Secrets—how I love them; love ferreting them out, coaxing people to divulge them, collecting them, hoarding them, cultivating them until just the right moment...

"Please pardon the interruption, Mrs. Bannon. I shall keep this brief so that you may resume your regularly scheduled programming momentarily." I snickered to myself as the words appeared as dictated on the flickering screen of the display of the old model personal comm unit in my hand. Regularly scheduled programming hadn't been a "thing" for several generations, made obsolete by personalized, on-demand content streams comprised of computer generated scenarios and storylines plucked straight from the viewer's subconscious mind and brought to life for their viewing pleasure and no one else's. No real surprises, no real controversy, nothing to challenge, incite, or enlighten; not unless the "viewer" desired such things, and then such things were constrained by what was already present in their mind. Provocation of thought is an illusion.

The point is that poor Mrs. Bannon wouldn't get the joke—wouldn't even know a joke had been made. Her loss really. It wasn't for her amusement anyway.

At the distorted bell like chime of a received message, I dropped my attention back down to the dim screen in hand.

Katra Bannon: Who is this? What do you want?

Polaris: Who I am is of little import. As for what I want? The answer is nothing but a moment of your time.

Katra Bannon: Listen here you little shit!

"Oh, ho! Someone has quite the mouth on them. Tsk, tsk, darling. Didn't Mummy and Daddy teach you better? Oh, right. Mummies and Daddies are for those who aren't born to rule multinational corporations with an iron fist and keep other people's Mummies and Daddies enslaved on the edge of abject poverty. My mistake. So sorry," I cooed to the static thumbnail image of Katra Bannon at the top of the chat window. She was a severe looking woman; icy blonde hair pulled back in a tight, no-nonsense twist, sterile blue eyes impassive, unmoved set among sharp, hawkish features marred by nary a wrinkle to belie her fifty-something years spent navigating the cutthroat arena of the ruling enterprise class. She would make the perfect effigy to burn at the altar of everything wrong with contemporary society if there weren't better candidates; candidates who actually propagated the wrongs—wrongs the general populace would never notice for all the time they spent surrounded by the wealth of diversion the network offered—instead of just reaping the benefits.

There was a time I might have taken up the mantel of social justice and endeavored to do something to balance the institutionalized inequity inherent in the current regime, but I've come to discover that playing the hero is overrated. Been there, done that, didn't get the t-shirt, or commemorative photo, and though at the time it was grand, I don't think I shall go down that road again, thank you very much.

Polaris: Temper, temper. Is that any way to speak to someone who is doing you a favor?

I couldn't resist taunting her just a bit. Getting her overly riled up with me before the proper moment would make this little time-sink take all the longer, and I had a date with the data stream in oh... four and a quarter minutes, give or take a few seconds either way.

Katra Bannon: I have no interest in your so called favors, or anything else you might have to say. I don't know how you pulled off this little stunt, but I assure you, it will be your last.

"Promises, promises." If I had a shill for every time threatened along those lines... well... you get the idea. Katra Bannon, Corporate Ice Queen, was not the first and certainly would not be the last in a very, very long line of people who would like to see me cast out into the Jouwah, but not before implanting a PLM (Personal Liquidation Module) in my brain stem to ensure I could never survive coming within 10 clicks of any structure or device connected to a central feed hub. They'd have to catch me first, and even then... let's just say that such measures wouldn't be too difficult to render ineffective for yours truly. But that is neither here nor there.

...and then releasing them one piece at a time to just the right person to cause maximum fall out.

Polaris: So you're not interested in what your darling husband might be up to on the nights he stays away late?

Katra Bannon: I am aware of my husband's indiscretions. He is not nearly as stealthy as he thinks he is. If you think this is news to me, you are sadly mistaken.

Polaris: Of course it isn't, sweetie. But were you aware that he takes a high capacity data chip with him to his rendezvous? One that he keeps concealed within the band of his wrist link?

I selected and zipped over two of the files I'd loaded on the comm unit before initiating our little chat. The first was a short vid capture from a security monitor from the pleasure lounge showing the illustrious Mr. Bannon leaving the main floor and tripping up the stairs after a leggy woman with sunset striped hair to a private suite. The second was report from the Public Safety and Welfare Unit at the door detailing Mr. Bannon's blood toxicity analysis (experience altering substances were by no means illegal, though the presence of certain ones could get a person barred from entering an establishment), a read out of his mental and cognitive faculties at the moment of entry (useful for weeding out crazies who might disturb other patrons, or have less than benign intentions, but these stats were predominantly gathered to enhance the content on an individual's personal stream), and both thermal and gamma full body snaps (to prevent individuals with dangerous items on their person—aka weapons—from, again, disrupting the enjoyment of other patrons). I had taken the liberty of highlighting the portion of the gamma snap that shows the presence of an extra bit of circuitry lurking under the face of Mr. Bannon's wrist link, and provided a spec comparison sheet for that particular model data chip. I didn't want to assume the missus would know what it was she was seeing. There used to be a saying about assumptions, but people aren't that clever these days.

I didn't bother to stifle the chuckle that bubbled up from the depths of my chest at her lack of response. "Aww. Nothing to say?" I wished right then that I had grabbed a different model comm unit, one a little less beat up and more adept at multitasking so I could have watched her face as she took in the news. I'd just have to imagine the shock, outrage, and less than dignified sputtering I hoped she had given herself over to.

I let the silence prevail for another thirty seconds, giving her time to digest all that I had thrown at her—and of course to indulge my imaginings of the scene... well, unseen—before I got things moving along again.

Polaris: And, for that matter, that he leaves without it?

A third file zipped its way across the network, again taken from the Public Safety and Welfare Unit—psues colloquially—that highlighted the missing anomalous circuity present in the entry scan, and I waited.

I think this is my favourite bit of my current pastime: watching someone's world collapse down around them. That and seeing what they chose to do with the rubble. See, the thing about secrets is that, big or small, trifling or monumental on a scale that could send civilized society to its knees with one well placed word, everyone has them. And thank the stars for that or I'd have to find myself another line of work—again.

Katra Bannon: What are you after?

"That got your attention, I see."

Polaris: Nothing, dearest; I assure you. Simply passing along information I happened to stumble across so I can say I did my good deed for the day. Cosmic karma and all the nonsense.

Katra Bannon: You expect me to believe that you would go through the trouble of hijacking my personal feed to deliver this information that you specifically went out of your way to obtain and want nothing in return? Some how I doubt that is the case.

"Clever girl!" See, I might have stumbled across the security monitor feed (which I did two weeks prior to the incident in question), but in order to catch a report from the psues, you had to know who you were looking for, when and where, and catch the feed at the exact moment of collection and transmission back to the central hub (which I was able to thanks to my previous happy accident). Once the contents of the report were processed, all pertinent feed related data mined, the reports were destroyed with no chance of recovery. It was one of the reasons people put up with up with the intrusive contraptions: no fear of repercussions or judgment beyond the immediate.

Polaris: Believe what you want, my dear. But before I go, you might be interested in seeing who visits this particular mistress of carnal pleasures exactly one hour after your husband's departure from her company.

I select the remain four files loaded on the comm unit and zip them on their way. The first three show much the same as the ones I previously delivered, but the subject was now one Mr. Kaster Reicht, the son and heir to Bannon Corps largest, and most aggressive competitor. The fourth, was a transaction record to an account for one Karl Magnus who received a hefty deposit to the tune of five million dhram the morning after Mr. Bannon and Mr. Reicht paid a visit to the same woman. For the record, if you are going to set up a secret account to hide ill gotten funds in, for the love of god, don't use something as obvious as your middle name paired with the mother's maiden name for your assumed identity like our dear Mr. Bannon did. It makes it stupidly easy to find you out.

Now, I have no way of knowing exactly what was on the data chip Mr. Bannon carried in and left at the lounge that evening, but I know Mrs. Bannon will no doubt deduce that her husband was selling company secrets to the enemy. I don't much care if it was actually the case, only that the evidence seemed to indicate the possibility.

Before you jump the gun, break out the proverbial pitchforks and rally a lynch mob, I think it is fair to point out that, despite all outward appearances—most of which are carefully cultivated by yours truly—I'm really not a terrible person. Really, I'm not. It's just, when you've been around as long as I have, lived as many lifetimes, watched empires rise and fall, friends and lovers come and go, done your damndest to be what was needed at any given moment, and then seen it all laid to waste, with nary a word of thanks once the dust has settled, or worse yet, swept under the rug and forgotten entirely for the sake of convenience or progress or any other entirely too human reasoning, a person had a tendency to become a bit... jaded. Like I said, I've done the hero thing, more than once, and it is so not worth it. I wish I had known what it would be like before I made the one decision I could never take back.

But alas! Here I am, no turning back, so I am going to make the most of it while I can.

And speaking of secrets... the workstation I've been monitoring for the last three weeks just established a connection to the network. A heavily secured and overly protected connection hidden behind layers upon layers of firewalls, proxy tunnels, and split key encryption, but a connection none the less. Exactly on time. Silly buggers.

Polaris: Toodles!

I sent a small surge through the NAI (Network Access Identification) chip of the comm unit I was using, shorting out its circuits, and tossed the unit over my shoulder into the bin to put out next week for the tech-sal rats to plunder for the few extra shills they could get selling the now useless pieces to the silvers down in the Brakh. I almost felt bad for the poor sod whose access keys I had nicked. They were in for a very long night of brutal "questioning" at the hands of the NIPs and then be knocked down several access levels, but that would likely be the worst of it. The NIPs didn't toss you out into the Jouwah on your ear for getting your access credentials skimmed—not often at least.

Done with the Bannon's and their corporate supremacy struggles, I focused my attention solely on the task at hand. If I didn't get in the stream soon, I'd miss this transmission and never be able to complete the parsed out file. No completed file meant no secrets gained, and all my efforts—all three weeks of it—would be a waste. Anything with this many levels of careful security had to be something worth its weight in digital gold. Pawning it off would be a cinch, a very, very lucrative one if I played it just right, but mostly, it was a matter of simple curiosity on my part.

I toed off my shoes and shucked the silky trousers I wore about the house—singe marks were a bitch and I'd hate to ruin such fine craftsmanship simply because I am in a hurry—and danced over to the bank of terminals lining the interior wall of the den, the spark and crackle of suppressed energy already racing across my skin as I started letting go of my corporeal form. I could almost feel the undulations and pulses of coded light as they washed over, around and through me on their raced from origin to destination along fiber optic pathways that tangled across the city state. I loved the feeling almost as much as I loved teasing out the secrets wrapped up in their frenetic waves.

Remember how I said that everyone has a secret? Mine is a little bigger than most. You might even say that it is...stellar.