Four Weeks - The Beginning

The Plot Thickens

Alan's eyelids snapped open the next morning. He stared into the ceiling with eyes wide open for a while and then got off his bed. He slowly went downstairs with lazy, heavy, leaden steps and browsed through everything in the room he had used to design his weapons last night, while still making his way into the kitchen. Then, in the kitchen, he turned to a cabinet and crouched down to open it.

'Okay. Let's see what we've got,' he said.

The cabinet was spic and span with no trace of any cooking vessels, appliances, supplies or other necessities. Alan heaved a long sigh, bent his head down and looked around only to find nothing he could use. He then went on out to the workroom, where he found scraps of metal. He gathered a bunch of them and fashioned them into kitchen utilities he could use. Feeling triumphant, he picked them and strode into the kitchen smiling triumphantly only to find that there was neither stove nor oven. He stared for a while, stupefied, at the empty space holding all his utilities, some in his teeth and some between his fingers and toes. He thought long and hard, until finally he said, 'Ugh!' and dropped all the vessels, for the time being, giving up the idea of cooking himself a meal.

He walked back out to the workroom, looking defeated and slightly disgusted, sat down on some scrap metal that remained after last night's work and began to think. He made a computer out of some remaining scraps of metal, some electronic chips and wiring left over from his weapons design operation. He needed software; if not a complete operating system, then a software tool that he could use to make one. Alan had a habit of not washing his pants for months. For once, that habit proved useful. Alan had discovered that a pen drive lay in his pocket. There was a custom operating system in there that he'd designed himself; complete with all the network protocols and system software utilities. He put the pen drive into the slot and quickly loaded the custom operating system onto the hardware he had assembled. Its layout was clean with absolutely no icons to show after boot up. As Alan pressed a certain key combination, small blips began to pop up on screen. He double tapped one of the blips and the blip enlarged into a window. It was a black screen. He then double tapped another blip and it enlarged into the NSA website. He worked his way through the security layers, getting through the decryption, the firewalls and other layers, even managing to successfully get around the detection system. Having now hacked into the NSA database, Alan had a wealth of resources at his disposal. But, no one at the NSA knew there'd been a breach. Alan did not trust his uncle anymore and needed to verify all the information the video had given him. For all he knew, his uncle could've shown him the picture of the comrades expecting him to go after them, likely walking into a trap. The black screen now pulled up satellite images of important world locations. He double tapped another blip, which enlarged into his email. He had saved the photos of the comrades from his uncle's video in a folder. After retrieving the photos from the folder, Alan thought about how he might find these guys. Feeling confident in his artillery and all his other resources, he gave no thought to an attack plan. He said to himself,

'If this is all the security these guys have had, I'm surprised I am the first one to actually breach it. Wait, if these Neilons are on Earth and they do in fact feel threatened by its progress, I doubt they'd come all out at us. If you're so much more advanced, why bother with this rate of progress? They must be disguised as humans while here on Earth and the NSA database has got to have a profile!'

After a brief pause he asked, 'Why am I talking to myself?'

He initiated a face match program to find a match for the images of the comrades. After a while, it pulled up a profile. The profile was that of a man named Mark Corino.