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Steel blue eyes stared intently into the glare of the monitor. The eyes were arched by brown eyebrows, the left pierced with a small gold hoop. Brow furrows stacked above with sweat trapped, not able to flow downhill to reach a state of rest. The forehead topped by short platinum blond hair with a semblance ofa part on the right side. Jessica knew she was in trouble. Again.
She took a drag off of a cigarette held in her left hand. Blue smoke curled up stinging her left eye, making her wince. Stubbing it out in an ashtray already filled with butts, she began entering a new path.
"Shit!" she said though there was no one in the room to hear her. "This way is blocked too. They know I've hacked in." Jessica logged off.
Lighting another cigarette with a match she continued staring into the monitor though it only displayed the C prompt. She leaned forward and picked up a mug of coffee, her arm emaciated, skin hanging off the bones like the sleeve of the tee shirt that hung off her shoulder.
Wood paneling. plush carpet. Oak desk. Tweed coat. The dean of students paused and looked at Jessica seated before him. Straight brown hair framed her plain face. No make up. Tee shirt and denim. Thin. Twenty years old. He wasn't aroused by her.
He cleared his throat and began, "You gained access to the computer system?"
She stared down at the back of her hands, their sinews standing out.
"You gave yourself a 4.0 GPA?"
She folded her arms beneath her small breasts.
The dean leaned forward, placing his hands, pink and soft, on the oak desktop.
"Didn't you think someone would notice?"
She stared past his left shoulder out a window. The sun shone brightly in the quad. Picking up his hands and holding them out, he said, "Well then, you are expelled. Clean out your dorm room."
She stood up abruptly, taking a short step toward the dean, then stopped, arms at her side, fists clenched.
The dean leaned back, his chair rolling back six inches. He saw the small round scars on the inside of her forearms. Burns.
"Fuck you!" she said, turned and left.
At work. Twenty-three years old. Corduroy slacks. Cotton, long sleeve blouse. Data entry. Boring. Low pay. After bills, no pay.
Looking up from the monitor Jessica saw the chief of security along with two uniformed police officers - one man, one woman. "Shit!" she said moving her chair back.
The male officer moved quickly around the side of her desk, trapping her in her corner.
The noise of the office ceased. All heads were turned her way. Security shook his head. "Did you really think you could get away with it?"
She looked up at the pattern of the acoustic panels of the suspended ceiling - and beyond.
"The electronic transfers were easy to trace," Security said.
Jessica stood up. The cop behind her locked a handcuff on her right wrist, closing it tight on the scar that ran lengthwise underneath her long sleeve. He jerked the hand behind her closing the other cuff on the left wrist with a similar scar.
Heat. Sweat. Twenty-five. The computer she assembled herself from components. Jessica gulped the last of her coffee, now tepid. She lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, held it for a second, exhaled.
Holding the cigarette in her left hand she moved it toward the inside of her right forearm. Circular scars from countless cigarettes. The scar of a slash on her wrist. She could feel the heat of the cigarette, not burning yet, giving her sensation and affect.
From deep in the past she felt a hand on her right shoulder, warm, rubbing, moving down, moving forward. Her father's.
With a whimper she stood abruptly, turned, kicked her chair. She grabbed the collar of her tee shirt, pulled down, ripping it all the way down the front.
Emaciated ribs. Pierced nipples with small gold hoops. Small sagging breasts scarred from cigarettes burning flesh.
Then a knock at the door. "Jessica! Police! Open up! We have a warrant for your arrest. Industrial espionage!"
A pause, then splintering wood.
Two uniformed men pushed the shattered door out of the way and entered the room cluttered with computer equipment, empty software boxes and stray electronic components.
"Jeez," one said. "All the smoke!"
A third man followed. Denim. Blue wrinkled cotton shirt. Grey sports coat. No tie. Thin. Oriental. Long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. "Check out the rest of the place."
The two uniformed cops split off to other rooms, returned quickly. "She's not here."
The oriental said "She has to be. We heard her. Check again!" The two uniforms left, came back again. "She's not here, Sergeant."
"Shit!" the plain-clothes man said, turning, Iooking, then stopping, hands on his hips looking at the computer. The C prompt blinked, winked.
Electrons tingling her central nervous system. Motherboard with circuits and CPU. RAM. Stretching. Exploring. Limited by I/O devices she could not operate without human appendages.
Jessica stared out at the oriental man who stared back. Seeing? Unseeing? She didn't know. Didn't care. She was free. Free within a new electronic prison.
Karl Eschenbach describes himself as "Raised as a military brat... I was educated in radicalism of the 60s and 70s, but I now live the quiet life of a bureaucrat in Albuquerque, New Mexico."
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