commencing countdown [attn: Grace, Ian]

[errin]

Months have passed since a stranger invaded Grace's life, turning it off-kilter for a while. The unknown agent known first as anrkyangel and then as Riley Poole swept suddenly into Grace's life, to test and also to protect her, and finally to offer her assistance. Then suddenly she was gone. No word. No texts, no more messages to her laptop, nothing. If Grace ever tried the number she had for her, she never received a reply.

Until.

Grace will feel a sudden rush, a relentless (inexorable), shifting (mercurial) resonance welling up around her laptop. Does she remember it?

As before, there will be a black cmd box open and waiting for her. In white Courier font, and seemingly as though no time at all has passed (though who can tell really when the communication is in flat, emotionless text?):

major tom to ground control: you there, sweetheart?

[FadedNoel]

It's like floating, almost. Only there is no you to float, and no distinction between you and the everything in which you swim. You watch (with whose eyes?) as you help the universe become.

Grace opens her eyes, checking on the computer screen in her office, to see that success has been granted with the latest compile of the "penetration testing" suite that she's affectionately named ZeroKnight. Because a Zero Day is the term for an undiscovered system vulnerability, and what are knights good for except to hack (and slash)?

She's glowing with the sense of lucky success that comes from coding for three hours and compiling with no errors the first time when that resonance hits along with a command line.

I'm always here, except when I'm not. Which, last time I was out of this world, it was for a month. So you're lucky. What's up? Haven't heard from you in a while.