It’s another day, like every other day in Ortho’s world. The year is 2246. Almost two hundred years since the nuclear war of 2050. The sky has a purple haze to it. A fine crystal dust still coats the ground in exposed areas. Mankind has survived, though no longer as rulers of the planet. They now dwell in caverns under the ground, a species mutated to nothing more than scavengers.

Ortho is a handyman, a class of Robot dedicated to restoring and fixing the buildings mankind once occupied. Today he’s working on the Pentagon, a building of importance in the pre-nuclear years. Its historical value puts it in the elite class of buildings. Ortho felt something close to pride, when he was chosen to renovate its lavatories.

The new masters are particularly concerned with the lavatory, a favorite place to dwell in the pre-nuclear days. The building was not a total loss. The nuclear bomb targeting Washington D.C., fell short of the mark, decimating Arlington instead. The cracks in the Pentagon have been time consuming to fix. Especially repairing the marble floors, and porcelain fixtures in the lavatories. The new Masters watch with anticipation as the restoration continues.

Of all the creatures on Earth they’ve been the most adept at change. The inherent mutations caused by the radiation fallout, have enhanced their species. While most land animals, like the Fox, couldn’t adapt. The new Masters faired well. Their hard shells protected them, and their cunning intelligence grew. They’ve developed a powerful fleet of Robots. Single focused, in their dedication to restoring the buildings in the greatest cities on Earth.

Germaine is the elected leader of the new Masters. Under his watchful eye, his civilization has grown. His kind have thrived, and created a world built on technology and peace. The wars and dissent of humans are over. This has taken diligence and attention to detail on his part. The humans must be monitored on a daily basis. When a new human is born, it’s tagged and closely monitored with the rest of its species. Though mutated to dysfunctional scavengers, humans are still dangerous.

Germaine checks a report sent via email by one of his Watchers. A new human has been born, one that possesses greater intelligence than it’s parents. Germaine calls his staff together to discuss this newest human. It’s not the first human to show signs of greater intelligence, but it’s the first to use tools. Yesterday it killed a Watcher with a rock. Pounding the Watcher on the back, and disabling it. The infant continued to pound the Watcher until it died. This has not happened since before the War.

The act of terrorism will not go unpunished, nor be tolerated. A suggestion is made to use a Robot to dispose of the infant. But built into the robotic code is the law to not kill a human. Weapons of destruction were destroyed years ago. So killing the human infant will not be easy. Germaine remembers how humans used poison to kill his kind. They used sprays and powders deadly to his species. Would this technique work to eradicate the human infant?

Germaine calls Ortho into his office. He questions Ortho on the products used to fix the porcelain. Ortho tells him of a powder they use to seal the cracks. Germaine has the powder tested, and discovers it’s deadly to humans if ingested. It will erode their stomach lining, causing death. Germaine has Ortho leave a bowl of powder near the infants dwelling. But does not tell him why. As hoped the infant tenaciously sticks a finger into the powder. Curiously it licks its finger. The powder has a bitter taste, but the infant’s curiosity has already sealed its doom.

Germaine feels like a Demon. It’s goes against his ideologies to kill another being, even a human. But Germain knows it was necessary to preserve his kind. Roaches have evolved into a higher species. And he will allow nothing, least of all a human, to destroy what he’s created.

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but this whole dis-topia thing really isn’t so bad. If you believe the writers like Orwell and Rand, they were convinced that the world would be taken over by some sort of ism-demon like fascism or communism, but they aren’t actually too bad.

First of all, I’ll introduce myself. My name is 5176540, but most people call me Robert because that’s easier to say in conversation. I’m the Senior Building Lavatory Technician at Preliminary Education Center 4392. In simpler terms, I’m the handyman and janitor of the local elementary school. Of course the government gave me the job, the government gives everyone a job according to their merits. I’ve never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, so it makes sense, and I like working around the kids anyway.

That’s not too important though, you probably want to know what things are like here. First of all, things really aren’t too bad. I mean, they’ve got cameras in all the public places, and in the homes of people they suspect. So, I mean, it sounds bad that the government is watching all the time, but you feel safe. Crime has gone way down because of the cameras, so much so that even women can walk around alone and at night without worrying much.

The government also gives us just about everything we need. They take care of all my necessities like food and clothes and a home, and I even get a little bit of extra money for extra stuff that’s just nice to have. I really don’t have to worry about much, I just keep working and they make sure I’m living nicely. They say that things are better like this, because all alone I wouldn’t spend my money very well, and wouldn’t get a job anyway. That makes sense to me.

Some people are either seen on camera or reported as trying to hurt the government. Most of the time, whoever takes them sneaks in during the night like a fox and takes them away without a sound. Other times they scream as they are being taken, and it wakes everybody up. Nobody knows what happens afterwards, but we do know that the government takes care of them. After a while, you just get used to the screams, and it’s no big deal anymore. I don’t know what they were doing wrong, but since they were doing something bad, they need to be removed for the benefit of everyone else, right?

More importantly than those minor details is that we still have fun. Most writers predicted a dreary and boring world, but it is really quite interesting. There are all sorts of sports events going on. My favorite is Gridiron, which is somewhat like rugby. The point is to get the ball to the other end, but there are no stoppages in play, and much more violence. I love it when players get injured early in the game, since they can’t be cleaned up until the end, and they provide an obstacle for the men still standing. My favorite team has got to be from district 16, even though I live in 82. They won the Crystal Cup last year by killing several members of the other team right in the beginning, so that there was no resistance to their scoring. It was amazing; you would have had to see it.

Also unlike most predicted dis-topias, we’re still advancing in technology. Most of the scientific expansions aren’t important to my job, and I don’t understand what’s going on anyway, so I don’t pay much attention. Once, though, they tried to come up with a robot to do my job. It was a funny looking contraption and even funnier because they painted it purple so that the little kids would like it. The problem is that they work on a formula, and when something doesn’t fit that formula, the thing fails. If a kid decides to smear stuff on the walls, or if the toilet is clogged really badly, the thing doesn’t work right. We may have robots making cars and flying planes, but clogged toilets are still man’s domain.

Sheena slid the replacement vial into her white-coat pocket and flushed the contaminated blood from the other one down the lavatory, discarding the empty vessel in the bin marked with a red and yellow bio-hazard sticker.
“Good night, Marcy,” she called to her co-worker, as she slipped the vial out of her pocket and into its intended slot in a tray of identical tubes.
Her heart pounded in her chest, her adrenalin always surged when she did this. She hung her coat on the peg in her locker and left the haematology laboratory for home.

Home. More like a jail cell. It held the bear essentials with only a few mementos to remind them of the life they once had, the life they had lost. Of freedom, sunsets and lazy walks when the air was fresh and flower-scented, air that flowed freely and supported clouds, snow crystals, birds and insects. Even flies were a fond memory now.

Now they were settlers, living in this remote colony for one purpose: Existence.
When the estimated percentage of the world population infected with HIV reached 80%, the Joint Council called for volunteers to populate an orbiting island in an attempt to separate those wretched souls, whose destiny was only to die, from the few who remained uninfected. By the time the numbers reached 97%, most of the remainder were evacuated save for a quota of medical corps and welfare workers. The enlisted served year long stints, doing their best, but failing miserably to alleviate the suffering of the dying. The disease coveted victims like a demon craves souls, and consumed their lives mercilessly. Occasionally a care-giver would succumb to the virus, forfeiting return to the colony.

“Hi, all packed, Sweetie?” she asked her husband, James, as she punched the ‘close’ button to the right of their unit’s entrance. Looking around her, she pondered the similarities of domestic life on this foreign station to their home of the past. Josh abandoned his game of robot warriors and ran to hug his mom. She wished he shared the enthusiasm for the books she loved as a child, books passed from her own mother to her, in the hopes that a grandchild might one day read and cherish them. Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck just didn’t grab his attention. How does one explain the antics of a duck and a fox to a four year old that has never seen an animal?
She and James had been out here for eight years. Their son Josh was born in the Colony and his parents’ talk of “One day when we go back home…” was too foreign a concept for him. This was his home. He knew no other.

James had received the draft papers a month earlier. A month was nowhere enough time to prepare for leaving your family for a year. He wasn’t a doctor or medic, but orderlies and general handymen were also needed on earth, and many fathers would leave their families to manage the affairs of the terminally ill until the Die Out. Fifteen to twenty years, they predicted. An entire generation would grow up before the mass return to Earth.

Sheena washed two mugs for coffee and a few glasses leftover from the morning’s breakfast. She only realised that she had cut herself when the suds turned red. She stared at her once-tanned forearms, now translucent white, showing purple veins. Meticulously she disinfected the cut, applied an adhesive bandage, and then washed the cups and glasses again, more thoroughly this time.

“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” Sheena told James as they drank a last cup of the awful stuff that passed for coffee out here.
“It’s only a year, it’ll pass quicker than you think,” he replied, as he drew her close and held her tight. They both knew they were evading the subject of his departure, preferring to be stoic in front of Josh than to confront the pain of their imminent separation. Only Sheena knew that he wouldn’t be coming back. Nobody on earth would be willing to cover for him the way she had so many times.

A riddle giftwrapped in a story.

Challenge: Can you guess which three separate classic tales (one play, one novel and one myth) are at the heart of this story ? Can you solve the riddle for the name and nature of the virus/hacker, and the office's complete acronym ?

-------------
In the lobby lavatory, Goldmund washed his hands. He felt a deep, private pleasure in this habit. Symbolically it meant starting an investigation without preconceptions.

Hands in the blowdryer. He winced. Not because the heat bothered him-- no, that sweet warmth was like an invisible lover's touch. No, he winced because the regular programmers here would laugh at the word 'investigation'. They saw Goldmund as a handyman, a plumber to fix leaks.

He picked at a brownish-red stain beneath one wet nail. "Out, damned spot. Lady MacBeth, I'll wash your hands of this mess. Or exorcise your ghost."

He glanced at the mirror and jerked reflexively, because in the reflection was a neatly suited man standing behind him. *sigh* Someone'd come in without Goldmund noticing. Bad beginning.

Goldmund asked, "..You security ?"
"Security," the reflection replied.

...Down into long forests of cabling and corridors. "I'm fox-hunting," Goldmund mused.

He jerked. Yet another man had snuck up on him. Not security this time. Sneakers. Wrinkled white shirt. Trousers stretched at the knees. Overfilled chest pockets, overfilled belly. A Dilbert.

Dilbert gestured. Goldmund followed.

A bright office. Keyboards, monitors. Dilbert steered Goldmund to a small metal chair. Dilbert smothered another. Dilbert turned toward Goldmund. Bearings squeaked.

"What's the problem ? Rogue robot hiding in the walls, won't come out until he's guaranteed a pension ?"

Dilbert chuckled. "No. Got no robots at the North American Research Center for Int--"

"--Rrrrright," Goldmund interrupted. Goldmund felt acronyms're like accordions: collapsed,
they're OK... but unfolded and played up ? Listeners beg for it to end. "There's a bug. Maybe a rogue Linux daemon. Yes ?"

"Yes. Type anything, you get.."

"...random misspellings, italics, hyperlinks. A dyslexic poltergeist. Sure it isn't PEBKAC ? ID-10-T ?"

Dilbert grinned.

Goldmund restarted: "OK, quick check."
Dilbert waited expectantly.
"You changed keyboards, antivirus, firewall... ?" Goldmund nodded for each. Dilbert mirrored each nod.

"Mmmmind if I try ? The problem recurs ?"

"...The problem recurs." Dilbert leaned forward. Goldmund saw himself reflected in Dilbert's pupils. "It's consistent. The only mysteries're cause'n'cure."

Goldmund turned to a PC, opened a menu. Nothing odd. He opened a calculator app, typed a few numbers. Normal. Text editor...He typed "My name's Peter Charlton Goldmund." The screen showed "My name's pEter Charlton, Goldmund." Weird.

“On the desktop-- Is that Firefox ? What, you have an Internet connection in this secure office ?”

Goldmund shook his head, clicked on Firefox, googled a random phrase: "Crystal Meth". Middle and last letters failed to reach the screen. "Cry Me," it implored.

He inspected the keyboard's purple connector. Solidly in. No problem there.

"Motherboard checked ?”

“Checked.”

The next minutes were uncomfortably quiet ones. Goldmund stared hard at the screen. Google and Goldmund's reflection stared back. Nobody had anything new to say.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

No ergonomics here. Uncomfortable chairs, monitor angles that put a crick in the user's neck, QWERTY keyboards (a century-old, tried-and-failed pattern), office lighting arranged so it gave back an uncomfortable reflection off the monitor. Goldmund mused that even if he didn't find the source of the problem, he could at least save their office from carpal tunnel syndrome, aching backs and eyestrain.

His eyebrows flew up. He felt giddy.

Slowly, Goldmund reached for some thick, soft-looking printouts, stuffed them between his chair and his South Pole, asked Dilbert to turn off some lights.

"Much better," he mumbled.

He typed his name, then the office's name into Google. No surprises, no weirdness.

His vanity and playfulness took over. Besides, he thought, there was no way he could keep his job if he explained his suspicions to this audience.

He turned the lights back on, removed his cushion, mooched from Dilbert's private stash of Doritos, typed a few words. The glitch was back. He grinned.

Goldmund pretended to inspect the system files, copied placebo anti-viral files from his memory stick keychain.

He stood, stretched, made a show of massaging his back and neck.

"Problem solved," he said. "Partly viral, partly hacker."

On the way out he visited the Human Resources manager, made her write down his advice. If the problem returned, it wouldn't be his fault. Well... maybe a little. Vanity precluded explaining a mystery older than Apollo.

2152.3.04.15
Search teams failed to recover the glyphs washed away in last month’s storms. If adequate protections had been placed around the Morn temple site the glyphs would still be intact. The storms eroded away the west side of Grist Hill revealing a new building complex. Preliminary surveys indicate this may be a part of the defense network.
My work to uncover the energy sources used to power such a massive civilization proceeds. Since my return to Sear our team found signatures of large-scale fusion reactions centered on the temple complexes. We hope to find reactors housed beneath the temples but work must be completed on the entry sequences before we can proceed into the temples.
Earth’s support is waning despite the opportunities this abandoned planet holds. My support of the security staff is waning after the breach of my privacy in the lavatory this morning. The guards have begun calling me “Handyman” since the incident.

2152.6.06.24
Research team Gamma was lost today in the Morn Temple. Dr. Still’s translation of the entry sequence was incorrect. Contrary to our previous assessment many power grids are still active as well as internal defense mechanisms. When Still presents his new translations to the Governing Authority I will suggest robots be sent in first to prevent further loss of life.
The incident at Morn temple has strained relations among settlers and research staff. Governor Hawass released a scathing assessment of my research. In his opinion I should have known there was an active power source on the planet. How was I supposed to know a planet abandoned for seven thousand years would have working infrastructure?
Pressure to provide answers weighs on my staff and I. The Grist Hill site proved to be a storehouse for crystal rods. I believe these may be controls for the power system, but as people disbelieved my previous theories, so they don’t believe the rods are part of any power system.
Granted, I don’t know what function they would serve within a fusion reactor or why they would be stored so far away from reactors. The text inscribed on the walls of the storehouses is only beginning to be deciphered. Perhaps time will prove me right.

2153.1.01.02
Earth’s interest in the research we are doing here on Sear has multiplied exponentially since the discovery of an active fusion reactor within the Morn Temple. We are still unsure what fuel the reactor is using. The reactor should have shut down millennia ago. We have managed to clean up the old control rooms and matched symbols throughout the complex with corresponding symbols on the crystal rods found at Grist Hill.
We began pairing crystals with their receptacles in Morn Temple. Work was halted after a purple aura began emanating from the fusion reactor. Governor Hawass is attempting to override my precautions through the Governing Authority. Until we know the purpose of the crystals and how to control the reactor I do not believe we should proceed any further.

2153.3.01.04
The Governing Authority ordered resumption of work at the Morn Temple. The crystal rods have all been moved from Grist Hill and placed within the temple. There has been no escalation of power output or the purple aura around the reactor.

2153.5.01.06
Governor Hawass ordered the Sear Protection Forces to protect the Morn Temple from rioters. Riots erupted across the planet as people report demon sightings. Panic has gripped the population while doctors blame the abnormal ‘ocular occurrence’s’ on a peculiar magnetic field surrounding the planet. I would not believe the stories coming from the cities if I had not seen a fox wander through my office walls this morning.

2153.4.02.01
The crystal rods are amplifying the effect produced by the reactor in Morn Temple. Many people have gone missing since Morn was reactivated. I began reviewing translations relevant to the temple sites and I believe I found their purpose. They are not power reactors. The energy field they generate appears to be way to evolve the planetary population. What we will become is unknown to me at this point.

It was a dark night as Han Dee made his way back to his starship. Han Dee was a Bounty Hunter who tracked down demons and other creatures that were out of their sector. Most people just called him the Handyman. He was the one they hired when robots would become self aware and try to take over the world or when the little purple dinosaurs known as Eyeluvewes would go on crazed eating sprees and devour every dog, cat, rabbit, fox or moose it could find. Han Dee was the one every being, human or otherwise, would call for help. But this particular mission was different. It was unlike anything he was ever asked to do. “Find the mystic crystal. Sure, no problem,” Han thought to himself. When King Phaeton asked him to accomplish this one task he thought to himself how easy it would be. King Phaeton explained to him how the crystal gives life to his otherwise doomed garden.

Accustomed to hunting down wicked creatures, with more teeth than a great white shark and usually ten times his size, this one mission would be a piece of cake. However, after searching seven different planets his patience was wearing thin. But it was on the seventh planet that he found out from a Kranta, a small elf like creature with tentacle eyes and a big smile from ear to ear, that the crystal was being guarded by an angry banshee that dwells on planet Aroma in the Bermuda Sector. That was why no man had attempted to recover the crystal. The Bermuda Sector was named after the famous bermuda triangle for the very same reason... nothing had ever returned from that sector.

This banshee was no regular banshee. It was nothing like the typical text book banshees that Han learned about in Bounty Hunting 101. This banshee reeked of stale meatloaf and loved to listen to Michael Bolton.

Upon hearing this news, Han immediately set off for the Bermuda Sector. The injustice of Michael Bolton music broadcasting across the universe had to be stopped perhaps more so than obtaining the crystal. Sure the crystal keeps King Phaeton’s garden growing healthy and strong, but the thought of Michael Bolton fans spreading across the galaxy angered the young bounty hunter. He could not let this go on. He would be the first to return from the Bermuda Sector. He would snag the life giving crystal for delicious fruits and vegetables and stop the music of Michael Bolton from spreading like a disease off of the planet earth.

After speaking to the Kranta, Han boarded his ship and set off into space. The journey was rough. After traveling past the three moons of Grando, he started to pick up a faint signal. He felt that someone was desperately trying to tell or ask him something. The signal was pegged with static. Han ran to the communication dock to enhance the signal he was receiving. Quietly he sat, anticipating the incoming signal...listening as the broadcast was channeled throughout his entire spacecraft. At first, he could pick out single words, ”How...I...supposed...to...all...living...is gone.”

The pit of Han’s stomach started to churn. “Devastation has hit a civilization. I wasn’t fast enough to save them,” he thought. Just as Han was about to let himself sink into a deep despair, the signal came back stronger than ever!

“Tell me, how am I supposed to live without you? How am I supposed to carry on when all that I’ve been living for is gone?”

When Han heard this, he knew he was close to the banshee. The anger swept over him. He grabbed his battle gear: double-edged cyber sword; proton grenade launcher with triple action multi-missle launcher; single assault hand cannon; MP3/ATRAC3 CD Walkman Player with ship accessories; and Prodigy’s What Evil Lurks album. The only way to overpower the banshee is to overwhelm her with music that will paralyze her. Just before he went in to the Battle of Bolton, Han made a quick visit to the lavatory. Just then a cry throughout his ship could be heard, “Why isn’t there ever any toilet paper in here?!?”