1 An average life, a noble death

Life is a gift, it is to be shared with others and for most of us only that simple act can make us satisfied with all the effort we put in. Some naughty kids while being flogged start to imagine how they'll tell this story to their friends the next day.

These were the kind of thoughts going through Dave's head at the moment. He only thinks in this line of direction once he has made a big mess.

'Oh shit what should I do' Dave pulled on his hair with both hands, frustration evident on his face.

He couldn't get into college with his grades so he started working part time till he was ready to get serious with his education. His parents approved and got him a job in a computer firm. His main work is to photocopy documents, type out written books or crosscheck information that has been imputed over a decade ago.

The computer's storage capacity, that can store up to 2 terabyte of data was clear, he deleted all the data present by accident, but how?

3 days ago..

"The client doesn't want this information to leak but with the new influx of data that needs cross referencing.." Philip stopped talking and made a face that screamed it has to be you.

"So you need someone to move all the data from the flash to the system and when he arrives, he'll move it to his phone directly. Right?" Dave asked with a tinge of suspicion in his voice.

This wasn't part of the agreement he made, but it seemed too easy and Philip, his boss told him once this pulls through he'll get an advance. With a monthly salary of 300 dollars an advance of $6000 was just too much just for moving some data.

'They couldn't be thinking of getting rid of me once the task is done, right?' While Dave was cooking up grandeurs in his mind, Philip then dropped the bomb.

"Well actually" he coughed and cleared his throat "this is where it's from" he brought out a simple book. It looked so ordinary no one would think of giving it an extra glance.

'Why did he mention this' Dave thought to himself as he went through the file on the system while flipping the pages on the book to ensure they correspond.

'Huh' he gave Philip a side eye but the receiver just glanced at his shoes amazed at how well polished they were. The book had 40 pages of which 21 had some words in English mixed with numbers and looking like some error gone wrong, that was okay but the problem was the data on the system only had 3 pages.

"I'll go straight to the point" Philip looked him in the eye and continued, "I need you to type everything in this book down by the end of tomorrow, and don't even think about using any ai or voice typing to work like you usually do" he took a breather.

"Firstly, the 'client' doesn't want this info to see the light of day, or in this case to go online at all, secondly with the way it's written only humans can type this while making sure it is exactly the same." 

2 days ago...

Dave had to call his parents to inform them of his sleepover for 3 consecutive days till the enigma of a client arrived, he was thinking it would be easy to get all the characters down but he couldn't be more wrong. A single line of the page looked like this, zf558g lik2 um n219d f&up4m.

And he had to type 18 full pages of this dog shit. So he had to work overnight consecutively but at least his colleagues brought him food and came to chat occasionally

Today, 1:00 am in the morning

"..finally done" Dave groaned while stretching his back. This had to be the longest time he had gone without sleep and also the longest time he spent working.

There was a reason why Philip entrusted Dave to do this work though. He thoroughly checked every page upon completion to ensure its accuracy. 

"Let me just check the first 3 pages and I can finally sleep" he checked the first page, no problem but the second page had a whole chunk of input missing.

"Ahh, fuck me", Dave drowsily typed on the keyboard but he fell asleep, as his hands and head rested on the keyboard multiple prompts and folders were opened, he was logged out then logged back in but failed the password one too many times and the computer was reset.

Since Dave started working on the system he got really irritated once someone used it. According to him it was a disruption in his workspace, they avoided using the system and Dave being Dave didn't make backups.

Terabytes of data, gone in the blink of an eye, his alarm woke him by 5:00 am.

He was surprised to see the log in screen, but thought nothing much of it. Once he clicked on the mouse he saw the formatted prompt due to too many failures.

His heart skipped a beat, he quickly clicked on the ok button at the bottom of the prompt and was logged into the system. It was a clean desktop.

"Oh no, no no no no" he really did it this time. Thinking of how to make a joke of the situation and how everything would be a memory in the future, he finally noticed it. An eerie chocking silence.

Some guys get to work by 4 but this was already 5 and no one was present, well except him. Suddenly two guys came running into the office. The hall has two doors one at the front and one at the back, the building was 3 story's high.

"What the.." he tried running but they easily caught up to him, he was still groggy from just waking up. They brought him outside where he saw the rest of them bruised, they forced him to kneel and before he could make heads or tail of the situation.

BANG

The guy that seemed like the boss had his brains scattered across the pavement. An object flew from the sky, landed and busted. Dave couldn't see anything and had this ringing sensation in his ear, by the time he came through he saw some skilled men and women wearing all black killing the people he could only assume to be terrorists.

Before he could comprehend the situation he saw a tall dude and a girl slightly shorter than him walking over, the tall dude was greeting Philip while the girl smiled at him.

"Hello ... name is Katlin" she said. The ringing in his ear subsided but was still present

"Yo, I'm Dave" he responded 'seems like she's a foreigner' he thought to himself due to her accent.

Meanwhile on the rooftops 20 meters away, "did we get em all" an old man with a stern expression and a pair of binoculars responded to the blonde lady "keep your eyes peeled, don't want any surprises" then he spotted movement among the corpses, one of the terrorists was hidden under a corpse and took aim at Katlin who was talking to Dave. "Under the body near the red can, shoot quickly" he yelled but it was too late.

Dave always had Micro perception, he could spot a maggot 2 meters away as long as it was within his plane of sight. In his peripheral view he saw a light shine off something he couldn't describe, "watch out" he yelled and yanked Katlin out of the way. A bullet broke his sternum and rib cage, a rib punctured his heart. Immediately he heard the familiar shot of the sniper followed by gasps of shock. He saw Philip, his coworkers and the tall dude rushing towards him. 

Katlin seemed to be calling his name but her voice sounded so distant. "So tired" Dave weakly closed his eyes as he lay on the cold hard ground. He heard a cracking noise