Legacy

Why not?

At one point in our history (to be more specific, the year 2026 A.D.), science managed to discover the ability to extract skills from our being. Yes, skills. Scientists invented a system of giving and receiving skills. How did they do it? It turns out that they found a way to extract the necessary information from the brain of one person and then implant it into the brain of another, so that this new recipient acquires all the abilities of the previous one as if it had always had them. All done technologically. However, they did not manage that the "donor" of the skills kept them, but it ends up looking as if he had never obtained them.

All this obviously gave way to the market for buying and selling skills. Maybe you went to the bakery one day and, instead of asking for a loaf of bread, you asked the baker if he could sell you his kneading or baking skill. This came in handy for people who had difficulty learning certain trades. His supplier could always go learn again and the buyer would have a skill he would never have had in the normal way. All advantages.

Over the years, inheritances came to leave the skills of the deceased as well. For obvious reasons, the process of extracting and implanting abilities could only be done by some doctors or scientists, and express permission had to be requested from the government (although this was normalized over the years to a level where it was considered a normal operation like donating blood).

Now that you know a little bit about the context in which we find ourselves, it is time to start telling my story....

I was a normal kid, 16 years old. Our family was large and close-knit, except for my uncle Charles, his wife and children. They came to visit us once a year or so, although the rest of the adults and they didn't get along very well. They never told me why, but I was always able to sense the tension when they got together.

All in all, he seemed like a pretty decent person to me and I liked him a lot. When I was younger, whenever he came over he would always tell me stories he made up and later, when I got older, he started playing video games with me.

He was like the cool guy, but at the same time misunderstood. I can never forget the heated arguments he would have with my mother when they thought no one could hear them, although I never quite understood why and what they were arguing about, as I was still too young.

A few years before my sixteenth birthday, they stopped coming to meetings and meals. According to my parents, his wife had gotten a job in a city too far away, and they wouldn't be able to come again.

The thing is, he ended up passing away. According to what I was told, he was shot twice in the head. My parents explained to me (without telling me many details) that my uncle had enemies. But it turns out that he had left me an inheritance: a cardboard box.

The box was not empty, of course. It was big and heavy, and no one had the faintest idea what might be inside. I took it up to my room, sat down on the bed and plucked up my courage.

At first I thought the box was going to contain photos or videos of moments we had once lived. So when I opened the box and found a medium blue drill, a gold lock pick, a pair of black gloves, a black mask, some neatly folded papers and a tape recorder; I was very confused.

Clearly I went to the tape recorder first. That would give me answers.

"Boy, if you're listening to this I'm dead. You'll know that already, though. I'm asking you to please listen to this recording alone. What I'm about to tell you is private between you and me, and no one else can know." I stopped the recording, confused. I stood up, closed my bedroom door and pressed play again.

"All these years I've been lying to you. I've always told you that I don't have a job, that I was supporting myself thanks to my wife and unemployment pay. But I don't. Alan, I'm a bank robber. Professional. I've robbed the biggest banks in the world. Unfortunately, this trade has brought me worse enemies than I expected: a Mexican cartel I swindled is looking for me and it won't be long before they find me. I've left you a list of clues that I want you to follow, as well as all my skills that I've learned over the years. If you do it right, you'll get to the end of it all and be able to frame the cartel. If you're wondering why I chose you, you were always my favorite nephew and I've seen a lot of potential in you. Good luck."

I paused the recording, dumbfounded. My uncle? A bank robber?

I grabbed the folded papers and read them carefully. One was a permission slip to receive the skills my uncle donated. Another was a list of... places? Banks, jewelry stores, casinos?

Then I understood. My uncle hadn't left me simple clues. No, the bastard left me addresses of places I had to rob.

He wanted me to carry on his legacy.

I took the mask, inspected it and put it on. Then I said to myself:

—Why not?