SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES

It was not all for nothing, the intern thought. How incredibly lucky was he to be the coffee and donut boy to CLOUD, INC. San Francisco's VP and soon to be second richest man in the world? While he danced from one end of the room to the other to ask Megan if she wanted some fruit punch, he recognized that she had been eyeing him from across the room, and she gave him a wink while she stepped out onto the balcony. Who was about to get laid tonight? This college boy. Damn, internships are great, he thought. His good-for-nothing Dad had been right about that.

Over the wild music and chinks of champagne glasses, he ran over to the blonde intern who worked in the marketing sect and she shut the door as quickly as she could behind him. She grabbed him by the shirt and planted a deadly smooch that landed him on his back. CHEERS! again came in a loud muffle from inside the building. The two lovebirds were daring enough to pull off their shirts as well, until the girl stopped kissing him and lifted her head:

"Did you hear that?" She looked around like an ostrich. Her breasts were too plump, as in they hit him in the face. "Is someone outside with us? Holy shit— I'm gonna get fired from my first job."

"This isn't a job. This is an internship, practically slave labor," the male intern said. He pulled his belt out from under him. "Now relax. There's no one here. We're on the seventh floor balcony for Pete's sake." He tried to pull her back down by her arm, but her eyes kept dotting the silhouetted rim of the balcony where the background of San Francisco's city lights illustrated a Parisian America. Her head turned as her eyes may have tricked her, pretending an animal leapt upon the balcony wall, blocking the San Francisco Bay bridge over the water. She knew someone was there.

"Megan," he insisted pulling her by her lower bare back down to his stomach and pulling so her breasts pushed against him hard, but so soft. The taste of champagne patted their lips. "Just get back down, Babe. There's nothing over there. Stop making up excuses." He had had enough of the excuses already. Stop playing coy.

"I'm not," she insisted as she pushed herself back up as hard as she could to look. "I swear I think I see someone there." Her words were a whisper. "I'll be so fired if I'm right."

"Your dad owns the company, and you're only here because you hate staying home with your mom. Shuht uhp already and kiss me, Megan." He pulled her back down but she refused and slapped him. He flinched and pushed her off. "WHAT THE HELL, MEG?"

She scrambled to her feet and recoiled backward, watching him cautiously. "I think you've had too much to drink, Dan." Suddenly a red dot appeared over his pants. Right at the bulge. She was not sure what it was but thought maybe she was drunk too. "What's that on your pants?" she asked him, pointing, unsteadily.

He ignored her. "You think I'm too drunk? I think you're too drunk. Look at you. You came to a party in a blouse without a bra, and now without the bra, your double D's are all hanging out, and they're not beating gravity I can tell you that. Maybe they're a blessing, maybe they're a curse." He waddled over to her and touched them, but she pushed him back and picked up her shirt.

"Oh, come on, Megan," he said pulling her as she stumbled toward the door. "What did I do?" He grabbed at her, ungentlemanly. To which she refused to answer as a knot caught her throat. She was only a senior in high school, too young for him. "Come on, Megan," he repeated, "What did I do to you?"

But before she could answer, midway as she had her mouth open to speak, she thought she might as well scream, because at that moment, the red laser dot rose up his chest, then up his neck, then up to his forehead-- and so came a raspy voice: "You had too much to drink, jerk." Pfft—The sound didn't do the horror justice... She was about to scream when the red laser dot disappeared. A pfft led to Dan's backward collapse and a bloody hole magical appearance through his cranium. He hit the balcony floor hard, and the porch light shattered by a flying silent bullet, and two men raced over behind Megan and held her mouth tight before she could scream. She tried as best she could, but in almost an instant she breathed a bitter taste of something cotton over her mouth, and quickly fell into her deepest sleep that would never end. They let her down gently and swept her deep into the shadows out of the moonlight. They left the bodies behind a plant.

"Was the comment really necessary, Jack?" said the one man holding the gun. "I literally could have just shot him without you blowing our cover."

"Shhh," said the other guy, gun free, before he pulled his own weapon out of his pocket. "Bubba, you'll blow our cover if you keep the conversation going."

"Typical Jack," said Bubba, the guy who shot Dan, the intern. "Always getting me into trouble and then blaming shit on me. You really suck, Jack."

"I'm gonna ignore that so we can move on. What's next on the agenda?"

Bubba pulled off his mask and yanked out a grocery list: "1. Infiltrate balcony (check), 2. Compromise any goalkeepers on the perimeter (check), 3. Find the AI smartphone, 4. Get the hell out, 5. Call for the clean up crew." Bubba put his list back in his pocket. Jack took off his mask and of course his hair was perfectly styled and Bubba had just one more thing for which to resent him. He rolled his eyes. "We take this shit off," he said while he unzipped and stepped out of his black ops suit and magically appeared in a silver tuxedo while Jack appeared in a light blue tuxedo. Where'd Jack get the boutonnière? What the hell? Just ANOTHER thing to resent Jack for. Bubba got over the comparison and continued. "Then we go in, find the AI smartphone, steal it and call Golem to send in his guys to compromise the whole place. Sounds friendly."

"Do you know what Golem's men are going to do to all these people?" Jack asked sympathetically. "He won't hurt them right?"

"Nah, he won't do that," Bubba rolled his eyes. "They're probably all just under arrest for copyrighting the codes. I heard something back at intelligence headquarters before our flight that London has the same codes as them. Now that's not right."

Jack nodded in agreement. Sure did not sound fair to him. He was happy to take down a company with unfair business practices. As long as his mission was of sound morality, he was content to follow any instruction Mr. Golem required of him. And if it was not moral, then it better come with a nice hotel stay, some traveling, free roaming and sight seeing, and perhaps a dance here or there. And by 'dance', he could not help but notice as they opened the balcony sliding door to step inside that the entire room changed mood and cheered as the music switched completely to alternative indie with a song that sounded a lot like a fusion between African 'World music' and western alternative Indie. Is this Mumford and Sons? He closed the door behind him and found a blonde girl jump in nearly crying with overwhelming joy saying, "This is what Joy taught me," and she begun to do dance moves he had never seen before. He followed Bubba as they slid through the huge company crowd, but could not pull his eyes away from the African dance of the white girl as others joined her. "JOY, COME JOIN," she shouted, and at that second he was slammed backward by a girl wearing a scarlet dress who had run into him and fallen onto of him.

"My gosh, I'm so sorry," she said, trying her best to stand in heels. "A little too much to drink. I'm such a klutz." She got up and pulled him up with the help of a table. And looked at him strangely and laughed. "What?" It was at that moment that Jack realized he'd been staring. ("My apologies," he said.) "It's fine," she said. And with that she ran off to dance with her coworkers.

Jack watched her go in that scarlet dress. He could smell her perfume make a trail to the dance floor. But a slap on the back woke him as Bubba led him again through the crowd. Jack followed, and they snuck into a backroom and escaped into hallways. Where was the Quality Assurance room? That AI smartphone would surely be in there. Sure enough Jack and Bubba made it to a room where cords plugged into the wall snaked across the floor. Sure enough Jack and Bubba found a sleek smartphone sitting on the table connected by a cord to the only running computer. Credits of code scrolled up the screen and a full 'Progress' bar in the center of the screen read one important phrase: DOWNLOAD COMPLETE. The two looked at one another before Bubba stepped over to the table to grab the AI smartphone. That is, until they heard the door behind them open. And they turned to see a familiar face.

"You boys looking for something?" he said, in a locker room voice.

The two spies recognized him instantly. Jack said, sincerely, "Benji! So good to see you. Long time no see." He really did miss him. Benji had been gone too long on this mission to sabotage CLOUD. Why, if only he had just done his job right, then they would not be in this pickle. They would not be on opposite sides.

Benji was in no way pleased. He frowned and kept one hand in his pocket. "Don't pretend to be happy to see me, Jack. We were friends once. Not anymore. I know you're here to kill me."

Kill you? Was Jack naive? "I think you've got the wrong impression Benji. You may have fucked up, but that doesn't mean we're just gonna kill you. We're just here to clean up your mess."

But Benji eyed Bubba intensely. Bubba was inching closer toward the phone. "The only mess around here is gonna be you if you don't leave this room right now, boys. Get out." He glared at Jack.

Bubba froze but a smile curled over the side of his face. "Jack and I are here for different reasons. No need to be hostile to the guy. He's just here to get the phone." He pulled a switchblade from his back pocket. "I'm the one who's here to kill you."

Jack's eyes popped out of his head and he took a step back from their line of sight. "Bubba, what the hell are you talking about. Benji, we're just here for the phone, I swear." He swore.

Benji shook his head. "I know you are, Jack." But he pulled a shimmering silver handgun from his pocket and pointed it at Bubba. "Unfortunately, the phone's the most important part."

Jack forgot to keep a poker face but Bubba did a swell job. He knew exactly how to use a knife against a gun. Although, Bubba knew Benji knew all the same tricks from school.

Bubba had a few quick words for Jack before it all went down. "Remember the mission, Jack. Benji is not our friend anymore. You get the phone and destroy it. That's our protocol."

Benji pointed the gun at Jack whose eyes held onto it like the open jaws of an alligator about to clamp down. "You touch that AI, Jack, and I swear to God I will blow your brains out, capisce?"

That did not exactly sound like the best avenue, Jack had to think.

"Take the phone Jack, I'll hold him off," said Bubba, ready.

Jack looked at the two armed classmates and realized his honor to his country before his friends. Jobs and humanity's safety comes before personal friendship. The greater good triumphs individual sacrifice.

Benji eyed Jack in anticipation. "What's it gonna be, Jack?"

What is it going to be?... What is it going to be?... "It's gonna be I am gonna get that phone and go back into that main dance hall so I can get that babe 'Joy''s number." Jack was an honest guy.

Brought aback, Benji took a moment to recover and let out a laugh and shook his head. "So you like African nurses, Jack?"

Before Jack could answer, Bubba ran at Benji with his knife and pushed Benji's gun up in the air before it shot the lights off. The two bashed each other against a set of computers and Jack knew this was his cue to swipe the phone and run. He ran and pulled the phone out of its cord and plugged a microchip into the computer's USB to erase all its memory. Benji's gun shot off again and Bubba shouted, "RUN, JACK, DESTROY THE PHONE OUTSIDE." But his partner was silenced by another shot of Benji's gun, and Jack turned and found Bubba collapse onto the floor.

"BUBBA!" Jack shouted. But Benji lunged with all his weight and charged at Jack, knocking him against the monitors. Jack was able to shake the gun from Benji's wrist but Benji meanwhile swiped the phone away and kicked Jack in the groin. Jack collapsed and Benji ran full throttle out of the room and down the hall in the opposite direction of the party. Jack jumped to his feet and gained footing as he trotted in pain into the hallway and lifted his own gun. Benji ran down to the end of the hallway and into a back room. Jack knew from the building's blueprints there was no escape out that way. It was the garbage chute room.

Out of sight of Jack, Benji closed the garbage chute room door that smelled rank and found two bins. One was recycling, the other was garbage. Damn, I can't let Golem get the codes to make AI. He pulled the garbage shoot option and was about to throw it in but was knocked down by the swinging door. Jack shot into the garbage room and tackled him to the floor. Jack said "You shot Bubba? Who do you think you are? Whose side are you on?"

But Benji kicked him off and kicked him in the groin one more time, and quickly pulled the closest chute, which was 'recycling,' and threw the phone down the echoey shaft. He answered the "Whose side are you on?" question with satisfaction.

"Everyone else's," he said. And he jumped to his feet and ran out into the hallway again. Jack groaned holding his cajones in pain and caught the door with his foot before lumbering out into the hall in hot pursuit. He sped with momentous inertia as he bounced himself off the walls to combat gravity. He saw Benji make a turn into the party room and knew he was trying to escape through the balcony. He rushed out to the party room himself and lumbered like a drunken man through the dancing crowd. A strobe of scarlet red splashed before him and again he ran into the girl in the scarlet dress, Joy, who caught him this time and helped him balance on his feet. She laughed. "Us klutz's need to stick together, you know." But Jack spotted Benji escape to the balcony, and quickly moved around Joy and sped as fast as he could over a slippery floor.

But in one quick second, he noticed four things happen. First, while Benji ran to leap off the edge of the balcony, a helicopter that suddenly rose from the San Francisco city background illuminated him, and a man with a sniper pointed at him and Benji collapsed. Quickly the helicopter light died and the helicopter flew away. That meant Golem's men were here and it was over due time that they get the hell out of the building according to the mission itinerary. Jack ran in the opposite direction and Joy in the scarlet dress grabbed his hand and yanked him backward. He fell onto a chair. His groin still hurt. She sat on his knee, drunk.

She said, "Where are you going hot shot? AI got you scared?"

Jack was scared out of his wits. Another minute in this building and he would risk running into Mr. Golem's second wave of agents. Not to mention the trouble he would be in for failing to get the AI smartphone and destroy it, plus the trouble he would be in for not protecting Bubba. "I need to get out of this country," he confessed to her honestly.

This made her smile and say, "Well you talked to the right person, Monsieur. I'm heading back to Senegal tonight." Jack had no clue where Senegal was. "But I'm sure you have other plans."

Jack looked to the balcony and saw the helicopter reappear but this time men in heavy black operative attire were jumping onto the balcony. He jumped and pulled her by the hand and ran her across to the stairway. He slammed the door and kicked the lock on the floor shut before yanking her close behind him as he glided down the stairs.

She giggled with glee, pulling up her red dress. Her French accent was showing. "Does that mean you're going on the plane with me, Mr. I-don't-know-who-you-are? I hope you're not kidnapping me." But she laughed and it was just a joke to her.

They made it to the ground floor and he burst out the exit door with her into a back alley and toward a bank of silence.

To her he said, again honestly, "How much is a ticket?"

She laughed like he was joking but his face was stern and he continued to pull her away with him into that good night . . .

"$1400?" she guessed, realizing he really was committed.

. . . And they disappeared in the direction of San Francisco International Airport, and disappeared quickly into that good night. The whole time thinking, where was that phone now, and would they find it?

***