The Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Defence:

“Access Denied!”

“Dammit,” grumbled Cyril, studying the worn keys on the security terminal; slowly and precisely he began retyping his password. You were allowed 5 attempts before being locked out, but the Guards seemed to be in a permanent state of heightened alert these days; he didn’t want to draw their attention, or worse, antagonise them.

The buildings damnable layers of security were becoming an increasing annoyance. Despite working in shifts staggered one hour apart, employees needed to arrive forty-five minutes early to ensure they’d cleared security in time for work. It was his first day back after a long weekend in Cornwall, and Cyril was curious to discover what new hurdles security had invented for him to jump through, while he'd been away.

“I’d love to know what the hell is so important about our work, that it requires security strong enough to frustrate & confound a highly educated work force!” He grumbled to himself.

He’d been in his new post for almost 18 months. 90 working days of back breaking effort, grafting on complex and nebulous asset calculations; Absent any referential context, Cyril remained none the wiser as to what any of it was for. Everything, including the Ministry’s name, seemed contradictory. The Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Defence! “Surely that’s an oxymoron?” He chuckled to himself, mentally reciting his password before hitting enter; He quickly changed his mind and deleted it. Distracted by his ruminations, he was convinced he’d made a mistake. “Better safe than sorry,” he chided himself, as he began again.

“Password.” He tutted to himself, another misleading falsehood. Word was implicitly singular. “How may thirty letter words can you think of off the top of your head?” He thought grumpily, frowning askance to the camera monitoring his booth, while stabbing at the keypad with false enthusiasm. There was one; ‘Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism!’ He’d looked it up, imagining there were none; but he was wrong.

Still, passwords frustrated him, he found passphrases much more memorable. All the normal rules could be applied: mixing cases, numbers, and symbols. Dashes signifying spaces also helped bulk up the digits. Cyril found it relatively enjoyable coming up with a new passphrase every 6 days. Yes 6 days! A 7-day reset cycle was far too logical, predictable, and considerate a period for the level of obsessiveness that permeated all the facilities security infrastructure. That said, he had been mildly surprised when the courier interrupted his brief period of annual leave with the 3-word priority communique:

‘RESET YOUR PASSWORD!’

Many imaginative phrases had passed through his mind as he signed for it; wasps threateningly circling his carefully prepared, and temporarily defenceless, Cornish cream tea; the courier checking and copying the receipt with exaggerated diligence, before eventually handing over the ominous red envelope.

Part of him thought, perhaps hoped, he’d been made redundant. There was a collective gasp of horror in the kitchenette when he’d told his colleagues his plans for a long weekend. Such was Pie-chart Pete’s shock at Cyril’s ‘careless use of annual leave entitlement,’ Cyril thought he might pass out.

“You can’t do that!” He’d squealed loudly; nervously glancing this way and that, seemingly terrified ‘others’ had heard.

Shocked, Cyril didn’t know what to say, as Pete leaned in conspiratorially and squeaked; “There will be consequences!” Wagging his finger agitatedly in the air.

Still wagging, he scuttled off; leaving Cyril more than a little perplexed, as the rest of the gathering nervously shuffled away, excusing themselves with, ‘things to do.’

When the courier interrupted his cream tea, he’d assumed the consequence had crystallised. But no, just more security driven bureaucracy. He had reset it there and then; shooing the increasingly determined wasps away from the thick layer of jam, oozing slowly from between scone and cream. With a childish giggle he’d settled on:

My-K@T-TidDLe5-i5-n0T-Th@t-F@t

He’d never had a cat called Tiddles, fat or otherwise! But he found that funny phrases helped with his recall. With a sigh, he finished typing and hit enter:

“Access Denied!”

“What!” Cyril exclaimed loudly. Suddenly, he wasn’t finding his ‘funny but memorable' passphrase particularly amusing!

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the 8-balls twitch at the disturbance. The nearest’s head snapped round to look his way furiously; rifle shouldered and aimed in the same reflex movement. Thankfully, he slowly lowered the rifle, finger fidgeting at the trigger guard, as Cyril made a deliberate show of turning his attention to re-typing his passphrase. Cyril let go of the breath that had caught in his throat, as the muzzle finally lowered, and the guard looked away.

“Ha. 8-balls!” He mumbled humourlessly, trying to calm his rattled nerves. He was sure he was the first to coin the disparaging phrase. The ‘8-balls’ were steroid popping super soldiers, who were constantly wired on a potent cocktail of combat stimulants, coffee, and nicotine. To Cyril it seemed they existed in only two emotional states: controlled rage or uncontrolled rage. Dressed head to toe in black combat armour, only their chins were exposed, protruding from beneath bulbous glossy black helms. The effect was like the white dot on the black billiard ball; hence Cyril had dubbed them 8-balls.

Not for the first time Cyril wondered about them. Why were top tier elite soldiers guarding and terrifying the workers at a seemingly unimportant Economic Ministry? Glancing left and right, he wondered at the familial similarity of their exposed chins: Same shape, similarly groomed, identical indelible sneers.

Officially, the mouth and chin were exposed; 'to improve non-security communications while maintaining the anonymity of the security operative.' However, there were believable rumours of a much more disturbing truth. It was said that in the dying days of the last great war, so many soldiers had been lost that the army was on the verge of collapse. To bolster the countries defences, the Government authorised the use of banned cloning technologies to restock the dwindling army. After the war, they continued the programme to provide cheap, disposable, but effective military and security assets.

“No smoke without fire!” Thought Cyril as his finger hesitated over the enter key.

Closing his eyes, he mentally recited his password and recalled his inputs. Anxiety undermining his confidence, he deleted it again. As he did, he felt the chilly tide of sweat spreading from his underarms, as his numb, and moistening fingers, fumbled across the keyboard.

“Pull yourself together!” He admonished himself, “This is the easy bit.”

He’d already passed through the difficult layers of security, made so by their lack of definition. This was the only element under his direct control and, as such, should have been the simplest to pass.

The trickier ‘passive’ security measures began at the hyper-loop station; facial and motion analysis were conducted on anyone exiting the carriage. A 95% baseline parameter match was the authorisation threshold for leaving the Station and entering the front door to the Ministry. The problem was, nobody was told about this first layer of security being enacted, nor the baselines used to assess them.

The first they’d known of the new arrangements was when Colin, a colleague from the ‘Defensive Parameter: Optimisation, Assessment, and Delivery Group’ on the 63rd floor – and highly allergic to Bee stings - got stung on the lip picnicking with his family.

When he’d recovered enough to return to work, he looked like he’d tucked a golf ball under his top lip. Oh, how they’d laughed! Until they’d arrived, still teasing him, at the Ministries main entrance; a security team burst out, bludgeoned poor Colin to the floor, savagely beat him, hog-tied his mumbling heap, and dragged him off for interrogation. It was 3 weeks before they saw him again.

Poor Colin, he still wasn’t himself. A couple of weeks ago, in the canteen queue, he’d wailed, fallen to his knees, and pissed his pants. The chef had kicked open the kitchen door to deliver a fresh tray of meatballs to the servery and triggered him. With an empathetic shake of his head, he hit enter.

“Access denied!”

Cyril gulped loudly as the machine merrily rejected his passphrase a third time, in its irritatingly pleasant sing-song voice; the swallow reflex seemed to carry on falling, down into his stomach, to do a somersault, before landing lower, and trying to prise loose his grip on his bowels. While fighting to control them, icy fingers of anxiety crawled up his spine to tightly grasp his thudding heart.

Closing his eyes, he breathed in through his nose to the count of 2, slowly letting it go through his mouth to the count of 8. In his mind’s eye he could see the amber alert blinking above the terminal, he imagined the grimacing grins of the 8-balls as they began to buzz around his terminal, like flies to fresh dung.

Opening his eyes, no calmer, but far less likely to soil himself, he found himself staring into the monitoring camera lens again. Absently, he wondered if the rejecting voice was a real person behind the camera? Randomly screwing with workers who seemed too relaxed or were noticeably in a hurry. Cyril’s quarterly staffing review was in 5 minutes; lateness came with a reprimand! The thought triggered another pulse of anxiety; breathing deeply again, he rolled his shoulders to clear his head.

With an effort, he ignored the unsettling gathering of 8-balls cluttering the edges of his vision; unfortunately, he couldn’t unsee their crouched posture and shouldered weapons. Blessedly, for now, their muzzles were dipped with fingers resting on their trigger guards.

With his heart throbbing an insistent marching beat that screamed “RUN,” Cyril looked down at the keyboard and frantically pondered what was going wrong.

So far, he’d passed the passive checks at the station, the intelligence test at the main entrance, the psychological response test at the vertical transportation node, the various biometric checkpoints that littered the complex, and had keyed in his passphrase at the coffee dispenser and WC enroute.

“Checks upon checks upon checks,” he complained to himself, “it’s not like more checks are needed to verify that I’m me! But it shouldn’t matter, why am I being stopped at my departmental entrance?”

There was no reason he could think of, unless...

Cyril glanced over his shoulder, there was no queue behind him. He looked left and right; long queues had formed at the adjacent terminals. Most people were eyes front, one or two spared nervous glances in his direction, but quickly averted their gaze when he tried to catch their attention.

“Shit!”

He vaguely recalled someone hissing his name as he rushed up to the empty terminal. In his haste he hadn’t paid it any mind, nor considered that an empty terminal was a little odd. The terminal looked tired, but otherwise okay; the key identifiers worn away through use. This was relatively normal throughout the ministry; thousands of workers coding in and out several times daily added a huge amount of wear to the units. “This one must have a fault!”

Thinking, “there’s nothing to lose!” He looked toward the nearest 8-ball and asked, “Sir, does this terminal have a fault?”

“Code in!” He barked in response, his sneer turning into a snarl.

More calmly than he felt, Cyril persevered, “Apologies Sir, but it is not recognising my password. There must be a fault. I will join the next queue.”

“FREEZE!”

The command exploded from the guard like a cracked whip, halting Cyril mid turn, instinctively he raised his hands. As he slowly turned back to face the guard, he overheard fragments of the 8 balls extreme situation report as he called for support, “Aggressive... Refusing to code in... Attempting to flee...”

Cyril waited in silence, indignant at the false interpretation of his actions, but too scared to speak out and risk escalation. Instead, he concentrated on controlling his breathing, while attempting to ignore his thundering heart, which now seemed to be banging directly on his eardrums. Trickles of sweat meandered down his back to tickle his belt line, while beading moisture itched at his brow; he resisted the urge to wipe it away in case the movement was misinterpreted.

Oblivious to Cyril’s discomfort the 8-ball cocked his head, listening to the response from his commander. With a nod he advanced two steps and took aim.

“Code in!”

Cyril’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water; his belief that the terminal was broken, and that any attempt to key in his password was doomed to failure, warred with his sense of immediate self-preservation, as he stared into the physical and metaphorical abyss of the gun barrel.

Reasoning he had two attempts remaining, and a sign of cooperation may aid his cause, Cyril moved back to the terminal and rested his hands either side of the keyboard, panicking, wondering, “How the hell do I get out of this?”

At his workstation, he could reveal his password temporarily and see any type errors. All public facing terminals had this functionality disabled for security.

“How do I diagnose a problem I can’t see?”

Having a puzzle to solve helped distract him from the surrounding guards and calm down. He decided on a process of elimination, beginning by testing the basic keystrokes; if a punched key resulted in an asterisk, then it must be working. Each did.

“So far, so good; although not very helpful.”

Next, he checked shift and caps lock. The indicator showed caps lock as being off, so he tapped the key. The indicator light did not illuminate. Careful to keep count, he robustly tapped a few more times; to no avail.

“I was right.”

Relief flooded through him, and Cyril called out triumphantly to the 8-ball, “Caps lock is broken! I need to use another terminal.”

“Denied. Code in!” Came the blunt response.

“But it won’t work... it’s broken.” Retorted Cyril in confusion.

“Code! In!” The 8-ball growled menacingly, advancing another two paces for emphasis.

Cyril’s emotions swung from warm relief to icy panic, so sudden was the shift he felt himself go lightheaded. Closing his eyes, he breathed and held onto the terminal while the sensation passed. After a moment, he’d steadied himself and opened his eyes, staring down at the broken keyboard.

“If I hit caps lock once more, it’s in the opposite position to the last time I tried to code in. If it is faulty, then my password should work! If it doesn’t, then the shift key is also broken.”

Cyril deliberately said his thoughts out loud. He doubted the 8-balls cared, but hoped their commander was watching the proceedings and would see sense. His hands once again danced across the keypad, to finish hovering over enter. Summoning the courage to strike the key, he resolved to write his notice and quit as soon as he got to his workstation.

Moving to the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Defence was supposed to be a promotion. The reality was that every day felt like a looming death sentence. The precedent was set from his first day; he almost got shot for arriving without setting up his password. Apparently, the requirement to do so was clearly stated on page 6743, paragraph 12 of the work contract he’d signed.

Cyril’s experience hadn’t meaningfully improved since his first day. The constant security tests, checks, changes, and renewals had him in an eternal state of stress. He’d lost weight; unable to bring a packed lunch into the building for security reasons, but averse to braving the twelve security stations he needed to pass to get to the cafeteria. When he did eat, he was plagued by indigestion and reflux; he was losing sleep, worrying the ‘what if’s’ of failing one of the myriads of security checks.

“I’m about to find out if any were right!”

For the life of him he couldn’t imagine why all this obsessive security was necessary. He had been repeatedly assured, with much laughter at the thought, that his work was not sensitive or subject to any enhanced levels of secrecy. However, his line managers were probably just as clueless about what they were all doing.

At his lower moments of stress and fatigue, he’d wished the 8-balls would just trump up an excuse to shoot him and be done with it.

With the threat now looming, Cyril realised he really wanted to live, just not like this. He wanted to return to the Ministry of Liquidatable Asset Collection. Underpaid, undervalued, and underappreciated he may have been, but he understood his purpose and contribution to society. He arrived at work, and with a swipe of his access card, he was at his desk logging in.

With a rueful smile his hand dropped, and his finger struck enter.

“Access denied! Intruder alert! Security to terminal 6-A-3-C.”

“That’s four!” Cyril was oddly calm, as he fought the urge to run, and stepped back from the terminal with his hands on his head.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!”

“We’ve got a runner!”

“FREEZE!”

All around Cyril was commotion, but his eyes were rooted on the terminal booth. The moment the security announcement had called out, he’d noticed flecks of dried blood on the inside of the terminal enclosure. This scenario had already unfolded, at least once before. It must have been while he was in Cornwall.

“To their credit, the sanitation team have done a fantastic job of cleaning up the terminal!”

As his eyes tracked the surrounding 8-balls, Cyril could see, and understood, the expectant grins twitching on their faces. They were hungry hunters circling their cornered prey, itching for their alpha to give the kill command. They could, and should, have taken the terminal out of use, but their perverted sense of security probably made them think it was another test; having an excuse to kill someone was a bonus.

“Code in!” Bellowed the 8-ball who’d harried Cyril since the start.

“The terminal is broken!” Cyril answered, trying to keep his voice calm, and measured.

“Code in NOW!” He screamed, advancing to stand just out of arms reach of Cyril.

“No!”

Cyril could see his compatriots moving quickly and mechanically into close flanking positions around him. Not that he intended to, but any effort to flee would be futile.

In motion, the 8-balls were quick and professional; admirable and impressive. However, in the stress of the moment, Cyril was noticing details that he would normally have overlooked. When stilled, their face and muscles ticked and twitched, like a drug addict desperate for a fix. The 8-balls were tormented by the relative inactivity of their duty, they in turn passed their torment onto those whom they were supposed to protect, seeking ‘a fix.’ Cyril could only hope that the rules, their duty, and their orders would hold them in check.

Lowering his gun, the lead 8-ball took another step toward Cyril; his compatriots, twitching uncomfortably as he loomed over him threateningly. Cyril was acutely aware that, up close, the 8-ball was wider than he was tall!

“Code in!” He repeated, his voice low, but quavering with the effort needed to restrain his violent inclinations.

Cyril shook his head, “The terminal is broke...”

Before he could finish, three things happened in the blink of an eye: The 8-ball facing him screamed in incoherent rage, a psychological dam breaking in his mind; one behind Cyril lunged forward and clubbed him on the back of the head with the butt of his rifle; toppling forward in a daze, Cyril was snatched up by the screaming 8-ball. Grabbed around the throat, he was lifted off the ground.

Cyril’s toes tickled the tiles, feebly searching for purchase, as his hands grasped at an arm that felt like cast iron. Stars danced in his vision as he snorted and spluttered, desperately trying to take the pressure off his throat. As he dangled and kicked, he could see colleagues watching on in mute horror. 8-balls roughly elbowed their way into the outraged gathering, ensuring they remained spectators; too scared to intervene.

Slowly Cyril was hauled higher until he was face to face with his distorted reflection in the 8-balls helmet. Twitching beneath, he could see the 8-balls chin and neck, flushed with barely contained anger; bulging with chords of muscle, threaded with throbbing veins. His mouth twitched, as if to speak, then he abruptly looked away, glaring at the crowd threateningly. With a snort of frustration, he lazily flung Cyril at the terminal.

As Cyril clattered to the floor, noisily sucking in air and coughing, the 8-ball drew his side arm, swaggered up behind him, pulled him to his knees, and pressed his gun to the side of his head. There he paused, waiting, allowing Cyril to absorb the gravity of the moment and the importance of his next decision.

Cyril farted loudly, but managed not to soil himself, as the cold hard muzzle puckered the flesh on his temple.

The 8-ball leaned in close and growled into Cyril’s ear, “Tap in or be taken out! It’s all the same to me.”

Despite the period of choking, Cyril gagged, nauseated by the 8-balls breath. It was thick with the rank, dung-like, odour of poor oral hygiene, blended with the bitter aroma of stale chemical coffee, and overlaid with a sweeter after note from whatever nicotine product he’d been inhaling.

Less bravely, and much shriller than he’d hoped, Cyril began, “The terminal is…”

“BROKEN!” The guard screamed, losing all sense of reason.

Snatching his gun away, with a quick flourish, he switched grip and whipped the back of Cyril’s head. As he collapsed against the terminal the 8-ball continued raging at him:

“Fuck you! You... treacherous… insurrectionist... state-hating… weak-arsed… disobedient... mother… fucker!”

Every insult was punctuated with a heavy blow, bludgeoning Cyril into a mewling heap on the blood-soaked floor. Gasps from the audience were drowned by the cheers of the other 8-balls, who’d ceased prowling to enjoy the show.

Breathing heavily, his exposed chin an unhealthy shade of purple, the 8-ball dragged Cyril up to the terminal by his hair and bellowed, “CODE IN. NOW!”

Showered in spittle & gagging on the stench, Cyril sobbed and nodded.

“Good.” The 8-ball said mildly, hauling him up to his feet. “It’ll go easier if you... cooperate!”

Encouragingly, he straightened Cyril’s lapels & dusted down his shoulders. With a thunderous clap the 8-ball gave his shoulders one last slap, squeezed them in excited expectation, turned Cyril around and gently pushed him toward the terminal.

“Click. Snick-snack!”

Cyril spun back around as the 8-ball thumbed the safety and chambered a round. The 8-ball grinned more widely and wagged his gun encouragingly toward the terminal, mouthing, “Go on then!”

Turning back to the terminal, Cyril placed his hands either side of the keyboard for what he imagined would be the last time, closed his eyes and let out a sob.

A moment of serenity washed over him; with a smile, he imagined he could hear his late father whistling the theme tune to the antiques roadshow, like he used to when busying himself around the house. Cyril wondered if he was perhaps already dead, and this was what happened when the angels came to collect you?

The whistling grew louder, joined by the accompanying squelch of rubber soled boots on the polished tiled floor. Opening his eyes, Cyril leaned sideways to look behind the terminal, toward the source of the sound. He expected some new security related horror to be emerging from the bowels of the building, ready to fill the air with dreadful threats.

To Cyril’s surprise, and the 8-balls displeasure, a diminutive lady in bright orange overalls marched up to the pass gate and let herself through. Festooned with tools, and swinging her arms unnecessarily high with every stride, she whistled and marched up to the terminal. Halting next to Cyril, she took a long thin box from where it was tucked under her arm. She blinked, surprised at the state of him, before unashamedly appraising him from head to toe and back again.

After whistling a long descending note while shaking her head, she brazenly announced, “You look like shit!”

Cyril managed half a smile, from his rapidly swelling face, earning a snort of laughter from the newcomer as she observed, “tough day, huh!”

Cyril nodded mutely as she went on to introduce herself as Mandy. He opened his mouth to respond, but the 8-ball interrupted by clearing his throat unnecessarily loudly. Mandy glanced over her shoulder at him; he was turning purple again, pointing angrily at the amber terminal warning indicator, and waggling his pistol.

“Well duh!” Mandy retorted, waving her small cardboard package back at him, “that’s what I’m here to fix!”

With a gargled roar he clenched his fists, waved his arms, then stormed off; the rest of the gathered 8-balls groaned in disappointment.

Glancing at Cyril, Mandy whispered, “Meat-heads, they’re such morons!”

Cyril laughed and sobbed at the same time, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

“Excuse me.” Mandy asked, gently nudging him aside and handing him a pack of paper handkerchiefs. “I’ll have this fixed in a jiffy.”

True to her word, in moments she’d levered off the old console, extracted a new one from the packaging, fixed it in place, and ran a couple of quick checks.

“Okay, then.” She murmured turning to Cyril with a warm smile. “Try that.”

Instantly the 8-balls were alert. Cyril moved nervously up to the shiny new keyboard, as they crowded in closer, guns clicking as they readied themselves.

He tested the caps lock; light on, light off. Satisfied, he carefully input his password. Holding his breath, he mumbled a quick prayer to God, who he’d never believed in, who had no reason to save him, but who he desperately needed now, and hit enter.

“Access Granted!”

Cyril laughed hysterically, stepping back to see the terminal light up green.

“Result!” Mandy grinned, “These terminals are going on the fritz more regularly with the longer passwords.”

“Yes.” Cyril managed to agree, “it would seem so.”

Glancing over his shoulder as he shuffled painfully through the pass gate, Cyril noticed his 8-ball tormentor having some kind of fit, maybe a stroke? His mind unable to apply the brakes on his adrenaline fuelled heart, he was slumped on one knee, slack jawed, his chin flickering between shades of red and purple.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.” Cyril mused as he closed the gate and turned to thank Mandy.

Suddenly looking up from scribbling notes on the empty box, she pointed her pen at him and said, “one more thing.”

“Yes.”

“Reset your password.”

“Huh?”

“Your password, you should reset it. Do it as soon as you get to your workstation.”

He opened his mouth to ask why, but Mandy was already shaking her head, a patient smile on her lips.

Pointing to the cameras she explained, “They’ll have clicked me being closer than the mandatory 2-meter separation, while you put in your password.”

“So, I’m red flagged until I change it.” Cyril finished with a knowing smile. The 8-balls would be looking for any reason to get at him now.

“Bingo!” Mandy agreed. “We call it being 8-balled!” She added with a snort of laughter.

Cyril chuckled with her, then said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Mandy replied with a little bow. “But seriously…”

“I will, I will, I will.” Agreed Cyril holding his hands up defensively. “As soon as I get to my workstation, I’ll reset my password.”