Chapter 2: The Digital Doppelgänger

Monday morning arrived, as it always did, with cold, mathematical certainty. At 7:05 AM, Alex was already at his desk, a cup of black coffee steaming beside his keyboard. He wasn’t working. He was waiting. He had set a digital tripwire, and now he was listening for the snap.

Right on schedule, at 8:15 AM, a new email materialized in his inbox.

From: [email protected] Subject: Regarding Your Missed Appointment

"Dear Kevin Vance," it read, the tone now dripping with passive aggression. "Our records indicate that you missed your 7:00 AM service appointment today. To maintain your vehicle's warranty and performance, it is crucial to adhere to the recommended service schedule. Please contact us at your earliest convenience to rebook."

Alex allowed himself a thin, satisfied smile. They were predictable. Their system was a simple, reactive machine. Input A leads to Output B. Perfect. Now, he had a legitimate reason to engage. This was his final test. He would give them one last, clear opportunity to demonstrate a flicker of competence before he committed to a more... robust solution.

He bypassed his personal number, routing a call through a scrambled VoIP service that would appear on their caller ID as "Unknown." After three rings, a tinny, automated voice answered, directing him through a labyrinthine phone menu. He pressed '2' for Service, then '4' for Existing Appointments.

"Sterling Motors, this is Brenda, how can I help you?" The voice was bored, chewing on something that was definitely not professionalism.

"Hello," Alex said, his tone perfectly level. "I need to speak to a manager in the service department, please."

"Regarding?" Brenda asked, the sound of her chewing crackling over the line.

"It concerns a persistent error in your customer database."

A sigh. "Sir, for database issues, you should probably email our support line."

"I have," Alex replied, his patience, already a finite resource, wearing thin. "It was ignored. I would like to speak to a manager."

"They're all in the morning briefing," she said, the lie as flimsy as their website's security. "Can I take a message?"

"No," Alex said, his voice dropping a fraction, gaining an edge of authority that made people in call centers sit up straight. "You can transfer me. Now."

There was a moment of surprised silence, then a disgruntled "Fine, hold on."

After a minute of jarring hold music, a new voice came on the line. It was different. Clearer, sharper, with an undercurrent of managed stress. "This is Chloe Martinez, Customer Service Manager. How can I help you?"

Finally. A signal in the noise.

"Ms. Martinez," Alex began, "for the past week, I have been receiving service reminders for a Mr. Kevin Vance. My email address has been incorrectly associated with his account. I have already sent an email to your service address requesting its removal, which was disregarded."

There was a pause, followed by the soft clatter of a keyboard. "I am so sorry to hear that, sir," Chloe said, and for the first time in this entire affair, Alex heard a note of genuine apology. "That absolutely should have been handled. Can you please provide me with the email address in question?"

Alex gave it to her. He could hear her typing, her rhythm quick and efficient.

"Okay, I see it here," she confirmed, a hint of frustration in her voice, directed not at him, but at her own system. "And I see the account for Kevin Vance's Sterling Sentinel. It looks like a simple data entry typo. I can't apologize enough for the annoyance this has caused you. I am personally deleting your email from his file right now." She paused. "There. It's done. It will be completely purged from our system within the hour. You won't receive any more communications from us."

She was good. Empathetic, direct, and seemingly effective. For a moment, Alex felt a glimmer of hope that this whole ridiculous episode could be resolved cleanly. She was a competent node in a dysfunctional network. Perhaps she was all that was needed.

"Thank you, Ms. Martinez. I appreciate your assistance," he said, and he meant it.

"Of course. Thank you for your patience."

Alex ended the call and leaned back, archiving the thread once more. He had given the system a chance. He had found its most capable operator. Now, he would wait and see if the operator had any real control over the machine.

He spent the next two hours reverse-engineering the security architecture of a major bank, just to relax. He found three backdoors and a critical flaw in their transfer protocol before he got bored. As he was composing an anonymous, scathing tip to a white-hat security forum, a new email notification pinged.

His eyes flicked to the corner of his screen. The sender was [email protected]. The subject line was a chipper, agonizingly friendly beacon of failure.

"We've Missed You, Kevin! Enjoy 15% Off Your Next Service!"

Alex stared at the email. He wasn't angry. The irritation had cooled and hardened into something else entirely: certainty. Chloe Martinez had done her job. She had likely deleted his email from the service department's database, just as she'd promised. But she was powerless. The marketing database was a separate, sloppily-managed beast. The sales department probably had their own list. The whole corporate structure was a digital hydra, and cutting off one head meant nothing.

The system wasn't just flawed; it was rotten from the foundation up. It was a monument to incompetence, built by Henderson, populated by Brendas, and enabling Kevins. And Chloe was trapped inside, a ghost of what a functional employee should be.

The time for polite requests was over. The time for fixing their mess was over.

He would no longer be a passive victim of their digital incompetence. He would become an active participant. He would embrace the identity they had so carelessly thrust upon him.

His fingers began to move with a renewed, predatory purpose. In one window, he pulled up every public record, social media post, and news clipping on Kevin Vance. He saw the life of frictionless privilege, the sneering entitlement, the casual disregard for anyone outside his gilded cage. This wasn't a person; it was a caricature of everything Alex despised.

In another window, he performed a deep-level scan of Sterling Motors’ entire network. He found their customer portal, a laughably insecure piece of off-the-shelf software. He mapped its functions, its data fields, its automated communication triggers. He saw the service schedules, the loaner car requests, the contact forms, the parts ordering system.

It wasn't just a scheduling tool. It was a palette. An orchestra of digital processes waiting for a conductor.

Alex created a new, encrypted folder on his private server. He named it ‘Project Vance.’ Inside, he began to build a profile. Not of Alex Thorne, but of the digital doppelgänger he was about to become. This version of Kevin Vance wouldn't be a lazy, arrogant heir. No, this Kevin Vance would be the most demanding, erratic, and utterly baffling customer in the history of Sterling Motors.

He would be a phantom in their spreadsheets, a ghost in their machine. And he was about to turn their own broken system into a weapon of exquisite, prolonged, and perfectly orchestrated annoyance. The game was on.