Las Vegas December 31, 1986

Time, why is it that time always seem to come to a crawl whenever one wish to be somewhere else. Must been the aliens like everything else in this fucked up place. Anthony smiled, content of his own joke. His shift would be done in one hour and then he would go waste himself at the Fremont street. Like last year. Best thing ever that happened to him. Right after the twins. Man, those two knew how to party. They sucked him and his wallet dry, but it was worth it. Ten out of ten, would do it again.

Hmm, he still had their number saved somewhere for special occasions, perhaps…

“Anthony, my man, still here? Babysitting your precious hard drives?”

“No. Whatever the hell you want from me, no. I’m done in forty-nine minutes and I sure as hell don’t want to fix some damn printer.”

“You’re breaking my heart. And here I wanted to give you this…”

Wang made one of his famous sad faces and flapped a sticky note in the air. There were some numbers on it.

“Since I know your tase, I thought you might enjoy this but I see you are not in the mood…”

“Enjoy what? Your company? Go enjoy my middle finger.”

“Two words man. Asian Triplets.”

“Continue…”

“The girls are new in town and would like to have a good time tonight if you know what I mean.”

Anthony reached for the memo, triplets. Asian at that. Something he could finally scratch off from his bucket list.

“Not so fast. First, I need your help with something. We got it this morning”

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Heavy yellow folder flapped onto Anthony’s desk.

“The hell is this? John doe? What am I supposed to do with that? I’m the database guy not missing person department.”

“Yeah, well then this is something right up your alley. This ain’t no John Doe.”

“No?”

“No. Listen to this. Some hikers found a naked guy near Bald Mountain. He was covered in blood, head to toe so they thought him dead at first but when they got closer, they realized he was still breathing. You can guess what happened next. Dude ended up in hospital, they run some tests and found entire periodic table in his blood. State Troopers also got interested and run an id on him.”

“And then his file came to us?”

“Bingo!”

“Why?”

“It’s all messed up. The guy looks twentyish, yet our system spat out some dude that fought in Vietnam, stationed in Germany during cold war and his birth certificate is dated as nineteen oh two.”

“Bullshit.”

“I shit you not. Check yourself.”

Anthony browsed through the files then run a query on the database.

“The hell? That for real? The guy should be like eighty-four. Got any photos?”

“Only the recent one the troopers made. Nothing else on file. I did a check with the air force to see if it’s one of theirs but nothing.”

“What about his past postings?”

“All dead ends. Literally and figuratively. Anyone who could put a positive id on him is either dead or missing.”

“A spook?”

“Thought so too but CIA told me to fuck off so, I don’t think it’s their property.”

“What, you gonna tell me the aliens dropped him?”

“Nah, my bet would be on that crash or whatever happened on last Thursday. Something mixed up in the system?”

“Well, it is possible…”

They had to recover everything from tapes since something fried nine drives. Maybe during that something bugged out?

“Man, not today, it’s gonna take years to unfuck all that and I’m gone in like half an hour. Can’t you leave it for after the new year’s?”

“I need this today… Can’t you `fix` it?”

“No can do. Twenty-nine minutes.”

“Come on man, think of the triplets.”

Anthony hanged his eyes on the yellow slip. Usually he would take fifty grands for this kind of thing. For people `showing up` in the system. But triplets… He stretched his arm and took the memo.

“You‘re a lifesaver man.”

“Shut the fuck up. I did nothing.”

At the same time John Doe died and a new male citizen od United States of America was born. He had a birth certificate and a social security number. He just needed a name.

Anthony looked at his screen, the blue logo in the corner caught his attention.

“Have a good life mister Vesa.”