"It looks like the kinda screen that a computer programmer would see. It has a bunch of, I guess folders, that match our other folders. I'm going to click on the jobs one."

That brought up a bunch of labels like time, location, skill, and so forth. Ok, I think I am getting the hang of this. Now, how do I write the code. I thought about how I wanted to run an algorithm that would find the most complimentary people for our team. I'd want to start with unique skills that most people would not have.

And that's when the code just sorta wrote itself. It wasn't written in any programming language I recognized, but I could understand it. It was like I had invented the language and so of course I could read it. But if you asked me to write it, I'd tell you I have no idea. There was one thing on the screen I did understand. There was a big green button. Green means go, right? I pushed it.

Sara kicked my shin. I came out of my trance real quick.

"Ok, so I'm running a search to find people who are offering jobs where the rewards are the most unique skills. I figured..."

Sara finished my sentence. "You figured if everyone starts killing each other we should put a team together that would stand the best chance to survive."

"Yeah, how did you..."

"My Analysis skills are almost as high as my negotiation skills. That's why I'm such a kick ass investment banker."

I paused and looked over at her. "Wait, if you are an i-banker, shouldn't you be living in some kinda penthouse in Manhattan?"

"I do. This place was my parent's house. I was just checking up on it when..." she waved her arms around, "all this happened."

My search completed. I had a list of skills ranked by uniqueness. I decided to send the top fifteen over chat before reading them myself.

Chicken Sexer

Golf Ball Diver

Dice Quality Inspector

Odor Tester

Bokator Master

Finnish Linguist

Gunsmith

Cross country skier

Knife Thrower

Okichitaw Master

Contrabass Balalaika Master

Drag Racer

Krav Maga Master

Munitions Expert

CNC Mill Operator

Ugh, I should have looked over the list before I sent it. If my goal was to convince Sara to join me, this would not help.

Fortunately, Sara didn't seem to mind. "Clearly this is not the best way to rank people, but I think this helps us create some buckets. Can you keep a list of skills and people we want to revisit later?"

I created a new file and found it easy enough to make a sort of database. I found I wasn't limited by the normal two dimensional view of data people were used to seeing in an Excel spreadsheet. I could float through clouds of data that were connected by themes.

"I've got it, what would you like to pull out?" I asked.

"Strong fighters are an obvious choice. I've heard of Krav Maga, that's the style the Israeli army uses. Knife Thrower and Gunsmith make sense too. I don't know if a Contrabass Balalaika, Okichitaw or Bokator Master are fighters or some kind of musical instrument. Do you have a way of looking these up on the internet?"

My computer had been connected via wifi, so I suppose it was possible, but again I had no idea how to find out. I decided to create a program that looks up every skill and provides a description, hoping this merged version of myself and my computer would just fill in the gaps.

"Holy shit, that worked." I said. At first it was too much information, so I tweaked the program to highlight just the top summary.

Contrabass Balalaika - a Russian stringed musical instrument with a triangular wooden, hollow body and three strings.

Okichitaw - incorporates the fighting techniques of the Plains Cree First Nations with traditional martial arts such as judo and taekwondo.

Bokator - martial art used by ancient Khmer military groups of Cambodia.

Sara sat thinking, "Ok, let's try to come up with the major categories and then talk about how to find the best people for those areas. Fighting makes sense to add."

I nodded. I looked at my arm and how I had been able to create something new. "I think we should create a category for weapons designer. Maybe they can craft things like this," I lifted my arm, "and provide them to our fighters."

She nodded. "What else?"

"I don't think we need anyone to have sex with chickens." I said.

She rolled her eyes. "Dummy, a chicken sexer figures out if a baby chick is male or female."

"Oh. Well that's good. I was starting to have nightmares that we might be chased around by crazy chicken fuckers."

I looked at the list again, "What about people who can build things, like cars or other machines?"

"Good, put that on the list. I don't think we'll need a linguist but let's put that down just in case. I think it might also be good to get someone who knows medicine."

"Oh, like a healer." I said, thinking of a fantasy game I played on my PC in college.

Sara looked at me, "No, like a doctor or a pharmacologist. What the fuck is a healer?"

"No, Doctor is what I meant."

Sara had a way of making you feel stupid. I decided I wasn't stupid so it was probably just one of her skills.

"What about criminals?" Sara asked.

That took me aback, "I thought we weren't going after chicken fuckers."

"Not chicken fuckers. Why are you so obsessed with that idea?" I shrugged. "I mean like a bank robber or something."

Ah, the thief class. All my fantasy game playing really started to flood back now. I thought about that musical instrument and put down 'Musician' although I had really wanted to say 'Bard'. I also put down 'Hunter' and felt pretty sure that would work in today's vernacular just as well. I thought about the religious class in those games, the monk or cleric, but decided against it.

I sent the list over:

Fighter

Hunter

Linguist

Mechanic

Medic

Musician

Thief

Weapons Engineer

Sara nodded, "That looks good. Now we need a way to find the best people for these areas. Any ideas?"

I did have some ideas, "I can build a list of all the skills that make sense under these headings, then we can search for people offering the largest rewards in these areas."

Sara nodded, "Sounds good. After we do that, any idea who we go after first?"

I did, "I think we need to get at least one fighter on the team immediately. Later, if we get a weapons engineer we can increase the number of fighters by showing them how we might enhance them."

Sara nodded. "Can that computer of yours plot the best course for us to recruit?"

We heard a scream from outside.

I ran to the window and closed the curtains. "I don't see why not. Let me start with the list of fighters so that we can get on the road now."

While I worked on the program, Sara went through the apartment and lay out items of food, clothing and toiletries that she thought we aught to store in our inventory.

As we finished stocking up I received a notification that the program finished its run. I sent over the first name and address on the list to Sara in chat.

"Let's go," she said.

We walked into my garage.

Even though I could chat from now on, I couldn't brake old habits that easily. I spoke outloud, "Eyal Peretz is the the first name on our list. He lives in Borough Park in Brooklyn."

"I'll drive." Sara said and went for the driver seat of my Jeep Grand Cherokee.

"But, it's my car..." It came out a lot more whiny than I had intended.

"You just focus on getting that list of targets together."

She was right. I had a lot of work to do.

The roads were remarkable empty. I guess other people hadn't come the same conclusion we had. Or perhaps they had families. I had no idea what I would have done if I had had a wife and kids in my house, all going through the same thing. Maybe live in denial?

It made me start to wonder what the government would be doing right now. I tried to go to a news website when I realized we weren't connected to my wifi anymore. My computer didn't have a cell phone connection. I'd have to think of a solution to that.

A thought occurred to me, "If everyone is going through the same thing we just did, do you think anyone is doing their old job?"

"What do you mean?" Sara asked.

"Well, are people reporting on the news? Are doctors healing patients?"

"I don't know. There is a part of me that just wants to go back to exactly what I did before. Go into work tomorrow like nothing happened. Even now I'm thinking about all the shit I need to get done for a client. I'm guessing for most people that will override any crazy change to their behavior. Then again, it didn't take long for people to start attacking other people. Pretty soon I think these roads are going to get really crazy."

"Maybe we should recruit someone who knows how to fly a helicopter." I said as a joke.

"Good idea, put that down. JFK isn't too far from Brooklyn." Sara responded in complete seriousness.

We were only 15 minutes out from Eyal when I actually read his job posting more carefully.

Posted By: Eyal Peretz (Not Rated)

Start Date: ASAP

Job Title: I want an armored truck

Reward: Krav Maga Level +15

The Israeli army used Krav Maga as their main martial arts skill. It was like a combination of karate and dirty street fighting. For a nation surrounded on every side by people trying to kill them, a fighting style whose goal was to win, not look good, made sense.

But that job title, I better tell Sara. I hope she wasn't too pissed. "So, we might need to make a stop before we arrive at Eyal's."

Sara remained focused on driving and said distractedly, "Oh, why's that?"

"He wants an armored truck."

And she slammed on the brakes. The seat belt cut into my skin and my teeth felt like they had launched from my mouth.

"What the fuck James? Where the hell are we supposed to get an armored truck?"

I didn't know how to answer that. Then an idea came to me. I needed to access the Internet.

"Can we go to that Starbucks over there?" I pointed to a sign advertising a Starbucks and McDonald's off the freeway.

She glared at me, then started the car back up and drove us to the Starbucks.

I didn't get out.

"Well, are you going to get us some coffee?" She asked annoyed.

"No, I just needed their wifi."

Sara looked around and decided against getting out of the car.

I searched eBay for military vehicles. There, some crazy SOB modified a military transport vehicle and had added a big cab in the back. He painted the entire thing matte black.

"Do you have $75,000?" I asked Sara.

"Just give me the address." I sent it to her over chat.

Thirty minutes later we arrived at a combination junkyard and mobile home. I saw a huge tarp covering something in the back. If that was the truck, gods it was big.

As we pulled into the property a heavyset balding man wearing red flannel and way too tight shorts stepped out of his home with a shotgun in his hands. We stopped.

"Ok, why don't you take it from here." I suggested to Sara.

"Seriously?"

"You're the negotiator, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember."

Sara opened her door slowly, keeping her hands up and her palms open.

"Are you still selling the truck?"

He relaxed. "You interested in my little Jefe?"