August.

The outdoor air was warm and heavy. At the same time, it smelled of water. Water that was already stored in the clouds, waiting to fall to the ground. A summer storm was brewing. The sun was gradually hiding, and from the west, a thick band of grey-blue clouds was heading towards a small village called Podbělec (Coltsfoot). On the edge of this village, where the road curved sharply right before the forest and continued between fields towards Prague, stood a house, the last in a row, which at that time was inhabited by a lonely old man.

His name was Michal Hedgehog.

Opposite the house, across the street, there was nothing. There was only an overgrown jungle of tall grass and wild trees, which together hid a small pond in their midst. The entire overgrown plot was so large that you could build four more houses on each side of it. That's why no one in Michal Hedgehog's family understood why Michal didn't want to sell the plot and, what's more, declared it off-limits. To make it clear to everyone, he hammered in a stake on each side with a small red sign:

"No Trespassing, Private Property."

Michal once excused it by saying that his brother Pavel, a biologist by profession, had explained to him the important role that insects play on Earth, that without them everything would eventually die out, and that insects were losing the places they liked and were becoming fewer and fewer every year. So he finally decided to dedicate this plot of land to them. Other times, he excused it by saying that he wanted peace and quiet and that he wanted an oasis where no one would disturb him and which he would have close at hand. In his case, that meant having it literally across the road from his house.

And so, Michal lived peacefully in Podbělec in relative tranquility, but unfortunately, also in solitude. To the left of the house, he had only the forest, across the road was that overgrown plot with the pond, and in the place where his house adjoined his neighbor's, his young neighbors had a large wall built, probably so that the old geezer wouldn't watch them swimming. He didn't have a wife anymore either. She had died nine years ago. So, to keep the house from being silent all day, he now talked to an artificial intelligence, which partially compensated for his need to talk to someone. Apart from the loneliness, though, he wasn't doing badly. In his youth, he got a taste of money, cryptocurrencies, and his old job paid damn well. Later, he himself also paid his employees well. Some of that money was stained with the red color of blood, but he was convinced that he had chosen the lesser evil at the time, which was also necessary in its time.

So yes, he had the means. That was also evident from the house where he lived. If it weren't for the loneliness, many people would have traded places with him in a heartbeat. His house didn't try to be obviously ostentatious, but it couldn't be denied that he had invested considerable financial resources in it. In its current form, however, it looked a bit old, as it had stood in its place for over 70 years. However, if it weren't for Michal's care, the house would have been nothing but a ruin in those 70 years; that, among other things, kept him active. So, although the originally cream-white plaster on the ground floor didn't shine with newness, and the originally orange-ish wooden cladding of the first floor was now completely dark brown, everything else was relatively new. The entire roof had 10-year-old solar panels on all four sides, covering its entire surface, which had replaced less powerful ones from earlier.

The huge windows of the first floor, which in some places were a substitute for walls, were polished so that nothing would obstruct the romantic view of the forest. And if necessary, they could be darkened from the inside with blinds or simply be fogged to the form of frosted glass. Towards the garden, there was a small balcony under the roof on the first floor, the floor of which was also the ceiling of the outdoor terrace, where Michal liked to sit peacefully in the rain to listen to the sound and breathe in the scent that the earth gave off during the rain, and even shortly after it. Today, however, it would probably be different. He was expecting a visit, and right after that, he was planning a big event. But he still had to arrange something for that.

Michal entered his study, which was located in the back left corner of his house and inside which it looked remarkable. All the furniture was made of wood, but it looked modern. Cabinets, cupboards, tables, desks, all the furniture was made in a clean and simple design. The desk with the monitor and computer had large rounded corners. The cabinets on the sides and at the back of the study had no ornaments on their wooden doors, and they too had their side edges rounded to a considerable extent. Finally, in the middle of the room stood a small circular table and on it a white spherical speaker with a connected cable. That was Michal's only company for those long nine years.

"Ivanka," Michal began, and the center of the white speaker turned blue, "activate my local TIC POS node."

"Activating. Are you intending to contact Pavel?" The intensity of the blue light in the sphere changed depending on how Ivanka spoke. Michal walked past the table further to the back of the room and answered her:

"Of course, naturally." Then he knelt down and pulled back the red carpet on the floor to reveal a square hatch covered with linoleum with a wood print. Michal tapped a rhythm on the hatch: five short taps, a pause, and one long tap. And the hatch opened as if on command. Behind it, Michal found an ordinary steel ladder. Although Michal was an old man, he started down the ladder. When he climbed all the way down, there was a door like a bank vault waiting for him, and next to it was a panel where one could enter a password. Well, Michal entered his password, and the door let him in. Behind it, a hidden and very modestly lit hi-tech workshop was revealed to him, where dozens of boxes were placed around the walls. There were also four large display cases. In three of them stood dimly lit silhouettes of some large figures. The workshop was elongated in shape, as if there was no room for it in width. Remarking on the lack of light, he commented:

"Excellent, I see you've got everything prepared for hibernation mode. So, just bring the terminal online for me one last time, and then you can seal this place up for good after I leave."

At the very end of the elongated room, a screen that was hung on the wall turned on. Below it was a robust control panel with a keyboard and mouse, which itself served as a table for the two devices. Apparently, there was a lot of electronics inside the panel. Apart from the keyboard and mouse, a bundle of wires protruded from a drilled hole in the iron cover, at the end of which was a device that evoked by its shape that one should place something in the shape of a ring into it.

Michal pulled up a nearby chair and sat down on it. He took his right hand, which was all withered and withered with age and on which he mainly had a silver ring with two shallow grooves at the edges. He had it on his index finger, and so he began to tap rhythmically on it with his thumb. Suddenly, both grooves of the ring just lit up in green and then slowly faded again. Subsequently, a miniature spike emerged from the inside of the ring, which pricked Michal in the finger.

At that moment, only one of its grooves lit up on the ring, in blue. And on the second groove, only one miniature point lit up in blue. After a while, that point grew a little, and in a moment, it grew a little more. In this way, the second groove gradually lit up as if something was loading. Looking from the direction of the ring, it was already clear what it was. On Michal's hand, starting from the ring, and therefore also the injection site, a blue-glowing lightning-like pattern was spreading over his palm and the inside of his forearm.

It wouldn't stand out so much in normal light, because it was a faint light, but because it was dark here except for the light from the screen, the pattern was perfectly visible. It was like lightning frozen in time, which was spreading sideways and lengthwise at a slowed-down speed, and at the same time, it was constantly glowing under the old man's flabby skin. Michal rolled up his sleeve for it and admired it. He himself knew well what it was, and it filled him with calm. The light on the second groove of the ring continued to stretch around the ring as the process continued, but the growth of that strange formation on his hand, on the other hand, stopped. When the second groove of the ring was almost completely lit, the pattern under Michal's skin began to fade from the forearm back to the palm. And when both grooves of the ring on Michal's finger were lit again in their entire length, nothing was glowing under Michal's skin anymore. Michal removed the ring from his hand, and both grooves soon went out. Then he inserted the ring into the device connected to the panel below the screen. And Ivanka spoke to him: