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(Not up to your standards, but I had a flash and had to pen)

...

"I was never really what you'd call the activist type. My idea of subversion was surfing websites like 2600 and TAP. I liked my country and all, but my idea of "patriots" was that they wore camo and played games in the woods, so I was pretty surprised when I heard that knock on my door.

I've always been a bit paranoid, or at least I have ever since I served time in juvenile for hacking some old DARPANET systems. A crazy, gay ACLU attorney finally got my record expunged just before I graduated college, so I was able to get a decent job, but his advice to me was to stay so straight (there's irony there) and paranoid that I'd never be busted again no matter what.

I cracked my door and looked out. There they were. Two aged men, wearing stereotypical camos that had seen better days. It wasn't until the one in back spoke up that I realized I knew him.

I let them in against my better judgement, but my judgement never has been very sharp (just ask my last two girlfriends). Then again, what do you say when you see the cop who busted you as a teenager? If you haven't been there, you probably wouldn't understand, but there he was. He retired years ago, he explained to me, and now he needed a favor.

Well, that was rich. I can think of my screaming parents, two trials, and three years behind concrete and barbed wire with freaks who had an entirely different concept of survival than I did as reasons enough not give this guy any favors. I could still taste the concrete and remember him reading me my rights, and I told him so. Man, that felt good to finally be able to speak back to him. Old memories were flooding into my mind, and now this guy needed me.

But his story rocked my myopic little world. People weren't getting their rights read to them anymore, he explained. Police commissioners were all UN appointees, and all cops and paramilitary forces were under their direct local supervision. The rules were different, too. The Treaty of Global Good Governance was viewed as the supreme law of the land, and it didn't have a Bill of Rights.

"So why are you here talking to me", I finally asked.

"We need a hacker."

My hands went numb. I felt my face go flush. Ten years later the same cop wants to send me back to jail? What an obvious setup! I tried to stand and tell them to leave, but I just couldn't. My knees wouldn't move and I just sat there staring at them.

They didn't seem to notice. Maybe I was crazy but it looked as though they were figeting. Now that's rich, I thought. They're nervous, but I'm the one that's going to go to jail if I don't get smart fast.

My old arresting cop started to continue. It's our cell phones. We know that they've been turning them on to track us and listen to us, and we want to trap them.

"More power to you," I managed to stammer.

Then it grew quiet. "You don't understand. It's all over. It's not the cops versus criminals or Conservatives versus Liberals anymore. Our government is gone. The Constitution is gone. Our rights are gone. Our soverignty is gone. The police commissioner for this town is from Nigeria, and the precinct captain is from Yemen. Over them both is a regional council that's comprised of two Communist Chinese and a mullah from Iran."

This was actually news to me. I tracked the news on the web, and no one had mentioned any of this to me and I told them so.

"They all have cover stories. The news is only allowed to mention and show their American puppets. A UN Fairness-in-Media committee insures that each news agency carries only the official news, and who's in charge isn't part of that."

I told them that I'm not buying any of this spiel. That I'm not hacking anything for them and that I'm not going back to jail. Finally, I felt the strength begin to return to my legs. I stood and showed them the door.

The ex-cop that I didn't know finally spoke. "OK, I understand your position, but can you at least answer a technical question for us?"

"Is the Pope Catholic," I laughed?!

"Just tell us, can you detect when someone is trying to remotely access your cell phone?"

I laughed again. "Of course. The signal to activate and the codes for functions are all clear-text, unencrypted."

That's when I noticed it. They both sighed and relaxed. Man, maybe I had these two pegged wrong. Nobody in a sting relaxes when their prey refuses to cross the line into illegality.

"Well, even if you won't help us per se," the quiet ex-cop said, maybe you can one day feel comfortable enough with us to tell us how we can detect that signal."

I must've still been in shock, though, because as they were leaving I told them to bring a laptop and the cell phone that they wanted for their trap back and I'd tell them how to do it.

And then I bolted the door shut and prayed for the first time in seven years...