“So that’s the reason it took this long…” Charlotte said as she checked the contents of the file already inside the downloads folder.

She opened a program to see the content of the humongous file, realizing it was in fact a folder with innumerable files, which used all the free space of her hardware. Images, text and charts were most of the things inside. Her lips twitched. “How am I going to sort it out… It’ll take me all my life.” 

Charlotte started to check files after file with low spirit, trying to look for similarities between them to put in different folders. It was still dark outside.

*Bzzz bzzz

The sound made Charlotte look at her bed, where her phone was. Light illuminated the room thoroughly while the sound of cars and people came from the other side of her window. With heavy steps, she went to pick her phone, disconnecting it from its charging cord.

“An unknown number… Should I answer?” Amidst her wonder the phone stopped moving and a message appeared in its screen.

2 missed calls.

“It wasn’t a wrong number, huh.” She said, turning around back to her desk with mobile at hand.

Atop her desk were her two computers, connected through at least three cables mangled in between. She already had a vague idea of what she was doing, so she hastened the process as much as she could. As her fingers continued to move atop the keyboard, her phone buzzed again.

She looked at it for a moment before pressing the answer option. “Hmph this lady is quite busy right now, I hope it’s worth my time.” 

“Yes? This number was given to us, I wish to speak with Miss Charlotte Eschete.”

“… It’s me. What do you need?”

“Oh, perfect. I’m calling from Treller Corporation, I’m in charge of the new personnel we contract. My name is Dunn Frousher. We actually met a couple days ago; I hope you still remember me?”

Charlotte remained in silence for a moment, trying to connect her words through her slow working brain. “Yes…? Oh! Sorry, yes, I remember you, I wasn’t expecting an actual call from you, and so soon at that.” She said with a chuckle, trying not to sound disrespectful. “I’ve been quite busy the last couple hours, sorry.”

“And who hasn’t?” He said with a mocking sounding voice. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’m calling you because you’re interested in working with us, right?”

“Yeah? Oh, I was accepted?”

“Yes. In fact, we’re holding a meeting this afternoon about it and I hope you can come.”

“Yes! Of course! I’ll be there!” She said with reinvigorated enthusiasm, her monetary problems finally seeing a light in the dark.

“Alright, then, it’ll be at three. Take into account its importance, we won’t be calling again if you don’t come in time.”

“Of course! Thanks! Oh, about the shift and wages…?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be discussed at that time.”

“Okay.”

“Alright, farewell. I hope to see you there, Miss Charlotte.”

“Bye~” As soon as she said that, the phone grew still, all sound coming from the other side stopped.

Looking at the screen of her phone, she realized it was close to noon. And the date.

“Oh, I’ll be damned! I’ve got another interview this afternoon! I better cancel it.” She said as she searched through her mail for the phone number of the company with which she had it. Typing it on the calling panel, she pressed the dial to start the call.

Sound of connecting the call rang as she paced around the room. “Come one~ c’mon~!” In her waiting to be answered, her stomach started to protest its lack of food income it has been getting the last few days, making her steps go faster and faster.

“Hello-” Someone finally picked the call.

“Yes! This is Charlotte, I’m call-“ She said in a hurry.

“Welcome to GameWorld Industry, if you’re calling for~” Only to be interrupted by an answering machine.

It continued to talk for a while, leaving her hanging on her words. As her mind processed what the machine was trying to say, her option to connect to someone came and went without waiting, finishing the call as she didn’t say anything to it.

On the second try, she tried to make things go faster, which made the call connect to the design department and after a few words, the lady at the other end hanged the phone to her.

On the third try, she sat at her bed’s edge and did it slowly and properly with calmed breath and ragging gut. She was finally connected to someone who could help her.

“Hello, this is Charlotte speaking, I was calling because…”

…

With the interview canceled and done for sure, she was transferred to a questionnaire without importance to her. Breathing in and out for a few times, she finished the call.

“Remember, Charl, the best thing is to be patient, you won’t get far if you rush it.” With calm mind, she wondered what she needed to do right then, standing from the bed she took a step for her wardrobe before her stomach made different plans. “Right, food. Now.” 

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She continued her previous way and wore some easy clothes over her almost naked body, remembering this time to not go out without proper equipment. She then prepared something fast in the kitchen and readied herself to go out.

----------------------------------------

Charlotte arrived at Treller Corp.’s floor just ten minutes before the appointed time. Speaking to the receptionist next to the door, she was informed that the meeting was in the building’s hall. With a tilted head and lost expression, she went down to the hall in the third floor.

“He could’ve told me it was in the third floor… I could have just gone there instead of going to their floor without having to waste time…” She mumbled inside the elevator as her rough breath calmed down with its cool air.

“Well, it doesn’t matter that much now that I’m here. Oh, I hope bringing a laptop wasn’t required, he didn’t say anything so it shouldn’t be…”

Once the elevator came to a stop, she walked out to find more than a hundred individuals talking and whispering among them. Their expression was clouded and worry could be felt between everyone present. 

This is an open meeting to recruit a large batch of people, right? Why is everyone so serious? What happened?”

Between thoughts, her brows knitted together as she walked to the last row where the only empty seats of the room were. She waited for the talk to start while her ears followed the whispers around her.

A catastrophe last night…? Planes crashed as well as trains… What in the world…

Dunn Frousher walked out from behind her and to the podium at the end of the hall. Most of the people stopped talking while some others continued their whispers.

“Ahem.” He coughed to the mic and waited for the hall to be in complete silence. “Good afternoon, everybody. I’m happy to see you all here with me, even if we did this in such short notice. First of all, I’d like to inform those not in the known, Treller is a subsidiary of Necox Inc., the largest company in the world in terms of network management and data transfer.”

… Really? Charlotte tilted her head as a new wave of murmurs arose.

“Is it really…?” “Then, we’re to work for that.” “I thought they solved it already…”

“Now.” He clapped to the mic, making the room become quiet again. “All I can say for now is that Necox asked all their branches and subsidiaries to do a thorough research of the incident. As you know, with yesterday’s attack the world understood how frail and dependent we’re on the internet, and how easy is for someone with bad intentions to make it fall.”

Attack? Huh? I didn’t notice…

“Wasn’t it an update gone wrong?” Someone said, making most people look his way.

“No.” Dunn said with a shake. “It’s a confirmed attack, though it came from an unidentified source. It started at around two in the afternoon and continued for twelve hours.”

At two? I didn’t see anything wrong at that time…

“Wasn’t it for an hour?” Another man asked.

“Sadly, no. Though the consequences were devastating for that hour, it’s confirmed it started way earlier, all attempts to stop the hacking were fruitless. Also, because at first it wasn’t doing much, it was ignored by the experts. It was a progressive attack, increasing its effect over time. During the last five minutes all form of communication ceased to be, generating all the accidents we saw over the news.”

A progressive world-wide hacking? That’s worrisome, whoever made that didn’t have good intentions… But to do that kind of attack, they’d need the help of a quantum computer linked to the net, and then… Wait, that sounds like, what I did?Charlotte’s eyes went wide, her head shot to the side to look at the people whispering around her. N-no way, it was, me?

“Silence, please. I’d like to inform you that we regard everyone here highly. That’s why we ask for your cooperation to search for the causes and get an answer regarding this attack. There’re some projects that are going to come forward regarding this, you’ll briefed in a moment …”

As Dunn explained the different groups to be formed and how their work was going to be determined, Charlotte stared at him with a closed shut mouth, all his words going into oblivion. Down her back traveled cold sweat and her hands formed fists, making her knuckles get a pink color.

Y-yes, I added a progressive seed, making the infiltrated systems double their processing power on the interpretation every time a cycle came to an end, all of it so it wouldn’t take that long to finish it. But, world-wide catastrophe? Really? It escalated that much? No, no, of course it did, that amount of information was already out my expectations… And, first it needed to be interpreted by a quantum beast to a binary code… So, that’s why it used so many resources? Damn. I’m in trouble.

“Finally, seeing at the amount of people here, you’ll be working in teams of 5 individuals. How the team will be distributed is up to each team, but the schedule has to be met. We’ll be distributing contracts, so sign it or leave.”

Staff members started walking around the hall, giving the people around the corresponding paper. Charlotte received it with trembling hands and started to read without much interest. Her mind busy in how to avoid the crisis. Good wage and no time frame. All that matters is the result, but they’re not saying what the work will be… Depending on it, I think I can exploit it… I also need money, more now than ever.

Some people exited the hall after a while, saying the payment was too low or the conditions unreasonable. Most of those inside didn’t even move from their seats, however.

After half an hour, everyone still present had signed the contract or were staff of the company already. Dunn had gone somewhere at some point and another man spoke atop the platform, beginning the briefing for their job.

“In a while, we’ll be putting each of you in a team based on your records and what we know about you. As you read, each team will have the freedom choice on how you’ll be doing your thing. Another thing you need to know, is that every major city in the world will have a team like this one, be it from Necox or another networking company. The reason is simple, the hacking not only affected Necox, it affected all kind of network connected to the web, so it’s an international problem. Your job for the next few weeks is to identify the points used in the area, what was done and how was it done. In this region of Gercia, there are close to ten thousand connection points, so each team will be assigned a fraction of that. Now, for your teams…” The man continued to talk for an hour about everything that needed to be considered, the findings Necox made throughout the attack and the format for the reports each group would be doing starting next friday. “Alright, I believe that’d be everything. We request everyone to be here tomorrow at 7. We’ll tell what team each is in so don’t worry about that now. Also, you don’t need to bring a personal terminal or laptop, we can lend that to you. Remember, however, that it’s just a basic one and not a customized one. That’s all for today, thank you all for coming. Goodbye.”

Oh, I’ll be needing one of those.

She walked out, along with the others, as she cracked her stiff neck to the sides with heavy feet. It was me, totally me… Who else would make an extension as stupid as that. Dot nodanger… Damn, what did I do. 

Going down the stairs, she was out of the building, again in the busy part of the city. I’ll take the metro today, I’m too tired to walk for an hour. She walked to the closest station as her head continued its job. Hmm I think I can lead the team, yeah. Lead it to the wrong direction, the only thing that’s known right now is the extension of my file, everything else they said were wrong assumptions. I’ll need to think about how to convince them… If I can, then I’ll try to lead more groups astray, yeah, that way I can keep myself safe until I understand the results completely. Yeah, it’s perfect.

She nodded as a smile illuminated her face, finally out of her reverie and with a plan at hand.

Once in her room and after eating something nice, she sat in front of her laptop and started to go through the things her little hacking did to the world. This is worse than I thought, damn. At least there weren’t deaths because of it. But the monetary loss is horrible… Damn.

She then started to work on her plans.