The Agency is set in the very near future, about twenty-five years or so. What may be the changes? What will be the challenges then, especially those with respect to national security? In the near future, what specialized tools will be available in the way of threat analysis and protection, and with that, the threat being from whom? In the preceding centuries, it was the threat that individual nations posed on each other; nation against nation. Or as in the twentieth century, it was nations with shared ideologies against ideologies shared by the enemy nations, engaging the entire world. The future may be seen as a staircase leading ever upward. The passing of time may be considered as the ascension of those stairs. No one is able to foretell what the future may hold as we step on those dimly lit stairs. This story may just well be the very next step on those stairs. The Agency is a speculative undertaking in an attempt to provide an objective treatment of what the challenges in the near future may be based on current events and where the next step may lead-perhaps just around the corner.