The Universe's Mixer

His lab was empty. Of him at least. All of Jensen's monitors were running as per usual with the pseudo GPS program running, security feeds on the Clocktower, random chatter over lines he'd tapped into as well as some beta coding he'd been working on. All except for one station where his chair was knocked over. A half a cup of coffee sat there along with a mostly eaten glazed donut. The monitor was black, but the hard drive was on. Turning on the monitor would show a blank window with a cursor blinking. Only one person other than himself would know his passwords since she'd been working with him on his programing and coding. Which meant only Fred would be able to activate the program. He had counted on that.

Entering the password activated the video message along with another empty window. Cpl. Jake Jensen's head and shoulders appeared, an excited grin on his face.

"Fred! Hey, babe! Oh, man you would not BELIEVE what happened to me today!" He was gesturing a lot with his hands, a clear sign that he was hyper about something. "I was working on that coding we had going. The one where we were going to try to track shifts in the City via the utilities but specifically through phone lines and cell signals since those would be tracable because you're a freaking genius as well as gorgeous for suggesting we triangulate the cell towers." He waved that off with a shake of his head. "Anyway. You know how famous people discover famous shit usually by accident? I totally made this typo in the coding," he looked down and typing could be heard. Meanwhile, lines of code begin to appear in the blank window next to the video. "...and I stumbled across something that was absolutely amazing! A wormhole." He clapped his hands together as he laughed. "I created a fucking wormhole! On the computer! Do you have ANY idea what this means?! Wait. Of course you do. Because you're an absolutely gorgeous genius BUT, just in case you're sitting there blathering off the probabilities of a digital wormhole let me tell you. It's TRUE! TRUE, Fred! Tron? The Matrix? Totally possible even without the red pill! And! I'm gonna prove it." He pointed at the viewer with a smug smirk on his face. "I'm going to run a diagnostic then run a test. If it works I'll test it on myself and then..." His smile turned more gentle as he looked directly into the camera, directly at Fred. "Then. I'll come back. I'll get you and we'll get the hell out of the City once and for all." He smiled and leaned forward as he huffed a small laugh. "God, Fred. I can't wait to get you home. I'll take you to one of my niece's soccer games and we won't even have to go in disguise because with this I'll be able to clear my name. And Clay's. Pooch. My whole unit." He reached out to tap the lense, making the image bounce a little. "I'm leaving this in case I'm not back by the time you get to the lab. The coding should be complete in the other window so you can see what I did. But I'll be back for you, babe. Promise. But uh...just in case...I love you." He smiled again then the video message ended.

In the other window where the coding had been listing out the program jumped then gliched. Almost immediately the coding began to change, numbers, equations and lines turning into nothing but jumbled nonsense. Faster and faster the coding reprogrammed itself then deleting itself. No amount of trying to interrupt it worked, the external controls entirely locked out. Finally, it all abruptly disappeared except for three words at the bottom left of the window:

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