The Elektra Excerpt

Chapter 1:

"If you are looking for sympathy, Mr McGrail, you will find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis." Ralph Dixon was a hard arsed TAFE lecturer if ever there was one, despite looking like a gnome that had escaped from Nick's grandmothers garden and lost his shiny red hat somewhere along the way. He even spoke with a funny English accent that was probably the underlying basis for Nick's association of him with a garden guard. Ralph would slur his words randomly as if he had a speech impediment, but only for certain combinations of consonants and vowels, and it had a habit of making the man come of "soft" of both character and intelligence, but as he had made his way to the Curriculum Coordinator position of the electronics wing at Midland TAFE – soon to be Polytechnic – campus, Nick had reason to believe this wasn't the case at all.
    
The young apprentice, like the rest of his class, had been given the task of writing a five thousand word essay on Luigi Galvani - the man who had discovered electricity – but Nick had found this too boring a thing to bother with, and so had forgotten about it completely, until the five minutes before class started in which he saw his class mates pulling their wads of paper from their bags.
          
When he had applied for a job at Computech Corporation, who were looking for slave labour under the guise of what they called an "apprenticeship", Nick thought he'd end up making things like the Tesla coils and EMP grenades he'd seen on the many video games he’d played that supposedly could take out an entire city block's power grid with the press of a button, but so far it was just medial crap about the discovery and theory of electricity. He just didn't care that Galvani stumbled upon what had until then been considered magic when he began dissecting a frogs leg and the chemicals in the fluid he was using reacted with the metal in his scalpel, causing the leg to twitch as its nerves became electrified. He didn't care that electricity was the science of passing electrons through valence shells and had been named after the Greek word for amber.

It wasn't as if Nick was dumb enough to be entirely convinced by the lure of Hollywood fantasy, and wherever it was that video games were made; he had reasoned that electronics was a fast evolving industry and as such figured a qualification in the field would provide him with something stable to fall back on. He expected that there would be some boring moments in his education, but these nonsense exercises on writing about something that he was never going to use in his career as a technician were just wastes of time, in his more than humbled opinion.
          
Tesla! Now there was a man Nick could write about; the true inventor of wireless energy whose coils could fry a man by shooting bolts of electricity at them from several metres away. The same man who, it was rumored, had spoken regularly to "otherworldly creatures" and who had been in charge of the infamous Philadelphia Project, whereby a US Naval ship had, for a single moment "supposedly" been sent forward in time, its crew becoming fused with the ships rails when it reappeared; the same man who had sought to deliver free energy to the world by using the gravitational pull of the moon focused through a tower named Wardenclyffe his investors suddenly stopped funding and which the government destroyed.
          
Whether these stories were true or not, wasn't the point; it was the fact they had been told that made Nick find them interesting. Tesla was clearly a man of character - and not just of a garden variety like Ralph Dixon had been full of either; Tesla was a genius when it came to the science of electricity, but he had been left out of all the history books in place of such charlatans as Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi. Well, that wasn't entirely fair on Marconi, for the man had succeeded where Tesla had failed, bringing the world to the forefront of wireless radio transmission, and he had allegedly taken over from Tesla when something had spooked the man into giving up his position on the Philadelphia Project.
          
These were not the same thoughts held by any rational modern day technologist like Ralph Dixon, because Nick was somewhat of a conspiracy theorist when it came to the subject of Nikola Tesla; it was the real reason he’d decided to take that avenue when his high school careers counselor told him he was too dumb to study forensic science – Nick laughed at this when he was broken into several years later, and the forensic investigator sent to search for fingerprints didn’t even know what a hornet was.
          
After watching the Terminator movies as a young boy, something in the back of Nick’s mind had convinced him that it would be technology that saw to the end of mankind – technology married together with stupidity, which is something humans had in abundance, if their past history was anything to go by.
          
Something about people creating artificially intelligent machines to do their work for them just seemed to scream to him a bad idea, and if that day did ever come when these machines went AWOL and turned on their makers, Nick wanted to have as much knowledge of how they worked as he could cram into that not so artificial memory bank of his. Out of control drone in the sky about to rain hell down upon him and whatever remnants of humanity were left? No problem, just toss an EMP grenade in its general vicinity and Bob’s your Uncle Sam.
          
Perhaps it was a sort of subconscious fear of the unseen force Nick had embedded into the depths of his psyche at the age of eight when he had been electrocuted by his bed side lamp one evening after probing the metal pieces which would normally hold a light bulb to see if they became hot – and of course forgetting to unplug the damned thing beforehand.
          

It wasn’t heat that Nick felt enter his body, but a surge of raw power that made it feel like a colony of microscopic ants were running on the cells of his blood, messing up not only the nerves in his body but his thought processes as well. It was a good thing the electrodes were next to each other, because it created a short path for the electricity to flow, which only held on to Nick for the short time his finger was in contact with them. If it had been any longer, Nick was sure he would have felt the heat as his blood boiled and his arteries exploded from the pressure of that same red liquid vaporizing.
          
Ralph had shown him – and the class – many pictures of what was left over when stupidity overtook that part of the brain that housed rationality; when people had thought it a perfectly fine and safe activity to try stealing the copper wire off high voltage power transformers while they still had that microscopic ant colony scuttling continuously through them. Some were wearing nothing but their satin under shorts that had fused to the skin from the heat, and others had melted to the power poles themselves – Philadelphia project style. What every single one had in common, though, was that their hand holding the pliers had been torn off at the shoulder and found several metres away, nothing more than a charred piece of meat just like the body it came from. There had even been a video of some poor Indian teenager who had climbed atop a train carriage and whose head burst into flames when his hand brushed one of the power lines that gave it its juice.
          
Apparently this was to drill home the message about safety – that even though the plastic insulation of pliers was rated to tens of thousands of volts, that did not mean it would protect you from everything, especially your own stupidity – but Nick knew better.
          
There was something about the sick way Ralph was getting satisfaction from showing them; something too familiar about the way Nick’s old tree lopping boss had gotten satisfaction from watching the shell of an AC-130 gunship blow a terrorist to pieces. The same smile his friend, Tony, couldn’t wipe off his face when he’d shown Nick a live recording of Saddam’s hanging, just as the Iraqi dictator’s neck snapped and bent at a perfect ninety degree angle to the rope. It was that small psychopathic tendency that everyone had that makes them look toward death and injury when they should be looking away; the very thing that gave newspapers and stations their prime positions on the stock exchange.
          
These delusions weren’t helped by the substitute TAFE lecturer Nick got one day when Ralph was sick; an old, retired air force lieutenant that had at one point been second in charge, and had explicitly taught Nick’s class how to make electro magnetic pulse missiles that would fry any piece of electronic equipment within a radius of five kilometers from the detonation point. Too bad Nick hadn’t brought a pencil that day, though he doubted if he really had the ability required to design and assemble a missile of that caliber all by himself. He doubted very much he could do it on the abysmally small wages Computech were paying him.
          
“And you won’t even know one has gone off, even if you are standing right next to it…unless you check your digital sports watch.” Ron had said, before discussing some of the quantum theory projects he had been working on – the declassified parts, that was. Someone – most probably, and most definitely Nick - had asked him how long he thought it would be before Terminator became a reality, and the man had supposed less than ten years. He then went on to give an example of experiments that involved splicing mice brains to aircraft piloting systems, that, after crashing once, never did again. This was where Nick and the rest of the class decided Ron was full of shit.
          
Still the man had been more entertaining than the previous fill in, Geoff, whose methods for teaching were so outdated that he just ran power point slides all day, and it got Nick thinking about his conspiracy theorist blog he had been spending his time on when he should have been focusing on Volta; The Probability of Alien Contact Here on Earth.
          
Nick had been gathering quite a few followers when he took a video of some strange light he’d seen one night in the town of Wooroloo, where his parents lived. The light was nothing more than what appeared to be a comet – maybe even one of Ron’s missiles, the man had moved into this part of town after all – that arced up and over the tallest gum tree on the property then fell back away towards earth one evening. After ringing the local observatory and the many TV stations that liked to report on manners that weren’t quite fitting of the definition of “news” – footballers with strange haircuts, small dogs wearing hats, footballers in training, Perth’s richest people, footballers on drugs – and finding no one else who had witnessed the light, Nick’s father gave up, figuring it was probably just some kind of meteor shower.
          
Nick on the other hand, took to writing about it, linking it to some second hand story he had heard about dancing lights at the nearby gravel oval – the same kind you’d expect to find on any internet UFO forum, and was delighted to find that his work had been swallowed up by a well known believer, researcher and alleged abductee, Lance Walker.
          
Nick found his following boosted to well over ten thousand the day after Lance had read his blog and posted a link to it on his site along side instructions on how to make tin foil hats. If it weren’t for the crazy old bastard Walker, who also claimed he was a descendant of one of the people present at the Roswell investigation, Nick in all likelihood never would have bothered continuing with the blog. In fact, these days he just did it for a laugh, sort of like a satirical mock up of all the best conspiracies.
          
His favorite theories were the ones about secret microchip implants the government had been injecting into children whenever they went for their annual measles shot, because Nick could debunk the whole theory without even thinking about it. It amazed him how many people were stupid enough to put the health of their children at risk for the sake of no more than a miniscule piece of wire whose primary purpose was to monitor stock over a few hundred metres at most, without even giving second thought to that piece of plastic in their pocket which had been given that vague description of a mobile phone. It amused him to see all these people posting about these secret tracking devices on their social media pages, where he could find out where they worked, where they lived, where they went to school, who their family was, if he wanted to. The government didn’t need some secret agenda to find out what people were up to, because people were dumb enough to splatter it all over their page in the form of a cyber identity; an imaginary bunch of ones and zeroes that could be decoded into what was known as metadata by good old ASIO, the security department that had nothing better to do than waste their time chasing online media pirates. Besides, if the government really needed to find someone who was a virtual recluse, they could just hack into the GPS module in that person’s mobile phone which would give them real time coordinates accurate to within a few metres. Nick knew for certain that even the smallest of these GPS modules were too big to be disguised in the form of a measles shot.
          
Thanks to people like Tesla and Marconi, the world had reached a point where all it took to retrieve secure information was to pluck it from the air and decode it using a sophisticated knowledge of electromagnetic radiation. Of course, this was easier said than done, which is why Nick had been given a low mark on his last exam paper, and which is why he really needed to make up his grade with the report on Galvani.
          
“Come on Ralphy, my man. You know half of the class just copy and pasted their reports from the internet. Can’t you just do the same for me and stamp my name on the top?” Nick asked, hopeful Ralph was in a good enough mood to give him a second chance. The gnome just looked back at him blankly, not speaking or even blinking for a good half a minute.
          
“That may be true, but at least these guys found the motivation to do what would have taken you….what….less than ten seconds to do. If you can’t even do something that simple, then I worry about what you will do when it comes to frequency modulation and amplifier principles.” Ralph stated in that condescending, high pitched tone Nick always despised him for using. The man occasionally liked to remind them in not so subtle ways that he was better than there lowly arses; something Nick was sure all apprentices got from not only their lecturers but their employers as well.
          
“Yeah ok, you got me. Truth is I forgot about it. That what you want to hear, Ralph, buddy? Me admitting my mistakes? Getting me ready for the big bad world I haven’t quite stepped out into yet?” Nick replied, still hopeful, but not expectant, of Ralph coming through for him.
          
“Preparing you for the big bad world was your parents job, not mine. But yes, consider it a lesson in time management, you lazy sob. Now, here is all I am prepared to offer you. Tonight I have to attend a dinner so I will not have time to read and grade these papers. That will be left for tomorrow. If yours is not on the pile by then, then you fail. Simple as that. I don’t care if your next lecture isn’t for two weeks! Call in sick, take the morning off, whatever. Just bring me that damned report.” Nick could tell Ralph was being serious, because the man still had not blinked even once.
          
“Thanks Ralphy, really appreciate it, old pal.”

          
The day came and went. Too slowly for Nick’s liking, but probably not for Ralph’s. Throughout the day he had been stretching the powers his position had afforded him and had made his students squirm at every opportunity. But at two o’clock – a whole hour before the lecture officially finished – Ralph decided he’d had enough and told them all to go study in the library for the rest of the day. It was the college’s policy that a lecturer was responsible for their students up until the very end of the pre arranged time for that lecture, so Ralph couldn’t just outright tell them to fuck off – though, this he did do sometimes, when he was feeling particular careless. It was better than Powerpoint Geoff, who made them sit in silence for the whole hour after he ran out of teaching material, expecting them to go and break a leg or get hit by a car crossing the road, treating them like twenty something year old school children instead of capable adults.
          
Nick crossed that very road, wondering why the local government had even bothered introducing a parking fee when they decided to change the name to Polytechnic. Cars were lining the verges of the road crammed in next to each other so tightly that Nick couldn’t slip past them comfortably, and had to take the long way round. Some had even resorted to parking illegally to escape the five dollar fee that awaited them in the vacant parking lot on the other side of the road.
          
If the owners of these cars were conspiracy theorists, Nick gathered, then they were the ones who believed in government tracking implants. There was just no logic to it, especially when the college had announced that they would not be gathering parking fees until the following semester. One car that had blocked off an access way had even drawn the attention of a cop who was out and happily jotting down its number plate.
Nick noticed a young woman rushing over to the cop to beg herself out of the fine. She overtook Nick, just as he made it across the road.
          
“I was only dropping in to hand in an assignment. Wasn’t even here for five minutes.” The woman begged, turning to him in hopes he could some how change the cops mind, and he noticed she was stunningly attractive; long flowing brown hair, just the right height – he wasn’t very good when it came to guessing these things – enough meat on her bones to make her look like a real woman and not some anorexic stick that needed to digest a few beef burgers. Resting on her nose were a pair of purple square rimmed glasses that in no way hindered her beauty. If anything they only amplified it, and Nick had do everything in his power to stop his thoughts wandering to some geeky fantasy involving her and video games...
          
“Doesn’t matter. You’re illegally parked.” The cop continued writing up his fine, ignoring the desperate pleas coming from the woman.
          
“But I’ve only got one demerit point left. If I lose that then there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to get to work.”

“Should have thought about that before you blocked off this access lane.”                
Nick couldn’t believe what a tight arse this cop was being. And he thought Ralph was bad. He found himself moving between the woman and the police officer before he could even think the whole idea through properly.
          
“I was the one driving, officer. Don’t punish Elektra, here, for something that is my fault.” He popped open the door and threw his bag casually onto the back seat to really sell the lie. The woman looked at him with a confused look, and Nick just stared back at her as if to say “Just go with it”.
He pulled out his wallet from the inside of his jeans pocket, then slid out the license and shoved it in the cops face, making a point of being rude about it.
          
“Nice try pal, but this car is registered to a Madison Bailey, and there’s a nice little picture of her on my laptop that is a spitting image of this woman.” The cop pointed to Nick’s Elektra using the license he had just handed over.
          
“Madison had a few too many to drink last night, so I offered to drive her over here. My car’s in the garage waiting for a new engine to be fitted.” This was the only part of Nick’s story that was true. He’d left his oil change for a about forty thousand kilometers too many, and on the way home from work one day a piece of sludge had come free and blown out one of his cylinders; not something Nick thought he’d be fixing anytime soon, given his boss’s refusal to give him a pay rise despite all his hard work.
          
“Why did you call her Elektra, when her name is Madison then?” The cop asked and Nick found himself struggling for an answer. That was what he got for just rolling with the first idea that had popped into his head. Luckily for him, Madison had switched on to the game and broke in before his falter gave it away.
          
“That is his pet name for me. My nickname.” Madison didn’t know just how fitting that word was at this particular moment in time. Nick smiled, taking it as some sort of sign. The cop looked first at Madison, then back at him.
          
“Is that true”. He asked, flipping over Nick’s ID, and squinting at the holographic seal as if to make sure he hadn’t just been handed a fake – and very illegal – card. Nick supposed that was exactly what he was hoping for.  
          
“I’d bet my dog on it.” Nick replied, hopping into the driver’s side, trying to make it seem as if him and Madison went way back. Even he was surprised at how casual he was making this seem. Nick patted the seat to hurry Madison up to join him, and after an apprehensive moment she came willingly, acting just as convincing as he had. In the rear view mirror they could see the cop jotting down his details, taking an extra five minutes for every one that was really needed. Every so often he would glance back at the couple with a curious look on his face. Eventually he finished up, and appeared back at Nick’s door, and handed him back his license.
          
“That will be a hundred dollar fine, Mr McGrail. Seeing as you showed enough decency to admit to your own fault, and several points, the details are written on the front. Do try and use the parking lot next time. It is what is there for, and the tickets are a lot cheaper than these ones, I can assure you. Madison, in future you may want to think twice about lending your car to your boyfriend.” Madison went bright red, but the cop didn’t see it, as he was already back in his car and watching them to make sure they didn’t switch seats.
          
“Drive” She said through gritted teeth, and Nick noticed she was gripping the bottom of her seat with both hands. As they turned the corner and put a good distance behind the traffic warden disguised as a member of an organization that had peoples best interests at heart, Nick had to keep from veering off the side of the road when Madison all of a sudden burst out with a fit laughter.
          
“Man that was so cool. I can’t believe you just did that. I can pay you back for the fine, but aren’t you worried about those demerit points?” she asked, as Nick pulled up in an empty car park at the nearby shopping complex. He would have been lying if he’d said he didn’t have just a little bit of concern about how he was going to manage it on his abysmally low income.
          
“Nope. And don’t worry about it! Us apprentice electronic technicians are rolling in it. Plus I could always hack into the national bank and change a few ones and zeroes on my account if I really needed to.” Nick grinned as he grabbed his bag from out the back.
          
“Kidding.” He reassured Madison when he saw her expression, but he’d read it completely wrong. Apparently she wasn’t done with talking to him.
“Where you headed?” She asked, jumping back behind the wheel. Nick slung his bag back over his shoulder, and pointed over the other one.
          
“Station. Got a train to catch.”

“Want a lift. It’s the least I can do for you after getting me out of that.” Nick’s plan had paid off after all. Another five minutes in Madison’s presence was worth all the money in the world.
          
“Sure, why not.” He threw his bag back in and jumped in the seat that was still warm from Madison’s body heat. Nick leaned back and made himself comfy.
          
“So why call me such an outlandish name as Elektra? Why not something simple like Marie or Ashley or Jane”. Madison was alternating from looking at Nick and then the road when she asked this. She seemed genuinely interested in the name nick had picked out for the game of let’s fuck with the cop. Her Nick name.
          
“It was the first thing that popped into my head.” Nick smiled and popped his head out the window, trying to play it cool. In truth he was so overwhelmed by her that he half expected his head to explode if he looked at her a moment too long. The last thing he wanted to do was come across as that creepy desperate guy, because in actuality he was just that. He was a guy who stayed up late to egg on a bunch of conspiracy theorists, then sat alone in his apartment during the day reading comics and farting the remnants of pizza and other take away foods because he didn’t know how to cook. The best Nick could do when it came to cooking was a piece of rump that was either still bleeding or was three quarters charcoal and never anywhere in between – if you didn’t count the two minute noodles that took up most of his pantry cupboard space that was.
          
“So you hear a damsel in distress and the first thing that pops into your head is that her name could be Elektra? Wanna know what I think? I think you’re a comic book guy, and you are on your way to go get a copy of the Daredevil spin off because it just came out today.” Madison took the opportunity of being stationary at a red light to monitor Nick’s reaction. Nick turned to her, smiling at the fact that they both shared something in common.
          
“Man, you are good. You a Marvel fan, or more of a DC girl”?
          
“Bit of both. You? Obviously you like Marvel, but which do you prefer?” Madison seemed to be enjoying this question time a little too much. She failed to notice the light had turned green, and only realised when an impatient old man behind her started beeping and yelling for her to move her arse. Nick threw his hand out the window and saluted him with his middle finger.

Same. I don’t get all these people who have to make it into a big fight between the two like they are football teams. Both of them have some good comics, both of them have some shit ones; I’m not going to pretend I like the shit ones just because they tie in with a character from a good one.” The old man had now decided Madison was moving too slow, and had changed into the left hand lane so he could speed past. Nick kept his one finger salute hanging out of the window, without breaking his eye sight with her.
          
“I hear you, there. Idiots if you ask me...” Madison paused as if there was something she wanted to ask but wasn’t sure how to ask it.
“What? What is it?” Nick asked, sensing something was the matter. He hoped he hadn’t done something – hadn’t accidentally farted without realising it – to offend this woman that had taken him by storm.
          
“Is that the only reason you called me Elektra?” Madison finally asked, using the road as a good excuse to look away from him. Nick didn’t understand why such a thing was important, but Madison had her reasons. Nick thought about his answer as they pulled into the train station.
          
“No. That was about it. I was thinking of the name Elektra because I was on my way to buy a comic of that name. Why do you ask?” Nick couldn’t deny that Madison had definitely peaked his intrigue, though he did not know he had peaked hers more.
          
“Nothing. Just a coincidence. I will tell you about it later?” Nick raised an eyebrow, wondering how much later there was going to be considering he’d just reached his destination.
          
“When.” He asked, hopping out and closing the door. His window was still down from when he’d given his salute to the impatient old man.
          
“Over dinner!” Madison replied, jotting her number down on a piece of paper that she pulled out of the glove box and stretching over so she could hand it to Nick. As he reached in to grab it, his finger brushed past her wrist and a loud crack could be heard as tens of thousands of volts discharged in the form of static electricity. Nick was so bewildered, that before he could even reply Madison had taken off and was fast disappearing out of sight. He carefully folded the piece of paper, not wanting to crease the numbers in case it ruined one of them beyond readability, then put it in a secure pocket of his bag – one that had an inside zip surrounded by two on the outside.

Nick withdrew his wallet and headed for the change dispenser at the far side of the stations entrance. A single fifty dollar note was the only thing in there that kept it from being totally empty – apart from the ten he’d hidden under his license. Nick apprehensively took it out and slid it into the machine that would give him the five dollars in change he needed to buy a train ticket. Normally he would have just skipped buying the ticket, but Nick figured he’d already made one massive gamble today, and decided not to push his luck, even if that gamble had paid out the jackpot. He hated to split such a large note, but then again he needed change for the Elektra comic. He watched as the machine hungrily gobbled up the note like a glutton and then vomited it back out again in a combination of coins and smaller notes. Only, that’s what Nick had expected to happen, though when he went to retrieve his change he realised that these notes were a higher denomination than the fifty; all three of them were hundreds, known more colloquially as green backs.

Despite the unbelievable luck that had come his way, Nick kept his composure as he scooped the pile of plastic and metal back into his wallet; there was a guard to his right and several people queuing up behind him, and the last thing he wanted was to have to give back the money that would pay for his fine, as well as the dinner with Madison that fine had scored him, just because of some stupid malfunction. It served people right for putting so much faith in automated machines. He wondered how many had “forgot” to pay for their items when going through the self service check out at his local supermarket. He had done it with a few things himself, here and there when he was really low on funds.

Nick walked past the guard and gave him a friendly salute – much more friendly than the one he’d given to the impatient old man – so as not to look suspicious. The guard nodded back to him, smiling a mouth full of the whitest teeth Nick had ever seen. He doubted this guy had touched one cigarette in his whole life time.

After purchasing his all day pass from another malfunctioning machine that seemed to add another dollar to the price every month or so, Nick took a seat and waited for his train to arrive. The electronic sign above him telling it him it would be another two minutes, flickered on and off. Nick recognized this as the beginning of the end of a dying electronic circuit.
          
“Hey brother, any chance I can scab a cig’rette?” A man in a ratty brown jumper and shredded pants had approached Nick, just as he pulled the pack from his pocket. He looked as though he had been living rough for quite a while, and hadn’t had a decent wash for even longer.
          
“Depends. What do I get out of it?” Nick sparked his lighter that was always kept inside the packet and roasted the end of a cigarette until he had a nice red cherry on the end. He wasn’t inhaling it, instead just admiring the burning tobacco. The sudden appearance of the vagrant had got him thinking about his addiction.

“I can do a backflip for ya, if ya like.” The haggard man leaned in and gave Nick a hopeful raise of his eyebrows. He seemed more eager to show off his acrobatics skills than he did for a cigarette. Before Nick could reply he found the man had twirled himself around not once, but three times. On the third time he tripped on his landing, and Nick had to quickly jump and catch him before he fell off the edge of the platform onto the tracks below.
          
“You know what. That dedication deserves a lot more than one.” Nick handed the whole pack over, with the lighter still tucked neatly inside, figuring that now was as good a time as any to break his habit before taking Madison out on a date. First impressions and all that. The vagrant’s face broke out into a smile, but, unlike the train guard’s perfect orthodontic dream, this man’s teeth were all jagged and stained various different shades of brown and yellow. Nick noticed he was even missing a few as well.
          
“Thankyeh, sir. I like ta think I got a certain amount of decency for all the shitty things I been upto, so I tell yer what. You ever find yourself in trouble and see ol’ Jeffery here in the gen’ral vicinity, you just give us a shout and I be at yer back in no time. ” Jeffry held out his hand to shake and Nick took it, trying to not to think about all the dirt and grime that was on it.
          
“No need for that. How about a conversation before my train arrives? That will be more than enough”. Nick said, wiping his hand off on the corner of his jeans when Jeffry wasn’t looking. There was a gnawing feeling growing inside of him telling him that he really should wash it when he got a chance – and not just wash it; scrub it until his skin peeled off.
            
“Mister, for a whole damn pack of cig’rettes, I’d follow yer to the city and back, recitin’ headlines from the daily bugle the whole way.” Jeffry lit his own cig’rette and took a seat next to Nick, closing his eyes and savoring every drag for a few moments before taking another one.
“No thanks. Not a fan of the paper. It’s all a load of biased bullshit if you ask me. Nothing ever in it except death and gloom; depressive shit to make you think the slave pen the government has you in is really not that bad.” Jeffry looked at Nick, then nodded in agreement, puckering his lips as he did so.
          
“Too true that, brother. So that means you in the dark about all this shit happ’nin’ in ‘Merica and the rest the worl’? I tell ya what, it’s somethin’ you might wanna check in on once in awhile. Apocalyptic, end of times shit if ev’ there was any.” Nick looked at Jeffry curiously, wondering if the homeless man was trying to yank his chain. Right on cue, the blinking LED board that said the train should be another thirty seconds, fizzled out completely and went dark. Jeffry saw it and took it as some ominous sign.
          
“What are you talking about? What is happening in the world today that makes you think it’s the end of it?” Nick asked, amused.
          
“Terrorists hackin’ into corp’rate bank accounts and wipin’ millions off the stock exchange. Resettin’ everythin’ to zero just like that Durden fellow tried doing in the book about fightin’.” Jeffry said, pretending to punch himself in the face, and winking at Nick at the same time.
          
“Shit's causin’ riots every where. Goddamn ‘Merican military probably gonna go DEFCON 1 over it. Prob’ly think it’s the Ruski’s or the K’reans, even though they’ve both had their fare share of it over on their own turf.” Jeffry started laughing, a strange and slightly psychotic laugh that put Nick on edge.
          
“What’s so funny?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. Jeffry stopped laughing and looked back at him.
          
“An old joke. Apart from bein’ the system in place to alert its model cit’zens to imm’nent nuke’lar warfare, DEF CON is the name given to a bunch of computer hackers. I find that funny consid’ring this whole cluster fuck is prob’ly due to Stuxnet, though I f’give yer if yer don’ know what that is.” As a matter of fact, Nick did know what that was, not that he could profess to being an expert on the subject. Stuxnet was one of those things you only really knew about if you were immersed the world of computer programming or geopolitics. It wasn’t something Nick had come across in any of his textbooks or his many TAFE lectures. The train pulled up in front of them, it’s brakes making a high pitched squeaking noise as it came to a stop in front of them.
          
“That’s the militarized computer virus isn’t it? The one all the online news pages were calling the first digital weapon? I remember reading an article about it, but my memory is a bit sketchy. Care to fill me in?” Nick asked, standing up and making his way towards the doors. Jeffry nodded, giving quite an approving look.
          
“I’m impressed, pal. Though, computer virus is prob’ly a bit redundant. More like a computer plague. Damned ‘Mericans helped develop it with Israel back in two thousand eight. A year later it showed up in a number of Iranian nuclear power plants, though no one realised it was there at first. It wasn’t until a few hundred of ‘em stopped workin’ that software developers started looking into their industr’al control program. What they found was a piece of code half a meg’byte in size – a fuckin’ whopper of a worm, most of the ones that steal your credit card info are only a few kilobytes – that had been speeding up and slowing down all the centr’fuges use’ ta purify uranium, all the while sendin’ out little mess’ges that the system was A-OK.” Jeffry paused to light another cigarette, flinging the still smoldering butt of his first onto the tracks. He inhaled one long drag and then continued on with his story. Nick couldn’t believe the wealth of information coming from someone who couldn’t even afford a new set of pants. Perhaps Jeffry was an apprentice just like him, though Nick doubted this due to his enthusiasm for Stuxnet.
          
“Problem was, the dumb sons a bitches released it as a freely download’ble tool that could be tinkered with to any would be cyber terrorist’s heart’s delight. In twenty ‘leven it popped back up under the name of Duqu, and had been changed to copy keystrokes and steal information. A year later it popped up again under the name of Flame. Not bad, consid’ring it was s’posed to kill itself in twenty twelve. Now who knows what und’ground crim’nal org’nizations have re-written it, or what purpose they have written it for. Sounds to me like just the thing you’d want if you planned on crashin’ the stock market. All because ‘Merica and their Jewish pals got careless. Talk ‘bout a biblical end of times event.” Jeffry laughed that crazy laugh that made Nick cringe. He stumped out his cigarette on the door of the train carriage, then put it back in the pack with the lighter for later.
          
The two of them took a seat at the very back next to a window that someone had scratched some illegible territorial mark into, making the whole point of it as redundant as the word virus. Nick wondered why this was so. He found that they were given quite a wide birth, probably on account of Jeffry’s appearance, or – more likely – because of his smell.
          
“So what makes this Stuxnet thing so dangerous? What makes it a plague rather a virus? And how on earth do you know all this? Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look like your average expert on cyber warfare.” Jeffry flashed him another broken tooth smile.
          
“Use’ ta be a software developer ‘fore I got hooked on meth amphet’mines. Though I’m off that shit now. Can’t get a job ‘cause I got no house, can’t get a house ‘cause I got no job.” Nick noticed that Jeffry’s eyes were slowly filling with tears as the man took a moment to remember his life before vagrancy. Nick almost asked him if he wanted to move in with him, then thought better of it. He’d only known this guy for less than half an hour, after all.
          
“The reason Stuxnet is a plague is ‘cause part of its code is designed to replicate the whole program if certain conditions are met. These would have origin’ly only been found in nuke’lar power plants, but after Duqu and Flame, there’s no tellin’ what these could have been changed to. Could be if you take a selfie and post it on your media page for all we know. Nor do we know what it is such conditions are trig’rin’. Could be a bank account deletion today and a plane fallin’ out the sky somewhere over the ‘lantic ocean tommorra. All these dumb bastards who got their ears and fingers pressed up to their phones twenty four seven don’t have any idea what sort of power lies in front of them. Change a few lines of code in that fav’rite app of theirs and sud’nly you got the world’s most dang’rous weapon. No need to drop nukes when you can just recreate Chernobyl on a global scale at the press of a ‘maginary button. ” Jeffry pulled the half smoked cigarette out of the pack and placed it in the crook of his ear. Nick thought about the potential such a worm had to exploit if the designers got creative. He thought about all the electrical grids over the city and everything that could be – and probably was – controlled using automated system software; computers, mobile phones, traffic lights, automatic teller machines, change dispenser machines. Train brakes. Nick pushed the thought of an out of control train out of his head – the thought that involved him and Jeffry getting turned into strawberry coloured jam.
          
A woman several seats ahead of them looked up and gave Jeffry a distasteful glance, turning her nose down at him like she was some sort of university professor, then went back to being absorbed in her phone. Why bother wasting time checking out if the story about an out of control cyber plague was real when you could just stare at videos of puppies wearing hats all day? When it was something like Ebola – something you could see – the world was put on quarantine, but when it came to something virtual like Stuxnet, everybody just turned a blind eye and expected the professionals to fix it; professionals like Jeffry who had their vices just like everyone else. Too bad if one of those vices turned out to be selling their source code on the black market for a bit of extra cash, because the companies they worked for were too busy trying to hold onto theirs.  Nick was starting think that Jeffry was making a very good point. The collective ignorance of the world populous to the technology they took for granted was a weak spot just begging to be exploited by terrorists. What did they call these weaknesses in software terminology? Zero days, or zero hours or something?
          
The train came to a stop at its first platform across the road from the Woodbridge hotel, the brakes squealing even louder than they had done when it pulled up in front of Nick and Jeffry back at Midland. Nick was relieved to find that it did eventually stop, though he couldn’t deny that this conversation with the ex-software developer had clicked on his doom and gloom button. There was a split second burst of adrenaline through his system when the squeal got so loud that he thought the brakes were going to, well, break.
          
“Well this is my stop, my friend... You know I on’y just realised, I never got yer name.” Jeffry stood up, holding out his hand once more for Nick to shake. Nick took it, that mental reminder to clean his hand afterward working its way back in.
          
“Nick McGrail.” He replied, thanking Jeffry for the conversation. It had definitely given him something think about. The question was, was a computer plague something you brought up on a first date? It sure beat the hell out of talking about capacitors and resistors all night. Nick suddenly realised that Madison had never asked his name. Oh what an interesting day this had been.
          
“Thanks for the cig’rettes. Like I said, Nick, you in trouble and ol’ Jeffry is in town, you just give a shout and I’ll be there fassah ‘an you can say Stuxnet.”
“Appreciate it.” Nick replied, putting his hands into his jeans to try and keep them warm. A cold chill had blown through the carriage as the doors flew open. His hand brushed past his wallet, and Nick found himself pulling it out.
          
“Where you staying, Jeff?” Nick unbuttoned the wallet and took a peak at the new shade of green that was lining the middle.
“Got a little somethin set up a’ top the look out, Kalamunda way. A little, shall we say, camp. Million dollar view of the city from my bedroom. Wish I had a lady to take me there on a Sat’day night. Get’s real mag’cal ‘round midnight watchin’ all the planes comin’ inta land.” Jeffry turned to head out the doors before they closed, but Nick grabbed him by the shoulder before he could shuffle off too far away.
          
“Take this.” He said, shoving a green back into Jeffry’s hand. The vagrant looked at it and another smile broke out on his face, this one warm and gentle and compliment with teary eyes.
          
“You’re a good man, Nick McGrail. If and when the world does go ta shit, may yer find your higher ground like in that Chili Peppers song.” Jeffry kissed the note, then held it up and nodded. He folded just as carefully as Nick had folded Madison’s number, then put it in his newly acquired pack of cigarettes.
          
“It’s nothing. Really. Change dispenser malfunctioned...and you need it more than me.” Nick shrugged, back to his casual self. He spread out in the double seat putting his hands back behind his head.
          
“That the one in the foyer of the Midlan’ station? Hahah that things been keepin’ me alive for the past week. Figured it ought to have run out of money by now.” A PING sound could be heard coming from over the loud speakers with a voice announcing that the doors were closing.
          
“Shit!” Jeffry stammered, sprinting for the door. He jumped through just as it closed and caught a piece of his ragged shirt in the door. Slowly the train took off, and Jeffry kept up with for a moment as he tried wrestling his shirt free. In the end he gave up and yanked as hard as could. Nick could see a large rip appear before his new friend disappeared out of sight, the piece of shirt clasped in both sides of the door flapping like a flag in the wind.
          
There were around twelve more stops before Nick finally got off the train. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast time and his stomach was starting to grumble so loudly that several people thought he had a bad case of the runs and had steered clear of him just as they had done with Jeffry.
There was a nice little sandwich bar only a few blocks away that Nick decided to make his first destination. He picked up his bag, and edged closer to his seat, gripping it and ready to stand once the train had slowed past the point where the inertia of its movement would throw him, but just at that moment there was a lurch and he was thrown against the back of the chair that was in front of him. The same thing happened to everyone else who was sitting; everyone who had been standing were thrown to floor on top of each other. Another voice came from the loud speaker, apologising for whatever had gone wrong, as a carriage full of disgruntled passengers got to their feet and brushed themselves off. One of them, a man aged probably in his forties, was banging on the door to the captain’s carriage as hard as he could, to which there was no reply. He eventually gave up, deciding he had business elsewhere. Nick got to his feet and rushed to the exit of the train with the others before something else happened that was a lot less forgiving.
          
Nick flew up the escalator steps four at a time, then legged it as hard as he could once at the top. He was cutting it fine if he wanted to grab himself a bite before making it to the comic book shop on the other side of the city, but he reckoned if the queue wasn’t too outrageous, he would probably have enough time. He’d just have to eat on the run. If there were too many people there he’d just have to skip it and get something else later. He double timed it past all the shop windows that closed up for the day and turned off all their lights, not noticing that some of them still had a fair few people wandering around in them like they were lost.
          
By the time Nick reached the sandwich bar, he had almost entirely forgotten about Stuxnet. His thoughts had drifted to the Norwegian smoked salmon and Swiss cheese sub he was going to have delivered on a bed of dark rye bread with sliced tomato, avocado and...nothing. The queue was indeed outrageous; so outrageous, in fact, that Nick could see it trailing out the door and snaking around the corner. When he looked over toward all the other fast food restaurants, Nick realised why this was: The power was out in every single one of them. The Dutch Deli, the only place he knew of in the whole state that sold twelve inch smoked salmon subs for under ten dollars, had sucked up all the business from these fast food chains because most of its stock was cured meat and freshly made bread, though that didn’t stop them from placing a huge sign outside that said “50% off everything.”
          
Nick thought he knew exactly when this power failure had occurred; somewhere around the time his face was smacking against the seat on the train. A thought occurred to him that maybe the Deli owner had bought Stuxnet and paid a few dodgy software developers to target it at Micky Ds and Southern Fried Chicken; the small family owned business’s two greatest rivals. He left the human snake and headed for the comic book store instead, his stomach sounding more like a demon lord now that he had just stirred it up by sprinting around town.
          
It was hard to tell if the place was still open on a good day, let alone one that had just experienced a power outage, as the shop itself was located in another building. To get there Nick had to go through a set of darkly tinted windows, then walk a flight of stairs that really only had enough width for one set of traffic. If someone was coming down the stairs, he’d have to wait for them in the small square space at the bottom, before he could get to the top.
          
As Nick got to the door he saw a piece of paper had been stuck there haphazardly with a very faint message informing customers that they were still open, but could only take cash in correct amounts, as both the til and card machine were offline. Just how much faith people put in their computers was really starting to hit home for Nick.
He ascended the stairs into a room that was lit by a lone candle flickering on the cashiers desk. If it weren’t for that dim light, Nick would have walked straight into the three racks of shelves that housed not only comic books but various models of all the greatest superheroes. If he made it to other wall, he would have been treated to a nice shower of swords from some of the most memorable movies.
          
“Just here to grab the new Elektra comic” he said to the darkness behind the counter.
          
“You got the right amount of cash on you? Computer ain’t working, buddy.” A wrinkled face suddenly appeared out of now where, the dancing shadows being cast from the candle making it appear as if it were some kind of reptile or insect. Nick felt like he was about to either get his fortune read, or be brutally murdered, one of the two. It was something about the eerie light and the creepy man behind the counter that really set the mood for such things. The thought of Stuxnet buzzing around somewhere in the back of his mind probably also had something to do with it.
          
“I’ve got a ten dollar note. You can keep the change.” Nick slapped a blue back on the counter. The cashier took it and examined it in the light of the candle.
          
“Gee, a whole five cents. You’re awfully kind mister. Here’s ya comic.” The cashier said, pulling a fresh copy out from under the desk. Nick took one look at it and found the woman on the front bore a striking resemblance to Madison. He picked it up off the counter and headed back down the stairs.
          
When the evening light poured over the comic cover, Nick found that Elektra didn’t look as much as Madison as he first thought. Maybe it was the way the candlelight had been hitting it, or maybe he had just been a little too taken by her. Whatever the reason, he unzipped his bag and slid it in next to the piece of paper with her phone number. Now he was wondering when he should try it out to see if it did in fact connect to somewhere. He had been treated to this trick before; build up enough courage to ask a woman for her number, only to ring it and have it connect to a life insurance sales desk or a colonoscopy clinic. When was the appropriate amount of time to wait anyway? Two days? Three? Unbeknownst to Nick, the power outage was going to decide for him.
He walked back towards the sandwich bar, only to find it just empty as the other fast food places. Not a single piece of salami was left hanging on the many hooks above the bread. The place was a ghost town and Nick was the ghost; a lonely soul left wandering the abandoned city. He had been hoping to do a little window shopping, maybe even catch a movie, but seeing as everything was closed, Nick decided to head back to the train station.
          
It was near on five o clock when he got there, but unlike the centre of the city, this place was packed out. It didn’t take a genius to work out why either. The station guards had organized shuttle buses to pick up all the passengers left stranded by the dysfunctional train, but these had nowhere near enough room to do the job efficiently. Judging by the large crowd and the time it was taking for each new bus to arrive, Nick guessed he’d be here for another couple of hours at least.
          
He worked his way through the sea of people to a telephone booth, just to find a queue longer than the one had been over at The Dutch Deli. Nick turned on his heels and made slow, squirming move toward the entry point he’d just come from, figuring it would be easier to go and use the booth back at the information desk near The Dutch Deli. Within fifteen minutes he had walked there, and was delighted to find only a few people were using it. He waited another half an hour for the two strangers to finish their calls, then dug around in his pocket for his wallet, but after a good self-frisking Nick realised it was no use: he’d either left it at home or somehow dropped along the way. He put his hand back into the pocket it had been in and felt the bare skin of his fingers touching his leg. Of course, now he remembered that these were his bad jeans. There was really only one thing left to do, unless Nick felt up for spending the night in the city park.
          
Nick unslung his bag and took out the piece of paper with Madison’s number scrawled across it. He shoveled in a few coins left over from his ticket purchase and hit the dial button.