The Duplicate

Chapter Twenty-two

"Food helps all things, don't you think?" Dax sets a plate on the table in front of me.

I lift my face from my hands and look over the microwaved Chinese food with puffy eyes. Fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, egg-rolls. "To be honest, Dax, I don't know if I can eat right now."

"Try to. You'll feel better, trust me." He turns for the fridge. "Want a Coke?"

Sighing, I pick at the sweet and sour chicken. "Sure."

"I think Coke helps all things, too. It's like liquid heaven in a can. That is... if you can overlook all the crazy chemicals in it, like phosphoric acid." He grabs a Diet Coke and pops it open on his way back over to me. "At least the aspartame tastes good. Plus, the carbonation might help settle your stomach."

"Thank you," I say as he places it on the table.

"No problem." He smiles, then plucks up the rice box from the table and busies himself with making his own plate. "How's the chicken?"

With a mouthful, I nod and cover my mouth to speak. "You were right. I'm hungrier than I thought." I go for my egg-roll, eyes flickering over the Chinese food boxes scattered over the table. "Is this all you eat? Just Chinese food? That's all I see on your computer desk."

"Lately, yeah." He dumps a spoonful of rice on his plate. "I go through phases. A couple of weeks ago Mexican food was all I would eat. A few weeks before that I went through a burger phase." He glances at me as I raise an eyebrow. "I know, I'm weird."

"Maybe a little, but that's not necessarily a bad thing." I pause, studying him while I chew. "But, you know, there's something I don't get about you."

"What?"

"You know Government controls the media and the internet, and they actually kill people who speak out against them. You don't seem to be a big fan of Government, but—"

"I work for them," Dax finishes for me.

"Yes."

Dax chuckles, nervously. "It's kind of a long story."

"We have time."

"It's stupid."

"I don't care."

"Okay. Well—" Dax accidentally drops his spoon. It clatters over the tabletop, and his cheeks redden as he picks it up. "I was stupid, and I fell in with a crowd of hackers. At first, it was just little stuff. Hack into people's e-mails. Hack into the my university's website. It was all just for fun. Then, one day, I decided to do something funny and hack into a Government website. All I did was change the names of some Government Officials to Jackass and Shithead. Stuff like that."

I can't help it. Despite the pounding in my head and the puffiness of my eyes, my jaw drops in a half surprised, half amused smile.

Dax shakes an egg-roll out of a plastic bag onto his plate. "Yeah, it was stupid. I had about two days of fame at the university I went to, and then I got caught. Government wasn't too happy. I was handcuffed, brought into a Government Facility, the whole sh-bang. They brought out my rap sheet, which isn't exactly pristine. Then they told me I could either go to prison for ten plus years for destruction of Government property, or I could put my talents to use, for them. With pay." His shoulders twitch in a timid shrug. "Not to toot my own horn, but, well, apparently, they thought I was pretty good."

Now, with his plate full, he sits in the chair next to me. And I stare at him in disbelief.

Dax reddens even more. He shoves his glasses up his nose. "I told you it was stupid."