Inside, she glanced at herself in the mirror, scowling when she saw the dark shadows encircling her eyes. Any hope of a date with a hot man had vanished when her boss had told them all that they would be working double shifts from now on, leaving her tired and exhausted when she staggered home every day. Her dark hair was already starting to thin, she realised, or at least it looked that way. And there was no way she could afford a cosmetics treatment when she also had to pay for the girls…
Her blood ran cold as she realised what she was missing. The girls. They were normally noisy, playing that dreadful racket that passed for modern music every time she came home, but now the apartment was quiet. She peeked into the bedroom they shared and saw no one; indeed, the room didn’t look to have been entered since she’d sent them both to school in the morning. The small picture of their father — the only memento they’d had of a man who had walked out on them shortly after they were born — was still where they’d left it, positioned neatly so he could overlook their bed. It gave them enough comfort that Marian had never had the heart to remove it.
But there was no sign of the girls. Feeling a cold tremor running through her heart, she glanced into the living room and kitchen and saw nothing. They normally took a drink from the fridge as soon as they returned home, but there were no traces of anything having been taken. In fact, there was nothing to suggest that the girls had ever come home.
They were teenagers, with all of the rebellious impulses that implied, but they knew better than to stay out after school. They’d always come home before, even when they’d wanted to go stay with a friend for a few hours. She’d trusted them to understand the dangers…
She stared in horror, her imagination providing her with all kinds of horrifying possibilities, each one nastier than the last. The girls were thirteen and fourteen, respectively; there were slave or prostitution rings that would pay dearly for such young girls. Or they could simply have been raped and murdered by the gangs. Or…
The communicator rang. She stumbled towards it, pressed her thumb against the scanner, and activated the device. There was no caller ID, nothing to show who was calling or why. Normally, she would not have bothered to answer, but now… she couldn’t escape the feeling that it might be connected to the girls. Perhaps the security guards had found them…
“Good afternoon, Marian,” a voice said. It was completely atonal, probably computer-generated. “You will be wondering, by now, what has happened to your kids. We have them.”
Marian stared down at the blank screen. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the voice informed her. “What does matter is what you are going to do for us.”
“I don’t have money,” Marian said, feeling her life shattering around her. If she went for a loan, now, it was unlikely she could get more than a few thousand credits. And how did she know the kidnappers would return her children after she paid the ransom? “What do you want?”
“If you look under the sofa,” the voice said, “you will find a datachip. We expect you to take that chip with you tomorrow, then upload the program to the main computer network and activate it. Destroy the datachip once you have used it. Should you do so, your children will be returned to you alive and unharmed. If not… well, you will never see your children again.”
Marian hesitated, unable to speak. She knew the dangers of uploading a program of unknown origin, everyone did. It wouldn’t just cost her the job if she was discovered; it would ensure that she spent the rest of her life on a penal colony, while her children would be taken away and given to someone else to raise. If, of course, the kidnappers didn’t kill them anyway, no matter what they’d promised.
And yet… they were her children.
She could go to her boss, she knew. It was certainly what she was supposed to do. But she knew better than to think her children could be rescued, not when the corporation’s main interests would be securing itself. She would go into a holding cell, the datachip would be examined carefully and the children would be left to fend for themselves. There might be an attempt to arrest the kidnappers, but they wouldn’t be too worried about the children. What should she do? What could she do?
“Your choice,” the voice told her. “We’ll know if you upload the program. If you do, your kids will be freed. If not, you will lose them forever.”
“I will,” Marian promised. She knew she couldn’t trust her boss to take care of her children. Besides, if the kidnappers expected immediate results from whatever program was on the datachip, they’d know she’d tried to alert the authorities. “Just don’t hurt them, please.”
The line broke. Marian stared down at it, cursing herself. She should have asked for proof they were still alive, proof the kidnappers even had them… she stepped back, then walked over to the sofa and looked underneath it. As promised, a simple civilian-grade datachip was waiting for her. She picked it up and examined it, but saw nothing. The only way to know what was on the chip was to examine it in a computer. And doing that, she knew, might trigger the program.
Putting the chip in her pocket, she walked over to the fridge and removed a bottle of cheap wine she’d picked up for the times her job felt like too much. Taking a large swig, she sat down on the sofa and closed her eyes, trying to put the whole thing out of her mind. But images of her children kept floating up in front of her, some memories from when they were little girls, some her imagination showing her what might happen to them. Sickened, she curled up in a ball and tried to sleep. It didn’t come easily.
The following morning, she had to force herself to shower and swallow two pills before she could even leave the apartment. Some of her friends greeted her as she boarded the transport tube for the ride to the plant; she had to force herself to act normally, knowing that if they reported her she was doomed. The security staff wouldn’t thank her for bringing the datachip into the office, even though it was safe as long as it wasn’t actually inserted into a computer. She felt sweat running down her back as she got out of the tube and walked through the security gate with the others, wondering if the guards could sense her guilt. But no one tried to stop her as she entered the complex and made her way to her own office.
It was a good job, even though it was tedious at times. Everything from starships to orbital fortresses and industrial nodes required computer cores, which were produced and given their first programming at Luna Base. Marian was surprised that demand hadn’t fallen, despite the destruction of the Jupiter Shipyards, but apparently there were shortfalls everywhere. Or, as some of the techs had muttered when they thought they couldn’t be overhead, the immense corporation had simply failed to cancel orders even though they no longer needed them.
She sat down in front of her desk and activated the computer, silently grateful that she hadn’t run into her boss. Her job — along with hundreds of others — was monitoring the prime programming inserted into computer cores, then certifying them for shipment. It was a difficult task at the best of times, particularly when the techs were experimenting with newer non-standard pieces of software. Even the ban on innovation outside the labs wasn’t enough to stop them.
Carefully, she pulled the datachip from her pocket and inserted it into the slot. There was a long pause, just long enough for her to wonder if the chip had been prepared properly, then the screen blinked up a note. PROGRAM ACTIVE. Marian shuddered, then blanked it from her screen and went to work. She took the datachip as soon as it was expelled and threw it into the disposer. All physical evidence would be gone by the end of the hour.