Beeep Beeep Beeep, her smart watch rang as the clock struck 5:30 A.M.

Alice took an hour preparing both her things and herself. She had the day ahead of her and she couldn’t miss out on this opportunity that has presented itself.

She opened her gray bag and put her things inside, ‘I’ll have to go the library first, I need some info.’ she thought as she placed a pink hoodie, a bottle of water, a ‘Quantum Physics’ book, a molecular knife, some rope and a chocolate bar.

After she finished putting the things in her, she noticed that she had put something weird inside. She moved her hand towards the knife and smiled at it. And then removed the book just under it.

‘Why would I need a book? I’m going to the library for pete’s sake.’ She chuckled to herself as she placed the sheathed knife back into her bag.

‘You’d never know when you’d need to stab someone in the gut, would you?’ A voice in her head suggested.

‘Gosh, She need to have some friends, I’ve been talking to myself for quite a while now.’ She chuckled again.

‘...It’s not such a bad thing now, is it?’ Her head replied.

‘Not at all, Me.’ She grinned to herself as she slung the bag to her bag. ‘I’m getting insane, she thought.’ Not that she’s complaining though. She likes the company in her head. It makes everything less lonely.

Alice walked out of her unit and strode through the halls of the condominium. On the ground was a red carpet lined with gold on the edges. Not real gold of course, but gold-ish fabric nonetheless. The whole condo was rectangular, so one would only need to walk in straight line to get to the elevator. Alice lived in the 15th floor of the 20 story condo, but it would only take 30 seconds or so to reach the bottom.

She walked towards the elevator and went inside. The elevator was half-outside of the building so she could see the colossal skyscrapers that cover the city skyline. Alice thought of the hundreds of workers and clerks enslaved by their work inside those sky scrapers.

As soon as she finished the thought, the elevator stopped on the 4th floor and a man came in. ‘Speak of the devil!’ She mused. It was a business man. ‘One of those supposedly working in the enslavement cam--the sky scrapers.’

‘... You almost said enslavement camps, didn’t you?’ Her inner thoughts said sharply.

‘I dunno what you’re talking about, Me.’ She relied back innocently as she stared at the businessman.

The man was standing in front of her, almost oblivious to her presence in the elevator. Black shoes, black coat, black hair, blue tie, blue eyes. ‘Typical.’ she thought. This man probably works til late 8 pm just to provide sustenance for his family. He’ll then go back home to taste his wife’s cooking and maybe play with the kids, then watch some news in a Holo-screen, then sleep. Rise and Repeat.

‘What a pity…’ She thought.

‘Do you really feel that way?’ She could imagine her inner self with her hands crossed and a smug face.

Alice grinned. ‘Nope.’

As soon as they reached the ground floor, a cacophony assaulted Alice’s ears. She hurried to the exits. The first time she checked in here, she was quite surprised that it was a manual check in done by humans. Usually companies would use A.I’s or make it completely automatic. It seemed that this one preferred to use humans.

‘There’s no one better to rant to than humans after all.’ Her inner thoughts said.

‘True that.’

Walking out of the complex, Alice treaded through the sidewalks of the city. Trees were lined up in a small island, with genetically engineered bio-luminescence; they actually serve as lamp posts during the night. Now that it was almost sunrise, however, the light on them were dim.

‘Like in you.’

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

‘Oh shut up.’

After some twists, turns, crossings and the occasional bumping by the shoulder with other pedestrians, Alice finally reached the library.

She climbed up the steps and walked past the marble pillars that support the ceiling. Inside was not what you would expect from normal libraries, bookshelves are replaced with holo-screens and books replaced by data. These types of libraries, which were incidentally called E-Libraries, were fairly uncommon.

She walked over to one holo-screen at the far right of the room and sat at the chair in front of it. After turning it on, it flashed a sky blue screen containing different apps and programs.

Holo-screen and phones, plus anything holographic actually, is created with a base. That base serves as the projector, the power source and the control center. Hard light is projected using modified crystals and components that condensed the photons enough to behave like a solid. They use differing magnetic fields or something similar to make the light stay in only one place, while differing frequencies and intensities of photons can modify the colors and brightness respectively.

‘How the hell do you know all of this?’ Her head asked, which she decides to call Bunny for now. She likes bunnies.

‘Researching, of course.’ She replied nonchalantly.

‘Yeah, ‘research’ more like hacking.’ Bunny said.

‘Bah. Potato-Potahto. Most people would be surprised about the amount of data stored in the internet, just waiting to be dug out.’

‘Freaking Nerd.’

‘What the hell? You’re quite nasty today. And that just means you’re a nerd too.’

‘...Fair enough.’

Alice shook her head and opened an app in the computer (She’ll just call it that) and started typing. With those magnetic fields and other gizmos she mentioned earlier, the computers didn’t need physical keyboards and mouses, you can hack and crack quite a lot of things without being exposed due to the built-in anonymity and privacy of the computers. Well that’s if you can disable the multitude of alarms and virus detectors crammed in it.

‘We’re gonna get caught aren’t we?’

‘Nah. I disabled the alarm systems… I think… probably… maybe… it’s my first time doing it here…’

‘Yup, we’re screwed.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a pessimist.’

‘I’m your sound of reason. That’s my job, along with realism.’

Haaah. Alice sighed and doubled checked all the alarm, alert, and virus detection systems.

‘Happy now?’

‘Not really, but better.’

After minutes of getting through firewalls and almost getting caught by random passerby’s, Alice finally got inside Aethon Inc.’s servers. They’re a company that mainly exports silicon and silver. With technology being the forefront of the world, they’re making pretty big bucks.

As for her motives in hacking them, there were basically none. She just thought it would be a fun idea. Not a good one of course, but a fun idea nonetheless.

As she peered into the servers, all she could find were status reports of their shipments and cargos, nothing unusual or suspicious.

‘Yet.’

‘Yeah. Yet.’

Minutes pass by and still nothing. ‘This is getting boring pretty quickly… ‘ she thought.

With their power, she was hoping for some kind of confidential files or maybe clues about an evil-super-villain-disguised-as-the-president-of-a-huge-organization kind of thing…

……….

…..

.

‘Oh! oh! I found it. The holy grail of hacking! A hidden folder named……… ‘Secret’…’

‘A bit anti-climactic, don’t you think? Look, it’s not even locked! it’s probably just porn or some shit.’ Bunny said haughtily.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk! That’s just what they wanted you to think. As they all say, the best way to hide a tree is in the forest. Besides, I’ve already looked through everything; this is the only suspicious folder remaining.’ Alice snapped back all-knowingly.

She opened it and was greeted by a myriad of folders. Each named by a number from 1-10000, after trying to open the folder named ‘1’ there was another wave of folders, now from 1-20000, then She pressed the first folder again and folders came again, now from 1-30000. She could almost feel a vein popping in her head.

Haaah. She sighed and leaned back the chair, letting her arms dangle at the sides. ‘Going through this would take me forever. Why the fuck are there no ‘Search’ tabs?! Ughh…’

‘Just copy it in a hard drive.’ Bunny suggested.

‘Hmm… that’s a good idea. I’ll just look into it back at the apartment.’

After rorming the idea, Alice shuffled through her bag and grabbed a flash drive. She stuck it in a port at the base of the computer and copied the folder, plus some other files She found interesting.

10 minutes and a couple hundred gigabyte worth of data later, she unplugged the drive and packed up. Oh, and she also ensured that no alerts or similar were triggered.

‘We can’t be tracked now, can we?’

Alice shudder at the thought of what will happen if they somehow get hold of her…

‘You’re grinning. Menacingly. Clear that off.’

‘Oh, haha. Sorry ‘bout that. ‘ Alice cleared the grin off her face and replaced it with a calm, neutral expression.

She slumped the backpack over her right shoulder and proceeded outside of the library. She calmly walked the same path that she treaded before she came. It took 3 hours to hack, search and copy the interesting files on the server, and she’s not even sure if the ‘secret’ folder is actually worth her time.

Well, Alice hopes this becomes an interesting day.

‘Define ‘interesting’.’ Bunny asked courteously.

‘Ha! I’m sure you already know the answer. ‘ Alice continue walking as she conversed with herself in her head.

‘Yeah. I do.’