The first thing I stole was a lollipop. I was nine years old and my little sister had dropped hers in the dirt and started crying. I wasn't going to give my own lollipop up to her, so I told her to sit down while I went back to the store for another. Along the way I discovered I was out of money, but I knew I could not bring my sister home crying, so I went into the store. When the clerk was busy with another customer, getting cigarettes or something, I pocketed a new lollipop for my sister. As I gave her the artificial grape treat I realized what I had done, and that I had gotten away with something that the grownups didn't notice.

I didn't steal anything for quite a while after that. My next take occurred in my freshman year in high school. A bunch of my classmates were going on and on about one particular teacher that none of us liked, Mr. Landry. Not only was he a boring history teacher, but he also gave really hard homework and impossible exams. We'd heard rumors that only six students had ever received an A in his class in the fifteen years he had been teaching. It was near the end of the term and the homework was killer. We all knew we were barely scrapping by in that class, despite having worked our tails off. No one was failing because Mr. Landry hating teaching summer school more than students hated being there. He made sure that everyone in his classes at least passed, but for most students it was by the skin of their teeth.

Mr. Landry had just submitted his grade book, after making himself a cheat sheet of sorts. He wrote down what everyone's grade in the class was, and from there calculated what each student must make on the final exam in order to pass. The final exam grades were submitted to the guidance counselor's office after the exams were done, and the counselors added the marks from the final exam to those listed in the grade book to get the final grade for each student. It was on a mission to save our academic careers that I undertook my second job, and learned in the process I had a talent for copying the handwriting of other people. I honed this skill for later jobs, but for changing marks in the grade book, the numbers I scratched out managed. The most difficult thing about this mission was in returning the grade book to the desk of the counselor in charge of compiling grades for the freshman. I was in the process of returning it when the counselor in question returned to her office. I spent several tense minutes in that room, but finally she left, and I returned the book and slipped out unnoticed. The lowest grade in Mr. Landry's class that year was a C, and the historic number of A's he'd assigned was doubled. I'm sure he would have contested the grades, except then he would have to explain the cheat sheet he used to calculate the final exam grades, the presence of which would surely get him a quick boot out the door.

In high school is when I really honed what I considered my talents, and practiced slipping into and out of places unnoticed. I started with crowded locale, where it was easy to blend in the crowd, and moved to relatively empty spaces, occupied by perhaps only a handful of people, or even a lone person. I would remove items to return them later, once they were missed, making the victim think they had merely misplaced the item in questions. Keys, wallets, book bags, nothing was sacred from my self-imposed training. When I felt confident in my skills, I decided to try them out in the real world. It was at my high school graduation that the rival high school's mascot was found in our gym. That feat had been accomplished before, don't get me wrong, but I was the only one who managed to not only capture the live dog they had, but also the entire dog outfit that the human mascot wore. When our principal called the other high school to confess to having the items, he was informed that their school hadn't noticed them missing, as they had in past years. That's because unlike my predecessors, who usually drew out the process for days, I managed to take the mascots and secure them in our gym in less than an hour after I decided to do it.

By that time, I was also well versed in copying the handwriting of pretty much anyone, as long as I had a large enough sample of their writing available. Not that I ever found that difficult to secure.

In the fall I did what most high school graduates do and went to college. While my studies were important to me, my evenings were not idle. I took my skills out on the streets, to see what I could get away with. I stole from dorm rooms, from stores and houses. I even managed my first take from a museum during this time. The security system was the hardest thing to figure out, and that is where some of the skills I had learned in my computer classes came in handy. I also learned ways to steal information, and while that is quite a lucrative career, I quickly found the challenge in it wasn't worth my time. It seemed too easy, easier that that first candy I had taken.

I have stolen a variety of items from all walks of life. No challenge was too great. In fact, the more difficult the steal, the more it interested me. I have stolen from museums, churches, multi-millionaires, and even the government. Vaults, security systems and guards cannot stop me. The more, the better, I say, though some of the new security and locking systems that have been created over the years have almost managed to stop me. Almost.

For a while the government got word of my work, and I thought to lay low for a while, until I could resume my hobby, but then an idea struck. Surely with all the government does publicly, there are sometimes cause for jobs to be done privately. I soon found I was right, and became employed by the grand ol' US of A government. I never met with my contacts, and they never asked. All correspondence was undertaken on a secure network with a tight encryption system. Only those of us who could get into the system were privy to the jobs that were needed. It was understood that if I was ever apprehended, they would disavow any knowledge of me, like Mission Impossible. Their hands were even cleaner, since they could honestly say they had never seen me before.  

I don't know how many people worked that network. I know I personally had four different log-ins, and suspect my "colleges in arms" did the same. One unspoken rule of the board, once a mission was open by someone, it was theirs, and no one else could claim it, or even read it, unless the mission failed. I do not know if the other subscribers to the board received payment for their missions. I never did, nor did I want to. The challenge was enough. I stole a great many things for our fine country, and in the process was introduced to similar systems in international governments. I stole a great many things from our government in turn.

In my line of work, it is hard to say who is the best, because they, by definition, are the ones no one knows about. A successful thief will never take credit for their work. In some cases, their work won't even be noticed for days, if ever. Of course the large scale gigs, where no replica can be substituted for the original, the heist is noticed, but a good thief never does two jobs the same way, so invariably several jobs he's done will be associated with several different people.

As important as it is to understand patterns when breaking security systems, it's even more important to understand your own patterns in breaking these systems. Such patterns are the second quickest way to be caught. The quickest, of course, is being a bad thief. One sign of a bad thief is that they feel some sort of attachment to the items they've lifted, and feel the need to keep them. Or worse, sell them.

I can tell you that of all the things I've stolen over the years, I have only kept two things: an earring that I lifted from my then-girlfriend in eleventh grade, and a single object of art, whose owner had passed away shortly after my taking the item. Not that I had a hand in the death, but rather I knew she was old and with no family, and the item would not be missed.

After a few years I disappeared from the government scene. Most of the jobs bored me. I still checked in the network occasionally and took minor jobs, but found ultimately that I had to create my own goals to find real challenges. I have had a long and successful career, and have determined that there is only one thing that I have not stolen that would be a challenge to me.

You may be asking yourself why I am telling you all this. The reason is simple. You are the only person I'll be able to share my deeds with, and who will help me attain my final challenge. The one thing I have not yet stolen is a life.

Don't look so panicked, I do not mean to become something as base as a murderer. In all my years, even with the government, I never killed. Being a thief is tiring, however, and I yearn for a normal life. It is too dangerous to do that as myself, not only for fear I may be caught, but also for fear I'll slip back into what I was. I have been preparing for my retirement for years. Even as I was stealing from mansions and national banks, I have been observing you, learning what I need for my last heist. I know you, probably better than you know yourself. I know your writing, your talk, your habits, your walk, everything. Slowly I have gathered everything I needed to know to pull this off.