Part one: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1049125.html
Part two: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1049392.html

The woman from “NABU” was pounding on Sting’s door. NABU, NABU. He pulled up a search window and flipped around. Nothing. The pounding was getting louder.

NABU, secret. ARMY. Right, he didn’t want to do this on brainware. He fired up his old-tech machine, conscious of the fact that he was doing this with secret Army people right outside of his door. There wasn’t technically anything wrong with looking up information incognito, except that it meant you had something to hide.

There was something a little closer to wrong with using the backalley searches he was about to use, but they weren’t quite illegal. They could do bad stuff to your brainware if you didn’t know what you were doing – and maybe even if you did – but that was different than illegal. Technically.

He plugged in a password, a second password, his authentication, and the pounding was still going on. It was disturbingly rhythmic, like a heartbeat, knock-knock, knock-knock. He ran a couple searches, Army, NABU, secret organizations within the Army…

“Woah, shit.” It took him four tries to get anything at all. What he found, he was half-convinced was a hoax. Sure, tech had improved a lot in the last decade, but for NABU to already be recruiting, if they were… It had to be a hoax. Someone had taken screen shots of mechs from some video game he hadn’t seen yet.

It was almost tempting… He turned off the old-tech, unplugged it, and put it back in the closet. The woman was still knocking on the door. He unlocked it and opened it again. “No.”

Her fist stopped in mid-air and fell to her side. “No?”

“No, not interested. I know I just turned eighteen but the whole point of a draft card is not the army shows up at your door.”

“But you don’t know what we’re offering yet.”

He was pretty sure he did. “Still not interested. Good-bye.”

Part Four: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1054666.html

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