Fate is unavoidable. It's destiny. Most people don't mind, they rejoice when it comes for them, they yearn for the day they'll meet the person Fate has chosen for them.
But Phineas has forever dreaded the day his timer would hit zero, romance just i...
"You know, I may have over-romanticized the memories of this game." Phineas twisted the putter around in his hands.
"What, you're not having fun?" Vanessa lounged against the wall of the indoor course.
"No. No, I am. It's just not as great as I remember." But the place had closed down when he was ten, and it had been a while since he'd been there before it's closing. "It's like those kiddie rides outside Superduper Mega Superstore, they were great when I was toddler, but once I got a little older it was just... awkward. Not that rocking back-and-forth and slowness is bad, necessarily, but it's boring after like age five." He shrugged, staring at the course.
"Are you stalling?"
"What? No!" He wasn't. But this was one of the harder shots. The ball needed to hit at just the right angle to bounce off all six walls, go through the windmill, and into the hole. It was mostly down to math.
Sadly, math was not Phineas' strongest suit. He could do it, but without a calculator or some paper, it sometimes took a little while to get the numbers right in his head.
"Whatever." Vanessa casually looked around the area before reaching into the pocket of her form-fitting leather jacket. Pulling out a tiny box, she pressed a button on it. A green light lit up on its front.
Recognizing the device, Phineas sighed. "I thought this was a fun outing."
"It's both." She turned the jammer over in her hand. "What do you know about P.I.G.?"
"The animal?"
"The organization."
Phineas shrugged. Honestly, he didn't know much about them. Sure, he had heard of them on online forums. They were a subject of rumor and, as far as he knew, no one had proof they actually existed.
If they did and were tasked with keeping aliens from becoming known, like the rumors said, they sucked at their job since real, verified UFOs had been shown live on five o'clock news more times than Phineas cared to count.
"They deal with aliens and are probably made up."
Vanessa shook her head slightly. "They're not, considering they raided us this morning."
"Still not sure what this has to do with me." Phineas swung the putter above the ball in a practice swing.
"I want you to hack them and find out why they came after us."
Lowering the putter, he sighed. "Nessa, if they're real, they're a government group. Hacking them is a whole lot different than me hacking into your husband's email." He still didn't know why she had him do that either, but he didn't feel it was his place to ask. "This would be an actual crime."
"So you can't do it?" Her voice had taken on an edge he didn't care for.
"Not can't, won't." As much as he trusted Vanessa, he knew next to nothing about the organization she worked for, giving them government information didn't sound like the brightest idea.
"It's not like I want the information for anything evil."
"So why do you want it?" Giving up on trying to get the calculations perfect, Phineas swung. The ball made it all the way into two inches of the hole before coming to a stop. He sighed.
She reached into her pocket again, pulling out a slim envelope that looked too long to have fit in there.
Phineas frowned. "What's that?"
"All I know about it and what I need to know about." Holding it out to him, she waved it back and forth slightly. "You can't tell me you're not curious."
Curiously wasn't enough, even if he could feel his brewing. Phineas pitched his nose, trying to push the feeling back. That old saying about curiosity killing the cat was right. At least, it had never gotten him anywhere good.
"I'll pay you twice what I did last time."
"Last time was different." He sighed. Candace did say she wanted him working, though he doubted this was what she had in mind. He took the envelope. "This better not come back to bite me."
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "Don't worry about it, I'm me, remember? If anything comes of it, I'll take care of it."
Sizing up his own pockets, Phineas tried to figure out where it put it. "Can I fold this?"
"Yeah. Do you know Danny's?"
"The music shop?" Phineas gently folded the papers over.
"The bar." Once Phineas nodded, she continued, "I'm meeting an old friend there Saturday. Eight pm."
"Bring the info, yeah, I got it." Something told Phineas this was going to backfire on him. Somehow.
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Phineas knelt at the side of his bed before bending over to look under it. One brown eye stared at him. "Have you been under there all day, Perry?"
The platypus chattered.
Maybe that's one of the places he hid every day. It's not like Phineas looked under there often. Brushing it off, the reached under, shifting a few small boxes out the way until he found what he was searching for.
Pulling out the case, he ran his hand over it. A bit of dust flying off at the action.
He sat up and crossed his legs under him. His fingers hesitated on the latches. He half-expected it to be broken every time he opened it, despite how many persuasions he took. None of his other inventions lasted this long.
He flipped it open. Not wasting a moment, he ran his eyes over it for any signs of damage before taking it out.
It didn't look like much. A few motherboards and chips and wires and whatever else he'd manage to scavenge up of as a teen coated in a mostly clear, plastic casing. He smiled.
At his touch, it lit up. Waiting for the computer to boot-up, he went to pull out the envelope. His smile fell when his hand touched something else in there too. Had something fallen out of it?
He removed both items. Setting the envelope down, he turned over the other item in his hand.
It was some business card. His mouth went dry. He didn't need to read it to know whose it was. Did he even want it? He'd manage to put that had happened that morning from his mind, but it flooded back now. Letting out a breath, he rubbed at his eyes.
If it did this for Nessa and got caught, maybe he'd just tell her to let what happens happen. If the government made him disappear, at least he wouldn't have to be bothered with all this soulmate stuff.
He could throw the card away later. The computer had booted up, the holographic screen and keyboard pulsing. He'd have to check the wires when he was done hacking. He'd do it first, but he was on a deadline and his store brought laptop wasn't untraceable.
This could be good. A few hours of concentrated work to find or create a backdoor to keep his mind off his real problems.
