It was late and Nic was wide awake, coding in the early morning hours bathed in the soft pulsing light emanating from the many racks of high tech albeit esoteric equipment that adorned his lab. His legion of small automatons scurried about the room, many of which served little real purpose, at some point they were part of one project or another, others the product of boredom.

As a collection they demonstrated Nic's considerable talent and fed his hunger to create and innovate. Some were very utilitarian, designed to accomplish some menial task Nic preferred not to do himself, like empty the garbage. Others were nefarious, like the tiny flight-capable Model Tens, which could deliver a lethal dose of poison with a single strike of their retractable needles. Some were obscure curiosities of no identifiable use - anthropomorphized mechanical pets to assuage Nic's isolation. And others yet were hopelessly broken to the point of being paperweights or doorstops.

Then there was Katherine. His masterpiece, his life's work, the penultimate robot, although Nic did not regard her as any of these things- especially a robot. Katherine was a hulking, insect-like creation, most closely resembling a mantid. As designed, she was dull grey, but her active camouflage provided her with a mimetic carapace and for reasons known only to her, she was most often a shade of green.

Insofar as robotics went, it was Nic's crowning achievement. Katherine was part bodyguard, part housekeeper, part butler, lab assistant and constant companion. Whatever Nic was doing, Katherine was there. Her processing power was so great that Nic would often have her interface with the computer cluster in his lab to increase the computational capacity of his systems. She was actually quite adept with cryptanalysis, which came in very useful over the years.

While Nic could take credit for Katherine, he did admit on a couple occasions that her processing core was not his design, but he would leave it at that. She was artificially intelligent and arguably sentient. Her AI programming started with basic insect intelligence and behaviour, but Nic had upgraded her many times over the years. She learned new behaviours on her own and had developed a unique personality; curious and playful she was child-like but also prone to ill-tempered outbursts and occasional pouting.

Nic found it all rather fascinating. Contrary to the laws of Meta she was not a registered A.I., the authorities kept a tight reign on A.I. and would undoubtedly confiscate her if they knew. Nic had no intention of turning her over.

Tonight Nic was churning out some new code for a client, while Katherine hung from the ceiling high above, her large almond-shaped eyes glowing a faint green. Nic's client, a foreign military contractor, needed some low-level artificial intelligence for their drones. It was a basic survival instinct program designed to provide the drones with enough intelligence so that the expensive devices would not loiter in conditions where they could be easily shot down. He referred to it as a basic fight or flight programming and had successfully sold similar code to other clients in the past.

This was one of the ways Nic supported himself, though his trust fund could provide for all his financial needs, he was compelled to work. Working on projects gave him a sense of self-worth and he enjoyed the challenge. Coding for any foreign military was lucrative and Nic was always more than happy to oblige any confidentiality policy.

An elderly man entered the room, Katherine's head flicked and tilted, eyes brightening briefly as she took in the details of the newcomer. He was dressed in robes, completely bald and had a neatly trimmed, very white beard. Round glasses perched on his nose gave him a bookish look and made his eyes look small.

"Good evening, Nicolaus - what has you up at such an hour?" He asked, with an accent of one who had grown up on the mid-sea island city of Vallenburg.

Nic spun in his chair, "Hi Simon, just getting some work done, didn't wake you did I?"

"No, my son, when you get to be my age, you'll find that sleep comes when it comes, and that's not too often."

Simon was a practicing monk who shared the old church that Nic called home. Nic owned it, but since he used only a small space for his own requirements, he allowed Simon to preach to his meagre flock of followers, Nic would even attend the occasional sermon out of mixture of curiosity and politeness.

Truth be told, Nic rather enjoyed the company which was counter to his self-perception as a misanthrope. The two had frequent discussions on a variety of topics, Simon being a well-travelled and educated man of many years provided a wealth of knowledge that couldn't be obtained from the usual sources. He was also the only father-figure Nic has ever really known and the two had grown very close over the years.

Nic felt it important Simon be allowed to practice his craft, in part it was another way to thumb his nose at the authorities who did not approve of Simon's type of organization. There wasn't a precise Core ordinance banning the practice, but they had gone after other larger groups when they disapproved of the message being spread to the congregation. Simon's church was small, and Nic took steps to keep it sequestered. Besides, Simon did not preach anything that even approached anti-government dogma.

The Interval took a toll on religious practices, by the beginning of the present age no organized church of any kind continued to exist, at least not inside the Cores. The practice was not officially banned, but it was certainly not endorsed either.

Simon had traveled and searched and studied for decades, incorporating what he could find of the Second Age religions with his own beliefs and in the process developed his own theology. Written scripture did not survive the Interval, most of what Simon learned had come from physical structures, temples, mausoleums, mosques - many not much more than rubble, but there was always something to be learned from them.

Nic's church itself had survived the Interval although it required extensive repair. When Nic bought it, it was overgrown and hidden in a small woodlot in the middle of an Old Cities borough. Nic hired some locals to clear the lot and rebuild the church for his needs.

One day out on an errand, Nic came across Simon preaching in the street and stopped to listen. He found what Simon had to say piqued his interest and he approached Simon and offered to buy him lunch. The two had sandwiches at a cafe nearby and talked at length about religion, science, politics and food. Simon could not believe a boy of fourteen was out on his own, but Nic was mature beyond his years.

Nic explained how he'd been exiled to private educational institutes for as long as he could remember. He spoke of how he tired of the uniforms, strict rules and the incessant bullying he endured for being different. Bio-born made for easy targets, they stood out in a crowd and if their mistreatment was not officially condoned, it was often conveniently overlooked.

He told Simon that he had had enough and left the school and struck out on his own. Simon, quite moved by the story, listened with rapt attention. Nic went on to detail how he had hacked the credit lender's systems to get his trust released early and then moved far from his elitist parents to Parish Village in the Old Cities.

By the time lunch was over Nic was offering Simon a place to stay and preach, an offer Simon initially refused, but Nic was persistent and persuasive. The two worked together cleaning up the interior, getting the place refurnished and refurbishing the old stained-glass windows. Only one window survived intact, the one in Nic's office, the man with the sheep. Nic was very fond of that one. Simon explained to Nic, the person in the image was a recurring theme in some of the ancient religions, he suspected him to be a central figure, perhaps a prophet.

Simon's fusion of ancient religions struck Nic as oddly apropos considering the current state of things. Despite having a very limited audience for his message, Simon happily spread his message at every opportunity. Simon eschewed material things and believed much peace could be found in a simple life. He told Nic that technology was both a blessing and a curse, more so the latter when it was wielded by the wrong people or for the wrong reasons. Nic could not argue with that. Simon's teachings often came back to three simple precepts; unilateral fairness, personal accountability and peaceful coexistence, he claimed if everyone just heeded those things, the world would be a much better place.

"I have a present for you." Nic fished through his desk drawer, "Was just delivered yesterday." He produced a carved wooden figurine, the size of a grapefruit and held it out, a sculpture of a man bent over, face in his lap, hands over his eyes. "The guy I got it from says it would be right up your alley."

"Oh my! It is an exquisite piece, you shouldn't have spent your money on it for me though." Simon said shaking his head.

"Didn't cost me a thing - the guy owed me a favour. Take it, Simon, add it to your collection." Nic placed the figure in Simon's palm. Simon smiled back kindly.

"This is very touching Nicolaus, you'll never know how much this means to me." Simon ran his finger over the figure. "It's a wonderful gift."

"I thought you'd like it." Nic smiled, it warmed his heart to see the old man happy. "You do a lot for me Simon, it's the least I could do."

"I've put on a pot of tea, care for some?" Simon offered.

"Sounds good, but I'll come get it in a bit, I have some more work to tackle still."

"So much work Nicolaus, you should take more time to enjoy the small things in life." Simon advised.

"I know." Nic wished he could enjoy the small things. He looked up at the ceiling, "Katherine, can you give me a hand please?"

Katherine's eyes immediately brightened and she crept down the wall. Simon passed her on the way out to the kitchen, she clicked her mandibles at him as she passed. She seemed to like to tease Simon, he showed no reaction and continued out of the room. Katherine walked over to Nic and stood, towering above him.

"I want to give that code another try, you up for that?" Nic plugged some interface cables into a stack of servers and took the other end over to Katherine and connected them to her I/O ports. "I'll feed you some new ideas I've had and upload a couple algorithms I think might get us closer to cracking this code. Feel free to experiment as much as you like, after all, math is your thing." She chirped in apparent agreement. Nic returned to the display to initiate the transfer, Katherine settled down, her eyes pulsing a soft blue - she was thinking.

Nic had been working on that code for weeks now, with Katherine's help, but the cryptanalysis was slow going. They quickly eliminated all the known encryption protocols, including a couple military ones that were supposed to be confidential. After exhausting those possibilities the work was painstakingly slow, tedious code-breaking. Even with all the hardware Nic had access to, including Katherine, the code was exceedingly difficult to crack. Weeks had gone by and Nic felt he was not much closer to an answer than he was when they started.

"You don't send a person an encrypted message that you know they cannot decrypt, right?" Nic asked Katherine rhetorically. "Am I wrong about all this?"

He started to wonder if this was a trick, or some kind of joke. But then why the print out, why not just a message, of all the ways you could send someone a message, why use an old piece of junk printer? The printer was part of the puzzle, he figured.

He racked his brains and paced back and forth, Katherine chittered away as she often did when working. "Think Nic, think."

Nic noticed the systems health status was indicating a steady temperature rise in the server stack. He had forgotten to increase the coolant flow from the closed-loop cooling system and with all the systems working at full capacity, the equipment was getting hot.

He corrected the misstep opening some secondary valves behind the stand where that old printer sat. He looked at the printer, what's so special about the printer? He thought, running his finger over the buttons, an orange light was flashing, the unit was offline. The display read BUFFER ERROR. He printed off a config sheet, he looked at the warm print out, rubbing the paper between his fingers. He stared at the paper - page count, paper size, io buffer, dozens of data points for all aspects of the printer. The latter half of the page was output displaying all the characters the printer could produce, something was out of place. Nic let out an involuntary expletive.

In the middle of all that alphanumeric noise was something that did not belong, a long string of apparently random characters, it had all the hallmarks of a private cryptographic key. He quickly scanned the paper, copied the key and fed it to Katherine.

"What do you make of that? Is it what I think it is?" Nic leaned against one of her legs, Katherine chirped back excitedly. Soon Katherine was sending results back to the cluster. "I'm gonna go grab a tea with Simon, it would be nice if you could finish this up before I get back." He said, only partly in jest.

Nic left the room, went down the spiral stairs of the bell tower to the basement, down a long hall and into the kitchen. Simon was seated at a small table, he had already started his tea. A couple bagels and some fresh fruit sat on a plate in the middle of the table. "Come, sit, Nicolaus, have a bite."

Nic sat and poured himself some tea. "Thanks Simon." He grabbed a wedge of melon to nibble on.

"Have you had any luck with your puzzle?" Simon inquired. He did not understand a great deal about technology, and even less about Nic's obsession with it. He often used inappropriate terminology, Nic had to make quite an effort not to correct him all the time. Whether Nic was writing code, penetrating a network, or building a device, Simon usually referred to it as a puzzle.

"I think it's coming along now, Katherine is chewing on it. I suspect I'll have an answer as to what it is by the time I'm done this tea."

"That's good news, this little puzzle has had you vexed for some time, perhaps once it's solved you can find time to help me with our Thursday buffet this week." Every second Thursday of the month, Simon and some volunteers cooked up a big buffet for those in need of a good meal. He frequently tried to get Nic to get involved in some of the charity functions, more for Nic's benefit that anything else. Simon believed all the time Nic spent in his office working was unhealthy, and that Nic needed to interact with more humans and fewer machines.

"Sure Simon, I'll give you a hand."

"Great. Not to be rude, but keep Katherine out of the kitchen please." There had been an incident a few months back when Katherine tried to help with the food preparation. Too many cooks in the kitchen takes on a whole new meaning when of them is an enormous, over-eager robotic insect.

"Yes, that won't be a problem." Katherine had since been re-tasked with a security role, as handing out free food sometimes attracted a more nefarious element of society. Even the toughest, street-harden thug quailed when Katherine appeared.

Nic polished off a bagel and almost all the fruit and took some time to finish his tea. He brushed his long, unkempt hair from his face and slouched in his chair. It was a little downtime for Nic and his mind began to wander.

While Simon sipped his tea and made some notes for his next sermon, Nic got to thinking about the ghost he had been chasing the last few years, that network anomaly that revealed itself from time to time. Nic had discovered a bit of a pattern, in all the anomaly sightings he had uncovered, there was always an accompanying event.

Some events got media coverage, like when all the street lights began to blink in unison for three hours. It was passed off in the media as the work of student pranksters. Some events were kept quiet, like the Novex Industries incident, when their robotic assembly line was hacked and reprogrammed to weld all the doors shut on the armored vehicles they produce. The assembly facility runs with almost zero human presence, 300 vehicles came off the line in that condition before someone noticed. In spite of the secrecy, word did get out and Novex was forced to make a press release.

The official story mentioned a quality control issue that delayed delivery of some units, nothing about a network intrusion, nothing approaching the truth. There were literally dozens of other mishaps of various magnitudes, and all were followed by a massive data transfer that raced across the Core's networks, eventually disappearing deep into the high security 'Nets.

Nic did not believe the popular theory that a hacking group was doing it just for laughs, he just didn't buy it. In the end, chasing the ghost ultimately led Nic to the code Katherine was working on now. It was very curious he thought.

"Thank's again, that hit the spot." Nic got up from his chair. "I have to get back to my work."

Simon looked up from his notes, nodding. "I know you do, my son. I will see you later."

Nic cleared the table and put the dishes in the sink. For a brief second, he considered programming Katherine so she could help with the dishes on Thursday night, but then decided he had better not. He took his time getting back to the office, when he got there he found Katherine, eyes glowing a soft green again, she was no longer crunching numbers it would appear. From a fair distance away, Nic could see on the large display that a results file was awaiting his perusal.

"Well, babe - this is it. You are free go." Katherine lingered for a minute, then left the room to climb high into the bell tower for a nap. Napping - another behaviour she developed on her own.

Nic opened the file and began to read, he found it contained instructions on how he could configure his network to accept communications based on the mystery encryption from the letter. He stared at the screen for sometime before calling Miller.

Miller too, was technically savvy. Unlike Nic however, Miller was educated, graduated with Honors and now worked a legitimate job in the financial district. His job ironically, was to keep people like Nic out of the credit lenders' systems.

Miller would sometimes consult Nic to get an inside scoop on the network underworld, since Nic had ties to some shady hacker circles through his alter-ego, Ciohiann. The two met at a hacker conference some years previous, competing against each other in a device hacking contest. If you could root the device and gain total control, you would win the device and some other tech items from the vendor.

Miller managed to hack the device first and won, but that was due to the fact Nic discovered after hacking into the device that it was remotely monitored by the vendor for fairness and scoring purposes. Nic used that connection to gain a reverse shell to the vendor's devices and planted backdoors on them. Weeks later he downloaded all the design data for the new device which he later sold to a competitor for a decent sum of money. The vendor was absent from the conference the following year.