A writing challenge from @TheGemmeCommunity:

I present you The Cursed Ruby, a writing activity. In this one, I want you to use your imagination and become a superhero with one small issue. What is it? You have to figure it out and write a funny, mysterious, dramatic, or {insert word of your choice} short story.

Another day, another dollar. Another pile of shit-stained rags in an alleyway.

I don't know what Stern Industries does, certainly not in that particular office, and I don't care. The alphabet agency I work for, when they tell me anything, insists that what I do is for the sake of national security. But I'll be honest: what I do is for the sake of the pay. The dark side might have cookies, but I hear they have raisins in them.

So today was yet another use of my skills. My training and aptitude as a hacker, so I can get through most any firewall, especially if I can get inside the building. Which leads to my other skill: I can get through any physical wall too.

It was weird when it started, in the middle of high school. I accidentally put my hand through my locker door. No one saw it happen, which was a good thing. Bad thing was that just out of reflex I grabbed a book that was in there, and couldn't pull it back through with my hand, so the locker turned into a monkey trap. It was weirdly hard to make myself let go of the book so I could get loose.

I can go through solid objects, but I can't take anything with me. Nothing. Nothing that isn't inherently a part of my body. I'm sure people think the first thing that comes to mind is that I can't steal stuff. Lemme tell you, that's not the first thing that comes to mind when i actually do it.

It's the shit. And the piss. And my stomach contents. And the air.

I step through a wall, and come out gasping for air, feeling weirdly lighter, and craving food. The first time I did it it didn't even occur to me I had a mess to clean up on the other side of the wall. I had to lay out plastic groundcloths when I practiced.

It's kind of a leap of faith to step into a wall if I don't know how thick it is or if there's space on the other side. When people talk about holding their breath, it means they have lungs full of air they're slowly processing all the oxygen out of. I'm not taking any air with me at all, so I have to hyperventilate first to get oxygen into my blood and just be...not breathing until I'm through.

So when it comes to my job, there's a few basic steps:

● Go to a thrift shop or a charity clothing source and pick up a used tracksuit.

● Check out the target building and find a place to hide a backpack with a set of clothes and energy bars.

● Come back late enough at night and walk through a wall, leaving a messy tracksuit behind.

● Find some food. Any food. There's always something somewhere. Otherwise I start dry-heaving from a suddenly empty stomach.

● Find an unlocked workstation. There's always one of those too, because there's always someone who can't be bothered. Sometimes it's in a locked room. Not a problem.

● Get through network security, which is much easier from inside the facility, but harder without my digital toolkit.

● Open up a connection to the outside, so whoever I work for can do whatever they pay me to allow.

● Get out, get dressed, get stuffed on energy bars, get home, get drunk.

● Get paid.

The pay's good. The demands aren't too demanding. So far the hardest part has been running around naked, sometimes for hours, in a chilly office. Sitting on cold and not terribly clean plastic chairs. Hoping some security guard doesn't catch me with his flashlight, making me come up with something like a bet gone wrong or a college hazing.

The aforementioned shit-stained rags can be someone else's problem.