Excerpt: Mechanophilia

Prologue:
Xander hunched in front of his keyboard in the darkened room, the sole light from the monitor throwing shadows across his face. His fingers danced across the keys, filing the otherwise silent room with a sort of rhythm. Click clack clack click click. “Come on,” he mumbled, fingers moving faster. “Almost… got it…Yes!” Hands flew up in the air in victory. He pushed back from the desk; spun his chair around. “I am the greatest!” He grinned to himself and turned back to watch the green bar slowly filling across the screen.
“Downloading. Downloading,” A mechanical female voice informed him from his speakers. “Warning. Security breach detected. Warning,” The expression of triumph that had been stretched across Xander’s face was quickly replaced with one of shock.
“What? No!” He rushed to type something in, but the warning voice refused to stop.
“30 seconds to trace.”
“Fuck. Fuck! Why isn’t it working?!” Xander typed furiously. “No no no no…”
“Trace in 5, 4, 3, 2…” Xander leapt from his chair, fingers fumbling to find the power chord. “1.” He yanked, hard. The screen went black and he panted from his position on the floor, staring intently at the screen. Had he made it? Slowly, as if it would make a difference, he pushed the prongs back into the socket. He stood, stared down at the wrinkles in his shirt. Xander sighed. He pulled it over his head and folded it neatly, placing it in the hamper before grabbing an identical crisp white t-shirt and pulling it over his head. He sat back down at the desk, and pressed the power button.
3 minutes later Xander sat at the small kitchen dining table of his one bedroom apartment, phone pressed to his ear. “Xander? Why are you calling so late? We don’t have a meeting I forgot about, do we?” A male voice answered, sounding sleepy. Xander stood, moved to the window and pulled one of the blinds down to look at the dark street below. In the distance he could hear sirens.
“Yeah, sorry Smith. I, uh…. I screwed up.” A sigh answered him.
“What did you do? You know you only have 3 months of probation left. What couldn’t wait ‘til I didn’t have to deal with you?” Smith sounded exasperated. He had good reason. For the past 5 years Xander Jacobs had been the largest headache any public official had ever had to deal with. Ever. And not just because of the weird hours he kept.
“Well, you see, they just came out with this new encryption code and I-,”
“Please don’t tell me you just hacked a government website. Again.”
“Eh heh.”
“At least tell me you weren’t detected. I can work with not detected.”
“About that…” A pause. A long-suffering sigh.
“I’ll be there in 5.” The phone went dead and Xander put it back on the charger. He flipped the top on his hand sanitizer. The first of the cop cars pulled up on the street below. Xander rubbed the alcohol across his palms. He hoped the cops would be nice enough to let him bring it this time. If not, Smith would have some for him.
Probably.
If he wasn’t too annoyed.