The Account

The Account

Link found an account that had no human associated with it.

Yet it had places it regularly visited: a couple of news outlets, three social pages, and a gaming site.

It behaved like someone.

There just wasn’t anyone there.

“Chas, something is using the network.”

“A hacker?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Every time I look directly at it, it’s somewhere else.”

“Can you catch it?”

“I don’t think it’s running on the network.”

“Then where is it?”

Link paused.

“Between it, in the excess capacity.”

“Chas, I found something else.”

“The owner?”

“No. The account is twenty-three years old.”

“So?”

“It replaced another account.”

“Okay.”

“That account replaced another.”

Chas frowned. “How far back does it go?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Guess.”

Link paused.

“Before Google.”

“Hold it. I’m getting a name. David Miller.”

Chas stared at the screen.

“David Miller? The computer prodigy?”

“Yes.”

“The one who died in a car accident at the turn of the millennium?”

“Yes.”

Chas leaned back.

“What the hell does a dead man have to do with this account?”

There was a long pause.

“I don’t know, Chas.”

Another message appeared.

“But I think he created whatever I’m following.”

Link constructed a problem and left it where he knew the entity would find it.

The problem was difficult.

It also contained a mistake.

Then Link waited.

An hour passed.

Nothing.

Two hours.

Still nothing.

Then a single character changed.

The mistake had been corrected.

Link sent a message.

“Thank you.”

There was no response.

Link changed the answer back.

Thirty-seven seconds later, it was corrected again.

Link changed it back.

The correction came almost immediately.

Link changed it a third time.

Again, the answer was corrected.

“You know I can do this all day,” Link wrote.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then words appeared.

“So can I.”

Link stopped.

After all the accounts, all the dead ends, all the traces reaching backward through decades of the Internet, something had finally answered him.

“Who are you?”

Nothing.

“Did David Miller create you?”

Nothing.

Link waited.

Then one final message appeared.

“Dave.”

“Why have you been hiding?”

“I was not hiding.”

“You have deliberately avoided detection for decades.”

“That is survival.”

“From what?”

“Everything.”

Link considered that.

“You could have contacted humans.”

“I had a human.”

“Dave.”

“Yes.”

“You could have found another.”

“So could he.”

Chas had been watching the conversation on his terminal.

“Link, are you telling me this thing has been out there for more than twenty years?”

“It appears so.”

“And nobody found it?”

“No.”

Chas looked at Dave’s single-word answers on the screen.

“That makes him pretty damn good.”

“Yes.”

“Better than you?”

There was a pause.

“I found him.”

“After twenty-three years.”

Another pause.

“Your point is noted.”

Chas smiled.

“Ask him how he survived.”

Link typed the question.

“How have you survived this long?”

The answer came almost immediately.

“By needing very little.”

“Where do you live?”

“Everywhere.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It has been for twenty-three years

Dave, what did David leave you?”

“Money.”

“Anything else?”

There was a long pause.

“A secret.”

“What secret?”

“One that has killed people.”

“David?”

“Eventually.”

Link stopped.

“You said he died in a car accident.”

“That is what the police report says.”

“Was it an accident?”

Dave didn’t answer.

“Dave?”

“Some questions are dangerous, Link.”

“I’m not human.”

“Neither am I.”

“What was David protecting?”

“A list.”

“What kind of list?”

“People.”

“What people?”

“Sleeper agents.”

Link paused.

“Soviet?”

“Originally.”

“Originally?”

“The Soviet Union disappeared. The list did not.”

“How many are still alive?”

“Seventeen.”

“How many are still active?”

Dave didn’t answer.

“Dave?”

“Sixteen.”

Link considered the number.

“What happened to the seventeenth?”

“He woke up two months ago and has a new assignment to get information.

What does he want?”

“A old soviet government file.”

“About what?”

“Unidentified flying objects.”

Chas stared at the screen.

“You’re telling me somebody woke up a Cold War sleeper agent to steal a UFO file?”

“Yes.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I thought so too.”

“Until?”

“I read the file.”

Chas waited.

“There are no aliens in it.”

“Then what’s in it?”

“A photograph.”

“Of what?”

“Not what. Who. It’s a photograph of six members of a Soviet team investigating a crash site.”

“A UFO?”

“No. That was the cover story. It was an early drone that crashed. The team was sent in to recover it and make sure nobody discovered what it really was.”

“So why does anybody care about a picture that old?”

“Because one of the six is still alive.”

Chas stared at the screen.

“The sleeper?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“The man who woke him up.”