Kevin Stevenson was a simple man with a quite normal day job. Kevin worked as a technology analyst for a small company in the great (and sometimes strange) state of Florida. The small company was named Excellon and dealt primarily with web site hosting for other small companies in the Estero, Florida area. Kevin liked his work, even though it wasn't what he truly loved to do. He was more of a dramatist, preferring acting to programming code but nonetheless, a job is a job, and a skill is a skill. Kevin was a very talented programmer, and as almost a necessity had spent several thousand dollars on technology for his home.
In fact, one room of the house was solely devoted to his geekish tendencies, something that his wife Claire wasn't too happy with. She was a lawyer, and as such made much more money than Kevin did. Claire would much rather have spent the money on something more important, something like a replacement for their car, an old Pontiac that, after a much appreciated twenty years of life, had recently been starting to show it's age. There had been a simple debate, with a great many "Yes Claire…" and "I know Claire…" and then the all-important "But it's for my job…" Somehow, Kevin had won the day, and gained 'permission' from his wife to craft a room dedicated to the trade he spent every weekday pursuing: technology.
The room was a tribute to Kevin's skills, with a custom built desktop computer more powerful than most available on the market and a server mounted into the wall that was meant for file sharing among the many computers in the house. There were flat screen monitors mounted into a corner in the room, with three used for Kevin's personal computer, and the fourth an output display for tracking use of the file-sharing server. Kevin had used several different technologies. He created a wireless network for the entire neighborhood to subscribe to (creating a stable source of income), had several ultra-portable tablet PC's for he and his wife, and had made sure that there was a superior sound system installed in the tech room. The sound system was what made Kevin the happiest when he was in 'The Lair.'
Every day, Kevin would come home from work and relax with his wife on the couch in the tech-room while listening to country music on the Satellite radio they subscribed to. It was there where they would exchange the day's events, relaxing and ignoring the problems of the world for a time. Inevitably though, Claire would have to work on her 'homework' as it were. As an adoption lawyer, she felt she was making a difference in the world, and as such she never felt bad about working at home, and Kevin never minded her work either. As far as Kevin was concerned, he had work that needed to be done as well, and her homework gave him a chance to get his work done.
It was warm in Estero. In the summer, south Florida seems to burn itself with heat waves, making the regular residents miss the winter months and sending all the snowbirds flocking north again (to the glee of the locals). The downside to this for Kevin was that demand for business was slower than when it is 'in season.' So, when Claire left to go work on her homework, it gave Kevin a chance to work on his hobby Claire wasn't too proud of: hacking. Kevin hadn't always been a hacker, but had learned the trade from coworkers in former jobs. Nowadays, most of these friends were no longer hackers, having either been 'tamed' by their better halves, lost interest in the thrill of hacking, or the most feared outcome: imprisonment. The hobby has never been one that wins public praise, even with the conventions to use hacking 'responsibly.'
The difference between Kevin and other hackers wasn't simply the experience he had, nor was it the fact he was still on the outside of a jail cell. The difference was in targets. Most of his old friends had tried to go after banks both domestic and international or after public corporations in an attempt to gain wealth through theft. Kevin was different in that all he wanted was the acquisition of knowledge. Specifically, Kevin was interested in the super-secret goings on in the military systems. He had hacked into the Army, Navy, Marines and the Coast Guard, but the Air Force computer system was what had intrigued Kevin the most.
Most of the Air Force's files, like that of the other branches, was relatively easy to backdoor in to, but buried deep within the garbled mess of files in their systems were files so secure they were barely noticeable. The only reason Kevin had figured out they were there was a shortcut placed in a NORAD officer's home directory to files that hadn't been readily accessible. Kevin couldn't help but laugh outright at the idea that someone had made a shortcut to a deeply hidden file system in an unsecured location. This didn't make his job easy, but it saved him the trouble of searching for the files. Locating the important files was the hard part for Kevin, getting in was always the easier of the two.
Rather than delve into the secreted files, Kevin decided that he would look for similar files in the less restricted area. A folder caught his attention: Blueprints. Kevin had always been fascinated with flight ever since he was a child. There was something about the feeling of defying gravity, if only for a short time. Inside the folder were some fairly normal file names. Kevin mumbled as he perused the list:
"F-15 Eagle… F-16 Fighting Falcon… F-22 Raptor… F-35 Lighting II… X-53… X301… BC-304 Hmmm…haven't heard of these last few…"
Kevin opened the blueprint for the BC-304 and nearly fell out of his chair. The plane, if you could call it that, was massive. He knew it was too big to fly like a standard jet. That didn't make sense to Kevin; he knew just by looking at the designs and size that the craft looked more like something out of a sci-fi television show than a legitimate military vehicle. No matter how much he looked, the screen showed the same vessel, unlike anything Kevin had even considered existed.