plates containing food.

“Thanks, this looks really nice,” I said as she passed me my plate.

“It’s only synthetic meat.” She replied modestly. Since the gate slowdown two decades ago no one had even seen a real cow in decades, so I was quite surprised by her remark.

As we ate lunch, Alice showed me some of the intel she had found during the day on a large A3-sized datapad she had on the table. My jaw dropped when she brought up a profile of the prime minister.

“You have dirt on the PM?” I said astonished.

“Most of it is only rumours and it looks like the security services have been doing a pretty good job of covering it up but yes,” Alice replied.

“Sadly, I’m not sure how I can help you with getting more information. It looks like from having a dig around today that their opsec department has locked down pretty much everything to people with my level of clearance. I’ll need some way of getting a higher clearance before I can even find where the information is stored.”

“I wonder if we could bribe someone or maybe hack their access.”

“Doesn’t that bracelet you gave me have biometric spoofing capabilities?”

“Yes, it does. What do you have in mind?”

 “Stealing someone's credentials and I have just the person in mind” I replied.

With a plan in place for me to get access to a higher clearance level our attention now turned to how we were going to escape the planet before the authorities caught up with us. Alice had already found a shuttle to the orbit station and had reserved a cabin on a freighter that would leave soon after we arrived. She had also made false biometric IDs for both of us and beamed mine to my datapad. As soon as it arrived, I programmed it onto my bracelet so I could use it when the time came.

Everything was moving fast, and I felt a mixture of fear and excitement as we hatched our plans. With our initial plan complete we relaxed on the sofa and Alice put a movie on the viewscreen. I was finding as I got to know her that I really enjoyed her company. After the movie, we hugged as Alice walked me to the transit pod. The pod quickly whisked me home and once I was home, I went straight to bed.

---
It wasn’t until Wednesday that I had an excuse to be in the office again. I spent the morning programming setting up new terminals and datapad’s for various employees. Lunchtime soon arrived, and I would get my first opportunity to put our plan into action. As I walked into the break room my boss was there as I’d expected. I think it was the only time I’ve ever been glad to bump into him in the break room. As usual, he was standing in the break room spouting his usual bigotries with a National Family Party mug in one hand and his datapad in the other. I made sure my bracelet brushed past his datapad and my bracelet vibrated gently to inform me that it had connected and retrieved his credentials from his datapad. I then proceeded to the vending machine to and bought my usual meal deal. Partly to evade suspicion but mostly because I was hungry and needed lunch.

With my lunch in hand, I returned to my desk and logged into my terminal with my boss's credentials. I was super impressed with the bracelet’s hacking abilities as it worked like a charm. Over lunch I did some digging we were much closer to our goal. Unfortunately for us  the backups for the PMs personal datapad as well as the security feeds for the incidents Alice had found were stored in a secure data centre. The only way we would be able to gain access to it would be to physically go there. I opened my datapad and started typing a message to Alice:

Me: I have some good news and some bad news.

Me: Good news is I know where the PMs datapad’s backups are stored as well as the security feeds we are interested in.

Me: Bad news is it’s in a secure data centre I can’t access from here. I’ll need to go there physically to retrieve the data.

Alice: That’s still excellent progress. We should meetup soon and plan our next steps. What are you doing this weekend?

Me: I don’t have any plans.

Alice: How does Friday morning sound?

Me: Works for me.

Alice: Great! See you then!

The rest of the week seemed to take forever though I was glad we only had a four-day workweek and Thursday was my last working day. Alice was growing on me, and I was looking forward to spending time with her again.