Rendezvous with Ana
By Littlesilverstar
An ordinary man gets more than he bargained for when he meets an extraordinary woman


Chet Warren was a very average loser.

He was in his late 30s, with a receding hairline, pale skin, and a little
extra fat around the middle. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, he had
been a B student in high school and was a graduate of Eastern Washington
University with a liberal arts degree that wasn't worth the paper it was
printed on.

After graduating, he had moved back to Seattle and after several months of
unemployment, found a job as a paper-pusher at a local aerospace company. He
had worked there ever since, for 15 years now, never getting promoted and
getting 3 percent raises a year if he got a raise at all.

At least he wasn't some kind of ultimate loser, Chet liked to tell himself. He
didn't live with his parents anymore, he had his own apartment now. He had
finally paid off his student loan debt. He had enough money for a steady
supply of new video games and to go out drinking with his buddies from work,
fellow low-status males. At 5'8", he was kind of short for a guy, but not THAT
short. And at least he wasn't one of those virgins. He had scored a couple of
times in college, but hadn't gotten any sex since then. And he hadn't even had
a date in over a year...Those things bothered him, but he could always make
himself feel better by thinking of the guys who were even lower than him on
the totem pole.

It was a typical boring Thursday afternoon in April at work. Chet sighed as he
organized yet another stack of files, pausing occasionally to glance out the
window at the rain coming down. The filing had been a pain in the ass today,
since the temp who was supposed to help him hadn't shown up. At least the
weekend would be here soon. And at least it would soon be summer and the rain
would stop.

A female giggle made him turn his head. He saw a couple of his coworkers, a
tall, tanned, athletic blonde woman and a tall, muscular, good-looking guy,
walking by. Both were younger than Chet, but both were already far
higher-ranking than him in the company and higher-paid, on the fast track to
upper management while he was stuck in his dead-end position. And they were
both taller than him, even the woman when she wore flat shoes. She and her
male companion were clearly attracted to each other, and in fact Chet had
heard them having sex in an empty meeting room more than once. As they passed
by his desk, the woman glanced at Chet and gave him a condescending, almost
pitying look before continuing on her way, giving her male companion a much
different look.

Chet continued listening to the pair's conversation as they receded down the
hall, hearing them talk about their next business trip together and their
reservations at the Ritz-Carlton. He sighed again, wishing that could be his
life. A career that had meaning, with multiple promotions and exciting
business trips with stays at luxury hotels. The respect of his peers. And love
and sex from a beautiful woman.

"Yo, Chet." It was his boss, poking his head around the corner.

He sat up straight. "Yes, sir?"

"Found a replacement temp to help you out." The boss's head disappeared and a
woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties entered the room. She was clearly
pretty, though she wouldn't have stood out in a crowd as a "hot chick" as she
wore no makeup and was tastefully dressed in a conservative outfit of
knee-length black skirt, long-sleeved white top, and flat-heeled
businesswoman's shoes. She had green eyes and long brown hair, and she was
fairly petite and slender, looking to be about 5'6" and 125 pounds.

Chet stood up eagerly, his day immediately brightened now that he was going to
be working with this attractive girl. "Welcome aboard. I'm Chet Warren." He
held out his hand.

"Nice to meet you, Chet. I'm Penelope Lawrence." Her grip was firm and
confident but not overpowering, and she spoke with a trace of a Midwestern
accent.

"Nice to meet you, Miss Lawrence. I'll show you the ropes and we can get
started."

"Cool. And you can call me Penelope." Chet immediately felt less nervous when
he heard her say that. It meant she was casual. Open. Friendly.

He made small talk with her as they got to work. "So what's your story,
Penelope?" Chet asked. "Where are you from?"

"I'm originally from Sioux Falls, South Dakota." He nodded at that. He *had*
detected her Midwestern accent correctly.

"After graduating from South Dakota State with my silly sociology degree, I
found it hard to get a job with it," Penelope continued. "I didn't want to end
up flipping burgers at McDonald's. Same old story as millions of Americans,
right? So I moved out here where I thought the job prospects would be better.
Right now I'm trying to find a temp-to-hire position. Doesn't look like it'll
be happening here, though."

"I'll put in a good word for you," said Chet. He indeed planned to, even
though he knew that the word of a grunt-level employee like him would mean
nothing to management. He could only hope that this pretty girl stuck around
for a while. "So how do you like our Seattle weather?"

"At least I'm not freezing my ass off in the winter like I do at home. But I
hear it stops raining in the summer."

They continued talking as they worked. Chet found Penelope friendly and easy
to talk to, in sharp contrast to most of the hot women at the company, who
looked down upon him (often literally, especially when they wore high heels)
and usually seemed to want to get their business with him over with as quickly
as possible. In addition, the fact that her college and job-searching
background was similar to his made him feel a connection to her.

Working with Penelope made the day fly by, and before Chet knew it, it was
time to go home. "So will you be coming back here?" he asked hopefully.

"I'll definitely be back tomorrow. Monday, I'm not sure."

He felt a surge of excitement at that. At least one more day with this
charming and attractive young woman.

"Thanks for showing me the ropes. See you tomorrow!" She picked up her bag and
waved goodbye.

"See you tomorrow." Chet found himself whistling happily as he shut down his
computer and packed up his stuff.

The next day, Chet arrived at work bright and early. He looked frequently and
impatiently at the clock as he started up his computer. He felt a sense of
relief when Penelope showed up, right on time. It was casual Friday, and she
was wearing jeans, a black sweater, and white tennis shoes. She greeted him in
her warm and friendly manner, and he felt that dopamine rush that he hadn't
really felt since college.

They continued to work well together, and again the day flew by. After
organizing and processing several boxes worth of files, Penelope rolled up the
sleeve of her black sweater, revealing a tanned, slim but muscular forearm,
and glanced at the large-faced man's watch that hung slightly loose on her
slender wrist. "Wow, it's almost noon. Want to go grab lunch somewhere?"

Chet was a little taken by surprise that she had actually asked him. He had a
flashback to an incident several months ago, when he had asked a female
coworker that he had a crush on to go to lunch with him. Just casually, the
way male and female coworkers went to lunch together all the time. But she had
looked at him, scowled, and said, "Ewww, no," in a loud voice that caused all
the men and women nearby to start laughing at him. He had had to call in sick
for a week to avoid the humiliation until the heat had died down.

"Yo. Earth to Chet. Do you know a good place? I'm new here."

His mind snapped back to the present. "Sorry. I was..." He trailed off,
realizing there was no good way to explain what he had been thinking, then
said, "Yeah, there's a really good sandwich place on the ground floor of the
building."

"Great. Let's go."

Just having lunch with Penelope gave a big boost to Chet's self-esteem. Even
though it wasn't really a date, he felt that it sort of ended his long
dateless streak. And his ego certainly got as well-fed as his stomach when he
saw other guys looking at him and Penelope together.

However, back at work, as the end of the day drew closer, Chet grew more and
more jittery as he thought about how to handle things with Penelope. He still
wasn't sure if he'd see her again on Monday, and he didn't want her to
disappear from his life. He had to ask for her number. But if it went wrong,
if she turned his request down, and then showed up on Monday after all, things
would be very awkward.

During his bathroom break, he gave himself a pep talk in front of the mirror.
"You can do it. She's a friendly girl. What's the worst that could happen?
Even if she says no, she's mature and professional enough not to make a scene
like that other woman. Come on, Chet. Let's go."

As closing time rolled around, he asked her as casually as possible, "So will
you be back on Monday?"

"I don't know. I'll have to check with the agency."

He took a deep breath. "In case we don't see each other here again, can I get
your number?"

To his enormous relief, she smiled. "Sure. Let me get yours too."

After they had exchanged numbers and Penelope had waved goodbye, Chet pumped
his fist in triumph, something he hadn't had the occasion to do for a while.
He had successfully taken the first big step. He now had a lifeline to her.

On Saturday morning, Chet slept in until around ten as he usually did, then
got up and popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster. After eating,
he began playing his favorite Lara Croft video game. He loved the way Lara
could do gymnastic backflips and was such an expert with her guns and bow and
arrow. He had always had a fascination, a fetish, for girls with those skills.

His iPhone, lying on a table a few feet away, buzzed. Probably his mother, he
thought with a bit of annoyance. Chet's mother was a bit of a helicopter
parent and liked checking in on him as if he was a teenager. Didn't she
understand that he was an adult now, and had been for decades? He was almost
forty, for Christ's sake! He was a man, not a boy! He had his own apartment
now! He was resentful of his better looking, more successful male coworkers
who were always getting texted by their girlfriends or female friends with
benefits, and he hated how when he received a text it was usually his mother.

With a sigh, he put the game on pause and picked up his phone. But to his
great surprise and delight, the text was from Penelope! His video game
forgotten, he read it eagerly:

"hey chet, what's up? i haven't made many friends here yet & i'm bored. want 2
go 2 the Mariners game this afternoon? we can hang out at the park across from
work until it's time 2 go 2 the stadium."

Chet's mouth dropped open in shock. He hadn't had a date in over a year, and
he hadn't had a date with a non-fat woman in over five years, and now this hot
chick was actually asking him out on a date? Okay, she wasn't supermodel-hot,
but she was a solid 7/10, and in fact hotter than any of the women he had ever
dated. When he had exchanged numbers with her, he had hoped that things would
end up like this, but he hadn't expected it to happen this soon!

He quickly texted her back: "sure, sounds great. i'll meet u at the park in
half an hour." He was about to add some heart emojis when he realized how gay
that would look, and simply pressed Send. Then he hurried to get ready for his
big date.

At the park, Penelope was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Her man's watch
was on her left wrist, and on her right she wore a spiked black leather
bracelet that covered up the thinnest part of her wrist and made her forearm
look thicker. Chet saw her upper arms for the first time and was impressed by
them too. They weren't big or bulky, but they weren't skinny either, and they
had visible muscle tone even when she wasn't flexing. He saw the shape of her
chest for the first time as well. The outline of her breasts indicated that
they were small, round, and perky, probably 34B's, although she wasn't wearing
a bra. Because of his fetish for athletic, muscular women, Chet noticed her
arms before he noticed her chest, although he loved a pair of perky tits as
much as any other red-blooded male.

"Hey, Chet. Glad you could make it." Penelope held up a baseball. "We can play
some catch, put us in the mood for the game."

His excitement turned to apprehension. He had always been unathletic and bad
at throwing, and he was worried that she wouldn't like him anymore after she
saw how bad he was. "Um... okay, but I have to warn you, I throw like a girl."

She laughed. "Come on, you can't be that bad." She motioned for him to stand
at home plate on one of the park's unused baseball diamonds, while she
positioned herself in center field. She then delivered a powerful and accurate
throw that was hard enough to painfully sting his hand and bounce off of it as
he attempted to catch it. He stared, impressed. She must have thrown it at
least 200 feet. "Now throw it back," she called out.

Chet did so, but his weak throw didn't even make it to second base. Penelope
began giggling, but in a friendly way, as she jogged forward to pick up the
ball. "You really do throw like a girl. All right, I'll stand closer."

They played catch for about twenty minutes, Penelope making sure not to throw
too hard. Afterward, they sat on a bench to chat as they watched the ducks
swimming in the pond.

"You definitely throw like a man," said Chet. "Where did you learn to throw
like that?"

"Oh, I played softball on my high school and college teams. I was usually in
center field. I could throw all the way from the warning track to home plate."

"Holy shit. That's amazing."

She smiled modestly. "Not THAT amazing. Remember, a softball field is smaller
than a baseball field."

"Well, still way more than I could ever do."

She patted his shoulder, then looked at her watch, the oversized timepiece
sliding slightly down her wrist as she moved her arm. "Hey, we'd better get
going soon."

They took the train to the stadium for the Seattle Mariners game against the
Anaheim Angels. (In this story, COVID-19 does not exist). Chet paid a good
amount for a pair of good seats on the third-base side just a few rows back
from the field. After that, Penelope insisted on paying for the concessions,
which over the course of the game included hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and
beer. Chet definitely thought that that made her even more of a cool chick, in
sharp contrast to the self-proclaimed "liberated" Seattle women who still
insisted on their male dates paying for everything. Between innings, they
chatted about various subjects, including work, and Penelope revealed that she
would be back at the company for at least another week. This made Chet's heart
leap with joy.

The date was perfect, he thought. Penelope was as smart and funny as she was
beautiful. And the game was exciting, too. In the bottom of the ninth inning,
the Mariners scored two runs for a 6-5 walk-off victory over the Angels.

On Monday and Tuesday at work, Chet and Penelope continued to work together on
the filing projects. They had lunch together too each day, and the easy way
the conversation flowed between them, the emotional connection he felt with
her combined with the physical attraction made him wonder - was she going to
be the one? The woman who would finally end his losing streak?

On Wednesday, however, Chet received an unpleasant surprise. His boss informed
him that Penelope would be working on another floor that day. The floor in
question was off limits to employees in Chet's position. Work returned to its
usual dreariness for him that day. At lunchtime, he texted her to see if she
wanted to go out, but a few minutes later she replied that she had already
eaten. He grumbled to himself as he realized he would have to wait until the
end of the day to see her, if he got the chance at all.

At closing time, he texted her again, saying he needed to talk to her. To his
relief, she responded quickly: "okay. meet me in the underground parking
garage, 3rd sub-basement. my car's there. see u in a few."

The third sub-basement had few cars parked there, as its depth and
inconvenience meant that it was typically only used by drivers who couldn't
find a space on the other two levels. Chet saw Penelope waiting by her black
Mercedes sedan. To his surprise, today she was wearing a very short black
miniskirt, a very tight white top, and knee-high black leather boots with
four-inch stiletto heels, in sharp contrast to her usual nondescript attire.
Her slender but muscular thighs certainly looked great in that little skirt,
though, he thought.

"Hey, Chet," she greeted him. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just wanted to chat. Haven't seen you all day. You
look...different. Great, but different." With her heels, she was now two
inches taller than him, and he found looking up at her to be quite a different
and frankly unsettling experience. He was also surprised by her car - he had
expected a young and presumably poor woman working as a temp to have a much
cheaper and less luxurious vehicle than the brand new E-class she was
currently standing next to.

"Sometimes a girl just likes a change of pace." There was something about her
tone that made Chet uneasy. It wasn't overtly hostile, but it somehow seemed
aggressive, extremely confident to the point of arrogance, traits he'd never
seen in her before. He suddenly became very aware of the fact that he was
completely alone with her in this dark sub-basement, that there was nobody
else around, and that there were no security cameras on this level.

"Yeah, I guess." He shuffled his feet nervously. "Well, I just wanted to say
hi. I've gotta go. See you tomorrow." He began turning to leave.

"Wait," she said. "I want to show you something." He turned back to her and
she smiled. It was different from all the friendly smiles she had shown him
before. This one seemed...well, *predatory.* Though the conscious part of his
brain couldn't come up with a reason, his subconscious suddenly urged him to
run, and run he did, racing for the exit as fast as he could.

He heard a rhythmic thumping noise behind him. Turning around, he saw to his
horror that he hadn't been paranoid after all! Penelope really was chasing
him! Strangely, however, she was pursuing him not by running, but by doing a
series of back handsprings, elegantly backflipping at him with the grace and
technical perfection of a pro-gymnast despite the skirt and four-inch high
heels she was wearing. Her backflips looked blindingly fast, almost turning
her into a blur. He began running faster, but she caught up to him a few
seconds later, executing a kick-full at the end of her tumbling run, her
booted feet impacting his back one after the other and sending him down to the
cold concrete surface.

Landing neatly, she jumped on top of him. Although her 125-pound weight wasn't
that heavy, he felt firmly pinned down, unable to move. She gave him that
predatory smile again. "Whatcha so afraid of that you had to run, baby?"

"Penelope, what the fu..." he began. That was all he had time for. With
lightning speed, her fist smashed into his jaw. His eyes crossed and he
slumped back, knocked out cold.

* * *

Chet awoke with a terrible pain in his jaw. He tried to touch it, but
discovered that his hands were tied behind his back, his torso was bound to a
chair that he was sitting in, and even his ankles were tied to the legs of the
chair. He tried to open his mouth to shout, but found that it had been secured
with a ball gag.

He looked around. He was in a large, dimly lit room. A window indicated pitch
blackness outside. It was late at night - he must have been out for hours.

He suddenly heard a female voice. Straining his eyes, he could just make out
the figure of Penelope in the shadows on the far side of the room, talking on
a cell phone, speaking in a language he didn't understand.

Her sixth sense alerted her to the fact that her guest was awake. She spoke a
few more quick words, then ended the call. Chet began making muffled noises
through his gag.

"Quiet!" she commanded sharply. She performed a series of cartwheels across
the room towards him. Her cartwheels were so fast and intimidating-looking
that he was indeed cowed into silence. She completed her tumbling run, landing
elegantly right in front of him, looking into his frightened brown eyes with
her piercing green ones. She was still wearing her black miniskirt, tight
white top, and knee-high black leather high-heeled boots, and she had added a
pair of black leather gloves to her outfit.

She crossed her toned arms in front of her and simply watched silently as Chet
sat there, tied and helpless, trembing with terror. He tried to guess why she
had done this to him, who she really was, who she was working for. Best as he
could tell, it probably had something to do with the defense contracts that
the aerospace company received, although he couldn't fathom why she had picked
on him. He had no security clearance and absolutely no access to any kind of
classified information. He was just a grunt.

She finally spoke. "We are way out in the middle of nowhere. Screaming will be
pointless; there is no one to hear you for miles."

The voice was definitely Penelope's, but it was also different somehow, Chet
thought. It was the accent. Yes, that was it. The slight Midwestern accent was
gone, replaced by a different slight accent that sounded probably Eastern
European. The accent of a native speaker of whatever foreign language he had
heard in her phone conversation. Russian? Ukrainian? Hell, it could have been
Moldovan for all he knew.

"Now, I am going to remove your gag," she continued. "Although screaming will
be pointless, it will also be annoying, so if you scream, I will have to use
this on you." She wagged her leather-gloved right fist. "You have already felt
what this is capable of, so please keep quiet."

Chet bobbed his head up and down. Penelope nodded back, then reached out and
removed the gag. Chet tried to exercise his jaw muscles that ached from having
been frozen in place, but suddenly let out an involuntary squeal of pain.

"I broke your jaw when I punched you," she explained. "It is best not to move
it too much."

He paused for a moment, then began talking, finding that it didn't hurt too
much if he spoke softly and slowly. "Who are you?"

She smiled. "Why, Chet Warren, you know my name. I am Penelope Lawrence."

"But your real name..."

"Who says Penelope Lawrence is not real? She has a Social Security number. She
is on record as a graduate of South Dakota State University, Class of 2017.
She has everything she needs to prove that she is just a regular all-American
girl. But if you must think of me as someone different...It is the accent, is
it not? I must say that it is nice to be able to use my natural one, even
though I trained so much with my fake Midwestern accent that it is quite
effortless by now. But anyway, if I seem too different to be Penelope anymore,
you may call me Anastasia. Or Ana."

"Ana..." Chet groaned, as if his brain was still trying to come to terms with
the fact that the innocent girl he had developed a crush on was actually a
mysterious and lethal spy, or assassin, or something.
"How...what...who...where...why...when..."

She chuckled. Instead of answering any of his questions, she responded with
one of her own. "Have you ever read Rendezvous with Rama?"

Chet was too taken by surprise by the unexpected, seemingly random question to
do anything but answer. The title sounded vaguely familiar, but he knew he
hadn't read it. So he replied, "No."

"Well, here are the cliffs notes, as you like to say. Rendezvous with Rama is
a science fiction novel written by Arthur C. Clarke. In the 22nd century, a
large alien spaceship is detected entering the Solar System. It is a
monumental event for humanity, for it is their first encounter with an alien
civilization. A human spaceship is sent to investigate the mysterious
intruder, which is given the name Rama by the humans. They are unable to get
any response from the alien ship, so they board it and start exploring. They
find many strange and wonderful things, including advanced biological robots
built by the aliens, but no sign of the aliens themselves. At the end of the
story, the spaceship slings around the Sun and flies off into deep space."

"You see," she continued, "the purpose of the alien spaceship was not to make
some dramatic First Contact with Earth like in that cheesy movie Star Trek:
First Contact, but merely to use the Sun's gravity as a slingshot to speed it
on its way to its ultimate, unknown destination. To humanity, the arrival of
that spaceship was the biggest event in history. But to the alien ship and its
builders, the visit to the Solar System was just one sentence in a full
novel."

Chet's expression changed, becoming darker, and Ana nodded. "You are beginning
to understand now," she said. "You are like humanity in the story, and I am
like the builder of Rama. To you, what is happening right now is the biggest
event in your life. But to me, this is just one small incident, just another
notch on my belt, as you like to say. It is not your place to know what my
mission, my career, my identity truly are, just like it was not humanity's
place to know the true story of Rama."

"But what are you going to do with me?" he quivered.

"You are frightened." Anastasia looked directly at him. "You are frightened
that I am going to torture you. But do not fear, little one. That is not part
of the mission. If it were, however, make no mistake. Do not let my beauty and
femininity fool you. I am fully capable of doing what has to be done to
complete a mission. Many a man who has sat tied in a chair like yours has
found that out the hard way. But you are one of the lucky ones. I know that
you know nothing, have nothing, no security clearance, no information of
value. So fear not about torture, little one. All you need fear is death."

Chet trembled at that, the wild thought of "this can't be happening" racing
through his mind over and over. He kept closing his eyes and re-opening them,
as if hoping this was only a nightmare that he would soon wake up from, but it
was all too real.

He opened his mouth, but Ana raised a leather-gloved hand to silence him.
"Pardon me. I must finish my phone call. I will be right back." With that, she
walked back over to her phone, lying where she had left it on a table at the
far end of the room. She picked it up and began speaking in the strange
foreign language again.

Chet desperately struggled against his bonds, but they were far too tight and
expertly tied. Anastasia, glancing up from her conversation, saw him
struggling, but had no reaction, apparently knowing that her prisoner was
completely secure.

Finally realizing that his efforts were futile, Chet stopped moving. The cold
finality of his situation slowly began sinking in. But even as his fear grew,
as he looked at his female captor, he began feeling something else as well. He
still saw Penelope there, as if his brain was still desperately clinging to
old memories. Though he might have been angry at his predicament, he
discovered that somehow he wasn't feeling anger towards her. When he thought
of the time they had spent together, he felt no sense of betrayal, but simply
nostalgia for the happier times.

Ana finished her call and walked back over to him, her high heels clicking
loudly on the hardwood floor. "I have kept you alive until now just in case I
needed something from you at the last minute, but everything with my contact
checks out. And that means it is time for us to say goodbye, and for you to
prepare to say hello to your maker, if you are a believer. I hope you had a
good lunch today, for your last meal."

He began to beg and plead. "Please, no, Miss Anastasia, don't kill me. I know
nothing about who you really are. I'm no threat to you. Please, just let me
go, I'm begging you!"

"True. You are no threat to me. But that is not the point. You must die for
the mission to succeed. You must disappear, never to be seen again."

"Then take me with you! Let me be your follower. I'll do whatever you want, I
swear!"

Ana reached under her miniskirt and took out a black handgun that had been
strapped to her thigh underneath the skirt. Swiftly chambering a round, she
flicked off the safety and aimed the barrel right between Chet's eyes. His
begging dropped to a whimper, repeated little squeals of "please... please...
please..."

"Do not be silly, little one. You would be far more hindrance than help as a
follower, and that would be assuming I could trust you not to run away, which
I cannot. Now, do you wish to die with dignity, or without it? The choice is
yours, but I recommend the former."

Chet ceased his whimpering and Ana nodded. "That is better." Her forearm
muscles began tensing as she tightened her grip on the trigger.

"Wait, Penelope! Can I say one last thing?"

She had no reaction to the use of her old name, but merely glanced down at her
watch. "Make it quick."

Chet swallowed hard, still facing the gun barrel a few feet in front of him.
"I truly enjoyed all the time we spent together. Working together, the
lunches, playing catch at the park, and especially the Mariners game last
Saturday. Even now, after all this, I still feel the same way. My life had
been in such a rut for years and if I'm going to die now, at least I had some
last happy experiences before I died."

She smiled at him. Not the predatory smile of Anastasia, but the old, warm
smile of Penelope. "I know," she said.

That was all he needed. He had gone through the various stages that people who
are facing death experience - denial, anger, fear, and bargaining. Now, he had
finally reached the last stage - acceptance. A wave of complete peace and calm
washed over him. He was ready, and he nodded.

Ana pulled the trigger.

* * *

EPILOGUE

EMERGENCY MEETING OF SENIOR EXECUTIVES AT THE AEROSPACE COMPANY

1 AM, THURSDAY

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Or good morning, actually." The CEO
looked at his watch. "I must apologize for calling you all here at this
unearthly hour. But we have a matter that must be taken care of with the
utmost urgency." He nodded at the man sitting to his left. "The assistant head
of IT discovered something last night and I'm going to let him explain it to
you now."

The IT man stood up. "Around seven last evening, I was doing my usual daily
computer security checks when I noticed an anomaly in one of our firewalls. I
investigated and long story short and geek stuff aside, I discovered that
someone had hacked into our secure server and stolen hundreds of pages worth
of classified data on the F-35 fighter jet." At that, gasps of alarm echoed
throughout the meeting room.

"I did some tracing and eventually discovered that the hack was done under the
account of one of our grunt-level paper pushers, Chet Warren. Checked his
record, been with the company 15 years but never got a promotion. Guess that
made him resentful and greedy."

"Are we sure that it was this Chet guy?" asked the company's executive vice
president. "Is it possible that someone could have stolen his password and
used his account?"

"Possible, but extremely unlikely," the IT guy replied. "Sure, someone could
have learned his password if they'd kept their eyes and ears open, especially
if it was a pretty girl or someone like that who could distract him, but
that's not the most damning evidence we have against him. I'll let the big
boss take it from here."

The CEO nodded. "Naturally, as soon as the head of security and I learned
about the data theft, we began an immediate search for Chet Warren. It wasn't
long before we discovered that his car was still parked in the third
sub-basement of the underground garage, but Chet himself was nowhere to be
found. We reviewed the security camera footage and saw him taking the elevator
down to the third sub-basement, but he never came out. A confederate in
another car must have picked him up. Obviously, he didn't want anyone to be
able to trace his own car. I sent a security team to his apartment, but he was
gone. Neither his landlady nor any of his neighbors saw him at all last
evening. Chet Warren seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth."

"What about the cameras in the third sub-basement?" asked one of the senior
vice presidents. "What did they show?"

The CEO scowled. "We have no cameras in the third sub-basement. Well, we
didn't. We're having them installed right now, but that was a stupid oversight
on the part of the head of security. Or ex-head of security. I fired him as
soon as I found out. That's why he's not in this meeting with us. I also fired
the head of IT for allowing the data breach to take place." The CEO looked at
the assistant head of IT. "By the way, you've just received a promotion."

"My God, do you guys realize what this means?" said the company's head of
sales. "If the Feds find out how bad we fucked up, we'll lose all our defense
contracts. That's more than half our business!"

"Our only hope," said the CEO, "is to find Chet Warren before he sells the
classified information." He turned to the small army of security guards and
private investigators he had invited to the meeting. "You hear that, boys and
girls? Focus on that name and no one else. Chet fucking Warren. You got it?
Now get out there."

THE END...for now

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was actually debating whether or not to include the Epilogue
in the story. In the end, I chose to include it because I've read Rendezvous
with Rama and I actually didn't enjoy it all that much, since I'm the kind of
guy who likes the mystery to be explained in the end instead of leaving it all
unknown and stuff. I knew in *my* mind what Penelope/Anastasia's method and
motive were in pulling off her crime, but I wanted the readers to have a way
of knowing too, while still having Chet play the role of the human who remains
forever in the dark about "Rama."

If you liked the story please drop me a line at silverstar222b@yahoo.com. God
willing, by the time I write my next story this crisis will have passed and
I'll no longer feel the need to insert COVID-19 references into my writing. As
always, stay safe out there.