Ernie was a simple man, with a simple life, as long as you defined ‘simple’ within the context of Section One that is. He was a slightly built man who stood 5’10”, with a soft physic that was hidden beneath his drab gray work pants and shirt. Thinning gray hair still streaked with occasional bits of black, and thick, institutional style glasses were the most prominent features of his otherwise nondescript face. Deep lines etched the area around his mouth, and the prominence of his cheek bones were accentuated by the hollows beneath. All in all, Ernie was a quiet, unassuming man, the sort who could easily slip through life quite invisibly with no one the wiser for it. However, if one looked closely, one could see that Ernie’s eyes didn’t complete the picture. Because for all that Ernie’s body and face spoke of mediocrity, his clear, blue eyes spoke of something more.

He paused in his journey towards Systems to stretch his tight muscles. It had already been a long night, and it wasn’t even half over. Placing his hands at the small of his back, Ernie stretched backwards forcing his shoulders towards the floor and his chin towards the ceiling in an exaggerated series of slow-motion postures. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut at the apex of his stretch he took in a deep breath, held that stance for a moment, and then relaxed, coming back to an upright position. Well, as upright as this 52 year old man was going to achieve anyway. Shaking out his arms and shoulders, he resumed his journey, resolutely pushing his equipment trolley ahead of him. He still had a lot of work to do. This might be a high-tech organization, but waste baskets would always need to be emptied, floors mopped, bathrooms cleaned, and furniture dusted. His job security as a janitor would never be in doubt.

As he entered Systems, he noted that there was minimal activity. Oh sure, lights flashed on various monitors and equipment, and an occasional soft mechanical whirring could be heard as some contraption or other cycled through its assigned job. However, there were few people around except for *his* colleagues, and Bertha and Sam were busy in Munitions and Van Access tonight. He glanced at his watch, extending his arm away from his body to focus better on the tiny numbers, and noted that it was 3am. There really was no easy way to tell night from day in this place, he’d observed a long time ago, except possibly through the level of activity going on, and even that wasn’t always an accurate indicator.

Humming softly to himself, he set about his tasks, emptying here, dusting there, straightening-up somewhere else. He was just finishing around Birkoff’s station, when his eyes paused momentarily on some of the activity being displayed on the computer monitor. His hand came up, and absently began to massage the stubble along the bottom edge of his chin as he studied the situation.

“Ooooooo,” he muttered quietly to himself as he looked at the blinking ‘ERROR’ message flashing for attention. Birkoff’s program wasn’t working right, Ernie deduced.

The middle aged janitor’s face took on a sad look. He liked the young computer genius, and felt bad when one of his programs, or something, didn’t work right. He knew that Birkoff tried very hard, as Ernie often would find him working late when he made his regular cleaning rounds. There wasn’t much that Ernie could do to help he knew... but he liked to try anyway. It made him feel good.

Ernie continued to study the screen intently with a puzzled frown on his face, when his eyes opened wide as if all of a sudden discovering a solution. He’d help his young friend, he decided... well maybe just this one time...

With a great sense of purpose, Ernie put down his feather duster, and poked at a few keys on the keyboard in front of him. He continued to watch the screen for a minute until it went blank except for a small blinking icon in the bottom corner. He stood-up proudly, placing both hands on his hips and smiled a great big satisfied smile. There, he thought to himself as he pushed his glasses back up his nose, now everything is better. Realizing too late that he’d forgotten to check around before giving his ‘help’, (Bertha and Sam had warned him about this) Ernie quickly glanced to his right and left to see if anyone had been watching. It wouldn’t be right for someone else to see what he’d done, because he wanted his buddy Birkoff to get *all* the credit. Ernie was safe.

Feeling quite good, the quiet man took one last glance around making sure he’d finished his tasks, gathered up his equipment, and pushed on to Madeline’s office next, resuming his idle humming. Madeline always had interesting stories to read in her office, he thought, and Ernie liked to read everything he could. And besides, those poor tiny trees she kept really needed to be fertilized and watered, or they’d *never* get big enough to plant outside...

************************************

An incessant beeping noise woke Birkoff abruptly from what was an already restless slumber.

“Damn it,” he hissed to no one in particular, as he stumbled out of bed and over to the monitor on the desk across the room. He’d been trying to crack the encryption code on the disc that Nikita had recovered from the Freedom League for over a week now with little success. And his frustration level was rapidly rising with each obstacle he’d encountered.

Flicking on the desk lamp, Birkoff put on his glasses and studied the message displayed. He let out a sigh of relief and smiled.

“All right,” he whooped in triumph. “I knew that last change would do the trick.”

Feeling extraordinarily pleased with himself, and looking forward to telling Operations later on that the problem had been fixed, Birkoff returned to bed. It was just after 3am, and he figured he should be able to get another 3 good hours of sleep before he officially had to get up.

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