Zachary Cox
Age: 25
Nationality: US

"Good morning Zeus, you look great today, what can I do for you?"

"Hi Gilda, I'm as cool as cool can get. Let's start with some TechnoRock, hhm, yeah, gimme a random album of the Skizzomonks."

Gilda raised her hand from behind the bar towards Cherry, the girl next to a 1970s jukebox and instantly, she started the album. The place wasn't huge, it looked like a bordello from an old western film, with several beautiful girls running around semi naked all looking more then anxious for applying their skills! Zeus, was infront of the bar, a long wooden bench with stools attached to the floor, whilst Gilda, always behind the bar, preparing his custom drink, jack daniels with ice. Her voice was always sensuous, with a hint of desire, her body was incredibly perfect, making any other man go nuts. From what Zeus recalled, she always managed to wear different dresses according to his mood, this time, she was wearing a very tight cat suit with her usual mouth watering cleavage. He just looked at her and smiled with satisfaction. The music filled the place, it was like it was coming from everywhere.

"Hey Zeus, Cynthia has something for you in your bedroom."

"Seeya babe." He walked across the place towards a huge staircase leading to wooden double doors. As he approached, the doors opened, showing a luxurious double bed with various paintings around the walls depicting men and women making love in all sorts of exotic positions. On his bed, a brunette in lingerie and black specs was waiting for him.

"Darling, I was waiting for you."

As she was talking, Zeus jumped into the bed, relaxed and looked towards the big mirror on the ceiling.
"So, what's in Cynthia?"

The woman removed her bra and suddenly the mirror lighted dimly, and words started to appear.
"This is your first mail, dated 19/05/2020:12:00pm

Hi man, I cannot find an entrance to the corp, too many watchdogs and ice programs. Where did you say, you found that back entry?

Be cool man, Centaur."

"Dick head, he never remembers shit! I'll reply later." He then looked at the girl's chest and touched her right breast gently.

"The next message is dated…" He continued until all five messages were through and after replying to Centaur, giving him the required indications, he kissed the girl goodbye and she just floated into the mirror.

"Out Gilda."

And he was out, out of his environmental module, out of his own realm in cyberspace. Gilda was the name he gave to his cyberdeck's operating system, whilst Cynthia was the code name for the mail service. Zachary Cox, as known in the real world, was sitting in a leather armchair, with a brownish drink by his side. On a desk, just within reach of his hands, was his silvery cyberdeck, nothing very special, but he liked it. Strangely enough there was not a trace of any neural interface cable between the man and the access to his haven. He woke up, and walked towards a small mirror besides his bed.

"Hhm, not bad, but…could be better", he was looking at a set of tattooed arrows pointing to a barcode near his temples. This was not the only tattoo, Zach was covered with all sort of tattoos and body piercing.

The barcode made it evident for anyone that the recipient possessed psychic abilities. Every man and woman alike that possessed such talents were required to register their talents with the local authorities and a barcode would be implanted permanently.

He was very proud about his inborn powers, although in his youth, people tended to treat him like some kind of aberration. This wasn't enough to stop him, his mind capabilities helped him to get away with lots of many difficult situations.

"Mikey, where the fuck did you put the scissors?", was his reaction as he opened the desk's drawers for his brand new scissors as his goatee needed some tending,

"Hey, are you listening? What the hell are you doing?", remembering his friend's dedication to electronics. He moved to the other room, near the bathroom, and there Mike was playing with a piece of fucked up equipment found in a scrap yard. To Zach's terror, his once shiny scissors was used for some kind of conduction in Mike's helpless attempt to repair the thing.

"Shit! What do you think you're doing with my scissors, are you mad or what? My scissors!", shouted Zach.
"Sorry man, but I was so deep into this, that…ahem…I just needed something…hhm…to conduct and…well, ok, ok, I'll buy you a new one" answered Mike still looking at his equipment.

"Hell, you're never change. How did I end up with you?!"

"Because, you needed money and repairs to your previous computer!" replied Michael Garibaldi. The techie, was an electronics guru, and although he knew Zach for some time now, he did not know Zach's cyberspace identity.

The first time that the two met was 7 years ago, at KIKO, a company specializing in software for embedded systems. Michael was an apprentice engineer at that time, whilst Zach, was a trouble making programmer, always complaining that his work mates were only good for programming 1990s calculators, and that their hardware sucked. They sometimes had clashes, but Zach liked people with brains and the ability to repair his hardware!

Another quality that marked Zach's life was his greed, and although he was very good at his work, his overconfidence brought him into a very bad situation. One day, while Mike, was showing him the XEM3210, a very powerful computer, his head was already thinking of a way to hack it and use it's processing capabilities to enter the National Bank's system and make some amendments. And this is what he tried to do, so one night he remained in the building, hiding in one of the box rooms. Reaching the computer terminal was no big deal, and with the aid of his abilities, he managed to subdue its security system and to promote himself to super user, but he missed one of the running services which happened to be another guard who had just been triggered. A silent alarm went through and when he finally noticed, it was too late, he did not take enough precautions, so when the connection was ended, traces still leaded to his identity. He was later arrested and convicted for 2 years in the state prison.

Prison wasn't a holiday, all days were the same for two whole years. Thanks to his mind reading capabilities and to the high level of ignorance amongst the other prisoners many dangerous situations were easily overcome.

As all other days, he was in the courtyard boasting about his superior programming skills with a couple of illiterates, when another guy, as large as a mountain and strong as a bull, approached them. The giant stopped in front of Zach, looked at him, spit and said "Shut up, sissy, you talk like woman. I think I'm soon gonna kill you."

Zach was completely stunned, we wasn't (and still is not) well built or anything, he's strength was in his mind. That man was nicked Goliath and killing for him was like breathing air. The hacker was soon to be hacked if he didn't think of something quick. This was just a couple of weeks from the day that he'd be free. "Not now! I'm so close to be out of this!! Fuck, he's too fucken big."

Rolling in his bed was the only thing he could do that night, always imagining different ways Goliath could kill him. What he really needed is something that could keep Goliath busy for a couple of weeks, yes, if the bastard would do something really nasty in the presence of the guards, then he'd be in isolation for a good time. He stood up and started to formulate a plan.

The next day, he was very watchful, this had to be done carefully, no mistakes! All the prisoners, were in the showers, he could see Goliath on the other end of the line staring at his eyes with a grin that would make death seem pleasant. Then, movement, one by one the prisoners were going out, and the only two people left were Zach and the giant. Goliath started towards Zachary in a slow walk, still naked, and his arms reaching out for him. Zachary closed his eyes, started to concentrate really hard, this was no easy task, and rarely did it work, but he had no other options, it was either trying or dying. As the killer closed by, Zach opened his eyes and mental energy flowed towards his enemy.

After a couple of minutes, he opened his eyes, things seemed somewhat smaller than he recalled. It had worked, infront of him was his body still unconscious on the floor. He felt, great strength and stamina in his new body, and found it easy to roll the man into a bundle of used clothes he had hidden in the showers. Zachary had managed a very difficult task, he mind switched with the big man, now he had his body. After wearing the man's rugs, followed the other prisoners to the mess hall, moved towards the second target, the second most bastard human being in the world, Reginald Stonehue, the chief of the prison guards. Zach eyed the man, as bad as he could, and as he came close he started shouting and hit the man hard enough to demolish a stone wall. He did not wait for reactions and started for a run. After knocking two other guards, he sprinted towards the showers, were Goliath in a hackers body was fighting to free himself from the entangling clothes. The two man looked at each other, and the power was again activated. Zach was back to his body while Goliath was still shaking off the effects of moving from a body to an other, the guards arrived. The giant's reaction time was very limited due to seven guards jumping on him and hitting him as badly as they could.

Well, the two weeks passed uneventfully, considering that Goliath was to pass 2 weeks in infirmary and another month in an isolation cell.

"Who knows if he's still angry with me after all these years?", thought Zach.

"Man…hello, hello! Are you still with us?", mocked Mike, to his dreamer friend.

"Of course I am! Anyway, don't forget to buy a new pair. By the way, do you remember the senior programmer back in KIKO?"

"Who, Stevenson?"

"Yeah. He is project manager with Nendo Enterpises. I thank the almighty god of mainframes, that he's not my boss! Last time I saw him discussing some stuff with that dumb ass of Walken, my coordinator."

"Did he see you?"

"I don't think so, he won't be very pleased if he knew!"

"Is your current project interesting?"

"Well, to say the least, it sucks big time! They're working on some kind of neural net anti virus, but the people there are all too stupid to come up with anything useful."

"You're telling me of never changing! You must always be the best, do you?"
"I can't really help it, can I?"

Mike shook his head and started to laugh and although Zach was convinced of what he had just said he started to laugh as well.