Charlie returned home that Friday evening to find an empty house. His wife had taken the kids to her sisters for the weekend after all. He was trying to ship them off all week, somewhere, anywhere. The incident in East Bank earlier that day had shaken the entire city. Dissident spokespeople were up on every news station calling the events of the day an attack on the people by government spooks. News stations were running the best counter propaganda and containment they could, saying that the Operators were simply agents investigating the Redmond Tunnel explosion and were ambushed. Charlie sat down to absorb some of the new updates that he may have missed. “Breaking News … CIB agent seriously assaulted after being ambushed in East Bank has succumbed to his injuries”. Charlie knew Operator Owens. He was the first operator to carry out a successful hostage rescue using Oculus. He was a fine Operative but was clearly a company man when it came to following orders. Charlie knew this was bad overall as three dissidents were also shot, two were dead, one was missing and others were still on the run. This had the potential to go very wrong for him but he was already working an angle in his mind. Now would be the time to expose Oculus and show the world what has been going on without their knowledge. Charlie scanned and cleared the house again and brought the three backpacks down to the basement. He conducted a quick stock take on all three backpacks. He then went through the programmers mods and updates. They had done him proud, a clean sweep of all requested features, mostly functional with detailed notes. WiDar, Pose Estimation, Heartbeat identifier, PSE, Remote Projection and a feature called Emergency Broadcast were among the list all checked off as complete and passed Alpha testing. It would take hours of practical training to master and use these features in the field but Charlie wanted to give the best Operator in the history of Oculus, and his apprentice, every tool he could. As Charlie wrapped up for the night and was about to head up stairs, Fleets voice filled the room. Standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs was James Fleet. “Charlie, it’s been a minute”.
© 2024 Stephen J. Delaney
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