chapter 2

February 10th, 2012, Sacramento, California, Flame Club

Angie was busted. It was Friday night and the club was seething with drunk, loud people she had to serve booze to. And being a cute "girl next door" minus the extra 50 pounds, Angie was sure to get her share of lewd comments and slaps and squeezes on her firm butt.

And if the night wasn't worse enough, there was this one crazy weirdo slouched on the bar desk. The guy was about her own age, about 22 maybe, but looked and acted like a crazy person.

"One more sherving of ethanol, phleashe!" the blue-haired weirdo slurred and almost fell off his barstool.

Angie poured another shot of the cheapest bourbon they had and placed it in front of the guy. If the guy hadn't been mad drunk and acting so weird, he would have been pretty good looking, she thought and sighed. Why were all the best looking guys such idiots?

"That's one fifty." she told the guy.

The weirdo laughed and sputtered cheap booze out of his mouth. "I can't believe everything is so cheap here! Where I come from, only the richest ***s are even allowed to buy ethanol since its strictly forbidden and it costs more than you can even imagine."

She took his money and took one more look. Even his clothes looked really out of place and odd. The colors were horrible shades of grey and pink and his hair was so blue it made her feel sick just to look at it. He had also a strange accent that she couldn't place anywhere.

As drunk as the guy was, he managed to stay until the club closed and was one of the last customers to leave. He was rambling something unintelligible as he staggered out.

Almost immediately Angie noticed a small silvery device on the floor under the weird guy's seat. It looked a bit like it could have been an early prototype of some new Apple product with rounded corners and lots of metal in it. But when she picked it up to return it to the guy, she could hear a soft masculine voice inside her head.

"Welcome to Matter Transport Application, version 0.352 beta, new user. How can I help you?"

Angie shrieked and dropped the device. Was it like this to go crazy? She had heard stories of completely normal people suddenly snapping and turning insane. Had she imagined the voices or what? Her hand trembling, she picked up the device again.

"Hello again. I am sensing that you are agitated, new user. Perhaps you have not interacted with a device capable of direct human-computer link before?" the device began.

This time Angie bit her lip and didn't scream. She did let go of the device though and the voice stopped immediately. Angie wasn't stupid, she realized that somehow the device was making the voices in her head. She lifted it up again and said "Please be quiet, I just want to return you to your owner."

It worked! No more voices in her head and so she ran to the door, but it was too late. The weird guy had gone and she could see no trace of him.

Now that the strange device had fallen silent, she wasn't so afraid of it. She could sense that it was very valuable though and decided to keep it if the guy would come back looking for it. So she took it home with her and forgot about it for a few days.