“Would you please stop pacing around the flat for a minute? Who on Earth are you meeting this evening? Is it a job interview or something?” complained Matt as his roommate was doing laps around the flat.

Finn was indeed pacing nervously around the flat, a trait he inherited from his father. He was thinking about the dinner with Fae and her digital underground contacts at the Glowing Shamrock in less than one hour. He was more than an introvert than his sister, and he wasn’t keen on meeting new people at the best of times, never mind potentially dangerous people. What if they demanded that he infiltrated Éireann Digital Systems? What if they blackmailed him with something? What if someone at Éireann Digital Systems was at the pub and reported that he was affiliating with known criminals? He really, really didn’t want to go. But on the other hand he was intrigued. If these people were anything like that jeweler on Princes St, it would have been remarkable. But this time they were going to meet in a public place. Unless they went out and got kidnapped and get taken to a basement. No. Maybe they were going to use code words! They would talk about the weather and communicate places and times to meet other people! And what about the whole data courier business? Were they going to give him spinning disks or lightning cards? They may have secretly got some cool pre-Pulse tech to work, something they couldn’t be detected by border control?

the phone rang

“I hope to God this is Matt and not my idiot brother who should already be on the tram getting here!” said Fae from a pay phone on the other end of the line. Finn finally snapped out of his daydreaming and blurted some hasty reply before putting down the phone and running to get his coat, leaving Matt wondering what was going on.

He managed to catch the 18:12 205 tram to the Victorian Quarter. Fae was right, he was probably going to be late, but at least everyone was going to be there already, including her sister, so he felt a little bit less overwhelmed.

Finn looked around the pub. It was very busy, as expected on a Friday night: a lot of couples, groups of friends, and families were already having their first round. He kept scanning tables until he saw an arm waving at him, it was his sister and, as expected, was already sat down at a table with a couple he didn’t know. They seemed perfectly normal, in their early thirties at most, dressed like any other in there. The girl, a good looking redhead, was smiling and looking directly at him now, with gorgeous green eyes. The man, with straight long hair in a pony tail and a well-maintained mid-length beard to match, was rather built and very inquisitive, piercing blue eyes; overall a Scandinavian almost-Viking king of look.

Finn greeted everyone and was introduced to Kathleen and Eric, and then Fae signaled the waiter that they were ready to order.

“So Finn, your sister was telling us that you work at Éireann Digital Systems. How are things? Eric works there too… have you two met before?”

Finn tried to conceal his surprise when he heard that, then he looked at the stocky Viking who was also trying to figure out the same thing. He muttered that he worked primarily in the depot, moving new units coming in, and keeping track of inventory. Of course he did, he looked the part, but he definitely knew more than he let on about computers. Or so Finn thought, assuming perhaps incorrectly that all members of the digital underground had to be programmers and hackers. He told him that he was a Senior System Configurator, and tried very hard not to sound superior in any way, and quickly asked if he knew Jarrod, who typically brought him new units to assembled and configured. He did. Furthermore, he said he was a friend. Did he really mean friend or did he imply that he was also a member of the underground? He tried to look into his eyes to figure that out, but nothing: they kept staring straight at him without blinking.

Then suddenly, Eric actually attempted what almost looked like a smile and picked up a bag from under the table. Kathleen said that they wanted to give Fae a little something for her 30th, something that she could also use on her upcoming trip. That was it, thought Finn, they are going to give you the data to smuggle out of Ireland! Indeed, Kathleen first took out a small wooden box, with a slide-up opening. Fae picked it up, and slid up the opening. It was batteries, at least 3£ worth of batteries.

“I figured you’d need them for your new DigiBook. I did test them, and they should all be good, except for one which didn’t seem to be working, but maybe I am wrong. You should have a look…”

That was obviously the clue. One of the batteries was “it”, but what, exactly? Thought Finn while his sister took out each battery. When she got to the last one her facial expression changed a bit. She handed it to Finn. It was definitely lighter than an ordinary battery.

“But really,” continued Kathleen “you should have this as well. At least borrow it, will you? It does amazing photos. And some films of course. I haven’t used them in a while and I think they are all good”

Fae open the leather case that Kathleen handed to her and extracted one of those brand new Polaroid InstaFilm cameras. It would have definitely come in handy during the trip, thought Finn, who also had a quick look through the different films she gave her. This time the weight was the same, and they looked exactly like new films. Except that there was a tiny notch on the edge of one, nothing much but something you could feel with your hand —if you knew there had to be something to look for.

Fae gave the camera and the films to Finn, saying that he should carry it. Obviously, so that whatever it was we were carrying was going to be split within the two.

“And then you can borrow these, too” continued Eric, taking out two small booklets “My brother actually went more or less on the same route, when he recently decided to go backpacking for a summer, after graduating, and he got guides for most places… he also added some notes and marked some good cafes and shops.”

Fae had a look through the two guides. One was for Paris, and the other was for Turin. Those were obviously the destinations where they were supposed to deliver their stuff, and there were some rather peculiar markings on some of the pages, highlighting addresses on the maps and names of places in the text. As she was going through the Paris guide, a small piece of paper came out of the book.

“Ah sorry, there could be some receipts or similar rubbish in there. My brother kept everything. You may want to chuck those out, you probably… don’t need them”

Another coded message there. And sure enough, when Finn picked up one of the receipts, there was something scribbled on the back. It was a list of symbols with some text next to it, a kind of legend for the markings that were in the books: “safe”, “hot”, “friendly”, “avoid”, “well-supplied”, …

Finn couldn’t help but giving a surprised look at Eric, who looked at him and nodded in silence. Those were probably safe houses, places to avoid or that were friendly to the underground, and similar. They could have easily been notes to rate restaurants and cafes, except that… upon a closer look some of them definitely weren’t food places.

“You’ll also find a star on the map of both these guides” continued Eric “that was the that my brother… liked the most in each city”

Finn tried to decode what Eric just said. He looked at his sister and they suddenly realized, at the same time, that the thing thing that Eric’s brother liked the most in each city would have had to be the place where to deliver whatever it was that they were carrying. He flicked through the Paris guide and sure enough on the big, foldable map attached to the back of the guide, he could clearly see a star near the cathedral of Notre Dame.

“We’ll be sure not to miss them then!” said Fae, trying to get her brother to quickly fold back the map, confident that she understood everything so far.

They ordered their dinner. The other reason why Finn was looking forward to the trip was the food: since they went back to their parents for Fae’s 30th, he was looking forward to some real Italian food. Her parents always tried their best to source the proper ingredients, as close as they could to the real deal, and Finn could always tell the difference between proper pasta and the one that his friends' smothers used to prepare: it was either the cooking time or something in the sauce, or the consistency of the pasta itself that was off. He always wondered what having some real trofie al pesto in Genoa would have been like. He wasn’t so sure of what to expect about French food.

They continued chatting about the trip. Following the cover story of Eric’s brother backpacking through continental Europe, they understood that they could have surely booked only a trip at a time, but that would have meant having to wait a few days each way, which wasn’t ideal if they had to stay within a total of three weeks there and back. They figured they wanted to have at least three full days in Genoa, so they ended up budgeting the whole first and last week of travel time, including two longer stop of a whole full day in Paris and one in Turin. They would have had to pre-book most of the tickets and accommodation through a travel agency, and there were several in the city that organized tours throughout France, and that was definitely the best bet to keep to some sort of schedule.

For Italy, things were more complicated. It was no longer such a common tourist destination these days, given the state of political turmoil, especially in some of the big Northern cities like Milan, Turin, or Genoa, so most of the travel agencies were no longer setup for tours there. The main challenge was having someone in the country they could trust, and which could anticipate the money necessary for all the bookings in local currency. But luckily, apparently Kathleen knew someone who could help: she heard of one “agency” on the other side of the city that might have been able to organize something for them. It was probably going to be more expensive than usual, but it was better than having no bookings at all.

That was interesting: it sounded like they were going to meet some more people tied to the digital underground, and God knows how this was going to work.

“Ohh before I forget: do you guys cycle? Tomorrow is going to be a fantastic day, in the morning at least! You should check out the route to the old airport and the abandoned control tower… maybe you can even get in if they didn’t block the access to it. It is quite a cycle from the center, but worth it.” jumped in Eric out of the blue, and the sibling instantly understood that they had their next morning planned out for them.

The other thing they needed to sort out rather urgently was how to get on the continent. A cruise ship would have been too expensive for essentially only one stop, but the most obvious way to get to France, and to La Havre especially, was to register as passengers on a packet boat. There were a few going every week from Cork to France managed by the National Postal Service.

By the time they finished their dinner, they had a clearer idea of the different stops along the way, and their original plan to go through La Havre, Paris, Lyon, Turin and then Genoa was basically confirmed.

When Fae got back to her flat, she had only one thing in mind: find out what they were supposed to smuggle along with the batteries and the camera films. Finn kept the camera and the films, and she kept the batteries. She took a good look at the wooden box that contained them, and there was nothing special about that: just a battery box, they were fairly common these days, as batteries finally became more affordable and more and more people had to use them for their own “devices”, of which the DigiBook was a prime example, although a bit expensive for most.

She examined the batteries, and definitely there was something odd with one of them, as it seemed a bit lighter than the others. She looked at it closely and discovered that it had been modified and it was basically an empty shell, with a screw-on top that could barely be discovered. She unscrewed the top and tapped the bottom of the battery shell so that whatever was inside finally came out. It was… a microfilm! As silly as it may sound, Fae was well aware that despite being a common crime novel trope, microfilms made perfect sense to smuggle large amounts of data, especially diagrams or pictures, that would have been otherwise very difficult if not impossible to transfer via packet radio. She was sure at this point that Finn had one as well, perhaps obviously enough within one of the camera films they gave him.

She also spent a considerable amount of time scanning through the Turin travel guide they lent them and that was specifically given to her: there were quite a few “places of interest” to check out, and the star marking the place where they were supposed to bring that microfilm was on the Mole Antoneliana, one of the most famous landmarks of the city. At this point, she was very curious about her brother’s travel guide, which was for Paris. She was wondering if they would have picked something similarly obvious like the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame…

the phone rang

“Mum! What’s up? I am good, I just went out with Finn and some… friends, I guess. Yes. We are getting ready for the trip, yes… it’s taking ages! But we should be able to get most of the tickets in advance, hopefully. What? No, of course we are going! No, mum, no chance. We gotta do it, you know that. It’s fine, we are going to be fine. We’ll manage, we… well, we will have some help, as you know. No, we can afford it now, you know. We got plenty of money thanks to you guys. Don’t worry! Seriously mum, goodnight! Kisses! To daddy too, OK? Bye.”

Fae was getting hyped up over this. And could not understand why all of a sudden her parents didn’t want them to go to Genoa. After discussing for hours last time, now it seemed like they were implying that they were better off not going. Of course, it would have been a difficult trip, possibly dangerous, but she made up her mind, and that was it.

Still, she kept thinking about that call even when she went to bed, and then finally fell asleep.

Tamsin put down her phone, worried. She looked at her husband, and told him that their daughter had made up her mind, and that they were determined to go on that trip. Vic listened, and then almost smiled: “it’s your daughter you know? You wouldn’t leave this either!”

“Sometimes I wish we actually did something about this whole thing, when the time was right. We wouldn’t be in this situation now.” said Tamsin, angry at herself and at Vic.

“Of course we wouldn’t, because we would be in prison, or worse, and God knows what would have happened to our kids. Twenty-five years ago we made a choice: we looked away. We decided to be selfish, but because we wanted a better life for our children. Or better, we wanted a life for them. If we hadn’t done that, if we tried to be heroes… we just couldn’t. So yes, we took the money, and the job, and the safety. Because we couldn’t afford to be heroes: we wanted a family.”

“And now we are sending them, our children, the very reason why we did all this, to the one place where they could be harmed!” Shouted Tamsin, angry with despair. “How could you do that! I should have…” shel launched herself at her husband, who tried to calm her down.

“I know. But think about it. Things are getting out of hand, and they have a way to make the difference. The world is no longer safe. We had a few years of weird, controlled ‘progress’, if you can call it that. Now they are getting greedy, they going to destroy everything, everywhere, unless they are stopped.”

Tamsin looked at Vic, with slightly watery eyes. She knew, deep down, that he was right. They played it safe, they sacrificed ideals and possibly killed the truth because they wanted their kids to have a life without worrying about the police raiding their house someday and take them away.

“It’s not that others did anything different, mind. It was bigger than us. It is, still, way bigger than any of us could ever imagine, probably” continued Vic, repeating to Tamsin what he repeated to himself countless times over the years.

“And now we shifted our burden onto our children, the very same children we wanted to protect. Aren’t we doing the exact opposite of what we said we would?” asked Tamsin.

“They are old enough now. And well, we owed them the truth, they had to know why we know. If there’s someone that can pull it off, is our children, I am sure of this.”

“Fae is in touch with the underground.” said Fae, bluntly. Her husband looked at her, again, with the same look and half smile that was both proud and worried.

“Fae is a grown woman, and she can make her own choices. And so is Finn. If you think about it, it would almost be better if they actually became part of the underground itself. I trust the underground more than the authorities, you know that. Will she be mad at us when she finds out the truth? Hopefully, she will come to the conclusion then we only did what’s best for our family”

The two hugged, and kept repeating to themselves that they did the best they could, and they made the best choices when it came to their children, as parents often do. Right before going to bed, Vic looked out of nearly all the windows as he close each blind for the night. No one, no lights, no noises in the distance… luckily, they were alone.