Up and Down

Chapter 1: Uberboss_1

"Adaline Bowman lived a normal life until one cold winter night in 1935 when something incredible happened."

- Age of Adaline, in theaters April 24

_______

The Present Day

Rikkard Ambrose heard the ping before he had even entered his office, while he was still in the elevator of the office building. He pulled his phone out of pocket and stared at the blinking screen, coolly. It was supposed to be a smart phone. But so far, he had been unable to detect any special signs of intelligence.

The blinking letters on the screen said:

Message received from Uberboss_1

Mr Ambrose would never go so far as to wince or grimace. But deep, deep inside, he pulled an imaginary tortured face at the new username. Last week she had been Supersufragette_999, the week before that Man-Slaughter-Yippee, and the week before that… well, maybe it was better not even to remember.

There were two options under Message received: Read and Ignore.

And Hamlet thought he had it difficult with “to be or not to be”! He sighed, and, reluctantly bowing to fate, pressed

Read.

Open Windows

That was all the message said. Odd. Hm. Well, at least these infernal phones had one advantage. They usually kept her messages from developing into novels.

The elevator doors slid open, and he marched over to the door of his office – the door which, in large, easily decipherable letters said “Secretary”. She had insisted on that. She insisted on a great many things, just for the fun of it.

Entering the office that was currently his, he marched to the nearest window and searched for a latch. He examined the left side. The right. The top. He even knelt down to where the glass reached the floor, to see whether there was a window latch hidden down there in some secret hole. Finally, he pulled his not so very smart smartphone out of his pocket and produced the following message:

The windows cannot be opened.

It was only a moment before, with another ping, an answer popped up on the screen.

Not the ones in the wall. The one on your computer.

xoxo

Uberboss_1

He remained standing for one precious moment, allowing himself one precious moment to draw in a breath and remain calm, very calm, cool and relaxed. Then he shot a glare back at the un-opening window and marched over to the infernal machine that was his computer. After pushing all of the buttons in a row, one of them finally got the thing’s engines goings and it started to buzz and whirr and blink. A moment later, the operating system’s Logo appeared on the screen, quickly replaced by the thing they called a ‘desktop’, although it bore no resemblance to a proper desk whatsoever. There wasn’t even an inkwell, or a few drawers.

There were a lot of shiny little icons, though. He clicked on one vaguely resembling an envelope, and the intra-office messaging system opened. One particular user was already signed on, and a message popped up immediately. The contents of the message weren’t really a surprise. But still…

Mr Ambrose,

Bring me file 3053954830B

Uberboss_1

Rikkard Ambrose felt his fingers tighten into a hard fist. That wasn’t the only thing about him that went hard, either. He ground his teeth.

Seven years, he told himself. Just seven more years of this, then it's my turn again.