The door to the narrow utility closet slammed open. Evan glanced up from where he yet again fiddled with the wiring in the walls to see Fred grinning down at him.

“Do you want a new island to dig for buried treasure?” Fred grinned.

Evan turned from his crouched position within the wall to survey his uncle Fred’s face.

“What is that damned grin for?” Evan grumbled.

He pulled himself from within the wall.

“Feeling smug now you are gainfully employed? It’s not like I’m not trying to enjoy this garbage work, you know.”

“Oh, I know you’re trying, but you should still be nice to me, since technically I am your boss.” Fred’s grin continued to spread wrinkles of joy across his face.

Evan scowled. “Being the big breadwinner does not make you the boss, old man.”

Fred waved his free hand as he balanced on his cane. “No, no, no. I wish I could say you’re my personal assistant and maid service, but that’s not what I meant.”

Evan’s eyes narrowed. “Get to it, then. I’m getting more annoyed than usual.”

“I got you a new job.” Fred lowered to a conspiratorial tone. “At ITower. Cloud Services Branch.” Fred clapped a hand on Evan’s shoulder.

“Front of the lines. Security work, and networking, for the whole sector.”

Evan’s breath caught as he realized what his uncle was offering.

“Same pay as before the crash?” He pressed the most pertinent issue.

Fred waved off the question. “Bah! This is bigger than a paycheck, my boy! This is history in the making. We are tasked with catching bad guys, getting the world back on line, saving the day.”

The older man offered a smart nod and marched for the hallway.

“It does pay, though. I mean come on Fred, be serious a moment.” Evan followed, brushing dust from his hands.

Evan stopped short as the older man pivoted on his cane to halt, toe-to-toe with his nephew.

“Of course it pays.” A wily grin emerged on the man’s face. “Double what you did with that corner office gig!”

Evan swallowed. “Double.”

Fred’s brows wriggled. “Double. Speaking of which, I think we should celebrate. Drinks are on me.”

A broad smile split Evan’s face, then he frowned. “You know you’re not supposed to drink anymore.”

Fred’s shoulders slumped. “Killjoy. Fine, you can have mine. I’ll order a Shirley Temple.”

Evan clapped a hand on Fred’s back.

It was good to see the man in good spirits. “And you can tell me all about saving the world.”

                * * *

Evan made his way through the maze of open office spaces filling the floor. Many of his military buddies laughed when Evan first told them about working security for corporate communications, yet something about the energy thrilled him. An office was safer than a van in the middle of a nowhere battlefield, but the adrenaline rush was there. He wasn’t as excited with the step down to working in a cubicle, even if it was on the top floor. But he was certain it wouldn’t take long before both he and his uncle moved to more elite accommodations.

Evan rounded a corner and smiled with his former confidence at a pair of women chatting over the cubicle walls. The women shrugged him off, but they did smile. He was grateful he’d chosen to shave the two-month overgrowth on his face. A clean look suited his features best.

Evan took a peek into the cube he would call home for more than eight hours a day. He assessed the situation with deflated enthusiasm.

Woven among the standard monitor, keyboard, and mouse setup, and a master tower, sat a leaning stack of file boxes. Wires and cables as dusty as the gaps in the walls teetered against the sides of the cubicle.

This was as desperate a situation as the buildings and server rooms. At least here, wires were easy to access. Evan considered the situation. He had never had to plug anything in when setting up a new office.

“Shit. This is going to take forever.” Evan sighed at the futility.

He wasn’t certain why he initially thought he would come in to a fully operational wireless system.

Evan dug into the nearest box to reveal a trove of dust-covered, yellowed papers, notebooks, and faded covers of hard copy manuals; books.

“What the hell is this?” The protest was louder than intended.

The outburst drew Fred from the next cubicle over.

Evan slammed a particularly large book onto the center of the desk as Fred peered in through the opening at the rear of the cubicle.

A box of wires to shifted. The towering filing boxes gave way. A cascade of wires unraveled across the floor as they pooled around Evan’s ankles.

“Damn it all to… Seriously!” Evan tugged at his hair.

“I have a few extra high blood pressure pills in my desk.” Fred’s snide remark whirled Evan around.

“That is not even funny.” Evan growled.

Fred shrugged. “Who says I was totally joking?”

Evan muttered a few more choice curses. He snatched up another book and a fistful of cords.

“Seriously though. What the hell am I supposed to do with this waste?”

“You’re supposed to get to work.” Fred folded his arms and leaned against the edge of the cubicle. “And I don’t want to hear grumbling or complaints over the wall.” Fred’s brow quirked. “You’re good at what you do, but it took more than pulling wires to get the big guys to ignore your dismissal from GlobeNet.”

Evan turned his gaze from Fred as he fought to connect monitor to tower on the desktop.

“That wasn’t my fault. GlobeNet was looking for a fall guy to sacrifice to the ITower gods. I happened to be the goat they decided to scape with. Not to mention I was probably the highest paid employee on the security floor.”

Fred nodded. “I know you’re probably right about that, kid. Still, they look at the writing on the screen, not the soul of the employee. You’re a punk sometimes, but you’re good, and you have got passion. Especially if you can prove you can do it better than anyone else.”

Evan hadn’t so much as raised his eyes to Fred through the pep talk. His hands fumbled with connections as his feet danced between the loops of wires.

Evan could feel Fred’s eyes on him as he struggled with the cords and connections. It was completely outside the younger man’s realm of understanding. Firing up strategic mobile unit communication stations was much more demanding than plugging in a corporate cubicle on fifty-year-old technology, but Fred opted not to mention this to Evan.

“Better than rooting in dusty walls all day. You’re doing what you love, even if you don’t recognize it yet.” Fred pushed away from the cubicle wall and straightened. “At least the money’s good.”

Evan flopped into the rolling office chair as he plugged in another wire. He finally turned to look at Fred.

He sighed. “Yeah. Thanks. That much is true. I haven’t made a real paycheck since before the crash.” Evan scanned the disaster surrounding him.

“Good. Now you can start paying rent.” Fred winked.

A relieved smirk grew on Evan’s face. “This isn’t so bad, I guess. Crawling around in the dust and crawl spaces of your house isn’t payment enough? Even before I got into the business of being a wire rat, your house needed work. You should have been paying me for having to sleep on your curbside-catch of a couch. My back and my social life certainly paid this past couple months.”

Fred laughed. “Don’t go blaming our living arrangement for your social fall out.” Fred tapped at his temple. “Maybe if you had a real address book instead of trusting everything to the Cloud, you could contact all those lady friends you used to have. Bet their beds would have been much more comfortable than my old couch.” Female snickers could be heard coming from surrounding cubicles.

Evan feigned hurling a thick volume on computer networking. He dropped the tome into an empty cardboard box instead.

“Whatever you say, old man.” Evan wheeled his chair around the small space. “You’re like the godfather of this whole Cloud deal. Big data, instant transfers. You’ve never owned a print copy of anything. You can’t possibly tell me you don’t put your trust in that masterpiece of data storage.”

Fred smiled and allowed his eyebrows to raise. “That, young man, is precisely the reason why I don’t trust it.”

Fred’s laughter was cut short by the sound of an alert hailing him to his cubicle.

“Well then, speaking of keeping in touch with lovely ladies.” Fred offered a curt salute before bowing and disappearing around the cubicle wall. “You will have to excuse me. I have an important date.”

Evan rolled his eyes. He slumped in the chair and scanned the cubicle made all the more cramped by oodles of wire yet to connect everything to every other thing.