I pushed the down button on the elevator and looked down at my phone. The text message was still on the screen.
“Meet me at the building today. 5PM’’
I sighed, and looked up at the arrival board. Elevator 10, the last car, was still stuck on the 11th floor. It was the first day back from summer break, and the new semester was already not off to a good start. I had spent the summer searching for any sign of extra-terrestrial life, instead of studying for my first year of university.
I knew what the text message meant. My alien contact had found something serious. So serious, I had to drop everything and go meet with him when he said so. I slumped down in the elevator car, and stared at the screen of my phone. I was still on the fourth floor of the office highrise I worked in.
This was the 5th time I had been summoned in the past year. Aliens, it turned out, were into blackmail. They had hacked every computer and smartphone on the home planet, and used it to keep an eye on the humans. They could use any data on a phone to extort the phone owner. Human governments, in turn, had decided to officially institute a sort of ’national ID’ system for all citizens so they could be tracked.
Instead of a national ID, the aliens had been using a different system. They had hacked the national identity system and used it to identify anybody using a phone. When the user wanted to do anything that would expose themselves to the aliens, they would receive a text message.
It happened, the message would say. If you don’t come to an agreement with me, I will send the text to a friend or more. We will be traced, and we will have to go to the aliens. It would be over. There are 4 of us, and we all know each other. That’s it. Agree.
I had tried to keep my college studies and advances in space alien research separate, but it was difficult. It was, in fact, impossible. I had a pretty good idea where I was going to be for the next 20 years. I knew what a full professor’s salary was, and I did the math. I had to give in.
I stepped off the elevator on the ground floor and walked through the glass door into the bright clear illumination of the Los Angeles morning. It was a bright summer day, but over on the east coast it was only 8AM. As I walked out, I noticed the heavy traffic around the office traffic and realized that if I wanted to get home by night I may need to go on mass transit.
I started to contemplate the debt I was going to have to take out to do so. I had only just left the city, and the taxicab software was already calculating the fare for me. I knew my options. The only one I liked was the return trip. It was 7:10AM here in Los Angeles, so the cab ride was rapid. There was only one catch.
The cab system here had been hacked by aliens, too.
I walked to the bus stop for the express bus home and waited patiently. It was a long wait, and I started to think that taking a cab would be a better decision for me. Eventually, I boarded the metro bus and took it to the end of the line.
If you’re ever in Ithaca, New York, take a bus ride with me. It’s not fun. It takes about 2.5 hours on a good day, which is 45 minutes longer than the drive. It’s cheaper, though. Theoretically. Then there’s the 4 hours you have to spend in the bus station while you wait for the bus to come and pick you up (which is another bus, you understand). This time, it took 4.5 hours, and the only time the automatic ticket scanner would accept my pass was the return trip. I had to push the button to the next station every day, making sure I got off at my stop.
It was no wonder that, like a few other citizens, I was spending more on gas than I could afford.
I had a good look at the fare card, and I could make out the payment charges on it. As expected, it was higher than the actual ticket price. I doubted that the system was actually fooled, but it would be an expression of the government's dissatisfaction with me to charge me the maximum amount of tax. It was still cheaper than cabbing, so I would deal. I had too much money anyway.
As I walked through the streets I saw the bags of people all in one headed home. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the combination of the heat of the summer sun and the humidity made the heat extremely suffocating. It was hard to stand the heat some days.
Once I got home, I took a shower, and then sat down in my living room among the plants that I had grown. I brushed my hair with a brush and looked over at the phone. In a few minutes, my phone would buzz. My contact would check to see if I had the data he was looking for.
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