Jackson was running late, the senator needed the witnesses silenced before the online bloggers got a hold of the story. In the old days it was easier the news services were “controlled” but web posters were a different matter. This was the second hit and run of the kid’s that Jackson had to cleanup. Considering both victims looked like his step mom Jackson thought the senator really should consider getting his son some counseling. The problem was the sole witness to the accident was the best friend of the victim. They had been shopping when it happened and now she was proving stubborn. Jackson prided himself on being the best “Fixer” in the business. Money or threats normally works for witnesses but not this time. He guessed that having her best friend die in her arms might have something to do with it. It would have been easier if the kid had just gotten both of the women at once. Now he had to do it the messy way. Luckily the witness was a drug user or at least had been in the past. A simple overdose would work fine and her relapse would be blamed on the death of her friend. The M.E. would sign off on it with just a quick phone call from him.

Unfortunately for Jackson, the Senator and his son there was another witness to what happened. The pills he intended for the witness somehow ended up in his own food and drink over the next few days. He quickly got addicted and a year later after losing everything was found dead of an overdose in a dirty rat infested alley. The witness herself didn’t remember much about the incident yet somehow her phone recorded it all. It clearly showed the well known face of the senator’s son as he drove toward them. The senator himself lost the re-election when the video got leaked. Afterward his wife divorced him and his son ended up in jail. For some reason all copies of the prenup disappeared and she ended up with half of his money. The rest went to the IRS when they found out about the payments for bribes and Jackson’s fees were deducted as job expenses. The senator’s old friends manage to keep him out of jail before washing their hands of him.

* * * * *

I finished up another quick one as I sat back and enjoyed a couple of peanut butter cookies Grandma made for me. Things were going slowly on the pollution and endangered animal efforts so I spent my extra time on smaller, sadder injustices to see what I could do. I thought again about just having Hawk deal with the pollution problem itself. As I found out more of his capabilities I became more sure he could do something about it. The problem with that was whatever he did wouldn’t last. Any kind of permanent solution needed people to care about it and take care of it themselves. I remember mom saying “if kids aren’t taught to pick up after themselves they would grow up forever living in a pig sty”. I couldn’t think of any way force people to clean up after themselves. Somehow I needed to find a way to make them care enough to do it. The animals dying off were another unsolvable issue. I could maybe slow it down but what they needed was their own place away from people but how was I going to do that?

Looking over my shoulder I could see Sammy was still enjoying her hammock. On our spring vacation she had fell in love one day with this one spot at the resort. It was a hammock tucked under the palm trees where a warm tropical breeze would blow over and rock her. She claimed it was the best nap she had ever had. When we got back I surprised her by hooking a hammock up in the middle of the cabin and had Hawk surround it with large portals linked to that same day and spot. She was now lying asleep on it with a text book open resting on her tummy. As she was slowly being rocked back and forth I wondered if I was good enough for her. Looking at her and thinking about all the people my actions indirectly killed and all the other ones I could have saved I wasn’t sure.

Somehow as if sensing I was watching her she woke up, turned and smiled at me. Watching her stretch and then brush some sand off her book I smiled. My smile dropped as I thought about the sand. There it was again; somehow things from the past were appearing in the present. I knew Hawk had said that was impossible and it was states being matched but sand was a little more physical the sun or sound.

Just to be sure I asked “Hawk, did that sand come from that beach?”

“No” was the usual one work response back

“So it was the matched states that copied the sand then”?

“Yes” again was the response.

“Why are we getting sand this time and not when I watched the beach through a portal before?” I asked

“To create the moving air breeze requested for Sammy the width of the portal was increased exceeding the dimensions of the sand” Hawk responded.

Sammy quietly listening in asked “Can you copy bigger things then sand?”

“Yes”

Sammy stood up at that point. I don’t think she realized till now what it meant that Hawk could copy things from the past, actual physical things that was. We had talked about the sounds and sunlight being copied but something like sand changed things with her. She wanted to try it out right away and started looking around for something to copy. A few minutes later she was asking hawk to copy a coconut on the other side of the beach portal. It was lying on the sand under a palm tree. A second after she asked a small portal appeared on the beach with the other end beside her. The portal on the beach didn’t look any different but it seemed to move through the coconut from one side to the other. When it did a matching coconut appeared on the cabin floor next to her. Sammy very excitedly picked it up and started yelling about coconuts. A bit surprised I was happy she didn’t want to start copying money, gold or jewels next.

While looking at Sammy’s excitement I asked Hawk why did the portal seem to move through the coconut instead of just a wider portal covering it?

“Request was to copy the item not widen the portal” was his response.

It seemed that Hawk had more than one way to copy an object. It also made his capabilities even more dangerous if people found out. While I was thinking about everything Hawk could do now I had to worry about economic collapse. While I was thinking about that Sammy was busy paging through a fashion magazine she had in her backpack. I wasn’t aware of her interest in fashion until I saw that and heard her wondering if Hawk could copy something in her size. I started to tell her we could just go to fashion week in Europe and buy whatever it was if she wanted but then I noticed her magazine. It was a Victoria’s Secret catalog (circ. 2016). Wondering where she would have found it I deciding there were some good things about hawk’s newest ability and stayed silent.

I’m not sure how Hawk handled the size thing but Sammy surprised me that night and for many other wonderful nights after. I was still concerned about what widespread duplicating of things would do so I had a talk with Sammy and her Grandma about it. To show my concern I started by showing them the Federal Reserve destroying old money. I even reached through the portal to pull out a handful of shredded currency. Seeing all that money now confetti it did seem to make my point that money was really just paper. That it was people’s belief and acceptance of it for barter that gave it value. I also thought about showing them a few diamond storage reserves to explain why the supply is carefully kept limited but thought Sammy might get ideas from it. After some more talk we all agree to limit the duplication to things like Sammy’s clothes and a few out of season or hard to get cooking ingredients Grandma wanted for her recipes.

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I did keep trying to think of a way the duplication could help the wildlife issue but the main problem still remained; to many people, not enough space. I decided to double check Hawk’s weird response about life not being discontinuous. I tried seeds, plants and even bugs but what I ended up getting looked the same but dead. The plants immediately started wilting, the seeds didn’t germinate and the bugs dead. I even tried a glass of pond water loaded with microbes but all the microbes in it had stopped moving. I finally did one more test and with Grandma’s permission feed some duplicated corn to her chickens. They ate it fine with no ill effect. We couldn’t grow any of it but it was still food. There really did seem to be something tying life together from before inception. Whatever it was life needed it and it wasn’t present after duplication.

When I checked on the NSA task force they were getting further along in their investigation. The suspect list had grown to five hackers they had identified. The three I had setup as suspects and two more unrelated ones they found suspect. Over the last couple of months with a dozen agents they managed to eliminate two of mine and one of theirs as suspects for the incidents. With ony two suspects remaining I decided it was time to connect them to my ghost hacker supposedly hiding out in North Korea.

Since both hackers now had their real identities known I was sure the NSA was monitoring their computers for any and all activity. Getting access to a computer not being used in North Korea’s APT37 was easy. A portal to an empty office after someone just stepped away took care of that. Using it to send a remote access request to each of the hacker suspect’s computers when they weren’t on them was next. The NSA might wonder why both computers within a week of each other would accept a connection request from some unknown computer but they should attribute it to a hack running. Instead all I had to do was reach through at the right time and click ok to accept the Remote Desktop Connection request. Once in the browser was accessed and a few different sites accessed. After that I then logged in to a couple of forums to post innocuous but suspicious messages. When finished I shut down the connection. I made sure that one web page accessed was related to the bar Kim Byeong had the brawl in.

By the next day both hackers had been pulled in for questioning. They eventually admitted to several hacking incidents but not the ones the NSA was concerned with. The investigators then went back over everything including their computer logs. I was a bit surprised the agents had ignored the IP traffic to both computers. It seemed like an obvious thing to check but eventually they did. Once they had the questioning of the two hackers then shifted to their connection with North Korea. At this rate I figured it would take a week for them to catch the remote access and reference of the bar fight to Kim Byeong. Once they did I could then kill off the ghost of Kim Byeong in such a way that their investigation into my actions would close. Thinking about the duplication and what it did to the bugs I had a great idea for how to do that final piece.

It ended up taking almost three weeks before Kim Byeong’s name showed up in their investigation. I guess the browser history trail from the bar to the man Kim Byeong killed was a little too obtuse. Going by their meetings and case reviews it looked like they now considered APT37 to be the main suspect. I would have preferred them to focus mainly on Kim Byeong but thinking it’s the department he worked for would do just as well. I now needed a suitable place and time to kill off Kim Byeong before they found out he was already dead.

Killing him in North Korea would give rise to too many questions since their security already knew he was dead. The only other country he might have a plausible reason to be in was South Korea. Thinking of a reason for him to return there all I could come up with was love, money, fear or guilt. He didn’t have family or a girlfriend there so love was out; money was also unlikely since he owed a lot of bad people from his gambling loses. Fear was a good reason to leave North Korea but not to go back to the South. That just left guilt but then the question became what would he fill guilty about in South Korea? He wasn’t the type to worry about paying back his debts. Reviewing the culture and customs of Korea I did find one thing he might feel guilty enough to return for.

Detective Kim Ji Ho of Seoul’s Metropolitan Police (SMPA) was busy catching up on paperwork when the desk sergeant called to tell him two agents of the CIA were downstairs wanting to talk to him. He was a bit worried; the CIA did not normally pay visits to the SMPA. They usually dealt directly with the National Police Agency instead. Deciding if he should let the Commissioner know Detective Kim asked the sergeant to show them to the conference room while he made a phone call.

When he to the conference room the agents had already sat down at the table. Detective Kim had dealt with Americans before so didn’t expect them to bow in greeting but not even a handshake? All they did was briefly say their names and one of them pulled an SMPA official file out of his briefcase. Wondering how they had gotten hold of the file Detective Kim introduced himself to them with his mediocre English and sat down waiting for them to speak. One of the agents introduced as Agent Clifton took a picture out of the folder and placed it down in front of him. Looking at it, it showed a body lying in an alley that the Detective recognized from a case closed last week.

Putting his finger on the photo the agent said “Kim Byeong dead from a fall off a building last week”

“Yes” said the Detective “It was a simple case, no evidence of foul play”

“Take us to that building” said the other agent.

The Commissioner did say to assist them in any way so he simply said “My car is available” then walked them out to the parking garage.

As Detective Kim escorted them to his car he tried to get more information about why there were interested in a simple accident. The only thing the either agent would say was that the deceased was a member of the Lazarus Group. The detective was very familiar with that group. Although they usually focused on Western countries there had been a number of attacks in South Korea. For a member of the Lazarus Group to be actually here in Seoul that “might” explain the CIAs involvement but not why they would be dealing with the local police force instead of the national police. While he was thinking about this they arrived at a rundown apartment building where the body had been found.

The agents didn’t seem interested in the alley and barely glanced around it. They were slightly more interested in the roof and took pictures of both the ledge and windows below. Detective Kim explained a rope and crowbar had been found with the body showing that the man must have been planning to break in when he fell. After that the agents insisted on checking on going door to door questioning each resident of the building. With Detective Kim translating the only new but inconsequential piece of information they found was that a window and her two children suddenly came into money and moved out. When asked about no one could say where they went or how they came by the money. Further questioning did reveled that the woman’s husband had killed in a bar fight a few years ago leaving her and her two kids destitute.

The agents sent their report back to Langley and it eventually ended up with the NSA task force. A bit of additional investigation identified the woman as the widow of the man Kim Byeong supposedly killed in the bar fight. The conclusion from the agents investigating was that Kim Byeong returned to South Korea to give money to the wife of the man he killed. This was an old Korean custom called “habuigeum” or blood money. It’s intended to release an excused from further punishment and guilt. The assumption was that he then fell or possibly committed suicide from the roof while leaving. What was still unknown was whether Kim Byeong was operating on his own or with the help of the Lazarus Group when the supposed hacking incidents were committed.

After a few days of discussion and review the task force leader decided to close out the case and shut it down. He did note in his final report that agents working on the Lazarus Group should keep their eyes open for any similar events to occur. Watching the task force finally deciding to close the case I sat back in my chair in relief. I had been worried that at the last minute something in the autopsy review might give away that Kim Byeong’s body was fake. Seeing a body appear like that out of thin air on the roof was a bit shocking. Adding in the noise it made as I pushed it off the ledge and it hit the ground was even more sickening. But now they had their hacker and even if the identify something I do in the future they’ll blame it on the Lazarus group.