Date: 10.5.2152

To: you, my only friend

Subject: they're pissing me off

hi,

I'm sorry I haven't written in a while.

It's been a difficult couple of days, and I'm still trying to make some sense of it. Everything is so out of control, and I'm in total panic mode. I've gone through all of my morphine stash, but I'm still on edge.

If you remember, last week I packed my bags and was ready to bolt. But guess who was standing right in front of my building, waiting for me to make a move?

Yes, it was Kevin - you got it.

Apparently, I wasn't careful enough that day we met. I've gotten too sloppy, too relaxed in the last two years. That's what got me into this mess.

Kevin blocked the doorway with his body and pointed at my bags:

"I suspected you were a coward."

"Thank you for this astute judgment of my character, but I don't have a lot of time. Can we pick it up later?" I asked, all the while knowing this battle was lost.

My bag was heavy enough to distract Kevin if I threw it at him and quickly ran. But I wasn't ready to part with my hard drives. Besides, sooner or later, he would have caught me either way.

"So, where are you going in such a hurry?" he asked.

"None of your business. Can you please leave me alone? If you don't, I'll call the police."

"Go on, do it. I'm sure they're gonna be very interested to know how you hacked government servers. Not to mention how you've been hacking into space program transmissions for years now," Kevin smirked.

"They're not gonna believe you. And if they do, you're going down with me," I tried not to show that I was scared.

"You realize that the penalty for your crimes is worse than being deported to Neptune?" Kevin asked.

"What are you even talking about?" I tried to push him away. "I don't care. Just let me go."

"Don't worry, I will," Kevin sighed. "But I need to know what was in those files."

"I told you, I don't know."

"That's a lie."

"Believe what you want. I'm not telling you anything."

Kevin gave me a heavy look. I feigned confidence and shrugged:

"What are you gonna do? Beat me up? That will accomplish nothing."

Suddenly Kevin grabbed me by the arm:

"Come on, you need to see something," he dragged me out on the street. I was so shocked I didn't even fight back.

But then I came back to my senses.

"I don't need to see anything!" I shouted. "Find someone else to deal with the files. I just want to be left alone."

Kevin ignored my words and continued dragging me somewhere. He had so much strength he seemed not to even notice my petty resistance. Mia was right about the gym, after all. You also probably think that I'm pathetic.

"Where are we going?" I asked, finally admitting my defeat.

At that point, I was almost sure he was taking me to some quiet location to torture and kill me.

I had no idea how I would respond to torture. Would I spill all the secrets just to make the pain stop, or was I stronger than that? With some things, there's no way of knowing before you try, is there? Have you ever been tortured? And if so, did you at any point just give up?

We crossed one street after another. We took so many turns I lost count. And then, there we were - in the middle of what used to be an industrial part of town a couple of decades ago. It was full of old shabby factory buildings that felt like shadows coming to haunt us from the past.

Kevin pushed me into one of the buildings with boarded-up windows. "That's it," I thought, "this is the sad, run-down place where my life is going to end, and I won't be able to do anything about it."

As I went in, a strong smell of old wet rags and mildew hit my nose. A lot of people would have found the smell appalling, but for me, it was rather calming. I spent a big part of my childhood hiding in the basement. It was the only place at home where no one would think to look for me, so I always associated this particular smell with safety. Ironic, isn't it? Because at that moment, with Kevin behind me, I didn't feel safe at all.

We climbed upstairs and passed through several spacious rooms with abandoned equipment till we were standing in front of a rusty metal door. Kevin knocked twice and shouted, "It's me, open up!"

I tried to escape again but didn't even manage to take one step when Kevin tightened his grip around my arm again.

"Wait, you're gonna want to see this."

I really doubted that. But since I had no choice, I made no other attempts to save my life. In a couple very long minutes, the door flung open and... I couldn't believe my eyes.

The girl who opened the door was no one else but Katja.

Yes, the same Katja B. from Neptune, batch 003 – the one I wrote to you about! I blinked several times and then bit my lip as hard as I could just to check if this all was some morphine-induced delusion. Alas, no. Katja was still there, glaring at me.

"Who is that?" She asked Kevin.

"That's Ryan – the weird stalker we've been discussing recently."

"Oh, right... And why did you think it was a good idea to bring him here?"

"We need his help, and, well, he needed some convincing. I thought you might do the trick," said Kevin as we entered a very smoky room. There were some plastic tables, a dirty sofa, and a tall bookshelf inside. The bookshelf was so full it seemed it would collapse at any moment.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"How?" I asked, staring at Katja. "Why? But..."

"A secret for a secret," Kevin smiled. "You tell us about the files, and we tell you how we got Katja back to Earth."

"How did you find out I know Katja?" I finally managed to form a coherent sentence.

"Don't flatter yourself. You don't know me, weirdo," Katja spat out.

"After our meeting, I realized that you were not expecting the file from Mike. So it puzzled me – for what other reason would you need to go through all of his emails? And then I had a hunch that it wasn't just Mike you had on your radar. Sarah here made it her personal mission to see who else you've been following. And it turns out you are diligently looking into people who had any connection to the rebellion of 45."

A blonde girl with big green eyes appeared from under the table and waved at me with a smile.

"You're quite skilled. I couldn't trace all your activity. So I had to backtrack by comparing your digital footprint on Mike's and Kevin's data and cross-referencing it with everyone in our database. And damn, you've been busy! You're tracking almost everybody, except for a couple people. To be honest, I'm even a little offended. Were Maxime and I not interesting enough for you?"

"Come on, Sarah, would you let it go?" said a tall man in a white hoodie who was standing just behind the door this whole time.

I realized that the smoke in the room was his doing. He had a vaporizer in his hand and was blowing big fluffy pink clouds out of his mouth.

"He also didn't hack me, which honestly I'm happy about it. Isn't it a good thing?"

"I fell through your carefully placed nets too, I guess," the man turned to me.

"Sorry, what?" I couldn't remember any other instance in my life when I was so confused, and I'm counting the times when I was very high. "Why do you guys think I should have been following you? What is going on? Who are you, people?"

"Well, you should know better than anyone. There is a reason why you're following the rebels, isn't there?" Kevin asked me while getting comfortable on the dirty sofa.

"I'm not following the rebels. I don't care about the rebellion," I said.

As you know, I was telling the truth. But judging from the expressions on their faces, these guys didn't believe me.

"So it's just a coincidence that you've been downloading all the available data on these people? For years?" Sarah handed me a list, printed on three A4 sheets. I looked through the names...and you will not believe it – I indeed knew every single person on it.

Most of them were Neptune inhabitants. A couple of them were from Saturn, though. I did know that many of them must have had a colorful past, but I never bothered enough to look through their history ten years into the past.

Most of what I knew about them came from their emails and video messages to their friends and family. Yes, as I mentioned to you before, I, of course, noticed a certain pattern among the Neptunians, and I was aware that at least some of them were tied to the riots of 45. But it never was my mission to pursue the rebels. At that moment, I realized that these people might have misunderstood my intentions and have probably thought me sympathetic to the cause I wasn't even interested in.

"Yes, believe it or not, it's just a coincidence," I said with a sigh.

"There's no such thing as coincidences," Katja looked at me and crossed her arms.

"Technically, you're right," I couldn't argue. "But the rule of big numbers is still a thing."

"So, why did you watch the videos I made for my brother?" She asked me point-blank.

Even though I was familiar with her voice, I never heard her speak English. I expected her to have more of an accent, but she barely had any, which was weird for someone who, as far as I know, had never spent any considerable time in the US. Did she pick the language up on Neptune? But nothing from the video surveillance suggested she made any friends there...

"I am just... interested in the life of terraformers," I finally said awkwardly. It was weird to admit it out loud.

Everyone looked very confused.

"So you want to tell me you went through all this trouble of hacking government servers and stealing gigabytes of transmitted data just because you wanted a... reality show?" The guy with the vaporizer asked incredulously.

I nodded. What else could I have done? They reacted the same way Mia did. It's ok. I don't expect anyone to understand. Except for you, of course. You're my rock.

"Wow, that's just really stupid," said Kevin.

"Thank you again for your very astute observations," I started to get pissed. "Can I go now?"

"Man, it all makes sense now! That's why you

were not interested in me and Maxime. Because we never left Earth!" The blonde girl exclaimed.

"Really, Sarah? It's all you care about?" Maxime puffed out another cloud of smoke and rolled his eyes. "How about the fact that the guy we had so much hope for turned out to be just an obsessed space nerd? That's so embarrassing. Not to mention discouraging."

"Yes, and now, thanks to some people here," Katja glared at Kevin, "he also knows too much about us!"

"I don't know anything!" I put my hands up in the air. "Just let me go! I will forget all about you, guys. I will also gladly move very far away and will never look into the people on your list ever again. I swear!"

"Such a wasted potential," Kevin shook his head. "Do you realize you could be doing much more with the abilities you have?"

"I'm good, thank you," I said and slowly started moving towards the door.

"Are you not the least bit curious about how we got Katja back?" Kevin asked.

I contemplated the question for a bit. It was an interesting puzzle, but the price for the solution was just too high.

"And again, I'm good," I struggled a bit with opening the door. "I wish all the best to you and hope we never see each other again."

"Wait a minute!" Maxime shut the door again. "Before you go, you should at least tell us about the files or show Sarah how you managed to decrypt them."

"It's a simple program. I'm sure she'll figure it out sooner or later!"

As soon as I said it, I realized I've made a mistake. You're probably rolling your eyes right now.

"Aha!" Kevin jumped up from the sofa. "So you do know what the data was all about!"

"It wasn't anything exciting... budget cuts, more control over media, blah blah. You know, same old," I lied.

"If so, why didn't you tell me that when we first met?" Kevin asked.

"I didn't know if I could trust you... You might have been a government spy or something," I was proud of how I wriggled my way out of this one.

"Somehow, I just don't believe him," said Maxime.

"You're right. He completely lacks credibility," Sarah nodded.

Katja just looked at me while Kevin said:

"This is serious, we need this info, and you're the only one who can help. We wouldn't have asked you if we knew you weren't interested in the mission, but now we can't just let you go. We put ourselves into a very precarious position. You should understand that the success of our operation depends on what you know."

I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"This is what you call an operation? Are you kidding me? Four people in an abandoned factory, using their real names, and who can't decrypt files even with detailed instructions at hand? No offense, but from where I stand, it looks like you're a bunch of rebel wannabes playing games. Oh, woopty-doo, you got one terraformer back to Earth! First of all, most likely, you just got lucky. And second, what did that even accomplish? No, let me rephrase that – what do you even want to accomplish with this?"

"Take down the system," said Katja without blinking an eye.

"Is this sarcasm?" I had to ask.

"It's not just four of us," said Kevin.

"Oh, ok, it's eight of you. That changes everything! The government is quivering in their boots! The rebellion of 45 has nothing on you, guys."

"So young and already so cynical," said Maxime.

"It has nothing to do with my philosophical beliefs," I argued. "I don't think you understand what you're doing. And thus, you're doomed to fail. Most likely, you will all end up on Neptune."

"Or dead...," Kevin added.

"Whatever, it's going to be your own fault."

I know, I know, I was being a jerk.

"That's why we're looking for people who could help us! We're making history here," said Sarah.

"You're delusional!" I turned to Kevin. "You told me I should open my eyes. It's the other way round – you don't see that the fight is already lost. It was lost long ago, even before 45. And everyone who doesn't get it is either blind or insane."

"And your solution is just to do nothing, sit around and enjoy the show?" asked Maxime.

"You don't have to enjoy it," it was my turn to roll my eyes. "Anyway, beats me what you are going to do! Just don't involve me in this."

With these words, I slammed the door behind me and, after being disoriented for a bit, finally managed to leave the factory building. Thankfully no one followed me.

Since then, I've been sitting around my apartment, abusing drugs and fuming with anger.

I changed my mind. I'm not going to move just because of these idiots! Who do they think they are?

What annoys me the most is their sense of superiority. They act and talk like they're the only ones who see the problems with our society and political system right now, and everyone else is just willfully ignorant. Where do they get off saying that the rest of the world is blind? Can you believe this arrogance?

If they ever contact me again in any way, I'm sending all the info I have on them to the police. And I don't even care if you think that makes me an asshole.

Is it wrong to want to live my life in peace and not fight for some hopeless agenda?

Yours,

Ryan