Cennet's Cyborg

Level 02 - Ban

Time stopped for a few seconds, then resumed with the muttering of the lab team. For years, I'd hacked into UGO's servers, databases, emails. Most of their innovations in the past years was due to a hacker calling himself Ban, leaving solutions to problems UGO was having, giving them new ideas and helping to further the company. It frustrated me immensely to know that a simple chip that could read and pick up on biological issues was just thrown to the wayside when it could've helped the doctors save Theresa. What was I to do now?

"Jared..." mom trailed off, her amber eyes peering at me, "you're Ban?" she asked, as if the reality just struck her. I'd thought she would place more worry on the fact that Theresa died, but she quickly made me remember why we never had a close relationship to begin with.

"Yeah, I'm Ba–does it matter?" I sighed, "Did her family have the funeral already?"

She nodded at me. At that point, I really stopped and wondered if there was a reason that I was alive. I needed to take my mind off of this tragedy, if only for a couple hours.

"Take me home," I muttered.

"Home? You can't leave ye–"

"I can. My vitals are fine. I've been stable for days. And yes, I've already accessed my records so I know the truth. Please, just, get me home." Perhaps it was the pleading in my voice that struck a maternal nerve, but I had my way.

We arrived home quickly, escaping the flow of traffic by going away from the city. She didn't fail in sternly questioning the source of Ban's emails and highlighting the illegalities of what I've been doing. After seeing my setup in the basement, she got visibly angry and fumed about the wrongs I've done, but when she calmed, the thoughts of losing my advice filtered through the cracks of her wall of emotion.

"Okay, Jared, listen," she placed her hands upon my thin, small shoulders, "you're only thirteen, what you're doing is highly illegal and although I begged everyone at the medical facility to stay quiet about it, this information could still go to the board of directors. If they don't like what you've been doing, we could be in some big trouble. However," her hands squeezed a little tighter as she looked down, breaking eye contact, "it's true that this 'Ban' has allowed UGO to make bounds and leaps in the right direction."

I tilted my head, curious as to where she was going with this. For someone who hardly ever spent time with me to speak, this much was astounding in itself.

"Come to UGO on your days off from school and help us perfect the TS. We can always say you just like observing robots," she smiled. Perhaps, at such a young age, I knew too much. Behind that smile I knew perfectly well that all she cared about was Ban, not so much Jared Ugo. Yet, as if my feeble and childlike mind couldn't control its nature of dependency, I took her offer.

My choice had me a little baffled, and presented an argument I'd try to avoid, that is, I'm helping UGO, not as a means of coping and taking my mind off my restless conscience so I could forget my past sin, but as a means of earning my mother's attention and love. That argument smothered my mind and blotted out its creativity for the day.

Once again, I leapt through the wee hours of the morning, finishing a program to augment the user's control of the TS by phone. I shutdown my computer and opened the basement's door. "Theresa?" I called aloud, wondering where she was. How stupid of me.

Oh... Right... It stung. A bitter taste of reality that wouldn't just linger in your mouth, but would get stronger as time passed. I stared along at the high-top chairs lining the kitchen counter we'd sit on every morning, my eyes watering without pause. "Dammit! Theresa!" I slumped to my knees, heartache seeding its way into my day. It was so empty and quiet without her, yet, my head was filled so much noise that I couldn't hear or feel the presence behind me.