Wandering the Capitol

[Sage]

Sage hadn't been feeling well for the past few days - light fever and chills being the predominant symptom. His head hurt like a bitch but taking a walk seemed to clear his head. For days he walked up and down the river while he worked. He'd shipped Nox a brand new high end computer with an ultra processor and a holo graphics card any would be hacker would have loved to get their hands on. Nox wasn't a hacker, but he used the same software that he did to find information quickly. Software Sage had designed for his own purposes which he'd given to Nox's sister and she tweaked it for their own purposes. Whatever the twins did for a living put Sage's algorithms through their paces and with Aurora's help he'd designed a fast and efficient way for anyone to search the internet and other databases for exactly what they were looking for.

Sage had installed the latest software for Nox and sent it to Moscow for the man to use. His last gift for Aurora. He would miss the blonde hair blue eyes wanna-be-hacker. She was a smart girl. And he missed talking to her - she at least understood half of what he said where as her brother would just nod and smile but he listened anyway. He'd learned that since he started working with him a little closer.

But now Sage was running diagnostics on some other company's firmware trying to bust through their firewalls. It was a good paying job - he'd been hired in as a consultant. He did make money outside of the den. The fresh air helped the headaches, but the scenery along the river was getting hold. So Sage hoped the yellow line and rode it into the Capitol.

DC was just as good a place to walk and hack as Alexandria was. He'd done this more times than he could count. Take a bench and stare at the pigeons on the street while he worked. Today though he wanted to walk. The parks and tourist areas were packed on the spring day, but not nearly as much as when it became field trip season for the schools around the world. The Smithsonian was still a huge hit but Sage hadn't been there in ages.

Cracking someone's firewall wasn't as easy as the movies made it out to be. For Sage it looked easy because he never touched a keyboard. He wasn't even sure he could type the code efficiently as he wrote the sub routines that did his job. So much of his own software was formed as he thought without really much effort on his part. It was like speaking English to the processor and it understood. It wasn't that simple of course - Sage had designed the responses himself. Grim had taught him everything he needed to know about computers. And Sage had picked up more as he learned his own system.

The tech wasn't new - it wasn't the greatest, but it was all he had to work with. Though he had been finding it a bit sluggish recently. It was nano seconds slower than before but it was noticeable to Sage. Sage wandered around DC paying only half attention to where he was going and what was around him - most of his attention was turned inwards while he worked.