DECEMBER EIGHTEEN
ZACHARIAS MATTEO
PLANET EARTH
YEAR 2115
It took Zach a while to find Kiki Kovacs.
She had hit herself in the billions of internet-layers well. And when he finally found a link with her name in it, he stared back at the words password required.
It took another while for him to figure o3ut that this password was written on the card she had given him. He read the combination of numbers and letter to the Screen, holding his breath for the brief moment it took for it to get to the next page.
The page was clean, white, asked for nothing but his name.
“Zacharias Matteo,” he breathed.
“Request sent.”
It took longer to come to the new page now. He suspected the request got sent right to Kiki’s screen for her to decide whenever he was allowed any further or not.
It took a few minutes.
Then the room filled with the sound of her soft laugh, clearly recorded beforehand.
“So I must really like you, huh?” she said, and Zach couldn’t help but smile to the white pixels of the Screen. “I will repeat an address two times before I delete this page from your Screen.”
Zach felt more awake than ever. He commanded the smaller, less intelligent, Screen on his wrist to record Kiki’s voice as she, as promised, repeated an address twice.
Then he held his breath again.
The Screen went black for a second.
Then, like it had been shut off, lit up again. Zach tried to find the page again, but it was, as he thought, gone.
He leaned back in his chair, ruffled his hair. Told the Screen to find the address. It, once again, asked for a password and his name before he was allowed to see the exact position.
It was a basement.
A basement in the non-pretty parts.
And he was going there tomorrow.
