Paul Dayton hunched over the grimy coffee table in the small apartment his family called home.  Tall and lanky, hair to his shoulders and a light covering of youthful fuzz on his cheeks he looked every bit the classic electronics geek.  Only fifteen, he was already so tall to watch him, bent over the table, hurt.  He turned the holojector over and over, scanning it with his magnifying glass, trying to find the loose connection.  With his father’s help Paul Dayton had managed to calculate a way to hack into the net that had been mostly locked down for the past fourteen months.

His parents were back in the bedrooms, his father stomping around and huffing about something again and his mother trying to calm him down.  Her constant fluttering and insisting that her husband’s worries were unfounded did anything but calm him.

Dayton, as his few friends called the boy of fifteen, always turned to tinkering and hacking when his parents went at it.  The past fourteen months it was not possible to do this though, with the entire world’s information structure, hard and virtual, collapsed.  Most people didn’t know what was happening because in 2057 everything flowed through the air or down fiber optics.  Once the net went down over the course of a few days just a little more than a year ago the world went with it.

Dayton knew about the rioting that eventually blew up into full-fledged... well, he didn’t quite know what to call it.  Was it a war when there were no governments left to fight?  In the early days as attempts to revive communications systems and short distance networks, what reports could be passed claimed that the world’s governments were struggling to keep things controlled but people need to eat, and it didn’t take long for the whole batch of nations to come undone.

Some of the larger cities, like Los Angeles where Dayton lived, were able to fare a bit better than most.  Already being a center for technology there were plenty of companies with resources to come to the aid of the local governments and bring limited systems online.  The Bay Area and Seattle had both managed even better.  Eventually, news came through the various proprietary networks and then person to person that some of the major corporations headquartered on the West Coast United States were forming alliances to relieve the governments.

Oh, the governments weren’t being replaced.  Relieved was the word used.

From what Dayton and his friends could see the Mayor of Los Angeles was nothing more than a big titled messenger boy for West Coast Alliance.

There was a soft rapping on the open window of the apartment living room.  Dayton just grunted and the wiry figure climbed through the window from the fired escape.  He strode across the living room in his jeans that would have been black if not for all the soot caked to them and his long shaggy hair flopped about his face.  He plopped on the ground next to Dayton and laid a tiny wire and some kind of tool next to the other boy.

Dayton didn’t even look at the tool, just grabbed it and smiled quickly.

"Thanks, Goose," he said.

"No problem Dayton," his friend said.

Dayton was the only one of their group that he let get away with calling him Goose.  It was short for Mongoose, which he acquired somewhere around eight or nine.  After being bullied for months by and older kid he’d finally snapped and attacked the older bigger kid.  As is typically the case with bullies, the older kid didn’t know what to do and by the time he’d recovered, prey had turned hunter, with the smaller kid clinging to his back and biting everything he could get his mouth on.  Once the older kid shook free and ran off, a spectator commented the short gangly kid was like a mongoose attacking a cobra.

He gained a reputation as somebody not to mess with and the name stuck.  Mongoose preferred it to his real name, which Dayton didn’t know.  Mongoose was pretty much all anybody called him by the time they met.  Even his parents because he didn’t respond to them unless they used his adopted moniker.  Actually, he rarely responded to them even if they did use it.

"You think this is going to work, Dayton?" Mongoose asked.

"Don’t know," Dayton replied.  "It couldn’t work any worse than anything else I’ve tried."

"How ’bout throwing it out the window?"

Dayton glanced at his friend from the corner of his eye.

"How ’bout throwing you out the window?"

"Give it try."

"I will," Dayton said.  "Soon as I get this wire in... There."  He leaned back and nodded to the table where Mongoose was sitting.  "Give me that battery."

Mongoose handing the tiny disc to Dayton and watched as the other boy slipped it into a slot on the side of the holojector housing.

Then Dayton sat back and took a deep breath.

"What now?" Mongoose asked.

"I guess we’ll turn it on.  See if we got power."

Dayton pushed a small button on the side and they both leaned closer to watch the black disc as it sat on the table.  Then they heard a slight whine as something inside activated and the power indicator came on.

They smiled at each other bumped fists.

Dayton felt the small holojector vibrate ever so slightly as it powered up.  His eyes went wide and he glanced at Mongoose.  Both were shaking with anticipation.  The speaker clicked with static and they both caught the sound of obvious words.

Dayton’s finger swiped furiously across the touch pad keys as he tried to make some adjustments.

"Man," he said to himself, "Signals flying everywhere but without the structure I can’t grab anything."

"Would it help if we were in a different spot?"

"I’m not sure if video signal is going through but I’m giving my report anyway, just in case the net in this area has been patched," came a clear voice from the speaker.

The boys looked at each other.

"Try to pump up--" Mongoose started, but Dayton cut him off.

"He just said he didn’t know if he was transmitting video, you knucklehead.  I don’t want to lose what we got."

"Wait," came another voice from the speaker.  "Let me just..."

Suddenly, the holojector glowed to life, the burst of light startling the boys.

"We got it," Dayton said softly.  "Dad!  We got it!"

His dad ran into the room and saw the boys huddled around the ’jector.

A report huddled against the side of a building, talking into the camera while people ran wild in the streets behind him, throwing whatever they could get their hands on, smashing windows, hitting each other, fighting what appeared to be cops.

"The big news of the treaty between the leaders of the corporate states has obviously not made its way to the man on the street as the clashes with the corporate militia forces continue," the reporter said.  "Nobody expects things to get back to normal soon but this is an historic day that should lead to the recovery from the devastation of Ragnarok."

BANG!  BANG!  BANG!  Guns shots popped in the background and he ducked, covering his head.  The images swam and shook as the cameraman tried to zoom in on the scene behind the reporter.

"It was just over two years ago that a massive virus, aptly named the Ragnarok virus ate its way through the Net and all the world’s information systems, bringing the world as we knew it to an end.  With communications, banking, government, military and all information networks essentially wiped out chaos settled on the whole world.  Rioting spread and unable to respond to the disaster nearly all political governments collapsed and corporate coalitions began to assert their authority.  They annexed militaries and combined them with their security forces, set about patching together whatever pieces of the Net they could and started claiming territory."

Dayton’s father spun suddenly and zipped from the room, having heard enough.

The screen filled with a rotating globe, a generated graphic.  It showed the political boundaries of the countries as they had been up until 2057.  The boundaries morphed into new boundaries, combining some countries, cutting others in pieces.

The boys looked at each other, frowning.

"This was the beginning of the corporate states," the voice of the reporter said speaking over the floating globe.  "Many thought it would end the rioting but instead bloody wars for more territory between the corporate states broke out."

Dayton’s mother was trailing her haggard husband as he rushed from room to room.  Dayton and Mongoose huddled more closely to the news report.  They’d been fighting more and more over the past few months and though they both tried to keep it from him Dayton knew it had something to do with his dad’s last job.

"Where the hell are we going to go, James!" Dayton’s mother yelled at her husband’s back as he dug through a hall closet.  "Look out the damn window!"

"Slipping away through that mess is our only chance," James replied.

Dayton leaned closer to the holocast as the globe transformed back into the Reporter.

"But with today’s treaty between the corporate states a new direction will be taken.  The boards of the states have agreed to further talks about how to regulate the new, corporate governments and bring peace and order to the world again."

"Hey dad, check this out," Dayton said, hoping it might distract his parents from their argument.  "The corp states are going to talk about regulation, just like you said."

James stopped and stared at his son, as Maria just looked between them.

"Gamma was right, Maria," James said as he turned to her.  His eyes were pleading with her and it was enough to calm her a bit.  "Just pack what you can damn it and let’s get going."

"Why do you call him G dad?"

"We were all assigned a letter of the ancient Greek alphabet.  Whoever it was that hired each of us and formed the teams required it.  Nobody knew who we were."

"Except whoever hired you."

Dayton knew this observation had been a big part of what his parents fought about.  Inwardly, he slapped his forehead in frustration.  He always had a way of pointing out something that was best left unsaid.  It never helped and it always seemed to hurt, no matter how trivial it seemed before he said it.

"You don’t know if that damn job had anything to do with this, James."

"Then how did I know exactly, EXACTLY, which corps would rise to the top on this?  Which governments would give control to which corps?" he asked, his temperature rising.  Dayton could see his skin flushing with blood.  This never meant more than his dad stomping around and ranting.  He wasn’t an abusive man.  It just didn’t take much to set him off when he felt he should just be listened to, rather than questioned.  

"How did I know all that, Maria?  I’m telling you Maria, that code I worked on was part of Ragnarok.  Worse yet, my part is what set the rules for how it spread."

James dove under the kitchen cabinets and started pulling drawers out.  Then from behind the drawers he grabbed all kinds of small electronic devices Dayton couldn’t quite make out and shoved them in a bag.

"You’ve been predicting a corporate takeover of the worlds’ governments by 2060 since we were teenagers, James."

"Pretty good, dad.  You’re only three years off."

James and Maria both stopped and stared hard at Dayton.  Their faces were aghast, as if he’d just stripped off his clothes and taken a shit in the middle of the room.

"Paul, this is serious," James said.  He slowly came out of the kitchen area and Dayton wished for the second time in under a minute he would just learn to keep his mouth shut.  He could tell Mongoose was wishing he would as well.

"Corporations were never satisfied controlling the population by bullying the government.  It was a matter of time until they made a play to own the population outright.  They made their play and now they’re taking out the people who made it happen."

"Oh my god, James," Maria said, throwing her hands up in exasperation.  She turned away but continued to wave her hands as she spoke.  "Now the big bad suits are coming to get you?"

"Zeta and Theta confirmed that Gamma’s dead.  Gamma and Pi have been off-line too long and now I can’t get in touch with Delta."  

He looked back at the boys and saw them standing still.

"Paul, I told you to get your things ready.  What are you..."

He finally studied the boys and finally noticed they were no longer watching the holo-cast but instead studied a security monitor he’d rigged up to watch for people coming in and out of their building.  At first, he’d told Dayton and Maria that it would help warn them if looters or rioters tried to get into their building, which was a reason he’d spent the time fighting with the old power grids.  However, he had another reason and he’d kept quiet about it as much as he could.  Lately though, the oppressive fear and sense that with each step he took a bag was coming down over him and it got harder to pretend he was just checking to make sure all the cameras had enough juice as he glanced at the little monitor fifty times a day.

On the wall, next to the monitor, a red light flashed.

James rushed to the monitor and stood beside his son.  It showed a view of a hallway.  Dayton saw the flush of his anger drain from him as his face went white when the screen showed a line of armed men come around the corner.

"They’re here," he whispered.

He grabbed Dayton’s shirt and Mongoose’s arm and dragged them across the room.

"Run like hell, Paul!"

"Who are they?" Dayton asked, his heart pounding.  Seeing the armed men in the monitor made all the doubt leave him.  His father wasn’t the crazy tech tinkerer.  He may not have been a prophet either but he knew what he was talking about.

James stopped to grab something from his bag and shoved it into Dayton’s hand.  Mongoose ran for the window and started climbing out.  James dragged his son towards a window overlooking the street.

BAM, BAM, BAM!  

They all turned to the door as something smashed into it.  Maria screamed as James ripped the window open and pointed at the little black slab, almost exactly the same size as Dayton’s hand if he held it flat.

"Use that to scramble night scanners.  Charge it during the day, it’s a solar battery."

"Where should I meet you?"

They all whipped around as the door crashed again, some dust bursting from where the hinges held it to the door frame.  It was clear they weren’t going to hold much longer.

James pushed Dayton out the window onto the fired escape, then grabbed him by the shoulders, stared in his eyes.

"Just run and don’t look back, son," James said.

The words’ meanings hit Dayton and he felt his eyes fill with water.

"But dad..."

He looked from his father to his mother and back.

"Remember what I told you: no implants or mods.  Stay pure and don’t become a tool of the market.  Now go."

He quickly hugged his son and suddenly the door smashed open.  Dayton fells on his back onto the fired escape as his father pushed him down and turned to the door in one motion.

Dayton watched the shower of bullets, glass and blood fly out the window.  As he pressed his body against the fired escape, he felt Mongoose yank on his jacket, pulling him towards the ladder down.  Dayton finally started pushing his body towards the opening to the ladder, helping Mongoose.  As he finally rolled over and twisted down the ladder, head first, he couldn’t tell what was louder: the guns ripping the only home he’d ever know to shreds or the screams of his parents.  As his parents are slaughtered inside.  He scrambles down the fired escape and looked up when he got to the street.

Dayton wasn’t sure how they’d managed to get to the street but once they had they pressed against the wall of the alley.

The guns had stopped.  His tears hadn’t.

"Where do we go?" Mongoose asked in a low whisper.  It still made Dayton jump.

A piece of glass hit the street next to them, falling from the destroyed window above.  It was all they needed to get their legs moving though.  They didn’t know in what direction they were moving or where they might even be trying to reach.  All they knew was anywhere had to be better than where they were.

Next Chapter: Pieces