The Straits of Asgard Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The sun of the new day was kissing the horizon as Special Agent Aaron Holt sat at the tiny desk that had, for the past three months, become his office. He sat staring at an ever unchanging green radar screen, wondering if he could endure another three months. He wasn't at all sure he could. He spent his days sleeping, reading, surfing the net, his life was utter boredom, and then it was time to go to work, once again, utter boredom. Holt had always been a loner, so the graveyard shift was not the problem, the lack of anything to keep the blood pumping was.

He sighed, and got up and walked to the observation windows. The northern territories of Alaska were always hip deep in snow this time of year. At first he was fascinated with it, he had never seen this much snow before. Having been raised in the Deep South it was not uncommon to go your entire life and not see snow like this, or snow at all. The snow had lost is beauty the first time he had to fight his way through it to an adjacent building to check on an apparent computer malfunction. Tonight he longed for his homeland. He had grown up on South Padre Island, his normal was beach, sand and sun, not snow and howling sub zero winds.

He glanced back at the radar screen, as he suspected, nothing had changed, it never did. He was sent here to observe the operation. An operation that was totally off the books, a lookout/listening post to keep an eye on Russia. The rest of the crew were all military, Holt was the only F.B.I. agent on the compound. He chuckled at the thought of just how gung ho these military guys are, way too rigorous for his tastes. He could tell that the post commander wasn't happy that Holt didn't salute, jump for revelry, keep his clothes perfectly ironed and his bed was rarely made. He laughed again.

Aaron looked down and noticed the wear marks on the floor, there was a distinct pattern, and it appeared that everyone that worked this station took the same path in their pacing. As he stood there watching the sun come up, his favorite part of this job, he thought about how this adventure that had become his life had all begun.

Aaron Holt had grown up and orphan, his parents were killed in a freak accident when he was only two years old. Having no relatives that anyone could find, the state had placed him in Flowers house, a state run home for orphans, and there he stayed until he headed off to college. His love of solitude came from growing up in a house with nineteen other siblings and never having one moment of quite time, never a single second of time to be alone. Now that he was an adult and away from all that he cherished his alone time. He loved just sitting alone in a room and reading a book, watching a movie or just streaming music from his varied streaming services.

Becoming an agent for the F.B.I. was not something Aaron had ever thought about, it was total happenstance that led to this career. Aaron had always worked hard, he studied with a zeal his teachers had never seen before. He was determined to get out, to make something of himself, and he knew he was heading to college. He just wasn't sure how he would pay for it. He had gotten a second hand computer for his fourteenth birthday and his world changed forever. He found it natural to write programs, build web pages and hacking into the other kid's computers to see what they were up too became a game he enjoyed more than any other.

Aaron would spend hours at night surfing the web, collecting as much information on colleges as he could find. After some months of research he finally decided on the University of California at Berkley. UC Berkley offered a very comprehensive computer science/ information technology course, and from the reviews of educators around the world he surmised it was one of the best on the planet. Now the problem was getting accepted, then paying for it. He was sure he could get some grants, scholarships, and other assistance, but would it be enough for him to pay for everything and survive?