“I do. He was on my team at EverGreen Security. We were in Kansas City together and Berlin right before I left corporate.”
“That’s an asset,” Jacob said. “Can you contact him?”
“He comes to DeSoto’s once in a while. I’m sure I can make contact.”
“What else?” Sandy asked.
“Well, there is us,” Jacob said. “Johnson came to me because of all of us. He thinks we all bring something to the table, so what is it?”
“Hacking,” Gomez said, “knowledge of pharma-tech code, security experience, Sandy knows imaging tech.”
“One of the best deep fake artists around,” Sandy said.
Jacob laughed. “I’m sure that could…”
Interrupting, Two-Step opened the door and stuck his head in. “Hey, Pigeon Eater is here. He has those flippers you traded for. You want him to bring them back?”
Jacob stood. “I’ll go.”
“What’re you guys talking about?” Two-Step asked, not moving out of the doorway.
Gomez looked at Two-Step. “Get back to work.”
“I need to get through,” Jacob said when Two-Step still had not moved.
“Yeah right.”
Pigeon Eater stood at the entrance of the store, behind him and still in the mall walkway sat a wagon with two boxes in it. “Hey, Jacob.”
“I’m sorry I forgot to drop by for the phones yesterday,” Jacob said as he made his way toward Pigeon Eater. “I got caught up with something.”
“No problem, man. I just thought I would bring these by. I didn’t want the debt hanging over my head. That wouldn’t be good.” He glanced around and seemed unsure of how to proceed.
“I understand. You can wheel them to the back, or I can carry them,” Jacob said.
Pigeon Eater surveyed the aisles, then took in the size of the wagon. Satisfied, he pulled the wagon through the store, taking his time, making sure not to hit any of the electronics piled along the way. When he got to the counter he stopped. “I don’t think it will fit through there,” he said indicating behind the counter.
“I can take it from here,” Jacob said. “Two-Step, give me a hand.”
After they got the boxes off the wagon, Jacob thanked Pigeon Eater.
“No problem, man,” he said. “I just don’t get why you guys go so crazy over those things.”
“Oh, these things are like gold,” Two-Step started.
“I’m sure Pigeon Eater has other things he could be doing instead of listening to you ramble on about old tech,” Jacob said, cutting him off.
“Yeah, I’ve got to take some pigeons to The Chaat Spot,” he said. Without saying another word, he navigated his wagon back through the store.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jacob asked Two-Step as they carried the phones to the back room.
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t need to know they are so valuable.”
“But they are.”
“They are what?” Gomez asked.
“The phones,” Two-Step said.
“The phones are what?”
“Valuable.”
Jacob cut in. “But you don’t want the person trading them to you to know how valuable they are.”
Two-Step thought for a moment. “I could see how that could be a problem.”
Sandy rummaged through one of the boxes. “These are great,” she said, taking one of the phones out of the box.
Two-Step got excited. “I know. I’ve been thinking about them since Jacob said he was getting so many. We usually sell them to people on the pirate LTE network, but with this many, I can use a few for an idea I’ve been working on. I want to see if I can hook up one to a newer network. Maybe a quantum network. I think I can modify them to make a network go crazy slow.”
“Why would you do that?” Sandy asked.
“I... Well, for fun, I guess. If I can get it to work, it could cause some serious disruption to a system. I’m sure there are some Black Hats out there who would pay good credits for one that could do that.”
Jacob looked at Gomez. Gomez nodded. They both had the same idea.
“How close are you to making this work?” Jacob asked.
“It’s all theory, right now. The only flippers we’ve had have sold before I could test the theory. But with this many, I could try some ideas.”
“Would ten of these be enough to experiment on?” Gomez asked.
Two-Step’s face lit up. “Ten? Yeah, sure.”
“Start as soon as possible.”
“What about the Tandy?” Two-Step asked.
“Jesus, you aren’t done with that yet?”
“I will be today.”
“Good. Now get back out in the store.”
On his way out, Two-Step stopped and asked, “You guys thinking about using the phones for something?”
“Get back to work.”
Jacob shut the door behind Two-Step. “If he can get that to work…”
“We can use it on the Your Better Life network,” Sandy finished for him.
“Another asset,” Gomez said.
“But we will need more,” Jacob said. “More than we have. Weapons, for one. IDs that will work.”
Gomez sighed.
“What?” Sandy asked.
“I was hoping to avoid this, but I could get in touch with the SRS.”
“The Russians and Chinese? But I thought you two didn’t want to work with them again,” Sandy said.
“We don’t, but they have resources we could use. It would be a damn sight easier to work with them than gathering everything ourselves,” Gomez said.
“We couldn’t let them know about Your Better Life,” Jacob said.
“Oh, hell no,” Gomez agreed.
“You think they would be up for it?”
“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Gomez said.
Chapter 15
“We could make a date of it,” Jacob said. “Go to the museum or the zoo.”
“The zoo depresses me. Looking at clones of extinct animals in man-made habitats is just not my thing,” Sandy said.
She had the night off and wanted to spend the day working on an art project, an installation piece examining celebrity in politics. At least that is what she told people and what the project was in the beginning. Now it had morphed into something she couldn’t quite explain. Over time, it became directionless, and she felt like dropping it for months, but admitting that was a sort of defeat in her mind, admitting that she was not going to be an artist, that she would be running the visual show at DeSoto’s for the rest
