Chapter 17: The President is Briefed

Mark entered the conference room where Sarah and Ashley would be interviewing the first ‘hacker’ they wanted to hire. He had brought the three ‘artifacts of the ancients’ they had been showing people. He liked the name Benny had given them when Jim had shown them to his son, Jenny, and Benny. Benny said he would write some songs about the artifacts of the ancients. After Benny and Maria had explained, Jim had called Mark. He had thought the idea of writing songs to encourage those who may have such ‘artifacts of the ancients’ to come forward with them. He and Benny had spent over an hour talking about the idea. They had come up with the start of a plan to write a group of songs to seek out those who had such items. The first song would be only suggestive of what they were looking for so as not to give away their secrets. On Monday, Benny would have the first song for Mark to hear.

His thoughts were interrupted when the girls entered with Wayne Sobczak. They had warned him Wayne was someone who neither the Department of Defense nor the FBI would seek to recruit. As Wayne looked Mark over, he wasn’t sure the girls realized the government no longer took sexual preference into consideration when they hired.

“Wayne, this is my grandfather, Mark Sawyer. Grandpa, Wayne Sobczak.” The men shook hands.

“I don’t have a resume. If you don’t know what I can do, then that’s your problem. You shouldn’t have asked me to come in for an interview.” Wayne sat down and put his feet up on the chair next to him.

Mark saw why the girls knew they wouldn’t have to worry about the other two groups trying to hire Wayne. It would be interesting to see how this meeting went.

“Oh, I’m just here to meet you. I don’t know enough to judge you for what they think you would be helpful.”

“So, you’ll just tell them later they can’t hire the SOB.”

“I don’t have the authority to overrule the Chairwoman of Sawyer-Holdings. She does listen to what I have to say, but I can’t think of a reason why I need to advise them on your hiring. I’m here to learn. They want me to learn about what can be done with the internet. I’m a seventy-year-old man who finds he has a lot of years ahead of him. I’ve been ignoring learning new things; now I find I need to catch up.”

“Yeah, you don’t look seventy. That’s one of the reasons I came. I can’t find out how you did it.”

“So, you would be interested in helping us find that out?” Sarah asked.

Wayne looked back and forth between the three of them. “You don’t know. I thought you paid for some new medical treatment, but I couldn’t find anyone who really had such a treatment. Sure, there are plenty of people who will take your money and tell you they’ll make you look young, but there’s no sign they have ever helped anyone.”

“Oh, you won’t find it on the internet. They perfected it thousands of years ago.” Ashley told Wayne.

Wayne started laughing, then he saw the three of them didn’t consider it a joke.

“That isn’t why we asked you here, but if you have an interest in helping us find out why my grandfather has grown young, we would welcome your help. Now, I was looking for you to help us ensure we don’t have another surprise attack such as the one the North Koreans did. We suspect others knew of the attack and told no one. If they knew or especially if they did anything to cause the North Koreans to attack, we could face another such attack. There have been two attempts to kill us. We also suspect the people who knew about the attack were behind those who tried to kill us.”

Wayne again looked at the three of them. He saw they believed what Ashley had just told him. He leaned back and closed his eyes and thought. It was over ten minutes before he opened his eyes, sat up with his feet on the ground. “Tell me more.”

“You want me to take PT?” Wayne looked at Sarah.

“No, I want you to learn some things which will make it harder for someone to kill you. It will include getting in better shape. We will have instruction on things to look out for to help with your own security. We expect once they know we are looking for them, those who we are working closely with will be targeted.”

Wayne smiled at what Sarah had said. “I’ve not been close to anyone in a long while. I’ve had lovers, but none who I was close to. I may not have suffered the personal losses you have, but I sure don’t want anyone to do anything like that again. I agree we can’t trust the government to do it, but how do you think any company, no matter how much money you have, can do it either?”

“We are going to point out to the governments of the world where the problems are and get them to fix them. We have a start with the US, but we will need to get the other governments to work with us. We have Grandpa having grown young and healthy and the ‘artifacts of the ancients’ to draw governments to us. We will use that to our advantage.”

“Wayne, why do you think there are so few signs of this ancient technology?” Sarah took over. “What would it take to wipe signs of our civilization from the Earth? We suspect someone did it once. What will they do if they visit Earth tomorrow?”

“You aren’t just worried about a bunch of terrorists. You are worried about aliens.” He closed his eyes for just a few seconds. “When do I start?”

“We have a meeting in about an hour we would like you to attend. It’ll include some of the people we are working with. Sarah got a message last night. Her old boyfriend has some information he wants to give to us. We are going to ask the government to help us to meet with the Russian mafia.”

“Damn, I thought what I wrote in my play about what you two have done I was embellishing things. I was nowhere close to what you are really doing.”

“That’s the play you two got the leads in?” Mark added.

“Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell recognized us when they read the play. They didn’t even know about what we really do with computers. Wayne, you didn’t know much about us?”

“I knew you were a couple of school girls in the area. You had me fooled into thinking you didn’t know each other and that you were rivals. I also thought you were older. Hell, I was thinking you were two geeky girls who went to school and then went home to your computer.”

“No, they are cheerleaders, black belts, leads in your play, and very popular girls. They also had hidden what they could do from their families. It was only after the attack we found out about them.” Mark smiled at Wayne.

“You kept what you have been doing from your families. People have been trying to find out who you were for over two years. What are you, eighteen?”

“No, they are both fifteen.”

“Fifteen! You must have been twelve when I first saw signs of the two of you on the net. Crude but well thought out. You learned really quick. Now, no one sees any sign of you unless you want them to see it.” His stomach grumbled. “Are you going to feed me? They always take you out to eat when they interview you for professional jobs. Not that I have ever gone on an interview.”