Part 3.

About an hour before and a few thousand miles away Jen had been waiting for the result of her transmission test. The office was white, she loved the virgin colour, and it was the colour of her hair, most of her clothes and all her contact lenses. The computer terminals holoblock showed an image of a satellite in relation to Earth. "Too much time here." She muttered, Jen was addicted to work since her divorce. Her wife Jane, had become fed up with the work obsession. Jen had tried to square everything up. Romantic meals, nights in and nights out; All had been met with anger.

"Oh, now you bother!" Cropped up a few times, it was too late Jane was sleeping with someone else. As soon as that happened the papers were signed and Jane paid off. All Jen had to think about now was work.

Three months before Jen had sent a signal out from a laser station out in to the void of space. It was a buzzing beam designed to vibrate hydrogen ions. Hydrogen ions are like cosmic fog and may account for over half the mass in the universe. The beam would stress them as if falling into a black hole. Like shining a torch out in to the fog at night. It would have been seen like a beacon across space. Maybe Jen had lost a tiny bit of her grip on reality since the divorce. We have all had fun at work though, not all of us try to contact other worlds though. A strange thing to do since there had never been any sign of alien communication in two hundred years of looking, love sick people do the oddest things. The laser had been a new toy and a symbol of corporate strength. The laser could transmit almost every wave length from a thousandth of a millimetre to ten kilometre's, there was almost no particle you could not really make angry. It was a really cool toy. Jen thought that the laser would be used as a ground weapon if the Inter Corporation Treaty were broken. A hundred years before five large companies got in to a war. Which culminated in a small hydrogen bomb levelling the centre of Tokyo. Only two months after the mayor of Japan warned; "If you write an apocalypse in Tokyo in enough science fiction games, film and novels it may just happen!" The companies were split up and funds used to police the Inter Corporation Treaty program. The Inter Corporation Police were given strong and destructive powers and were always behind in funding terms. The wars continued and profits were secured. She had had a response from the lasers ion read outs two months ago. Her signal was repeated once then three times and then five times. She spent the next five hours trying to work out who or what had tricked her. Then the signal was repeated seven times. That was the first four prime numbers a mathematical light post. Unable to give a good theory as to where or how the signal had come she sat on the data, read around the subject and waited a month before having another go. The second time Jen planned the whole thing. Sending the standard eight by eight blocks that made up enough data to make a visual number or letter on even the oldest computer. Dumping the idea of trying to send sound or pictures she was going to send logic. She introduced the numbers by sending the prime numbers and then filling in the gaps. Then introduced simple mathematics and ended with the mathematical model of the solar system. Also a model of the know elements on the periodic table then a complex mathematical model of the planets structure and the relationship between the whole structure and elements on the table. The whole message was only a few seconds long. Jen thought it was not worth the time she had spent on it at all. After transmitting it from the office she dumped all the files out of guilt. All there was to do now was wait. For ages she sat there and cruised the company data bases for old friends personal files. Not really a lawful act but then she imagined that charging up millions of millions of miles of space was somehow worse. Through the database she could find anyone. There was an effort on the company's part to collect or steal all the data they could. The building of the great omni-base (the database that knew everything you could know about anyone) was an endless quest for several of Jens work friends. Name after name she passed over. She was into her friends at college when she came across an odd result. Rotors record was blank, from his last day at college on it was empty. She looked deeper into this. Rotor and her had been good friends. She had always thought him a loner and a bit of a geek. Too much time on the NET, too little time at his study. The page with his photo had a cartoon character and the contact details were that of the United Nations Capital House, which every child knew. Every other field in the database was filled with a mean average, which would mean this record would never stand out in a search. Unless you had the full name and date of birth Rotor was invisible. She shrugged it off as another odd thing, in the endless list that now made up her life. She was starting to write an e-mail to Jane when the mag canons blasted through the office door.

The men wore background adaptive cameo suits, which even seemed to hide the way they were facing. As the mag-canon flashes filled the room Jens hand was taken by a man dressed all in black. She felt ill and doubled over in pain. Then the air around her was clear and the office was empty, not her own office, the man in black was there. He said in a voice that seemed ageless and had no sign of modern slang; "We are in the office below yours, I carried you here. Call for help. Save the message. It is important you get out of here, it will not be today."