April 12, 1996
Northern California

From a safe distance Carmen watched the Passangue Juniors play at their game of soccer. How strange, she thought. How strange that there were only now people her own age working at Acme. How strange that they had only come after she had been exiled.

Wait a minute. Her own age?

They were not the same age she was; they were all near the same age she had been before she left home. So how old was she now? How long had she been... dhanna, an Exile? Her uncertainty disturbed her and she stopped watching them to figure it out. How long had it been? She tried to remember, and got a jumble of disconnected memories of museums, pursuits, plans, and frantic travels. She realized uneasily that she had paid little attention to the passing years as she focused on her excursions. What was today's date? She frowned, unsettled that she had not even paid attention to such a thing as that. The twelfth. Wasn't it the twelfth? Or maybe the eleventh. Of April. She was sure it was April. Of ninety-six. She remembered that. But when had she left home?

"You've been away for ten years, three months, and seven days."

She remembered the computer's words with a shock. Ten years! Had it really been that long? Had she really been exiled for ten years? Had she really been...a criminal...for that long? She had been eighteen when she left, she remembered. Eighteen plus ten was twenty-eight. She was twenty-eight years, almost thirty years old! Where had her life gone?

Wait. She was still older than that. She'd had a birthday recently, after she'd heard the computer message. She'd included it in one of her...excursions, because she wanted someone to notice. Twenty-nine!

And someone had noticed; four of the Juniors, anyway. Carmen started watching the Juniors once more as they ran across the field; some of them she liked better than others. She liked the girls from Russia and Brazil; they did their work well and didn't try to make her feel like a fool. The boy from Venezuela she did not like; nor did she like the Hopi boy. Why? She wasn't sure; she pondered over this for a short while as she watched them. They made her feel...uneasy. Wary. They were too enthusiastic; they enjoyed the chase too much. She could see the ambition in their eyes, desire to chase her down and lock her away, in some dark place where she would never see the sun again. To them she was something to be captured and conquered--for fun.

The blonde boy from San Francisco thought this way too; but she liked him. She wasn't sure why. It was almost as if he reminded her of someone, someone she once knew, someone she knew from before she left home...

Rodger! Zack reminded her of Rodger. When she realized this she was filled with sadness; she had forgotten how much she missed Rodger. The boy really was so much like Rodger; not only because he got along so well with Daieslenna (or the Chief, rather...Passangue called him Chief now); but because he really was so close to what Rodger was like. The way he spoke, listened to loud music, took nothing seriously and just went along for the ride, enjoying every minute of it. These were probably not the best qualities for a Junior; but Rodger was like that, and she liked Rodger.

But Zack's sister, Ivy, she liked still more. Ivy worked hard, loved the work she did, and did everything well. She was smart and pretty and strong and had a lot of stamina. With a shock Carmen realized that she was comparing the girl to herself; or rather, herself as she had been before she had left home. Was that why she liked her so much? Carmen had to admit that she felt some kind of connection to the girl. She showed off for Ivy's benefit, even though that usually just made the short-tempered Junior mad. She often would stop running and speak to Ivy, as if Ivy would care about anything she had to say; but in reality Carmen knew that if she got close enough she would jail her, just like any other of the Juniors.

With a helpless sense of fear and regret, Carmen realized that she was lonely. Lonely for another human being to talk to. Lonely for someone to treat her as a human being. But in the grave she had dug for herself she was not just lonely--she was utterly alone, a condemned Exile on a planet of five billion people. Head down and eyes shut, she walked slowly away from the happily playing Juniors and wondered if she could ever be truly human again.

*****

She might have gone on like this, and for who knew how long, but even then she had a sense that something was about to break. An old friend with an urgent mission had been hunting for her for the past few weeks, someone who held the key to the changes of many different lives. By the time he finally found her, he had very little time to lose, but he would have used his forward, cajoling manner even if he wanted to ask the time of day. For years afterward she remembered how his voice broke through through the fog and she awakened again, the very walls of the buildings of that small Northern California city becoming clearer as she began to remember.

He had been watching her as she stood outside the park fence, and followed her as she wandered no-matter-where downtown. As the garish streetlights became dimmer and the roads became narrower, he stepped up to her and broke through her barrier with a laugh.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Bright Eyes." She whirled round, eyes wide, and staggered back. "Relax, shortstuff; you look like you've seen a ghost. Oh, I guess you're not so short now, must be those shoes. By the way, love your outfit; you do have an eye for color. Red is not it." The person speaking was Rodger.

"Rodger!" she managed to say. "Is it really you?" She stared at him in disbelief, and stretched out her hand as if to touch him and make sure he was real. He still looked like the same old Rodger who she'd known from the Agency, whose appearance mimicked that of Daieslenna's, the creation Rodger had been most proud of. He laughed and put an arm around her shoulder. "Well, if I wasn't me, then who would I be?" They both laughed at this. "Always could make you laugh, Bright Eyes."

"I still can't believe you're really here!" she exclaimed breathlessly, wondering if she was dreaming this. She touched his shoulder, confirming that her old friend was really there. "We all thought you were..."

"Gone? Not good old Rodger. I'm like an old joke...you keep hearing it again and again and again."

"I'm so glad to see you!" she exclaimed happily. "I never thought I'd see you again. It's like you're back from the dead..."

"Been a while, hasn't it?" he asked. "How are things over in old Frisco?"

Carmen's smile disappeared. "You...you mean you don't know?"

"Nope!" he answered. "Been a bit out of the world situation for quite a while now. Why? The other Seniors still tease you about your age?"

She looked at the ground. "Rodger...this may come as a shock to you...but I don't work at the Agency anymore."

He looked surprised. "What would you rather be doing?"

She stepped away from him and shook his arm from her shoulder. "It's hard to explain, but I...I..." she was suddenly more ashamed than ever. How could she tell one of her best friends what she had done?

Rodger grinned knowingly. "You would rather be stealing buildings."

She stared at him, then shouted angrily, "Rodger! You mean you knew all along?"

He kept grinning. "You forget how much fun it is for me to tease you."

Carmen was speechless. She seemed angry, but was also both surprised and relieved to see that Rodger didn't seem think any less of her. She folded her arms. "Well, since you seem to know all about me, why don't you tell me what you've been doing for the past ten years?"

"Quite simple," he said, putting his arm round her shoulder once more. "After the Case of the Crystal Chandelier, I hid out with the computer nerds in the US military. You know, secret identity, odd lodgings, all that hush-hush stuff. It was fun, actually, playing with all those big-deal computers. Of course, all the people who work in that area don't know how to have fun. Real stiff pocket-protector nerds with the taped glasses. And everything we did was top secret, which meant I couldn't show off to anybody..."

"I can see where that would be a problem," she interrupted, grinning.

"Girl, do you know me!" he said. "But anyway, all that confidential stuff was just junk anyway. You know, the usual foreign conspiracies, aliens...Once we had some college kid try to break into the system. But he couldn't compete with Rodger's Great Wall of China!" Rodger concluded triumphantly. "That reminds me. Who's running Acme's system while I'm gone?"

She rolled her eyes. "You don't want to know."

He looked concerned. "Is it really that bad?"

"Look at it this way," she said. "The kid's only fourteen..."

He stared. "Kid? Fourteen?"

"Yes, fourteen. And he's made some changes..."

He looked shocked. "Changes? What kind of changes?"

She looked at him. "Well, I don't know completely. I only looked at the system once because I'm not exactly welcome there anymore. I think he..." She searched for the terminology. "He connected the satellite system directly to the mainframe, and..."

He slapped his hand to his head, cutting her off. "That's terrible! When you were in there, did you fix it?"

"No..."

"What did you do?"

She shrugged. "I guess I messed it up more."

He looked stricken. "Bright Eyes!"

She shrugged again. "Sorry, Rodger."

He shook his head, and said with mock anger, "Lady, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. You just get into everything. Can't take my eyes off you for a second."

Carmen was pleased. If he was teasing her that meant that her change in lifestyle hadn't seemed to affect him; they were still friends. The thought was very comforting to her. "Rodger," she said, changing the subject, "why are you just looking me up now? Why in the name of San Francisco Bay didn't you do it before?"

Rodger became quite serious, which was rare. "Actually, I looked you up to talk to you about that. When I worked with the military I found something very disturbing."

Curious, she asked, "What was that?"

He looked round, as if the buildings might have ears, then stopped walking and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Murgoes." he said. "The Murgoes are back. They are searching for those who are left from the Case of the Crystal Chandelier."

Carmen gasped. "Are you sure?" she asked in a whisper.

"Well, no, not completely." he answered, then winked at her. "Actually, that's where you come in."

"Me!" she cried.

"Shhhh!" Rodger urged.

"Let me make one thing very clear to you, Rodger," she said in a low growl. "Nothing can make me face those Murgoes again. Nothing."

"Listen, I know something terrible happened to you ten years ago, but I really need your help on this."

"You have no idea what I went through!" she snapped angrily. "You don't know what happened to me! If it hadn't been something terrible, don't you think I'd be leading a normal life, instead of having the Agency chase me all over creation?" Rodger was silent. "You have a lot of nerve, Rodger."

"Bright Eyes," he said quietly. "People will die if you don't help me."

"Why me?" she pleaded. "Why can't you find someone else?"

"You are the only one capable of getting inside the Murgo complex."

"The Murgo complex!" she threw up her arms. "Of all things, the Murgo complex! I'm not going in there!"

Rodger smiled. "You would be putting those criminal skills to good use."

"That's not funny!"

"Carmen, listen." he pleaded quietly. "They're going after all of us that are left. Lynn will die. Suhara will die. Jessica and Shirley and all of the other Seniors will die. You and I will die. Maybe even the Juniors will die." Carmen shut her eyes and turned away. "Please, Bright Eyes. You are the only one who can do it."

"I can't!" she cried. "I can't go in there! Not again!"

"Yes, you can," he told her.

"No."

"Yes, Bright Eyes. I have faith in you. You've got to help me save the others; all our old friends as well as the children that are there now." she flinched, and he continued, "I know you care for those Juniors. They don't have any defenses; they don't know any of the training we've had. How can they stand up against the Murgoes?"

She was silent for a long time. Finally she said, "For their sake, I'll do it, then." She looked him in the eyes. "And may my death be more painless than the life I have led." she said quietly.

"No one will die," Rodger answered confidently. "Not if we do it right."

"Death comes in many forms," she answered. "Sometimes death means being locked away in a dark place for the rest of your life, by the people whose lives you are trying to save."

Rodger sensed the meaning in this and said no more.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------