The sounds of wind blowing through the crevices in what remained of an old building gave Darren peace of mind. While being conscious, he really had no desire to open his eyes. He weighed his options softly to himself.

“I should probably get up, meh, but at the same time this is a really nice cement floor, the dust makes it feel soft.”

Slowly, he opened his eyes and took a long yawn. Around him were various backpacks and bags loosely filled with items he’d stolen, each one a trophy to his ego. “Wouldn’t it be magical if I ‘borrowed’ some food and forgot about it?” he chuckled to himself. As he opened bag after bag, sifting through the stolen junk, he eyed each piece with a small memory of the day when it came into his life. There was that shirt he’d taken from a narcoleptic man in the park, the baseball that was hit over the fence and he told the small kids he didn’t know where it went and, of course, Lucky, his stuffed dog that he’d had since a small child. “Huh” he came across something he didn’t remember taking. A sealed white envelope without a name or return address, but he also found a can of pork and beans, so that took priority.

After the beans were cooked, he opened the letter to give him some accompanying thoughts as he finished his breakfast. The letter started “You and several other recruits will undertake a top-secret mission” and continued from there. Two options came to mind as he continued skimming the letter. On one hand, he could do the just thing and ignore the letter, after all, it probably wasn’t for him and there was no way he could get to the meeting place at the designated time. On the other hand, being fashionably late is common for those of the upper class and he might be able to have a little fun and also potentially get some loose cash and items as well. “What do you think, Lucky?” he said as he looked at his faithful stuffed companion. “Fine, but you can’t come. Because what would they say, honestly, they’d think I was crazy.” The stuffed dog looked back with dead, plastic eyes. “I’m sorry, how about you stay here and I bring you a big steak when I get back?” No response. “Fine, I’ll take one of the backpacks and you can ride in it, but don’t call attention to yourself, got it?”

Darren stood up, dumped out one of the backpacks and put Lucky, an assorted handfuls of other items and the letter in it. He waved farewell to his loot, someone would probably find it and remove it while he was out. As he walked out of the building, he grabbed two hard-drives off the solar-charger and connected them to his belt and the XLR cables. He started towards the general direction of the landing pad mentioned in the letter, and chose random play on the hard-drives to accompany the start of his journey. He muttered to himself, “I’ve always wanted to be fashionably late anyway” as he left the abandoned building behind.