I said last chapter, when apologizing for a lack of updates, that "real life happened." Well, real life continued to happen, quite a lot. My apologies for the long silence. I hope you didn't lose faith. I do not intend for this to be one of those projects that people find ten years after the fact, lamenting that it had such promise but stopped updating in June of 2016. I cannot promise particularly speedy updates, but I can promise that I have not stopped.

This chapter contains scattered swearing, references to alcohol consumption, and references to violence.

INTERLUDE
JIMBO & SUZANNE

July 23rd, 2018

It was a nondescript letter without a return address, addressed to "Jimbo." He did not recognize the handwriting, but the fact that someone had actually taken the time to hand-write him a letter made him smile. The smile fell from his face as soon as he started to read it.

Akiko Ishiyama was dead. The letter was an invitation to a gathering at her home, which was described as "not a traditional funeral" but "a chance to come together and celebrate life." It was short, and Jim had difficulty imagining Yumi speaking the words that she had written, as if she had forced them onto the page. Not that he blamed her, of course, but it hurt to imagine Yumi in such pain. She had always been such a strong girl. Strong young woman, Jim corrected himself.

The gathering was on Wednesday, which was the day after next. Jim had work of course, but he didn't think anyone would mind if he didn't go. It was only summer session, the classes were small and he had called off from work three times in his entire life, one of them being his own mother's funeral. The kids would enjoy respite from P.E. class, and it wasn't like he enjoyed his job anymore. Not even for the kids. It made him so sick to think about it, that the very young people he had dedicated his entire career to didn't motivate him anymore. But Jim was getting old, too old to genuinely participate in the lessons he taught and too weighted with somber thoughts and old baggage to be a positive force in anyone's life.

Even if he had refused to quit like the rest of the teachers, Jimbo Morales had left just as they did. It was only that his body remained, abandoned and left to go through its paces with a completely different person inside it. Jim looked again at the envelope, and at his name on it. He hadn't been Jimbo in a long time. Jimbo was dead.

He set the letter down on the coffee table and glanced at the rest of the mail that he had gotten. Pro Wrestling Quarterly had sent him a letter in a bright pink envelope. His unpaid subscription was probably going to be sent to collections. And some pizza joint had sent him a menu, but dairy gave him the shits nowadays and he had more difficulty hearing on the telephone than he cared to admit. All that rock and roll had caught up with him. He wouldn't be ordering any time soon.

Ten years ago, if Jim had said "all that rock and roll is catching up with me" in class, they all would have laughed, he thought to himself as he stared at the menu on the table. If it said it now, they all would have stared at him blankly. As he tried to recall the faces of his students, he realized he couldn't bring up names to all the faces. He had always struggled a bit with names, of course, but he had always known the names even if he couldn't always say them when it counted. But this was different. There were names he didn't think he knew at all, unless he was calling attendance and looking at the roster. Jim had become something he had sworn never to become. He was jaded.

With a sigh, Jim looked over to the calendar on the wall. For years, he had always secretly gotten the ones with cute animals on them, like kittens or ducks, as a way of sort of softening the edge of the passing of time. That and he liked kittens. But in March he had gotten sick of looking at the stupid little runts and had replaced it with the only calendar he could find, tossed in some neglected clearance section of the store – it was "large print" for "easy readability." What a cosmic fucking joke that was. There wasn't anything on the 25th, just like there wasn't anything on any other day. Even so, Jim could tell by the empty feeling in his heart that he would not be going to the "celebration of life." He could not find it within himself to celebrate any life, and that wasn't what Yumi or her family needed.

"God, I hope they're doing okay," Jim said to no one. "Whatever it is they're doing."

Casting a grunt in the direction of the calendar, Jim walked the few steps it was to his recliner and flopped down. Empty soda cans fell from the armrests and as something crunched under his bottom he remembered he had been eating a bag of chips before he had gotten the mail. He considered pulling the bag out, but decided he didn't care. The chair was so old and lumpy, it wasn't any less comfortable to be sitting on the bag than to not. He did, however, take the time to fish the remote out from between his seat and the arm, because he was late to watch the news and that was all there was to do.

"-one hundred and twelve dead and nearly three thousand people displaced in unprecedentedly massive forest fires in the US state of Washington that have only grown in strength in recent days. A record drought continues to plague the usually rainy Northwestern United States; the White House this morning declared a state of emergency in both Washington and neighboring Oregon, sending Federal troops to help evacuate homes, but already several soldiers have died as fires continue to-"

Jim flipped the channel. There were other channels he could watch the news on.

"In international news, riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland turned violent this afternoon after the British Parliament in Westminster dissolved the Northern Ireland Assembly, claiming that the situation in Northern Ireland had grown too violent and unstable to support devolved government. With six dead and twenty wounded as nationalists attacked police outside the Assembly building, it is already the third deadly riot in the past seven days in Northern Ireland, in a city that is still reeling from a bombing that killed sixteen just last month. The situation in Northern Ireland has escalated since-"

Nope. Jim switched back to the first channel, hoping that it was late enough in the program that the only news left would be the stupid stories.

"-have just learned that an Air France flight from Moscow to Paris carrying 212 people has crashed over Belarus. Authorities have indicated that contact was lost with the aircraft for some thirty minutes before Belorussian authorities reported the crash. The aircraft crashed near a summer camp for children, and reports of casualties are-"

Jim threw the remote at the television but threw himself out of the chair and marched into his bedroom before witnessing whatever happened to the screen. He could still hear the reporter until he jumped onto his bed and threw the pillow over his head. The world was shit and he had had enough of-

What the fuck was he doing?

"What the fuck are you doing, Jim?" He spoke into his mattress, but even so there was an edge and a force to his voice. For even just a moment, it made him feel good to have such conviction, even if it was conviction against his own actions.

Slowly, he lessened his grip on the pillow and began to lift himself back up. The pillow slid from his head and landed somewhere on the floor. Joints popped as Jim forced himself up into a sitting position, facing his bedroom wall. Like in most places in his apartment, this wall bore various trinkets and tokens he had received during his many careers. At the moment, Jim faced an Award of Meritorious Service that he had earned during his time with the space administration. Next to it was a letter his mother had once written him, telling him how proud she was of him. In his closet, the doors of which no longer able to close because there were too many old clothes stuffed in it, he could just make out the sleeves of two of the uniforms he had once worn. And there, laying on the floor just next to his foot, was the old red jacket he used to wear to work.

"What have I turned into? When did I let it get this bad?" Jim leaned over and picked up the jacket. It had been on a clearance rack, Jim recalled, and it had made him feel sporty. It had eventually become something of a joke among students… and teachers, so he had retired it and it very well might have been here on this spot of floor ever since. How long had it been?

"Thirteen years," Jim said aloud. He had been wearing this the year Odd Della Robbia and Aelita Stones had come to Kadic, but stopped the year after. Jim wasn't really good with numbers, but somehow the years got clearer when he could attach them to faces. And one didn't forget faces like theirs. He had been a teacher for many, many years. He had known thousands of students, and thought the world of each and every one of them. But there had been something special about Della Robbia and his group. Or, really, Belpois and his group.

It had amazed Jim, how someone like Jeremie Belpois could end up the leader of such a ragtag gang. There had been many people something like Jeremie Belpois who had passed through the gates of Kadic Academy, and most of them never made many friends at all. To be honest, all of them were the type he might have pegged as not being very social. Ishiyama was distant, blunt, and she didn't really care for the things that middle school girls were usually told to care about. Stern was the quiet, brooding, Batman-type. And awkward as hell, really. Belpois was the kind of know-it-all Jim himself might have roughed up a little in school. Della Robbia was… well, he was just out there. And people had always talked about Stones, hearing her screaming at night, talking about wolves… she was one of those kids who you could just tell had something go wrong in their home life. Kids could be cruel about that sort of thing. But they had all found each other, and they had really been something.

What would Yumi Ishiyama tell him, as he hid in his bedroom from all the bad news in the world? Maybe not anything. She probably would have just turned her back to him and left. Ulrich might have said something, urging him to get up because he couldn't just hide there forever. Odd probably would have been a little more optimistic, or maybe just commented that he had looked like a slug laying there on his bed. He couldn't quite imagine Jeremie saying anything, but Aelita would have walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder.

"You can do it, Jim, I know you've got it in you." He had imagined Aelita saying the words, but Jim had said them out loud. He rose from the bed and turned to look out the window. They were out there, those kids. Grown men and women now, almost in their thirties. Saving the world.

Jim thought of William Dunbar. He hadn't even known he was missing. No one had. He had just fallen off the face of the Earth. What kind of teacher just let a student vanish? Hadn't his job always been to build upstanding young people and set them off into the world? Hadn't he always sworn never to leave a man behind? Those kids, those men and women, had dropped their entire lives to find their friend. They were willing to bear the weight of the world on their shoulders. And Jim was here, putting his head in the sand, making excuses. Too old. Too jaded. No. That wasn't how Jimbo Morales operated. Jimbo Morales got medals from the President.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The sun was bright and hot, and he could see people crowding into the shaded parts of the sidewalk as they walked around. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the thump of someone's bass. Maybe some of that electronic music. It was a different world from what it had been when he was Yumi Ishiyama's age. It was a scarier world. Never in a million years would he had ever guessed that people in his life would be disappearing like they had. He didn't have a clue what was going on, and nothing made a lick of sense, but at that moment, as he looked onto the horizon, Jimbo Morales decided that he was going to go out there and do something.

Somehow, he managed to find a duffel bag without having to dig through the closet for one. The jacket was the first thing he threw into it, as well as whatever clothing was in his reach. He had no idea how long he would be gone, but he knew he wouldn't be coming home for a while. He was going to go out there and… well, what was he going to do? He couldn't just run out there without a plan. That would be foolish, and not to be disparaging, but he was too old for that kind of brashness. He'd leave that to the kids.

The search for William himself was being handled by them, Jim presumed. He wouldn't be any help there, because he wouldn't even begin to know where to look. But there were other missing people he could help find. People just like him, lost, confused, cast away, and terrorized by forces beyond comprehension – the teachers. He could gather them all together, get them somewhere safe but united, so they could work together at a way to bring whoever these people were down. Maybe, if they put all their heads together, they could come up with something about William the kids hadn't. Or, hell, maybe they could all just cause enough of a stink to keep these Carthage people distracted while the kids did what they needed to do. That was something Jim was spectacular at doing.

He didn't have an inkling where William could be, but he had at least a few hints about some of his former colleagues. Well, just one really. Suzanne Hertz had called him some time ago, and she hadn't said much, but she had said that she was "taking the time to visit old stomping grounds." And over 24 years of working together, he had managed to learn a few things about Suzanne. She had grown up in Alsace, near the German border. "On a good day, you could see Germany," she had once said, "but if you could see Germany, it wasn't a good day." Suzanne laughing had always lifted Jim's spirits. What a delightful, airy sound it had been, like-

Well, uh, anyway, Suzanne was from Alsace. Her husband, however – Mr. Hertz – had been from Germany, if Jim recalled correctly, but with a French mother. He had joined the French Army, and had been dating a classmate of Suzanne's, or something like that. And her friend had taken Suzanne with her to a military ball with Mr. Hertz in an attempt to find her a guy, only for her to get smitten with Mr. Hertz himself. "I don't think she ever forgave me," Jim recalled Suzanne saying in a fit of laughter. And that ball had been in Strasbourg, which Jim remembered because he had an uncle who lived in Strasbourg. She and Mr. Hertz had gotten married in Strasbourg, and Jim recalled Suzanne off-handedly mentioning visiting there a few times, more than he could remember her mentioning anywhere else. If Suzanne Hertz had "old stomping grounds," they would be there. Far enough from where she normally lived, but in a city plenty large enough to get lost in. She was a smart lady, she knew it was best to hide in plain sight.

And so it came to be that Jim found himself in his car, his old, junky car that was just as cramped and full of old clothes as his apartment. His duffel bag and a bag of potato chips were thrown into the passenger seat, and tucked in the back under a pile of old shirts was his trusty baseball bat, just in case things got rough. And in the trunk, Jim knew, was a nail gun in case things got rougher – he had always had a feeling that he could trust that nail gun with his life. Maybe he was being dramatic, but he knew to trust his gut. So he turned on the car and drove east.

November 11th, 1989

"Waldo, what in the name of God are you doing?"

Waldo Schaeffer looked out from behind the mainframe to see his assistant standing in the door frame with her hands on her hips. Her brown hair, frizzy to begin with, seemed to be splayed in a million directions. Without her usual glasses, her eyes seemed more intense than usual – at the moment, they were bloodshot and wide open. It seemed that she had just gotten out of bed. Where did she sleep? In the damned lab?

He didn't actually want the answer to the question. He was afraid that it was yes.

"Jesus, Suzanne, what the hell are you doing here this late?"

She arched an eyebrow. She did not have to say the words I could ask you the same thing out loud because her expression said them for her.

"Suzanne, you need to leave. You're a smart girl. You know what's happening. You know what could happen to you if you get caught up in this. Get out of here." Waldo hid the wire cutters from her line of sight, as if it might give her any plausible deniability if she didn't see what he was doing. But she had seen. He knew she did. Suzanne saw everything.

"I'm an intelligent woman, not ten years younger than you," she said while crossing her arms. "And you, Dr. Schaeffer, are no spring chicken yourself. So unless you're planning to yank that thing from the wall yourself and intending to get shot to death while laying on the floor with a thrown-out back, move over and let me get in there."

"Suzanne… don't throw your life away."

"We're all about to throw our lives away unless we get fucking moving!" Anthea Schaeffer, Waldo's wife and fellow computer scientist on the project, burst into the room from the back door brandishing a hacksaw. "Stay or go, I don't care, but pick a side and stick with it. Keep snipping, Waldo."

With violently clattering heeled footsteps, Suzanne went up to the mainframe and started yanking wires by hand. "I take it you aren't concerned with the integrity of the machine," she said through grunts of exertion.

"Nope. We're just getting it the hell out of here."

"Wait… you're removing it? I thought… you were just destroying the connections." Suzanne did not stop yanking, but her voice lost quite a bit of its confidence.

"This thing isn't safe anywhere in this base," Anthea said, squeezing behind her husband to reach the very back of the machine. "We've got to get it out of here."

"This is a two meter tall mainframe," Suzanne said. "It has to weigh at least-"

"Stay or go, but don't waste time complaining." Anthea bent over to ensure all the power cables were unplugged, then lunged at the remaining cables with her saw.

"We are going to need another person," Suzanne said.

"Who else is on base at this hour? Even the General goes home between two and four." Waldo was sitting on the floor, trying to snip at the metal cable that secured the machine to the ground.

"Ferrand is probably still here somewhere. Or Gauthier. He might even still be awake." Suzanne placed her hands on the Mainframe and pushed with all her might; several of the remaining cords that connected it to the dozens of peripherals in the room snapped out as it shifted.

"Ferrand is skinny as a twig and probably couldn't lift an IBM, and Gauthier is a toady and a creep," Anthea said through gritted teeth. "What about Commandant Hertz, would he help us?"

"He… wouldn't want to get mixed up in this," said Suzanne softly. "They're… they're already watching him so closely, he… well, at best, he would say no. At worst..." Suzanne did not finish her sentence.

"Well, we're about disconnected here, so we're gonna need to make a decision pretty quickly." Anthea's teeth had not unclenched. "Either we trust your husband or we trust that creep Gauthier, or we lift this thing ourselves. We've already got a truck ready, we just need to get it down the hall."

"That's… at least fifty meters… but maybe if we got Ferrand, he could at least-"

"Suzanne?" An even-toned, if a little fearful, voice called from the door. It was the Commandant himself, apparently with ringing ears. He had put on his uniform pants, but still wore his nightshirt. Commandant Hertz was the leader of the Personnel Division, which among other things made him responsible for the civilians on the Project. He wasn't a scientist, and didn't know much about computers, but he thought the world of his wife. As far as Waldo could tell, he was as honest as they came. Which was probably why the General hated him so much. "What are… what's going on?"

"Reiner, don't… don't get..." Suzanne tried to say something to stop him, but he was already walking in to join them.

"Christ, Suzanne, the Project's already falling apart anyway. Everyone knows Waldo and Anthea are leaving and they know they aren't going to let them. And everyone knows I'm doomed too, so let's just get the hell out while we still can. And if we can stick it to the bastards on the way out, well, let's do it. What are we doing, tearing this down?" Commandant Hertz briskly walked up to the Mainframe, rubbing his hands together.

"We're tearing it down and moving it out. There's a truck waiting at the south door," Anthea said. "Or at least there was, who knows if they've moved it but we don't have time to guess. It's almost four and the General's never late."

"I've got one last cable to cut," said Waldo, crawling on his hands and knees over to the other side. "Who had all these goddamn anchors put in?"

"You did, dear," Anthea said.

"Well, don't listen to me next time," Waldo muttered.

"I try not to anyway," Anthea said, winking at Suzanne.

"Done. How are we going to do this?"

"You and the Commandant are tallest. Pull it down from the top. Suzanne and I will lift from the bottom. Then just… just go as fast as you can down the hall. God have mercy on our souls." Anthea took a deep breath and then crouched down at the bottom of the Mainframe. Suzanne copied her, and the Commandant and Waldo did as they were told.

"Son of a bitch," Waldo said.

"Lift," Anthea said, and she and Suzanne lifted as the men adjusted their grip. "Go, go, go!"

The hallway was the longest fifty meters of their lives. With the men walking backwards, they swore with every step, and Waldo stumbled twice. On the second, he rolled his ankle and shouted, but they carried on. With red, sweating faces and straining muscles, they carried on until they reached the promised truck, a green caravan with the cargo area already open.

"Turn and shove it up, boys!" Anthea shouted. They did as they were told, turning as best they could and moving the machine hand over hand into the truck. There was a hideous metallic scraping as they shoved it in, but they paid it no mind. It just made it more likely that no one could ever use that machine ever again, which was exactly what they wanted.

"Alright," Anthea said. "Alright. We've done it. But we have to go." She turned to the Hertzes. "We… already have our things in the truck, I don't..."

"Go," Suzanne said. "There's still time before the General gets here and most of what we need is right here on base. Go."

Waldo walked up to her. "Suzanne… you're one of the brightest people I've ever worked with. Take care of yourself."

Suzanne grabbed Waldo by the wrists and held his gaze for just a moment. "Stay strong. Tell Aelita we all love her. Godspeed."

"Waldo, we have to get Aelita before they know to look for us," Anthea said, already in the driver's seat.

Nodding, Waldo turned and jogged to the door. Commandant Hertz slammed the truck shut and slammed on the door, and the Schaffers sped off.

The Hertzes stood and watched the truck speed down the road. "Did you get the tracer on him?" The Commandant asked.

"It's on his watch," Suzanne replied.

"We'll let him run, for now," the Commandant said softly. "Let him get settled and think he's safe. It's not like we don't have copies of all the programs and schematics. But when he's stopped looking over his shoulder, we'll get him back. Hell, who knows. He's always been an addictive son of a bitch. He might come back himself."

October 10th, 1994

Waldo Schaeffer never did stop looking over his shoulder. And when Reiner Hertz's grand plan of kidnapping Anthea to lure Waldo back didn't work, the General had had enough. Suzanne Hertz never did stop wearing her wedding ring, until the day she walked into Kadic Academy for her interview. They didn't need to know she had baggage, and Reiner had been dead for years by then anyway.

"Well, did you have any more questions for me?" The headmaster was smiling already, so she knew she had already gotten the job.

"Just one, but it's not necessarily about the job. I was curious about the person I'm replacing. I've… heard that he's..."

"Missing," the headmaster said. "We… we started the year with a substitute, and it's hard for everyone to name a permanent replacement, but… it's for the kids. And the police… well, you know. They called off the search."

"Was he a popular teacher?"

"He wasn't hated," the headmaster said. "But he was kind of eccentric, I think it's fair to say. Not everyone understood where he was coming from all the time. Seemed awfully paranoid sometimes. And very old school in his teaching. Kids weren't crazy about all his homework. But he was a good man. Respected. We're all… going to miss him. It isn't going to be the same without Mr. Hopper."

"No," said Suzanne. "I can't imagine it ever will be."

"Well, Ms. Hertz, I'm quite impressed with you. I'd like to offer you the job." The Headmaster held out his hand, and she grasped it firmly, offering him a broad smile. She had gotten quite good at faking them.

"I'm pleased to accept. I'm very excited to be here," she told him. "There's some big shoes to fill."

"I'm sure you'll do great. Here, come with me, I'm going to introduce you to Jean-Pierre Delmas, he's my Deputy Headmaster, he'll get you started on all the paperwork and..."

Suzanne followed the Headmaster, but stopped listening to what he said. Instead, she looked around at the office, looking for doors and desks and computers and cabinets. Plenty of information to be rifled through. She could have Schaeffer's address by Wednesday. Who knew, he might have even left personal effects in his classroom that they stuffed somewhere "in case he came back." Suzanne doubted they would ever find Schaeffer, to be honest. But she didn't really care about him personally. She cared about that damned Mainframe that they'd let just walk out the building. She had helped him tear it from the wall.

"We'll let him think he's safe," she could hear Reiner telling her. God, what an absolute idiot he had been. And now he was dead and buried. And here she was, sent on some wild goddamn goose chase to find Waldo Schaeffer and what he left behind. The world was still full of threats, and if Waldo Schaeffer had died or fallen off the face of the Earth, he had taken with him the world's greatest hope to survive. What a crackpot idealist. Him and his wife. What a sob story she was.

She thought for a moment about the little girl. Aelita. She had gone with him, wherever he had gone. How old was she now? 12? For a moment, Suzanne felt guilty. But only a moment. She had given up guilt a long time ago. She was in the business of saving the world. Guilt wasn't an option.

All of a sudden, there was black haired man in front of her with the second-bushiest beard she had ever seen, after Waldo Schaeffer himself. He was going grey at the temples, and was fairly handsome in his sweater vest and blazer. Perhaps it was good she had kept her wedding ring off.

"Jean-Pierre Delmas," he said, holding out his hand. Unfortunately, his did have a ring.

"Suzanne Hertz," she said, shaking it with a genuine smile this time.

"It's good to meet you," Delmas said. "I'm excited to work with you."

"The pleasure is mine," Suzanne responded. "The pleasure is mine."

July 23rd, 2018

Five hundred kilometers was a damn long drive without air conditioning. The car's ever-so-kind thermometer informed him it was 36 degrees, which was downright hellish but yet still the lowest it had been all week. Even as the sun was setting in the sky behind him, the air was sticky to the point of being oppressive. For a guy with Spanish roots, Jim didn't do well in the heat. He cursed himself for not ponying up the money to fix the air conditioning in his car. "You only drive it to work and back, you're not going anywhere else any time soon," Jim said aloud in a sarcastic tone, mocking his own words.

The last vestiges of rush hour were still on the roads, but of course traffic wasn't quite as bad in Strasbourg it was in Paris. Not quite as bad. There was still some punk riding his back bumper, he had been for at least two kilometers. Jim wondered for a moment if he was a tail, someone out to get him. It was an old, beat up van though, not anything he would ever picture the government chasing somebody with. Still, Jim swerved into the next lane and did not stop holding his breath until the other car sped ahead of him.

As he came onto the city center, it dawned on Jim that he actually had no idea where to begin looking. Strasbourg wasn't some small little hamlet. One thing Jim did know was that he was hungry, so he took the next exit he came upon and high-tailed it to the nearest McDonald's. A Royale with Cheese and a Diet Coke couldn't cure all his life's problems, but they could at least give him something else to think about for a little while. After he got his food he went to a table tucked away in a far corner, away from the windows. He couldn't help but think he was being watched. Even the baby staring at him from across the restaurant gave him the creeps. "I'm too old for this," he muttered into his burger.

The respite offered by McDonald's was brief. He knew the greasy food would come back to bite him later, but even so it was gone far too soon. Walking through the restaurant to throw away his garbage made him tense, and out in the parking lot he felt exposed to the point that he could feel his heart pound. When he got back into his car, chest heaving, he shut his eyes and leaned back the chair as far as it could go. If he couldn't see the world, and it couldn't see him, maybe that would make things alright for a moment.

"You're not in your twenties anymore, Jimbo," he said aloud to himself. "And whatever the fuck this is, it's a lot scarier than beavers in Quebec." He paused. "Christ. It was just a McDonald's."

Slowly, he pulled his seat back up. "Let's not be stupid. Alright. Where am I going to go now?" Half a million people lived in Strasbourg, how was he going to find just one? He didn't even know for certain that she was here. "If you can't find her, then maybe the best option is to bring her to you," Jim said to himself. That was one thing he could do no matter how old he was – find a way to attract attention. But he hesitated – he wasn't the only person looking for her, was he? They could be anywhere. He wouldn't want to lead them right to her. "Well, Jim… if I was looking for some old teacher, where's the last place I would look?" What was an environment that he could not ever picture Suzanne Hertz existing in? It did not take him too long to think. "Some dive college bar," he decided. They might certainly fit the definition of old stomping grounds, and even if he didn't find her, there would at least be beer.

As it turned out, there were several dozen bars near the University of Strasbourg, which was home to nearly 50,000 students – far, far too many of whom were out drinking on a Monday. Never had his age been more apparent then when he stood in line – a line – to get into a bar on a Monday night surrounded by kids half his age. Most of them paid him no attention, talking to their friends or staring at their phones. Probably playing Pokemon or something, the damn kids.

This bar was apparently called Charlot's, and it was the dingiest, most dimly lit place he could find. There was graffiti all over the building, which as far as Jim could tell, was supposed to be part of the charm. It was tucked back into an alley, hidden from the street behind a bunch of greasy take-out type restaurants. The smell of cheap beer lingered in the air, and he could hear the sounds of a football game being played loudly on a television inside. Occasionally, someone cheered.

The bouncers were younger than Jim, but just as big. They seemed to stare at him longer than at the other people in line, but Jim didn't pay them any attention. He could take them, he told himself. But he thought it best not to try. Not that he would need to, of course. It wasn't like he had a fake ID. In fact, they didn't even ask for one. For a moment, Jim considered cracking a joke about not getting carded, but he decided against it. At this stage of his game, it would just be awkward.

"Three euro." There was someone sitting at a table set up at the inside of the door with a cash box.

"There's a cover? On a Monday? Lord have mercy," Jim muttered to himself as he pulled out his wallet. What had this world come to? Three euro to sit in some dive bar on a damn Monday night. There had better at least be some goddamn decent beer. But considering that the only drinkware the bar appeared to own was cheap, clear plastic cups, chances appeared to be slim. Jim tossed the coins in the cashbox with a displeased grunt and made his way inside.

Like the outside, just about every inch of the inside of the building was painted with graffiti. The building seemed to be all concrete, so at least all the paint gave it some color. There was a projector and a screen showing a football game, though only a few people seemed to be watching. It was some minor league matchup, no one Jim knew or cared about. There were a few scattered tables that all seemed to be as old and as rickety as Jim was, and some booths on the walls that were, what a surprise, covered in graffiti. In the middle of the room was the bar, staffed by people hardly older than the students and practically the only place in the room with actual lighting. A quick look around told Jim three things: he was the oldest person in the building, he was the only person there alone, and there was no Suzanne Hertz to be found. But he had paid the three fucking euro, so the least he could do was get a drink.

It took the bartender what felt like several years to finally get to Jim. He had been standing at the bar for four minutes. "I'll have a beer. Big. Whatever's cheapest." He didn't have that much cash on him, after the burger and then the cover. He braced himself for the worst, but the truth was that whatever it was, it wasn't the worst he'd had. The bartender was some kid with a sharply groomed beard who looked like he smoked dope. Of course, most kids looked like that these days. "Hey, lemme ask you something," Jim told him.

The kid looked up at him. He seemed pretty stand-offish, as if he didn't really know how to approach Jim. Most people didn't. "I'm looking for someone. A woman, older… about my age, give or take. Big glasses, big gray hair… seen anyone like that?"

"Who you just described could be pretty much any professor on campus," the kid answered, pouring shots of something that smelled like paint thinner as he spoke. "Can you be more specific?"

Jim had to give the kid credit, he wasn't lying. "Well, she would have probably been alone, pretty quiet… might have looked like she was hiding something. Probably looking around a lot."

"I know exactly who you're talking about," another bartender cut in. This one was a young woman, who looked like she could probably take down either or both of the big bouncers at the door. "There's this lady who I see everywhere on campus, or just around town. She's been in here a couple times, I've got friends who work at other bars who say they've seen her popping in and out. She just… walks around, always looking over her shoulder, always texting on her phone. Last week she came in, ordered a Manhattan, and nursed it all night while sitting in the back corner. Big, bushy gray hair and glasses like my grandma wouldn't even wear. She's been around for months, but no one has ever seen her in a class."

"What other places have you seen her?"

"Everywhere," she answered with wide eyes. "I never would have paid any attention to her, except that she's the only person to have ever ordered a Manhattan in the eight years I've worked here. But now that I noticed her, I see her all the time, and I realized that I had been seeing her all the time before. It's like playing Where's Wal-" She stopped in her tracks and then slightly, almost imperceptibly nodded. Slowly, with as much grace as his creaking joints and bloated frame could manage, Jim turned to face the door. And there, standing with her phone in her hands just like all the kids in the line, was Suzanne Hertz.

It had only been six months or so since Jim had last seen her, but she seemed to have aged quite a bit in that time. There was less volume to her hair, and more lines in her face. Perhaps it was just the dim light, but her skin seemed to have taken on a pallor. Still, she looked largely the same as she always had. Without her signature lab coat she seemed thinner, but even in "civilian" clothes Jim could feel her radiating sense of intelligence. She was the smartest person in the room, Jim knew it, she knew it, and probably everyone who stopped to look at her knew it. Her thumbs were flying atop her phone, and she barely stopped to hand over five euro for cover without even stopping to take her change. She did not look up as she walked to the back corner of the room and sat down in a booth as if she owned it.

Suddenly Jim felt his stomach tighten. "Get me a Manhattan," he spoke to the bartender. But he did not take his eyes off of Suzanne. She didn't quite look like he had expected. She didn't look like a woman who was running scared. She looked like she was a woman with a plan.

The bartender set the drink next to Jim's elbow. Slamming down the rest of his cheap beer, Jim set the last of his cash on the table, not really bothering to count it, and picked up the Manhattan. It was an American cocktail made with bourbon and bitter as hell, if Jim could remember correctly. Of course, all the drinks he'd had in his life had begun to run together. If he had to guess, Jim would have pegged Suzanne for a clear liquor kind of gal. Something with gin, perhaps. A white lady, or even just a dry martini. But far be it from Jim to question a woman's drink choices. Either way, Suzanne obviously had elegant tastes. And there was far more to her than Jim had ever realized.

"I was wondering if you'd like a drink," Jim said casually as he walked up to the table.

With a slight, almost barely noticeable, jump, Suzanne's face jerked up from her phone and looked up at Jim. For a moment, her jaw began to drop. But she stopped it and slowly stood up to face Jim. "How..." She looked down at the drink in his hand decided to grab it before finishing her sentence. "Seems like you've been playing detective." There was humor in her voice. A devilish sense of enjoyment. But it seemed dark. Dark like the bar. Dark like the whiskey in the plastic cup Suzanne held. Dark like her eyes, which seemed to be much darker brown than Jim remembered. She took a sip, and a smile played at the corners of her lips.

"Oh, it wasn't much," Jim said. "Just some asking around, and some remembering."

"Sometimes it's easy to forget how long I've known you," Suzanne said in an almost wistful tone of voice. "The years all run together. It really does seem like only yesterday..."

Jim felt himself blushing. "It's been a long, long time." He sucked in through his teeth and tried to think of what he wanted to say, but found himself speaking without really thinking at all. "Suzanne… I've come here because I… I think we need to do something. I don't… I don't want to roll over on this anymore."

Suzanne, who had been in the middle of another sip, stopped. "What do you mean?" Her voice was soft, but not delicate. Quite the opposite.

"I think… I mean, all this… business. You know what I mean. I can't help but feel like I'm running away from it. Giving up on it. And I don't want to give up anymore. I want to do something about it." Jim spoke in hushed tones, as if he was afraid someone at the bar was a plant. He looked from side to side, trying to see if there were kids staring at him. There were not. In fact, Jim and Suzanne were the only people in that half of the room.

"Why don't we go somewhere a little more discrete," Suzanne said. With a final sip of her drink, she stepped away towards the door, with her fingers grazing along Jim's shoulders as she walked around him. It didn't really seem like she had meant to do it, but after that, Jim couldn't help but follow.

The line of students waiting to enter the bar had cleared out. The alley was empty, and the sun was hidden behind low clouds as it began to set. Suzanne's heels echoed with each step. She walked briskly, and Jim almost struggled to keep up. Around the corner was a parking ramp where Jim had parked his car; it seemed as if Suzanne was heading there. She did not stop walking until she reached the third floor, and by pure coincidence – though with her, perhaps not – stopped near Jim's car. "So tell me what you want to do, Jim," Suzanne said. Her eyes were intently locked on his, but her gaze felt… welcoming.

"I want..." He took a deep breath. It was his heart that spoke. "I want to save the world."

January 8th, 2018

"Do you remember when we first met, Jean-Pierre?" She clasped a brace over his wrist. "On the day I got the job at Kadic?"

"Vaguely," he said, looking down at his arm, which was now strapped to the chair. Suzanne walked over and secured the second one in kind.

"I thought you were so handsome, with the grey at your temples… I mean, of course, you're still a handsome fellow, but you're no Pablo." She chuckled. "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to keep you calm. Medical procedures are stressful."

"What, exactly, is happening again?"

"We are going to rebuild you. We have the technology." She chuckled again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm nervous too, I laugh when I'm nervous. But what we are doing is an augmentation procedure to improve your learning capacity, your comprehension ability, and the language and sensory processing sectors of your brain. And we're throwing in laser eye surgery too, but that will be later in a conventional surgical facility. We just figure, for what you'll be doing, you won't want to deal with glasses."

"And how are you doing this?"

"Ironically, through theories postulated by the very man we're looking for." Suzanne tried to restrain a laugh, but failed, as she calibrated an instrument near Jean-Pierre's chair.

"Mr. Hopper was a neuroscientist?"

"Schaeffer," Suzanne reminded him. "And dear heavens, no. Well, actually I suppose in a manner of speaking you could say he was, but really he was a computer scientist. He did work with artificial intelligence. We're just adapting his techniques to biological intelligence."

"I thought you said you couldn't find his work. Wasn't that the whole point of hiring me?"

"We have some of his notes that he left behind, and he was very thorough." Suzanne sighed. "Alright. Ethics laws require me to inform you that this procedure is experimental and theoretical. It is, of course, your right to consent or not to consent to the procedure. But you only get to keep the job if you consent to the procedure."

Jean-Pierre looked down at his wrists, strapped to the chair. "I suppose there's no going back now."

"That's the spirit." Suzanne offered a genuine smile, and patted him on the hand. "You must understand. What you're doing is for the greatest good of all. You're doing this for the safety of our country. For the security of the world. For peace."

"I've already said yes. You don't need to give me a speech," said Jean-Pierre, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.

"You're a man after my own heart," Suzanne said. "But I wasn't just saying that to say it. This is what I care about. This is what keeps me going. Imagine what it would be like, not to have to send soldiers out to war. To just press a button and bring the terrorists to their knees. To be able to find every member these wide-spread, ever-shifting networks of extremists, in real time. To be able to disrupt the signals they use to set off their bombs. To be able to track their communications and find them before they even make the bombs. Waldo Schaeffer was a coward, who was afraid to make hard choices. But he made something that could practically erase terror from the face of the planet, and he squandered it. Well, we're going to find it, and we're going to remake it, and we're going to save the world."

"I just have one question, Suzanne. Is this procedure going to hurt?"

Suzanne chuckled.

July 23rd, 2018

"Is that what you think you're doing? Saving the world?" Suzanne had crossed her arms, and she was peering at Jim over the top of her glasses. It made Jim step back.

"Well… yeah, why wouldn't I? These are bad people, hunting us down, wanting to… do who knows what evil things." Jim wrung his hands. Suddenly the attitude Suzanne was giving off didn't feel welcoming at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. She still looked the same, but it was if there was something radiating from under her skin, giving Jim the heebie-jeebies.

"You don't have any idea, do you? What Project Carthage is doing. The kids didn't even tell you."

"They said… uh, well they mentioned… I mean, we all got those weird visits from people in suits, talking about reopening the missing person case, asking about computers… and you told us all about this Carthage thing and how you think it had been involved with our school. You were the one who figured out the kids knew about it," Jim rambled. "Look, I know they're bad people. But we can do something. We can help the kids."

"Well, let me tell you a little more about 'this Carthage thing,'" Suzanne said, stepping forward each time Jim stepped back. "It was a government project to intercept and disrupt Soviet communications during the Cold War. But it grew into something much bigger than that. It was about defending freedom. It was about keeping the whole world safe. It was about creating an automated system that could keep all of us protected from threats, before they happened, and let us as humans focus on the greater work of building a better world. No more militaries. No more soldiers. No more terrorists. A world without war."

"When you… put it like that..." There were beads of sweat dripping down Jim's face.

"You're a sweet man, Jim. I like you. Don't ever think that I don't. But… you're an idiot. And I don't deal with idiots anymore, no matter how loveable they might be." Suzanne took a deep breath. "You aren't ever going to understand what Project Carthage really means. You couldn't stop it if you tried. I couldn't help you stop it even if I wanted to. It's just too much."

"Even if you-" Jim's eyes were wide. He had stepped all the way back to his car and hit it with a thud. He started flailing wildly for the door handle but couldn't seem to find it.

"Those damn kids aren't the ones saving the world. They're just following the footsteps of a crazy old man who let blind idealism get in the way of the bigger picture. They're afraid to make the hard choices. And you… you're far too stupid to even understand what the hard choices are." Suzanne placed her hand atop the car door handle with a violent clatter. There was a ring on her finger that Jim had never noticed before. "I give you credit for coming all this way. I give you credit for finding me. And I think that, with the right people around you telling you what to do, you might even be a minor threat someday. But that isn't a compliment. For you, it's unfortunate. Because I can't have any threats. Not again."

"Su- Suzanne, please, what's happened to you? Have you always… did… did any of this mean anything? Was any of it real? Were you really a teacher? Did you care about the kids?" Jim was frozen as he stared up at Suzanne, tears rolling down his face.

She did not look up from her purse as she rummaged through it. "Oh sure, I was a real teacher. I even enjoyed teaching, I wouldn't have done it all that time if I didn't. There was a time when I vowed to leave my old life behind and just be Mrs. Hertz, the science teacher. But then Aelita Schaeffer just popped into my classroom one day, handed to me on a silver platter, and all that came crashing down. And now I've spent 12 years trying all over again to bring back what could have been. And I'm not going to let anyone stop me this time. Remember this, Jim Morales. I am the one who is saving the world."

The gun she pulled out of her purse was very small and white, and had a sort of sheen to it. It looked like it was made out of plastic. That was what caught Jim's attention as Suzanne pulled the trigger. He couldn't bring himself to look at her face.