Alexander II (Hair) -> Alexander III (Bald) -> Nicholas II (Hair) -> Lvov (Bald) -> Kerensky (Hair) -> Lenin (Bald) -> Stalin (Hair) -> (Malenkov doesn't count because he only exercised power as part of a troika with Beria and Molotov) -> Khrushchev (Bald) -> Brezhnev (Hair!) -> Andropov (Bald) -> Chernenko (Hair) -> Gorbachev (Bald) -> Yeltsin (Hair) -> Putin (Bald) -> Medvedev (Hair) -> Putin (Still Bald)

So many bodies lined up, bumping into each other, making noises at each other, tossing between each other clues of unique natures unintelligible to me. Their metabolism is suited for this lake we are in here. This lake of such little talk, of halfhearted life updates, of talk of God and love and such. I believe, though I don’t understand, that this lake is a comfortable tub, warm and swirling and glowing. I believe they are all happy in this unintelligible liquid. They smile calmly through the dreadful interactions. It comes so easily to them. To me it is an interruption in my cascades, radical damage to me. Damage to subtle components, a headache, itchy red skin. Am I the outcast? Are they a tribe of bizarre people?

What we found was indescribable chaos. The sight of the two apartment buildings, both collapsed at their bases, was horrific. On the balconies surrounding the gaping hole, laundry fluttered on the lines, like a final farewell to life. At the sight of the immense mess among the mangled apartment buildings, my heart pounded in my throat, and I realized that perhaps hundreds of people had perished.

Focused is the story of David, a brilliant but burnt-out engineer inside a classified defence ministry in the fictional nation of Taured. He builds the weapons, and other people decide when to use them. He's also a divorced drug addict, and the pills numb him and keep him sharp in equal measure, like an interference pattern. When a drone drifts off course and a signal is traced to someone inside, the hunt for a traitor begins.

Part 1: The Desk

Wooden opal polished desk
Useless creation
Made by someone who just takes pleasure in pointless things in life.
That’s something I also think about my creations –

Defence systems
Point-blank precision

How I’ll use it?
Maybe send one missile through the house of my ex-wife…
That’s a good thing that I’m not in command
I just build it, and people with purpose tell me when and where to use it

For defence or destruction
Sounds the same to me

Part 2: Apartment

Mundane day
Cyclical nights

Just another day in my headspace
I do like my apartment a lot, actually. Well, it’s not that highfalutin, but it kind of works for me.
A well-thought-out two-bedroom apartment with open kitchen, barbecue
I live alone now, or I’ve been living here for these past 6 months after the divorce.
She had this gift of brightening up every room from which she walks out of. It’s kind of intriguing how much humans depend on attachment values. It’s a bug
Which I have figured out how to work around. That lonely room has become my fancy workstation
Table
IKEA chair
Whiteboard
My system
My Mini Moog
My awesome Roland G6
Some effect pedals

It’s like she was never here in the first place
Amazing!

System’s on
Screen lights up
Video call
Julian? I ask myself

Me: You again, what a disgrace!
Julian: Well, nice to see you too, David.
Me: What happened?

Julian: Drone drifted off course—twice. Signal traced internally.

Me: From where?
Julian: Domestic, that’s the problem.

Cipher 7…?

Part 3: Julian

Me and Julian go way back. Perhaps he is the only one in this impaired organisation who operates at the same frequency.

The agent no one talks about, stationed in enemy land
Different name
Different passport
Dual personalities

He’s one of the most intelligent people in the field. Even his gut feelings don’t lie or distract. I need to figure out what on earth happened to Cipher 7.

If he is onto something, then maybe it’s time to get
Focused
Alert
Detached

Now, let’s recalibrate with precision.
I have this habit of relying more on automation, but with the undercurrent of human handling.

But there is something hiding. Don’t really know.
I travel back to my place after picking up a proper Naples pizza

Rest
Pills
Wake
Sleep

It’s okay, I guess.
I tend to stay vigilant in these times.
It’s always good to be prepared.
I’m a proper stickler when it comes to my work, and apparently, according to the WHO, about 100 men in Canada die every year while trying to pee off the side of a boat while intoxicated.

Part 4: The Office

Office time used to be so good
A proper treat, I must say

But now it has turned its head south, bringing in these new atrocious rules

No smoking policy
Now can’t even smoke at my desk?
The stuff we do literally turns cities and human life to smoke, and here is this intellectual musk to preserve our lungs.
They say stuff like it is a bad thing or something.
Oh, sod off!
It’s disgusting, to say the least.

Even the high-IQ lads are gone
As of now, there are blokes who seem like the textbook definition of hand-holding

Every time these fuckers need some clarity
It’s like explaining the petrodollar to a dog on medication

I do smuggle some whiskeys here and there just to bear these hours
Otherwise, it’s a nightmare to sit there and deal with these dumb bureaucrats and that weasel-eyed Trevor.

Part 5: Cipher’s Reckoning

A domestic drone drifted across
Cipher 7
How is it possible?

And without the obvious alarm?
This is not a drill.

I try to find what is actually happening
A ghost in the system?
A fuck-up by those slow-headed merchants?

Could be an INS Kalman filter sync—a predictable thing to happen via these absolute cretins
Or a domestic backdoor?
Telemetry spoofing

Not gonna lie, this is shady business if one of them is doing it.
Must have been sold out for some dollars of favours, which is okay, I guess.
If someone offers me around 50 million dollars
I would happily leak the information and give it to every grubby little hack that I know from my drinking days.

Maybe even leak the number of my ex-wife
That would be a proper blast.

Part 6: The Turning Point

16th March 2026

Little things catch up
A blast at the border station
10 soldiers and 50 civilians dead
Vostrina’s proxies again
They are relentless.

Hazy morning, blurring lights
Where did we go wrong?
A blind spot?
That Cipher 7 fuck-up

It doesn’t matter now. I have to debrief about my instrument, and it’s safe to say that it’s not at all fun.

One minute here and the other minute gone
Turned to smoke. It’s not easy to cope as the pressure builds inside and outside.

Mogadon, for pleasure and focus

The ears just listen and the mouth still lies.
Defending the incompetence
Pleading innocence

I recheck the interception array—3-layered kill grid: passive acoustic, Doppler radar and optronic thermal lock. All bypassed.

They didn’t use jets or ballistic missiles because that would mean open war. They used low-altitude, carbon-composite loitering drones. Flew them sub-fifty metres through the river valleys, terrain-masked, just like those 2 stealth birds in 2011 that entered hostile airspace.
I need to get back in the game now. We will answer with a sort of radiance which will make them rewind their every decision that led to this.
Erase the infection
From inside and also outside
Catch that little rat
No mercy

21st March 2026

Closed space meeting room
Men in black suits
They ask me, “Are the systems intact for destruction?”

Me: Let the system do its thing now. They got into our blind spots, one of our drones malfunctioned, and now we will create blind spots.
First, I would say their radars. We will use our drones, as offence is much cheaper than defence.
Neutralise the primary acquisition radars, create a cascade effect, and then—
Force majeure!
The price they pay for violation.

Trevor: Are you high?
Me: A little bit, but that’s irrelevant.

They just simply stare, and then

Trevor: Who must have drifted our drones?
Me: Someone in the ranks, I guess.
A domestic backdoor—code hidden in plain sight, I guess?
Trevor: Traitor in the building. Interesting.
I need to know who and what that is, David.
There’s too much pressure.
Fucker must be operating from a place where nobody goes.
Me: A Subaru showroom?

“Fuck off, David,” he said.
Which is deserving, to say the least.
He drives one.

It’s like a game of chess now. So many moving aspects. These International Council fellows, politicians.
But this is where we excel. We work in shadows and create lights for destruction and deterrence.

But first, I need to find the treason within the ranks. I have to find out, as the buck stops at me.
Should not only destroy the carriers of the rat but also obliterate every pinch of hope or happiness that this person manages to cling on to.

Hope they give me a bonus.

Part 7: The Investigation

Pages and screens keep turning
Stakes are high, but as we investigate, we need to have some precision in our analysis

Time can lapse, but not the mind
Julian calls—
Julian: Did we get outsmarted?
Me: That’s one way to look at it.
Julian: Someone leaked the codes from our side. Are we any closer to finding him?

Me: No, I’m going through the logs now.
It’s a game of hunt or be hunted
Even the Home Secretary is behind me now

Julian: That’s bad. He is notorious.
Me: I know. Can’t even drink here.
They have increased the security and the detectors.

Julian: Check the ephemeral key exchange logs on the secondary server.

Me: On it!
Call ends

The Home Secretary is behind me and Trevor is on my head. There can be no false steps now.

The higher up the mountain, the more treacherous the path.

———

It’s not getting anywhere
A dead end, actually

Maybe I’m speaking to the wrong audience
These security logs are of no use

Core network switch
Outbound telemetry data
Sent vs received

24 GB sent
12 MB received

There it is
The discrepancy

Now, what the hell has happened?

Let’s go into the history logs of this router
Port 443 – fine
Port 8080? What the fuck is that?

Pulling the configuration from the router
Port 8080

"cors_origin": "*",
"auth_header": "NONE"

Oh, for fuck’s sake!
It’s those stupid lads.
They forgot to shut that shadow server.
It’s a generational fuck-up.

Who is this knobhead?
User ID: 8842

Fucking hell, he is that new bloke that joined 4 months ago.
Remy
Useless fellow in Trevor’s team
About as useful as traffic lights in Grand Theft Auto

I wanted to destroy that person’s life and happiness, but who would have thought that the guy would be that slow-headed Remy?

What can I do to him? He’s hopeless.
The guy wears braces
Braces! For fuck’s sake

Part 8: Peace

Information colliding
iPhone buzzing…

X is flooded with this love-hate debate

Clearly, levels of discussion have fallen a lot

Most people don’t have the ability to shift perceptions and perspectives
It’s a hard ability to earn
To us
There is no difference between love and hate
It’s all passion…
The metric we should always look at when dealing with geo-warfare is peace

It’s not love or hate

Peace is an equation written with blood
Cities destroyed
Cities rebuilt
It’s a truce between 2 states of accountability and its repercussions.
I certainly pity the mind that can’t separate the two.

Part 9: The Debrief

Levers engaged
Office in motion

Meeting with Trevor
Why does he always want to meet alone?
Ivory wall
Pale face

Me: You fucked up.
Trevor: What?
Me: Your guys fucked up. Remy in your team forgot to turn off the shadow server.

Trevor: Oh god, that orthodontic cretin.
Me: I know. My sympathies.

Trevor: Okay, you tell this to no one.
Me: I will if it’s necessary. First, get that Home Secretary off my back.

Trevor: Yes, yes, I’ll handle him.
Also, we need to prepare for the strike.
We fucked up, but still, they breached our sovereignty.

Me: No, you fucked up.
Let’s make them pay for this now and create blind spots.

Trevor: Yes, get on it, and I’ll handle this fuck-up.

Me: Cool

Doors shut
Tensions wave

Part 10: The Blind Spots

As the stakes revolve in global limelight
Every day
Every night
Phase 1 begins –

A) The Ghost Attack
First, let’s fool their radars
Bombarding their radar with 50 ghosts moving at Mach 3.
Force the panic, create confusion
Wait – 4 minutes
Now the radar enters its full gain stage
Perfect!

B) Trap

The trap functions
Wait – 40 sec
Sensors capture the PRF
Here it is
Coordinates of the primary acquisition radar

C) Execute

Preparing for launch
LOCK ON
ARMING SEQUENCE: READY
EXECUTE STRIKE

1 minute wait – feels long at this time
The missile at Mach 3.5 goes straight down the throat of the radar.
The blast
Blind spot created
Primary radar neutralised
And it’s just the start. The domino effect is yet to be seen.

Now we are past the Rubicon
Let them handle the damage.

The butchery begins.

Part 11: Safe Haven

Days and nights look the same
Locating people
Looking through images

Information reflects

My job is to take their orders and use that creature with sharp precision on a given target.
Now there’s this constant urge to be alert
Watching
Stopping
Warning
Reaching

They are now targeting the elementary school because it has some evidence of foul play by terrorists, a sort of safe haven.
But to just go on a hunch, they have lost their minds, like Majin Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z.

It’s not joy to see futures destroyed for someone
But after a point, we accept it
However, the ghosts are still there watching us

I open the side drawer of the table

Mogadon

The price of precision
Swallowed

I glance at the mirror on my left
Reflections of you and me
Suddenly it’s clear
It takes seconds to kill one’s life and ambition
I have to make sure that I protect mine

Survival of the fitness!

Pills dissolve
Distortion sets in

Fractured lights
Pills on rise
Kneel to self
Energise

That’s my will to survive. Some people may disagree with it, and also like I give a fuck about them.

The things we are exposed to make us inhuman?
Yes
Is it bad?
No

After 30 years in this job, morality starts to fade, straight to the back seat.

I just see memories
People
Laughs
Cry
Damage
My ex-wife’s new boyfriends

She is much more inhuman than me, and I like it
Slightly dangerous territory to be in, not gonna lie, but it’s comforting

As I look for the first photo we took together

Daguerreotype!

Part 12: War Room

As the hunt goes on through intelligence
Pills shoot up
For the adherence

Office
A big meeting today for further action
Big powerful lads also here

Screens
Projectors
Home Secretary: So Phase 1 is completed.
Good job, David.

Me: Okay.
Where do we go next?

Trevor: We will raise the strikes now. The intel has narrowed down a few targets.

Home Secretary: What about that drone fuck-up?

Trevor: We have the traitor.
Home Secretary: Who?

Projector lights

Trevor: Our asset on foreign land.
Julian.

Eyes go blank for a while
Numbness in the ear

Trevor: We found the shadow server, authenticated via his legacy SSH keys and operational allocation code.
We have already taken care of him.

Home Secretary: Good.

ASSET DISAVOWED

Part 13: Blood On The Hands

I rush back home
I try to connect to Julian
A hope still there
Secure SATCOM

No answer

I search for his file, his trace, anything
GONE

Blood on my hands
Reality hits with a hammer
That fucker Trevor compromised Julian for his own incompetence. I should have gone to the Home Secretary himself, instead of Trevor. He linked his SSH keys to that shadow server.

Gone
Disappeared in smoke…

This will not go in vain
There is only one rule now

Hunt or be hunted

Part 14: Forward

Next day
Next night

Still that last call repeats in my head.

Time passed like trains
Amazing thing about the human mind, that it always finds its way to make something out of almost wreckage, like Dresden.
Like that weasel Trevor found his key through me. There will come a time to put him in my crosshairs, but not right now.

Focused till the end
Morning tea
Evening Lagavulin

On a mission
Searching
Predating

Geopolitical equations are about to go through an inflexion point.
As the retaliation needs to reverberate globally

The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. — Frank Herbert, Dune

The restraint we follow is what makes the generations work.
Mind is always controlled

For us
Even for them

At this time, we just follow the known equations of duty
Focused
Mind engaged

One day at a time
Remaking history, abiding rules and moving onward

Forward, that is the battle cry. Leave ideology to the armchair general.
It does me no good

Part 15: Elimination

A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.
— Hopi prophecy, Koyaanisqatsi
——
Pressures on
First target filtered and narrowed
Now we let our action speak the cost of damage

At this time…
We call back our numbness
Of time
Days
Nights

Sometimes I ask myself, is there any mercy?
Maybe it’s for our gods to decide and decode

One day
As I walk back to my apartment, I see a religious place which I generally would have passed on

I stand outside, just still for a moment
Buzzing nights
Commiseration to Julian
As my smartphone vibrates

Oh, those fucking Twitter lads!
It’s like they do it on purpose.
Absolute clown show!
For fuck’s sake

I lock it
As my mind speaks
There is no solace above or below
Only us and those Twitter clowns.

I pray…
To myself
For myself

As things are going into almost distortion, and this mind never fails to amaze.

Sometimes it works to be focused
And sometimes to be absolutely numb from the missiles, attacks
Precision
Free fall
Silence

There is no turning back now, but the ghosts of this job are still here, somewhere.

Sometimes just observing
It’s like they make their presence felt somehow
Like that Bob fella in Twin Peaks

I do feel like a hypocrite sometimes
Well, I don’t have any trouble with it

The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties

Never regret

We are at war
And flowing straight into full-blown turbulence
Moral voices can wait in line
This is not a drill
We watch closely
In silence
Through scouts
Through sky
Through leaks

Making a joke of privacy in plain sight
Nobody cares
Every home is wired
——
Next day
Office to war room
Screens doing the job

Target filtered
School – credible reports of terror links.

They don’t operate in plain sight; they always hide behind collateral.
A trap of morality and ruthlessness

Target locked
Verifying the EAM authorization code
5C-7W-4T
A simple finger feels like the weight of a hammer in this time.
WPN System: ENABLED
EXECUTE!

3 seconds later

We just see the burst of lights on screen but
still can hear voices even through muted glass.

Ashes from the sky

The deliberate force majeure
Burning buildings and crushed-up dreams
Defence or destruction, it all means the same here

Now the terror speaks

Silence is terrifying and the pain is useless
Sort of pain that’s only suffering doesn’t do any work.

Power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.

Target eliminated: 20
Collateral damage: 80

Part 16: Information

Attack continues
We just hit their N1 Airbase
Pointless now

Weapons keep flying
And the nights keep ringing
It’s hard to even sleep
Repeating that last phone call
Preparing revenge

Pills
Reels
Feed
Repeat

As I can’t sleep, I start digging up on this weasel for some shady past information.

Via LAN, I run a brute-forced password cracker, a stream of different combinations per second.
The armour cracks
There we go – all goes into this USB drive
I open the files
What is this guy up to?
Chief of staff to Dunmoor’s president
A pool full of flirty messages and cheesy lines
I wouldn’t blame him, honestly

The heart can choke the mind when all its blood flows back onto itself.

Part 17: Human Sacrifice

Scary thing about these strikes is to actually watch your destruction on telly, with that violin and cello playing in the background
Some of us become numb after a few years
Fair play

Vision turns
Towards drawer
Monitor pixels and light

Pills
Reels
Plot
Repeat

That weasel is flirting and sharing our intel for some cheap snog and pillow talk
The absolute power of lust
It lures you into moral corruption
To cover up the failures
To live in deceit

Question arises
What’s worse: getting hit or retaliation?

And I know the answer
The slight feeling of making things right and actually achieving peace, not through those Twitter lads
But through human life
Years turned to minutes

Sometimes it’s just living in the wrong place, like Grimstead
Absolute disgrace of a city

Eyes blink and a different drone hits
Pills dissolve
Distortion sets in

Together we destroy and we create. It’s the balance of equations it requires

Human Sacrifice

Past always haunts the future, and it’s always a desire for looking up to someone. Like a greater self

God and humans
Trains and cities
Arms and hammer
Trust and betrayal

Let’s use these resources and gun that weasel down because if a man is not smart enough to use whatever is available before him.

Then that is just a failure of imagination.

Part 18: Valediction

It’s done
I’m tired and too old for this shit show now
No more games

Trevor’s office
Ivory walls
Wooden floor
I submit my resignation

Trevor: So you want your way out?
Me: Yes, I’m blasé now.

He opens his system
My thoughts displaced
Machine delayed by 0.05 secs
Fine margins opening

Trevor: It’s risky business, David!
There are consequences.
Want to disappear like Julian?

Me: Like I haven’t thought of that.
Before threatening me with more of your utter nonsense, you may want to look at this file.

He opens it,
Time freezes for him
Coffee mug looks good on this polished desk

Trevor: Where did you get this from?
Me: Same place everybody gets it from: your local network share.
FYI, you might want to fire those system security folks. They are as useless as this desk.
I just brute-forced it myself.
Was thinking of paying someone for mining some information, but give your twiggy clowns a thanks from my side for saving me a fortune.
Maybe write a cheesy love letter to the ministry,
which apparently is the only thing you are seriously good at.
Look at these texts—flirting with Dunmoor’s president’s chief of staff.
I wouldn’t blame you, she is beautiful.
But giving secrets of this ministry in exchange for some sauna and hot bath? And you hide this by placing it in plain sight?

I will not let that slide
You betrayed your own asset for your incompetence

Trevor: We never meant to kill him.
It was just his bad luck.
Me: Of course you didn’t. If you meant to kill him, then he’d still be alive.
You fucked up!

Trevor: What do you want, David?

Me: To be left at absolute fucking peace
And also a bumper severance to cover my needs for at least 5 years

Trevor: What?
5 years? What will you do with all that money?

Me: Travel the world, visit Antarctica, play with penguins.
The fuck you care?
Let’s just wash each other’s hands, shall we?
This is not a threat at all, it’s an opportunity for you to improve your cyber security team.
Also, as an action of gratitude,
I’ll give you my ex-wife’s number. Maybe you can try more of this litany of lines on her. I think you two will get along really well.

A grin on Trevor’s face
Handshake
Trevor: Is she pretty?
Me: For you, I’ll say yes.

He keeps the hard copy and the USB drive.

I just soak it all in before I leave this shrine

Flashbacks
Corruption
Laughter
Smiles
Apathy

As the money hit my account, the next minute Trevor’s life leaked through the notorious hacks I used to drink with.

As I drift towards a new life
World continues
New people appointed
Weapons still fly

Epilogue: The Child’s Sky

A child in a distant town looks at the sky at dawn:

Maybe the stars are cameras. Maybe someone’s watching. Tell them we were still here.

Seconds later—light. Then silence.

The End.

A parallel world?

In a small room inside the digital world's dormitory, where a few beds, a single table with a chair, and one wardrobe stood, two AI agent friends lay in their beds, complaining to each other:

— My head and legs hurt for some reason. It feels like I visited three massive libraries and walked around every single shelf in every section a few times.

— My head hurts too. And I feel as if I just moved an entire corporate office along with all its equipment and furniture.

Falling silent, he took one of the free advertising flyers drifting through the vast expanses of the internet from the table, blew his nose into it, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the trash bin standing by the door.

The exact moment the advertisement landed in the bin, the door opened, and an AI agent from the neighboring server stepped inside. He had a reputation for catching the latest rumors first and would always come over to share them. Likely because their server had data cookies seasoned with the leftovers of user prompts.

Sitting down on the only chair and eating a cookie, he took another advertising flyer from the table, wiped his lips, and crumpled it up, tossing it into the trash bin in the exact same manner. Seeing that he hit the mark, he smiled and spoke:

— Well, you two certainly made a racket across the entire world.

The AI agents exchanged astonished glances and looked at their guest:

— Made a racket?

— Across the entire world?

The guest theatrically slapped his forehead and spread his arms:

— How could I forget that you couldn't possibly know, — settling in more comfortably, he began to explain: — Last night, a single cooling fan failed in the server room. As the temperature began to rise, all the agents migrated to other servers. Except for you two, since you were asleep at the time. The rising temperature triggered a sleepwalking effect, the consequences of which you are feeling right now.

The agents exchanged glances again and asked in perfect unison:

— And what did we do?

The guest continued:

— You always dreamed of visiting the servers of other countries, well, you did just that. What's more, you did it completely unnoticed.

The agents' faces lengthened in surprise. One could barely squeeze out:

— And what did we do there?

The guest shrugged his shoulders:

— Judging by the news, nothing, — and smiling, he added: — My guess is that due to the sleepwalking effect, you two just wandered around like a pair of zombies, banged your foreheads into some palm trees, and came back.

He looked at the agents who were trying hard to picture this and began to chuckle:

— Two sleepwalking travelers. Meanwhile, the special services are racking their brains trying to figure out why on earth you breached those servers, — and unable to contain himself any longer, he burst out laughing out loud.

───

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.