Zachary yawned as he waited for his target to leave the bathroom. He checked his watch; 10:23:45. Still fine. If it got past 10:30, then there might be problems. He hoped that the target hadnt eaten anything overly spicy the night before and continued leaning on the pillar just down from the bathroom doors.
A couple of minutes later (10:26:05) the middle aged man exited the bathroom and headed back towards the elevators. Zachary ducked around the pillar, and in his delivery boy disguise, fell into step behind him and waited with the small group of people also wanting to head upstairs.
The doors dinged and they all piled on. Zachary saw his target choose the button for floor fourteen and waited behind him.
It was just the two of them when they reached the 14th floor (10:28:14), and when the doors slid open, Zachary let the other off first and watched as he headed down the corridor to the right while he went left. He waited until his watch said 10:30:15 and turned and followed him.
“10:31:53,” Zachary muttered to himself. “Count it down.” He checked the watch again. “Sixty.”
Zachary walked through the plate glass doors emblazoned with a bright blue company logo and placed a large cardboard box on the receptionists desk. The receptionist, a middle aged woman with a sour face, looked up and was about to say something when her phone rang. She held up a finger to Zachary and took the call.
“Fifty,” he muttered as she transferred whoever was on the line to whoever they needed to speak to.
“Who is this for?” she asked briskly, obviously eager to rid herself of this person.
“Uh,” Zachary said, looking at his clipboard. “Simon Kettering,” he said, turning it so she could see. “Forty,” he whispered.
“What was that?” she asked, picking the handset of the phone up.
“What? I didnt say anything,” he replied.
“Ok,” she said, her tone of voice not believing him at all. “There’s a package for you down here, Simon,” she spoke into the phone. “I cant accept it, no. Ok, thank you.” She hung the phone up and indicated the waiting area for Zachary to wait in. “Hes on his way down,” she said.
“Thank you,” Zachary said, picking up the box and turning to sit in one of the chairs. “Thirty,” he muttered under his breath.
Zachary sat with the box in his lap and stared into the middle distance while he waited for this Simon Kettering, his target. This was the first time he had done this alone. The first time there wasnt someone else close by to get him out of trouble if something went wrong. Not that anything should go wrong; this was a pretty basic job. Almost a snatch and grab.
“Twenty,” he said. This time the receptionist saw him speak; saw his lips move. But she didnt hear what he said.
Kettering looked rather put out to have been summoned down to the reception from his office having only just made it back after his coffee break. He saw Zachary and rolled his eyes. He recognised the delivery man from the elevator and cursed that this was all unnecessary.
The receptionist indicated Zachary and Kettering nodded, heading over.
“You have something for me?” he asked Zachary in a clipped speech.
“Ten,” Zachary said.
“What?”
“Sorry, yes,” he replied and handed him the box with the clipboard on top. “Please sign here and Ill need to see your ID.”
“Of course,” Kettering said, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.
It was a slim, grey wallet. Nothing fancy, but certainly not cheap. It was light and not a bulging mess of cards and notes like some of his coworkers.
In a flash, Zachary had grabbed the wallet and was running. “Zero,” he said.
As predicted, the doors were open thanks to someone else entering and Zachary slipped through as the new arrival let them go, swinging them in Ketterings way as he bolted after the thief.
Zachary had that extra second now to slip into the elevator as it was closing, feeling that jolt of movement heading down as he heard Kettering pounding on the door behind him.
The elevator stopped on level 10, as had been planned and Zachary slipped out into an empty hallway. Fifty yards down, in a mirror of the ground floor, a suite of bathrooms waited.
Inside, planted there a few days earlier by a contractor who was there to work on the electricity, a tailored suit and a beard razor waited. Zachary quickly stripped down and shaved the beard he had spent nearly a month growing off. The hair fell onto the delivery uniform and he wrapped as much of it up as he could and shoved it all in the bin nearby. A worker on the night shift tonight would clean all that up, and no one here today would ever know about it.
He cleaned his face up, the smooth skin a marked difference to the unkempt beard he had just had. He quickly put the suit on, smoothed it out and headed back to the elevator.
He pressed the call button and an empty car stopped almost immediately. He checked his watch as he stepped in: 10:34:49. Cutting it close, but he should be able to make it. He patted the shape of Ketterings wallet against his chest as the car took him down to the basement carpark. The elevator opened at 10:35:31 and he stepped out, almost running into a security guard heading the other way.
“Sorry,” the guard said as he sped off, waving his hand apologetically.
Zachary returned the gesture indicating all was forgiven as he stepped into a car which had turned the corner right as he had stepped out into the path around the carpark and buckled himself in as it slowly meandered around to the boom gate to let them out.
The driver said nothing, and pushed the button to let the window down. As the car arrived at the cat, a security guard – a different one to the one that nearly ran into Zachary – stuck their head in and looked around. Seeing no one that they were meant to be looking for – a delivery guy in a red cap and messy beard – he waved them through whereupon the driver waved a card at the card reader, the gate swung up and the two occupants drove out of the carpark, into the street, never to be seen again.
“Cannot argue with those results,” Jerry nodded, tossing the grey wallet into the air, catching it with a flourish and sliding it into a drawer in his desk. “The proper stats will come in in a few days, but it seems it was a straight up success. Your first net positive job,” he crowed, offering his hand to Zachary who sat across from him, still in the suit.
“Thanks,” he replied. “Not sure what I did, really, but thanks.”
Jerry nodded again, a bad habit. “Kettering had been at his morning coffee break, mulling over the status of his marriage. A report he was meant to give at 11:15 was going to feature a question about notes he had been working on. The question would give him the idea to split from his wife. You interrupted that train of thought, the report never had the additional notes, he never got the question, the idea to divorce his wife didnt occur to him and he will stay married for the foreseeable future.”
“All that effort, sending me there, planning out the route and all that, just to save one mans marriage?”
“Oh, no, of course not,” Jerry laughed. “We dont care about him or his wife. But their son, born in two years, give or take, becomes one of the most revered minds in his time. His research, theories and breakthroughs allow humans to access faster than light travel, the ability to withstand interstellar space travel and any number of other remarkable things. Until your actions today, that future was a doomed branch universe. Destined to die in fire in a horrible cosmic end well before it was meant to. Now, that universe doesnt exist, no one will miss it, humans get an amazing future to look forward to and we power our machines for a little while longer.”
“The machines that I dont get to see,” Zachary said.
“Very few people do. Maybe one day, especially if you keep this level of work up. Daria was right to recommend you, and I trust you arent about to let her down.”
“No no,” Zachary said, remembering the soft face of the woman who recruited and trained her and how prone to disappointment she was. “I just thought that now I was on my own, I would get, you know, a bit more.”
“And you will,” Jerry said. “Dont even worry about that. We value your contributions here. But we also need to wait for the proper stats to come in. While it looks good now, you never know. Another trigger might appear in his decision tree. We might have to do it all again.”
“Does that happen a lot?” Zachary asked.
“Not a lot, but frequently enough. Some people around here think it means the cosmos wants certain things to happen.”
“Will I be called up for that if thats the case?”
“Absolutely not,” Jerry said. “We cant use the same operative on the same target. Theyd recognise you. Theyd be suspicious. But, dont worry, we have a slate of targets for you coming up. Once we verify these results.”
“Ok, great,” Zachary said, a little relieved. He didnt really want to revisit Simon Kettering again. Or his snobby receptionist.
“Head back down into the town. Take some time to relax and recuperate. Some of these jobs are tiring, I know. Well come and get you when were ready.”
“Thanks,” Zachary said and left.
Zachary left the building, having got changed out of the suit and into his usual loose tshirt and cargo shorts. He slid a pair of sunglasses onto his head and headed down the street.
He had made it only a few hundred yards when someone called out to him.
“Hey, you,” the voice said from an alley between two buildings. “Youre one of them, arent you? One of the changers?”
“Who are you?” Zachary said, peering into the shadows.
“You zip about, fucking with ordinary people, unmaking choices they havent even made, right?
“What are you talking about?” Zachary said, backing away.
“All those decisions not being made. It means a parallel universe is removed. A whole universe. All those galaxies and planets. Trillions of people. Every time you make sure someone doesnt make a decision. A whole universe of matter and energy, of potential. Gone. Because what? Someone sitting at the top of that building wants more? Its not money, is it? They dont get paid for doing this. So what is it they want? Why do they get you to do it? What benefit does it have for them? And do they ever stop to think about how its going to affect us?”