Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

SmileMan

SmileMan sat in the darkness of a small living room. The TV was on in the far corner casting dim blue light out onto the floor, spilling over the carpet like a pool of luminescent water. Shadows congregated at the edges of the room, clustering behind chairs and under coffee tables , waiting for the moment the light would fade and they could fill the emptiness left behind.

SmileMan didn't like the dark, much less after everything had come out about the void, but even before that they had never really felt comfortable , which is why the TV was on. Smileman always felt better when there was a screen on somewhere in the house. It made things feel less lonely.

Perhaps, that was due to their upbringing, spending their younger years sitting in government basements in dark rooms surrounded by monitors.

The house was quiet, and lonely at that moment, all the other occupants asleep or at least pretending to be.

SmileMan leaned back in their favorite chair, comfortable in the familiar embrace. Their back ached gently as it always did, and they sighed reaching down to rub at their stiff right knee,

Smileman was waiting, waiting for news of Eris . They should have been more careful with how they deployed her but she was just such an asset, and Eris had WANTED to help. SmileMan knew what that was like, wanting to be involved, wanting to be part of soemthing that was bigger than oneself. They had been once, once upon a time they had pledged themselves to the UNSC in exchange for avoiding a long and drawn out stint in federal prison. The details were fuzzy after so many years, but the government doesn't generally like it when you hack them, especially not when you somehow manage to hack classified information.

Smileman hadn't intended on doing anything with it, not really, they just wanted to see how things worked, and so they ended up in a basement in a south Mericanda government building supplied with all of the newest technology and toys one could desire. When you were as good at what you did as smile man, the government was willing to do a lot of things to keep you happy. Smileman had supported the effort through the Pan-Asian war, and was integral in the eventual takedown of the opposition leader, but during the course of their career they had also been the target of more than a few assassination attempts, due to someone leaking their location to enemy forces.

Not to mention they had seen a lot of horrible things in their days online, and so when the opportunity came to retire, they had taken it. SmileMan hadn't touched a computer in a very long time, or perhaps that was a lie. Smile man had not OWNED a computer in a very long time. After all that had happened, they had vowed never to touch a keyboard so long as they lived, but that had lasted maybe a week.

Thank goodness for children, they always wanted the newest sort of gadgets, and besides Smileman could benefit them by giving them the best that online security had to offer without them knowing it. Did they feel bad for potentially breaching the younger generation's privacy>

No not really.

Smileman didn't care about the weird kinky things family members were into.

Whatever got you off was not SmileMan's business

Things had cooled down for some years in there. They had finished raising their children, forgotten about the life for some time. Eventually their spouse had died and they had moved in with family members as was customary.

And now the grandkids were subject to confiscation of laptops and handheld devices at SmileMan's whim.

No one had ever found them out, in fact, Smileman was sure that none of the family even knew about their sorted history with the UN

SmileMan reached a hand down into the cushions and slowly withdrew the bright pink laptop from it's hiding place. Smileman had nabbed it earlier that day, and hidden it until the rest of the family went to sleep. The back of the laptop was covered in girly stickers and decals, which didn't at all bother Smileman as they opened the laptop and logged on.