Bob looked over at Emil, a nerd their group had gradually blackmailed into doing serious stuff. Nowadays, he was fully under their thumb and had apparently decided to make the best of his life of crime. “What do you think?”
Emil shrugged. “We can boot it up. Even if the owners have anti-theft tracking software on it, as long as we don’t let it get on the internet it won’t be able to communicate back to the owners.”
“What if it jumps on our wi-fi?”
“It won’t have the password.”
“What if someone’s got an open wi-fi nearby and it gets on that?”
“I’ll use my laptop to check for open wi-fi routers first.”
Bob narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want to have to move our whole operation because you were wrong about this. You and Joe drive it out someplace where there ain’t no wi-fi, then turn it on out there and make sure its wi-fi’s turned off. Then see if you can find the instructions.”
Emil had been doing this long enough to know better than protest. He shrugged. “Sure. Can’t be too safe.” He and Joe turned and left.
~~~
Emil and Joe were back about forty minutes later. “There aren’t any instructions. There’s a homemade app for controlling a stazer though.”
“How’s it control the damned thing?”
“USB cable. We looked, there’s a jack on the stazer.”
“You’ve got the wi-fi turned off?”
Emil nodded.
“Okay, jack the damned thing up and see if you can staze something.”
Emil powered the laptop up while Joe plugged in the stazer. They connected the two with a USB cable and Emil started the app.
The damned app insisted on an internet connection.
~~~
A couple of hours later, they’d tried everything they could think of. Emil had gone into the app’s code, trying to find a way to activate it without an internet connection but couldn’t. Bob asked, “You think some kind of super-coder could figure it out?”
Emil shrugged. “I think it needs computing resources it accesses over the internet. Without those, it can’t do its job.”
Bob slammed his fist down. “Damnit! How we gonna get access to those kinds of computing resources?”
Emil shrugged, “Blackmail the guy who built it?”
Bob turned slowly and looked at Joe. “Got any ideas…?”
Joe said, “I looked into that Seba guy. He’s pretty clean. I’m, uh thinking we’re going to have to go a different route. Use some other measures to convince him to see reason.”
Chapter Eight
When their rental van pulled up at the address they had for Staze, Jeremy stared around in mystification. He’d expected an exotic building, but they were in front of one of a row of several large metal utility buildings. He glanced at the van’s dashboard to confirm the vehicle thought they’d fully arrived at the address. It did. Looking back out the window, he searched for a sign saying “Staze” but couldn’t see one. He looked over at Dr. Medness, “I don’t think we’re in the right place.”
Medness had his phone out. “Neither do I. I’m doing an internet search to check the address.” A moment later he looked up, “This is the address that’s on the internet too. Go knock on the door and ask ’em where Staze is. They probably get people showing up here all the time.”
Jeremy got out and headed for the door. He’d been getting more and more excited on the drive down as Medness explained how he thought Stade could make Hora’s attempts to achieve H-B fusion possible. Medness had used his laptop to show Jeremy diagrams of the Stade fixture the people at Staze were going to cast for them. Jeremy had begun to realize that, if this worked to achieve fusion, he—as the grad student who’d helped make it all happen—would be able to write his own ticket.
Now he felt perplexed to have discovered some kind of cloak and dagger going on. Staze isn’t even at its proclaimed address…?! What the hell are they doing? he wondered.
He knocked on the door. When no one opened it, he tried the knob and it opened. Looking inside he saw a row of well-dressed people sitting on folding chairs, looking as if they were waiting to be interviewed. A nerdy young guy sat behind a desk. Nothing looked like it belonged at a major tech company. Jeremy entered and went to the guy at the desk. “Hi, we’re looking for Staze. It’s a company—”
The guy interrupted, “This is Staze. I’m Ryan. Your name please?”
“Um, Jeremy Robbs, but—”
Ryan had glanced over at his screen, “I don’t see you on our list. What’re you here for?”
“I’m with Dr. Brad Medness.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re here to cast something. Bring it on in.”
Back out at the car, Medness asked, “Did you get an address?”
Still feeling like he couldn’t believe it himself, Jeremy said, “Believe it or not, this is the place. They told me to bring our molds in.”
Medness had the van park itself, then they grabbed a couple of boxes out of the back of the van and headed in. Inside, Ryan led them into a large room. One that was nonetheless crowded with people working and talking. The hard, echogenic walls instantly made the noise level of so many people onerous.
Ryan led them to a young man he introduced as Norm. When Norm put his hand out to shake, Medness icily said, “Seba was going to help us with this?”
Norm dropped his hand back down and studied Medness, “You may want him, but so do a thousand other people. Do you want your device stazed or not? He might make it by while we’re doing it, but he’s a busy boy these days.”
Trying to
