She thanks you.

“Thank you.” the girl says, then frowns. “They broke my laptop.”

“Who are you?” you ask. She is too emotionally intense for you to probe. It happened sometimes.

“Penelope Simms.” the girl replies. “Call me ‘Penny’ and you die.”

“Fair enough.” You reply. “I’m Victor Phillips.”

“You work at Channel 5, don’t you?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

“I pay attention to the credits. You’re the copy editor, right?”

“Right.” You say. “Now, what reason would those professional-looking men have to break your laptop?”

“I’m a hacker.” Penelope says. “I’m too good at what I do to be allowed to work on my own. The government can’t have that. And what I do is I protect normal people’s privacy.”

“How?” you ask.

“I wrote a program called Sub-Zero.” Penelope says. “He’s kinda like that Bonzi Buddy you see ads for online, except instead of telling you you have a chat-appointment somewhere online, he tells you when somebody’s looking at what’s in your computer or what you’re doing, and then he freezes them so they can’t even reboot. Badabing, badaboom, they’re out of commission. It also sends Frost Packets attached to every data packet your computer sends out, and if the wrong person intercepts them...”

“Badabing, badaboom.” You finish, smiling. “I like it. Where can I get a copy?” Penelope pulls a tiny mini-CD from her shoe. It was about the size of the CDs that came with the X-Men: Evolution toys at Burger King.

“It’s as close as you can possibly get to absolute security, which makes it a threat to the government’s underground divisions.”

“And they couldn’t have that.” You sigh. “How do I get in touch with your parents?”