"Matt! What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
The jarring brightness of a naked light bulb behind him highlights the dark curves of his face.
We met during our first year of university, before I'd left programming far behind me. I remember the day we met. He was the only other kid who sat in the back row of Intro to C++.
He looked at me and smiled. His smile was broad and gorgeous, his teeth shockingly white against his dark chocolate complexion. But I was still a quiet girl and so I didn't smile back.
When he came down the row and sat beside me, I couldn't ignore him and I wasn't alone anymore. I believe I fell for him right then and there, because of that one kind gesture.
I spent the entire first semester of university pursuing him. When I finally convinced him that I was worth a shot, we spent every moment together. He was my first real boyfriend, and I thought that's the way it was supposed to be.
We would sit side by side on the single bed in his dorm room, with a wireless keyboard on his lap and his massive computer screen across one wall of the room. It was a frenzy, for the next three years we spend together, of politics and programming.
And now he's standing in front of me, in the middle of a dingy bar on Mars.
"It's been a long time, Andy," he says.
I barely remember using the nickname that disappeared after undergrad. But it doesn't matter. I don't have time to catch up.
"What did you tell him?" I keep my eyes on Matt, but gesture at Chris.
"Everything."
"Specifically?"
"Come on, Andy --"
"I know you were a hacker," Chris interrupts. "And an infamous one, it seems. You're full of surprises, aren't you?"
It's true. Matt had introduced me to the good that our skills could do. To disrupt abusive governments, to tear down systems of oppression and hate.
It was something I'd never even considered. But Matt had principles, and he was willing to break the law to uphold them.
With increasingly automated and highly secured systems coming online around the world, it was not easy work. But we were good at what we did and fueled by sugar and caffeine, we had some small success.
He led me down the path of righteous indignation, and I followed willingly. His passion and his drive, these were the things I loved about him.
We had aliases, had hacked with the nebulous group called InCog. We'd hacked from the comfort of his dorm room off King's College Circle at the University of Toronto.
Tearing down the Vatican's firewalls to expose their secret abuses, helping the Occupy movement by messing with Wall Street's systems, and of course hacking the government that forced his family to leave their country -- these things fueled our passion. We were young and I was idealistic. I thought we could make a difference.
But then copycats used our aliases to attack innocent people: private individuals rather than oppressive organizations. They doxed and swatted, becoming tools of the oppressors.
By that time, I'd gone so deep that I was an internationally wanted criminal. And because of the copycats, my reputation had gone to shit.
When we faced graduation, I told Matt that I'd applied to teacher's college. He was disappointed.
"So you're going to become part of the system? Part of the cancer that grows to overcome the world?"
"I just think I could do more good this way." That was my reasoning at the time.
"In a government job?" He'd asked. "Whatcha gonna do? Teach teenagers how to do what we do?"
"Actually I was thinking little kids."
"Oh, yeah, get 'em while their young, right? Indoctrination takes so much better when they're green, doesn't it?"
We broke up over it. He promised, through tearful goodbyes, to keep the secret of my identity. I told him I would keep his.
It was an easy task: none of the authorities had even known that we were centered in Toronto. Not even other members of InCog knew that there were two of us working together in a single room.
Now, it's been over a decade. Neither of us, until this moment, had gone back on that promise. I would wonder, in quiet moments, what had become of him. That first year after the break up, I saw him once or twice around town.
But then he disappeared. I wasn't unhappy that that chapter of my life was over. I left hacking far, far behind me.
Until now.
"That was so long ago. What does it matter now?" I ask Chris.
"I wonder what would happen if I told all the fat cats who live here that I know the identities of the hackers who fucked with their fortunes all those years ago? And that one of them is the heir to the iTronics company?"
"That was nearly twenty years ago," I reply, sounding more confident than I feel. "There's no way they'll care."
"Are you willing to take that risk?"
I set my jaw.
"Think about this, Teach," Chris says as he approaches me. "You came to this world under false pretenses. Do you really think they would have allowed you to live here if they knew you were a wanted criminal? You really think they'll let you and your husband stay here if they found out?"
If it was just me on my own, I probably wouldn't care. I survived on Earth before, didn't I?
But Austin. Making him return to live in squalor on that planet is the one thing I've feared ever since we arrived here.
I look up at Chris. "What do you want from me?"
(Continued in Chapter 85...)